“I’ve been researching this place for fifteen years,” their professor said, “and that was the first time I’d seen something like this.”
Sophia hoped she might return to school with such a tale to tell. Something that would give her work some field credibility. Most of the time graduate students returned from fieldwork with ribald drinking stories or tales of bribing officials. They’d regale each other with stories of insects eaten, inclement weather endured, equipment stolen, equipment damaged, data lost. There were volumes on diarrhea, the diameters of spiders, the lengths of snakes, “Why did it have to be snakes?” Most stories were wild, but light on true adventure and with very little romance. Now that she was in the field, she realized that the stories were there to offset the banal repetition of gathering data. What she was doing with the impact of tourism wasn’t going to stop any hearts, but maybe something worth telling could happen on a side trip with a certain local legend.
Paul Thrift never spoke of his own exploits, but others did. She’d heard of how Paul once dove out of an airplane and parachuted into a slot canyon that had been unexplored because any other approach would have taken too long. He traveled the deserts with almost nothing. He could feed himself out there, find water with a forked stick. She worried, a little, that this trip would be too austere. She’d gone over her gear obsessively, packing it, trying the backpack for weight, unpacking it, winnowing, packing it again. In addition to food, clothes, tarp, first aid kit, notebook, pencil, and camera, she had her phone (for the audiobooks), a sharp multi-tool (in case she had to cut off her own arm), a hat, bug net, compass, tiny jet stove, and backpacking pot that belonged to her father. All of that.
In addition to her gear, she was bringing a few things for Paul, who could walk from the North Rim to the South Rim for meetings but who had trouble making it to town. Paul had sent her an ascetic list: pecans, sunblock, wet wipes, brewer’s yeast, some kind of bodybuilding protein powder, and two books that had come for him at his post office box. One was Loren Eiseley’s The Firmament of Time and the other was called Altered States: Buddhism and Psychedelic Spirituality in America.
The Eiseley was a book she’d recommended to him. Seeing it here in his resupply box made her smile and quickened her pulse ever so slightly. She’d read it in a paleontology course she’d taken as an elective, and she’d mentioned it to him only once, weeks ago when they first met. The only other thing on his list was so strange it gave her pause. He asked for Jolly Ranchers, which seemed antithetical to the mythology surrounding Paul: sugar, plastic, artificial flavor?
She loaded everything into the truck and noticed that the sky was beginning to glow, and through the trees a few wisps of cirrus clouds soaked up the pink dawn glow. She closed and locked the door of her trailer, then saw a light come on at Mrs. Gladstone’s. The door opened, and she stood behind the screen, wrapped in a quilt. Mikros leapt up at Mrs. Gladstone’s feet and began yapping at her.
“Going out again?” Mrs. Gladstone said. “You’re a workaholic.” Her hair was wrapped in a flowered silk scarf.
“Oh no. This trip is for pleasure.”
Mrs. Gladstone picked up Mikros and held her next to her face. “Good for you. All work and no play makes Jill a dull girl.”
“I’m still going out to the monument.”
“Boring. I thought you were going to say Las Vegas.”
“Paul is taking me to a place called the Swallow Valley,” she said.
“Swallow Valley, huh? People have been talking about that place for as long as I can remember. I think it’s a fantasy.”
“Paul said he thinks he’s found it. We’ll have to climb to get there.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“It could be,” Sophia said, smiling nervously.
“A little peril always got my propellers turning,” Mrs. Gladstone said, “but it’ll probably be safer out there than it would be here, what with some cat burglar running loose in town.”
“Cat burglar?”
“He broke into the Cluffs’ house while I was there yesterday. As if there hasn’t been enough tragedy for Raylene lately. I’m glad nobody got hurt.”
“Well, I hope you’re okay.”
“Nothing a Valium can’t fix. And I have Cleopatra in case he tries anything here.” The dog barked boldly from the safety of Mrs. Gladstone’s arms.
“Be safe,” Sophia said. “We’ll be in the Antelope Flats area. Paul says it’s near the junction of County Roads 16 and 14. I wrote it all down.” She handed Mrs. Gladstone a slip of paper, which she tucked inside her brassiere. “If we’re not back in forty-eight hours, send in the cavalry.”
“I’m sure you’ve thought of everything. Girls have to these days.” Mrs. Gladstone re-hoisted the dog and re-gathered the quilt around her.
Sophia said goodbye and drove to the grocery store. She picked up some rice, bouillon cubes, jerky, raisins, Dr Pepper, and B vitamins. At this hour, the store was almost empty. A few employees were stocking the last of the night freight. She worked through her list, and the last thing on it was ChapStick. In Princeton, she’d lose a tube before it ran out. Here in the desert she went through it so fast it caught her off guard. Her hair, skin, and lips felt stiff, like clothes left out on the line.
As she came around the end of the vitamin aisle, she saw the two jerks from a couple of days ago on the monument. The tall one with slumped shoulders had his arms filled with cans of beans. The shorter one was squatting down to get at the cans that were near the back of the shelf.
“Not that kind,” one of them said.
“This is the kind I like. They’ve already got seasoning.”
“It’s too salty.”
“The salt is what I like.”
Sophia turned, backed up until she was out of sight, and stopped to listen.
“Now’s not the time to get picky. We’ve got bigger problems right now than salty beans.”
The other one chuckled, then said, “The problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”
“Three who? What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. It’s from a movie. You never saw it.”
“Well, there’s only two of us. So shut up and get a cart.”
She went up the next aisle and hoped to stay away from these two. It was becoming clear how the walls of a small town were always up. She was the stranger, and they were locals. The store employees were locals, too. What must it be like to live in a place where you knew everyone but mostly only interacted with the steady flow of tourists who might only spend an hour or two in your hometown? She remembered once waiting for a table at a restaurant and seeing four kids from the university on a double date saying hello to an older woman who was leaving the restaurant. When the woman and her husband left, the students talked about how weird it was to run into a professor out in the world. One of them said, “I know it’s dumb, but I guess I never think about how they have, like, this whole other life.”
A whole other life.
She made her way to the back of the store and turned to consider the lip balm. She grabbed her go-to basic, then noticed all the choices. Some had SPF protection, some had color, the whole gamut of shades from plum to rose to aubergine. She picked a color she liked and held it in her hands for a few seconds before putting it back, feeling a little crazy about lingering like this. Eventually she picked an unscented tube that offered sun protection and would be less likely to attract pests. Boring but useful.