OUT OF THE BLUE

“I HAVE CANCER.” Her voice crept up on him like a shadow with attitude. They stood watchful at the end of the world in the hermetic air of pre-dawn darkness. It was early in August. Breathing kept them mindful of the desiccated heat waiting for them in the bone-dry furnace below. 

They were novice hikers facing an unknown trail deep into the Grand Canyon. On her fiftieth birthday—the let’s-not-talk-about-it birthday—Trudy Russo contemplated the void. Her husband, Tommy Kunze, anticipated the sunrise he’d envisioned. She stared into the darkness with galling uncertainty. 

 “You don’t have cancer,” he said. “You have a torn rotator cuff. A bone spur is not a tumor.” 

Tommy’s reproof echoed across the great crevasse. It fell through a preternatural silence to the canyon floor more than a mile below. Trudy nodded, a qualified movement of her head. Just to say he was right, of course.

Equilibrium, which lately had been iffy at best, had deserted her. She’d been fearless once. She’d rally after any setback and cry, “Fuck mistakes!” Trudy peered through the darkness and willed the landscape to emerge. She deliberated tearing the pads from the tens unit stuck to her shoulder before plummeting into the abyss. Instead, she gingerly backed away from the edge and groaned like a stalled motor, the sound that comes just before the burning smell. 

“Did we make a mistake?”

Tommy leveled an unbiased gaze at his wife. “No, Tru.” He reached for her hand. “We decided if either of us felt uneasy we would call it off. No questions, right?” 

“Right,” she said, vacantly.

He tugged her back to his side. “But we’ve come this far.” 

They were urban cliff dwellers, living on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. They were not hikers. That’s what buses and subways were for. And taxis. At that moment she missed the insular back seat of a yellow cab, that familiar scent of Everyman in a hurry, the city speeding past her still self.

Trudy glanced over her shoulder at the ridiculous rental. They had requested an economy car, conscious of their newly straitened finances, but the agent had overbooked and then upgraded them. A black Lincoln Town Car, covered in a ghostly greyish dust, nosed a rock face that was only just visible. A slice of moon winked among a cluster of morning stars. 

“We’re not in the middle of nowhere, but we can see it from here,” Trudy said. 

“Right, Thelma.”

“Louise,” she countered. “We could drive that thing off the cliff, you know. Holding hands.” 

He suggested it was a cruel thing to do to the natural beauty of the place. Someone would have to clean up the mess. And besides, it was the wrong car. It would remain where it was, an incongruous sight for the next five days, parked without even a view.

Tommy looked annoyingly at ease in cargo shorts and t-shirt, not much different from his usual summer fare. The bucket hat sat perfectly at home on his head. Though his hair was thinning, he still wore it collar length. Always diffident and soft-spoken, Tommy never raised a fuss, not even when a cashier overcharged him or another driver cut him off. He was a working musician, a bass player. Steady. People loved him. They were drawn to him. Trudy sometimes found his restraint irksome.

While Tommy was unflappable, she called it like it was and had no patience for time-wasting fools. People were a little frightened of her. She always insisted it would be better if she died first.

Trudy had been an editor at Hachette Magazines, recently and unceremoniously cut adrift from a fat paycheck. For this trip she’d been coaxed out of her habitual modish black into the beige apparition she’d become. Tan cargo shorts, white t-shirt, long-sleeved. She refused to wear sunscreen, though her skin shone like bathroom marble. The only clue that it was still Trudy was jet-black hair recently renewed and cropped into a boyish cut. She made him promise never to aim the camera in her direction.

Though Trudy tended to make the big decisions, especially about money, this time Tommy had planned everything. Months before, he secured the visas required to access tribal land. He arranged a spiritual cleansing, just outside of Seligman, Arizona, with a Hopi medicine woman, who’d prepared them for the descent. Booked a room at the no-frills lodge for camping-averse, bush-league hikers to the village of Supai, their destination. He offered to arrange a helicopter ride to the village and spare Trudy the strenuous journey. It was a viper’s nest of switchbacks a dizzyingly steep mile and a half down, and some eight miles or so to the village that had to be completed before the sun was fully overhead. They would each be carrying a gallon jug of water, which she thought was excessive. Then, there were the forty-pound backpacks. But her admittedly irrational fear of decapitation by helicopter blade mitigated any qualms about the unfamiliar trail ahead.

She followed Tommy to the car. Flat-lined on the horizon was the first sign of light. While he retrieved their backpacks and water from the trunk, she thought about how this trip had very nearly been aborted.

In order to pinpoint what he called hot spots, Tommy had urged her to break in the new hiking boots. He’d estimated a dry run from South Street Seaport to their apartment on the Upper East Side would about cover the distance they were expected to trek. It had been an oppressively hot and humid day in July. The pack she carried was stuffed with incidentals, testing what weight her injured shoulder could bear. She discovered just how many blisters her feet could sustain. A carriage horse had collapsed from the heat in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, wreaking havoc with midtown traffic. That cruelty aggravated her simmering rage. When a stranger asked if she was lost, Trudy had flung the backpack onto Fifth Avenue, backed into the granite pedestal of the bronze figure of Atlas, and used every bit of what strength she had left to keep from throttling the woman who’d mistaken her for a tourist. Tommy had stepped between them and said to the woman, “We’re fine. We are not lost.”

And then, in a hot flash, she remembered that just two days ago, back in Williams, they—she—had very nearly called the trip off. Tommy had planned a couple of days to unwind in the last outpost in Arizona before they reached the Canyon. Trudy spotted the familiar cartoon grins of Wallace and Gromit on the motel owner’s powder-blue polo shirt. She clocked an English accent. The man and his wife had retired to Arizona after an outbreak of salmonella in his factory back home in Leicestershire. They’d been in the States for twelve years. They had not yet visited the Grand Canyon and that had irritated Trudy.

She’d wanted authenticity. Tommy had suggested vegetarian choices at Rosa’s Cantina. Trudy had rejected the place and now she winced, embarrassed by the memory. “We can get Mexican in New York,” she’d whined. After many cocktails to blot out a dubious meal in the snuff-colored ambiance and charred miasma of The Rustler, Trudy lurched into a dusty street bathed under a buzzing orangey glow. She collapsed in a heap onto a life-size fiberglass statue of a cow. “We had these everywhere,” she said. “Remember them? Last summer. Cow statues wherever you went.” She hung from the neck of the thing. “There was that Starry Night cow? Remember?” 

At her stubborn insistence they carried on past two grizzled cowboys with guns drawn, re-enacting a shootout for the tourists who lined the unpaved street. 

They stumbled into music from a time-warped jukebox in the barn-like interior of the Sultana Bar. Trudy managed at the same time to flirt with a sky-scraping cowboy named Bill, and to enrage the female bartender whose girlfriend shot come-hither glances at Trudy from her perch at the end of the bar, mouthing Tracy Chapman: “You got a fast car and I got a plan to get us out of here.”

When Tommy remarked that Trudy did not look well, that her face was kind of purplish, she moaned. “I feel sick.” 

He said, only half-jokingly, “You ordered fish in a steak house, in a landlocked cowboy town. You ordered Manhattans from a bartender who wasn’t in on the joke. You accepted the last bartender’s challenge to have a shot of every kind of Tequila she had. What did you expect?”

“I was scared of that woman,” she grumbled.

Tommy wrestled her back to the motel. There was a clumsy attempt at sex that she instigated, followed by her tirade. It was the shootout at the not-so-O.K.-Corral only she was the one with guns drawn. Tommy, as usual, waited for Trudy’s dust to settle. He sensed she was less angry when they finally set out for the Canyon at some cursed hour. They turned off Route 66—still a good way from Hualapai Hilltop—and in the remote blackness, she mellowed. When three enormous moose crowned with sweeping wing-like antlers had appeared at the side of the road, she’d shed irritation, yelping in childlike fear and delight before offering an apology to Tommy, which he’d accepted with a nod.

At the trailhead it was as if someone had nudged a dimmer switch up a notch. Tommy urged her to get ready. “Nearly time,” he repeated. 

Trudy studied her feet, the cinnamon-colored, carpaccio-thin moccasins she’d bought in Seligman on advice from the medicine woman. “You need something softer going down,” said Rennie Eagleflyer. “Boots are murder on the toes.” Minnetonka classics, Trudy thought. Moose hide.

The session with Eagleflyer—whom Trudy had met for the first time in Seligman—was more like a visit with an old friend from another lifetime. She remembered driving through the birthplace of Route 66 souvenirs, how embarrassed she’d been when they pulled up to the humble bungalow in their conspicuous rent-a-beast. They were offered iced tea by the dark-eyed medicine woman with long black braids, and chatted easily in a cramped living room under the abstract gaze of a tribe of kachina dolls. Rennie lived with her two children, Dakota and Summer—lanky twin teens in Iron Maiden t-shirts—who were bashful in their manners, though wide-eyed and curious. 

Trudy felt compelled to explain the rental. “That car isn’t us…isn’t me.” 

“Coulda fooled me,” Rennie replied, before her solemn look transformed into a wide grin. “Oh, I know it’s not,” she laughed.

The cleansing ritual took place in a huge tepee behind the house, in a yard feathered with burnt grass. Long poles splayed from a topknot and anchored the tepee to the dusty ground. Stiches zippered above the opening like a scar. Trudy looked to Tommy, as if to say, “Did you know about this?” He shrugged his shoulders and gestured toward Rennie. 

“What did you expect? I’m Indian,” Rennie said, putting Trudy at ease again.

They approached the tepee in a band. The twins stopped short at what seemed to be an invisible barrier. “Nice meeting you,” they sang, running off.

Rennie ducked inside, leaving Tommy and Trudy momentarily at a loss. Trudy ran her hand along the taut, bleached material. She sensed an ancient presence, and possibly magic. 

“It came in a flat pack. The kids put it up,” Rennie shouted from inside.

Trudy shuffled in place, unsure. Tommy went first. Rennie looked out. “You are welcome to watch.” 

Trudy recalled Rennie Eagleflyer chanting rhythmically as she performed the cleansing ritual, until Tommy touched Trudy lightly on her arm, bringing her back to the present. She watched the landscape emerge slowly, as if from a developing Polaroid, from a blurry dream into sharper reality. 

“We’d better go,” Tommy urged. “Remember what we were told.” 

“I know, I know. Get there before high noon.” 

He helped her on with her pack, gingerly adjusting it to her shoulders. “You all right? Any pain?” Trudy nodded. She was okay. “I’ll get the water,” he said. 

The couple descended only a few hundred feet before a mule train forced them off the trail. Trudy slid the palm of one hand along the other in a reflexive gesture. She thought about Rennie Eagleflyer’s advice: “Don’t mistake an Indian’s silence for disregard.” She’d taught them an Indian handshake. “Should you be invited to do so,” she added.

Trudy made out the words Positive Vibration above the image of Bob Marley on the t-shirt worn by a dispassionate youth leading the mule train. She glanced covertly at straight black hair brushing his thin shoulders, kept in place by a colorful headband: green, yellow, and red. He made no eye contact and she knew that she would not be invited to greet him. He pressed on, under headphones, to a silent beat. A wiry, medium-sized dog of indistinguishable breed trotted alongside the boy. 

“I wish we had a dog with us,” said Trudy.

Tommy looked up from retying the laces on his sneakers. “What’s that about?” 

She watched as the team headed up the trail. “What’s what about? It would be nice to have a dog. I’d feel better with a dog.” 

“Huh. You don’t feel safe now? Tru?” 

“Well no, not exactly.” She looked around at the scarred canyon walls, rocky amaranthine layers materializing in first light, surrounding an alien landscape. “I’d feel safer with a dog.”

Just ahead a muscular black hound appeared. Its face was covered with a tannish mask, like a canine Lone Ranger. It stared at Tommy who advised Trudy to turn really, really slowly. 

“You wanted a dog,” he said quietly, indicating with his chin. They had been told about the many feral dogs in the canyon. The dogs belonged to no one. Be careful, but don’t be afraid, Rennie had said. Tommy said quietly, “Let’s just keep walking, see what happens.” 

The dog trotted ahead, turning his massive head toward them now and then. Tommy was frankly nervous. Trudy felt surprisingly at ease. “He looks like he’s a mix of some kind,” she said. “Maybe a Rottweiler?”

“Rennie called them Rez dogs, I think,” Tommy said.

“Sounds about right,” she said.

They reached the canyon floor and changed into hiking boots. After a while the dog sprinted ahead, darting around a bend. They suspected he was gone. As they neared the turn they heard a low, snarling chorus. Cautiously they peered around. Like some fiendish dog orchestra, a disparate pack of mongrels—fangs bared—formed a semicircle around their dog while he leveled his dark eyes on Trudy and Tommy. The dogs snarled and bawled until their conductor turned to them, lowered his head, and baring his teeth, silenced them while the couple scooted ahead on the trail. 

Trudy looked back, but Tommy urged her to keep going. 

A few minutes later the black hound bounded ahead of them. Trudy suggested they stop to eat. “All of us,” she said. She unwrapped and shared her peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the dog. 

They hiked until they came to what looked like a washout on the trail. Tommy was sure they were still headed northeast. The dog barked in disagreement. 

The sun was arcing higher. “The sun rises in the east, right?” Trudy asked.

“It changes,” Tommy said.

She could tell he was unsure and it made her nervous. “It would not be cool to be lost,” she said evenly.

Tommy started in one direction, but the dog heaved against him, pushing Tommy in another direction. 

“Follow the dog,” said Trudy.

They did, soon reconnecting with an obvious trail. A savory aroma of cottonwoods and willows rose around them in the keen light of morning. The heat was fierce, still hours away from high noon. 

Trudy paused, red-faced. “Can we stop for a breather?” 

Before Tommy could fuss over the question of her shoulder, she said she just wanted to sit for a bit, take it all in. He scanned the area looking for shade. Trudy filled the empty sandwich bag with water. She told him she was fine; he should feel free to explore. “I’ve got my hat,” she said. “And the dog.” 

She shed her backpack and dug out a kerchief, which she soaked with water and tied around her neck. The dog guzzled water greedily from the plastic bag before he slumped against her leg. Trudy watched as Tommy stepped cautiously off the trail, camera in hand. She tried to raise her arm to wave and gasped at a piercing reminder that her shoulder was frozen. Nothing would change until she had surgery. 

Trudy stroked the dog’s head. She’d lost her job in June. There’d been a debauched send-off from her co-workers. She’d stumbled drunk from the cab, fallen, and hurt her shoulder. She lied to Tommy, telling him she’d held the cumbersome back door of a bus for an old lady. That act of kindness had wrenched her shoulder. He eyed her warily, doubtfully assessing her condition. “You took the bus?” he asked. 

They’d been loopily in love at first sight. His sly observations about everything left her shrieking with laughter and she returned the favor. Trudy was sixteen, a student at a public high school in Midtown that specialized in the arts. Tommy was eighteen, having dropped out in his freshman year from the same school to play bass in a rock band. He was bad-boy handsome, tall and muscular in an urban, less scary Johnny Cash kind of way. He’d never veered from tight black jeans and denim jackets and ignored the ’60s trend to tie-dye and bell-bottoms. Trudy was a slender, dark-haired, sharp-tongued poet who knew the back streets on the Lower East Side like every corner of her chaotic bedroom in the Jacob Riis housing projects. Tommy had migrated downtown from the Bronx after he’d left school. He’d seen Trudy read her poetry in Tompkins Square Park. He fell hard when she tore a hole in a heckler—a guy twice Tommy’s size—at an open mic. Two years later, defying their parents, Tommy and Trudy hitched a ride to Baltimore and came back married. 

Thirty-two years. Trudy shivered a little, rousing the dog. An icicle of memory slid down her shoulder, prickling her arm. Tommy in sandals or sneakers and cargo shorts. An expanding waistline had relegated tight jeans to distant memory. He needed room to breathe, he said. She warmed to the comforting heft of the dog as it settled back into her. She’d counted on Tommy once for that mass, the emotional padding that allowed her to vent the pressures of the job with minimal collateral damage. He kept up the reassuring backbeat to their marriage while her job as an editor had given them a comfortable living with a trove of perks. Those perks were gone now. That pressure was gone. Maybe she needed a dog more than a husband.

Nothing, she thought, had happened as planned. After all the hoopla, the turn of the millennium turned out to be a non-event. January of 2001 brought rumors of layoffs. By June she was out. She’d made good money. In some ways she felt she’d been paying for the creative life she’d given up, while Tommy had gotten to keep his all that time. Now, with her income gone and his gigs dwindling, she had no idea what they would do. There were not many artists out there like Patti Smith, still hitting it with older band members. What paid jobs Tommy was able to wrangle were mostly folk, backing up some heroic relic, or recording with young songwriters armed with a bank balance and a website. Tommy had said they would be all right. She’d countered that the Mayans still had a chance to blow it all up in 2012.

Tommy returned and the three of them got back on the trail. They discovered wet soil in parts and a puddle with what looked like tadpoles skimming the greenish surface. When sunlight covered the canyon wall, its intensity bored right through them. The earthy tones gave way to meatier red rocks. Rennie Eagleflyer’s warning about dehydration and heatstroke reminded Trudy to gulp often from the plastic gallon jug. 

The dog bounded from the trail and disappeared behind a cluster of willows and scrubby thicket. They heard his excited barking and a splashing sound, like wet cheers.

“This time I know where I’m going,” Tommy said. “And that is not the right direction.”

Trudy asked him to help her off with her backpack. She ignored his questioning look. “Trust the dog,” she said. They followed the noises and discovered an oasis. The dog romped in a pool of the bluest-green water they had ever seen. Bootlaces were quickly undone.

Refreshed, they approached the entrance to the village of Supai. Behind a rough-hewn corral a feeble-looking horse gazed languidly at the newcomers. Undistinguished wood-frame houses appeared. Peach trees offered fruit and shade. Trudy turned to thank the dog and discovered he had gone. She emptied her water bottle in one gulp.

They followed a main dirt road until they came to the area called downtown. The road took them past the cafe and a school. They followed the schoolyard fence until they arrived at the lodge, a dark, two-story nondescript wooden structure set against a spectacular backdrop of the Canyon walls. They checked in. Trudy, as was her habit, proffered her credit card. The heavy-set woman behind the desk shook her head. 

“No credit, Tru,” Tommy said. “We have enough cash, I think.”

Urban instinct kicked in. Trudy asked the sleepy-eyed woman if there was a cash machine.

Expressionless, the woman replied, “See those big boulders out there, by the cafe?”

Trudy nodded. 

“You slide the card between them….”

After a brief, confused moment Trudy laughed. “You’ve done this before.”

A barely perceptible smile appeared on the moon-faced woman as she handed them a key.

They climbed the stairs to the top level to find a runty tan mutt with pink nose and pink lips asleep outside the door to their room. He rose, stretched and then trotted down the stairs. Pink Lips arrived every evening. He left as soon as they emerged in the morning. 

In the days ahead they were never without a dog. 

Another that looked like a re-packaged Doberman escorted them to the monumental Havasu Falls the next day. The currents were strong and swift. Non-swimmers, they dared not venture too close to the spumescent whorl at the bottom of the falls. The hound settled on a shaded picnic table until Tommy and Trudy had exhausted themselves in the deliriously bracing liquid mineral that seemingly spilled from the sky. 

By the third day Trudy’s shoulder pain was becoming unmanageable. She’d kept it from Tommy, unwilling to dampen his obvious bliss. And, she had to admit, the rugged harmony of the place went a long way in distracting her from herself. The beauty was overwhelming. Often in the evening it felt unreal—an enchanted world. 

For days, girls from the village had been rehearsing on a stage erected for an upcoming festival. It was a perfect place to lie down in the dark and stare up at the breathtaking arena of night. Tommy found constellations in swathes of luminous lace. Trudy squealed unabashedly at every shooting star. 

“Did you make a wish?” he asked. 

“I did,” she said. 

There were fewer visitors in August and the cook at the only cafe—a bare-bones structure—befriended them, providing a meatless chili with their fry bread at every meal. Like the woman at the lodge, the cook was doughy with girth and moved slowly—her round, weathered face an impenetrable moon. Trudy never once thought about bruschetta and garlic and pasta or that self-generating candle in the back room of John’s on East 12th Street. The woman told them about the great flood of ’97, four years ago that week. August was prime time for flash flooding and the village had been decimated. When Tommy asked about safeguards she replied, “We are indigenous people. We don’t build walls. Nature takes its course and we rebuild.” 

They sat at a long picnic table on the shaded porch of the cafe. The heat was stultifying. Cicadas shrieked in a teeth-clenching chorus, like a glee club on amphetamines. Reggae music billowed from the kitchen, comforting as slow-rising yeast. Dogs—a comic variety of crossbreeds—surrounded them, still as a taxidermist’s display. Tommy sensed Trudy was in discomfort. Trudy brushed him off. One of the older dogs rose, hobbling stiffly to her. He placed a blond paw on her shoulder. He threw his toothless head back and howled. 

After Trudy’s session with the tens unit the following morning, they stepped over the sleeping Pink Lips and headed for Mooney Falls. They had saved the precipitous sandstone challenge for last. A low-riding, spiky-haired mongrel—halfway between a schnauzer and a dachshund—led the way.

Posted signs warned extreme caution, and risk figured largely in the trail’s description. Tommy started down. Trudy followed, slower and far less confident. She stepped carefully through a small cave and then panicked in the open. Trudy eyed the wet rocks, the rusted chains. Tommy shouted above the roar of the falls that the ladders were slippery, and he motioned for her to wait. She imagined the gory scene two hundred feet below. She’d be horribly maimed. He would have to climb back up with her tied to his back. Encumbered, they would fall to their deaths.

Trudy pointed to her shoulder, shook her head and grimaced. “Have fun,” she croaked. “Take your time.”

She was red-faced and lathered with sweat. Hikers were forced to retreat or press out of her way as she scrabbled back up the trail. She was sure they heard the hollow sound of fear in her chest. She aimed for the blinding sun above.

At the top of the trail, Trudy took stock of her surroundings. The little dog was nowhere to be seen. She shuddered at what might have been. The roar of falling water did nothing to assuage her anxiety. Dragonflies zipped and dived, snapping her into the present. She skirted around head-bobbing lizards and monarch butterflies immobilized by the heat. At the creek she removed her boots and socks, lowered herself carefully to the bank and sank her bare feet into the cool rushing water.

Here was a verdant oasis sprung from a parched landscape. Trudy thought about what Rennie Eagleflyer had told her in the tepee, right after Trudy’s spirit had been cleansed with turkey feathers and just before Rennie had plunged her arm, up to the elbow, into Trudy’s stomach to remove bad spirits. Just like Supai village, often parched and battered by floods, there is still fresh water in every living soul. “The gods watch over us in many forms,” Rennie had said. 

Tommy had come up with the idea for the trip. Trudy had rejected it immediately. They were going to have to tighten their belts. He was persuasive and kept bringing her attention to websites he’d found on the Internet. When she stopped objecting—showed some interest—he reacted as if it was settled. He threw himself into planning the adventure with what she could only describe as joy. They joked about the adventure ahead. Trudy sensed a fleeting return to their common hilarity. 

She had called herself a poet once. Published a few chapbooks. Her poems appeared in chapbooks downtown. She performed in venues like the disused gas station on Avenue B and festivals in Tompkins Square Park. Her close friend was an elfin, speed-talking punk rocker named Suzie Q. Back then they were freelancers at Hachette and would remain best friends. They riffed on everything their synergy afforded them. They fought the good fight, clutching shot glasses of bourbon like grenades. They stabbed the stale air of late nights with sweet-smelling joints, cheered whatever punk band Tommy was in and then struggled through a corporate day. By the time places like Nuyorican Poets Cafe breathed life into the downtown scene, Trudy’s life as a poet was gasping for air.

She went back to school at night. Susan went home to Ohio. Trudy rose up through the ranks at Hachette, when you could still get in on the ground floor. Susan remade herself, married, and homeschooled her kids. Then she got her Bachelor of Environmental Studies degree. When Jim Carroll died, Trudy and Susan mourned their hero in so many phone calls, weeping immodestly. They called those days of poetry and rock “the blue times of torment,” a long way from now.

Trudy drew her head from side to side, easing the tightness in her neck. The creek ran through a cathedral of whip-thin willows that fanned under the taller, sturdier cottonwood trees. Cool water lapped at her bare feet, making a sound like a quiet hymn and calming her immeasurably. She twisted as best she could to look over her shoulder. She was utterly alone. 

How long does it take, she mused, to learn how to listen to the tree people, and the rock people, and the water people? Would she ever gain that eagle-eyed vision?

She ducked suddenly, an involuntary reaction to a looming shadow that skated overhead. She saw the wingspread first as it fanned its innumerable greyish-blue feather fingers, nearly touching her. A majestic creature—that she would later learn was a great blue heron—lowered its dark, wire-thin legs like landing gear and lit soundlessly onto the creek. It turned its head and looked directly at her. Trudy’s breath quickened. She held its gaze for the split second it took before the bird stretched its serpentine neck and, seemingly lifting its massive body with the strength of its beak, soared out of sight.

Later, in their hotel room, she never thought to ask Tommy about his Mooney adventure and only briefly mentioned the heron. A power outage meant no air conditioning. The bathroom mirror reflected her red face, sweating and weary. She moaned that she was getting old overnight. 

“You are far from getting old,” Tommy said. 

“I am old,” she insisted, adding that she had once turned heads. 

“But you hate that, being objectified,” Tommy said. “You always told me how much it irritated you when men…when you wanted to be taken seriously.” 

“I hate feeling invisible even more,” she said. 

“What’s wrong with that?” he said. “You want to take writing seriously? Isn’t it better to be invisible, like a spy?”

She turned from him, unsure.

“I’ll give you some space,” Tommy said. “Maybe get a little rest? We have a long night ahead of us.”

Trudy heard him greet Pink Lips. She lay on the thin covering of the double bed in their spartan room, shuddering at a troublesome memory. It was a sorry bunch that had accompanied her to an Irish bar in Times Square the night of her going-away party. They had all recognized the warning signs in the office. She just wanted to raise a little ruckus for a change. When a man who had been on his own raised his glass to her, she returned the flirt. Many drinks later she followed him to a dark corner in back of the bar and, though she could not remember it entirely, she knew she had gone too far. 

Tommy returned, waking Trudy from a deeply unsettling sleep. Before midnight they set out for an open field where an all-night ceremonial powwow for sacred loved ones was in progress. They flicked off their flashlights as soon as the sound of bells displaced a cricket chorus. They drew closer, but remained a respectful distance from an open-air shed constructed for the occasion. An ever-changing group of celebrants in full ceremonial costume came and went to pulsating drumbeats. A low chant, like a magnified heartbeat, echoed across the field. Trudy could just make out bands of tiny bells encircling ankles and wrists. 

Onlookers from the lodge and campsite bunched together in a wary herd. Trudy and Tommy remained apart from them. She turned her back on Tommy and tried to conjure her own sacred loved one. Soon her father appeared. There was no evidence of the physical and emotional pain that had ravaged him in life. He spoke to her and reminded her of the things he used to fix when he restored antiques. Did she remember when he suggested applying gold leaf along the break in a customer’s repaired ceramic vase or lamp? He said he could tell what kind of person would accept or reject the idea of a golden seam. 

“You are more beautiful for having been broken,” he said. 

At sunrise the following morning, they headed for the makeshift helipad, nothing more than a dusty clearing dotted with debris and dogs. An inebriated Indian man, his face balled like a pocket in an old baseball glove, motioned for them to wait. There was no one else on the line. They were still on Indian time. Pink Lips bounded from the pack and settled at Trudy’s feet. She had been persuaded to helicopter out when Rennie Eagleflyer had described how difficult the return hike would be in the dark. Trudy had heard only the words tarantulas and snakes.

“I saw my father last night. In the field, during that ceremony,” Trudy said. “He spoke to me.”

Tommy hesitated. “It wasn’t your dad,” he said finally.

“Who was that who was talking to me then?” She acknowledged
the drunken man who waved them into the helicopter. “I swear it was my dad.”

“It was me,” Tommy said. “I was reminding you of what your dad used to tell you. About the gold leaf and being broken.” 

“Am I lost?” Trudy asked as they moved toward the helicopter. She allowed Tommy to carry her backpack. She gripped her hat tightly as the man and dog backed away from the rotating blades.

“No, you are not. You are found,” Tommy said, as they settled into their seats. “You just have a funny way of getting there.”

The helicopter rose like an armored dragonfly.  Trudy gazed at the receding floor of the canyon. She mentally retraced their steps to the village and gasped at the sunlit palette that striped the canyon walls. 

“I have something to tell you,” she shouted over the deafening whump-whump-whump above them.

Tommy focused the camera lens at the window and with his back to her he hollered, “Better to wait and tell me later.” 

 “What? Why?” she yelled.

He turned to her, his expression unreadable. “You may get your head chopped off so it might not matter.”