shrugs, slows the bus, stops just past the algarrobos.
Nausea rises again as I step down onto the asphalt shoulder. I take three quick steps, set Mariángel on the ground, turn and vomit into the sand. Wait. Vomit again. A third time. Wait. Mariángel is crying. I spit and wipe my mouth, take her up, whisper until she stops crying.
The day’s heat is only beginning, and there are certain clouds. I put on a sling months too small for Mariángel, work her slowly into it, arrange the sunshade over her head and tuck her bottles into their straps. I check my camera’s batteries and film. I take a drink from my canteen and start walking.
The path through this mile of desert was faint at first, used only by occasional goatherds. They are the ones who found Pilar. On each trip I clarify the trail to the best of my abilities: I cut notches in cacti, stack rocks, plant crosses.
Along and along through shallow dunes, scattered scrub and grasses. The noise of highway traffic fades. A cabuya low to the ground but eight feet wide, sawtoothed and fleshy, sharp at the tips. More dunes, and the ache in my hip lessens, disappears. Then sudden movement to my right, a lizard five inches long, thin and fast, dark stripes down its side, the head a bright red. It stops, raises up, looks back. A patch of blue on its chest, and I once choked on a lizard of similar size. It was a Western fence lizard. I caught it with a long grass noose and Joel dared me to eat it. Joel was my best and for certain long stretches only friend in Fallash and I can still feel those small claws digging into the sides of my throat. My father administered the Heimlich maneuver and the lizard popped out and ran.
Immense silence now. Scattered low palo santo, ghost gray and leafless, the smell of myrrh thick in the hot air, and I remember the curandero at Huancabamba fanning the smoke in my face, hoping to heal, hoping to cleanse. Tracks here and there—goat, squirrel, ground-dwelling bird. A thicket of faique, the thorns as long as my fingers.
Mariángel starts to cry, and I bring out her juice, but that is not it, and her milk, and that is not it either. Then I check her diaper. I change her in the unsteady shade, put my knapsack back on, push forward. The dust is thick in my eyelashes. More dunes, more scrub, and a hualtaco tree explodes as we pass by, shrieking and wingbeats, the caracara lifting off, black body and mottled chest, white at the throat and wingtips, naked red on the face. Mariángel crying again and the bird arcing back toward us. I hunch down, cover her head with my hands, look around for a nest but do not see one anywhere.
Thirty feet away the bird flares, lands on an outcropping. It rolls its head and snaps it forward, rattles at us. I stand, rattle back, and Mariángel quiets. I rattle again and she smiles. We bluff a charge, Mariángel laughing as she bounces against my chest, and the caracara lifts, shrieks, flies toward the highway.
- They will eat anything, I say, my voice thin and hoarse, strange to me.
Mariángel does not look up.
- Anything, and alive or dead. I have seen them dig for turtle eggs, dig for worms, have seen them attack pelicans over and over until the catch is disgorged.
Now she looks, smiles, reaches back to take hold of my beard.
- They will even chase vultures off of roadkill.
She squints and I fall quiet. The algarrobo grove is a hundred yards away. I slow down, step carefully, search the dunes to either side. Smell of heat, sweat, sand. Smell of rotting meat that fades too quickly to have been real, was some sort of olfactory mirage.
Still slower. Look again. Thirty yards. The trees are threadbare, sparse and thin. Twenty yards, ten. The path widens as it enters the grove. The sand here is no longer stained, no longer bears witness to the night my wife was raped and beaten and left for dead.
Sweat gathers in my beard, on my chest, down the center of my back. I take another drink. Then I weave through the trees,
Nausea rises again as I step down onto the asphalt shoulder. I take three quick steps, set Mariángel on the ground, turn and vomit into the sand. Wait. Vomit again. A third time. Wait. Mariángel is crying. I spit and wipe my mouth, take her up, whisper until she stops crying.
The day’s heat is only beginning, and there are certain clouds. I put on a sling months too small for Mariángel, work her slowly into it, arrange the sunshade over her head and tuck her bottles into their straps. I check my camera’s batteries and film. I take a drink from my canteen and start walking.
The path through this mile of desert was faint at first, used only by occasional goatherds. They are the ones who found Pilar. On each trip I clarify the trail to the best of my abilities: I cut notches in cacti, stack rocks, plant crosses.
Along and along through shallow dunes, scattered scrub and grasses. The noise of highway traffic fades. A cabuya low to the ground but eight feet wide, sawtoothed and fleshy, sharp at the tips. More dunes, and the ache in my hip lessens, disappears. Then sudden movement to my right, a lizard five inches long, thin and fast, dark stripes down its side, the head a bright red. It stops, raises up, looks back. A patch of blue on its chest, and I once choked on a lizard of similar size. It was a Western fence lizard. I caught it with a long grass noose and Joel dared me to eat it. Joel was my best and for certain long stretches only friend in Fallash and I can still feel those small claws digging into the sides of my throat. My father administered the Heimlich maneuver and the lizard popped out and ran.
Immense silence now. Scattered low palo santo, ghost gray and leafless, the smell of myrrh thick in the hot air, and I remember the curandero at Huancabamba fanning the smoke in my face, hoping to heal, hoping to cleanse. Tracks here and there—goat, squirrel, ground-dwelling bird. A thicket of faique, the thorns as long as my fingers.
Mariángel starts to cry, and I bring out her juice, but that is not it, and her milk, and that is not it either. Then I check her diaper. I change her in the unsteady shade, put my knapsack back on, push forward. The dust is thick in my eyelashes. More dunes, more scrub, and a hualtaco tree explodes as we pass by, shrieking and wingbeats, the caracara lifting off, black body and mottled chest, white at the throat and wingtips, naked red on the face. Mariángel crying again and the bird arcing back toward us. I hunch down, cover her head with my hands, look around for a nest but do not see one anywhere.
Thirty feet away the bird flares, lands on an outcropping. It rolls its head and snaps it forward, rattles at us. I stand, rattle back, and Mariángel quiets. I rattle again and she smiles. We bluff a charge, Mariángel laughing as she bounces against my chest, and the caracara lifts, shrieks, flies toward the highway.
- They will eat anything, I say, my voice thin and hoarse, strange to me.
Mariángel does not look up.
- Anything, and alive or dead. I have seen them dig for turtle eggs, dig for worms, have seen them attack pelicans over and over until the catch is disgorged.
Now she looks, smiles, reaches back to take hold of my beard.
- They will even chase vultures off of roadkill.
She squints and I fall quiet. The algarrobo grove is a hundred yards away. I slow down, step carefully, search the dunes to either side. Smell of heat, sweat, sand. Smell of rotting meat that fades too quickly to have been real, was some sort of olfactory mirage.
Still slower. Look again. Thirty yards. The trees are threadbare, sparse and thin. Twenty yards, ten. The path widens as it enters the grove. The sand here is no longer stained, no longer bears witness to the night my wife was raped and beaten and left for dead.
Sweat gathers in my beard, on my chest, down the center of my back. I take another drink. Then I weave through the trees,
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