Spirit Walk

One

A hoarse wind had piled up from the south and by afternoon blew strong enough to make the wires on that particular stretch of fence hum. Kevin noted their faint music as he looked down at the kid, maybe half an hour dead, his jacket sleeves tangled in the barbs as if he had tried to climb his way out of oncoming death. The boy’s hazel eyes had clouded, and with his slack body hanging from the strands, he appeared for all the world like a scarecrow on permanent vigil over his charge of jack wood and cedar trees. His hat had fallen to the wayside, and a lock of his sand colored hair lifted with the late fall breeze. The neck wound had emptied down the front of his shirt, the blood gone tacky and smelling, Kevin thought, the same way an old penny tastes on the tongue.

A tapping noise lifted Kevin away from the grip of that long-ago moment. He turned his head to find Julie, the student aid, rapping lightly on the doorframe to his office. Dr. McNally? she said, smiling. Are you okay?

He pushed his fingers back through his hair and swiveled his chair around to face her.

The lady in the Indian dress came by again. Julie shifted a leg, fidgeted with the pen she held. Your stalker?

Olivia Hallot had phoned the office earlier and said she’d be on campus sometime that day. He’d successfully ducked her all afternoon, but now that he was back from his last class, it looked like she would finally corner him.

Kevin shook his head, looked to the computer screen where he’d been pretending to vet emails. She’s not a stalker, Julie. She’s an old friend.

I think she might be lost on campus somewhere. What should I tell her if she comes by again?

Kevin struggled to call up a response. You don’t have to worry about her, Julie. I’ll handle it.

The girl backed out of the office a step. Okay, she said, lingering a moment before stepping away, her heel clicks fading down the hallway.

Alone now, Kevin closed his eyes and pressed his palms hard against his forehead. Shit, he said, shaking his head. It’s not her fault. Olivia had come unbidden, and like the bad memories, could not be ignored.

Those memories caught Kevin off guard frequently now, the triggers that prompted them multiplying by the day. The nightmares could not be helped, but the daytime memories brought a distinct kind of discomfort, as though he had lost the refuge of his waking hours when the old hurt could be pushed away with the sunlight.

Perhaps it was Olivia’s presence or the breeze that swayed the branches on the planted mesquites outside his window that had brought him back to a place in his mind he did not usually go. As if caught in some kernel of compressed time and space, he found himself in that long ago November morning on the Escrobarra Ridge. The dirt smell of grama and bunch grass rode on a soft wind and the grackles spoke from the tops of the oaks. The sky had begun to whiten in the east, and young Kevin wore the easiness of seventeen years like a light jacket.

The hunt that Friday morning had started with the customary excitement. He’d parked his truck at one of the usual spots, and with him as always was Armando Luna—they had hunted deer and javelina together these last five years. An hour before, Kevin had stopped in Douglas at a ramshackle duplex apartment. Luna had emerged half-dressed, rheumy-eyed with sleep and offering no excuses or apologies.

Shit, Mondy, Kevin said. You told me you’d be ready.

I am ready, Luna said. Just give me a minute.

Mondy was broad and thick at the belly and chest, built like a middle linebacker, and despite his 250 pounds walked light on his small feet. Kevin stood in the doorway as Mondy clambered in and out of rooms. A young woman’s voice came from the bedroom, and Kevin recognized it immediately as that of Jolene Sanders, who’d been two years ahead of him in school. Jolene had wavy nut-brown hair to her belt loops and blue eyes. She was stone-cold beautiful and Kevin stood livid and jealous that she now lay in Armando Luna’s bed. He could not for the life of him determine why. Kevin could hear their voices, a soft love-clucking behind the bedroom door, until Mondy stepped out with his rifle and gear and smiled at Kevin quick and smug as he passed him in the doorway.

They took Geronimo Trail east twenty miles to the Magoffin Ranch road, where they unlocked and passed through the gate, then bounced Kevin’s old three-quarter-ton truck to the head of Baker Canyon. They hooked south a mile on a track that quit at a windmill, water tank, and a scattering of salt licks at the base of the Escrobarra. Shot with runs of granite rim rock and dense stands of jack pine, juniper and oak, the ridge occupied a six-mile length of the twenty-five mile Peloncillo mountain range. It started on the Arizona side, doglegged two miles into New Mexico, then tapered into a gentle slope across the Mexican border at the point where the two states and Sonora intersected.

Mondy tried to convince Kevin to park at a different spot, another half-mile up canyon, but Kevin, as usual, ignored him. They stepped out into the chilly near-dawn and gathered their essentials from the truck bed—rifles, binoculars, canteens, a single daypack in which they carried emergency items, and a lunch of left-over roast beef and tortillas.

We’re pretty close to the border, Mondy pointed out. "Muy cercanos."

"¿Qué importa?" Kevin asked. How does it matter?

Mondy shrugged, moved to the other side of the truck bed. You bring extra ammo?

Kevin winced at the question but offered no response. He lifted his right foot to the back bumper and tightened his bootlace, allowing the question to hang between them, then looked up at the ridgeline where they would soon break trail. That’s not a question, Mondy, he said. You’re just making noise.

I just wanted to know how many shells you had, that’s all.

Kevin looked at him. Eleven.

I’ve seen you miss that many times.

"I’ve seen you miss that many times."

Everybody misses.

Mondy’s concern over extra ammo, in Kevin’s estimation, was due to his own lack of talent in marksmanship. In the last five seasons, Kevin had watched him miss a number of game animals, the bullet flying several feet over the intended target’s back. Mondy was twenty-three, six years Kevin’s senior, but age gave the big Indian no advantage.

I brought extra, Mondy said, finally. But I guess you didn’t.

Kiss my ass, Kevin came back.

Andale pues, Mondy said, forcing a chuckle. I’m just shitting you, man. Eleven shells. A good shot like you only needs one. You’re a good kid. I think you got potential.

For the next half hour they negotiated their usual route over the high saddle to the north, picking through a thatch of cat claw then up over the shale slide and finally to the rim rock at the top, where they squeezed through a small gap, just wide enough for an average-sized man to pass. Mondy turned sideways, hitched up his gut, and inched through while Kevin, smiling on the other side, held his rifle and pack. When Mondy finally grunted his way out, he glared at Kevin’s grin.

Are you saying something?

Kevin shook his head, motioned toward the gap. It’s plain to see the damn thing’s shrunk since last year.

Mondy gave a quick nod. Good kid. I knew you had potential.

You got potential, too, Kevin said. I mean, by Christmas you could weigh…I don’t know…

Mondy squared another hard look at Kevin. I got two words for you, he said. Jolene. Sanders.

Okay, Kevin said. It’s all in the interest of your health, anyway.

Well, quit being interested in my health.

When they finally crested the bald saddle, the sun was just touching the top of the ridge five-hundred yards opposite them. Mondy was winded, but Kevin knew, despite the labored breathing, that the big Indian would light a cigarette. So proud of his O’odham heritage, Armando Luna often introduced himself as Armando White Moon—especially to women—and, despite Kevin’s derisive laughter, donned a beaded headband, Concho-spangled vest, and knee-high moccasins to drink at a bar, looking more Apache than Papago. Kevin always carped at him about his smoking, pointing out that Indians in movies weren’t fat and didn’t smoke cigarettes. Mondy fished one from his breast pocket and stropped at his Bic lighter until his muttered curses, it seemed, finally brought the thing to flame. He drew in the smoke and looked at Kevin.

Smoke ‘em up, he whispered. You want one?

Kevin shook his head. Though he sometimes smoked, the thought of it seemed distasteful when hunting. The wind, gentle on their faces for now, rode out of the ever-whitening east, and the scent of the smoke would not be picked up by any game in front of them. Mondy puffed on his cigarette, and they stood some moments taking in the old familiar canyon. Though Kevin had looked on it from this vantage point many times, the waxing dawn light seemed to wash it anew. Opposite them, several runs of limestone rim rock descended like ribs halfway into the canyon, where in its lower side grew generous sprinklings of Emory oak, mountain mahogany, and mesquite. The south end seemed bare but for the brown tobosa grass, yet a pair of binoculars would betray a forest of ocotillo cactus, its crazy tendril-like limbs as impenetrable as chain mail.

For the two hunters on the saddle, the canyon pulsed with life. Each picked a clump of nearby broom grass and sat. They raised their binoculars to their eyes simultaneously, as if on cue. Others they’d hunted with had noticed this idiosyncrasy in the pair—Kevin’s father found it especially hilarious—but the two seemed impassive to any ridicule and seemed altogether unaware of the quirk.

Venado, Mondy said almost immediately.

¿Donde?

Abajo, Mondy said. "Low in the canyon, debajo del árbol grande—el verde."

Shit, Mondy, there’s a thousand green trees in that canyon.

Though their tones were flush with the excitement that comes with sighting game, still they whispered.

Where? Kevin asked again.

Big tree, man, right down toward the bottom.

Kevin was reminded of the futility in following Mondy’s spoken directions. He glanced over and tracked the line of Mondy’s binoculars where it ended slightly north, up canyon, at a clutch of juniper trees.

He raised his glasses and almost at once picked the all-but-transparent forms of the two animals out of the grain of the slope. The camouflage, the uncanny cryptic coloration, of the Couse Whitetail always stunned him. Even in the open, these tiny, mouse-colored deer—a big buck weighing little more than a hundred pounds—were difficult to see with even the best optics.

The two deer, feeding, picked their way into a mesquite where now only the hind end of the smaller one could be seen.

Doe and a fawn? Kevin asked.

"I don’t know. The bigger one—I looked for horns. ¿No hay, pues?"

Doe and a fawn, I think.

The one was big, Mondy said. Big chest, like a buck. But I think you’re right.

Yeah, Kevin allowed. Like a buck, but bald.

They sat the canyon an hour longer and glassed up seven more deer, three doe-fawn pairs and a small fork-horned buck high in the canyon under a mature oak, on whose acorns the young deer fed. The buck was too small for either of them to consider.

I think I see three points on one side, Mondy offered hopefully.

He’s a piss-ant two point, Kevin assured. A dink. You’re welcome to go after him, if you want.

Mondy sighed and lowered his glasses, touched his chin philosophically. No, he said, I think I’ll let him grow up.

Good, Kevin said. Fat as you are, little bastard look like a jack-rabbit when you dragged him down the mountain. Be shameful and tacky, downright untoward.

Mondy sighed again. Have I given you an ass-kicking yet today? Because you’re in definite need. He paused, and Kevin knew what was coming.

Mondy reached for his rifle, shouldered it, and with some effort found the deer in his telescopic sight. Untoward, Mondy said, peering through his scope. I bet you got that word from me.

I read it somewhere.

Most fancy words, Mondy said, you get from me. You use my words all the time and don’t even know it.

Kevin didn’t deny this. Armando Luna had an admirable vocabulary, though along with his penchant for big words he bore an embarrassing tendency toward malapropisms. During a heated conversation on evolution, of all things, with Kevin’s mother, Mondy had used the word relative when he meant relevant half a dozen times. And though Teresa McNally was perfectly aware of the misuse, she was gracious enough to not so much as smirk. At the hands of her son, however, Mondy suffered greatly for such language errors. Luna never failed to use conscrew when he meant construe, which Kevin first corrected then derided, and he could speak no more than two or three sentences with his nouns and verbs in perfect agreement.

If I could hit him from here, Mondy suggested, his rifle still trained on the small buck across the canyon, it would make it worth it—bragging rights, man.

Hell, Mondy, that’s over five-hundred yards.

Yeah, you’re right, Mondy said, lowering the rifle and stroking the butt almost affectionately. A little too far for my .243.

Shit, you couldn’t hit that deer with a .338.

There you go, disrespecting your elders again. I’m pretty sure it’s about ass-kicking time.

I’ve never seen you hit anything over two-hundred yards but the one time, and that was an accident.

Details, Mondy said. "You gabacho white eyes, so concerned with fucking details. You know, you’re being kind of a little punk today."

Kevin was quiet a moment. How’d you meet Jolene?

Mondy shouldered his rifle, looked through the scope again. You know, here and there. I don’t even remember anymore.

Kevin looked at the ground.

Mondy lowered the rifle, looked over at him. Opportunities come around, he said. You’ll see.

They had planned to hunt south as usual but lingered in this first good canyon just past an hour. The cue to get up and move on was usually given by Kevin, and the older man had always conceded this, an unspoken custom of their friendship. For some reason, today, Kevin wanted to take in this canyon a little longer.

And now, over three decades later, as he sat in his air-conditioned office, where he normally worried over the petty vagaries of the English department he headed, his mind had suddenly traversed those many years and dropped him onto a hillside a hundred miles south. He glanced out his office window, which neatly framed Sentinel Peak near the Tucson Mountains. Pima College was a nice place, but he found himself longing for the excitement that attended the sharp morning air and dawn light of that canyon in the Escrobarra, where he could go tomorrow and still find deer.

Even with his back to the door, Kevin could feel Julie’s presence behind him. He swiveled in his chair, reminding himself to look the girl in the eye and not let his gaze drop below her neckline. Julie had been the office work aid for the past seven weeks, hired that fall by Norma, the department secretary, though Kevin would not have hired the girl simply for the way she dressed. She never wore a top that didn’t sport a bit of cleavage nor a skirt that didn’t allow the distraction of her young legs.

Yes, Julie?

Norma just called. That lady was over in Student Services earlier asking for you.

Kevin glanced again toward the window.

The girl tilted her head, squinted. Seems like she’s lost. Are you sure she’s not crazy or something?

No, Kevin said. She’s not crazy.

They told her your office hours, but she didn’t come here. Norma saw her sitting at the campus Starbucks drinking coffee. Do you even know her very well?

I know her quite well, Kevin said. And she’s not lost.

Two

Olivia Hallot sat in a corner booth, a cup of black dark roast steaming in front of her. Kevin knew she had spotted him immediately, but she didn’t let on as she continued to survey the young people moiling about over afternoon snacks of scones and bear claws. Except for the obviously dyed auburn-red hair, Olivia didn’t look much different from when he’d seen her last three years before.

Hi darling, she said as he sat down across from her.

Hi, Oli.

She reached out and took his hand. You’re just as cute as the last time I saw you—cuter, even.

Though the compliment had been genuine, Kevin knew it wasn’t true. At fifty, he was beginning to show his age, and women (especially younger ones) had begun to respond to him with the kind of distance usually reserved for respectable middle-aged men.

Thanks, Oli. You look great, too.

Oh, nonsense, she said, waving off the compliment. I’m a fat old squaw woman—a happy one, though.

They both laughed. There was a long pause.

Well, Olivia said finally. I’s on my way to Douglas and my sister Dotty ast me to drop by the college here and pick up my niece for the long weekend. Thought I’d look you up, see what you were up to.

Well, I’m glad for it, Kevin lied. I know a good place to eat dinner.

Tucson had no shortage of great Mexican restaurants, but the best were on the old south side, family-owned businesses that had been passed down through several generations. They went to Mi Nidito on South 4th Avenue, a place that served, among a cadre of great food, the best taco buffet in town. As he and Olivia sat down with their full plates, Kevin held an outside hope that she had just breezed in to say hello and did not harbor some ulterior motive. They chatted a quarter hour, the usual exchanges about relatives and mutual relations between two people who had not seen each other in a long while.

Kevin finally spoke up after a pause in the conversation. You got any other business in Douglas?

Olivia shrugged. Something I been thinking about for a while. Meaning to do.

Kevin nodded. He had a dark guess about what she referred to. He ventured a sort of ruse, though he knew she would detect it immediately. Hubert’s estate? Her uncle Hubert had died in Douglas the year before, and Olivia had had legal trouble with the will.

Olivia shook her head, intent on picking at the lettuce on her plate. Finally, she looked up at him. I’m going back to the Escrobarra.

Kevin felt a sudden flush in his chest, like something draining from him, as though someone had pulled the stopper from a full sink. He’d dreaded this confrontation for years.

Olivia spoke. I know what you went through up there, Kevin. I wouldn’t ask you to do this if it wasn’t what O.D. wanted.

Oh, Oli, please! He pushed himself back from the table.

You know you need this, Kev.

"I know I don’t, Oli—I do not. Kevin’s voice rose. He looked about the dining area, though no one seemed to be listening. He lowered his voice. I’ve had nothing to do with hunting or shooting in thirty years. I don’t believe in guns anymore."

Oh, I see them all the time, Oli came back. They’re as common as ghosts and UFO’s.

Okay, so you’re a rhetorician? You know what I mean.

I’m not talking about hunting, or guns, Oli said. I’m talking about going back to the site and doing what O.D. asked.

I haven’t even been to Douglas in a decade. His parents had moved away nine years before, so even six years later, when his father, Thomas, had died of a heart attack, he didn’t have to go within thirty miles of that valley. But Oli was at the funeral, and for the two days she’d spent in the guest room at his parents’ house she did not mention the subject. It was only as she stood at his parents’ front door, ready to leave, that she spoke of it: With Tom gone, it’s just you now, she said.

Kevin had nodded at her characteristically cryptic phrasing. He knew well what she referred to. The failing O.D. was Thomas McNally’s life-long friend and had charged both Kevin and his father with the task, a deathbed request that Olivia had held onto with a bulldog’s grip.

After O.D. had refused the chemical therapy, had grown so emaciated as to look mummified, he’d called them to his house and asked them jointly, father and son—something a person agrees to do under the circumstances but then avoids, like someone who hides from debt collectors for unpaid bills. For a decade now his wife, Olivia, had been that debt collector.

A thought struck Kevin. You brought the ashes, didn’t you?

Olivia had just taken a bite and finished chewing before she spoke. Trunk of my car.

Jesus. Kevin no longer cared if anyone in the restaurant heard him.

I talked to your mom, Kevin. You need to do this.

Oh, yes. I should have known. My meddling mother.

You need to bring your devils out into the open. Not just for you but for me—for all of us. We need a kind of spiritual settling.

I’m not a very spiritual person.

That’s bullshit. Don’t believe in guns! When did you get so full of shit?

Kevin was two feet from the table now, his body folded into a kind of childlike pout. O.D. had been like family to him; still, there were places both physically and consciously he would not go. That afternoon in the Peloncillos on Escrobarra Ridge was one of those places. He could live with the nightmares, even the flashbacks, but he wasn’t going back to that ridge.

You blame yourself, Olivia said boldly. What happened wasn’t your fault.

Good part of it was. I got people killed, Oli.

Bullshit, she said. You were a boy. You need to go back to that ridge. O.D. knew that.

Kevin was thrown into silence.

That day has pressed its shape on you. You wear it around, Kevin, like a mourner’s coat, and you don’t even know it.

Oh, that really makes sense. Jesus, Oli, you sound just like him.

Like who?

You know who.

Olivia sat up from her food and squared herself to him, a fighter about to deliver a knock-out blow. "You need to do it for him, especially him."

Kevin looked at his watch and let out a long breath. He became aware that he was slightly rocking his upper body.

Olivia touched his forearm, then the side of his face. Settle down, honey.

Kevin felt the impulse to cry. I am settled down, Oli, and I want to keep it that way. I adjusted myself to that incident a long time ago. I’ve put myself right with it, and my life is moving along well.

Olivia took both his hands. Kevin, you haven’t put yourself right with it.

He pulled away, looked toward people drinking at the adjoining bar but saw none of them. He dropped his shoulders, shook his head. His eyes loaded up. God, Oli. Don’t do this to me.

You can’t just keep it shut down, dear. You got to let it out—if just to stretch itself and get some sunlight. So you can live your life.

I am living my life!

Not all the way.

Kevin saw other diners glance in their direction, whispering to one another. I knew my damned mother would put you up to this.

But she didn’t, Kevin. This was my idea. Yes, she wants it for you, but after what happened last time, she wouldn’t dare try.

Kevin looked at his full plate and felt nauseous.

You’re like one of my own, sweetheart. You know that.

Kevin reached for her hand and squeezed it. I’ve got a long weekend, he said. No classes Tuesday, either. I’ll think about it.

Good, Oli said. You should do more than just think about it.

Where would we do it?

Got it planned. I know the perfect place, Oli said, putting down her fork. There’s a good Forest Service trail now to that first long, deep canyon—the one where all the ocotillo bloom so pretty at the bottom. You remember?

But Kevin didn’t answer, caught in sudden surprise of the crystalline memory that had taken him.

You know the one.

Yes, he said, immersed now in the clear image of that mass of ocotillo crowned with orange blossoms. I know the one.

Three

The ocotillo become all but invisible to anyone who lives in the southeastern corner of Arizona. From a distance, their shape is subtle, their limbs twisting from the ground like the legs of an upended octopus. But for anyone who leaves a roadway, walks over a rise or into a canyon, they become a formidable presence, any dense stand of them almost impossible to negotiate. Even these many years later, Kevin’s skin remembered their thorns. Tangled and gray, the ocotillos on that November morning were not in bloom.

Two canyons north of where they’d started their hunt, Kevin and Mondy cut the tracks of a large cat. They had encountered the prints—three of them, pressed deep in the mud along the bank of a rock spring—half an hour before, shortly after lunch, and still they could not agree on what kind of animal had made them. In the midday hours they tended to work lower in the canyons, hoping to push up bedded game, and had crossed the spring bottom when Mondy stopped and raised one hand. He stared down at the ground. The prints were undoubtedly feline, but Kevin found no reason for it to be any other than a lion, perhaps a mature tom. Armando Luna, though, would not be moved, his argument planted as the mountain they stood on. This is Pete’s track, man. I know for sure. Old Pete, El Tigre, a black jaguar the Mexicans sometimes called El Sombro, came from the south at intervals over the last ten years to ravage game and livestock, international borders and paid-for cattle and colts be damned.

It’s probably just a cougar, Kevin said.

Mondy was patient. Cougar track is smaller and more square.

How do you know that? Kevin regretted the question the moment it came. Tracking was Mondy’s one solid skill.

Mondy looked off toward the valley, the grassy flat stark under the afternoon light. We’ve had this argument before.

Two hours later, John Monahan squatted on his haunches before the same set of tracks. Forty-six years old, he was a third-generation area rancher, and his outfit encompassed a good part of the San Bernardino Valley along the New Mexico border. The Monahan family had hunted big cats as long as they had ranched and had gained national attention for their prowess.

Local lore had it that John harbored a personal vendetta against the cat in question. For the last five years, Pete walked on only three paws, for which the rancher himself, as the story went, could take personal credit. Having woken one morning to the sound of a screaming filly, Monahan, in bedclothes and slippers, caught the old tom—a surreal silhouette of black—just as he was dragging the mare’s dead week-old colt out of the corral. The rancher had picked up the Mini 14 instead of the .270—the two rifles stood side-by-side in the entry-room closet—and the cat, no more than a hundred feet from the house, had slowed for the dragging of the colt. The telescopic sight of the deer rifle would have gathered enough dawn light for a good shot, but Monahan had instead blazed out 22 caliber bullets, emptying the entire clip, never able see the pins on the open sights of the little carbine well enough to fire a killing round. And it was only after sunrise that he had found the few spots of blood. He’d fed the dogs, saddled the good mule, and set out