Vanishing Acts Read online

  "Greta won't screw up. Hey, Fitz," I call out, and wait until he turns, shading his eyes. "I actually wasn't kidding about the snakes."

  As I drive off, I watch Fitz in the rearview mirror, staring down nervously at his feet. It makes me laugh out loud. Memories aren't stored in the heart or the head or even the soul, if you ask me, but in the spaces between any given two people.

  According to the Hopi, sometimes we no longer fit the world we've been given.

  In the beginning, there was only darkness and Taiowa the sun spirit. He created the First World and filled it with creatures that lived in a cave deep in the earth. But they fought among themselves, so he sent Spider Grandmother down to prepare them for a change.

  As Spider Grandmother led the creatures into the Second World, Taiowa changed them. They were no longer insects, but animals with fur, and webbed fingers, and tails. They were happy to have the space to roam free, but they didn't understand life any better than before.

  Taiowa sent Spider Grandmother back to lead the way into the Third World. By now, the animals had transformed into people. They made villages, and planted corn. But it was cold in the Third World, and mostly dark. Spider Grandmother taught them to weave blankets to keep warm; she told the women to make clay pots to store water and food. But in the cold, the pots couldn't be baked. The corn wouldn't grow.

  One day a hummingbird came to the people in the fields. He had been sent by Masauwu, Ruler of the Upper World, and Caretaker of the Place of the Dead. He brought with him fire, and he taught the people its secret.

  With this new discovery, the people could harden their pots and warm their fields and cook their food. For a while, they lived in peace. But sorcerers emerged, with medicine to hurt those they didn't like. Men gambled, instead of farming. Women grew wild, forgetting their babies, so that the fathers had to care for the children. People began to brag that there was no god, that they had created themselves.

  Spider Grandmother returned. She told the people that those of good heart would leave this place, and the evil ones, behind. They did not know where to go, but they had heard footsteps overhead in the sky. So the chiefs and the medicine men took clay and shaped a swallow out of it, wrapped it in a bride's robe, and sang it to life.

  The swallow flew toward the opening in the sky, but he was not strong enough to make it through. The medicine men decided to make a stronger bird, and they sang forth a dove. It flew through the opening and returned, saying, "On the other side, there is a land that spreads in all directions. But there is nothing alive up there."

  Still, the chiefs and the medicine men had heard footsteps. They fashioned a catbird this time, and asked him to ask the One Who Made the Footsteps for permission to enter his land.

  The catbird flew past the point where all the other birds had gone. He found sand, and mesas. He found ripe squash and blue corn and splitting melons. He found a single stone house, and its master, Masauwu. When he returned, he told the chiefs and the medicine men that Masauwu would allow them to come. They looked up, wondering how they would ever reach the hole in the sky.

  They went off to find Chipmunk, the planter. Chipmunk planted a sunflower seed in the ground, and by the power of singing, the people made it grow. But it bent over with its own weight, and could not reach the hole.

  Chipmunk planted a spruce, and then a pine, but neither grew tall enough. Finally, he planted a bamboo, and the people began to sing. Every time they stopped to catch their breath, the bamboo stopped growing and a notch formed. Finally the bamboo passed through the hole in the sky.

  Only the pure people were allowed into this Fourth World. Spider Grandmother went up the bamboo first, with her two warrior grandsons. As the people emerged, a mockingbird sorted them into Hopi and Navajo, Zuni and Pima, Ute and Supai, Sioux and Comanche and whites. The warrior grandsons took their buckskin ball and played their way across the earth, creating mountains and mesas. Spider Grandmother made a sun and a moon. Coyote tossed the leftover materials into the sky, to make the stars.

  The Hopi will tell you that evil managed to sneak in up the bamboo, anyway. That the time of this Fourth World is almost done. Any day now, they say, we might find ourselves in a new one.

  Tracking with a bloodhound takes away from the romance of scent. The smell that makes you want to bury your face in the neck of your lover, the trace of perfume that turns men's heads when a beautiful woman walks by--these are merely skin cells decomposing. For Greta and me, scent is a matter of serious business.

  After buckling on her leash, I walk Greta over to the baseball cap Fitz has left behind. Lifting it up, I watch her breathe in so deeply the fabric sucks into her nostrils. "Find him," I instruct, and Greta leaps over the bent fence and heads off, nose to the ground.

  This is a world populated by birds with unlikely names: the Common Flicker, the Harris Hawk, the Mexican Jay. We see agave plants, and chain-fruit cholla, rose mallow, paintbrush, tackstem. We walk by flora that I have only seen in books--brittlebush and cheeseweed, filaree, jojoba. We pass cacti that are mutations, their arms growing inward instead of out; their heads twisted like the folds of a human brain.

  Greta moves across the flat of the land slowly. I keep my eyes on the plump arms of the saguaros and the Modigliani necks of the ocotillo, where every now and then Fitz has left me a piece of toilet paper to let me know that Greta's heading in the right direction.

  She stops at the dried-out husk of a saguaro, and sits down. Suddenly she plants all four feet firmly on the ground and bares her teeth. The hair on the line of her spine stands on end; she growls.

  The javelina is about four feet long, with a bristled gray hide. Its yellowed tusks turn down at the ends; it has a mane that runs the length of its back. It looks up from its meal of prickly pear and grunts.

  I can never remember if you are supposed to run from a bear or stay perfectly still; I have absolutely no clue if there is safety etiquette for a javelina. The pig takes a cocky step toward Greta, who skitters sideways. I pull on her leash just in time to keep her from crashing into a stubby Medusa of a cactus.

  Suddenly Greta yelps, and falls to the ground, clawing at her nose. The cactus she didn't brush into has somehow managed to hook itself into her snout. Spines cover her muzzle, a few have worked their way into the gummy black gasket of her lips.

  Greta's mournful howl sends a flock of cactus wrens to the skies. The javelina, startled, thunders off. Without a second thought I kneel down and haul Greta over my shoulders in a fireman's carry. I don't feel her seventy-five pounds as I start running. "Fitz," I yell as loud as I can, and I try to find him with the clues he's left us.

  We are bent over Greta in the back of the Explorer. I'm lying over her, to keep her from moving, and stroking her head and her ears. Fitz leans close to her snout, pulling the spines free with a pair of needlenose pliers I carry in my emergency kit. "I think they call it teddy bear cholla," he says. "Nasty stuff ... it jumps at you." When he opens Greta's mouth, gently, she snaps at him. "Almost finished, sweetheart," Fitz soothes, and he pulls the last spines out of her gums. Then he leans forward to make sure he hasn't missed any. "That's it. You may want to double check my veterinary skills with a professional, but I think she's going to be okay."

  I take one look at Greta, and then at Fitz, and burst into tears. "I hate it here," I say. "I hate how hot it is and that there are snakes and that nothing's green. I hate the smell of that stupid jail. I want to go home."

  Fitz looks at me. "Then go," he says.

  His easy answer is enough to bring me up short. "Why aren't you talking me out of it?"

  "Why should I?" Fitz says. "Your father isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and he'd be the first one to tell you to get on with your life. Sophie would do better back in New Hampshire, in an environment she's used to. It's not like you have to stick around to get to know your mother--"

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "True or false: You don't care whether or not you see her again."