A Multitude of Sins (36 page)

Of course, the right way would be to look at it all at once, taking in the full effect, just the way Frances seemed to be doing. Except it was much too big to get everything into focus. Too big and too complicated. He felt like he wanted to
turn around, go back to the car and come up again. Get re-prepared.

Though it was exactly, he thought, staring mutely out at the flat brown plateau and the sheer drop straight off the other side—how far away, you couldn’t tell, since perspective was screwed up—it was exactly what he’d expected from the pictures in high school. It was a tourist attraction. A thing to see. It was plenty big. But twenty jillion people had already seen it, so that it felt sort of useless. A negative. Nothing like the ocean, which
had
a use. Nobody
needed
the Grand Canyon for anything. At its most important, he guessed, it would be a terrific impediment to somebody wanting to get to the other side. Which would not be a good comment to make to Frances, who was probably having a religious experience. She’d blow her top on that. The best comment, he thought, should be that it was really quiet. He’d never experienced anything this quiet. And it was nothing like an airport. Though flying in that little plane was probably the best way to see it.

The people they’d followed up the paved path were now moving on in the direction of telescopes situated in some little rocky outcrops built into the wall. They were all ooo-ing and ahh-ing, and most everybody had video equipment for taping the empty space. Farther along, he assumed, there would be a big rustic hotel and some gift shops, an art gallery and an IMAX that showed you what you could see for yourself just by standing here.

He hadn’t spoken yet, but he wanted to say something, so Frances would know he thought this was worthwhile. He just didn’t want to make her mad again. It was a big deal for her. They’d gone to all this trouble and time. She should be able to enjoy it, even if he didn’t particularly care. There was probably no way to get her interest in him back now; though he’d thought, while they were driving up, that they ought to at least try to keep this going back home, turn it into something more permanent, get the logistics smoothed out. That would be good. Only now it seemed like they might not even be talking on the ride back. So why bother?

Down the scenic walkway, where the other tourists were wandering toward the telescopes and restaurants, he saw the Indian boy from the motel again. He was talking into a cell phone and nodding as he walked along with the others. He was a paid guide, Howard decided, not a spiritual guide. Somebody hawking beads or trinkets to corn pones.

“What do you think about it now?” Frances finally said in a husky, reverent voice, as though she
was
in the grip of a religious experience. Her back was to him. She was still just staring out into the great silent space of the canyon. They were alone. The last three tourists were drifting away, chatting. “I thought I’d cry, but I can’t cry.”

“It’s sort of the opposite of real estate, isn’t it?” Howard said, which seemed an interesting observation. “It’s big, but it’s empty.”

Frances turned toward him, frowning, her eyes narrowed and annoyed. “Is that what you think? Big but empty? You think it’s empty? You look at the Grand Canyon and you think empty?” She looked back at the open canyon, as if it could understand her. “You’d be disappointed in heaven, too, I guess.”

This was clearly
not
an interesting observation, he realized. He stepped up to the stone wall, so his bare knees touched the stones and he was doing what he guessed she wanted. He could now see a little fuzz of white river far, far below, at the bottom of the canyon. And then he could see tiny people walking down the canyon’s sides on trails. Quite a few of them, once you made out one—small light-colored shirts, moving like insects. Which was for the birds. You wouldn’t see anything down there you couldn’t better see from up here. There would be nothing down there but poisonous snakes and a killer walk back, unless somebody sent a helicopter for you. “What river is that?” he said.

“Who cares what goddamn river it is,” Frances snapped. “It’s the Ganges. It’s not about the river. But okay, I understand. You think it’s empty. To me it’s full. You and I are just different.”

“What’s it full
of
?” Howard said. The small buzzing plane appeared again, inching out over the canyon. It was probably the police patrol, he thought. Though what could you do wrong out here?

“It’s full of healing energy,” Frances said. “It extinguishes all bad thoughts. It makes me not feel fed up.” She was staring straight out into the cool empty air, speaking as if she was speaking to the canyon, not to him. “It makes me feel like I felt when I was a little girl,” she said softly. “I can’t say it right. It has its own language.”

“Great,” Howard said, and for some reason, he thought of the two of them together in bed last night, and how she’d fixed her eyes on his face when she took him in. He wondered if she was looking at the canyon the same way now. He hoped so.

“I’ve just got to do what you’re not allowed to,” Frances said, and took a quick, reconnoitering look to where the other visitors were occupied with their video cameras and with crowding around the brass telescopes far down the walk. “I need to get you to take my picture with just the canyon behind me. I don’t want this wall in it. I want just me and the canyon. Will you do that?” She was handing him her camera and already crawling up onto the flat-topped stone retaining wall and looking around behind at the wide ledge of rubbly, rocky ground just below. “You probably can’t even see the canyon from where you are, can you? You’re tall but you’re still too low.”

He stood holding the camera, watching up at her, waiting for her to find the right place to pose.

There were plenty of hand-carved wooden signs with crisp white lettering that said,
PLEASE DO NOT CLIMB ON OR GO BEYOND THE WALL
.
IT
’s
DANGEROUS
.
ACCIDENTS OCCUR FREQUENTLY
. She could see these signs. She could read, he thought. He didn’t want to start another argument.

“I’ll have to break some more rules,” Frances said from up on the wall, and she began to scoot down on the outside of the wall until her pink shoes touched the dirt. He looked
over at her. Little pine shrubs were growing out of the arid ground, their roots broken through the dirt. Other footprints were visible. Plenty of people had walked around where she was. A small yellow film box lay half-buried in the dirt. A red-and-white cigarette package was wadded up and tossed. “I just want to go a step or two farther out here,” Frances said, looking up at him, widening her eyes and smiling. She was happy, though she’d gotten her white shorts dirty and her pink shoes, too.

He looped the camera cord around his neck so he wouldn’t drop it.

“I want just me and the canyon in the picture. Nothing else. Look through it now. See what you see when you see me.” She was beaming, backing up through the little scrub pines, squinting into the morning sun. “Is it okay?”

“Be careful,” Howard said, fitting the little rubber eye-cushion to his face, the camera warm against his nose.

“Okay?” she said. He hadn’t found her yet. “This’ll be great. This canyon’s really young, it just looks old. Oh my.”

He put the little black lens brackets on her, or at least on the place he thought she would be just below him—where she’d been. But where she wasn’t now. Through the lens he looked left and then right, then up, then down. He lowered the camera to find where she’d moved to. “Where’d you go?” he said. He was smiling. But she was gone. The space he’d had fixed with the viewfinder was there, recognizable by a taller, jutting piece of piney scrub—
piñons
, he remembered that name from somewhere. But Frances was not occupying the space. He saw only sunny open air and, far away, the sheer brown and red and purple face of the canyon’s opposite wall and the flat earth’s surface atop it. A great distance. An impossible distance.

“Frances?” he said and then waited, the camera weightless in his hands. He’d hardly ever said her name, in all the times, all the hours. What had he called her? He couldn’t remember. Maybe they’d never used names. “Oh my.” He’d heard those words. They were in memory. He wasn’t certain,
though, if he hadn’t said them himself. What had they meant?

He stood still and peered straight down into the space Frances Bilandic had occupied, behind which was much more vacant space. She would appear. She would spring up. “Frances?” he said again, without completely expecting to speak, but expecting to hear her voice. He heard the far-off buzzing of the patrol plane. He looked up but couldn’t see it. His knees and thighs were pressed against the rock wall. All seemed perfectly pleasant. He looked to the left and down to where he’d seen the small white-shirted humans inching along the canyon walls. One or some of them, he thought, should be looking up here. For an instant, he expected to see Frances down where they were. But she wasn’t, and no one was looking up. No one there had any idea of anyone here.

And no one down the path was now walking back in his direction. He was alone here, unobserved. He put the camera on the sunny top of the wall and started crawling over, one bare knee then the other, scraping his shin but getting himself down onto the dusty ground where Frances was supposed to be, beyond where the film package and the cigarette box were. He took a step through the loose rocks—it smelled warm and familiarly like urine. But after only four cautious steps (a snake seemed possible here) he found himself at a sudden rough edge and a straight drop down.

And it was at this instant that his head began to pound and his heart jerk, and his breathing became shallow and difficult and oddly hoarse, and a roar commenced in his ears, as if he’d been running and shouting to get to here. And it was now that he got down on his knees and his fists like an animal, as though he could breathe better that way, and peered over the jagged edge and down, far down, far, far down—certainly not to where the river was shining whitely. But far. Two hundred feet, at least, to where the dirt and rock sidewall of the canyon discontinued its straight drop and angled out a few feet before breaking off again for the long, long drop to the bottom. There were rocks and more piney bushes there, and
a tree—a ragged, Asiatic-looking cedar growing into the dirt and stone at an angle that would eventually cause it to fall away. And it was just there, at the up-slope base of this ancient cedar, that Frances was, two hundred feet below him.

It was her face he saw first, appearing round and shiny in the sunlight. She was staring up at him, her eyes seemingly open, though the rest of her—her white shorts and blue sail-cloth top with the anchor, her bare legs and arms—these were all jumbled about her in a crazy way, as if her face had been dropped first, and then the rest of her. It actually seemed, from here, that one arm was intact but separated from her body.

And she didn’t move. For a moment he thought the expression on her face changed the instant he saw her. But that wasn’t likely, because it didn’t change again. As poorly as he could make her out, her expression never changed.

How long did he kneel in the pine scrub and rubble and bits of paper trash and urine scent beyond the wall? He couldn’t be sure. Though not long. The roar in his ears stopped first. His heart beat furiously for a time, and then seemed almost to stop beating, after which a cool perspiration rose on his neck and in his hair and stained through his T-shirt. He looked down at Frances again and, keeping a careful eye on her very white upward-turned face, he tried to think what he might do: help her, save her, comfort her, bring her back to here, give her what she needed, given where she was. Anything. All of these. What? Time did not pass slowly or quickly. Yet he seemed to have all the time he needed, alone there in the brush, to decide something.

Only, he knew that this time wouldn’t last. Howard gazed up toward the telescopes, where the other visitors had wandered. Frances would not be seen at first—she was too near to the canyon wall, too hidden among the cedar branches. Too surprising. For a time she’d be mistaken for something she wasn’t. An article of her own clothing. No one would
want
to see what had happened. They wanted to look at something else entirely.

Though if anyone
had
seen, they would already be coming
—shouting, arms waving—the way he’d felt a moment or ten minutes ago. Other people would already be at the wall looking down. He would be seen, too, hunkering like an animal, his T-shirt a white flag in the underbrush. Soon enough this would happen. Her camera was on the wall. He needed to move, now.

On his hands and knees he backed away from the edge, got turned around and crawled up through the pine roots and human debris to the piss-scented base of the wall. And as he was so tall, he simply stood and peered over, able to see all the way back down the asphalt path to the parking lot where he and Frances had followed the crowd. No one was walking up, nor was anyone coming back from the telescopes. And in that moment’s recognition he leaped-hoisted himself up onto and over the wall, and in doing so kicked Frances’s cheap Pentax down onto the pavement.

He stood up again quickly, on the right side of the wall, the correct side, where the rest of the world was supposed to stay. And it was not, he felt, the cool breeze lifting out of the open expanse of canyon—not at all a bad feeling to be here. Whatever was bad had occurred on the other side. Now he was here. Safe.

Though all the other many phrases were about to begin now. Their exact meanings would very soon be present in his thinking.
Authorities notified. Help summoned. Frances rescued
(though of course she was dead). The forces responsible for terrible events had to be mobilized and mobilized now.

He stared at the Pentax lying on the black sequined asphalt, ruined. He tried to remember if she’d taken his picture in the car this morning, his picture in the motel last night, his picture in Phoenix, his picture at the scenic turn-out even one hour ago. But he simply couldn’t remember. His mind wasn’t so still that he could bring back that kind of thing, although he knew he very much wanted for the answer to be
no
, that she had not taken his picture, and for the camera to stay where it had come to rest. (Though hadn’t he touched it?)