December 1 - December 24, 1998

CHAPTER XXII

VISION QUEST

The very moment at the El Tovar Hotel Jay folded her letter to him then pocketed it, Julia was, indeed, behind the wheel of the Alfa Romeo, jouncing eastward on Interstate 15. Although she had expected to be on Interstate 40 nearing Flagstaff by that hour, she was just now approaching Barstow, seeking the Interstate 40 East interchange. The day was overcast with the sky at its darkest, most ponderous, and most forbidding, in the exact direction she was bound.

Earlier that morning it had been no surprise to her when the Alfa failed to start. After an Auto Club tow to the nearest gas station, where a new battery had been installed, the engine had caught immediately. She was at once relieved and in torment.

Other things besides the Alfa's initial failure had gone wrong. The faint doink in the engine she had become aware of about thirty miles back, when the radio (Christmas music on every station) had abruptly quit, might become a larger electric problem, and soon. And did the radio's failure signal more than electrical problems? There had been a plague of them since Paco acquired the disreputable demi-chariot. There was also the problem of the drivers who were honking at her because her pace was perhaps a bit too leisurely, and the terrible certainty she felt that she would be brushed off the pavement like so much lint on a jacket sleeve each time a semi passed her and she was momentarily caught in its wind sheer.

She was also troubled by a headache so severe it was making her queasy. She really needed to pull over, but she resisted the urge: If she got off the Interstate now, would she have the nerve to get back on and proceed? Part of the headache's source was tension from trying to keep tamped down the panic she felt about being behind the wheel again, panic over the capricious vagaries of her fellow motorists, unforseeable dangers of the highway itself, and her own reflexes, or lack of them.

She was already experiencing some extra panic because she knew she would soon need to downshift through all the gears and get into second to make it onto the I-40 interchange. The journey had already required her to make two similar major freeway transitions, neither of which, she judged, had transpired with Drivers' Manual precision.

Another part of the cause of the throbbing in her neck and head was, she knew, lack of sleep. After the cab ride from the airport the night before, she had spent much of the dark hours pacing her kitchen while her cat, Zoey, paced along with her on top of the counter. During this pacing interlude, Julia had contemplated the ramifications of what she was about to do.

At about Two A.M. Julia took a hot bath (in her family hot baths were the equivalent of chicken soup). At four o'clock, she took another bath. After that, she climbed into bed with the felines, made a tent over them all with the peach down comforter, and tried to explain to her brood (all but Buckley, who was still at Steve's clinic) the ways--as closely as she could estimate--their lives would change, if she decided to keep the brown puppy; if he was still alive, that is.

Julia glanced at the items piled in the passenger seat next to her; Buckley's large wicker bed, a pile of old towels, two gallons of water from her earthquake-preparedness cache, bowls for water and food, a blazing purple dog collar and leash, a bag of puppy chow and box of doggy biscuits. These last four items she had purchased at the all-night Rite-Aid drugstore on La Brea Avenue on the cab ride home from the airport.

On the back seat of the Alfa was a box that measured 7"x4"x9," had about a seven- pound heft to it, was wrapped in white paper, and had an official-looking document affixed to the top. This was the one item she hadn't wanted to forget, so had predictably, forgotten it completely. Going back for it had precipitated the sojourn's worst crisis.

When she arrived back home after the new battery was installed, for what was meant to be a very brief stopover, she realized that besides grabbing the box, it might be prudent if she visited the bathroom before starting off again. In the bathroom she had experienced some kind of fit; an anxiety attack, accompanied by severe toe cramps. She had needed yet another hot bath to suppress it. That burned another hour of precious daylight. If she hadn't abandoned the Alfa askew, half on the neighbor's (not the nice one who took care of her cats) lawn and half in the driveway, and hadn't needed to move the car in any case, she might not have set out again.

She saw the sign for the I-40 interchange. Two miles.

Julia's heart began to thump a little harder. She thought about the things she had written in her letter to Jay the night before, when she was checking out of the El Tovar. At about the same time she had become aware of the ominous doink in the Alfa's engine, her words to Jay and the brave sentiments behind them had begun to sound faintly ridiculous. The whole venture itself seemed hair-brained and quixotic. For a moment, everything that happened the day before on First Mesa seemed today like the product of a fertile imagination. What was she doing out here, hurtling along the pavement, all alone and just this side of nowhere, was the question that kept dropping onto her brain pan with the same jarring effect as a half a dollar dropped on a china dinner plate. No one in their right mind drives 1200 miles round trip for a mutt dog that might or might not be alive by the time she got to him. But Julia also knew she was far from her right mind, hadn't been since Paco died, so in any terms that mattered, that part was irrelevant.

The thing that had gone right, however, so right that it easily eclipsed all that had gone wrong, was the fact that she was doing this. Although it wavered, her nerve had yet to completely fail her. Each time it threatened to she had salvaged it by recalling not just the electric warmth of Dewey Kayenta's hand, but also his caution to anticipate and avoid becoming discouraged by crises of faith and confidence. It also made her feel more solid to think about the main thing she had wanted to tell Jay in the letter, but had omitted; the still-resonating impact of her last few moments alone with the puppy on the mesa yesterday: Her certainty about what she had seen in the little tike's eyes, if however unlikely, persevered.

As Julia continued to fret, as she gasped with dismay that the moment for the transition to the interchange was so suddenly at hand, it was as though her body told her brain to put a sock in it. Almost past volition, her foot depressed the Alfa's clutch, while her hand simultaneously reached for the gearshift. She effortlessly powered the engine down, then back up again, to merge flawlessly with traffic on eastbound I-40.

She congratulated herself.

By the time Julia reached Winslow, Arizona and began looking for the turn-off for Route 87 up to the Mesas, snow from the two predicted and colliding weather fronts was just beginning to fall. When she turned onto Route 87 gusts of wind were whorling the snow along the dark and wet pavement.

Beyond Castle Butte, she stopped at the gas station in the tiny Navaho community of Dilkon to fill the Alfa's almost empty tank and to use the restroom. She felt confident enough to do this now, because she had already begun the ascent to the mesas. She was much too close to turn back now. Yet as she filled the tank, her had trembled. Not because she was anxious about getting back in the car, or dazed from lack of sleep or by what she had already so amazingly accomplished (500 miles!), but because she knew it wouldn't be long before she learned the brown puppy's fate. Had he survived? Despite her doubts all day during this eastward advance, underneath and within, around and over them, she had been perpetually praying, chanting actually, to keep the little canine alive.

She paid the Navaho youth behind the counter for the gas, for a banana and a bag of Salt and Vinegar chips, and a cold bottle of Evian water. The young man didn't seem curious about her. Maybe he saw pilgrims like her all the time.

He glanced out the window. "Pretty bad," he said. "Getting worse."

She nodded.

"Hope you got snow tires."

"I don't," she said.

"It'll be better the farther south you get . . . closer to Flagstaff," he offered.

She didn't tell him Flagstaff was the direction from which she had just come.

"Merry Christmas," he called as she headed for the door.

"Merry Christmas to you," she paused to say. She had almost forgotten it was Christmas Eve.

"Drive safely," he cautioned. She promised she would.

As Julia proceeded north on Route 87 the snow fell harder. By the light of the Alfa's headlamps she noticed with an edge of alarm that it was now collecting in some of the hollows in the jagged cliff walls she passed. The road grew ever more slick and treacherous. She slowed and traveled at 30 mph for a time, then to twenty-five. When she reached the junction at Highway 264, near the Mishongovi Trading Post and the Craft Guild on Second Mesa, she was doing about fifteen. Her hands tight and damp on the wheel, she guided the Alfa through the right turn onto the road up to Polacca and Keams Canyon beyond.

Almost in danger of making the same mistake Jay had made the day before, when they had overshot the steeply ascending road to First Mesa, to Hano, Sichomovi and Walpi, Julia slammed on the brakes. The pressure was too abrupt and intense. She experienced that moment of sickness when the brakes at first failed to catch. The tiny silver Alfa revolved half a turn, stalled, then came to a halt broadside in the narrow road.

Without allowing herself to think about it, she turned the key and started the engine again, then put the car in gear and made it onto the chancy byway that wended upwards through turns so sharp she was forced to slow the Alfa to under ten mph to make it safely around them.

The doink in the engine kept time with her heart for this entire final stretch.

At last, just as she became aware of the stinging tautness in her wrists, the dark and odd-shaped, mortar-daubed clumps and nuggets of stone that were the dwellings of the village of Hano came into view.

At Hano's portal she brought the car to a halt, then sat for a moment watching the snow twirl in the beams of the headlights.

Julia read the notice twice through before she registered its significance. It hadn't been there the day before when she had been up here with Jay.

"Closed To The Public," it informed.

Soyal, she concluded. The last part of it, probably. Soyal was the celebration of the Winter Solstice. Its observance always began in late November when the village Sun Watcher, whose job it was to observe the light, saw the light slanting in a certain way through a certain cleft in certain rocky wall. Soyal marked the inception of the annual Hopi sacred dance cycle, which would conclude with the Niman (homegoing) festival sometime late next summer when the spirits returned to where they dwelled above the San Francisco peaks. During Soyal, the final nine days of it, the village kivas were symbolically and ritually opened to the spirits of the dead . . . the Katcinas. Today, maybe tomorrow, was Qoqoqlom, which spelled the conclusion of the Soyal observance, yet was also the first big event of the cycle, in which designated groups of villagers dressed up as and personated Katcinas to perform their highly ritualized dances. Throughout the year, some of the dances were open to the public, but not these. Whatever fortitude that had been propelling Julia all day abruptly evaporated.

But what was that draped over a corner of the sign? Billowing in and out in the wind as it was, it appeared to be breathing.

Julia put the Alfa in neutral, pulled on the parking brake and climbed out. Shivering, with snow blowing around her, she walked to the sign to make sure the billowing thing was what she thought it was.

(to be continued)

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