The Heart is Deceitful above All Things (22 page)

A few folks in the back of the crowd turned to watch Sarah. She flipped her hair back over her shoulders like a horse whipping its mane. He didn't seem to notice. ‘If any of you'd like to hold a real meteorite,' he said as he started uncovering shoebox-size crates lined with a cloth napkin sitting on a glass display case next to him. ‘They don't bite.' He gave a little chuckle.

Sarah pushed her way to the front, and her hand was in the box before he'd finished.

‘Oh,' he said, ‘here you go.'

‘This is the most beautiful rock I've ever seen.' Sarah's voice echoed painfully.

‘Not a rock––you have yourself a chondrite, one of the most common subtypes of stony meteorites.'

‘Common?' She raised her voice a little.

‘Well, yes, but there are chondrules contained within, silicate inclusions.'

‘Please hand me an uncommon meteorite.' She thrust
her open palm out, the rejected meteorite in the center. He paused, tilting his head like a dog in confusion.

‘Can I have one?' A little girl's hand reached up.

‘Yeah, sure.' He took the one from Sarah and plopped it in the girl's hand. Sarah left her hand extended, gave it a shake to remind him.

‘Uh, okay, well, no meteorite is really uncommon.' She shook her hand again. ‘But, OK well . . .' He turned to a box. ‘Pallasites.' He carefully placed a shiny metallic rock with yellow green crystal cubes in her hand.

‘Rare.' He swallowed. ‘Considered one of the most beautiful.' She nodded approvingly. ‘This one is polished,' he said, then cleared his throat and announced to the group, ‘Olivine mineral makes the green yellow. Here, everyone help yourself.'

He carried on about meteorites, even as the children who had crowded up front dropped their meteorites back in his boxes carelessly and started running around, screaming about dead pioneers' bones. He didn't stop, though there were only a few people left in the group yawning loudly. Sarah never left her spot, even as little kids pushed around her. When one kid got in front of her, she put her hand on his shoulder and firmly pushed him aside. During the lecture, Sarah turned her head abruptly to find me standing off to the side. She signaled for me to come take a meteorite. I crept slowly into the thinning crowd and worked my way up to the boxes. I cautiously reached in for a rock and kept one eye on her. She usually doesn't like me around when she's casting.

‘Cats don't like to be pet when they eat, now, do they? I don't like you rubbing around me when I'm casting. Besides, he might not like kids.'

I glanced up at the ranger. He had a composed look that would've seemed solemn or aloof if it weren't for a nose that was too pointy and upturned. It offset his face in a friendly way. I knew if it weren't for his nose, Sarah never would've cast for him.

When he finished, only two white-haired retirees were left, besides Sarah and me. They thanked him, and before he could stop them, they pitched their meteorites in the box. Sarah glanced at me again and deliberately wiped her finger across her mouth. The shoplifting sign. The nobody-is-looking-so-put-it-under-your-shirt-or-in-your-pocket-now look. I wasn't sure at first what she meant for me to steal. I looked around for a wallet someone had put down. She wiped her mouth again, but it looked more like the slit-your-throat sign. All I saw near me on the glass display table were a few small meteorites that some of the bored tourists had replaced. I put my hand over them. Her face was turned toward the ranger, but she gave a small nod. I closed my hand around them and stuffed them, plus one I already had, into my pocket.

Sarah ran to the facilities as soon as he finished. Our ranger lovingly wiped down each meteorite with a cheesecloth and placed them back in assorted wood boxes. I kept my hips turned so he wouldn't notice the bulge of my pocket.

‘Death Valley was given its name by the gold seekers, many of whom died crossing the valley during the 1849 California Gold Rush,' another ranger's voice boasted from the next room. When the meteorites were almost all packed up, Sarah burst out of the bathroom, the pink lines around her plump lips redrawn, and I could tell she had dampened and remoussed her hair, blowing it dry under the hand dryers to maximize its volume. She'd rolled up the denim legs of her shorts as high as they'd go, until they were cutting into her thigh, and her T-shirt was slightly damp.

‘It's the wet T-shirt trick,' she once told me. ‘No guy can resist a girl that looks like she just won the contest. Did I squeeze my nipples enough? Are they out?'

‘Do you think we will get hit by a meteor?' she called out before the bathroom door had even swished shut behind her.

He turned and looked surprised, then pleased, that someone had anything to ask him. It took him a few seconds to realize who was asking, and when he fixed the voice to the rapidly approaching body, he blinked like someone was waving a hand too close to his face.

‘I'm afraid I'll get hit by a meteor.' Sarah had chosen the Southern ladies' society accent. She fanned around her head with her hands, making the gelled hair clumps flutter like tentacles. He stopped blinking and turned to a box and fished around inside it. ‘I have a Mbale chondrite in here somewhere.'

‘Oh, good,' Sarah sighed, and ran her finger under her lacquered lashes.

‘Here, here.' He pulled out a small gray black rock. ‘We've recovered over one thousand specimens, it was a huge fall!' He stared at the rock.

She moved in close, pressing up against his shoulders to look at the rock. ‘Umm,' she moaned, and licked her lips. He took a small step away from her. She stepped forward.

‘In Uganda, a boy got hit on the head,' he said, looking into his box. ‘I have more from that fall somewhere.'

I pressed my hand over my pocket.

‘Hit on the head?' Sarah gasped. ‘Lord have mercy!'

He stepped back, quick little steps, and put the rock out in his hand to show her, or to stop her from moving in. He nodded down onto the rock. ‘Well, the specimen was slowed down by a banana tree, so the boy wasn't a casualty.'

‘Thank the Lord for the wilds of Africa,' Sarah sighed. ‘But out here in the desert, without any banana trees, I fear for our safety.'

He took another step back. ‘Oh, I assure you getting hit by a meteorite is extremely rare. I would love to have met the boy.' He stared from the rock in his palm to the box of rocks. ‘I often dream of visiting Uganda to examine him.'

‘I would like to go with you to Uganda.'

He looked up at her quickly, his eyebrows raised, then
took a quick breath to say something but blew it out like a deflating tire; he gave a tight laugh.

She shook her hair and smiled and stuck out her hand. ‘My name is Caitlin. Is there a place nearby we can go for a drink?'

He looked like he'd been punched. After a second of hesitation, he shook her hand. She kept shaking it.

‘Caitlin,' I said to myself softly, so I would be sure to remember. I wished she said what my name was, so I'd know if I was going to be a boy or a girl and how I would be expected to move.

He abandoned his hand to her and fixated on his rocks.

‘I would love a cool beer, wouldn't you?' She giggled.

For the first time he looked at me, as if for help.

‘That's my brother, Richard.' She waved at me with her free hand. He nodded and smiled warmly at me. I nodded back.

‘Richard,' I whispered. Been Richard a few times.

She cleared her throat, and I knew she resented our exchange of nods.

‘I––uh––I have a tour to give soon.' He tugged gently at her grip on his hand.

‘Great––I can't get enough of meteorites,' she said, strengthening her grasp.

‘Oh, oh, it's out in the field.' He pulled his hand away with a little effort. ‘Got to pack these up.' He gave her a strained smile.

‘Here, let me help you!' she exclaimed as she picked up various rocks and tossed them.

‘No, no,' he said, putting his hands out over the boxes. ‘Thank you. Thank you. I can do it. But thank you.'

‘OK.' She laughed as if he were being silly.

‘We're camping tonight.' She started tapping her pink nails on the glass.

‘Good.' He fished out the meteorites she'd thrown in and started polishing them.

‘Well, what if we get hit?'

‘Pardon?' He glanced at her with such a bewildered expression, I knew she would misread it.

‘Oh, you!' She giggled, threw her hair back, and did a fast twirl like a ballerina. ‘You know we might just get hit!' she said sexily, and slapped her hand on the glass next to his boxes so hard that he and the meteorites jumped. He grabbed his boxes to keep them from falling, holding tight. He kept his red face tucked in close like he was saying prayers to them.

She leaned over him and did the cascade in his face. She learned that from stripping.

‘You lean back, lift your long hair, and let it cascade down the back. That'll get you a man's paycheck faster then his ex-wife!'

When she was gone I'd put the mop head on and practice my cascade.

He wiped hair from his face, piled up his boxes, and without looking at her said tersely, ‘Ma'am, if you get hit by a meteorite, I will be very impressed. I have to run
now. I am very late. Have a great stay with us in Death Valley.' Before she could say a thing, he lifted his boxes and hurried for the employee exit. Sarah stood there for a minute, looking puzzled. She shifted from side to side and stared at the employee door. After about twenty minutes she said, ‘You think he wants me to wait here?'

I swallowed. ‘I think this would be an OK place to wait.'

She didn't say anything. We stood for another twenty minutes until a short woman ranger with a face like a shovel asked us if we needed help.

‘Where is he?' Sarah tossed her hair at the employee door.

‘Who?' the ranger asked.

‘The meteorite man!' she said, annoyed.

‘Jim? Jim left a while ago.' She smiled.

‘What do you mean, left?' Sarah's bottom lip sucked in and out between her teeth.

‘He has a tour at Scotty's Castle. He left. Can I help you with something?'

‘He just asked me to stay with him here in Death Valley,' she stated, as if the ranger had said the world were flat or something.

The ranger smiled too widely and nodded. ‘OK––well, we're closing, so if I can't help you with anything, I'm going to have to ask you to leave.'

I saw the rage flash over her face and I knew she was about to hit the woman and I got ready to run and grab her fist, but she shook her head violently
like you do an Etch-a-Sketch and smiled at the ranger. ‘OK.'

She turned and left the station. I followed.

There's a way that still warm air can make me feel incredibly lonely and small. Just the silence of it allows me to hear the world completely and how exposed I am in it.

She squinted at the yellow orange beginnings of a sunset and just stood there.

‘Good thing it's fall,' I said suddenly. ‘In the summer it once was a hundred and thirty.' She nodded and I felt myself get all excited. I continued, ‘See, pioneers were dying of thirst, after going so long without anything, and then they saw all this water and they thought they were saved.'

She turned and watched them lock up the station.

‘But when they got up to the water they found out it was all salt water.'

The shovel-faced ranger gave us a good-bye wave as she climbed in a jeep.

‘That's how it got the name.' I felt out of breath.

‘You'll see,' Sarah muttered toward the woman. She turned to look at me.

‘Badwater,' I blurted.

‘You're going to get hit by a meteorite,' she said.

I nodded. ‘A lot of folks drank the water.' She turned and walked toward our car.

‘And they died.' I followed her.

The first meteorite grazes the side of my face and kind of tickles, but I stay asleep sitting up against the car tire. I dream I am getting hit in the face with the burnt-up testicles that fall off a blackjack oak.

‘Those would be the petrified balls of the crank master,' Sarah had said as she pointed at the light brown hairy acorns scattered beneath the tree.

‘That's their innered organs,' she said, pointing to the leaves under our feet that resembled flattened livers. ‘Look up.' The twisted split branches spread out like a highway of veins in the see-through human body dolls I've always admired. I nodded at the gore of it. She nodded and made ‘tsk-tsk' sounds with her teeth.

‘If you run across a blackjack, you know there was once a crank house that exploded. That's where they grow in these parts. It's a warning, and if you don't pay it,' she said, narrowing her eyes like a fortune-teller, ‘it'll curse you when it could be protecting you.' She walked up to the black twisted tree and started petting it. ‘See, if you were a girl, you could now be assured you would never die in a crank house fire.' She pulled down her pants and rubbed her bare crotch against it as if she'd wiped with poison ivy leaves by mistake. I ran up and started to pull down my pants to do it also. She waved me away.

‘No––these fuckers ain't got their crank no more. These fuckers got burned alive and their eyeballs boiled and now they're stuck here in this tree! You think they
want you? You'll piss em off ! I'm satisfying their need for pussy, and in return the spirits will make sure I never burn up alive in a crank house fire and have my eyeballs boil!'

‘I don't want to get burned up alive and have my eyeballs boil,' I said, trying to rub against the scorched-looking skin of the blackjack.

‘Forget it.' She pushed me away with a hard shove. ‘You missed out.'

The second meteor hits me on the head with a loud thud, jerking me out of my dream. I wave my hands around my head to protect it from the falling testicles.