Educated(13)

Grandma never told us what happened to the women. The Apaches were at war but had no warriors, so perhaps she thought the ending too bleak to say aloud. The word “slaughter” came to mind, because slaughter is the word for it, for a battle when one side mounts no defense. It’s the word we used on the farm. We slaughtered chickens, we didn’t fight them. A slaughter was the likely outcome of the warriors’ bravery. They died as heroes, their wives as slaves.

As we drove to the trailer, the sun dipping in the sky, its last rays reaching across the highway, I thought about the Apache women. Like the sandstone altar on which they had died, the shape of their lives had been determined years before—before the horses began their gallop, their sorrel bodies arching for that final collision. Long before the warriors’ leap it was decided how the women would live and how they would die. By the warriors, by the women themselves. Decided. Choices, numberless as grains of sand, had layered and compressed, coalescing into sediment, then into rock, until all was set in stone.



* * *



—

I HAD NEVER BEFORE left the mountain and I ached for it, for the sight of the Princess etched in pine across the massif. I found myself glancing at the vacant Arizona sky, hoping to see her black form swelling out of the earth, laying claim to her half of the heavens. But she was not there. More than the sight of her, I missed her caresses—the wind she sent through canyons and ravines to sweep through my hair every morning. In Arizona, there was no wind. There was just one heat-stricken hour after another.

I spent my days wandering from one side of the trailer to the other, then out the back door, across the patio, over to the hammock, then around to the front porch, where I’d step over Dad’s semiconscious form and back inside again. It was a great relief when, on the sixth day, Grandpa’s four-wheeler broke down and Tyler and Luke took it apart to find the trouble. I sat on a large barrel of blue plastic, watching them, wondering when we could go home. When Dad would stop talking about the Illuminati. When Mother would stop leaving the room whenever Dad entered it.

That night after dinner, Dad said it was time to go. “Get your stuff,” he said. “We’re hitting the road in a half hour.” It was early evening, which Grandma said was a ridiculous time to begin a twelve-hour drive. Mother said we should wait until morning, but Dad wanted to get home so he and the boys could scrap the next morning. “I can’t afford to lose any more work days,” he said.

Mother’s eyes darkened with worry, but she said nothing.



* * *



—

I AWOKE WHEN THE CAR HIT the first utility pole. I’d been asleep on the floor under my sister’s feet, a blanket over my head. I tried to sit up but the car was shaking, lunging—it felt like it was coming apart—and Audrey fell on top of me. I couldn’t see what was happening but I could feel and hear it. Another loud thud, a lurch, my mother screaming, “Tyler!” from the front seat, and a final violent jolt before everything stopped and silence set in.

Several seconds passed in which nothing happened.

Then I heard Audrey’s voice. She was calling our names one by one. Then she said, “Everyone’s here except Tara!”

I tried to shout but my face was wedged under the seat, my cheek pressed to the floor. I struggled under Audrey’s weight as she shouted my name. Finally, I arched my back and pushed her off, then stuck my head out of the blanket and said, “Here.”

I looked around. Tyler had twisted his upper body so that he was practically climbing into the backseat, his eyes bulging as he took in every cut, every bruise, every pair of wide eyes. I could see his face but it didn’t look like his face. Blood gushed from his mouth and down his shirt. I closed my eyes, trying to forget the twisted angles of his bloodstained teeth. When I opened them again, it was to check everyone else. Richard was holding his head, a hand over each ear like he was trying to block out a noise. Audrey’s nose was strangely hooked and blood was streaming from it down her arm. Luke was shaking but I couldn’t see any blood. I had a gash on my forearm from where the seat’s frame had caught hold of me.

“Everyone all right?” My father’s voice. There was a general mumble.

“There are power lines on the car,” Dad said. “Nobody gets out till they’ve shut them off.” His door opened, and for a moment I thought he’d been electrocuted, but then I saw he’d pitched himself far enough so that his body had never touched the car and the ground at the same time. I remember peering at him through my shattered window as he circled the car, his red cap pushed back so the brim reached upward, licking the air. He looked strangely boyish.

He circled the car then stopped, crouching low, bringing his head level with the passenger seat. “Are you okay?” he said. Then he said it again. The third time he said it, his voice quivered.

I leaned over the seat to see who he was talking to, and only then realized how serious the accident had been. The front half of the car had been compressed, the engine arched, curving back over itself, like a fold in solid rock.

There was a glare on the windshield from the morning sun. I saw crisscrossing patterns of fissures and cracks. The sight was familiar. I’d seen hundreds of shattered windshields in the junkyard, each one unique, with its particular spray of gossamer extruding from the point of impact, a chronicle of the collision. The cracks on our windshield told their own story. Their epicenter was a small ring with fissures circling outward. The ring was directly in front of the passenger seat.