Raising Arizona

I press my forehead to the cool plastic window of the airplane as we soar over thick white clouds. There’s nothing to see, so I slide back into place in my seat and stretch out my legs. The plane is cold, so I wrap my arms around myself and think back.

____________

“Comrie.”

I answered. “Ference?”

“What’s up?”

I sighed. “Nothing. I’m tired and bored and there’s nothing here, and it’s July and it’s not even that warm. It’s drizzling. It’s been drizzling for a week straight, at least. I hate it here.”

“I’m going to Arizona next week. Come with me, it’ll be fun,” he pleaded.

“Why? It’s July, Andy, you’re fucking crazy. It must be eighty thousand degrees there.”

“No,” he said. “Well, it is, but it’ll be cool where we are. I promise. I’ve been up there a lot in the summer. Please? You don’t have to stay for a long time.”

I got up and looked out the window. Rain. Grayness. Seventy degrees and falling.

“Okay, I’ll go.”

_______________

After leafing through the in-flight magazine and being bored out of my skull, I look back out the window. We’re flying over some sorry, pathetic, boring province or state, characterized by endless square fields divided by lonesome interstates, cars scuttling along on their way to God knows where. Eventually the terrain becomes hillier, then suddenly through the clouds one of the Rocky peaks bursts through, looking like the advertisement on a cheap bottle of wine. It’s awesome, breathtaking, etc., but I’m still bored and the plane is still cold.

The peaks still showcase snow even in July, lending them drama and prestige. But even mystique and awe become old after a while, so I shut the window and shut my eyes.

I sleep a dreamless, fitful sleep, the kind of sleep into which you dream about your surroundings—you dream about flying over the Rockies, then wake up to find yourself flying over the Rockies—it is unsatisfying. At least when I wake up, we’ve passed into the desert.

It’s strange, at first. I’ve never paid attention to it now, when flying into Phoenix for games, but now I observe it all acutely. The soil goes from reddish to brownish and back again, with canyons and gorges all over the place. The entire place is dotted with scrubby trees and bushes—even from 37,000 feet in the air I can see that they are not large. The roads are not interstates, but twisting, winding dirt roads—twining over mountains and following their edges down into gorges, switching back on themselves as they climb to desperate heights and back down again. Now and again I can catch a glimpse of river, looking like nothing so much as a woven silver necklace dropped into a forest. It appears back at us, winking, glinting in the hot sunshine. If you reached hard enough you could pick it up, rub the fine metal between rough fingers.

The droning pilot interrupts my reverie. “Ladies and gentlemen, we will be beginning our descent into the Phoenix area and the Sky Harbor International Airport. The seatbelt signs are being turned on, so we ask you to take your seats and fasten those. The weather in Phoenix is a scorcher, it’s ninety-seven degrees Fahrenheit and sunny at the airport. Better bring your sunscreen!”

The plane descends through air and slowly brings the ground into focus. First houses and buildings become clear, then cars zipping along the baking freeway, and finally individual plants on the ground. It’s a bumpy, uneventful landing, and Sky Harbor International Airport is uncommonly calm and quiet.

Flying with the team is never like this, we’re always escorted quickly and privately through the airport, and I’ve never flown by myself into Phoenix before. It’s a well-lit, comfortable, quiet, calm, cool airport, well signposted, and I find my way to the luggage carousel and outside without too much trouble.

Outdoors, palm trees are reaching up half-dead, turning-brown fronds to the sky, waiting for rain. The earth bakes ceaselessly, and the sun is like a fluorescent light bulb that refuses to turn off. Standing outside for just a few minutes at the bench where I’ve been told to stay, I get hot and feel overdressed in long pants and a T-shirt. I ponder going into my luggage and putting on shorts quickly, but I decide against it. It’s too hot to do anything but stand listlessly in the shade.

It’s only a minute or so more until the familiar sound of a motorcycle reaches me and Andy careens around to the side, yanking off his helmet.

“Get on!” he yells, over the sound of traffic and incoming planes. I fasten the heavy helmet over my head and fasten myself onto the back of the restored Indian bike. It’s tricked out in black leather fringes and it’s been polished until it gleams and it’s hot to the touch. Andy lashes my bag behind me, then hops on, shaking the bike. He revs the motor once more and it starts with a jump.

We drive safely once the freeway, but he takes an exit pointing north, and we’re suddenly shunted onto an exit where no one else is going. Andy kicks it into the next gear, and suddenly we’re blazing along the pavement, fifty, sixty, seventy miles an hour. I’m momentarily afraid of spinning out of control, but Andy handles the bike like a musical instrument, with care and reverence, so I turn my attention to the scenery.

Massive saguaro cacti lay on either side of the road, with pale green arms reaching out in all directions. Some were brown and dying, some were barely more than a foot high. Other plants were scattered around—prickly pear cacti, which could be plucked and carefully eaten; Indian paintbrush that wasn’t blooming; and scrubby, anonymous bushes. Gradually the road climbs up through sandy hills and the cacti begin to disappear as they are replaced by different, taller, greener kinds of plant life. The sand turns redder the further we go.

It’s still very hot, but even whipping along at seventy-five I can tell it’s cooler in the mountains. We’re passing through mountains now, ridged and gritty. The view is incredible and the sky comes down in a brilliant blue bowl, encircling as far as the eye can see.

Eventually we turn a corner and red rock formations rise out of the earth. They’re spectacular, layers and layers of rock piled onto each other, soaring and falling and occasionally exposing a white, bleached-out side.

This is the town of Sedona. We race through it onto another highway, which takes us lower, and I have the time to crane my head at the scenic turnouts. It’s too loud to talk, and I have no idea where Andy is taking me. The road snakes down to the bottom of the valley, where a bubbling river takes hairpin turns and lonely cottonwoods drape themselves over it. Sheer rock walls line the highway, stretching up and up and up until it hurts to look back, because the sun is beaming directly down. It’s brutal.

After a few more minutes Andy stops underneath a giant, gaping cottonwood tree, leaps off the bike, and dashes into a teeny cottage. He runs back out, grabs my bag, puts something else on the back, and we rip off again with the speed of terrified rabbits.

The highway continued to climb into the sky, up a mountain that I didn’t recall passing before. It switched back on itself again and again. We pass a four-thousand-foot elevation sign, then a five-thousand-foot, then six-thousand and still it goes up. The motorcycle wavers precariously near the edge and I feel my heart leap into my throat and stay lodged there. I grip the sides of my seat with my hands until my knuckles have whitened to the color of bone.

Eventually he takes a sharp turn into an observatory lookout point, and I disembark for the first time in two hours, my legs feel like water. The steep climb to the top has considerably weakened my nerves, and I am profoundly grateful that the place is almost empty.

We wander to the edge and peer down into the valley. It’s awesome. I wish there were fewer people around to share it with. I want to just sit and hold his hand but I can’t, there are too many people. I think he sees me looking longingly around in the hot July sun and he touches my shoulder.

“Come on, come with me. I have to show you something.” It strikes me that I’ve been in Arizona for little over two hours, and we haven’t done much talking. I suddenly feel sick with moving, and I allow myself to be towed along much in the fashion of a tugboat pulling another boat. I don’t feel like moving any more.

As we cruise back down the highway, down the cascading mountain, the red rocks of Sedona lose their appeal. I close my eyes slowly behind my helmet, the sun is beginning to head towards the western ridge of mountains.

After we hit the desert we stop and let the motorcycle stop in a small “parking lot” along the side of the road. The bike idles for a minute, and then cuts off completely. Andy helps me off the bike and I jump down onto the dusty earth, kicking myself for not bringing sunglasses. He tosses the key into his pocket and walks off to the edge of the lot, where a wire fence marks the divide.

“Let’s you and I go for a ramble,” he says. I nod stupidly, and he climbs through the fence with a practiced air. I climb through it, clumsily, not knowing what to do and when. We begin to walk.

The terrain is rocky and rough and dusty and hard to walk on. Rocks slip out from under my feet and I twist my ankle more than once. We crest a ridge and walk a little further down.

Cars and people other than the two of us are completely erased from the world. It’s just him and I and the shade from the trees and the sun. He throws down the bag and stretches out on the ground. I crouch, slowly, then lie out beside him.

“Welcome to Arizona,” he grins. “Are you crazy yet?”

I somehow don’t want him to be flippant.

“Guess not.” We lie in silence for a while, waiting for cool breezes and the dark cover of night. It’s hot as hell, even in the shade.

The sun begins to melt down behind the ridges, and Andy moves a little bit closer to me. I lay my head comfortably on his shoulder, glad for the intimacy of rocks and mountains and sunset.

“Do you know what mountains these are?” he asks quietly. I close my eyes against the soothing rumble in his chest. I shake my head no.

“Superstition Mountains.” I open my eyes again, staring at the line of hills.

“They don’t look superstitious,” I say quietly. He grins into the sky that is turning shades of darker blue.

“I’ll tell you a story.”

It feels good to lie in the close comfort of his arm and watch the fading light of night, watch the mountains disappearing into the dark.

“They say there was a lost gold mine in there way back when, people are still looking for it. People still die looking for it. It’s called the Lost Dutchman Mine. It’s still lost.

“They say Pecos Bill came up this way when he was young. He used Arizona as a pen for his horses.”

I interrupt. “Who is Pecos Bill?”

“You don’t know?” he says, his face animated with disbelief. I feel motionless—not tired, exactly, because I’m nowhere near falling asleep, but I feel like never moving again. I lie still as he begins to speak.

“Pecos Bill was born in Texas, he had sixteen brothers and sisters. When his family moved out West one day, he fell out of the wagon and just wasn’t missed. Turns out a coyote found him and they raised him as a coyote.

“He grew up with fleas and running with the dogs and howling at the moon, just like them. One day he ran into a cowboy, though, and the cowboy asked him. ‘Boy, where are you from?’ Bill answered him indignantly. ‘I’m no boy, can’t you see? I’m a coyote.’ The man laughed at him. ‘I am, I’ve got fleas and I howl.’ The man told him ‘That doesn’t prove anything. Most people have fleas and most Texans howl, so you must be a Texan boy. And besides, you haven’t got a tail.’

“Bill looked at himself and he still didn’t have a tail, so he decided the man was right. He went into town and got a job as a cowboy.

“Bill could do anything. He invented train robbery and the six-shooter and cow-stealing, he shot the bad men and the bad Indians and the bad buffalo, and he ate the Buffalo. He wrestled with rattlesnakes until they called for mercy. He rode the mountain lions that were as big as three states until they asked if he could take a joke. He came across a band of cowboys tougher than leather and they made him their boss.

“Pecos Bill found his horse right here, in these Superstition Mountains. She wasn’t barely bigger than a colt, and her name was Widow-Maker. He raised her on nitroglycerine and dynamite, and she was the best horse anyone had ever seen.

“Bill rode a cyclone and when he slid down the lightning bolt, he came down so hard he made Death Valley. The cyclone rained so hard it washed out the Grand Canyon, and Bill made a raft and sailed down it when it was eighty miles wide and taller than the mountains. His rope was just two feet shorter than the equator, and he could rope a whole herd of cattle with it.”

I listen to the story, entranced and calmed and soothed.

“He drew the Rio Grande and invented the centipede and the tarantula. He went on a buffalo-hunting trip with only his dog, Norther, and brought down one and skinned it alive. He let them go to grow new hides, except they died in the winter.

“Bill drank strychnine instead of liquor, and he ate barbed wire and fishhooks with his meat. It all rusted in his gut and he died.”

By this point the stars have come out, dotting the sky with brilliant points of lights, like we are lying at the bottom of a tin-punched lantern. The light with the stars and the moon is enough to light the way.

I am suddenly overwhelmed with a rush of sickening desire. I feel like my insides are being torn out roughly with the force of emotion, and it’s strange. I manage to swallow it back into myself, my torment and my unshed tears. The desert does not need them here.

“What’s wrong?” he asks quietly. I shrug noncommittally, because I know if I open my mouth the lump in my throat won’t allow me to speak.

He leans over and kisses me softly, a touch with pleading undertones. I kiss him back, opening my lips and setting my head on the desert ground. His lips move slowly along mine, almost as if they are speaking words I can’t interpret. He slowly moves long my jawline and I stroke my fingers through his hair, keeping my eyes closed and praying for the world to stay away that much longer. His hands, cool and dusty, touch my neck and his thumb traces down to my collarbone. He lies softly kissing me for what seems like hours—hours I can’t properly calculate because I don’t know if I was all there to remember it.

Eventually our shirts come off and he splays his hands across my stomach, tracing patterns on my chest. I feel what I think is a spiral, then a man with a flute, then another man figure. I’m guessing. I can’t see. He kisses me again, and my time and space become trivial.

His lips move down to my collarbone and he shifts his balance over onto me. One hand is on my shoulder and the other is on the ground, sometimes raising up to trace along my bicep.

It feels wonderful, but I’m still stuck in that horrible whirl that says I will never be able to get away from grey days and grey nights without him. My stomach knots itself up, twisting, and I force myself to forget it.

His lips then find their way to each nipple, flicking his tongue and fingers across each until I’ve completely obliterated my memory, concentrating. I work at getting my pants off, kicking them into a dusty heap. It’s all I can do then to lie still. The heat has filled my head.

He gently puts two fingers around my cock, and my shuttered and boarded eyes roll back a little. I want to stay here, right now. I never want to go forward and I can’t go back.

Andy kisses me again and tastes salty—maybe it’s not salt I taste, maybe it’s just tasteless desert grit that’s blown onto his lips. Whatever it is, it distracts me for a half an instant while he probes one finger into me, slick and shocking at first. One finger, then two, and then a half-minute or so of memory tape is erased from my brain and I almost want to cry out because I’ve missed it.

“Andy,” I say softly against his mouth. Maybe it is salt I taste, salty tears while he climaxes and waits for me. I feel like sobbing.

“Shh,” he says quietly, then continues so softly I don’t know if I’m hearing him or wind whistling through my ears. “I don’t know what’s wrong, but I promise that I’ll stay with you, I’ll stay with you, I’ll stay with you,” he trails off.

I hate it here, I hate it because it’s reminded me of everything I hate about myself and I love it because everything is clearer here. The sky and its startling clarity against the dirt look stark and perfect, and I can see perfectly what’s wrong with me and why I hate it.

But it’s just too hot to do anything about it.