My So-Called Ruined Life. Melanie Bishop

shakes it out. We pour a little water onto the bandana and let it soak the cloth. Then she holds it over the man’s mouth and squeezes. He soaks it up as quickly as the dry ground did. He opens his mouth for more, like a bird. Greta repeats the process.

      “What if he has heat stroke?” I say. “We need to get help.”

      “He’s dehydrated.”

      “We need to call for help,” I repeat. “But of course we don’t have a phone.” This has been the only source of argument on the trip. Greta has always been anti cell phones. Doesn’t even own one. And she wouldn’t let me carry mine in my pack—said it went against all her instincts in the wild, to have such a thing. To imagine it ringing in the middle of nowhere. She thinks it’s absurd. I gave in, as I always do on the phone issue, realizing that these days, at a place as popular as this canyon, if we were to need a phone, someone would come by before long who would have one. But now that we are in a situation where we clearly need one, I’m burning mad and Greta can tell. She’s holding the man’s head up now so that he can get big sips. In between, she’s trying to get him to answer questions. I fume.

      “Relax, Tate.”

      “Relax?”

      “One of us can run ahead for help.”

      “Oh, that should be really expeditious,” I say. “Have you not noticed our snail’s pace?”

      “What do you suggest, Tate?” she says. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

      “I’m thinking what I always think! That we should have a phone! Everybody would have a phone. You’re living in the dark ages, Garbo! This is one of those things that separates you from all the parents in the world. A parent, any parent, would have a phone! They just would! I mean, have you ever heard of Safety First? Like, what if one of us were to break a leg?”

      Greta, eternally calm and clear-headed, just looks at me. She gets an expression on her face that I’ve seen enough times to know she’s moving into concerned mode—instead of getting pissed back at me, she’s worried about me. I don’t want her concern; I want her to fight back. She is reminding me of my father. Did everyone who ever hung around with Carla have to adopt this steadiness, so that Carla could be the wacko one?

      “Am I right?” I say. I’m determined to make my point.

      “You’re right about parents and phones,” she says.

      “So why do you insist on never bringing a phone, even when it makes total sense? I mean, you follow the recommended amounts of water to a T, but you won’t dream of having a way to call for help?” I look at the man again, whose eyes are shut. He looks so small and vulnerable there, in fetal position. “Well?” I say.

      “What?”

      “Why are you so stubborn about the damn cell phone thing?” I’m yelling, and the look I’m giving her could burn holes through travertine.

      I feel some emotion coming large up my throat, burning behind my eyes, threatening to turn into tears. “And meanwhile,” I say, my voice starting to shake, “the lunatic who crushed my mom’s head still walks around…the fucker is free…he could be here, for all we know.” I can’t hold it back and I’m crying hard, in jagged sobs. Greta reaches to put an arm around me and I slough her off.

      “Hey!” A man has just come around the bend with what looks like his wife and son. “What’s the trouble? Can we help?”

      Greta shows him the old man, and he goes into action. He checks his vitals and inside his mouth. He tells his wife to go up or down the trail until she gets a signal and to call the emergency number. Each of them, even the young boy, has a phone out and ready.

      “He’s stable,” the man tells us. “You did the right thing, getting some water into him.” He looks at me. “He your grandpa?”

      I shake my head.

      “Relative?”

      I look at Greta, like fix this. Like don’t make me talk when I’m like this.

      “We don’t know the man,” she says. “We just came across him. My niece is upset about something else.”

      “My aunt,” I say, “has something against cell phones.” I say it mean.

      The man looks at me like is that what you’re crying about? A phone? And I don’t care what he or anyone else thinks. He stays by the old man, tells him help is on the way. The wife and son have given us all some room. They are seated just off the trail up ahead. The emergency has been reported and the woman has a bag of pecans out, and the boy unwraps a fruit roll-up. Fruit roll-ups remind me of my mother—I mean Carla—something she used to put in my lunch box. I force another surge of sadness away, using the same will that kept me walking up the ridiculously cruel incline of this ridiculously deep canyon. Tears sting at the rims of my eyes, but they don’t spill. They pool there and the dry world around me drinks them up. A person could lose a lot of tears in a place like this.

      Greta pulls some food out of her pack, and I sit down right where I am, looking out over the gigantic expanse. It’s weird how a landscape this dry can sometimes trick you into thinking it’s wet. Like when you’re driving a long, straight shot of road, and you’ll see up ahead what looks like a shallow puddle, but when you arrive at the puddle, it’s disappeared, a mirage. Here in the Grand Canyon in the summer, heat waves hover above some surfaces. There’s something watery about them. Part of me wants to leap out into the void, and find those heat waves shimmering there like the surface of a vertical lake. I bet out there, where the water is imaginary, I could find my buoyancy easily.

      I focus on the clouds, the cliffs, and the nothingness between them. In front of me, up close, I focus on some kind of cactus, asserting itself from a sharp crack in the rock. I don’t know what kind it is, but I make a mental note of its shape and size so I can look it up later. It’s a hardy-looking thing—mean almost, but out here, you have to be if you’re going to survive.

CHAPTER SEVEN:

       SOME TIDAL WAVE

      In the next half hour, Greta needs me to make up my mind about visiting that Eco League college. She doesn’t care either way (but really she does—she’s big on education), but if we’re going, she needs to turn off at the next exit. Greta doesn’t hesitate to say she thinks we should stick with the plan—we allowed time for the side trip, she reminds me, and we have an appointment. But she’ll leave it up to me. What it all boils down to is that Greta’s worried about me. The incident with the old man put a damper on our trip and my mood.