The man drove in silence for a long while. They were in Idaho now, and the clouds grew thicker, huddled close against the horizon, and were laddered against the distant mountains, now to the east and to the west. The mountains themselves, Savitha noticed, were streaked with tendrils of blue and red. The valley between the bowl of mountains, the one they were passing through, was green and fertile and reminded her of the fields around Indravalli, fed by the Krishna.
The man popped a peanut into his mouth. He raised his eyes to the rearview mirror. “Spent many of my days out here,” he said, clearly talking to Savitha, though she had no idea what he was saying. “Fishing. The Bitterroot, Salmon, every little creek and stream. Spent most of my twenties and thirties back there in Coeur d’Alene.” He pointed out the passenger side window. “Right there, right down there is Trapper’s Peak. Spiked, like this.” He showed her with his hands, his elbows guiding the steering wheel. “Can’t look at it too long, though. It’ll break you up inside. That’s how some mountains are.”
His eyes in the mirror were watching hers.
“What is your story, anyways? How’d you end up on that damn sidewalk? And how in God’s name did you lose that hand?”
She met his gaze and then looked down. She liked his voice. She liked the way it summoned her, summoned even the uncomprehending, the wandering parts of her.
“I couldn’t even take a guess. Not one. And what are you? All of twenty?”
She wanted to tell him something, maybe something about Poornima or her father or Indravalli, but there was nothing she could piece together that would’ve made sense to him, and so she was quiet, listening.
“Well, I know accidents happen. I know all about that. I’ve had my share. I could tell you stories. Boy.” He stopped; he shook his head. Savitha’s eyes lit up. She understood that word: boy. She began to listen even more carefully. “I got one,” the man said, his voice rising. “I got a story for you. It’s about a little boy. Little. I’ll say he was about four. He and his mama and daddy lived in Montana. Just them. Just the three of them. His father was a ranch hand. One of those cattle ranches with hundreds and hundreds of heads. One of those ranches where you could spend an entire year just fixing the fences, let alone calving and vaccinating and culling and weaning. A big place. You get the idea. Well, one day, when this boy was four, his mama up and ran off. With some traveling salesman that came around, maybe, or a heavy machinery salesman. Hard to say, because immediately, before the boy could say boo, he was sent to live with his grandparents in Arizona. Tucson. His daddy put him on a bus, by himself, and sent him down to the desert. And you know what happened? I’ll tell you what happened: the boy found his spot. He loved it, the desert. His grandparents lived in a little house surrounded by dirt and sand and cactus, no fences, and with a yard that ended far away, in a low range of blue and purple and orange mountains. Well, the boy couldn’t get enough of it. He’d play, but mostly he’d sit and watch those mountains. He’d watch them so close it was as if he expected his mother to walk right out of them. Walk out, take his hand, and lead him away. Not back to Montana, mind you, but deeper into the desert.
“Some time after the boy moved to Arizona, his grandparents hired another boy to work for them. Older. A teenager. Just someone to come around and help with the chores. For instance, they had a detached shed that needed to be cleaned out. Out back. And they wanted help with building a porch. The sides would be braided thistle, to keep the sun out during the day, but open to the west, facing into the mountains and the sunset. They joked with their grandson. They watched him staring into the mountains—coming in only for the hottest part of the day, when the sun was directly overhead—and they laughed and they said to him, When that porch is built, we’ll never see you again.
“Well, the teenage boy—let’s call him Freddie—began with the porch. He built it in a couple of weeks, and then he moved over to the shed and started in on that. He must’ve seen the grandson dozens of times, talked with him, even answered a question or two the little boy had for him, but he’d never shown any particular interest in him. He was a teenage boy, after all, and the grandparents thought having a bit of company must’ve been nice for their grandson.
“And it was. It was. But the third week in, Freddie called the little boy over to him. It was just about sunset. The boy’s grandparents had finished their dinners, and they were sitting out on their new porch with iced teas and smoking. When the boy walked into the shed, hardly any light coming through the door, Freddie coaxed him into a corner, took the boy’s arm, and he said, Shhh.
“Well, you can imagine what happened next. And it kept happening almost every day for the next month. And during all that time, the boy heeded Freddie’s words. He never made a sound, not one, but in the evenings, in the desert quiet, he could hear his grandparents, sitting just a few feet away on the porch. They’d laugh, they’d bicker, but mostly, they’d just talk of this and that. The weather, for instance. Or the cactus out front that had bloomed last year, but not this year. Or their small aches and pains, the ones that come with age. And the boy, from the shed, as Freddie did what he did, would listen with all his might. He’d listen to the voices of his grandparents. Although, to tell you the truth, they ceased to be his grandparents. They were just voices now, voices that he listened to with such intention, such intensity, that he slowly lost his own power of speech. He spoke less and less, and one day, toward the end of the month, he stopped speaking altogether. His grandparents were mystified; they never understood why. They thought it was from his mother leaving him and the move to the desert. But the boy knew why. Maybe not at the age of four, but later. He came to understand why: he came to understand that the most magical words, the only words that mattered, were the ones spoken by his grandparents. While they sat out on the porch—grown old now, their concern for the bloomless cactus, or the clouds, or the pain in their knees filling the night sky. Filling it like stars. You see, the boy knew, knew, even at the age of four, that he would never in his life sit on a porch as his grandparents did. He would never sit with another person and speak of small things. Or great things. Or even the most effortless things. And that that was what Freddie had taken from him. The boy knew this; the boy knew this as he knew those mountains, as he knew his mother would never come out of them.”
There was silence. A silence so deep that when Savitha closed her eyes, she felt a warm wind brush against her face. Why is there a wind, she wondered, in a closed car?