Animal Dreams

"I swear to God it's true."

"I believe you. It's just funny how people are. People in Grace do that too, in a way. You give them a compliment and they'll say, 'Oh, no, that's just something I've had a long time.' We're all scared to be too happy about what we've got, for fear somebody'll notice and take it away." He reached over and stroked the underside of my arm, from the elbow up. "Like you, Codi. You're exactly like that. Scared to claim anything you love."

"Am I?" I was willing to believe whatever he said. Talking with Loyd was like talking to myself, only more honest. Emelina was always asking me what it was like to live overseas, and I knew she would love the penis story, but I'd never told her much about Crete. I was afraid of her seeing me as more of an outsider in Grace than I already was. But Loyd didn't make those judgments. I could have told Loyd I'd lived on Neptune, and he'd say, "Uh-huh? What was it like, was it cold?"

In the Jemez Mountains we drove up the slope of what looked like a huge old volcano. A fluted core of granite jutted from its mouth, and twisted black ridges of old lava flows ran like varicose veins down its sides. The snow was deep and the road icy. We crept along, then stopped. Loyd got out of the truck and started down the bank toward a frozen creek that cut between the road and the steep mountainside.

"Are you nuts?" I inquired.

"Come on." He waved energetically.

"Why should I follow you down there?" I demanded, following as fast as I could.

"It's a surprise."

It was near sunset, near or below freezing, and Loyd wasn't even wearing his jacket. I slipped several times behind him and then we both slid flat-out down the hill on our backs. We were sledding, not on snow but on an exposed hillside of bizarre, rounded gravel. I picked up a handful in my mitten and tossed it in the air. It was porous and weightless like Styrofoam popcorn. "What is this stuff?" I asked, but Loyd was already crossing a log over the frozen creek. I scrambled behind him up the forested slope on the other side. I picked my way between rocks, grabbing roots and tree trunks to pull myself up. Halfway up I had to stop, hugging a pine trunk and panting. The cold air cut my lungs, and I blinked hard against the sensation that the water in my eyes might freeze over.

"It's the altitude," I whined. Loyd grabbed my hand and pulled me gently uphill. Suddenly we were following the course of an odd unfrozen stream with lush plants thriving alongside it, their leaves glossy green against the snow. I'd never seen anything like this in nature, only in the sort of paintings that show improbable and dreamlike things. Loyd, who had gotten ahead of me again, was now taking off his shirt. I wondered if perhaps I was, after all, in one of my strange dreams, and whether I would soon be looking under the foliage beside the stream for my lost baby.

I climbed over the top of a boulder and there stood Loyd, naked, smiling, an apparition bathed in steam. He slid into the blue pool at the base of the boulder. I touched the steaming water and it blessedly scalded my fingertips. I undressed more quickly than I probably have in my life, before or since, and immersed myself up to my eyes.

The sun set. Venus opened her eye on the horizon. From where we sat we could see the Jemez range and the valley floor fifty miles to the south, its buttes and mesas still lit by a distant sun. When our bodies turned red we stood up briefly among the snow-covered boulders, shouting, and the steam rose off our uplifted arms like smokestacks.

Loyd asked, "So, am I nuts?"

I stretched my legs along the sandy bottom of the pool until my toes found his. The heat relaxed every muscle and sinew and reflex in my body, and most of the ones in my head. This kind of happiness was sure to attract the attention of the Evil Eye. "Have you got any more surprises?" I asked. "Or is this the last one?"

"I've got some more."

He scooted over and lifted me off the sand, supporting my floating body with both hands under the small of my back. "I don't give them away all at once, though," he said. "Only a half dozen a year."

I counted on my fingers: Kinishba. Spider Rock, the Cliff house, and Maxine Shorty's farm. And this, volcanic hot springs. I didn't know whether to count the cockfights or not. That he could give up cockfights, I'd have to count that. "So I've used up my half-dozen already," I said.

He lifted me slightly out of the water and kissed my ribs, one at a time. "If you're only staying around for a year. That's the rules."

"That's bribery."

"Whatever it takes." He kissed my navel and the damp hill over my pubic bone.