Excerpt from IN MARBLE CANYON

by Peter Turchi

Late in the night, Henry sat on a cushion on one of the wooden rocking chairs on the front porch, looking above the silhouette of the Dorianne, lost in thought. He had written nothing worth keeping, not a sentence. The more he tried, the more it felt as if he were snuffing out the very idea he wanted to cultivate, starving the flame of oxygen. Well, not an idea, he never started with an idea, maybe that was the problem. Now he was thinking too much about ideas, about meaning, about significance. That wasn’t how he had approached any of the writing that was any good. Or that he thought, at the time, had been good.

He heard movement just inside the door. He hadn’t excluded any of the others from the house, had encouraged them, in fact, to make full use of it. The cabins were small, never intended to be used as apartments. That was one of the things that made this situation feel temporary: how long could Vince and Sophie live this way? Vince talked about moving a trailer onto the property. But where would Vince get a trailer? He pissed away every penny. And Sophie….

The door opened and closed, and a moment later a hand rested on his head. One of the women in his life. Shouldn’t he be able to distinguish his wife’s touch from his daughter’s?

The hand moved, caressed his ear. Jasmine must have woken and found him missing from their bed.

“This is the world’s least comfortable rocking chair,” he said.

She sat on his knee. “The stars are beautiful.”

“The stars are always beautiful here. The sky is always clear. One can’t escape the insistent reminder that we aren’t so much as a grain of sand on the beach of the universe.”

Jasmine took a sip from a coffee mug.

“That’s not the line,” Henry said. “I can’t even remember what movie that’s from.”

“At least you haven’t lost your sunny disposition.” She offered the mug. “Wine?”

Henry declined.

“It doesn’t sound like a very good movie.”

“I worry about Sophie,” he said. “This is no place for a young woman, alone.”

A car passed. At this time of night vehicles on the two lanes of 89A hurtled through the darkness, miles to go in open country.

“Sophie has friends here. People like her.”

“It was said without irony, in the movie. Which is a mistake. You can only look at the stars and talk about how small you feel ironically.”

“I think I know why you can’t sleep,” Jasmine said.

“Most of those people come and go with the season. She has a crush on Franklin.”

“You’ve just noticed?”

“I was enjoying myself alone out here.”

“Should I go back inside?”

Henry sighed. “Everything hurts. I should hike, or at least walk along the river, but my hip hurts, I can’t feel my toes.”

“Franklin says we’re all here because, at heart, we’re loners.”

“You make it too obvious when you’re changing the subject.”

“I’m sorry you hurt. But talking about it is tiresome.”

“It’s one topic I can speak on with both authority and passionate interest. He said ironically.”

Jasmine sipped her wine. Henry surveyed the stars. The truth was, he enjoyed the darkness, and looking at the night sky. “I think they said specks of sand. But ‘a grain’ is better. And that was sarcasm, not irony.”

Jasmine idly caressed his arm.

“What say you?” he asked. “Do you think we’re here because we’re loners? Outcasts? Social misfits?”

“We are each here,” Jasmine said, “for different reasons.”

Henry rested his hand on her leg.

“I don’t feel lonely,” he said. “I have everything I want.” The Dorianne stood like a silent reprimand. Yes, he had suffered losses; yes, he had grieved. But he believed it. “So many people are unhappy, but I—” he found firm bare skin beneath his young wife’s robe, “—I am a lucky man.”

Jasmine covered his hand with hers. “Sincerity is all right,” she said. “Just don’t get carried away.” She swirled what was left in her cup. “Franklin has a lot of ideas. He’s searching for purpose.”

“He’s an ant nibbling away at mountains,” Henry said. Then, “I can’t get a single fucking sentence right. He’s told you his search and rescue story?”

“Oh yes. Very sad. A little boy reduced to a pickup line.”

They sat quietly for a moment. A streak of light crossed the sky.

“That’s unfortunate,” Henry said.

“Mmm?”

“Just as I was going to invite you back to bed, a shooting star. How banal. The universe  conspires against me.”

“That’s because you have everything.”

Henry raised her hand to his lips, kissed it.

“How long,” she asked, “do you really plan to stay here?”

She would rather be back in Tucson, he knew, or even in the cold Midwest. She had friends in Chicago, family in St. Louis. People her age didn’t mind the cold.

Jasmine curled her hand around her mug, cradling it in her lap. A warm breeze blew over them.

Sophie wondered if it had something to do with the phases of the moon.

She wondered if it had something to do with her biological clock, whatever that really meant. She had imagined having children, assumed she’d have children, ducklings who would imprint on her, for a while, then go free.

All she knew for certain was that she had lost patience with drinking with the guides, with the casual sexism of the river crowd, with the assumptions by too many people that, because she was a woman, she didn’t truly know this place, couldn’t actually kayak the Colorado, didn’t actually know where to find midges in the eddies or how to fish a streamer in a dead drift.

But what she was doing made no sense. She had taken to sitting outside her cabin the nights Franklin stayed over, hoping he would notice and join her. His light was still on tonight, so there was reason to hope. Until Vince’s truck pulled in.

That was the other reason she had lost patience with the raucous, bullshitting, drinking crowd she had enjoyed before, during her nights away from the lodge, when they were still running it as a lodge. Uncle Vince, who had enjoyed his beer but never seemed out of control, had gone over an edge, and he could be a belligerent drunk—not mean to her, not often, but boorish and antagonistic, mean-spirited. She told herself it was only the alcohol talking, but those thoughts came from somewhere.

He slammed the driver’s door. “Soph!”

She glanced toward Franklin’s cabin, hoping for a sign of movement. Hoping to be rescued.

“How’s my partner?” he said, pronouncing the words carefully, deliberately. “How is the Arizona nightingale?” He sat heavily on the edge of her cabin’s porch, by her feet, holding an open beer in one hand, a stack of thin slices of wood in the other. “I brought these for you. Maybe Jasmine will help.”

“I wish you wouldn’t drive like that.”

Vince made a dismissive gesture. “What do you take me for? Some kind of rookie?” He raised his bottle as if to toast her. “Sing something. Sing something melancholic.”

“People are sleeping,” she said softly, hoping to get him to lower his voice.

“Sing a lullaby,” he suggested. “Where’s Griddle?” When they had visitors at the lodge, she and Griddle would sometimes entertain. Usually at least one person headed on a river trip would have brought a guitar; once there were two violinists. They would build a fire in the semi-circle of cabins, play, and sing, strangers brought together for one night. Their Facebook reviews called it “magical,” “enchanting,” “unforgettable.” It had gotten to the point that people arrived expecting a performance. Griddle pretended to be reluctant, but it had been hugely disappointing to him when her father and Jasmine had moved in, and those opportunities ended. Now they made music once a week, at most.

“Home.” Griddle lived with his extended family on the reservation.

“I do not mean to be critical,” Uncle Vince began, “but to some it might appear to be an affectation, wearing those at night.” He meant her aviators.

“I like them.”

“’I like a good cigar, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while.’ Attributed to Groucho Marx, likely apocryphal. Can you even see?”

“I can see.”

Vince held two fingers up in front of her face. She slapped them away.

“It has come to my attention,” Vince said, “that your father’s scandalously young bride, fair Jasmine, is unusually attractive. I pine for her. Sing me a song of longing.”

“Go to bed,” Sophie said.

“I’d go to her bed. Do you think she could possibly be satisfied with a man like your father? In the way that a woman needs to be satisfied?”

“I thought Roy cut you off,” Sophie said, miserable. She would never sit outside alone again.

“Roy,” Vince said, holding his bottle high, as if it were a candle lighting his way, “is a businessman. A businessman who makes money selling liquor. There is no business to be had in not selling liquor, for a liquor salesman.”

“I worry about you.”

“Did that make sense? Roy is a liquor salesman; he makes money selling liquor. He does not make money not selling liquor, to liquor drinkers. Neither does he make money not selling liquor to non-liquor drinkers.” He paused.

“You shouldn’t drink and drive,” she said.

Vince made a broad show of turning to look up at her. “Excuse me? Am I being lectured by my niece? Did I just hear a PFD? A PTA?” He grew confused.

“Public service announcement,” she said. “PSA.” And then: “If I sing you one song, will you please go to bed?”

“Yes!” Vince shouted into the sky. “Yes! The Arizona nightingale! But do make it melancholic.”

That part was easy; the song had been in her head all day.

                        They say that love's a gentle thing
But it's only brought me pain

Vince listened in respectful and/or drunken silence. Sophie tried to think of Linda Ronstadt, whose brain no longer allowed her to sing. Better to think of her than of Franklin, working in his cabin, ignoring her.

I expect to live single
All the days of my life.

“My god,” Vince said when she finished. “You—” he shook his bottle. Empty. “—are gorgeous. Well, no—your voice….”

Sophie’s throat constricted. “Uncle Vince.”

He held his bottle out to her; she took it. Holding both arms in front, extended, he raised himself to his feet, wobbled, but stayed upright. “Still got it.” He nodded toward the bottle. “Your buddy would recycle that. Pointless.”

Sophie fought to breathe. “He’s not my buddy.” She squeezed her eyes shut.

“Oh, Soph.” Uncle Vince took a wavering step closer. Put his hand under her chin. She heard his exhales, smelled his beer, but did not look up. With effort, he squatted and kissed her damply on the cheek.

Peter Turchi is the author of six books, including Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer, and (Don't) Stop Me if You've Heard This Before. He lives in Arizona, and teaches at the University of Houston.