hen my parents split, or actually when they finally got around to telling me they were splitting, there was nothing I could do but nod. They'd taken to positioning me in between them at dinner, one at each end of our pine kitchen table, like book ends, me like the book whose purpose isn't to be read, but rather to give the book ends a reason to be there, displayed and oiled on a fireplace mantel somewhere. My stories, of how my day went, how Nina's training was going, the hot gossip down at the stable, fell flat on the pine. I watched the words sink into the table, in between the casserole dish and the bread basket. One by one, the letters of my words slipped through the finish and deep into the natural cracks in the wood. I finally gave up one night after watching the phrase "I'm failing statistics" slip through, unacknowledged by either of my parents. They were busy rearranging their food on their plates, like bad children. "Didn't you hear me?" I asked, amazed.

"You're failing statistics," my father said. "Your mother and I are agreeing with them."

"With who?"

"With whom," Mom said. "Statistics. We're agreeing with statistics." Dad looked up at me, his brown eyes flat.

"Jesus, Ron, do you have to make a joke out of everything?" Mom's voice was sharp, not serrated like the knives on the table, but truly sharp. Sharp like scalping knives.

"Your mother and I are getting a divorce," he said.

I looked at Mom to see if this was for real, though I was pretty sure that it was.

She nodded.

"We're sorry, honey. We tried to stay together--for your sake. But we just can't, not any longer."

Dad sighed, loudly. "We're sorry, chicken. We really are."

When I was younger, Dad called me chick. He said my hair was just as soft and twice as yellow as the young birds we grew in our backyard. When I turned sixteen last spring, I stopped calling him Daddy, shortened it to Dad. Mom said he was hurt by that. I say he's way too sensitive. So he started calling me chicken.

"Pretty soon you'll be a hen like your Mamma," he said.

I had rolled my eyes and gone to my room, but I could see how maybe not being called Daddy anymore could hurt his feelings, after all. They decided that it would be best if I left for the summer. They didn't ask my opinion. They just decided. At least they asked me if I'd rather go to my Aunt Louise in New York or my grandfather in Arizona.

"Hot and humid versus hot and dry," as Dad put it.

"What about Nina?"

"We'll hire one of the girls down at the stables to ride her for a couple of months. She'll be fine."

I shook my head. "I'm not going anywhere without Nina."

They must have been able to tell that I was serious, because that was the end of that argument. The book speaks. "I'll take her to Granddaddy's," I said.

"I'll find a hauler to drive her out there."

I smiled at Dad. "Thank you."

And that's how I came to be on a plane headed West, my clothes stored under me in the heavy belly of the aircraft, waiting to be regurgitated into Arizona. I wondered how Nina was doing down there, in that strange trailer. I'd helped load her myself, had walked all the way into the trailer with her, instead of stepping to one side and making her do it herself. I'd mixed some sweet alfalfa and molasses in with her oat hay, even threw in a few chopped carrots. I patted her neck as I tied her lead rope in a safety knot, checked the latch on her halter. I knelt by her long legs and checked, for the fourth time, the velcro on her shipping boots. Then I walked behind her and tied her long red tail in a slip knot to keep it from getting caught on anything, like the velcro on her boots, during the long ride. I stepped up to her face and exchanged warm air with her, breathing in her sweet breath, exchanging it for my own. We stood like that for a long time, sharing the same air, back and forth. I patted her on the shoulder, finally, and said, "See you there."

My parents weren't feeling quite guilty enough about the divorce to let me ride in the trailer to Arizona.

"There is no way you're riding a thousand miles alone with a strange man," Mom had said.

I hadn't even bothered to point out that I wouldn't be entirely alone, Nina would be there, and had decided that it would be better all the way around if I kept them in the dark about the short knife I had carried from the kitchen, out the front door, and to the airport. I wore it in my boot, like I had seen it done in the Westerns on late night TV. I wrapped the blade in a piece of cardboard, first, then slipped it in my black Doc Martin on the inside of my calf, pulling the laces tight. The airport officials thought it was the boot's steel tips that set off the alarm. So when my grandfather saw me step off the airplane in Tucson, he saw a straight-faced, iron-backed girl, dressed in black and walking with a slight awkwardness. The knife did not allow me to bend my ankle quite right.

I saw a man I did not recognize. It had been seven years since we had last met, and another seven between visits before that. Our only communication had been awkward telephone calls, neither of us knowing what to say. A picture of him and my grandmother sat on my mother's bedstand. It was taken right after the war. He was wearing his navy uniform, staring right into the eye of the camera, unsmiling. She was on his left, looking at some spot past the cameraman, at something I could not see, could not guess at. That was all I had of her; she was dead before I was born. At the airport he stood, alone, at the edge of the asphalt, leaning against the wire gate. He wore a heavy, wide brimmed cowboy hat that shaded his eyes from mine. He stood with his thumbs in his belt loops. We walked towards each other, uncertain, when we realized we were the only unclaimed people in the hot dry day. Five steps away from an embrace, we both stopped.

"Mona," he said, voice as dusty as his shirt. "Karen's little girl all grown up."

"Hi, Granddaddy." I smiled, I couldn't help myself. Swear to God, the man looked like he'd stepped off the cutting room floor, a relic from a '50's Western.

Then we stepped forward and hugged. He put his hand on the back of my head, pulled my face into the faded denim of his shirt. He smelled of dust, horses, work. He held me there for a second longer than I wanted, even started rocking me back and forth a little. Then, just as I was about to pull away, he withdrew, stepped back, sized me up.

He stared at me, serious, and I shifted my weight from foot to foot, feeling the knife rock against my ankle bone. He reached out his tanned, leather hand and touched my cheek. It was rough, the hands of a rider worn from the constant rub of reins against the palm, between the fingers. I rubbed the palm of my own hand, felt matching callouses there. I smiled.

"Just like your mamma," he said. "You could be her twin." Then he gestured with a nod towards the plane. "How was the flight?"

"Fine. I was a little worried about Nina."

Granddaddy laughed. "Just like your mamma," he said.

I could tell which vehicle was his from the edge of the parking lot. Its dusty red cab sat higher than the heads of the compact cars surrounding it. The truck was old, I remembered it from our last visit. That time, he had come to see us, driving that truck alone all those miles.

"Don't like planes," he'd said, when I'd asked why he hadn't flown.

At nine years old, that answer had seemed incredible. There I was, a child, and I had already been in planes more times than I could count, even gone all the way to Germany the Christmas before.

"But how do you get places?"

"I drive. Ride a horse if I can."

"I mean far away places. Like Germany. Or New York."

"Why would I want to go to those places?"

"I don't know. To see them. Just to travel."

"I've seen plenty," he said. "I've been to Germany. Don't care to go back." And he had a look in his eye when he said that. "I stay where my land is. Where my family is."

And even though it sounded odd, as a nine year old who had already seen the world (or so I thought) I'd nodded. It made sense. Why go, when you could stay? If you were happy where you were, I mean. That's probably why my parents traveled so much. Now that they were splitting, I could see that maybe they'd been looking for a home. Maybe they figured there was somewhere they could live together, happy. As it turned out, it wasn't anywhere a plane could take them.

We drove the road to Granddaddy's ranch in silence. He kept his eyes straight ahead, slightly squinted, as if he could see his place in miniature, so far ahead that no one but he could see it, way out past the horizon. We drove into the sun, and I watched it sink through the windshield.

It's amazing the colors sand changes to when the dying sun strikes it. First orange, bright fire orange, painful to look at but demanding your gaze, like saying, look at me, I'm beautiful, I'm so beautiful it hurts, watch me. But that orange is so powerful it can't last long, and I figure anything that beautiful is bound for death, so pretty soon it changes to this red, this amazing red, and that lasts even less, but what sticks on the sand like chaps to the saddle is the pink. A salmon color that's born from the last breath of the red, and it sinks in between the granules of the desert, sinks right in, so quiet, not demanding attention, not shocking you into staring, just deserving of a long, solemn look as it disappears under the sand, leaving but the heat and the wind.

When we pulled through the iron gate of Granddaddy's ranch, it was full dark except for the stars. I stared up at them, thinking there was something wrong.

"Are there always this many stars here?" I asked.

Granddaddy looked up. "There are always that many stars everywhere," he said. "Some places just make you see them clearer."

And that was the only thing we said as the asphalt turned to gravel to dirt, down a mile and a half of straight nothing, dust clouds growing and finding their way into the cab, winding up through the air vents into my nose. Granddaddy killed the engine in front of the tall wooden house, but the road didn't end there. I could tell by the glow of the headlights that it paid no mind to the house, made its own way even further.

"Where does the road end?"

"At the paddocks. You'll see them in the morning."

The truck brought Nina early the next morning, along with dawn. I was asleep when the truck drove up, still asleep when it left. Around seven, I woke up. I lay in my mother's childhood bed, staring up at the high yellow ceiling, and listened. The house made sounds, none that I could pinpoint. Not settled sounds, though. More like it was searching its own corners for missing people. I looked around. All Mom's stuff, I guess it was her stuff, was still there, things she'd never mentioned, it was all around, as if waiting for her to come back, waiting for her to pick things up, play with them, laugh. I felt like telling the room it would be waiting a long time.

"She's gone," I told the room, out of pity, mostly. "You wouldn't recognize her, anyway."

The house sighed, but it chose not to believe me. I could feel it still searching. Well, good for the house. I got out of bed and got dressed, pulling on my jeans from the night before and my boots. I tried to ignore the stuffed animals who stared at me, implored me to pick them up. I felt their gaze burn into my back. I turned to make the bed, took the lemon yellow and white quilt from the mattress and flipped it over, its backing facing out. Then I pulled my knife from underneath the pillow and slid it back against my ankle.

I followed the dirt road further west from the house. In the daylight, I could see a barn up ahead. So different from home, the desert. So much more like home. I mean, it seems so empty, the space is incredible. You can spin in circles for miles with your arms spread out, you can skip, you can scream, and there's not even anything for your voice to echo off of, it just disappears, into the sand, I guess, or into the sun. But I didn't feel lonely, out there in the empty, not like I used to back home, pressed in by so many neighbors, the screech of tires on asphalt, the laughter of kids in surrounding yards, the oppressiveness of the argument my parents never had.

I stood there, not too far from my destination, and spread my arms out. I closed my eyes and let the sun press down on my upturned face, felt it sink into my skin, digging around my eyes, making wrinkles. I yelled, contracting my stomach muscles with the force of my cry. I yelled until my breath ran out, until there was nothing more to say. Then I opened my eyes, dropped my arms, and made my way to the barn.

Inside, I found my grandfather feeding handfuls of warm bran mash to Nina. He looked up from his task.

"Morning," he said.

"Hi." I walked up to Nina and rubbed her forehead. She didn't look right.

"What's the matter with her?"

"She came out of the trailer a little funny. Kind of tied up. Wasn't no manure in there with her."

"Oh, God."

"She ever collicked on you before?"

"Once. It was pretty bad. The vet thought for sure they'd have to cut her open."

"What'd you do with her?"

"Walked for seven hours straight. All night."

Granddaddy handed me the lead rope. "Let's get going."

For the first hour, we walked in heavy circles around the barn. We wore a groove in the sand, me standing close to Nina, patting her left shoulder and talking to her in a low voice. I told her about the plane ride, tried to explain the sensation of leaving the ground, rising up above the earth, unnaturally high. I told her she would be okay, she just needed to relax, she was in a great place, everything would be fine. "I love you," I told her. She breathed quickly, her eyes wild, nostrils flaring as she took in as much desert as she could. Granddaddy stood to the left of me, hands pressed into his pockets, watching us. He'd gotten a stethoscope from his emergency kit and wore it around his neck. It looked awkward there against his checked shirt. Occasionally, he held the end of it against Nina's belly, listening for gut noises. After the first hour, Granddaddy disappeared into the house for a while. When he came back, he said, "I called the vet. She can't make it out here before noon, at the soonest. She said to just keep walking. Maybe some more bran mash, with hot water."

I nodded. There was nothing to say.

The second hour, we moved up and down the stretch of road between the house and the barn. By then, the knife in my boot had rubbed a blister into my ankle, and walking was becoming impossible. Finally, I stopped. I handed the lead rope to Granddaddy and knelt down, loosened the boot lace, and pulled out the short knife. The cardboard I had wrapped the blade in was worn down, close to cut through. I wrapped the knife up tighter, and, for lack of a better place, slipped it in the front pocket of my shirt. I stood up and took the rope back from his hands. He didn't say anything about the knife, didn't even raise an eyebrow.

"I was four years older than you when I went to Germany." His eyes looked straight ahead, and for a second I wondered if he'd really said anything. "I went because I was young and because what was happening there was wrong. I brought your grandmother back here with me because she had nowhere else to go, after the war, no family left. And we loved each other."

This was the most I'd heard my grandfather say in one breath since I'd gotten off the plane. Probably before that, even. So I listened.

"The only reason she made it alive was because she was smart." I nodded. "That's not true," he said. "It's because she was blond."

"It doesn't matter why," I said.

"She was raised German, did you know that? I mean, she was Romanian, but because of the occupation, they all spoke German. At school, at the market. She was even baptized Catholic, after it started getting bad. Imagine that."

I tried. I couldn't.

"But nothing mattered. Nothing but blondness." I remember her, sort of. She was always so pale, not only her skin, her hair, but just her. Everything about her. I could see how she would have loved it, out in he desert. Against the pale sand, she would have blended right in. Could have disappeared, into that sand.

Nina kept stopping, trying to twist her head around, looking at her belly in amazement. She tried to bite it, to bite out the pain. She pawed at the ground as if she wanted to lie down, but I wouldn't let her, I just tugged on the lead rope, made clicking sounds with my tongue, and coaxed her into walking again and again, further into the path we'd dug traversing the road from barn to house and back, sinking millimeter by millimeter closer to the source of the heat in the sand. For it seemed to me that the growing heat of the day did not come from the sun above our heads, but rather from the ground. By nine, heat was radiating upwards from the sand in thick orange waves that bent the paths of vision. It came up from the core of the earth.

By ten, I could feel my boots begin to melt into the sand. It was the core of the earth, pulling me gently down, I was certain of that. I looked around. Granddaddy was melting, too, but he didn't seem to notice. Neither did Nina, who didn't even glance down at her disappearing hoofs, didn't honor them with a thought. She slogged ahead, snorting a little, and shook her heavy head. We had worn such a path now, a long skinny oval between the two buildings, that I could let my arm hang at my side and feel the earth with my fingertips, our legs invisible to anyone outside our path. Outside our groove.

Before eleven, we no longer had knees. But, somehow, we still walked, further and further towards the center of the earth. I could feel the heat of the world on my shins and calves, even though those parts of me were now missing. And Granddaddy stared straight on, at that point of the horizon where he could see something invisible to me. Nina seemed to be relaxing a little, so I decided to go with the flow, to see what happened. So we walked on.

This was better, being on the ground, in the ground, than it had been yesterday, high up on the plane. I unclipped Nina's lead rope and threw it out of our tread, up onto the ground. She followed along just the same, so I slipped my knife from my shirt pocket and let it fly too, watched the glint of its blade flash as it spun, once, twice, and again before it pierced the sand and stuck, handle pointing to the sky, blade towards the center of the earth. Granddaddy smiled, patted my shoulder. I smiled back.

It wasn't that we were melting, I decided, or that we were digging a path, a scar, into the sand. Rather, the sand was rising. Like a tide, it came up to meet us. And we pushed on, up to our thighs in its welcoming hold.

"Where is Grandma buried?" I asked. "I'd like to go visit her."

Granddaddy looked around, and spread his arms out wide. "She is here," he said. "In the sand."

And Nina nodded her head, and knelt next to me, motioned with a soft swing of her head for me to climb up on her back. So I swung my right leg over her, gripped her sandy mane in fistfuls, and we rose together, as we sunk into the land.

Copyright © 1997 by Elana Kuczynski. All rights reserved.