Crossing New Mexico with Weldon Kees

after Kees' "Travels in North America" 1.Santa Fe "The walls are old," he says. I turn in the plaza and nod to Weldon Kees, his face as dark as the cool shadows that surround us, walls keeping him safe, honoring his silence, though he comes to me to be led away. "The mountains out there are not old," he claims and slips his hands into his coat. We cross the street, each Indian blanket on the ground holding jewelry I would love to touch, but Kees and the Navajo man selling his crafts are whispering to the ground. Kees surprises me by entering the Museum of Arts. I follow him, the stone floor ringing with our footsteps, empty arches blending above. Kees stops and turns to me. "One can see only so much," he says. He leads me to the twisted dwarf, the tangles form of faith and death, arrows bristling from its muscled body, a sacrifice of the ugly encased in glass, Kees staring at the sculpture as if he knows why we really can't see it. He points to the deepest arrow and places a hand on my shoulder. "When you believe this, you are home," he tells me and walks out. 2.Albuquerque The Sangre de Cristo mountains are old and he is driving my car to the highest ridge, the valley below avoiding the bright moon, the same white light in the bay Kees wanted to touch before he left. "Mist and clouds are a lie," he claims. "Look down there. Men are running away." He drives slowly to the top and we get out, the autumn sun burning terraces into scrub cedars and piñon pines he wrote about when he crossed here long ago, standing on the edge of the cliff as if this is the only way for him to go. "Look past what you want to see," he sighs as the wind takes his slick hair and makes him into someone I have seen before, the streets of Albuquerque down there as dusty as his closed eyes. We stand on the edge and I wait at this elevation with Kees who wrote that the towns we will not visit are places where home truly lies. "I must go," he decides. "Where to?" I ask. "Anyplace you haven't seen," he says, and walks down the mountain. 3.Tyuonyi Kees and I are happy when the sun splits the tree for a moment because yesterday controlled this mountain dawn, burning mud deeper into the adobe. Cottonwoods catch fire here, give the people time to hide inside turtle shells, though they come out to watch us. I stop as the drawings come to life under the arches, symbols familiar to those who sleep by crossing the street each night. As I stare, I realize a man who diappears wants to understand and not hide, yet the designs tempt me to walk in the wrong direction and leave him behind. To go farther up would mean a canyon where I have been. A dirt street inside another path, tiny houses falling back, letting me pass beyond their locked doors, as if the smoking windows know where I must go. When I enter the placita, the old woman is not there because this is about bringing Kees back. The dirt street opens to the last scorched tree breaking out of walls to shade what can't be blessed, its branches confusing until their cracks enter the ground in search of peace. 4.Santa Maria Water disappears to settle as clear glass that contains memories of thirst, the ancient hole found in the ruins, Kees' hand keeping the others from skimming the surface of the still water, reaching to be alone under the mountain wall, though eyes that watch have seen this before, men entering and never coming out. One hand keeps the other from touching the surface. Pulling back allows the echo of falling rocks, the deep swimmer breaking through walls to emerge on the other side of the well where the first figures to emerge in centuries are sitting and rubbing sand over their wet, shivering bodies. 5.Fort Selden Kees is getting tired in the desert heat and sits on a historic slab of western settlement, this old fort a museum where thirsty men come to drink from the bitter well. Kees smokes too many cigarettes and shakes his head at me, "Look at the moth and the deep iris in your garden because the equation I found in San Francisco is an eclipse drawn on paper by my trembling hands." He pauses and takes a drag, my head bathed in sweat and confusion as he coughs this, "It is too late because jazz has gone away. I placed a stone deity of a bird next to an eggplant on my desk, its smooth purple skin as significant as the gathering of birds in your head, their chirping coming from sorrow, even from the bay where I never told a lie, though the grand steps lead to the burned church where the musicians used to trace my forehead." I stare at him and he tosses smoke on the ground because we are close to home. 6.El Paso Kees waits at the bus station in my hometown. We cannot go farther because the border here is out there and as violent as the reasons he disappeared in San Francisco a long time ago. I want to tell him who I think he is, but I grew up here and must hide how things have really been, drawing the light off the mountains as if the doubters of history are simply starving boys offering to shine Kees' shoes on the corner of Paisano Street. My hometown has a bridge, but Kees won't go near it because he says to cross it would be to admit there is something wrong on the other side of my family's house. He can never cross because we have found our way here, El Paso dreaming its population of mute men must keep growing because the border keeps taking too many of them away. Kees looks at the bus schedule, runs out of cigarettes and everything is closed. He nods at nothing and waits on the bench with someone he swears looks like me.