The calm surface of the old woman rippled as she began to speak.

“My Gare-old, his father was a man named Root-iger. Some kind of scientist, nuclear physicist? Bitter, like a root that makes you sick.” Jasmine knew that she was spelling the names wrong in her head but the correct spellings wouldn’t mean anything so she didn’t ask. (It would turn out she was wrong but Giles would be the one to discover this.)

“That father his, dominated poor Gare-old’s life. They were not close. Gerald called him ‘Vater,’ very formal. A loving father would have been called ‘Papa.’ He told me.”

Jasmine smiled. “And Rooti-ger didn’t like him taking a picture of…” Here a Sliver Mary would have smiled to show she knew they were both thinking of a naked behind. But Mrs. Benz did not smile back. Instead her upper teeth worried at her lower lip.

“He came out here,” she continued as if Jasmine had said nothing, “to get away. Old man never knew where he was. That old man, he was … he was like Coyote mated with a vulture.”

Jasmine’s fingers touched the cotton weave of the tablecloth. She felt the presence of the two demons: the big icy one who said, “Madame … Tiffany is it not? We meet again.” And the smaller funny one who squawked, “Gawrd feck it, whet was that?” They weren’t in the room but they were somewhere, and Jasmine held them at bay by hearing about the elder Herr Benz and his son and asking only the right questions.

It was like treading water, which she had learned two summers ago at the noisy, echoing Larsen Pool with the air sharp with chlorine and the whistles of the lifeguards. Asking Mrs. Benz the questions was like weaving her hands back and forth like angel wings. And keeping the two demons from entering the story was like gently kicking her feet, keeping the down-below firmly down there.

Her legs as she sat on the old cane chair swung back and forth as she asked, “Won’t you tell me about the day he took your picture?” That question fit just right. Like the tooth popping back into its dimpled hole.

Mrs. Benz’s eyes became the black of an open cave, a passageway to some secret little statue in a hidden grotto. Jasmine trod air with her legs and the world did not dissolve into a dark corridor with waiting demons.

“My Gare-old, he was good at photography. Not National Geographic good, though he sure would have loved to be published there. But he wasn’t that good.” But this wasn’t what she wanted to tell Jasmine. This was not the thing that made her eager to tell her story at last to a child. She hovered over the heart of the story, an eagle on the lofting air above a canyon, searching for one particular fold…

“That morning, the morning he took the picture, I knew he loved me like a man should love a woman. I’m not saying more about that.” Jasmine nodded, filling in the detail that Mrs. Benz and her husband had done that private thing in bed that made Popster and Yako look so happy when they made breakfast with mussy hair and shining eyes, giving each other little hand squeezes.

“I said, ‘Bring your camera, I’ll show you where to get the picture you want.’ I knew what he wanted, see, he wanted a picture of me and he wanted lots of grand sky and mountain and sculpted rock so it was a picture of nature that old Herr Benz couldn’t object to.” Again the old woman left hanging the detail that she’d be naked in the picture. Jasmine knew that she should just nod. This was not the detail that needed a child’s open heart to bring it out.

“I was strong. Gare-old, well, he wasn’t. But he followed me best he could. Up the trail, starts to the left of the conference center and an hour later, out onto the mountain top. What a perfect day it was! He was winded and he plonked down on a rock, panting. I smiled at him and got comfortable.” A brief pause to check that Jasmine understood she took her clothes off, without her having to say it. Jasmine nodded with a little smile, not mocking or knowing, just accepting.

“Well.” The eagle, watching from his mountain wall, fell like the thunderbolt. “I give him one last look, last time I saw his face, then I leaned back and closed my eyes to give him time to decide on the best shot and on f-stops and lens apertures and that stuff. The rock was warm on my elbows and hey, I knew I looked good. I felt the sun on me. He was all hatted up and shirted and got on long pants ‘cause he was a lobster, put him in the sun ten minutes and he’d be cooked.

“I hear him circling but I don’t hear the cluck-shush of the camera and I hear him getting further back and further back. I don’t move but I do think, ‘He ain’t gonna be such a fool as to back right over the cliff, is he?’ See, that mountain top is nice and rounded but right over the conference center it drops off real sudden.

“And then I hear him go over, just like Coyote in a story, doin’ something stupid and down he goes. Yiiiiii!”

Jasmine listened, as spellbound as when Giles told a story. “That was ten years ago and I was a sweet young thing. Now I’m an old lady. Guess you wonder how I got this old, yeah?” But she didn’t look to see Jasmine nod shyly.

“Well, see, that was just the first time. He fell like Coyote, down hundreds of feet and bashed his brains out and that was that. When I came down the mountain, sad as an old cottonwood tree, there they was in a flutter at the conference center with the dead man and blood spattered and the kids all upset. The cops investigated, they asked me questions and then I went on without him.

“But every time I thought over what happened, how it went, every time it seemed a little different. More and more, stronger and stronger I got the thought, that father his, was looking for him.

“Then one day I was thinking it over again and remembering how it was, how I’d been leaning back on my elbows in the sun. And, there I was. Back on top that mountain where I hadn’t gone since that day, sitting in the sun. He’s still alive and I hear him backing away. I feel the old man looking, looking, trying to save his son, see. The old man’s crazy but he’s gonna save his son. He can’t, I think, that was years ago.

“I don’t dare open my eyes, dunno what I’ll see, and I never told anybody any this. I hear my Gare-old backing away and I hear him go Yiiii over the edge again, and I think, well, course the old man couldn’t save him. I opened my eyes at last ‘cause I thought the dream was over.

“But I was still there.” Her black eyes drilled into Jasmine, who shivered.

“I came down from the mountain, there’s the tribal police again, pulling the body out of the conference center, all the New Agers all upset and blood, just like before. But I’m three years older and I got to live those three years again.”

Jasmine looked with respect at this woman who, like her, could travel the odd corridors of time and space so calmly.

“Well that’s the way it keeps happening, and you’ll be the first I ever told. Every few years it feels the old man’s getting closer and back I go to that mountain top and live it over again and I keep getting older living the same few years.

“Then one time it’s different. He goes over the edge. I still don’t look, don’t want to see a dead man’s face. I hear his cry. But something’s different.

“All those times, I never knew I heard the little sound of him hitting. But this time I don’t hear it. And when I come down the mountain, there’s no police, no body. There’s no conference center. It’s gone. And nobody around here remembers it was ever there.” She nodded and Jasmine nodded back, wide eyed.

“Folks kinda know something is different, they don’t know for sure what. And they know I’m in it, I guess: they give me the big distance just like they give Red Rock Mountain the big distance. And nobody but me remembers there was ever a conference center there, just a big gouge now, and if those people at that workshop got any folks, any relatives out there, they just forgot ‘em somehow.”

Her deep pool eyes looked directly at Jasmine at last.

There seemed to be a great stillness in the whole world now that the secret was spoken aloud.