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Vermilion

That weekend, my roommate Vin and I drove a few hours north into the high desert. Red rocks rose against blue sky, the colors belonging to a better rainbow.

The Hyundai's radiator cracked somewhere down a nameless cattle trail, and our cell phones got no signal, so we had to hike two miles beneath desert sun to the nearest settlement. The only place open was a bar with a neon sign in the window that said BEER.

"This is our destiny," Vin croaked, and we went to the beer.

The bartender looked like an albino crocodile, and he told us he served both kinds of beer: Bud and Bud Lite. We drank from plastic cups and asked him if anyone could help us with the car. The town didn't have a mechanic, nor a working phone.

"We're screwed," Vin concluded.

The bartender considered this for a minute or two before smiling, showing us long rows of teeth. "Vermilion," he said.

He led us to a back storeroom and into a cellar, which went very deep. Part of the passage wound through an old copper mine. Part of it was a natural cavern system. Part of it, where the walls glistened, seemed like the internal organs of an enormous living thing. We went down far, then climbed many stairs and re-emerged in sunlight.

Cliffs surrounded us, and broad mesas and spires that scratched the cloudless sky. We said nothing but fumbled for our cameras.

The crocodile shook his head no. "The earth bleeds fire into these rocks," he said. "Taking a picture is like shutter-bugging a wounded man. It's disrespectful."

Vin and I repocketed our cameras.

A few hundred yards away, a stream trickled through a stand of avocado-colored palo verde trees, and the crocodile went off to soak there.

"So, now what?" Vin said. "We climb the cliffs and find our spirit animals?"

Vin's a sarcastic guy, but he wasn't being sarcastic now, not in this secret place, in this ancient land absent of man's encrustations, here, where the earth revealed its purest truth.

I pointed to the tallest spire in view. I only now remembered dreams of flying, of spreading my wings and spiraling on thermals. "Let's start with that one."

Vin nodded and we headed for it. Before we'd gotten more than a dozen paces, my phone chirped. I flipped it open and saw that I had three bars.

"Good," said the crocodile. He'd followed us unnoticed, crawling on his belly. "Folks can usually get signal out here."

Vin handed me his AAA card, and I stood in the vermilion world, my thumb poised over the keypad.