Her thoughts are interrupted by her phone alarm. 3:14 p.m.—pi time. One last look, one last breath in this quiet place. She rises and turns in place, surveys the headstones, the desolate hills, the weathered buildings frozen in time. The empty spaces where fires razed nine- tenths of the town, now blanketed with low brush and dotted with an incongruous mix of abandoned vehicles—wooden wagons and rusted panel trucks—like an open—air transportation museum. She multiplies the number of buildings by ten and visualizes the town in its heyday. Eight thousand people seeking gold and opportunity, until the mines ran dry, and they left as quickly as they had come. That's way too many people. She prefers it like this. Dad did, too.
She walks Mojo down the path against a chill wind that kicks dust off the dirt streets of the ghost town. Preserved in a state of arrested decay. Like her family.
They pass the church, where they will meet Mom at four, and amble down Green Street. Past the park office, surrey shed, and morgue, to the schoolhouse. Arizona peers through the windows and listens. It's so quiet, unlike the school she'd known, with its cacophonous din and jeering voices. She looks at the rows of desks still laden with books, pictures the ghosts of children returning from their eternal recess, and wonders if, in a different place and time, she could have fit in.
They take the long way back, up Wood Street. The stamp mill, its corrugated blue-gray metal siding just two hundred feet away, looms large behind small wooden buildings with sagging rooflines. A brown sign with white lettering reads HAZARDOUS AREA, CLOSED TO PUBLIC. Wearing a crooked smile, she imagines herself and Mojo as they navigate old mine shafts and clamber up loose piles of mercury-laden tailings.
They continue around the block to the corner of Main and Union, the site of the former Sawdust Corner Saloon. Arizona hears the ghost of the bar's calliope and wonders how it had ever competed with the thunderous ore-crushing pistons of the stamp mill. Maybe the saloon was open only when the mill was closed? The two sound wraiths begin to battle inside her head, so she moves on before they can possess her.
They wander down Prospect and Park streets, through the section that best survived the fires—more or less intact—and reach the Methodist Church at exactly four o'clock.
Mom is nowhere to be seen.
CHAPTER TWO
OCCAM'S RAZOR
Arizona sees a group OF tourists coming down Green Street, accompanied by a young park ranger. Mom isn't among them. She scowls. Tardiness is disrespectful, and Mom knows that. Her body is still while her brain scurries. She looks at her phone—no service. Next idea. Search? No, Mom isn't that late. Ask the ranger? She feels her pulse in her temples. She inhales and exhales, slowly, three times, from the diaphragm like Mom taught her. The ranger is only one person. No big deal. She swallows, takes one more breath, and approaches him.
"Excuse me," she says, making momentary eye contact. "My mother went on the three o'clock stamp-mill tour. We were supposed to meet at the church at four, but she's not there."
"That tour probably just finished," he says, looking at his watch. "Not a fan of stamp mills?"
"My dog couldn't go."
"Oh, right. Give your mom a few more minutes. I'm sure she'll show up." Arizona gives a perfunctory nod. She thinks about saying thanks, but she isn't thankful. She walks Mojo in laps around the church, again and again.
Half an hour passes. She looks at Mojo, whose expression is as clear as words—why are we walking in circles, and where the heck is Mom?
"I know, right?" she says. She feels a flutter in her chest and wonders what it is. Annoyance? Confusion? Worry? Probably just annoyance.
She fetches the park brochure from her pack and flips to the map. Her eyes dart back and forth, look for patterns—search patterns. She pulls out her notebook and writes.
Each search grid larger, yet incorporating the previous. Self-similar supersets of Euclidean space.
Fractals? No, unnecessarily infinite.
Tiles that combine to self-replicate. Rep-tiles.
