The day I was going to propose to Sally was the day of the cloudburst that wiped out the towns along the Big Thompson. The scar always reminds me.  Even when I fly too high to see it,  I know it's down there -- a steep, slithering, snake-like run, everything except the dirt wiped away by the avalanche.  Today I'm flying low.  I imagine my plane lopping off the top of the mountain, slicing it again and again, making the land as flat as the plains east of Denver. 

     Sally appears in the cockpit beside me.  We peer down at the pines and firs and brush that, interspersed with the dirt and under a bright sun, become a show of diamonds and emeralds.  If you get up high enough.  Far enough away. 
     Sally's long red hair looks fuller, more coppery in the light, and her pale cheeks flush with life.  I watch her hands.  She signs the word "beautiful" to herself, over and over, while staring down at the land. Then she says "beautiful" in the strong, clear voice I've given her. 
     "Why?" I ask. "Why beautiful?" 
     Sally holds her hands still.  She vanishes, and the scar zooms up at me.  Noticeable as a slit down someone's face. 
 
     Months ago, my wife, Rachel, and I lounged on the couch, and I trailed my hand up and down her back.  She rolled onto her side, stopped my hand, and held it in her own.  You know, they've found more bones, she whispered, her chin cutting into my shoulder blade. From the flood, they think.  Close to the avalanche.  She smelled like a flower, but, that night, we didn't lie naked together. The bed seemed too small. Her kind breath clawed the darkness.  It hurt my ears. 
 
     Sally runs her finger down the mountain scar, then touches it to my lips, smiling.  She stretches an arm across my shoulders.  But water begins to drizzle down her arms in streams, and I lose her face. 
     I'm left with only her voice: This land won't close itself up like a body.  If it did, it would die. 

          You know, they've found more bones.  From the flood they think.  Close to the avalanche.   If these are Sally's bones, I would've been close, volunteering at the North Fork, close to the scarred mountain. I worked there the day after the cloudburst. 
     The first person I found was a man who had one arm caught under a boulder, and his other arm hugged the side of it.  His chest was in the mud and his head against the rock.  We had to dig him out.  We crawled into the mud, arms and faces first.  The mud slid back into place just as quickly as we could scoop it into our arms, but I felt his arm.  For a moment, I was thinking that it was good that the arm wasn't injured, as if that made a difference. 
     The Army Corps of Engineers had been using a crane to try and pull cars up, but mostly the end dangled like an empty fishing line.  The retrieved cars, wadded up from being wrapped around boulders, looked like extra-large, smashed soda cans.   Sometimes a car got away and floated on down the river.  Sometimes we would have our eyes locked on the river and forget to look for the dead.  I had to remind myself to look for others besides Sally.  Before, the river had seemed merely a trickle. 
       The rain finally let up.  I remember patches of light cracking the sky and a pickup that, all except for the cab, was buried by coarse sand.  One man lay on the sand on the hood of that old truck.   I took some water to him, and he choked on it when he drank.  As hard as we worked, it was still hard to drink water.  We all looked dark, even in the rain, as if we had been working in coal mines. 
     "Look at this.  This is the coolest thing I've ever seen," one man said, leaning toward a boulder, feeling it with his hands.  "This thing must be at least twenty feet long.  Man, the river carried this down?"  He climbed up the bank, pranced on top of the boulder, then stretched out on top of it, as if making an angel in snow.  The boulder had scars on it, as did the downstream sides of the other boulders that were lying around.  "Yep.  I'm six feet.  It's gotta be over twenty." 
     "Why are you measuring the rock?"  I asked. 
     "What?" he asked, raising his head. 
     "Why are you measuring the rock?  There's work to be done.  We've got dead bodies in cars and you're excited about a boulder?  Look at that one over there.  Or that one over there.  Man, it's big.  Maybe we can ship it off to a museum and put it under glass." 
     "Hey," another guy walked up to me.  "We're all trying to cope as best we know how.  What you said doesn't help.  Let him look at the rock if it keeps him happy and keeps him from going crazy in his head.  Let us all look at friggin rocks." 
     What I did next was no better.  I walked away and sat behind a log. A strip of bark had been washed off a pine tree in front of me.  One bird walked around in front of it like it was lost, pecking into the bark.  I don't know what kind of bird it was, small and dark, or why I remember it except that it had feet that looked like spiders.  I wondered if all birds have spider feet and why they would need them when they could just fly off?  I thought we all needed that kind of feet. 
     I remembered when Sally and I first met at an art fair. I had said my name in sign language and liked the way she repeated "John," lingering on the "n," holding her fist tight, thumb inside the fingers, as if she might toss her hand in the air and scatter seeds all about.  As if simply holding my name in her hand was a sign of strength. She smiled, seemed impressed that I could talk to her.  I repeated "Sally" and held the "y" in the valley of my hand between my pinkie and thumb. 
     I heard what sounded like a wild animal whimpering and began to climb the rocks.  When I got to the top of a cliff, I found a white bundle. Inside was a baby with blue eyes.  He tried to look at me and tried to shut his eyes against the rain at the same time.  Beside him, I found a book of checks that said Sarah Peters. 
     I managed to climb down with the baby.  He had a faint lipstick print on his cheek that had stayed in spite of the rain.  I stood there, wiping his face with my shirt. Sally.  Oh, good God, Sally.  What do I do?    She could've been behind me, reaching out to us. She could've answered me. 
      A woman's legs jutted out from under some weeds. Above that, an arm, tangled red hair.  My legs went watery.  Her swollen face had scratches on it, but I could tell she wasn't Sally, and a sick relief followed.  I had held onto that possibly orphaned baby and hoped it would be his mother, not Sally. 
     The scratches on her face could've come from branches, but they looked like human scratch marks, as if someone had been grabbing at her face.  I checked for a pulse but couldn't find one. I bent my head over her mouth to listen for her breath, but I only heard her watch ticking in short flicks.  Her shirt was torn down the front, exposing her breasts, so I tried to pull her back into the bushes, until someone came for her.  We had to take care of the living first.  I didn't feel right touching even her shoulders in order to get the shirt out from under her.  I had already been too close, her watch ticking like a heartbeat.  I knew her name. 
     "I've got a baby," I yelled into the air.  "I've got a baby," I said again, holding it out to the cliffs. 
     "Avalanche," someone yelled. 
     Behind me, the whole mountain was toppling down. Thousands of boulders crashed.  I heard them, but it was so foggy I couldn't see much.  I didn't know which way to run. 
     "Clear out.  Get out of here," a voice rose from somewhere. 
     My feet had sunk up in the mud.  I pulled them out and ran from the sound, squeezing the baby against me.  The jarring continued for at least ten minutes, and I thought he would bounce out of my arms. He started screaming.  I didn't know what to do with him, but I cradled his head in my hand, and he stopped crying and just looked at me, confused, as if wondering why his mother wasn't holding him.  I looked down, and I was wearing only one shoe. So much to do, and I remember standing there with one shoe.  I finally started moving in the direction of the chopper, so they could take the baby to safety.  I hugged him again, glad to have him breathing against me, his face tiny and moist against my cheek.  He was cold, but I held onto him like he was a pillow warmed by fire. 
     I imagine Sally standing, not hearing the terrible tumbling.  Could she feel it vibrating the joints in her feet, see the air turn strange? 
 
     I imagine an archaeologist finding bones, excited.  He lays them out on a table and runs his fingers over them.  He turns one over and holds it to the light.  He breathes hard.  He checks to see if she was a hard worker, checks her teeth to see if she ate healthy food.  He examines the pelvic bone to see if she had kids. Bone grit bites into his skin. This man, he knows what becomes of flesh.