No mention of a missing camping party. No mention of rain. It occurred to her it was important for her to be rescued, not only for her own sake but to warn about the plague. About the bats. Bats didn’t carry rodent fleas so the bats and the plague were unrelated, but . . . The effort of thought was tiring her out. It was so much easier to watch the growing mirage, to lose herself in it, to let her mind float. Hallucination was a sign of dehydration: a lack of water changed the whole chemical balance of the body, but it was so seductive. She enjoyed thinking she might see Youngman coming, wading towards her through a dusty surf.
Her mind went on in a crueler direction. There was a story Youngman once told her about a young man who went to the Maski Canyon, arriving at night at a fine, big pueblo built underneath the ground. Smoke rose from chimneys, children ran up and down ladders and beacon fires burned on the roofs. The young man was not only welcomed in this strange pueblo beneath the earth, he was washed and fed and taken to a great dance hall where festivities were just beginning. He’d never seen such laughing and dancing, and beautiful girls who ran around singing and joking, pointing to each other and shouting, “Hapa! Hapa! Is! Is!” “Dead! Dead! This! This!” The fun went on for most of the night, and when he was tired he was led to bed by the two most beautiful girls. They removed his clothes and theirs. He kissed their lips and breasts and spread their legs, making love to each girl in turn until they all fell asleep, the girls lying on top of him. He woke, shielding his eyes because the daylight was much brighter than he expected, and he saw that the reason was there was no ceiling. The room which was so fine at night was now filled with sand. Parts of the wall were collapsed and the windows were broken, and bits of the rafters that were left were falling down in the wind onto the floor. He sat up, and bones fell from his chest. The entire room was full of skeletons, two of them embracing him in their arms. In fear and disgust, he broke their clutch and ran . . .
Youngman wasn’t coming, she told herself. No one was, not in time. Not until she was something to be shoveled instead of loved. Her head rocked back and forth and she heard the clicking of lizard claws running over the van. She didn’t hear the fading voice of the radio.
. . . Another health advisory to pass along. A jack-rabbit turned in to health authorities has proven to have an animal form of plague. Hopi Deputy Youngman Duran turned in the rabbit and he is now being sought by authorities so they can administer necessary injections of vaccine. This is an infectious disease and people are advised not to approach the deputy, only to inform authorities of his whereabouts . . .
Instead of staying on flat ground, Youngman deflated his tires and crossed as many dunes as he could on the chance he might be able to spot the van. Or smoke signals or the glint of a mirror. Or vultures. From time to time, he turned on the transistor radio to monitor what Chee was doing, and also because he knew if the campers came out of the desert Chee would broadcast their arrival. The jeep whined, sliding sideways down through mesquite, chewing the brush in its wheels.
Youngman felt no bitterness towards Chee for lies and betrayal: it was as pointless as the desert being bitter at the sun. Survival was not a matter of morals. A snake didn’t debate the ethics of eating a ground squirrel; it was eat or die. The Navajos, 135,000 of them, were surviving. The Hopis, 6,000 of them, were not. They could blame the Navajos, blame the pahans, blame witches. It was the desert, their own home, that was killing them. It was a changing desert, drier since the Navajos and whites stole the rivers, seized water the same way a snake bit.
Staying alive supplied its own morality. By that standard, Chee was a hero and Youngman was, perhaps, a coward. That’s what they called him in the Army. Heap big coward.
The jeep would only do 50. Youngman kept his foot down, relying on his steering. Running away, it could be termed, he thought. Avoiding the responsibility of falling into lockstep once again. That’s why he’d come back to the desert in the first place, to escape a world he didn’t fit into. Probably, he admitted to himself, that was why he’d fought quarantine. Not from courage but because the threat of confinement, any kind of confinement after the years in the stockade, was enough to make him shake like a boy. He wasn’t even brave enough to face quarantine knowing that he had the answer. The answer to the bites, the running blood, the lack of tracks, the lights at Momoa’s, the night Abner died. He had it, and his only solace for not turning back was that no one would believe him because it was impossible. An impossible nightmare.
At midday, the sun seemed to pulse yellow and huge. Not only shadows, objects themselves shrank. It was a time when even lizards crouched under rocks. Prairie dogs and sand boas dug deep away from the heat.
Youngman was crossing a dry alkali hole when he heard the jeep’s engine block crack, and he shifted to neutral and rolled an extra hundred yards. The hood was too hot to touch so he kicked it open. The block was close to red hot, and crawling under the jeep on his back he found a hole in the radiator that a rock had punched and drained the radiator dry.
He rolled away and closed his eyes. Gilboa was thirty miles to the east, and the mesa forty miles north. There was a federal highway forty miles west.
“Damn.”
He’d done it. He’d finally reached nowhere, with no way out but to follow his own tracks.
Was it worth it?
Hayden Paine stood on the roof of his Land Rover.
Field glasses accentuated heat waves. Saguaro cactus seemed to undulate and dance, mesquite and yucca became floating islands, a canyon twenty miles off turned into a stately sailing ship standing above its own reflection. Occasionally, he thought he caught true movement out of the corner of his eye. He’d turn the glasses and the movement would fade, a chimera. Besides, his interest was the canyons. He hadn’t come to them as much as he’d been drawn. Each sunset, he’d tracked the path of the bats on his oscilloscope. Each sunrise, he’d driven another ten miles on a predicated path and tracked the bats again on the flight homeward. Studying the black and brick-red escarpments of the canyons, his excitement grew.
He climbed down to the table and isolation box he’d set up on the ground. His trap of the night before was successful. Four goats, bought from a Navajo near Tuba City, were dead, drained until their blood pressure failed. Paine, in return, had killed four bats.
The isolation box was a simple one without air filters, good only for pathology. Two latex gloves with accordion wrists reached through a Lucite panel to syringes and dissecting tools. Pins spread the dead bat’s wings. Fleas hopped against the walls, because a dead host was no host at all. A colorful sun umbrella shaded Paine while he worked.
For an hour, he painstakingly examined the bat, shaving the fur in search of swellings and extracting blood specimens for analysis. Human plague normally began when the usual rodent population host died from animal plague. The fleas sought new hosts. But the bats weren’t dying off; if anything, they seemed to be flourishing. Despite the imprisoned fleas and other bat parasites hopping around it, the bat in the glove box showed no signs of illness. Was it possible for an animal to play the role of a plague bacillus host and itself remain healthy? Was it conceivable that the vampires, drawing blood from different human populations, had picked up plague antibodies in a natural system of inoculation? One answer was that the same bats that had spread fatal derriengue in Venezuela were themselves vigorous and thriving.
The desert canyons drew his attention again. He’d always hunted vampires before in the semi-tropics among lush vegetation. Paine assembled his maps and carried them onto the Land Rover, where the heat of the truck burned through the soles of his boots. The temperature was 120°F in the shade. Bats could survive a cave temperature of close to 100°F, but there had to be enough moisture to keep the membranes of their wings from drying out. The Geological Survey’s topological map showed only a labyrinth of rugged, apparently barren canyons that, according to one map supplied by Chee, were called Cañon de Maski. He swung around slowly, taking in the Painted Desert through h
is field glasses.
Heat waves had settled into a steady simmer as if the sand was on the point of bursting into flame. Straight cacti were twisted into corkscrews. To the northeast, the Black Mesa was a thin black line drawn in a blue sky over the horizon. Directly to the east, something was running. It was the same moving object Paine had seen before he examined the bat. He played with the focus. Sometimes the object would dissolve altogether into thin air, then it would coalesce for a second and be almost distinct. It was definitely coming closer and it was doing so on two legs. Paine understood the mechanics of the desert. A man could run in desert heat without water for one hour before prostration dropped him. In the high altitude of Arizona, maybe forty minutes. So the man wasn’t there, Paine was seeing a mirage. Even as he decided so, the figure broke into floating spots and disappeared. Paine stared through the glasses for another five minutes. The man was gone.
The heat on the Rover was unbearable. Paine retreated to swallow two salt tablets with a pint of water and to study his other maps, which were in a plastic binder inscribed Earth Resources Observation Systems—Landsat II, III. The maps themselves were splotches of color on acetate, undecipherable unless laid over a second map of man-made boundaries. They were among the most expensive maps ever charted. The power companies had paid more for them than Chee was paying Paine and the truth was that, by the maps, an investment of millions could rest on Paine. Another truth was that he would have done the work for nothing.
Paine had put the maps away when he found himself unconsciously raising his field glasses to the east. The running man was a mile off. He was covering ground in long, easy strides, a pack of some kind strapped to his back, a wide brimmed hat shading his face. From time to time, heat waves or terrain would rise to his chest but he kept coming, his arms swinging loosely. Once, he dissolved into blue, only to reappear closer than before. Paine could see him without glasses. A dark, lean man. The pack, a bedroll wrapped around a rifle. He kept coming, shifting against the distorted background, legs rhythmically pumping. Following the Land Rover’s tracks, Paine realized. Skirting a dune, past a withered barrel cactus. Paine recognized the face.
The Indian only slowed down the last twenty yards, looking at Paine silently enough to remind Paine that they were enemies, before he slumped in the shade of the Rover.
Paine had waited too long. If he’d seen a vehicle approaching over the desert, he would have driven off; a man on foot he simply hadn’t believed. And this was the last man Paine wanted to see. The Indian closed his eyes and luxuriantly breathed the relatively cool air of the shade through his mouth. The soles of his boots were punctured by thorns and stained with blood.
Paine was nervous. The damn Indian had used the silent treatment before. At last, the Indian sat up to remove his boots.
“What do you want?” Paine was brusque. “What are you following me for?”
“You have a cold beer?” Youngman asked.
He washed his feet with one beer and drank two other cans. Despite the six-pack he’d drunk up on the run, he was still thirsty.
“Paine, you look like you’re seeing a ghost.”
“You should be one. I saw you out there two hours ago.”
“And you didn’t come after me?”
“I thought you were a mirage.”
“You hoped I was one. Well, don’t get uptight. I’m happy enough to see you.”
Youngman’s laugh was at himself. It reinforced Paine’s suspicion that he was constantly underestimating the deputy. Obviously, Chee had too, because Duran was scheduled to be locked up this morning. The idea of a man escaping on foot across the Painted Desert intrigued Paine.
“How long could you have run?”
“Maybe five more steps. How far is it to that table?”
“I was just doing a wildlife study—”
Youngman got to his feet and walked to the shaded table. Paine followed him anxiously. Chee said Duran knew nothing, but Chee also said Duran was an ignorant drunkard, a typical reservation Indian.
The bat was still spread out in the glove box. Its wings had dried into dark parchment around which were laid the organs of a gutted stomach cavity. The stomach itself looked like a worm.
“Mind?” Youngman asked.
Paine shrugged.
Youngman inserted his hands into the gloves and picked up the scalpels in the box. He peeled back the bat’s lips, exposing two broad incisors that filled half the upper jaw. The rest of the jaws were taken up by heavy, dagger-shaped canine teeth; the bottom incisors and back molars were practically nonexistent. Youngman skewered the stomach on a scalpel and ran it across the dead bat’s teeth, which sliced the stomach in two.
“It was the teeth.” Youngman smiled. “It was the teeth I couldn’t figure out.”
The Indian knew. How, Paine couldn’t start to guess. He didn’t understand his own reactions because he thought he would have killed anyone who interfered and instead he felt as much relief as anger. He balanced between the two emotions.
“Why did you follow me, Duran?”
“I’ll tell you while I drive.”
Anne was poised on the end of the three-meter board, from which she could see all the swimming pools in Phoenix so that the entire city seemed to be set in turquoise, and she remembered a story by John Cheever called The Swimmer in which a man set out to swim a Connecticut county by following a line of swimming pools.
“Jump!” her father called from the outdoor bar. “Come on, honey!”
Tables were set out beside the pool for guests and a mariachi band played in the garden. Anne noticed that her mother had switched from roses to a rock garden of cactus and succulents. Water lilies floated on the pool, the same as they’d done for her graduation party. This was her graduation party, she remembered.
“You have to jump, dear,” her mother called.
Of course, her parents wanted her to take that job at the Heard Museum downtown. There were wonderful kachina dolls at the Heard. Anne considered using her medical training on one of the reservations, though. Indians were fascinating.
She dived, flying on widespread arms until she plunged into a brilliant blue pool, tasting the pure water, watching the lily pads float overhead like spots before the eyes. Leisurely, she came to the surface and pulled herself out of the pool. The top of her bathing suit had come off, but no one seemed to notice, which struck her as odd. She pushed her wet hair away from her eyes and saw Youngman at a table with a big, red-haired guy. They had a tall drink waiting for her so she joined them.
“I love you,” Youngman said. “I’m taking you out of here, anyplace you want to go.”
This was flattering but the party had only begun. The other man put a wet towel around her.
“Haven’t you got a dry one?” she asked.
“You need a wet one.”
Ridiculous, she was soaked. Still, she didn’t want to make a scene, and Youngman seemed so pleased. He smiled so seldom and now he was gushing like a boy.
“Drink a little bit more, just sip it. You’re going to be all right and as soon as you can go, we’re heading out. Just you and me, okay? Right now, we have to get your temperature down.”
“How did you get here?” Anne asked. It wasn’t like her father to invite Indians to social occasions.
“The smoke from the fire. You led us here. You did a great job.”
Chatter mixed with the tinkling of glasses while the mariachis strolled between the tables. Anne was afraid someone would request “Guadalajara.” The song always made her dizzy.
“Turn off the radio,” Youngman said, and the other man went into the rock garden, where one of the guests had inappropriately parked a van. Her mother would be furious. “His name is Paine.”
“I don’t see any signs of infection. Besides the broken fingers and heat prostration, she’s okay. If we can just get her fever down. Lucky she didn’t get more sunburn or she couldn’t have made it,” Paine said.
“She’s lost about twelve
pounds in body fluid too. I’ve seen her looking better,” Youngman tried to joke.
“Thank you.” She covered her breasts.
“No.” Youngman took the towel away and replaced it with a fresh, wet one.
“The others.” Anne looked, embarrassed, at the guests.
“Dead. You buried them. We found the camp. You’re the only one left. Thank God, we found you when we did.”
“I didn’t think you were coming.” Anne knew how sensitive Youngman could be about mixing with whites.
“I should have come sooner.”
Anne was concerned because Youngman seemed so worried. His face was dusty and haggard, and the whites of his eyes were red.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“So far, I haven’t caught it. That’s another reason we have to get out of here.”
Paine tried to ask her a question but there was a commotion as all the other guests left, taking their chairs and tables away. She was confused, trying to find her father. No one was even saying good-bye. She didn’t want to be left alone.
“Can you hear me, Anne?” Youngman asked her. “Can you answer us?”
She nodded. Anything to keep him from going.
“Was it bats?”
One of the departing women turned and started screaming. It was the reverend’s wife, screaming so loudly that Anne put her hands over her ears but the scream filled her brain, overflowed it, and came out her own mouth.
The late afternoon was strangely cool and quiet. A breeze filtered through the mesh walls of Paine’s field tent. He called it a “cocoon.” Growing out of the back of the Land Rover the way it did. Anne thought the resemblance was more to a queen bee. She lay on a bedroll, sipping weak tea, her head propped on a specimen case. Paine was scrambling powdered eggs on a Coleman stove. Youngman stayed beside her.
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