by Bella Pollen
Another hour passes, an hour and three-quarters then, abruptly, the ground opens into a gaping ravine. I stop in dismay and squat down, tired and disheartened. My throat is dry, my head throbbing. It’s already two-thirty. I drink more water and eat the egg sandwich and apple from my backpack, minutely scanning the land on the other side. How could I have got it so wrong? The road should be there, it should be, but there’s only more cactus, more rock, more bloody juniper and mesquite. I am just coming to the conclusion that I’m going to have to turn back when something catches my eye. A series of quick flashes then the sun moves behind a cloud and they’re gone. I go on staring and slowly, slowly, as though drawn onto a treasure map with invisible ink, the road reappears. A rough winding track, cut into the opposite side of the cliff and, just below it, what can only be the tin roof of a cabin.
A spasm of nerves twists my stomach. Up until now this has been a hunch I’ve been close to dismissing as silly, but if this cabin represents what I think it does – a hiding place – then to continue would be to knowingly walk into danger. I vacillate for a bit but it’s no good, curiosity has me in its grip, and besides, I can’t bear to go on seeing my distrust of Benjamín reflected in his face. I walk the edge impatiently, looking for a way down, and am eventually rewarded by a break in the cliff, a wash of loose stones that looks as though it leads as near as dammit to the bottom. I start down tentatively, shoving my heel in hard with each step to keep from slipping, but soon default to sliding on my bottom. The wash becomes progressively narrower, finally tapering into a dead end between two jutting pieces of sheer rock above the canyon floor. I peer over the edge. It’s only about five feet to the bottom, maybe less. A hand on either side of the rock and I should be able to swing through and land safely. I wait to catch my breath but again, irrationally, I get the feeling I’m not alone. This time I spin round quickly only to discover I’m playing grandmother’s footsteps with a coyote. He stands at the top of the ravine, the remains of my apple core in his mouth. Reassured, I throw the backpack to the ground, then keeping my weight as evenly distributed as possible, swing through the gap in the rock and let go.
The nail protrudes at an oblique angle from a length of wood wedged into the canyon floor. The tip meets my leg about two inches above the ankle, and the force of the jump drives it straight through my calf. There’s a searing pain. I look down in time to see the flesh closing swampily around the nail and realize with horror that a piece of wood about a foot and a half long is now attached to my leg. Instinctively, I take it in both hands and, with as much strength as I can muster, pull it out again. The tissue surrenders the nail with a sucking noise and the blood follows – at first in a great gush, then in long powerful spurts like the initial yield of an unexpected oil strike. I press one thumb on it, then the other, but the blood flows relentlessly down my leg, seeping into the white cotton of my sock like tomato juice into kitchen paper. Shocked, upping the pressure of my thumbs, I try to remember if there’s an important artery there. One of those bleeding-to-death-in-three-minute ones. As an experiment, I let go. Sure enough the blood pulses steadily higher. Tourniquet! I think wildly, tourniquet! – And squeeze down as hard as possible.
Fuck. I am going to bleed to death at the bottom of this canyon and have my leg gnawed off by coyotes with cider breath. My children will be taken into welfare and Robert will say I told you so. Minutes pass. Pain begins to register in waves. I keep the pressure on until I can no longer feel my thumbs and still I hold them there until eventually the pulsing calms down. My panic subsides. I might not be about to die after all but I need to get out of here and quickly. My leg is tacky with blood from the knee down and stiffening up fast. I examine the nail. It’s eight inches long and thick with flaked rust and God only knows what else. Tentatively, I put my foot to the ground. There’s an unpleasant squelch. I unknot the laces with shaking fingers and ease off the boot. My entire sock is crimson with blood. I tip the boot’s heel. Blood spills onto the rocks and spreads out in a dark pool, and without warning I’m overcome with dizziness. Black spots form before my eyes, the ground begins moving beneath my feet like a listing ship and the world tips sideways. I cast around for something to hold on to but there’s nothing that isn’t spiky or unfriendly. Still I stay standing, willing the faintness to pass, but it’s no good; my legs and arms turn rubbery, my knees start to buckle as though somebody has thrust their hands into my body and whisked out all the bones, and now the black spots grow ever larger and begin to merge with one another until finally they block out the world altogether.
18
Consciousness returns in small fragments; sun creeping through gaps between logs; a section of corrugated tin roof; the itchiness of a blanket against my bare skin. There are men’s voices, a murmur of Spanish, feet moving around. I can smell tobacco and burning cedar. Smoke drifts lazily through the light. I turn my head. Duval sits at a wooden table, scraping at a piece of paper with a standing knife. He looks up briefly as I stir, then bends his head without speaking. I, too, say nothing. After all, to the traditional first questions of capture, namely ‘Who are you?’ and ‘Why am I here?’ I already know the answers. After a while, though, my head begins to clear and I push up on my elbows.
‘What happened?’
‘You fainted.’ He examines a piece of paper under the light.
‘Certainly did not.’
Duval pushes back his chair. Under the table, Taco raises an enquiring head.
‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s just not very practical when there are so many sharp things to land on.’
‘What do you mean?’
He picks up my hand. I look at it stupidly. Four neat red splodges have seeped through a white bandage.
‘I don’t understand. How did I get here?’
‘You were carried.’
‘By you?’
There’s a theatrical bit of throat clearing behind us as Winfred eases his bulk off a stool in the corner.
‘Hey, Mrs Coleman!’
‘Winfred found you,’ Duval says. ‘He’s the rodeo champion haybale tosser so he’s used to hauling dead weights around.’
Winfred cracks a grin. ‘How you feeling, Mrs Coleman?’
‘You owe me a hundred and seventy dollars,’ I say weakly.
‘Ha ha, Mrs Coleman.’ He chuckles nervously. Duval looks at him.
‘Speeding fines,’ he pleads half-heartedly.
Duval shakes his head. ‘You can’t help it, can you? At heart you’re just a no-good thieving Indian.’
‘Aw, come on, Duval,’ Winfred says coyly.
‘Give Mrs Coleman back her money.’
Winfred smirks and reaches into his wallet. Duval takes the bills from him and counts out $150.
‘Deduct a twenty for your trouble. I’m sure Mrs Coleman wouldn’t begrudge a little road recovery fee.’ He hands me the wad of dollars.
‘Were you following me, Winfred?’
‘Naw.’
‘I heard you.’
‘Winfred’s tracking is not what it used to be.’ Duval flicks him in the gut. ‘Too fat to be light on his feet.’
Winfred pushes out his chest. ‘It’s all muscle, bro, check it out.’
‘Like hell – you only have to be downwind of the smell of food to put on weight.’
‘It’s true,’ Winfred says proudly. ‘If a truck hauling potato chips drives along my road while I’m asleep, I wake up two pounds heavier in the morning.’
Not prepared to be charmed quite yet, I tuck the money into the pocket of my shirt.
‘What about all those other times in the car, Winfred? Were you following me then too?’
‘Duval told me to watch out for you.’
‘Why?’ I look from one to the other.
‘Ma’am, I mean, well . . . look at you. You’re not bully-beef.’ Winfred sounds in no way apologetic. ‘Duval was worried you’d be a magnet for every weirdo in this state.’
‘Really,’ I say drily. ‘Well,
seems he was right.’
Winfred chuckles and slaps Duval on the back. ‘I’ll come back later.’
‘Oh, sure . . . go.’ Duval grins. ‘Leave when the going gets tough.’
I look at him curiously. This Duval is so utterly unlike the Duval of the perpetual frown and disapproving comments. One of the Mexicans passes Winfred in the doorway. He’s wearing a grubby Guess USA T-shirt and a University of Wisconsin baseball hat. He’s new on the site, well ... at least the hat and shirt are. Silently, he hands Duval a white cloth and a bottle of witchy purple liquid then retreats awkwardly, knocking his hip against the door frame on his way out.
I take a look around the long narrow room.
‘So this is where you live?’
‘Some of the time.’
‘And the rest of the time?’
‘There are other places I go.’
‘Where you leave boxes and cigarettes in bedside tables?’
‘Yes, I’m sorry about that. I had meant to remove them before you arrived.’
‘Why didn’t you then?’
‘Minor change of plan.’
‘I see.’
‘As you’ve found out the hard way, life in the desert can be a little unpredictable.’
‘I guess,’ I say ruefully, then fall silent as he sets the bottle on the table and unclips his Leatherman from its leather pouch. ‘So what is this cabin?’
‘It’s an old schoolroom.’
‘Part of the town?’ I’m surprised. There is no mention of a schoolroom on the Temerosa deeds.
‘Built between Temerosa and Black Mesa – another ghost town. Shared by the two.’
The long pauses that have always characterized Duval’s speech are gone, and without them it feels like he’s finally talking in sync. ‘You realize your accent’s slipping, don’t you?’ I tell him. In answer he pinches out the blade of his knife.
‘Sanchez,’ he shouts.
‘Who are you? Is Duval even your real name?’
‘Roll up your jeans.’
I look at the approaching knife. ‘You’re not going to use that on me, are you?’
‘Roll them up.’
I do as he says. The blood has dried, dark and thick on my skin, like a layer of Marmite or congealed redcurrant jelly. Duval cuts the cloth into three strips, then he takes the bottle of water off the table and sloshes it up and down my calf. Using one of the strips, he starts daubing at the blood around the general area of the hole. I bite my lip. He moves to the second cloth. Clean, the wound looks disappointingly pedestrian, no bigger than the head of a drawing pin. Duval squints at it with a certain forensic detachment then squeezes it open and shut.
‘Ow,’ I say crossly, ‘that hurts!’
‘Good. Now I know I’m in the right place.’
‘I might have thought the hole was an indication of that.’
‘Nail?’
I nod.
‘Had a tetanus shot recently?’
‘No.’
‘Pity.’ He trickles more water into the wound, then pokes at it with his finger. ‘You need water pressure to get this clean. Unfortunately, as you may have noticed, our amenities here are a little basic.’ He digs in deeper with his finger. I wince.
‘Sanchez!’ he shouts again.
This time Sanchez appears. Duval says something to him in Spanish.
‘What? What did you ask him?’
‘Hold the leg like this,’ Duval instructs and Sanchez takes over the opening and shutting routine as Duval reaches for the bottle of purple brew.
‘Hey! What’s in that?’
‘This might hurt a little,’ he says gently and sloshes the liquid straight inside the hole.
A line of fire burns through my leg as if someone has shovelled smouldering coals along its length. Duval quickly lifts my foot by the heel and pours on another shot. I buck against Sanchez’s hand, but the Mexican holds fast.
‘Oh, fine,’ I grit my teeth, ‘just shoot me now.’
Duval chuckles. ‘Not plan A but I might reconsider depending on how much of a pain in the ass you are.’
Nauseous, I hold on to the edge of the cot. Fainting once is excusable, fainting again, particularly in front of Duval, would be downright humiliating.
‘Put your head between your knees,’ he suggests, kneading his fingers up and down the flesh as though making home-made bread. The feeling of unreality is overwhelming. What time is it? What would the children be up to? Would Candy and Sharleen be bouncing off the walls? I try to picture Robert sitting in some legal office in Geneva, bored, tapping his leg while the lawyers pore over the legal minutiae of trust documents. By the time my head clears Sanchez has left and Duval is slowly winding a bandage round my leg.
‘Here,’ he hands me a mug, ‘drink this.’
‘What is it?’
‘Tea.’
I sniff it. ‘I hate tea.’
‘Don’t be so ungrateful.’
‘What happened to good old-fashioned whiskey?’
‘This isn’t High Chaparral. The tea has sugar in it.’
I take a few sips. He’s right. It’s thick with sugar, and its milky warmth is strangely comforting. The fire in my leg begins to subside and I remember for the first time why I came.
‘What are you running here? You, Winfred, the workers? A drug-smuggling operation?’
‘Living in these conditions?’ Duval looks amused. ‘I can’t be very good at it, if that’s the case.’ He finishes with the bandage and tucks the edges in.
‘So it is people then,’ I say flatly, and the feeling of disappointment is almost crushing. I hadn’t wanted to believe it of him but it’s the only explanation. Bringing Mexicans over the border, moving them through the town. Men slipping in and out of the clothes left by the workers before them, using the building project as a cover before disappearing on and up into the north.
‘You’re a coyote,’ I say hollowly.
Duval scratches his stubble and adopts a drawl. ‘Well, what with the increase of upwardly mobile immigrants, we in the coyote business prefer to be called guides.’
I look at him in disgust. ‘You trade in people. You make money out of their misery.’
‘And you, I presume, armed with self-righteous zeal, have taken it upon yourself to come up here and stop me?’ He unzips the top of my backpack and takes out the contents. ‘You’re not exactly well equipped for a citizen’s arrest, are you? One bottle of water, inadequate. One plastic compass, useless. One penknife, blunt. One map, tourist, and let’s see . . .’ he digs down to the bottom, ‘one Powerbar. “Made with love and soya”,’ he reads off the back. ‘Personally, I’d be tempted to shoot someone who offered me love and soya in the same sentence.’
‘How dare you patronize me?’ I say angrily. ‘You’ve been using the town as cover, using me . . . How can you possibly justify what you do? How can you?’
An unreadable expression passes over his face, then he rolls the leg of my jeans down. ‘I think you’ll be fine to go home now. Winfred will take you.’
‘I could call the authorities, turn you in.’
‘Yes.’ He takes his cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and shrugs one out of the packet. ‘You could.’
‘And you think I won’t!’
‘I think you’re a fugitive, Alice,’ he says quietly, ‘and therefore not much different to the rest of us.’
The cabin is still and quiet. Thank God for Sharleen and Candy, thank God the children are at Prestcott’s trashing bedspreads and stealing mini soaps, and I have nothing more taxing to do than hobble upstairs and fall into bed. The leg burns but the shooting pains have stopped. My hair smells of tobacco and wood smoke. I lie drowsily under the covers, trying to arrange my thoughts and feelings into some sort of order, but my head just grows heavier and heavier. I dream I am running along the white beaches of the North Orkneys, in the middle of a pack of wolves. I run at great speed. The sand feels firm under my paws. A cool wind rushes past my face as my skin tur
ns to bristle. I let my tongue hang down to catch the splatters of sea spray. Eventually the rhythmic pounding of feet gives way to a more localized pounding in my left leg and I wake. The hands on the clock read five. It feels good to lie in bed for a while, listening for the creaks as the mining ghosts tread the floorboards, but in the end I get out of bed to join them, hauling my stiff leg down the stairs like a new prosthetic limb I haven’t yet mastered the technique of using. In the kitchen I crunch up coffee beans and shake the leg around, trying to loosen it up while water heats in the saucepan. Taking a blanket off the sofa and carrying the mug of steaming coffee outside to the butterscotch truck, I hoist myself up into the flatbed and lean against its cold metal side, waiting for the sun. The sky is still grey over the mountains, the echoes of night not yet entirely receded. I love these moments just before dawn, when you’re the only person awake and the whole world belongs to you. In the twin beds of Prestcott’s, the children, still in the grip of their night-time blackout, would be throwing their limbs about like double-jointed zombies. In the secret schoolroom, the Mexicans would be shifting and turning on the floor. And Duval? Well, who knows . . . There are other places I go,’ he’d said and I picture him in the dark confines of a woman’s bedroom, watching her silently as she sleeps.
I pinch myself. There can be no romanticizing the situation. Duval – trafficking in people, using the town as a cover. I know perfectly well I should call the Border Patrol and yet... I sip the burning coffee. ‘After you left Temerosa that first time I never thought you’d be back,’ he’d said as he helped me up into Winfred’s truck and I’d looked at him, expecting to see the same mocking smile, but his eyes had been serious. ‘I never dreamed you’d come to live here. Not on your own, not with two small children . . .’
