Desert Places

by Blake Crouch

  “And Grandmom’s house was next to this apple orchard. Joe Hamby’s orchard. He was a widower, so he lived by himself. It was early autumn, and schools and church groups would come for the day to Hamby’s orchard to pick apples and pumpkins, and buy cider and take hayrides.

  “Well, since this orchard backed right up against Grandmom’s property, we couldn’t resist sneaking over there. We’d steal apples, climb on his tractors, play in the mountains of hay he stored in his barns. But Hamby was a real bastard about trespassers, so we’d have to go at night. We’d wait till Grandmom went to sleep, and we’d sneak out of that creaky farmhouse.

  “All right, so this one particular October night, we slip outside about nine o’clock and hop the fence into the orchard. I remember the moon’s very full, and it’s not cold yet, but the crickets and tree frogs are gone, so the night is very still and very quiet. It’s near the peak of harvest. Some of the apples have soured, but most are perfect, and we stroll through the orchard, eating these ripened sun-warmed beauties, just having a helluva time.

  “Now Hamby owned a couple hundred acres, and on the farthest corner of his land, there was this pumpkin patch we’d heard about but never had the balls to go there. Well, this night was one of those nights when we felt invincible. So we reach the end of the orchard and see these big orange pumpkins in the moonlight. Remember, Hamby had won some blue ribbons for his pumpkins at the state fair. He grew these monstrous hundred-pound freaks of nature.

  “We can see his house a ways up the tractor path, and all the lights are off, so we race each other into the pumpkin patch, our eyes peeled for one of those hundred-pounders. Finally, we collapse in the middle of the patch, laughing, out of breath.”

  Orson smiled. I did, too. We knew what was coming. “Suddenly, just a few yards away, we hear this loud groan: ‘I LOVE my orange pussy!’”

  I guffawed, felt the whiskey burn my sinuses.

  “Scared us shitless,” he said. “We turn and see Mr. Hamby draped over this huge pumpkin the size of one of those Galápagos Island sea turtles. He’s got his overalls down around his ankles, and boy he’s humping this thing in the moonlight. Just talking up a storm, smacking it like he’s smacking a bare ass, and stopping every now and then to take a swig from his jar of peach brandy.

  “Of course we’re mortified, and don’t realize he’s obliviously drunk. We think he’ll see us and chase us if we try to run home, so we lay down in the dirt and wait for him to finish up and go home. Well, eventually he finishes …with that pumpkin, pulls up his overalls, and goes looking for another. The next one’s smaller, and after he’s bored a hole in it with his auger, he drops to his knees and starts riding this one. We watch him fuck five pumpkins before he passes out dead drunk. Then we run back through the orchard toward Grandmom’s, sick on apples and…”

  I see us on that brisk autumn night, as vividly as I see us sitting here now, climbing back over that wooden fence, both wearing overalls and matching long-sleeved turtlenecks. We wanted to be identical then. Told everyone we were, and we looked it, too. Does that bond still have a pulse?

  I had tears in my eyes when he finished. The sound of our laughter moved me, and I allowed myself to look freely into his face, surveying the space behind his eyes. But the fingernail marks across his cheek started that woman’s god-awful screaming inside my head again, and I lost the comfort of the moment, and the ease with which I’d remained in his presence for the last half hour. Orson discerned the change, and his gaze left me for the black empty desert all around us.

  A gust extinguished the candles, leaving us in darkness. Now the last intimation of purple was exposed against the western horizon, but it blackened the moment I saw it. The sky filled with stars—millions more than in the polluted eastern skies. Even on the clearest nights above Lake Norman, the stars appear fuzzy, as if dimmed behind diaphanous chiffon. Here they shone upon the desert like tiny moons, and many streaked across the sky.

  “I’m cold,” I said, rubbing my arms, now textured with gooseflesh. I could barely see Orson, only his shape visible across the table.

  He stood. “If you have to use the outhouse, do it now. In fifteen minutes, I’m locking you in your room.”

  “Why?”

  Orson made no reply. He took the plates and glasses inside, and I sat for a moment after he was gone, searching the sky for meteors. Rubbing my eyes, I came to my feet. I would be relieved to be alone in my room, with nothing to do but read and sleep. The sound of dishes in the sink made me start, and I ran across the warm dirt in bare feet to the outhouse.

  7

  DAYS passed languidly on the desert. The sun wasted no time setting the land on fire, so after ten o’clock each morning, it became dangerous to venture outside. The heat was dry and stifling, so I remained in the shaded, cooler confines of my room or the rest of the cabin when I wasn’t locked away.

  There was no paucity of food. In fact, I’d never eaten better. Orson kept his freezer filled with prime cuts of meat, and he prepared three exquisite meals each day. We ate steak, salmon, veal, even lobster on one occasion, and drank bottles of wine with every supper. I asked him once why he dined like royalty, and he told me, “Because I’m entitled to it, Andy. We both are.”

  As I finished one book, Orson would have another for me. After Machiavelli, it was Seneca, and then Democratis on the expunction of melancholy. Though I read a book each day, Orson kept constant pressure on me to read faster. What he wanted me to glean from these classic texts, I could not imagine, and he had yet to reveal.

  I obsessed about potential modes of escape. Though I had the opportunity, simply walking away was out. I had neither the strength nor the resources to hike out of this desert, without even knowing a direction in which to head. But I surmised Orson’s means of transportation was locked in the shed. So I’d bide my time, construct a plan, and amass the nerve and will to overcome my brother. I would not be impetuous. Only smart decisions and flawless execution would preserve my life.

  Keeping a journal calmed me. Several hours after dusk, when I’d finished reading and Orson had locked me in for the night, I would sit in bed and jot down the day’s events. I’d write for an hour, often longer, sometimes disgressing into thoughts of home and the lake. I’d compose elaborate descriptions of my property, summoning the smells and sounds of the lake in summer to this lonely desert. Without question, it became my favorite time of day, and I considered it a temporary oasis. It was all I could think about during the day—what I lived for. And often, by the time I’d put my pen and paper in the drawer and cut out the light, I could hear the lake lapping at the shore, its breeze stirring the trees.

  With respect to time, I knew only that it was late May. Since I’d been drugged during my abduction, I couldn’t be sure which day I’d come to consciousness in the desert. Several days might have passed between that stormy night at the motel and my waking in the cabin. So I labeled my journal entries “Day 1,” “Day 2,” “Day 3,” et cetera, beginning with my first day of consciousness. I couldn’t understand what drove Orson to keep the date hidden from me. It seemed like an irrelevant, useless fact in my present situation, yet it bothered me not to know.

  As for the location of the cabin, I didn’t have the first clue. It could’ve been anywhere west of the plains. I pencil-sketched views from the front porch and my barred bedroom window, including the mountain range to the north and east and the ridge of red bluffs in the west. I also sketched the local plant life: sagebrush, tumbleweed, greasewood, lupine, and several other desert flowers that I happened upon during early-evening walks.

  Some nights after sunset, when just a blush of red lingered in the sky, I’d see herds of antelope and mule deer moving through the desert. Their silhouettes against the horizon pained me, for as they trudged slowly out of sight, I envied their freedom. I recorded these observations in the journal, too, along with sightings of jackrabbits and long-tailed kangaroo mice. Though I never saw one, barn owls screeched constantly thr
ough the night and turkey vultures frequented the sky in the heat of day. I hoped that through the observations I recorded, I could one day locate this desert again. But in truth, I had no way of knowing if I would ever be allowed to leave.

  I lay awake in bed. Having finished my journal, it was late, and Orson had disabled the generator for the night, so the cabin was silent. Outside in the dark, only the wind disrupted the oblique stillness. I could feel it pushing through cracks between the logs. Always blowing.

  A memory had been haunting me for the last hour.

  Orson and I are eight years old, playing in the woods near our neighborhood in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, under a bleached August sky. Like many young boys, we’re fascinated with wildlife, and Orson catches a gray lizard scampering across a rotten log.

  Thrilled with the find, I tell him to hold the lizard down, and with a devious smile, he does. I extract a magnifying glass from my pocket. The sun is bright, and in no time a blinding dot appears on the lizard’s scaly skin. The sunlight burns through, and Orson and I look at each other and laugh with delight, enthralled as the smoking lizard squirms to escape.

  “It’s my turn!” he says finally. “You hold him.”

  We spend the entire afternoon torturing the creature. When we’re finished, I throw it into the grass, but Orson insists on taking it with him.

  “I own it now,” he says. “It’s mine.”

  8

  Day 6 (after midnight?)

  Took another shower today. The thermometer read 95°F when I scrambled naked across the blistering ground to the well. I loathe that icy water. Feels just a few degrees above freezing, and it takes my breath as it spills over me. I washed as fast as I could, but by the time I’d rinsed all the soap from my body, I was shivering.

  At sunset, I wanted to go for a walk on the desert, but Orson locked me in my room. From my bedroom window, I saw a brown Buick heading east on a slim dirt road that runs perfectly straight into the horizon. He’s been gone several hours now. It feels safer here without him.

  The Scorcher is probably hitting the bookstores now, and I’m sure Cynthia has about nine ulcers. I don’t blame her. I’m supposed to start a twelve-city book tour any day now. Signings, radio programs, and television appearances will be canceled. This is going to dampen sales; this is breaking contract with my publisher.…But I can’t dwell on these things now. It’s out of my control and only makes me crazy.

  I’m still reading like a madman. Poe, Plato, and McCarthy in the last two days. I still don’t understand what Orson wants so desperately for me to see. Hell, I’m not sure he even knows. He spends his days reading, too, and I wonder what he’s searching for in the thousands of pages, if he thinks there’s some character, some story or philosophy he’s yet to uncover that might explain or justify what he sees in the mirror. But I imagine he only finds morsels of comfort, like that cruelty bit from The Prince or the psychopathic Judge Holden in Blood Meridian.

  I hear a car approaching in the distance. This is the first time he’s left me alone, and that worries me. Perhaps he just went for groceries. Good night.

  I walked from the bed to the dresser and placed the pen and paper inside the middle drawer. It would be useless to try to hide my journal from Orson. Besides, he did display a sense of decorum when it came to my writing. At least I didn’t think he’d read my journal yet. He respected what he called intrinsic urges, which was writing in my case.

  I crawled back into bed, reached over to the beside table, and smothered the kerosene lantern, which I’d been using the last few nights instead of the lamp. The slam of a car door echoed through the open window. I didn’t want to be awake when he came inside.

  His voice whispered my name: “Andy. Andy. Andrew Thomas.” My eyes opened, but I saw nothing. The sotto voce whisper continued. “Hey there, buddy. Got a surprise for you. Well, for us actually.” The blinding beam of a flashlight illuminated Orson’s face—a smile between blood-besmirched cheeks. He turned on the lamp above the bed. My eyes ached.

  “Let’s go. You’re burning moonlight.” He set the flashlight on the dresser and yanked the covers off me. Glancing out the window, I saw the moon high in the sky. Still exhausted, I didn’t feel like I’d been asleep long.

  Orson tossed me a pair of jeans and a blue T-shirt from my duffel bag, which lay open in a corner. Impatient, almost manic, he resembled a child in an amusement park as he paced around the room in his navy one-piece mechanic’s suit and steel-tipped boots.

  The waning moon spread a blue glow, bright as day, upon everything—the sagebrush, the bluffs, even Orson. My breath steamed in the cold night air. We walked toward the shed, and as we approached, I noticed the Buick parked outside, its back end facing us, the front pointed into the double doors. The license plate had been removed.

  Something banged into those doors inside the shed, followed by a brief lamentation: “HELP ME!” When I stopped walking, Orson spun around.

  “Tell me what we’re doing,” I said.

  “You’re coming with me into that shed.”

  “Who’s in there?”

  “Andy…”

  “No. Who’s in—” I stared down the two-and-one-eighth-inch stainless steel barrel of my .357 revolver.

  “Lead the way,” he said.

  At gunpoint, I walked along the side of the building. The shed was bigger than I’d originally thought, the sides forty feet long, the tin roof steeply slanted, presumably to protect it from caving under the crippling winter snows, if we were, in fact, that far north. We reached the back side of the shed, and Orson stopped me at the door. He withdrew a key from his pocket, and as he inserted it into the lock, glanced back at me and grinned.

  “You like buttermilk, don’t you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, though I couldn’t fathom the possible relevance.

  “Did you always like it?”

  “No.”

  “That’s right. You drank it ’cause Dad did, but you came to love it. Well, I think it tastes like shit, but you have an acquired taste for buttermilk. That’s sort of what’s gonna happen here. You’re gonna hate it at first. You’re gonna hate me more than you do now. But it’ll grow on you. You’ll acquire a taste for this, too, I promise.” He unlocked the door and put the key back into his pocket. “Not one word unless I tell you.” Smiling, he motioned for me to enter first. “‘Inhuman cruelty,’” he whispered as I opened the door and he followed me into the shed.

  A woman lay blindfolded and handcuffed in the middle of the floor, a brown leather collar around her neck, a five-foot chain running from the collar to a metal pole. The pole rose from the concrete floor to the ceiling, where it was welded to a rafter. When Orson slammed the door, the woman clambered to her feet, wobbling awkwardly around the pole, attempting to gauge our location.

  She must’ve been about forty-five, her blond hair losing a perm. Slightly overweight, she wore a red-and-gray bowling shirt, navy pants, and one white shoe. Her perfume filled the room, and blood ran down the side of her nose from a cut beneath the blindfold.

  “Where are you? Why are you doing this?”

  This isn’t happening. This is pretend. We’re playing a game. That is not a human being.

  “Go sit, Andy,” Orson said, pointing to the front of the shed. I walked past tool-laden metal shelves and took a seat in a green lawn chair near the double doors. A white shoe rested against the doors, and I wondered why the woman had kicked it off. She looked in my direction, tears rambling down her cheeks. Orson came and stood beside me. He knelt down, inspecting the shiny tips of his boots. Suddenly, something clenched around my ankle.

  “Sorry,” he said, “but I just don’t trust you yet.” He’d cuffed my ankle with a leg iron, bolted to the floor beneath the lawn chair.

  As Orson walked toward the woman, he shoved my gun into a deep pocket in his mechanic’s suit.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” she asked again. Orson reached out and wiped the tears from her face, movin
g with her as she backed away, winding the chain slowly around the pole.

  “What’s your name?” he asked gently.

  “Sh-Shirley,” she said.

  “Shirley what?”

  “Tanner.” Orson crossed the room and picked up two stools that had been set upside down on the floor. He arranged them beside each other, within range of the woman’s chain.

  “Please,” he said, taking hold of her arm above the elbow, “have a seat.” When they were seated, facing each other, Orson stroked her face. Her entire body quaked, as though suffering from hypothermia. “Shirley, please calm down. I know you’re scared, but you have to stop crying.”

  “I wanna go home,” she said, her voice shaky and childlike. “I want—”

  “You can go home, Shirley,” Orson said. “I just want to talk to you. That’s all. Let me preface what we’re going to do by asking you a few questions. Do you know what preface means, Shirley?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is just a hunch, but when I look at you, I don’t see someone who spends much time in the books. Am I right?” She shrugged. “What’s the last thing you read?”

  “Um …Heaven’s Kiss.”

  “Is that a romance?” he asked, and she nodded. “Oh, I’m sorry, that doesn’t count. You see, romance novels are shit. You could probably write one. Go to college by chance?”

  “No.”

  “Finish high school?”

  “Yes.”

  “Whew. Scared me there for a minute, Shirley.”

  “Take me back,” she begged. “I want my husband.”

  “Stop whining,” he said, and tears trickled down her face again, but Orson let them go. “My brother’s here tonight,” he said, “and that’s a lucky coincidence for you. He’s gonna ask you five questions on anything—philosophy, history, literature, geography, whatever. You have to answer at least three correctly. Do that and I’ll take you back to the bowling alley. That’s why you’re blindfolded. Can’t see my face if I’m gonna let you go, now can you?” Timidly, she shook her head. Orson’s voice dropped to a whisper, and leaning in, he spoke into her ear just loudly enough for me to hear also: “But if you answer less than three questions correctly, I’m gonna cut your heart out.”