Five Skies

by Ron Carlson

  It took two minutes, and by the time Arthur seized Ronnie’s belt in his right hand and pulled him up into his arms, Darwin was back above him, calling from where he lay supine on the ramp. Arthur Key held the boy first and the earth next; he didn’t care, he could fall now. Having Ronnie in his arms stopped the day. Darwin was calling directions or something in a steady beat, but the crazy words were taken by the wind and the river and the rock, except for one and that was helicopter.

  TWENTY

  THERE WAS STILL half a pot of coffee cold on the propane stove and Arthur Key filled his enameled cup and added the cream to it and he sat at the blue table and then rose again in the punishing daylight and walked with the cup around the tent, slowly, and sat back down and then pushed up and stood again and sat at the table now and saw that his hand was in a fist and it was a big fist, and he laid that on the table and watched until it opened. The plateau was empty and the wind was still. It was hot, still over ninety degrees, but there was moisture in the air. He looked around again and was going to stand and he resisted the impulse. He had already walked the entire encampment and retrieved the clothing and papers and cups that the helicopter had blown through the sage; some of the debris, dishtowels and some of his paperwork had been scattered in the fence he and Ronnie had built the month before. Arthur went into the tent and straightened the sleeping bags on the cots and lined up the boots there and the personal gear in its duffels, and he unrolled the tent sides and tied them at the corners.

  The pilot had set down on the narrow band of asphalt halfway between the ranch road and the ramp, and he had done so with a gentle precision that was remarkable. The aircraft was small. Key didn’t know how long it had taken to carry Ronnie, over his shoulder, up the cliffside and he was mad now that he hadn’t looked at his watch. It might have been half an hour. He knew that when he reached the top, the helicopter appeared in twenty minutes. Ronnie had the rope tangled around his wrist and shoulder and his neck and an ankle. He had been breathing strangely, a slow periodic chuff, and Arthur had tried not to move him too much, but he’d had to cut the rope and haul the younger man out like a bag of cement. Twice in the steep scree, the big man had pushed up too fast and come away from the earth, Ronnie’s weight wanting him backward, the two of them out in the air, and both times he felt a terrifying relief of the beginning of the last fall. At the top it was bad, because Arthur had laid him carefully on the ground and Ronnie had issued a high slow groan with a wispy cry in it and bent his neck back and away in a distorted stretch. They opened his shirt and saw his chest was crushed, a gray depression, darkening as they watched. They covered him and checked his heartbeat and his shallow breathing. Key waited by the boy, ready to do mouth-to-mouth.

  As soon as the medical aircraft lifted away, Darwin laid it out: he and Marion would go to Twin Falls in her car. “I’ll stay,” Arthur said. “You can call. Later. Go.”

  Marion came to him and sat him on a milkcrate. “His eyes,” she said back to Darwin.

  “Are you in shock?” Darwin asked him.

  “I’m good. I don’t want to be in the car. Go. Call me.”

  Marion handed him a tumbler of water. “Drink this. Lie down.”

  “Go,” he told them. “I’ll be here.”

  It wasn’t shock, but it was something. Everything he’d put together for weeks was now loose in his heart and the pieces were sharp. He tried, as was his custom, to think of the next thing. For some reason he could not remember the climb, and when he closed his eyes he saw only the red and gray grid of Darwin’s plaid shirt. Arthur Key’s mind was empty. It was a double-pocket shirt and Darwin wore it without ever rolling the sleeves. Arthur tried to calm himself, to breathe, and he sat and took each of his boots off and banged them clean of sand and he peeled his socks off and shook them, and still as he sat and lifted one foot and then the other, putting himself back together, his heart was jangled.

  He stood up.

  Arthur Key had never done a project without a drawing, even from his schooldays. He went in the tent and found his notebook. On the blank page, he penciled freehand the ramp: top, side and front. For some reason he printed the date at the top and lettered in his name and the lowercase phrase not to scale.

  Alone at the table, he sipped the cold coffee and he worked at his drawing. The rabbits in the new silence moved through the campsite, up under the table, tame and curious. He looked at his watch. It was almost five o’clock. He held the paper still and freehand drew perfect circles where the auger would go.

  It cut across his grain to use a tool for the wrong purpose. Arthur Key had never used a wrench as a hammer once in his life or a pliers as a hammer or a pliers where a fitted wrench was the right tool. He backed the Farmall tractor onto the wooden ramp over the distant river. He’d already drawn the six circles in the painted white surface with his yellow marking crayon. He knew exactly where the uprights were; he’d built this thing. Still he drilled the pilot hole with the one-inch hand auger and then he started the posthole drill on the tractor power takeoff and set its spinning steel against the wood. The blade was dull and the broken steel edge rankled, not taking a bite. He pressed it down, pushing the little hydraulic lever all the way forward until the auger bit and ripped in one exploding second through the thick plywood deck, a jagged hole. He raised the bit and moved the tractor above the next yellow circle. It didn’t take an hour. The six openings were ugly ripped holes in the platform, each lined with splinters and each looking down alongside a standing railroad tie, and the voices of the river now came up through these torn places.

  He parked the tractor where it had been kept all summer, by the diminished lumber pile and he took the time to tap out the cotter pin and remove the heavy worn steel bit and lie it up off the ground there. All summer long it had done them well.

  Now he was committed, so he ate.

  He opened a bottle of Diff’s red wine and filled a mug with it. He sawed the heel off the sourdough bread and cut a hefty wedge of the cheddar cheese, and he sat down in the camp chair and put his feet on a milk crate. To the north, the clouds had banked and were brown and yellow, a storm that wouldn’t come this way.

  It didn’t matter to him; this was already an act of God, regardless of the weather.

  Way west the wall of nimbus which had shaded him all afternoon was now dispersed in a low boundary with one golden soft spot, the sun. He started to talk to himself, the things he had done, but gave it off. The bread and the cheese and the wine were good and he threw bits of crust to the rabbits, who came forward now like house cats. There was a little breeze and he was grateful for it; it would be useful later.

  Arthur Key had not been drunk all summer, and he wasn’t drunk two hours later. He was into the second bottle of wine and he watched the last birds cross in the small light. He’d been out to the ramp once with the kerosene, and he had drizzled it generously down each of the holes he had broken into the thing, saturating the thick wooden supports. Now he went out with the gasoline and fed it along the sides, and down, but not before he had pulled up the collapsible rails and latched them in place, shaking each. How well they fit at the corners. It was the kind of thing Harry would take a picture of for next time. He had hundreds of computer file photographs showing joints and connectors, and below each the date and the dimensions and the name of the job. These were beautiful rails.

  Key watched the river which was only a white line now in the black canyon, a crooked reflection of the last sky light. The air lifted his hair.

  He clambered underneath the construction in the dark and found the first support. It lit with one match, gently and easily, a small fire licking the kerosene. Every tie ignited with one match. By the time he climbed out and had ascended the plateau, the ruined holes in the ramp glowed yellow and then, as the flames came through each new chimney, the sides caught and yellow flames lifted there like pulsing flags. To the north he could see the chambered lightning in the humped hills. In a moment the sound of the river was overta
ken by the fractioned ripping of the flying ramp as it rose into flames and stayed there. The yellow fire coned above the ramp thirty feet, forty. It was a well-designed fire, and Key was glad to have such fuels.

  His heart was empty.

  He poured another mug of wine and went over to the telephone.

  Key put his forehead against the splintered telephone pole and ran his fingers over the metal numbers on the face of the old field telephone. It was just eight o’clock on the luminous dial of his old Bulova, a watch that had been his father’s, and when Key opened his eyes, his shadow vibrated on the pole and the shadow of the pole ran into the dark world.

  The connection sounded like a hollow chamber. Harry answered on the third ring, and Arthur Key took a shallow breath and said, “Harry.” There was a silence on the line and then something was set down and then Arthur said again, “Harry. I’m alive.” He knew it was the strangest thing he’d ever said, and he knew that he meant it.

  “I know you’re alive,” Harry said, his voice as familiar as a hand on the shoulder, Harry’s voice. “Oh, Arthur, I know you’re alive, goddamn it. I’ve got too many things to show you for you not to be alive. Where are you, Oregon? No, don’t say. Oh, Art.”

  “You’ve been working?”

  “We have. We’re busy. It’s like you told me: I’m becoming an engineer. When you come back, you’ll see. I’m a walking, talking engineer. You’re coming back? No, don’t say. We did the paddlewheel film.”

  Arthur Key watched the lovely fire pull at the wooden ramp, beating and snapping as if in a hurry, as if enraged. “Did you get the thing to turn over?”

  “Arthur, it was like dancing. Five tons and it turned like a dancer. I should tell you, I’m an engineer. I’m glad to hear you.”

  “I couldn’t call.”

  “Don’t say it. Arthur, it’s okay. I knew about it. You don’t have to call. We’ve got work if you want, but you need to take your time. Don’t say anything. We’ve got a calendar through the year. We’re fine.”

  Arthur turned and the fire was a steady stream of flames coming up the front and through the deck in roiling columns. The shadows of the tent and the tractor shook and rattled on the dark sage plain. Everything now in the night had gone brittle, only two sides, one white, the other black.

  The voice of his old friend. Arthur sat on the milk crate in the new dark. The blade of the distant mountains was subsumed in the skyblack. “Arthur, I need to tell you that Alicia went back. She went home about six weeks ago, right?”

  Key listened in the friction of the fire.

  “She came over twice and brought some of your brother’s stuff and she talked to me as you must know, and you know also that she said for you not to—how did she say it?—not to punish yourself. Like that. She said that. And Art, she was serious. I know she was.”

  The two men were silent. Arthur Key worked the back of his head against the splintered wooden pole.

  “Oh, Art, she also said to say that she’s okay and that she’s going to be okay and to tell you that.”

  “I appreciate the message, Harry.”

  “We picked up two small jobs at Columbia this month, each three weeks this fall. I’ve started on the drawings.”

  “That’s good, Harry. You sound good.”

  “You sound good, Art. God, I’m happy to hear you.” Key closed his eyes. “What’s it like where you are, Art? Are you okay?”

  “There’s five skies, Harry.”

  “Five skies.”

  “There’s five skies every day.”

  Harry was quiet and the chamber echoed, and then Harry said, “Be careful, Art. We’re here. I’m getting to be an engineer, but we’re just here.”

  “Take care, Harry.”

  “We will. You take care.”

  “Harry,” he said. “I’ll see you in a few weeks. I’m coming back.”

  Arthur Key set the receiver back in the cradle and put his head down for a minute and closed his eyes, finding the fire waiting, beating there.

  Two hours later, Arthur Key sat at the north end of the fence that he and Ronnie Panelli had built that summer, a steel structure that would outlast everything else they’d constructed on the high desert plateau. He sat on the ground looking into the river gorge which was lit as never had it been in a millennium of midnights, a box of flaring rocks and the river white and calling. The fire worked steadily and was undiminished. He had a cup of wine in his hand but he hadn’t lifted it to his mouth in an hour.

  The vision was in his mind. Arthur Key had seen it one other time at a festival job years ago in Colorado. They had been cleaning up and had already loaded the heavy seating. Key was on top of a semitrailer of the bundled supports, straightening out the load bands and dropping them to a co-worker so they could be cinched. The crew was clearing the stage, and in a minute they would dismantle the thing and load it too. Key watched one man coiling the long black power cord, rolling it around his folded elbow. It was the way he’d seen a hundred times: the man making a neat job of it as he slowly walked backward. The men always walked backward coiling cord or rope. He did it himself. There was something careful in it maybe, something unconscious. Key cleared the last thick strap and had the man below tighten it, and when he looked back at the stage, he saw the man with the now thick bundle of black cord step backward off the stage and disappear. It was ten feet. The man fell into a rolled snow fence they’d used in the arena, breaking his collarbone.

  Suddenly blooming dust furrowed in the blasting light beyond the fence, a rumbling, and the head of the snake became Marion’s Explorer, as facets catching glass and chrome. It was going too fast and reeled into the yard too fast and Arthur heard it crack the far gatepost as it entered. The vehicle stopped short and the door flung open, gathering the following train of dust, and Darwin came into the pulsing void, a man standing against the sheet of light in that shirt, gray and red. Arthur was up now and stepped to him, his shadow capturing the older man.

  “You dropped Marion in town.”

  “Goddamn day.” Darwin’s eyes were full of the white fire. He held both his hands out toward the blaze. “What did you do?”

  “Woke up.”

  Darwin stumbled past him, walking as if into the wind, as if there were something to be done about the inferno. Glowing splinters from the vertical ties streaked into the darkness and flakes from the layers of plywood rose glowing and went dark in the continuous fountain of cinders.

  Darwin was transfixed. The two men could see the far wall of the canyon, red rocks in the torchlight.

  “You didn’t call.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So I know.”

  “You know.” Darwin turned the golden plate of his face to Arthur Key. “He didn’t wake up, Art.” Darwin’s voice was injured: “What was he doing?”

  “Coiling rope.”

  “He had a driver’s license and Marion found his mother.”

  “His mother,” Key said quietly. “Is there any insurance out here?”

  “Some. The ranch, of course. There’ll be some.”

  “I’ve got some money,” Arthur said.

  “I know you do.”

  “Goddamn it.”

  “Goddamn it.”

  They were wary of each other in the heat of the fire. The flames towered steady and unabated, though the decking glowed whiter now and sagged in white-orange undulations which heaved and wavered. The broken holes opened and closed like mouths and there were other apertures in the vanishing structure. Arthur turned about and walked back to the camp and went into the tent. Spotted shadows played against the white canvas wall. Inside he gathered Ronnie’s sleeping bag and his old shoes and his duffelbag kit, and then also he grabbed up the folding cot. When he stood, Darwin was behind him in the shelter. “What are you doing?” Darwin took hold of the sleeping bag. Arthur tugged it and backed toward the tentflap. Darwin’s voice was still different. “What are you doing? Leave it.” He pulled hard at the sleeping bag,
tearing it away from Key, who was now out again in a world lit by fire. Darwin came out and pushed Arthur enough and swung his fist at the man, striking his neck, and following with his left to Key’s chest. “Stop,” Darwin said. “Fight me.” Arthur Key waited to see if Darwin would hit him again, his eyes plainly saying it: hit me. And then he pulled away and he did not stop but strode toward the fire, each step into another band of heat, doubling, and he hurled the gear, cot and all, onto the burning platform, raising great ghosts of cinders. When he spun around his shirt was steaming and he felt his eyebrows singed to stubble.

  Darwin sat hard on a milk crate and folded the sleeping bag on his lap, and as he did papers fell out onto the ground. “Get back,” he said to Arthur Key.

  “What is it?”

  Darwin sat at Ronnie’s table, looking at the white sheets. It was light enough to read everywhere on the mesa and into the depths of the river canyon. The world was a lit room. Arthur stood above Darwin while the older man looked at page after page, dozens. Even here they could still feel the heat. The men did not move except for Darwin’s hand turning a page and then another page. Then he was still and then he pushed the sleeping bag away onto the ground and then he laid the white papers on the table and then he leaned over and put his head onto his folded arms on them so the gusting wind would not have its way.

  Arthur watched his own shadow shake and flutter out across the country. He had been waiting for Darwin to hit him again, and now his heart subsided as the feathers of burning debris lifted through the night. There was a polished shelf of flames now peeling up from under the lip of the ramp, seamless and mesmerizing, and the stage was thin as paper.

  Arthur Key drew two tumblers of water from the cistern and handed one to Darwin. There were ashes in their hair and the white tent was covered with the dotted ashfall. They heard a cry now which became a groaning crack and the deck of the flying ramp folded and plunged away, the front—and then in another flurry of a million burning tickets, the back. Where it fell away from the earth the asphalt had been consumed and forty feet of it shone slick as oil. Darkness came over the encampment like a canopy and the black smoke was visible only as a blank roadway cutting through the stars. Two of the railroad tie uprights still stood, narrowed to withered posts which burned like the last weary sentinels of a lost city.