Canyons

by Gary Paulsen

He was wrong.

  He heard them yelling in back of him, yelling to each other as they started up the trail after him. Their voices echoed from the canyon walls. They did not sound like men, the voices, but like devil voices, death voices, ghost voices.

  He shook his head. The craziness from the wound was coming into his head and he shook it to clear it, to stop the weakness.

  He needed everything now. Had to have everything in him to get away.

  He fought forward on his good leg and hands, crawling and hobbling across the grassy area, the dry grass crumbling beneath him, the morning sun warm on his back.

  Everything bright, everything very clear and bright and hot and fresh. The air smelled good, even through the pain; smelled sweet and good.

  I will do this thing, he thought, his head momentarily clear. I will get away from the bluebellies and to the place of the sacred ones and back to my mother and ask the question of medicine, ask what I do not know.

  The soldiers voices grew fainter.

  I am doing this—I am making it away from them. O spirits, dust spirits and wind spirits and ghost spirits help me, come now to help me.

  They were in the streambed of the canyon, down and to his right, between him and the place of the ancient ones. They blocked him. He would have to hide. He would have to find a place and hide from them and let them search until he could get around them and while thinking of it, while wondering where he could hide, his eyes caught the dark place beneath an overhanging boulder looking down on the spring.

  All at the same time he saw the spring and the boulder and the dark place and knew what he had to do. His body, his whole being wanted to get to the water at the spring. He had never been so thirsty. But that was where the soldiers would look. They would seek him there.

  Instead he must hide beneath the boulder. Cover himself with dirt and hide there and let the spirits take the soldiers the wrong way.

  He worked in beneath the boulder, back in the crack where it met the earth, and carefully covered himself with sand and dust so that he would not show and thought still that he would do this, could do this thing.

  And now they came.

  Three of them. They must have left one to stay with the horses. Three of the soldiers came and he smelled them before he saw them. They smelled of strange sweat and some smell that came from the wool in their clothing and tobacco and hair on their faces—some mixed small of all that together.

  White smell.

  Bluebelly smell.

  Pony soldier smell.

  Death smell.

  Then he saw them. All three were walking side by side, about ten yards apart, staring intently at the spring, the small cottonwoods, the big rifles held in front of them, ready.

  Ready for him. Ready to shoot him.

  Now, he thought—now must my medicine be strong and the spirits come to help me. Now there must be help.

  They were so close now, so close he could see that one of them had a small cut on his cheek and that the blood had dried black. The man was large, squinting in the sun, and in the same sun, in the new morning light Coyote Runs saw his end, his death.

  As he watched the soldiers begin to pass, his eyes fell on the ground in front of them and there it was, his betrayal.

  His ankle had left a small trail of blood, smears here and there on the rocks and in the dirt. He had not thought of that. Had not considered that he would leave blood.

  Still he had a moment of hope. They were almost past it, past the small blood trail and he thought, oh, yes, I will live yet, I will not die in this place. I will live, I will live, I will live.…

  Then the bluebelly saw it.

  The soldier on the right stopped suddenly and looked down and Coyote Runs thought, no, not now, hide me medicine but knew, knew it was too late.

  The soldier’s eyes followed the scuffs and patches of blood up and to the right, up and up the eye came until he was looking at the rock.

  He said something, a low word to the other two men, and they stopped.

  Take me now, spirit, Coyote Runs thought—take me up and away now, away and away from this place. Take me.

  They saw him.

  But they did not shoot.

  They walked up to where he lay beneath the overhang of the rock, stood there, strong and tall and ugly and blue and stinking of white sweat they stood there and looked down on him.

  Coyote Runs did not move, lay looking up at them, sought his spirit, sought his soul. Away now, take me away from this place, spirit.…

  The man who had first seen him said something again, not to Coyote Runs but the other two men, and they all laughed. Words Coyote Runs did not understand, but the laughter he knew. It was hard laughter.

  Then the soldier said something to him.

  It was some kind of order, but he could not understand it. Some strong word. Maybe he swore.

  Coyote Runs looked at him, shook his head. I do not know what you mean.

  Then the soldier leaned down, still smiling, and put the muzzle of his rifle against Coyote Runs’ forehead and he thought, no, not now, I will go with you, I am in the wrong place, take me, spirit, take me now quickly before, before, before.…

  There was an enormous white flash, a splattering flash of white and the start of some mad noise to end all noises and then there was nothing.

  Nothingness.

  10

  Brennan snapped awake and sat up.

  He was scared, no, worse, terrified. Short breaths, pants that puffed in and out, his eyes wide, nostrils flared and the night, the night all around and closing on him and he did not know why.

  Did he dream?

  He could not think wholly of it, if there had been one. There were the edges of something, some greater horror that he did not understand. A stink he did not know, and pain, horrible pain in his leg and head and it had slammed him awake.

  Hard awake.

  He fought to control his breathing, got it down, stared around in the darkness. There was only starlight but it made the canyon seem painted with a silver ghost brush. He could see things, boulders, canyon walls, but not in detail. As if painted and left blurry.

  Take me, spirit …

  The thought came and left before he knew he’d really had it. Just the words. Take me, spirit … in and out.

  How strange. I never think these things, he thought. What is wrong with me?

  Below him the others slept quietly. The fire had long since died out and even the ashes must be cold, he thought, and the word cold brought the night down on, into him. He was suddenly freezing, the sweat chilling him because he was sitting.

  He pulled the bag up around his shoulders and shivered. By squinting he could just make out the numbers on his digital watch.

  Three in the morning.

  He had never been a light sleeper. Even just after his father left when his mother sat crying Brennan would sleep hard. And he never, ever had come awake suddenly so frightened, his breathing stopped.

  Or thinking strange thoughts about spirits.

  He lay back and pulled the bag up over his head to hold the warmth. Even in the summer, in the desert the nights were cold.

  What is the matter with me? Nightmares, cold sweats.

  He tried to close his eyes and doze but could not sleep. There was great unease in him, a great churning, whirling confusion that he could not understand and he sat up again.

  Something.

  Something was there with him, in him, around him. He could feel it. Some other thing was there.

  What are you?

  It finally came, the question. He asked it in his mind, then aloud, in a soft whisper:

  “What are you?”

  But there was no answer, no sound but a nightbird off in the canyon moonlight. A low warble, soft, there and gone. Below, his mother must have heard the sound in her sleep and turned over in her bag but did not awaken.

  He was still very cold, colder than he’d ever been. He wrapped in the sleeping bag and shivered but co
uld not seem to get warm and when he lay back on his foam sleeping pad he realized that something was sticking up beneath his shoulder, pushing into the foam.

  He tossed and turned but it still seemed to be prodding him and finally in irritation he raised up the corner of the foam pad to pull it away.

  It was a round and fairly smooth rock, the curve of it sticking just out of the sand beneath the sleeping pad, but when he tried to dislodge it he found that it was buried and would not come out.

  He pushed and pulled at it and after some effort it began to wiggle slightly and he at last broke it loose and put it over to the side. He scraped some sand into the hole left by the rock and lay back again but in all this effort the fear, the sweat, the chills had not left him.

  Take me, spirit …

  Again it was there, or still. Who are you? he thought. Then whispered it. “Who are you?”

  And thought, I am cracking, completely cracking up. This is crazy.

  Maybe it’s where I am. Maybe there is something in the wind.…

  There was no wind. The still canyon in the moonlight seemed almost to mock him. Everything was so peaceful, so settled and beautiful, and yet there was something that would not leave him alone.

  He could not sleep and again he sat up and as he did so his hand fell on the round rock he’d dug out from beneath the sleeping pad.

  He started to throw it away to the side but as he made the move the light from the moon caught it and he saw it for the first time.

  “What …?”

  It was not a rock.

  It was a human skull.

  He dropped it instantly, jerked his hand away and pushed back under the rock. But there it was again, a soft nudge in his thinking, a command, no, a request, a thought to do a thing he did not understand and he picked the skull up again.

  It was very old. Or he thought it was very old. And it was not complete. There was no lower jaw and it was filled with dirt and small rocks so that he could not make out the features.

  He held it up in the moonlight and turned it this way and that but there wasn’t enough light to see very well. He shook it to knock some of the dirt out of it and there was a small rattling and all the dirt, dried old sand, fell away.

  Suddenly there were eye sockets and a hole where the nose had been and teeth, upper teeth, but the whole back of the skull was missing. There was a gaping hole where the rear curve had been and when Brennan turned it over he saw that there was a round hole in the front of the skull, just above the eyes, roughly the size of his index finger.

  A bullet hole.

  It was the first thing that came to mind and he should drop it, he knew, should put it down. Whoever had been the skull, whoever it was had died a violent death, a murder victim, and he was playing with evidence and yet he could not.

  Could not put it down.

  Take me, spirit …

  There it was again, while he held the skull. It did not come from the skull but from some other place, outside his thinking and yet inside his mind. Some strange part of him.

  And he then knew what he had to do, knew it with all the certainty he had ever felt about anything in his life. He must take the skull.

  Wrong or right it was there. A fact. A known. He must take the skull from this place.

  He looked below to the fire pit and they were still all asleep, even the kids. But the sky was beginning to lighten over the back of the canyon, to the east, and they would be waking soon.

  He pulled his pack close to the back and opened the top compartment. In the bottom he had a spare sweatshirt and he pulled it out now and wrapped the skull in it and put it back carefully and thought all the time, all the time, I am crazy, this is crazy, I am crazy.

  But he could not stop himself.

  11

  Brennan shook his head and looked up just as the mower began to head into a rosebush. He jerked the wheel hard sideways and slewed around the edge, so close, the rose blooms brushed his cheek as he went by.

  Nothing, no part of his life was acting normally since the camping trip and the skull.

  A week had passed. They had broken camp after breakfast the next morning and walked back out to the van, the kids wild all the way, and driven home and nobody knew of the skull.

  When they returned home Brennan put the skull up in his closet on a shelf reserved for models, wrapped in paper. His mother rarely came in his room and never bothered the shelf, so it would be safe.

  Although safe from what, safe from whom Brennan couldn’t think.

  He was acting ridiculous and he knew it. One side of him told him to call the police and take the skull to them and tell where he got it. The skull might not be as old as all that, might be part of a murder investigation and he would be withholding evidence. He did not know how much of a crime that was but suspected it was a serious one and he was not a criminal. Or at least had never been one.

  Before now.

  Crazy.

  But something in him, some other part of his thinking told him to keep the skull and he could not think of a single reason why.

  To know it.

  That thought crept in and had been in his mind before. Every time he thought of the skull. He was supposed to know it.

  Take me, spirit had been there, in his thinking, and now, to know it.

  Know what?

  It was so frustrating! Here he was, hiding a skull with a bullet hole in it in his closet, hiding it even from his mother, maybe breaking the law and he had no reason for it, no excuse.

  Well, see, Officer, every time I thought about calling you this little thought came into my head and it said something about a spirit and that I was to know something.…

  He wheeled the mower around another rosebush and looked up to see Stoney glowering at him from where he was working with the string cutter around the small flower beds.

  The house belonged to a judge and Brennan kept finding himself looking at the windows thinking what if the judge was home and knew he had a criminal working in his front yard.

  Possible criminal, he thought, make that a possible criminal.

  The week had been almost completely insane.

  He no longer slept well. At night in his room he lay with his eyes open, thinking of the canyon and the moonlight and, of course, the skull.

  Always the skull.

  The first night back he had taken it from the closet and examined it in better light at the small desk-table in his room after his mother was asleep.

  It was so small.

  That was what hit him the first time. The back half of the skull was gone but even if it had been there it was a very small skull and he thought it must have been a child’s skull.

  So he took a tape ruler out of the drawer and measured it, across and from front to back, as best he could and then—because there was nothing else to compare it to—he measured his own skull.

  They were nearly the same.

  He had to press through his hair to get the tape tight down on his own skin, and make a guess at the measurement around the missing back part of the skull but when he did there was only a slight difference in the measurements and he thought then that it must have been a boy.

  A boy like him.

  There was no reason to think it. He would not have a much bigger skull when he was a grown man, so why could it not be a man’s skull? Or a woman’s or girl’s skull?

  Yet he could not shake the feeling and that night, the first night back, he put the skull back in the closet, went to bed but could not sleep though he was tired from the camping trip and not sleeping well the night before.

  At last his eyes had closed and he felt that he was still awake but somehow he dreamed, slipping in and out of the dream.

  The dream that night made no sense. He sat cross-legged on a high ridge overlooking the desert and the canyons below, apparently near where they had camped, and watched an eagle flying. It moved in huge circles, taking the light wind, climbing and falling, and he just sat and watched it fly and di
dn’t think or say anything, didn’t do anything.

  He could sometimes see the eagle very closely, see the feathers, the clear golden eye, then it would swing away and go higher and higher and finally become a small speck against the blue sky and then, in the end, nothing, and he just sat all the time on the ridge watching.

  Then he had opened his eyes and was awake. When he looked out the window it was light, well past dawn, and he was surprised to see the clock on his desk at seven-thirty. Stoney was due shortly and he had jumped out of bed and gone to work without eating.

  All that day, and the next, and the next he had thought of the skull. And during the nights he did not sleep but lay back and closed his eyes and had strange dreams until he opened his eyes and had to go to work.

  After the eagle dream he dreamed of a snake. The snake was a rattler, coiled in a lazy S on a rock in the sun. Brennan was afraid of snakes, snakes and spiders, but in the dream he had no fear of the snake and sat near it on a stone and watched it. The snake moved this way and that, back and forth, but not forward, the head weaving gently, the tongue flicking out in silence. Then it swung its head around and looked directly at Brennan, into his eyes, and Brennan was still not afraid. In the dream he studied the snake and the snake seemed to nod, its head moving up and down once gently, and Brennan answered the nod and was awake and the dream made no sense.

  He knew nothing of snakes. Except for one dead on the highway as they drove by he had never seen a rattlesnake, knew nothing about them. But the snake seemed to know him, seemed to be trying to say something to him, and in the same dream he danced with a group of dancers in a circle, holding arms and moving to the rhythm of a drum.

  In the dream he looked down and watched his feet move in the sand, kicking up small puffs of dust, and he yelled with the rest of the dancers, yelled a word he did not understand when the dance was done.

  And came awake. That night he sat up in his room for close to two hours after the dream and thought he must be going crazy.

  Of course he knew it came from the skull, and thought in some way that it had to do with a guilty conscience that came of not calling the police, or telling his mother. That feeling guilty was making him have bad, or at least strange, dreams.