Picnic in the Ruins
Page 25
“I’ve got a call from Pete Ashdown. He came home early from the Freedom Jamboree, and he says somebody stole his backhoe. He wants to talk to you about it.”
Dalton looked over at Raylene, who was turned toward the window, leaning forward against the seat belt.
“Is he holding?”
“Yep. He’s pretty mad. He’s said some salty things—I’m not even sure I know what some of them mean.”
“I’ll bet.”
She patched Pete through and he was already yelling. “Some dumb sons-a-bitches run off with my backhoe, and the trailer, too!”
“Pete, you sure someone didn’t take it on a job and forget to tell you?”
“The lock’s cut and lying there on the ground. Gate’s wide open.”
“Okay. I can come down tomorrow and file a report.”
“How about you send somebody out?”
“Last time we did that you shot at them.”
“They come unannounced.”
“Well, I don’t have anyone working today who wants to take that risk, Pete. I just don’t.”
Pete started ranting at him, and Dalton apologized. Raylene turned her head back toward Dalton. “That family would have less trouble if they stopped feeding their young from the table and made them earn their own way,” she whispered.
“Here’s the thing. I’m driving right now, and LaRae is sitting at the desk on a Sunday, when she’s normally supposed to have a day off. I’m going to guess you already called 911 and chewed them a new one when they told you this wasn’t an emergency. I could put more people on this, but your taxes would go up, and we both know you’re not going to let that happen. So, let’s just avoid giving the nanny state any more power than it’s already got. We’ll see you Monday.”
When there was no response, LaRae came back on and said, “I think he hung up.”
“Keep a can of pepper spray on your desk. He’ll be coming in hot.” Dalton said goodbye and replaced the microphone.
“Turn right,” Raylene said, knocking on the window with a knuckle.
“BLM office is south of town,” Dalton said, pointing straight.
“If it’s okay, I’d like to go past the old library.”
Dalton pulled a hard turn. “What’s on your mind?”
“When I was a girl, I used to spend every day of the summer in that building. The new one is heartless. It’s glass and metal and full of computers. I don’t like it.”
When they came to the building, she asked Dalton to stop. “I used to slide down that rail there. The nasty woman who worked here would scold me and say a lady doesn’t let her dress fly about like a kite. That was 1959. I told her some ladies might, but she might not know that, having only read books written for children.”
“Was that Caroline Plunkett?”
“Yes, it was,” Raylene said.
“I remember her. She liked quiet better than people.”
“I believe she did not have the capacity to like anything.”
“Why did you want me to stop here if this is the memory it gave you?” Dalton asked.
“Oh, I loved this place in spite of that woman. A lot of life is like that, Patrick. I wanted to have that childhood everything-is-the-first-time feeling back. I would never reread a book back then, because I thought to myself, Raylene, there isn’t enough time. Even as a child I knew this world is an hourglass. You can’t push any of that sand back to the top.” She sat up and looked around. “We can keep going now,” she said. “Where were you taking me?”
“To the BLM visitor’s center to see that big map of the monument.”
“Well, why would you do that?”
“We were going to see what you could remember about the trips you and Bruce would take together out there.”
“Bruce who?”
“Your husband, Bruce Cluff, the dentist.”
Raylene placed her hand against the side of her head. Dalton sighed and turned the Bronco around. They drove in silence back to where they’d turned off, and he rejoined that road. The radio crackled and the dispatcher came on. “I’ve got LaRae.”
“Put her through.”
“I’m sorry to bother you again, but Mrs. Gladstone called in to report a missing person.”
“Who?”
“Mrs. Gladstone, she wears all the bracelets, dresses like someone out of the sixties.”
“I know that,” he said. “Who’s missing?”
“Somebody living in one of her trailers. She’s from out of town, working for the National Parks. Her name is Sophia Shepard. She was out on the monument, and she was supposed to check in with her but didn’t.”
“Is it a camping thing?”
“She was out there with a ranger. That Thrift guy stationed at Dellenbaugh.”
Dalton let the microphone rest against the buttons of his uniform. He looked around, letting his eyes pause for a moment on Raylene before he checked his mirrors. “She’s probably just late, you know. And if she’s with a ranger already, I’m not sure there’s anything I can do.”
“I probably shouldn’t be paying attention to this,” Raylene said. “It’s none of my business, but people not coming back when they are supposed to isn’t something to be trifled with.”
“Stand by,” Dalton said. “Raylene, I don’t have the units right now to cover a federal jurisdiction.”
“Tell that to the girl’s parents,” Raylene said in a low voice, her eyes unflinching.
___
By morning, the earth had absorbed most of the rain. Sophia and Reinhardt abandoned their cave with water they bottled from the rain pools scattered across the slick rock. Sophia realized that during her flight from the scene yesterday, she’d been turned around. They’d have to go back to pick up the most direct path to Dellenbaugh Station. She wanted to stay off the road, so they climbed up to the high ridgeline, backtracking her route from the day before. There was a moist granularity to the soil today, which kept the dust down. The air was clear and free of haze, giving the landscape all around the deep focus of a large-format photograph. Directly across from them, the sheer silent cliff faces were streaked with desert varnish. Only a few hours before, they roared with plunging, temporary rivers.
A yellow-headed, blue-bodied lizard drank from one of the tiny tinajas, and it ceased as it heard them, remaining motionless until they had gone by. After a time, they passed a large boulder that had been split by the roots of a pinyon pine. She hadn’t seen any of these things during her flight. The return trip was filled with a twofold dread: worry about running into the man who had murdered Paul and anxiety over seeing Paul’s body. She did not know if she would search him out or try to stay away.
Sophia stopped when she recognized the view. “Down there. That’s where I came up. Everything I told you about happened down there.”
“Is it smart for us to go back?” Reinhardt asked.
“Smart? Probably not. But any chance for us to get out of here starts down there. I want to see if anything is left that we can use, and the trail we need to take to get to the ranger station starts here.”
Reinhardt nodded in agreement. “I want to inform you that the last of my diarrhea has passed. If you’re going to rescue me, it’s only fair that you have a clear picture of my physical capacities. Secrets won’t save us.” Reinhardt’s eyes narrowed and he set his jaw. It was clear that he meant for Sophia to reciprocate openness for openness.
“Okay,” she said. “I haven’t pooped since the day before yesterday.”
Reinhardt smiled. “That is not what I meant. My problems are gastrointestinal. Yours are of another magnitude. But now my problems are yours and yours are mine.”
“Whatever,” she said, turning toward the cinder cone so she wouldn’t have to think about what he just said. “He shot at us from up there.”
“Do you think he is up there now?”
“That would be a lot of waiting in a bad storm. He didn’t look like an outdoorsman.”
“Are you okay physically? May I
examine you?”
Sophia stepped back.
“I am a physician,” Reinhardt said. She allowed him to take her hands and feel them. He moved from the wrist and forearm, then with one hand he took her pulse. When he let go of her hands, he placed his palm on her forehead, then widened each of her eyes with his fingertips. “You seem well,” he said.
“We need to keep moving,” she said, walking away.
They hiked down from the cluster of rocks that Sophia ran past on her flight from the gunman. She paused for a moment and vaguely remembered that she had mistaken them for her aunts in Iran. This memory triggered a cascade of other memories, and as her body tensed in preparation for an onslaught of panic, she caught sight of Reinhardt and managed to keep control as they continued down the trail that led to the edge of the palisade.
It was not as she’d left it. The vehicles had all been flipped over like giant mechanical bugs, the windows and windshields crushed flat. The backhoe had been parked across the road at a place with a tree on one side. Several large stones had been pushed into the road, making passage along it impossible.
“I thought maybe you overstated the problem,” Reinhardt said. “I had no idea it was so dire.”
Sophia refused to respond. Her jaw locked, and her neck seized. She didn’t replay the events, but she reviewed them in reverse, flickering slow motion. When the scene had played through, Sophia unslung her day pack and pulled out the map, which had been rolled and flattened and folded. “We are here,” she said, showing Reinhardt. “And we need to get there.” She pointed to a section in the lower right-hand corner. A crooked double line branched from the main road and showed that the way out was to the southeast.
Reinhardt gasped. “Three days ago, I saw that map. In the diner. Two men were talking about this place and—” He looked down at the wreckage. “And these are them?”
Sophia nodded. “And one more,” she said. “Before we begin, we need to find anything we can down there that might help us. Food, water, hats, whatever.”
They climbed down and approached the vehicles. They were all inaccessible. The doors wouldn’t open, and the windows were cracked but filled with sagging safety glass. She kicked in a window trying to find what she could, but anything useful was gone. She crouched next to her own truck. The vehicle had been shot up, inside and out. Her cooler and water had been taken. Everything was gone, even the shattered phone. She went back to Paul’s Jeep, removed the map from her pack, and tucked it under the driver’s seat.
“You said he wanted the map. Why hide it here?” Reinhardt asked.
“He’s already been through these vehicles. He wouldn’t take the time to do it again. Plus, if he finds us, it could buy us some time if we have to come back here to get it.”
Sophia approached the turquoise truck, her hand following the upended curves of the wheel wells. The smell of the dead man came upon her all at once. A dozen feet away, he lay sprawled in a thick pudding of blood and soil. His fingers were thick, the tips burst open. A stream of red ants flowed into and out of the cuff of his shirt, the ruddy shimmer of their bodies tracing a path toward a low mound a few paces off. The smell of him became overwhelming as she drew near. She stepped around him in a half circle until she was upwind, which lessened the stench by a few degrees.
“Should we bury him?” Reinhardt asked.
Sophia shook her head. “The other one is down there,” she said, pointing down the hill. “We need to focus our energy on getting out of here.”
“And the ranger? Should we check on him?”
Sophia did not answer immediately. She was thinking about how far they were from the ranger station and how much longer it would take if they traveled cross-country instead of using the roads. She wondered how much water would be available along the route and how long it would be before it evaporated.
“Over there,” she said. “He went over the cliff, there.” She pointed, then rose to get some distance between herself and the dead man. Reinhardt walked to the edge of the box canyon and carefully looked over, stretching his neck and scanning back and forth. He shook his head. “I do not see him. It looks like a boulder came loose and is stuck down there.”
Sophia joined Reinhardt at the edge. Her insides were pulsing manically. Where could he be? She saw him go over. Maybe his gray-and-green uniform was working as camouflage. If his body was gone, that suggested a multitude of horrors, timelines in which his body was dragged from the crevice by animals, witches, or worse. She checked the space and saw the boulder Reinhardt mentioned. As they looked together, Reinhardt pointed to the negative space in the cliff wall across from them that matched the size and bulk of the rock below. In tandem, they leaned left and right, straining to see around the giant chockstone. Given the angle of the midday sun, they could only see shadows. Sophia’s hand involuntarily reached up and gripped Reinhardt’s shirt.
“Perhaps he did not die immediately,” Reinhardt said. “We might find his remains somewhere. Perhaps the storm revived him long enough to . . . I do not know.”
Sophia scanned the bottom of the small canyon, which ran thirty yards northward, then hooked left and connected to the depression where the other man had been operating the backhoe the day before. She circled back and ran down the slope past the disturbed gravesite, and she crawled back into the space under the fallen rock. There was enough room between the boulder and the ground for a human body, with some to spare. She looked back up at the edge, where Reinhardt stood, haloed in sunlight. Her face flushed. The corner of her eyes swelled, but she fought against the distraction of hope.
“Do you see any blood?” Reinhardt called down.
“No,” she called back. “But really. You are, like, the least encouraging person of all time.”
“I’m sorry. The last two days have been difficult for me emotionally.”
“That makes two of us,” she said.
While Sophia began looking for a sign that somebody had walked out, she heard the low crunch of tires on gravel. At first, she thought it might be a rescue, but that thought was immediately replaced by the flash of fear. She looked up at Reinhardt, who froze and pointed. “It’s him. From the other day,” he shouted. From her position below the road, she couldn’t see what was happening, but she heard the car stop. Reinhardt bolted down the incline, and a gunshot tore a chunk of bark from one of the junipers. When Reinhardt met her, they both turned and ran together toward the far end of the canyon wall. Two more shots ricocheted off the rocks, and they ran without saying anything about how impossible something like this was.
They looked back and saw the man lift a pistol and take aim. Ahead of them the canyon narrowed down to a tight gap just large enough for them to get through one at a time if they turned sideways. They were boxed in, and this was their only way out. Sophia slipped through first, and when she came through to the other side, she saw a pair of boots sticking out from under an overhanging rock. She jumped when she saw them, and crashed into Reinhardt, who was right behind her.
“Water,” a voice said. It was Paul. “I need water.”
Sophia bent down and helped him sit up.
“Don’t,” he groaned. “My shoulder is dislocated. And I’ve broken some ribs.”
“But you went over the cliff,” she said.
“I sure did,” he said. “I hit an overhang halfway down.”
Three more shots echoed through the gap.
“Is that guy back?” Paul asked.
They lifted Paul to his feet, and he was barely able to walk. With his good arm around Sophia’s shoulder, Paul pointed them toward the dark lava field in the distance. “We need to go there.”
“Are you kidding?” Sophia said.
“We’ll be okay if we can get there.”
The thick lava bed was a few hundred feet away, and they crossed the open ground as quickly as possible, switching their attention between the gap behind them and the directions Paul was giving them. “Go to that sage bush,” he said. “It’s th
e second one over. When we get there, you’ll see it.”
“What?”
“It’s a step in the rock, a single flat spot that doesn’t look like it’s made out of razors.”
As they came closer to the steep slope, they just didn’t see what Paul was describing. It all looked impossible to climb, like the surface of an inhospitable alien planet. Sophia and Paul tried to find the secret way in, while Reinhardt watched the gap to see if the man was coming through.
“We are wasting our time,” Sophia said.
Paul stepped onto the stone crags in one place, backed out, and tried another spot. When that one didn’t work, he tried another. The lava was jagged, crowded with fragments and crenellations that would shred a boot to nothing. On his third attempt, Paul found a flat space, stepped from the dry summer grass, and stood in the midst of the clinky heaps of lava.
“We can’t go in there. Those rocks are so sharp, they’ll tear us apart,” Reinhardt said.
“Is this one of those trails you talked about?” Sophia asked.
Paul nodded. “It’s the only point of entry on this side. You can’t see it, but it’s there.” He took three more steps to show them. Reinhardt followed, his boots curving across the tops of the dark stone. “No,” Paul instructed. “Down in the spaces where the cinders are packed in. Flat spots.” Reinhardt moved his feet to the only place that would accept them, then he stood tall and tested the step. Sophia followed, seeing that the path wasn’t a structure at all but a change in texture. She couldn’t see it, but it was there. Turn one degree off course, and the path would disappear.
Paul climbed slowly to the top of the flow. From there, he stood a story or so above the others and called back down. “None of it is where you’d think to step. We’re a lot taller than they were. Take sixty percent of a step and you’ll be in the zone,” he said, then he disappeared. Reinhardt followed, his arms gyrating. Sophia brought up the rear, and as she disappeared over the edge, the gunman emerged from the gap looking all around, confounded.
Sophia quickly caught up with Reinhardt and Paul, who was draining one of Reinhardt’s water bottles.
___