Black Sun Descending

by Stephen Legault

  All the lines of logic were converging on the Colorado River. Jane Vaughn’s dying wish to scatter her ashes; Penelope’s own notes in her journal; Edward Abbey’s writing focus on the forested branch canyons of the Colorado. She was somewhere along the winding route of the Colorado, thought Silas, but where? The river ran for fourteen hundred miles, more than half of which was through the canyon country of Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. If his task hadn’t seemed impossible when he started it four and a half years ago, it seemed utterly futile now.

  Silas remembered that while he and Hayduke were down in the canyon they had agreed to sit down and review Penelope’s journal together and make a list of all the people that she had crossed in her time advocating for protection of Abbey’s favorite places. The business with Paul Love and Chas Hinkley had sidetracked them. If he knew Hayduke, it wouldn’t be long before they had another opportunity.

  He thought about Dallas Vaughn and Jane’s burial instructions. Were Silas and Dallas Vaughn “the boys” she was referring too? If so, two less likely compatriots would be hard to find. Or was Hayduke one of “the boys?” Was there another man out there that Silas didn’t know about who had played a role in his wife’s work?

  Silas flicked on the left turn indicator. If he headed back to Moab and to his home nearby, he could start over. He could begin his search fresh, focusing on the Colorado, working his way down from where it first cut into its namesake plateau. He could map out a route of investigation that took him down through Hal Canyon, past where Jane Vaughn was discovered at the Atlas Mill site, and then beyond where he found Darcy McFarland the previous summer, just a few miles downriver. He would search Stillwater and Labyrinth Canyons on the Green River too. He’d accessed the Green’s many remote creeks and canyons by hiking down from the Island in the Sky, but he’d never undertaken a concentrated search of the lower reaches of the river. Maybe he would call and ask if his sons wanted to paddle the river with him in the fall, when the temperature fell once more.

  But these were the thoughts of a man who still believed that if his wife was to be found, she might have injured herself on a backpacking trip, succumbed to heat and dehydration, and died in some remote corner of this godforsaken wilderness. Silas angrily flicked off the turn indicator. That wasn’t really what he expected anymore. He had all but given up on finding Penelope alive, and now he was abandoning hope that she would be discovered having died peacefully, in the wilderness she had fought to defend.

  Now he believed that someone, maybe Paul Love, maybe Chas Hinkley, or even Balin Aldershot, had killed her for what she represented: a threat.

  He turned and drove toward Page.

  THE LAST FEW HUNDRED YARDS Silas drove with his headlights off, following the glow of a roaring fire. He and Hayduke had camped here before. Hayduke’s Jeep was parked nearby but the young man wasn’t obvious. It was only after Silas got out of the car that he appeared from behind a nearby juniper, his .357 Magnum in his right hand, a can of beer in the other. “Had to make sure it was you” was all he said before sitting back down.

  “You’re not surprised to see me, are you?”

  “No. I knew you’d find your way here.”

  “I thought you said you’d find me, not the other way around.”

  “I did find you.”

  Silas shook his head. He pulled a folding camp chair from the back of his car and set it up next to the fire. He took one of his six-packs from his cooler and offered a beer to Hayduke, who had to put down his pistol to accept it. The two men sat in silence and watched the flames lick at the scented juniper and piñon pine. A pocket of resin exploded, sending a few coals scattering across the sand and a tight clutch of sparks dancing toward the heavens.

  After Silas had drunk a second beer and munched on beef jerky and potato chips for dinner, he said, “The FBI are going to pick up Love and Hinkley. Two more days. They will be off the river, and the feds will be waiting for them.” Hayduke just nodded. “You don’t seem very happy about this. I thought you’d be more excited, maybe shoot something. A beer can or whatnot.”

  “I think it’s great,” Hayduke grumbled.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I think it’s great. Those guys are dirty.” The light of the fire glinted off the beer can that Hayduke raised to his hairy lips.

  “Okay, I’m not following something. These guys pulled a gun on us. Paul Love was likely as not going to shoot us and toss our bodies into the Colorado. These guys might be responsible for one, two, maybe three murders. The FBI gets them in a room and we might even find Penelope.”

  Hayduke finished one of the beers, crushed the can, and tossed it over his shoulder into the darkness. Silas heard it land in a shrub. “You’re going to pick that up, right?” asked Silas. The young man belched and lifted the second can of beer toward his mouth. “Stop!” Silas yelled. “Would you stop?” he said more quietly. “What is going on?”

  Hayduke drank, wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, and looked at Silas. “Listen, I hear what you’re saying, man. Hinkley and Love are certainly dirty. Hinkley has got his head so far up Love’s ass that I can see his face every time Love opens his mouth. And yeah, I’m pissed that fucker pulled a gun on us. My own cannon here was back in my pack or I would have blown that motherfucker away. But none of this adds up to them having killed Jane Vaughn or Darcy or Kiel. None of it adds up to them making Pen disappear. It might. It could. But so far it doesn’t.”

  “So the FBI picks them up and rakes them over the coals.”

  “Good. That’s what the G is supposed to do. Maybe a little waterboarding. Maybe some thumbscrew action. But all they’ve got is pulling a gun on us, and this funny business between Love and Hinkley. At best they go away for a year or two, but that’s unlikely. Hinkley might lose his job, maybe get transferred to a national historic site in Ohio. Love might get investigated for fraud or tax evasion or some shit. But murder? I just don’t know.”

  Silas drained his beer. He unhooked a can for himself and offered the six-pack to Hayduke. “Listen,” Hayduke shifted and added a piece of piñon pine to the fire. “When you were back in Flag playing footsie with the G, I did some sniffing around out here.” He looked over his shoulder, but the world beyond the circle of light from the fire was opaque.

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing too dangerous. I broke into Balin Aldershot’s place. The office where we saw him and that Slim Jim bastard the other day.”

  Silas shook his head.

  “What? What the hell is wrong with that? You broke into a senator’s office! You can do it and I can’t?”

  Silas raised his hands in a gesture of appeasement. “I didn’t say anything. So you broke in. Anybody see you?”

  “I don’t know.” Hayduke fidgeted. “I think they might have had security cameras, but I can’t be sure.”

  “You wore a mask? Gloves?”

  “Shit yeah, but you know, it’s kinda hard for me to disguise myself.” He pulled at his beard.

  “Okay, so, what did you find?”

  Hayduke stood up shakily, tucked his pistol in the waist of his jeans, and walked to where his Jeep sat in the darkness. He opened the passenger door and took out a map tube. He walked back to the fire and handed the map tube to Silas.

  Silas unscrewed the top of it. He pulled out a topographic sheet. He recognized it quickly. The same one hung on his wall: a small-scale map of the area north of Grand Canyon National Park called the Arizona Strip. “Help me out here.” Using his headlamp Silas said, “What am I looking for?”

  “Look just at the map.” Silas scanned it. “You see?”

  “I don’t. I’m sorry, I’m just not … oh, wait a minute.”

  “Yeah. The Patriot One Mine. It’s an old mine that was dormant for decades, then operated again for a few months just before the twenty-year moratorium brought in by the Secretary of the Interior to safeguard Grand Canyon National Park and the Colorado River from uranium mining and run
off. There are over two hundred and fifty claims scattered across the Kaibab Plateau area, and several operating mines. Patriot One was in the exploration phase, lots of big plans, when it got shut down. This map clearly shows that it’s part of the leases that have been frozen. Now, I know that a bunch of assholes from the Arizona Uranium Program—that’s an industry-backed NGO—are suing the feds over this. But the owners of Patriot One weren’t taking any chances. They were hedging their bets. They were just weeks away from being operational when the Secretary of the Interior shut things down.”

  “So they were trying to fudge the numbers.”

  “That’s right. Actually, I think they were trying to make it look like they were already in operation.”

  “How would they do that?”

  “Beats me. They could try a couple of angles. They could fake some paperwork, you know, permits and that sort of thing, or they could actually get the mine operating. Look at the map. It’s in the middle of nowhere. Twenty miles from Fredonia, forty from Jacob Lake. The nearest people are pretty much the tourists at the North Rim. They could stoke that fucker up and nobody would be the wiser.”

  “But there would be paperwork,” interjected Silas. “Lots of it.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know how they got around that.”

  Silas jumped up so quickly that he spilled his beer. Hayduke jumped up too. “What is it? Scorpion?”

  “Paperwork!”

  Hayduke looked around him. He had the .357 in one hand and a beer in the other. “Paperwork?”

  “Remember when we were in Jane’s office? We were looking at her threat letters and emails, and we talked about the mining ban?”

  “Yeah, so what?”

  “The letter from C. Thorn Smith.”

  “Jesus H. Christ.”

  “You said it. Remember, Smith wrote a letter explaining to Jane that the mine had won approval. It was just before she disappeared. I can’t believe we overlooked that! Smith must have leaned on the BLM to fast-track the approval of that mine, or maybe even fudge the date of the approval, so it would be grandfathered in before the Secretary of the Interior made his announcement. Who owns the Patriot One Mine?” Silas already knew the answer.

  “Ichabod Crane does. Slim Jim Zahn.”

  THEY FOUND TED EASILY ENOUGH. There was a coffee shop on the outskirts of Page that catered to truckers and men who worked in the industrial section of the town. Hayduke said he had tailed the man there after a night shift the previous day. “Just in case we needed to follow this thread,” he explained.

  Silas nodded his approval. Ted showed up at the diner shortly after eight in the morning; Hayduke approached him before he could get out of his Ford.

  “Hey, Ted, remember me?”

  The man was in his mid-fifties. He was overweight, his face sagged, and his eyes seemed to be permanently red and runny. “I don’t … wait, yeah, I do. You lied to me, you son of a bitch.”

  “Easy there, Ted,” said Hayduke, raising his hands in a defensive gesture.

  “You said you was coming to work for Aldershot.”

  “It didn’t work out is all. It’s no big deal. I want you to meet someone.”

  “I’m just off shift. I’m having supper and then going to bed.”

  “This will only take a minute, Ted,” said Silas, approaching the man.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Silas. I just have a few questions for you.”

  “You cops?”

  “Nope,” said Hayduke, grinning.

  “Who are you?”

  “We’re looking for someone. My wife. Can we ask you a few questions?”

  “Ask ’em quick. I’m hungry and tired.”

  “Last week when you talked with my friend here, you told him that from time to time you would haul from Arizona across the border into Utah.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Listen, Ted. We’re not here to make trouble for you. But we do want to know if you’ve ever hauled loads of waste rock from the Arizona Strip into Utah.”

  “I got to get me something to eat—”

  Silas stepped in front of the man before he could walk from his truck to the diner. “Right now my friend and I are just having a collegial conversation with you. If we tell the sheriff’s department and the FBI, they might not be so friendly. Can you help us out?”

  Ted rubbed his face. He looked around. Several other patrons of the café came and went. “We ain’t supposed to be doing it, see? It’s likely illegal. I don’t want to get my brother-in-law in trouble.”

  “Who is your brother-in-law?” asked Silas.

  “He works at the Atlas Mill site. Near Moab.”

  Silas felt a surge of electricity run through him. “Did you haul waste material from the Arizona Strip to the mill?”

  Ted looked puzzled. “Maybe once or twice.”

  “Ted, this isn’t a trick question. Did you or didn’t you?”

  “I think I brought a load that way once.”

  “When?” asked Hayduke.

  “I don’t know. Sometime last year I think. It was just the once I did it that way.”

  “What does your brother-in-law do there?” Hayduke asked.

  “He’s the security foreman. He pulls a night shift ever week or two. Listen, you tell the sheriff and they will get the Energy department down on my ass.”

  “We’re not going to tell anyone,” Silas lied. “Who told you to do this?”

  “I don’t think I can say—” Hayduke stepped menacingly toward the man. “Balin did. He told me to. He didn’t put it on my work order, he just calls me in and tells me what to do.”

  Silas was silent for a long moment, then recognition showed on his face. “You go in the other direction, don’t you?”

  “What are you talking about?” Hayduke looked at Silas.

  “He doesn’t haul waste from the Patriot One to Moab. You,” he addressed Ted once more, “haul old uranium waste from Moab up here.”

  Ted looked around. He was sweating despite the morning cool. “I drive down to Moab, load up some waste material, the newest stuff, mostly overburden, then haul it to the mine site. Someone is waiting there to unload it. Then I head back here.”

  “Do you ever inspect your load?”

  “No. It’s just rock. Mine waste.”

  “Its contaminated uranium waste, isn’t it?” asked Hayduke.

  “I don’t know nothing about it.”

  “Ted,” asked Silas. “Think back really carefully. How long has this been going on for?”

  Ted swallowed. “I don’t know, maybe a year, maybe a little longer.”

  Silas did the calculation in his head. The one trip that Ted hauled in the opposite direction coincided with the window when Jane Vaughn disappeared.

  “What are they doing with all that waste?” asked Silas.

  “I don’t know. I don’t care! I just do what Balin tells me. He’s my boss, right?”

  “Ted, you don’t tell anybody we’ve had this conversation, alright?” Silas instructed the man.

  Ted nodded his head.

  “Breakfast time,” said Hayduke, slapping Ted on the back.

  SILAS AND HAYDUKE ate breakfast at a café in the south end of town. They found a quiet booth where they could talk over bacon, eggs, and hash browns. Hayduke asked for a side order of flapjacks and Silas watched, amazed, as the young man wolfed them down. He wondered what Hayduke did for a living. He never seemed to want for anything. “How do you get by?” Silas asked.

  “What you mean?” Hayduke stuffed hash browns into his mouth.

  “You don’t have a job, do you?”

  “I got my work. Protecting the canyons, the desert—”

  “What I mean is, how do you make out for money?”

  “I get a disability pension from the US Army. Two tours, medical discharge. Plus, my folks got cash coming out their ears.”

  “What do they do?”

  Hayduke grinned, showing his perfect teeth.
There was food in them. “Dentists. What do you make of Ted’s story?” Hayduke interrupted Silas’s thoughts.

  “The man is scared. He’s going to lose his job. Maybe his brother-in-law will lose his gig too. Even get charged with something. Accessory or some such thing.”

  “Do you think he knew what he was really hauling?”

  “No. I don’t.”

  “So he had nothing to do with Jane Vaughn’s death?” asked Hayduke.

  “I don’t think so. I think he was just doing what Balin Aldershot told him to do. Why were they hauling waste rock from Moab to the Patriot One Mine?”

  “I have no idea,” confessed Hayduke. “So now what? You want to take this to your girlfriend?”

  Silas shot him a look.

  “Well,” protested Hayduke, “she’s smoking hot. You guys should hook up.”

  “I’m trying to find my wife.”

  Hayduke just shrugged.

  “I think we need to go on a road trip to the Patriot One Mine. Let’s see what Balin Aldershot and Slim Jim are really up to. We find out, then I call the feds and tell them what we’ve got.”

  Hayduke threw back the rest of his coffee and was up out of his seat like he’d been jolted with electricity. “I love doing this shit!” he said, eliciting an angry look from a mother with two toddlers in a nearby booth.

  SILAS AND HAYDUKE each drove their own vehicles out of Page and toward the Marble Gorge. They crossed the bridge downstream from Glen Canyon Dam and instead of stopping Hayduke simply rolled down the passenger window on his Jeep, leaned over, and gave the Glen Canyon Dam the finger.

  It was afternoon when they reached Jacob Lake, where they stopped for coffee and pie. Silas felt the pull of the North Rim, and momentarily considered abandoning their plans to resume his search for Penelope among the aspen forests and deep clefts of the Grand Canyon’s remote corner. Hayduke slapped him on the back, blueberry pie crust caught in his beard, and pointed to the door.