The Man Who Followed Women

by Bert Hitchens

  He ate breakfast at a small cafe a few doors from the motel.

  None of the big markets were open yet, but he drove around and found a small Mexican grocery where the proprietor was just putting up the awning. Here he bought crackers and cheese, canned lunch meat, potato chips, and five bottles of bottled water. He gassed up at a service station and had them check the tires and the radiator; and here he also picked up a good map of the county.

  He parked off the driveway and studied the map. All of the area around Vermillion, on either side of the Colorado, was marked by meandering irrigation canals and small settlements. A few miles out, however, roads became few and place names far between. It was empty country.

  The map showed a few dirt roads from the highway westward, mostly to mining properties. A few were marked to ghost towns. He traced the faint, cross-hatched line of the railroad west. Some of the unimproved roads were shown as crossing it, dying into blank space in the desert northward. He noted the names of a couple of towns: Sheep’s Mound and Tarwater. Under each, in parenthesis, was the word ruins. He had seen a ghost town or two in the past, and could visualize what these must look like, sun-scorched old boards and rusting wagon wheels, a tumble left by the wind and weather, with silence so thick it had a sound of its own, a hollow mouth humming.

  Ghost towns. Well, the whole case had a flavor of ghostly flittings; he might as well start with one or the other. Give the idea two or three days, and if nothing panned out he could go to Vermillion again and try Ryerson’s routine. Arbitrarily, he picked out Tarwater.

  Fifteen miles out of Vermillion, the dirt track to Tarwater took off—almost invisibly; Kernehan sped past and had to go back. There was no sign. The sun was bright by now. There was none of the lingering fog or damp that this April had had in the city. The earth lay bare and brown, the only sign of greenery a line of stunted smoke trees in a distant wash. Kernehan was driving due north from the highway. The dirt track was in fairly good shape, except where it crossed eroded patches left by the flash floods. At these spots Kernehan turned out of the track, hunting the smoothest spots he could, saving his axles. The clink of bottles from the box on the rear seat was comforting. This was no country to be in without water.

  About eight miles north of the highway the dirt track rounded a stony spur of hills to cross a broad barren valley. Kernehan had never seen anything so desolate, and now that he was no longer in sight of the highway with its occasional car, he was hit by a feeling of complete aloneness.

  Brilliant, barren, harsh—it looked like country where anything could happen.

  Chapter 13

  At the other end of the shallow valley the road passed through a flat-bottomed, gradually rising wash whose sides were almost vertical, where mica sparkled diamond-like against the red clay. At the top of the wash the road seemed impassable, the sandy earth having splashed away leaving the naked stones. Kernehan stopped the car and got out to plot a way around it. On the other side of the ridge the road dropped down between two eroded gray ranges of hills, and in the far distance lay a broad flat sink, white with sand.

  Where in hell, Kernehan thought, was Tarwater?

  Even ruins should be visible from up here on the ridge, and he could see nothing. Perhaps the town had been built of adobe, the sheltering roofs had been carried away by vandals, and now the adobe walls were melted and gone. And he had brought himself here on the wildest of wild-goose chases.

  Then in a sandy dip to one side of the rocky patch he saw the print of a tire. Here just under the ridge, it had been sheltered from the fine-blown dust that would otherwise quickly have filled it. To Kernehan it looked pretty fresh.

  He mapped out the way it led, off close to some low prickly growth, rejoining the road farther down. He got back into his car, drove in low gear the way the tire-track had seemed to lead. Half-way down the grade between the gray banks the road swung sharply to the right. He looked down past a series of rocky ledges, to a sudden spot of green. There was actually a tree growing down there; then he saw other things. Old walls and weathered wooden false-fronts. A main street rutted by time, tumbleweeds growing in the ruts. Off beside the lone tree, a couple of canvas tents, big ones, that looked new. A parked truck under the shade of the tree. Some hasty fences, inside them restless specks of red and white that must be chickens.

  Well, he’d found the town. And there was someone living in it.

  The road curved back and headed for the long lane between the hills, and Kernehan lost sight of the town. But at the bottom of the grade the road forked. A sign that he couldn’t read, all letters weathered away, pointed arrow-like in the direction of the far sandy sink. A road to nowhere, Kernehan thought. To the right at the top of a rock cairn was a new sign, painted on the back of a tomato crate. Tarwater Store Now Open.

  Kernehan swung the car right.

  A quarter mile farther on there was another sign. Water For Sale.

  A good commodity to be in possession of, Kernehan thought, in the middle of this country. He wondered if the water was brought in by truck, or if there could be a spring. The living tree, a leafy tower at least thirty feet in height, indicated the probability of the latter.

  He drove up the middle of the street between the ruined and rotting buildings. From the distance the place had looked like a western town, the kind of thing you saw all the time in the movies or on TV; but close at hand the damage took away any semblance of life. No one had lived here for a long time. Through the cockeyed-leaning doorways he saw sunshine on weedy floors.

  On a fallen porch was a third sign. Fresh Eggs.

  Kernehan shook his head in disbelief. What a crazy place to start a business!

  Someone had heard him coming. A man came out of one of the tents and stood shading his eyes against the brightness beyond his hatbrim, a lanky man as thin as a wire in sun-faded overalls, brown shirt, farmer’s straw sombrero, and bandana neckerchief. The tent flap moved again behind him; someone else was still inside, looking out. Kernehan sized up the two tents and the truck and the chickens hurriedly as he parked and got out. It all looked neat and shipshape, even temporary as it was. The truck wasn’t new, but the stakes had fresh paint on them and the windshield gleamed free of dust. The chickens seemed lively enough. The hens were singing; it sounded strange off here in this silent wilderness.

  Kernehan stretched himself briefly, relieving his shoulders after the grind of driving. Then he walked over to the waiting man.

  Getting close, Kernehan saw how old he was. He was a weathered scarecrow of far more than sixty. Hands and arms were marked by the knotted veins of old age, under the tan. Below his jutting chin the tendons made a double groove into the neck of the shirt. He spoke in a half-deaf treble. “Yes, sir. What can we do for you, sir?”

  Kernehan paused and looked around. “I saw your signs.”

  “Need water?”

  “I brought some with me. Not knowing there was any available out here.”

  “Oh? Well, we set up store here, we got groceries and homemade bread and fresh eggs. Meat’s all in cans, o’ course. Want to have a look?” As if taking Kernehan’s wish for granted, he headed for the other tent, lifted a flap and tied it back, and Kernehan found himself looking into a neat array of shelves, canned goods, a counter made of boards set up on a couple of sawhorses.

  The old man was business-like. He went promptly behind the counter and waited, his air implying that if Kernehan had come to Tarwater it must be to visit the Tarwater store and therefore to buy something. Kernehan entered the tent. The canvas floor had been swept clean, the broom stood in the corner. There was the smell of the fresh wood drying. “How on earth did you happen to come here?” Kernehan asked bluntly.

  “Wanted to get out of town. Bought the land off a mining company. They went broke. I knowed about the spring here for years, went through here years ago before it silted up. All I had to do was dig and cement’er up. Then my grandson and me bought the truck and the chickens and the tents. At first we was just
going to raise chickens, only then we decided to sell groceries too since we had to haul our own.”

  “And how is trade?” Kernehan asked, watching closely.

  “Ain’t much to speak of. But I figger, what if we even sell a few dollars’ worth a month, we’re still ahead on our own grub, getting it wholesale. The boy likes to eat.”

  Kernehan, in the doorway of the tent, looked back. A kid in his late teens had come out into the open. He had a shock of black hair, a long strong-looking torso, sturdy legs in denim jeans. He was bare above the waist and deeply tanned.

  There’s more to this than the yarn the old man’s telling, Kernehan thought disgustedly. “Give me some canned tomatoes,” he said, remembering that this was standard desert provender against both hunger and thirst. “Some corned beef, canned potatoes—I don’t suppose you board people for a few days,” he added suddenly.

  “Never tried it. Don’t know why not, if you can stand our cooking. What did you say your name was?” The old man’s stare was direct and almost challenging.

  “Mike Kernehan.”

  “I’m Milo Bucklen. Yonder’s my grandson, Randy Bucklen. What kind of business would be keeping you out here?”

  Kernehan looked back steadily into the unwinking washed-out eyes. “I’ve got a week’s vacation coming. I just wanted to do some prospecting.”

  The old man began to stack canned tomatoes and potatoes on the counter; Kernehan noted that he shook his head several times. “No use you tryin’ to board here with Randy and me—you’ll be wanting to sleep and eat out wherever it is you’re working. I’ve tried prospecting in my day, it wasn’t something you come home at night from like other work. I’ll make you a load of grub.”

  “I’m just a rockhound,” Kernehan corrected. “I haven’t lost anything in that forty miles of broken country I saw from the ridge, I’ll be in at night.”

  The old man hesitated, and Kernehan thought that he was trying to think of another excuse to get him going. If anything was going on, anything remotely connected with that business of robbing the railroad, they wouldn’t want a stranger camped here. At the same time, he thought dryly to himself, what an excellent supply depot this would make for the thieves, what a fine way to get food, water, and other necessities under cover of the old man’s strange business venture.

  The old man’s vein-knotted hands hovered over the canned goods on the counter. “I don’t know … I kind of hate to take your money, get you to stay here. I never heard of much of anything in gem stones, this part of the country. No agate … jasper … opals—they’re further west, up around Daggett, that country.”

  “Rockhounds are pretty thick there. I’m looking for new fields.”

  After another moment Bucklen shrugged, began returning the cans to the shelves. “Well, sir, it’s your money. What’d you reckon would be a right price for a day’s vittles? Five dollars sound too high?” He seemed to wait hopefully, and Kernehan wondered if by some strange chance he could be honest, be what he seemed, and actually need the money.

  “It’s okay.”

  “I make fresh bread most every day. Boy eats it by the loaf. We got lots of eggs, can fry up a chicken at night if you’d like that.”

  “Sounds fine.”

  “You going to start with lunch?”

  “Might as well,” Kernehan said. “It’s nearly lunchtime now.”

  The old man led the way back out of the tent, lowered the flap, and tied the string. “Then where you headin’?”

  “Maybe out in the direction of that big sink I saw coming down.”

  “Nothing out there,” Bucklen told him. “Used to be borax works down there, but it wasn’t good quality, they gave it up. It’s just an old salt-lake bed, what it is. If I was you and wanted something in the line of rocks—don’t think you’ll get anything like agate or jasper, but you might run across a few geodes—I’d run up a few of them saddleback canyons down yonder.”

  “I’ll give it a try.”

  At the tree the old man paused. Beyond, in the shade, Kernehan saw a cement rim above a round boundary of desert rock, evidently the well Bucklen had cleaned out. “One thing I better mention now while I think of it. Nights, we get a powerful passel of coyotes down here.”

  “I’ll bet you do.” Kernehan wondered why he hadn’t pretended to be hunting. It would give an excuse for the gun, of sorts. A rifle would have been better; but he had had no inkling of what he would find in Tarwater; and so now, no need to regret. “How do you keep them out of the chickens?”

  Bucklen coughed and spat. “Been lucky so far. Chicken house ain’t much, we built it out of old boards we salvaged from the town yonder, and you see what that is. We got to bring in new sound lumber, build a good one. Till then Randy sleeps out there, takes his cot and blankets, sets up right by the chicken-house door. One night … it was moonlight … he wakes up and there’s a big buck coyote looking him over from less’n a yard off.”

  “What did Randy do?”

  “Chucked a shoe at him. Must of got him pretty hard, we heard him howlin’ all the way up the ridge.” Bucklen jerked his head toward the rocky heights above the town.

  “Randy must have a pretty good aim.”

  Something closed up tight behind the old man’s face, almost a warning, Kernehan thought, as if comment about the boy’s personal qualities were somehow out of bounds.

  “Maybe he’s got a future in baseball.”

  Bucklen had half turned away. Now he looked back briefly. “Where you aiming to sleep, Mr. Kernehan?”

  Kernehan had given this some thought. “Well—I hadn’t expected to find a place where I could put up as good as this. I suppose I could go back to town, pick up some blankets, and come back and sleep in my car.”

  “No need for a trip to town. We got blankets. Give you a cot if we had one. Don’t have.”

  “I’ll be fine in the car,” Kernehan said.

  “I won’t charge for use of the blankets,” Bucklen decided. “We’ll just say the five dollars covers that, too.”

  “Thanks.”

  Bucklen went past the other tent to a crude outdoor fireplace made of rock, and began to build a cook fire for lunch. He shaved a board to kindling, worked with a few torn scraps of newspaper, got a blaze going. He wasn’t slow in his motions. He was wiry and adept.

  Kernehan thought to himself that the place wasn’t at all bad for the old man’s purpose—which seemed to be to get away from it all. There was not only apparently plenty of water, the wood supply should do nicely for quite a long while.

  Kernehan called over to him, “Guess I’ll look the town over.”

  Bucklen lifted his head from the small, carefully built blaze. “Just watch your step. It ain’t too early for snakes, and they’ll be shedding. Makes’em mean.”

  “Have you seen any around?”

  “Not yet. Ain’t really been here long enough. Warm weather coming, they’ll show themselves.” He blew on the faltering flame. “Might be they’ve stowed themselves under those old buildings. So keep an eye peeled.”

  There was little to see in the broken-down town, and Kernehan failed to run into any snakes. He found a small patch of desert lupine under the toe of the ridge, a splash of lavender bloom all alone in the midst of sun-scorched rock. A couple of lizards scuttled away. From somewhere a door hinge creaked now and then, faintly, as some semidetached bit of an old house stirred under the wind.

  He came back up the middle of the street, feeling the silence around him, the hinge squeaking and the noise of his boots on the earth only echoing the hollow quiet. Then he saw the boy, Randy, squatting in the shade of a lopsided porch. He had picked a splinter off one of the timbers and was chewing it and waiting. Kernehan decided the boy had been waiting for him. “Hi,” he said to Randy. “It’s hot.”

  “Yes, it is. Going to get hotter.”

  “The summer will be something. You and your grandad going to stay here through the year?”

  “Guess so.” Randy
took the splinter from between his teeth and made marks with it on the earth beside the rotted porch floor.

  “Where do you attend school out here?” Kernehan wondered.

  “I don’t.”

  “Graduated from high?”

  “No, sir. Just a junior this year, if …” His voice died.

  There were state laws on the subject, but Kernehan didn’t see how they could be enforced under the present conditions of isolation.

  “Do you like it out here?”

  Randy gave him a look—at first Kernehan had the idea Randy was looking to see if he was crazy. Then he decided that the look meant it was none of his business, and again he had the impression of overstepping, of trespass into forbidden territory. He turned so that Randy couldn’t see his face, afraid that it would betray his conviction, the sudden hunch; there was something funny going on. The air of concealment was too obvious.

  The old man might really need the five bucks a day, or he might have decided that Kernehan could stay so that he could keep an eye on him. He and the kid. The kid was keeping a sort of surveillance right now, come to think of it.

  “I should think you’d get lonesome for other young people,” Kernehan offered, looking at the expression on the boy’s face.

  “Wouldn’t matter if I did.” Randy rose lazily to his feet. He drew a deep breath as if bored. He was going to make a husky man, Kernehan thought. The shoulders were already broad and deep, the arms well muscled, the hands sturdy. A good-looking boy. Too bad he had to have this sort of start, mixed up in something.

  “How about hunting?” Kernehan asked.

  “I’m not allowed to have a gun.”

  “Your grandad’s rule?”

  Randy nodded briefly. He wore tennis sneakers on his feet. He used one foot to blot out carefully the aimless scratches he’d made in the dirt, as if even a little something to do was better than nothing.

  They went back together to the camp. There were tin plates and cups set out on the plank table under the tree, and presently Bucklen put the food on—frying-pan biscuits and creamed chipped beef made with canned milk, canned tomatoes, slabs of brick cheese, and coffee. It was surprisingly tasty, Kernehan discovered. The old man was no slouch as a cook.