by D. J. Butler
More chuckles.
Leon fielded the question. “Icelandic names. Small country, short list of names, I always figured.” Leon petted the dog-ensemble on his left arm. “As for Petey, he was the best dog I ever had. He was faithful, and I’ll tell you what, a lot more faithful than my wife. She ran off. But Petey stayed with Arnie and me. Stayed and stayed. When he finally got sick, he crawled under the back porch and died. I figured, what the hell, you can’t chase away loyalty like that, and now he’s always with me. Ain’t ya, Petey?” Leon wiggled the dog at Michael; the border collie’s mouth stretched wide to permit the chihuahua head, which seemed to be on the end of an extending rod or something similar, to emerge. “Bark. Bark. Bark. Down, boy. Down.” The giant guffawed, flinging spittle. “And Petey Two was a short-timer in this world, but there’s no reason a short-timer has to be lonely.”
Michael’s eyes and mouth opened wide. Hiram wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry, the giant didn’t seem to be making any kind of threat, so he stayed in his seat and watched.
Finally, Michael laughed. Then he relaxed, and reached up to pet the concentric dogs.
“Right,” Leon said. “You thirsty?”
“These fellows aren’t drinkers,” Howard Balsley said. He raised a tumbler. “But I’ll take a drink of Petey.”
A drink of Petey? Hiram furrowed his brow.
Leon grabbed the chihuahua head in one enormous fist. Tilting the dogs back to face the ceiling, he tugged—and Petey Two’s head came off, revealing the wide mouth of a bottle, taxidermied right into the body of original Petey.
“That’s the stuff,” Balsley said.
Leon grinned and poured half a glass of the contents of Petey into the tumbler. Hiram smelled the sharp tang of hard liquor and made himself smile, despite the oddity of watching alcohol pouring from the open mouth of a mangy stuffed dog.
Howard took a drink and grunted his appreciation.
The giant re-corked his dogs, swiveled left, and went back to the front desk.
The three old-timers rose.
Green spoke for them. “Well, we best let you to your lunch. If you need anything, Hiram, let us know. We hear you’re going to stay on Lloyd’s land and sight-see on the Monument. It’s gorgeous country up there. Why, someday, I bet you Moab is going to be famous the world around for its great beauty.”
“For the uranium,” Balsley put in. “It’s going to be as priceless as gold. We’ll need something to power our spaceships.”
Michael sat bolt-upright.
The three men left out through the door. The other men in the restaurant followed them.
“Spaceships?” Michael murmured.
“You handled that well,” Hiram said.
Michael launched into his fried steak. The meat was drowned in gravy, lying next to a clump of mashed potatoes and a few spoonfuls of peas.
“Do you mean their casual bigotry?” Michael asked. “That’s old news, bordering on the ancient. I think it’s funny Howard Balsley is selling uranium to Marie Curie’s school in Paris. And he didn’t answer your question on the ghost.”
“He didn’t.” Hiram touched his bloodstone.
“Or do you mean the fact that I just pretended that a stuffed dog was alive, so as not to offend its gigantic owner? Not just a stuffed dog, but a stuffed dog inside another stuffed dog. With a liquor bottle inside them both.”
“That too,” Hiram said.
Michael thoughtfully chewed a mouthful of steak. “I guess as a cunning man,” he said slowly, “I’ll have to do a fair amount of pretending. Not to mention evading the question, and…what was it you said? Keeping secret things secret.”
“Yes,” Hiram agreed. “That’s what I said.”
Chapter Seven
Michael drove, his arm out the window, feeling the wind. The road through the Monument wasn’t paved, but it was graded gravel and not well trafficked. Michael found the absence of other travelers rather surprising, given the scenic beauty around them.
To hit the road, they’d had to tack back north and west toward Helper, turning east on a road that was nearly invisible, and quickly climb up over a red rock cliff onto rolling desert table land. This was the long way, that was for sure.
Just in case, they’d picked up a full water can in Moab before they’d headed out, along with a big bag of flour to give to the Udalls.
The three old men back at the hotel were right. Once people found the otherworldly geology of the Monument, they’d come here in droves. As it was, only the courageous made their way into the desert—campers and scientists—or the more desperate, like the Udalls and the people at the ranch. The Wolfes or the Turnbows, apparently.
Michael stopped in front of a vast canyon of sandstone fins, red in the harsh sunlight. They gave the impression that a school of giant dolphins frolicked just beneath the sand.
“The wastes of Dudael,” his pap murmured.
“Come again?” Michael asked.
“Something Gus Dollar said to me. Fallen angels in the wastes of Dudael.”
Michael remembered the flies and fire at the bottom of the cavern, a lost place underneath the Kimball mine. “Gus Dollar tried to kill you, Pap.”
Hiram nodded. “That doesn’t make him a liar. But we don’t need to talk about Dudael and fallen angels.”
“Okay, we can talk about the ghost. You don’t think he’s a demon, do you? Or was Jimmy Udall killed by a fallen angel? Maybe that was what he meant by a wild animal. Maybe a possessed boar named Leon. Or was it Legion? We already have one Leon in Moab.”
Hiram didn’t say anything for a long time.
Michael had to prod him. “Why are we doing all this for the ghost? He’s passed on, right?”
“He’s dead,” Hiram said. “But he isn’t gone. He’s lingering. The dead do that, waiting for the resurrection. The peaceful dead are here too, Grandma Hettie used to say. They’re all around us, waiting for the last trump to sound so they can leap from their graves and meet the Lord Divine. But they’re peaceful, so we don’t hear from them. They’re having a good time, experiencing what some call paradise.”
“Jimmy Udall is the other kind.”
Hiram nodded. “For him, the wait is a kind of prison. Not because he was a sinner, but because he was wronged. He’s upset, I think about the way he died, so he’s trying to let us know, so we can fix it for him.”
“You want to help the dead, just like you want to help the living.” Michael shook his head slowly. “Pap, you have a big heart.”
“And the yet-to-be-born,” his father said. “Everyone is co-eternal from the beginning, and everyone will continue forever. We are all one family.” He consulted his map. “I think the turn off is just ahead. This map calls it Turnbow Road. At the very least, we can understand Jimmy’s death. People want to be understood, alive or dead, and that might be enough to give him peace. And if it isn’t…we’ll see what else we can do.”
Michael turned off the graded road at Hiram’s indication. Turnbow Road was rutted, long tracks of dried mud in the soil, pitted and precarious. The Double-A had a high base, and so, while they went sideways a few times, it didn’t rub its undercarriage on any of the exposed rock.
It was a bouncy, fun ride, and Michael loved negotiating his route through the desert. He’d drive off the road to avoid rocks or fallen logs, and when the road was entirely destroyed where it crossed a small gully—it looked as if a flash flood had wiped out the ramp entirely—he’d sidetracked half a mile to make his own crossing, always following his father’s directions and trying to stick to the map.
It was problem-solving, and Michael liked solving problems.
When they reached the Udalls’ dugout, there was a Plymouth Model 30U parked on the roadside. The car was brown, with chipped and flaking paint, and words painted on the side: DOCTOR STETSON’S ALL-GOOD SYRUP above, and below that, YOU’RE JUST 5¢ FROM A SMILE! A water barrel was strapped to the car’s roof. Had the Udalls gone for water, was that why they ha
dn’t been here, earlier? In any case, they were home now, and they didn’t look as if they were flush with stolen silver.
The family was out in the shade behind a rise of red rock. Two dirty-faced toddlers in rough square dresses played in the sand with wooden cups. The younger seemed to be trying to build a castle; the older was trying to bury the younger in sand.
Michael and his father emerged from the truck. A big woman plucked her towels and washcloths off the line. She held the linen in front of her and stepped closer to her children. Her coveralls lay over a calico shirt, both bleached by washing and the sun. She had dark hair and dark eyes, and she squinted at Hiram and Michael.
“You the Stetsons?” Hiram asked.
She shook her head. “We just bought his truck off him, when he didn’t know how to fix it anymore. Big city fool, more money than sense.”
“So you’re the Udalls?”
“Moses!” she snapped. Lowering her voice, she admitted, “Yes, we are, unless you got a writ.”
From out of the dugout came her male twin. Same coveralls and the same calico. Michael noticed that the two little girls’ dresses were made out of the same material, too. The man also had black hair, long and unkempt, and dark eyes.
Mr. Udall walked up to them in work boots. Same work boots on the woman as well. “Hey. What you two want?”
Hiram hefted the bag of flour down off the back of the truck. “Good day, Moses. I’m Hiram Woolley. This is my son Michael. Banjo Johansson had an extra bag of flour lying around, and if there aren’t weevils in it, you might like it.”
Moses frowned. “We ain’t no hobos. We don’t need no charity.”
Michael considered pointing out that the double-negative was a positive vote in favor of charity, but he managed to hold back.
“It’s old flour,” Pap said. “If you don’t want it, we’ll take it with us. Like I said, it might be spoiled.”
The woman set her laundry on a rock and came over to stand next to her husband. “We’ll see if it is. And thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Pap set the flour sack down on a broad red rock.
“You some kind of errand boys for Banjo Johansson?” Mr. Udall asked. “Or just doing him a favor, seeing as you was passing through?” He twisted his waist to scan the desolate horizon with his eyes and barked out an unpleasant laugh.
“Coming to see you, in fact.” Hiram smiled. “Banjo knew it, so he threw the flour on our truck.”
“Us?” Mr. Udall’s laughter and his smile collapsed. “What for? I don’t owe nobody money.”
“My son and I are interested in the ghost up around these parts. Folks think it might be your boy.”
“Jimmy’s dead,” Mrs. Udall said. “He fell. He ain’t the ghost. He’s at home with Jesus.”
“What you mean, interested?” Mr. Udall put in. “This some kind of game to you? You table-rappers or Quakers or something?”
“It’s no game.” Michael’s mouth ran ahead of his thoughts, and he was surprised to hear how earnest he sounded. “Do you mind talking about him with us? We’d like to help.”
“Help us?” Moses Udall squinted.
Hiram nodded. “And your boy.”
The woman crossed her arms. “Who are you?”
“Just people,” Hiram said. “But people who have experience with things like ghosts. I came to town to help Lloyd Preece find a well for Rex Whittle. Dowsed for it.”
“Sometimes people call us cunning men,” Michael said. Oddly enough, it felt good to say it.
“Better than that goddamn sheriff.” The woman spat into the dirt. “He called it a wolf attack. Three Toe, he said. I don’t believe it. Jimmy had a rifle. We didn’t hear a gun. We didn’t hear nothin’ that night.”
“Dammit, Priscilla!” Moses Udall thundered. “You can’t be blaspheming. The Reverend Majestic says we have to keep our speech perfect as God is perfect, or we’ll end up worse than Roosevelt.”
Roosevelt? Michael resolved that, if he ever entered the ministry, he’d call himself the Reverend Majestic.
“He’s damned by God, Moses, that Jack Del Rose is. Damned to hell.” She spat again. “It’s no blasphemy to say it. You take on the job of sheriff, you take on the responsibility, and he ain’t done his job, not by half!”
Moses spat also, as if prompted by his wife.
“The Reverend Majestic?” Pap asked. “Is that Earl Bill Clay? Preacher Bill? Is he around?”
“Preacher Bill shares the word of God for today,” Mr. Udall answered. “God’s ways are not our ways, and not the ways of the Roosevelt Administration. Preacher Bill says to have faith and keep our heads down, and we do, mostly. Only we don’t trust the sheriff. He’s worthless. Not a bad man. He just ain’t a good lawman.”
And yet Erasmus Green, the banker, thought highly of him. Wasn’t it just like the law, to be on the side of the wealthy?
“He didn’t look for the body,” Priscilla said. “He didn’t do no lawmanning. He called it wild animals and that was that. Or he said Jimmy left us ’cause of how hard the times are. He said maybe Jimmy might have found work in Grand Junction, over in Colorado, or rode the rails. Jimmy was a good boy. He wouldn’t leave us.”
Moses’ next words came out hard. “October last, Jimmy took the rifle out to hunt. Maybe catch an antelope. He never came back. I found the rifle up near the arch. No blood. No sign of Jimmy. Saw deer tracks in the sand, big ones. I’d a swore it was elk, maybe, but no elk would be out here in the desert. Not much to eat.”
“Have you seen many wolves out here?” Hiram asked.
“Coyotes are out here,” Moses grunted. “Not many wolves, since wolves like elk. Lot of meat there. I took down some elk in the La Sals last December, after Jimmy left us for his great reward in heaven above. Wolves in the La Sals are more likely than out here.”
“Though you did see big deer tracks,” Michael pointed out. “Maybe a herd of big deer is on the Monument, and wolves are hunting them.”
Moses nodded slowly.
Priscilla’s frown had turned darker. “Thanks for the flour. But you should leave and not bring up bad memories.”
“We’re sorry for your loss,” Pap said. “We’ll be on our way. But if you remember anything, we’re camped down near the river near Lloyd Preece’s homestead.”
“Lloyd’s a Christian,” Moses said. “He doesn’t trouble us if we’re on his land, and we’ve even done chores for him a time or two. Ain’t hardly another Christian body, though, and it’s only a matter of time before we’re sent on out from here. Howard Balsley says the government is going to take all this land. For tourists. I guess I can see that. It sure is pretty out here.” He paused. “Pretty, but in a sad way. Dust and death, and shapes God Almighty Himself can barely imagine.”
“You could say the same about life, I guess.” Pap tipped his hat. “Good day to you folks. We’re sorry for your loss.”
Moses nodded at them. “You have a good day.”
Priscilla curtsied.
Back in the Double-A, Michael went to turn around, but Pap pointed onward. “Let’s go see about the uranium prospector. He might have seen something.”
Michael cranked the wheel and sent the truck over a big shelf of rock, keeping his speed down and his tires off the sandy road so he wouldn’t wash the Udalls in dust.
“Glad they took the flour,” Pap murmured.
“Why do they stay out here?” Michael asked. “Is there no better place for them?”
His father left the question unanswered.
Where the road passed a long stretch of slickrock, they found the campsite again. This time it wasn’t empty; beside the tent stood a Ford Tudor, which was an awfully nice car to be out in the middle of the desert. A man hurried from the tent to his cooking stove, balanced on a low table assembled from pieces of long sandstone, kicking up dust as he went. Beside the stove lay cylinders and boxes without any immediately obvious uses—prospecting equipment? Then he grabbed a pack, turned it upside,
and shook out the contents.
Michael drove up next to him.
The man wore work pants and a nice shirt that would’ve looked better under a suit jacket. His suspenders were black silk. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, showing sunburned arms, as burned as his face and neck. The man had a pronounced Adam’s apple and a shock of dark hair, white with dust.
He ran up to the truck, kicking up more dust from his brown shoes. Not boots, those were shoes. The prospector pushed his face in through the window on Michael’s side. His eyes crowded close together on either side of a nose like a beak. The stench of him, sweat and stink and liquor, washed into the cab. “Have you seen it?”
Michael considered driving on. This guy wasn’t right.
“Maybe,” Pap said. “What are you looking for?”
The man stepped back, laughing. “The secrets of the universe. The rocks, the answer is in the rocks. History. All the history of the world. Power in the stone. Stones. The universe is in the stones. You haven’t seen it, have you?”
Michael felt the prickle of fear. Stones. As in a seer stone? Or a bloodstone? He leaned back. “I believe this falls into your area of expertise, Pap.”
His father got out of the truck and stepped slowly around the front.
The prospector faded slightly back.
Pap held up both his hands. “I’m Hiram Woolley. That’s Michael in the truck. We can help you, if you let us.”
“Davison Rock.” The man looked as if he were about to say more, but then he slammed his mouth shut and swallowed hard. His next words were a bit more coherent. “I’m Davison Rock. I’m fine. I’m all right. As right as rain, as they say, but there isn’t rain in the wilderness. It’s the Great Basin. The Sierra Nevadas take the rain. The Rockies over there, they take the rain. History is under my feet, history all the way back to the first day of creation, do you hear me? Moment zero!” The man laughed, but then tears fell from his eyes.
He staggered back, retreating.
Pap drifted to Michael, still in the truck, the engine idling. Pap leaned against the truck, his arms crossed. “He’s drunk. Maybe we’ll come back when he’s sober.”
