by Philip Webb
Luis has dismounted and wades up to his knees. He smiles at me. “Try it!”
Just for a few moments, my troubles drop away. We glance at each other floundering in the sand, pouring it through our fingers. For the fun of it. I feel light, almost weightless. It’s as though the trials of the journey that brought us to this place cease to matter. We are here. We are alive. We are friends. I close my eyes, but when I open them again, Luis’s carefree smile has gone. His look is searching, loaded somehow with a meaning that escapes me.
Kelly bobs by on an upwelling of new sand — it spills about her and bears her along. The horses splay and turn in lazy currents. We are sent to the crest of a gigantic bank and from there, as we tip, I can see the margins of the desert flowing out into a dozen or so spokes. They run into canyons at the outset of the San Andres Mountains, carving sheer slots from the rock. They are the land rivers and we are at their source.
Farther north, I watch great gouts of dust blasting into the sky — geysers massing into white pillars, fanning and bursting in the wind.
And as if issuing from a wondrous dream, perched upon the flow of one mighty land river, I see a wooden house. It pitches and yaws, anchored to static boulders by a series of chains. In clumsy wading bounds I am reunited with Cisco, for it is not difficult to navigate the currents.
By and by, we converge upon the floating house. Smoke escapes from an iron chimney. A man stands up from his easy chair on the back porch. He waves us around to a log pier tacked onto one side of the house, where one raggedy mule is tied up. From here he helps us guide the horses out of the river.
He is a small man, but I feel his great strength as he hauls me aboard the creaking planks. His face is much weathered by the wind, like wood that has split with age, but his eyes are bright and friendly. He touches the bill of a baseball cap that says simply I’M OLDER.
“Howdy, ma’am.”
“You’re Devon Marshall.”
“The same. If we been acquainted, you’d have to remind me of it. I ain’t used to folks out here. But I’m mighty glad of the company. Shot me a brace of wild turkeys and they’re roastin’ pretty fine. The Lord knows how they came to be flounderin’ in this here country, but it ain’t for me to wonder why. This here hub-a rivers throws up some strange pickin’s. But three fresh-faced young’uns like yourselves gotta be the strangest.”
The house sways under gentle currents of sand and heaves out creaks of complaint from its joists like a ship at anchor. Inside, it is a jumble of bric-a-brac mostly nailed or tied down — combed, Marshall says, from the dunes. Crates and barrels and engine blocks and truck tires fashioned into such furniture as he needs. Our shadows leap under the light of a swinging oil lamp, and it is snug as we huddle around an iron stove stoked with glowing coals.
Marshall serves the birds with wild onions and herbs from the San Andres Mountains and slabs of corn bread and it is the finest meal I have tasted in a long while. He feeds choice morsels to an ancient cat named Nugget that resembles a moth-eaten pillow, with broken teeth and torn ears. Nugget listens to the man’s constant gabble and gazes at us with a look of such half-lidded contentment that it is hard to imagine how life could be bettered.
“Lazy son of a flea-bitten molly — he don’t even have to round up the rats ’cause they don’t make it onto the land river.”
“You need no perimeter here — it is a Zone doldrums spot?” I ask.
“Nope — Zone here’s as active as other places. But, see, its force comes out in the land rivers. If you can live with the flow, ride it some, then you’s safe as a bug in a blanket. Been here two summers now, when the stirrin’s first started. That’s how come it ain’t on your map — this here’s a new happenin’ — spouting up wrecks of towns and riches from way down below. Kimberlite wells.”
“What’s-a-lite?” asks Kelly.
“Kimberlite — molten rock. Deep. Like three hundred mile. Satan’s forge. Loaded up with minerals. I seen a lava pipe burst up north-a here, sprayin’ diamonds big as your fist.”
“No way! Let’s see,” asks Kelly.
Marshall shakes his head. “Let ’em just drift downriver. If I cash in, this place’d be swamped. Dumbass rookies fillin’ their boots. This here White Sands is special. It ain’t for gettin’ pig-rich off of. Happenin’s like this is for a reason. Them springs out there start real gentle, just a-tricklin’. But they sure pick up. Mighty tough to cross once they get in their stride. You figured it yet?”
“Is like for guarding this land. Make hard for riders,” answers Luis. “Zone keep secrets maybe this way.”
“Makin’s of a tracker, son. Zone’s gotta keep its borders battened down. See, them land rivers pan out from here north and west and they done split territories up into a score of smaller Zones. Like itty-bitty islands. You can’t cross it like you used to. Hell, no one can even chart them all ’cause they changin’ course when you ain’t expectin’. Man, you don’t wanna be hunkered down on your ass when that happens — it’ll chew a damn forest into sawdust quicker’n you can run for your worthless life. Well, nuff-a my ramblin’ on. I can see you ain’t no tourists. Figure you gotta be here on some kinda mission if you’re in this deep.”
He waits while Nugget watches us through green-gold eyes that are practically melting with pleasure. And it is clear he will wait all day for an answer if he has to.
So I begin to tell him all that we have been through so far. He nods and sighs and his face darkens when I relate the shooting of Marfa’s sheriff.
“Mighty grieved to hear that. He’s a true officer of the law. I knowed Samuel since he took on the badge. That town don’t deserve him. Still, he’s the toughest man I ever met — you don’t escape the grave, but he ain’t one to tip into it lightly, neither.”
The rest of the tale he listens to tight-lipped, just stroking Nugget behind the ear ’til the room throbs with the sound of pampered purring. The deluge of fish, the Visitor in Brokeoff, succumbing to the Zone sleep, Carlsbad and the Visitors hiding there, the Mavis Pilgrim, Gallop’s story about Yiska, the whereabouts of my pa’s grave, the fate of this world that hangs in the balance.
“Last I heard, Yiska was crazy,” says Marshall. “Zone does that sometimes, breaks a man. Even a tracker, and Yiska was one of the best.”
He sits thinking for a long time, unpicking Nugget’s claws from his clothes. He pours us a measure of liquor each and replenishes the stove.
“Spied a big party two days back. They was movin’ real fast. Maybe fifteen riders. They went north ’cross the middle of the Sands. Lucky for me or they’d-a seen my setup here, I guess, but they looked like they’d never-a stopped for no one. Only could be Jethro’s boys — no other outfit as big as that in these parts.”
“They split,” I reason. “Some staying for the Mavis, some riding straight to Canyon de Chelly.”
“Maybe they reckoned they don’t need the clue we got from the Mavis,” adds Kelly. “Like all they gotta do is dig up every grave there.”
“Two days ahead,” mutters Luis.
I sigh. “It can’t be helped. At least we know something about the destination that they do not.”
“True,” agrees Marshall. “And they’d be waylaid by Zone troubles just the same. Two days ain’t no disaster.”
“We ain’t gonna catch them,” says Kelly. “Even if we rode day and night. We’re all in as it is. How far to Canyon de Chelly?”
Marshall traces out a route on my map. “Three fifty, four hundred mile, but you might as well double that in the Zone for all them extra scrapes comin’ at you. Well, from here least you ain’t got land rivers to cross to get to Spider Rock — ’less you get a real shake-up of the currents. There’s a mighty one runs across mesa country, Lost Woman Crater and them places. I followed its banks up as far as Church Rock three month back but I never went farther north ’cause that’s Navajo territory and they sure don’t take kindly to intruders.”
I down my liquor. It has the fortifying ta
ste of oak and fire, and it seems to bolster the wild thought I have been entertaining for some time.
“What about if we go on the land river itself? We will make up the miles then, for the current will be with us.”
Devon Marshall stares at me, eyebrows climbing up to his cap. Then he erupts into laughter. For a few minutes he cannot speak without collapsing into new gales.
“I met your daddy just after Visitation,” he manages at last. “Yep, I met the great Virgil Bridgwater when he was the only man to make it to the Pacific and back in one piece. And he told me you had to break the rules if you wanna be a tracker. Craziest damn wanderer I ever shared a whiskey with. ’Til I shared one with you — his daughter! Navigate a land river. Well, goddamn if that ain’t the most cracked notion I ever heard.”
When he has finished drying his eyes, and no further outbursts seem imminent, I tell him. “Sir, I mean what I say. Tell me how it might be done.”
Marshall refuses to set off until we have rested. He warns that there will be precious little opportunity for sleep on the land river and beckons us to lie down on a mattress by the woodstove. We three cozy into position, top and tail like sardines in a can. Luis lies in the middle and makes a show of suffocating from the combined fumes of my feet and Kelly’s.
“Yeah, well, it stinks like a saloon chunder bucket up here, buddy,” Kelly says. “Gonna have to amputate real soon. Bury these puppies in a concrete bunker for a thousand years.”
Luis raises his eyes at me, and again the look strays into something else. I want to meet it, his unwavering gaze, but I don’t know how, so I turn away and feign exhaustion. On the other side of Luis’s blistered feet, Kelly sighs with disappointment, exasperation almost. At these quiet moments, I feel off balance — another conversation without words leaves me none the wiser.
I feel too keyed up to sleep, my mind running wild with visions of the journey ahead. But the gentle lifting of the sand currents beneath Marshall’s house and the glow from the stove send me into deepest slumber.
I wake with a sick start, suddenly worried that I’ve let my guard down in the Zone, but all is as before. Creaking complaints issue from the house timbers. Nugget has wedged himself between Luis and me — an urgent throb of bliss rises from his bellows-bag body.
Kelly is awake — I watch her for a while as she leans against a porch post outside, gazing at the motionless sun.
I extricate myself from the blankets, taking care not to disturb boy or cat, and join her.
She nods at me but we don’t speak for some while.
“Can’t sleep?” I ask at last.
She begins to answer but then cuts herself short. The sand makes a susurrating sound as it sweeps around the piles of the landing stage. Our three horses jostle on the planks, catching their balance as they doze. Marshall’s mule has gone.
“Where is he?”
Kelly nods west toward the San Andres Mountains. “Went to set up a perimeter. Easier to keep watch up there, he said. Wants to take stock of the Zone before we set off.”
It is the quiet hour that puts this awkwardness between us, I think. Something about this lonely place, this source of land rivers, that makes us turn inward. I leave her to her thoughts, but she takes my sleeve.
“Do you think we’ll make it, Megan?” There is no imploring tone — she just asks it straight.
“Maybe. It’s a miracle we’ve made it this far. But … we …” I struggle to explain it, this conviction that I have.
“We are strong.” She finishes it for me. “Together. The three of us.” She lets out a little laugh. “The Bridgwater Posse.”
“It is true. Trackers generally move solo. They are loath to trust the judgment of others.”
I think of every occasion where we have needed to rely on each other. And if we were not three … then we would have failed. Lost, split asunder.
“The three of us,” she says again.
It gives my heart a jolt to hear the wistful tone in her voice — that she might have designs to break that bond somehow.
But she says simply, “I’ll be alone when this is done.”
“What?”
“If we make it, I mean. My family all gone. It won’t be the same no more, us.”
“What talk is that?”
She captures my gaze then, her hair caught in the wind like a golden streamer. “I dream about them, Megan. My folks. I always was the kid sister — holding my own, ton of cousins, uncles, aunties, big ol’ family getting on my nerves sometimes. But they ain’t coming back.”
“You’ve got us now,” I tell her, meaning it, not just as comfort but as fact.
“You got Luis,” she murmurs. “I ain’t getting in the way. Three works now but …”
“It … It’s not like that,” I stammer, feeling the blood rush to my face.
She looks at me askance. “What are you two like?”
“What?”
She pauses, trying to fathom me. “If you don’t know what’s as plain as potato pie, then I ain’t telling you.”
I’m adrift in this exchange. It worries at me — a ridiculous feeling that they have secrets.
There must be a hard frown on my face, for she says, “Jesus, Megan. You could try talking to him. That’s what the female of the species does best, right?”
A charge of hope laced with jealousy barrels through my chest.
“What’s he said to you?” I am unable to remove the last edge of accusation from my voice.
“Hey, I ain’t doing this go-between bull. You’re on your own.” A little laugh of disbelief, but not unkind.
I block her as she makes to go inside. She raises her eyes to the heavens, and checks past me, to ensure we are not overheard.
“Slow down, sister,” she says softly. “He ain’t said nothing. He don’t need to.”
She spruces my collar, all breezy now. And I know behind me Luis is awake.
Her smile is warm, and it is as though she tries the quip for size, wondering if she can still be the old Kelly, after everything she has been through. She wrinkles her nose at the jacket she bought in Brokeoff not much more than a day ago. “First I get half the fishing grounds of the Gulf of Mexico dumped on my ass, then I’m target practice for every flying critter in the Southwest! You’d think they was saving it up for me, the way I got it on every square inch. Like how much restroom action can you squeeze out of a bat anyways?”
She reaches in to smell me, holding my eye all the way.
“Phew — you ain’t been spared the eau de bat, neither. What next, do ya reckon? Piss of polecats? I tell you, this ol’ Zone is a bummer. I wanna wake up in the Big Rock Candy Mountains, you know, where the hens lay soft-boiled eggs, lemonade springs, all that.”
There is no time for deciphering feelings, mine or anyone else’s. Marshall returns in short order and we leave his floating house, once more entering the currents of White Sands. The old tracker is highly adept at leading his mule through the drifts. He wades and steers through eddies I see too late, but after an hour of fighting for balance, I learn to ride the forces that churn through this place.
Spokes of gleaming sand wend out from the dunes in different directions, and without Marshall’s skill, we could have ended up on any one of them. But as the flow picks up on our chosen path northward, the other land rivers disappear from view. The sand peters out or is churned into a mix of other soils and the horses shrug out of the shallows onto stronger ground, albeit faster moving. First the fixed peaks of the San Andres Mountains, then the Oscura ridge pass by as we progress. The way the solid banks fall behind, it is like riding Cisco at top clip even though his true pace is a trot. It is unerringly strange to pick a path across a desert in perpetual motion. Fissures are liable to open up at any time as the dirt rolls over itself, tumbling through broken country being made anew. A fine amber cloud of dust rises from these stirrings. Stones slide and are swallowed. Boulders jiggle in their mountings, trembling like ancient heads. But strangest of all
is the noise — a deep-in-the-Earth grumbling, punctuated by the crack of rock beds long undisturbed, and riding over it all, the rush and rattle of shale, as if the hand of God is panning for gold.
I’m sure the horses would lose their wits but for the ever-present challenge to find sure footing. It takes their minds over, leaving no room for fear. I, too, am absorbed in the task of remaining upright — trying to follow Marshall’s mule as it picks its route, nimble as a mountain goat, up and over undulations in the terrain.
We are all sick, except Marshall, who must be used to the unnatural motion of land-as-water. The nausea passes, though the unsettling sense that we are in the grip of a drug-induced hallucination does not. In places, I briefly spot the carcasses of small animals, perhaps gophers or rabbits, though it is hard to tell from their formless pelts, crushed no doubt in their burrows. They slither underground or are washed over the shale to the banks.
I shout to Marshall, “The river has changed course recently?”
He holds back so I’m level with him. “Yes, ma’am. It ain’t kept in check by the landscape around, the way a real river is. It’ll switchback at a moment’s notice. But see.” He points ahead where the course bends farther west. “It meanders some, and it can snap into a new turn, but the broad course is the same. This’un runs up right through old Albuquerque, then hangs west roughly where Route 66 used to be. Brings us within a spit of Navajo country.”
“Where does it end up?”
“Hell, your guess good as mine. Them land rivers carving up the whole northern Zone, but I figure they run outta juice when they hit the Deadline border. Our one probably backs up into the biggest pile-a-dirt in Alaska. Either that or it’s chucking out a spur to the noon waters of the Pacific someplace.”
He barks at me to concentrate on the ground swells at Cisco’s hooves. “Gotta keep one eye on close quarters, Megan! Keep him dancing some or he can get real bogged down in a flash. It’s gonna get hairy for the horses somewhere down the line — that’s guaranteed. Gotta be ready to bail out if we have to.”
