by Pete Hautman
“Don’t move,” I said.
The figure turned toward me.
“I was afraid they got you,” said Tim.
The precipice Tim and Frosty had tumbled over was only about twenty feet high. Tim had landed directly on top of Frosty, then bounced into a tangle of wolfberry pushes. He was pretty scratched up.
“You’re sure she’s dead?” I’d known Frosty most of my life.
“I think the rock that hit her did it.”
Tim had salvaged what he could from the saddlebags. His shotgun hadn’t survived the fall, and both water jugs had burst upon impact, but he’d been able to save some food, a blanket, and a few other odds and ends. He had loaded it all into the shell of the nylon tent and, using the tent as a sack, made his way down the narrow ravine, looking for a place to climb out. At a place where the side of the drainage had collapsed he had been able to scramble up a pile of broken boulders and, after stumbling around in the dark for a while, he had found the trail.
“We better keep moving,” I said. We tied the remains of Tim’s packs onto Cecil’s saddle. We would all be walking now. I started down, leading Cecil, and Tim brought up the rear. Tim had my rifle—if we were attacked again, it would come from behind.
We picked our way down the steep, rocky trail, waiting for more rocks to fall, or for a band of Kinka to come swarming upon us. Intent on listening, we did not talk.
An hour of slow walking—the trail became more treacherous with every step—brought us to the Coconino sandstone layer, an area dotted by junipers and enormous boulders. We stopped there and sat down on a flat rock looking out over Red Canyon. I pulled a bag of roasted pine nuts from my pocket and offered some to Tim. We sat munching and looking down into the gorge. In the moonlight, we could see the Redwall, the sheer, six-hundred-foot-high limestone cliff that ran the entire length of the canyon, waiting a quarter of a mile below us. The Redwall is the most precipitous part of the canyon. Except for a few dozen established trails through breaks in the Redwall, traversing it on foot is impossible. The Red Canyon trail would take us down, but it would not be easy.
Tim said, “So, you want to know what I saw?”
My heart jumped in my chest; followed by a wave of nausea. I’d been so busy thinking about our immediate danger, about where my next footfall should go, that I’d blocked out the reason we’d visited the Kinka camp in the first place.
“What,” I said, dreading what I was about to hear.
“There were about forty of ’em,” Tim said. “They were drinking something. Some kind of liquor. Sitting around the fire. Actually, only about a dozen of them were drinking. A lot of them were just sitting there looking vacant. You know, like Emory. He was one of them, by the way. He’s got paint all over his face now. They all had paint on their heads. They were mostly men, a few women, and a few little kids. It was one of the kids that spotted me and started hollering.”
“It’s a good thing they were drunk,” I said. “Otherwise they might’ve got us.”
Tim held out his hand for more nuts. I poured a few more into his hand.
“One of the women seemed to be in charge,” he continued. “I got a good look at her. She was black—or maybe she was painted black, and she was wearing tons of jewelry. Gold chains and earrings and bracelets—everything. She jangled when she walked, and she had these light colored eyes, kind of gold colored. Everybody called her Mother K, but I don’t think she was really anybody’s mother. She was walking around putting her hand on people’s heads, or she would shout at one of them to put another log on the fire or help with the cooking. She was the one that started yelling orders when that little kid spotted me.”
Tim took another handful of nuts.
“Did you see Hap?” I was afraid to ask about Uncle and Harryette.
Tim shook his head. “No, but they have the Land Rover and the Jeep and a big old bus—like a school bus? There were some people inside. They could’ve been in there.”
After a few seconds of chewing, Tim said, “There’s something else. The one they called Mother K, I saw her talking to this one girl. I couldn’t see them too good—they were on the other side of the fire—and they weren’t talking, actually. They were writing things in the dirt with a stick.”
“Why were they doing that?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.
“I’m pretty sure it was Harryette.”
“You think she’s their prisoner?”
“She wasn’t tied up or anything.”
“We have to go get her,” I said. “Hap and Uncle, too.”
“If they’re there.”
“Harryette wouldn’t just leave Uncle and Hap. She’s not like Emory. And she wouldn’t join up with a bunch like that. She wouldn’t have let them roll rocks down on us.”
“Maybe she’s the one that stopped them,” Tim said.
I loaded the water jug back in the saddlebag. “Whatever, we have to find out.”
“You’re not thinking of going back up the trail, are you?”
“No way. They’d be up there waiting for us. We’ll hike down to the river, then come back up a different way. There are lots of ways to get in and out of the canyon. It might take us a couple days, but when we make it back to the rim they won’t know where to expect us.”
“What if they’re gone?”
“We’ll find them.” I grasped Cecil’s reins. “Let’s get moving.”
Dawn found us picking our way through the Redwall layer, where the switchbacks were steep and the trail narrow. I had hoped the daylight would make the going easier, but now that we could see what we were walking on, I was doubly nervous. The trail was completely washed out in places, forcing us to scramble across steep talus slopes and climb over unstable piles of boulders. Twice I stepped on a loose bit of scree and nearly went down. Even Cecil seemed uncertain and fearful.
We reached the bottom of the Redwall in a state of nervous exhaustion. My legs ached, and my mind had retreated. I felt like I was looking out of my skull through eye-shaped windows. Vishnu Temple, a majestic butte on the north side of the canyon, rose directly in front of us, its pointed summit glowing in the morning sun. Deep inside myself I recognized its beauty, but I felt nothing but weariness. We were still two thousand feet above the river.
“We should stop,” I said. “If we keep going, one of us is going to get hurt. My legs feel like rubber.”
We rested in the shade of the Redwall, watching the colors of the canyon change as the sun rose higher, lighting more of VishnuTemple, then Rama Shrine, then the dozens of smaller, nameless buttes. Far to the west I could see Angel’s Gate jutting up like the roots of an oversize molar, and the enormous, detached section of rim known as Wotan’s Throne. A few yards in front of us a grizzly bear cactus displayed three brilliant pink flowers. Next to that was the stump of a yucca plant, its leaves gnawed off, possibly by a desert tortoise. If I’d been less exhausted I would have pointed these things out to Tim. As it was I simply noted them to myself.
At some point I fell asleep. When I awakened, the sun was directly above us. Tim was standing a few yards off the trail looking at something.
“What do you see?” I asked.
“Some kind of big lizard.”
I stood up, my legs complaining, and looked where he was pointing. A fat, gray-green lizard more than two feet long was sunning itself on a flat rock.
“That’s a chuckwalla,” I said. “If we run out of food, we might have to eat one.”
“I don’t plan to get that hungry,” Tim said.
“You never know.”
The chuckwalla, perhaps understanding something of our conversation, scurried off. We laughed for the first time in more than a day.
“You ready to go?” I asked.
Tim nodded.
We lost the trail several times, but were able to find it by searching for cairns, small piles of rocks that hikers had used years ago to mark the way down. It took us another four hours to reach the river.
&nb
sp; TWO SMALL HOLES
WE MADE CAMP IN A MESQUITE grove above a small rapids. Setting up the tent was a problem—Frosty had landed on top of the tent poles, and the few that Tim had been able to salvage weren’t good for much. We made do by tying the top of the tent to a mesquite branch above us. After a makeshift meal of crackers, sardines, and jerky, I took our water jug down to the river to fill it.
The water was high, and the rapids were roaring. I followed the shoreline upstream to a spot where I could dip the jugs into a pool. To my surprise, the water was warm. In the past, every time I’d been to the river, especially when it was high, the water had been icy cold. Just washing my hands in it would leave my fingers numb. But this water was warm enough to swim in.
I filled the jug, added a purification tablet, and trudged back toward camp. The sun had dropped below the rim; the canyon was in shadow. High above, wisps of cloud stood out against deep blue. I saw an enormous black bird about fifty feet above me, sailing down canyon, too big to be a hawk or an eagle. I was looking at a California condor. When I was born they had been all but extinct. Now, with most of the humans on the planet dead, the condors were coming back. Maybe the six billion dead humans had been the edge they needed. At least one good thing had come out of the Flu.
I’d seen condors before, but never this close. I watched the giant bird sailing down the gorge until it caught a thermal—a channel of warm, rising air—and spiraled up a few thousand feet. As it left the shadow of the canyon walls, sunlight glanced from its naked pink head. With ponderous grace, the great bird banked and glided off toward Wotan’s Throne.
Still looking up, I took a step forward. My foot landed on a rock and skidded off. Weighed down by the water jug, I staggered to the side, stepping into a tangle of driftwood, almost falling. Something slapped against my ankle, causing a sharp pain. Cursing, I extracted myself from the pile of twisted branches, and kept moving toward camp, watching my footfalls. I could have twisted my ankle, or worse, but it seemed to be okay. I reminded myself to be careful. If something happened, we were on our own.
By the time I reached camp the temperature had dropped. I was glad to see that Tim had built a small fire. Cecil was grazing on a patch of grass down near the rapids.
“I saw a condor,” I said, dropping down to sit beside him.
Tim nodded, poking the fire with a stick. “That’s a big vulture, right?”
“Yeah, their wings are ten feet across.”
“Let’s just hope we don’t see one face to face.”
“The only way that would happen is if we were dead and it was eating us.”
“That’s what I mean.” He tossed more wood on the fire. My ankle was throbbing. I reached down to massage it. It didn’t feel twisted, but it didn’t feel right, either.
“What’s the matter?” Tim asked.
“I hit my ankle on something.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” We sat listening to the crackle of burning mesquite, the peeping of frogs, the rushing rapids.
Tim said, “This is the worst day of my life.”
I couldn’t argue. We’d lost a mule, we’d lost our families, and we were stuck at the bottom of the biggest hole on the planet.
“Let’s get some sleep,” I said, standing up. My right foot felt like it was made of lead. A sharp pain rocketed up my calf. I gasped and sat back down.
“You okay?”
“I’m not sure.” I untied my hiking boot and pulled it off. Released from the boot, my foot felt better, but only for a moment. I peeled off my sock.
“You must’ve twisted it good. It’s all swollen.”
I stared at the ankle, reached down and touched it gingerly. Something there—a red lump just above the anklebone. I leaned closer. A shaft of fear pierced my abdomen.
I heard Tim’s voice, as if from a distance. “Jeez, what did you do?”
I didn’t answer. I was staring at two tiny puncture wounds, angry red eyes, about three quarters of an inch apart.
“I think I got bit,” I said.
I knew what to do. Uncle had drilled us in snakebite treatment. The instructions were frighteningly simple: Cut, suck, rest, and hope.
Tim used his knife to make two short, shallow cuts, one over each fang mark. It hurt, but I was too scared to care. He sucked and spat, trying to draw the poison out of the wound. I didn’t figure it would do much good, since almost half an hour had passed since I was bit, but we did it anyway. After about ten minutes I told him to stop. By that time I was feeling a lot worse. My entire leg was pulsing with sharp, electric bolts of pain. My tongue felt thick, and I was sweating gallons.
“I’m gonna be okay,” I said.
Tim handed me a water jug and told me to drink. I managed to swallow a few mouthfuls, then puked it up. “I gotta lie down.”
Tim helped me to the tent. I crawled inside.
“Don’t worry, I’m not gonna die,” I told him.
“You better not.” His face was drawn and pale.
“I’m cold.”
He covered me with a blanket.
“I’m just gonna lie here a while.” The last light of dusk filtered through the tent fabric. I could hear Tim breathing, and the muted rumbling of the rapids. I closed my eyes and saw a sea of bald heads, I saw Harryette and Emory, I saw Frosty and Tim skidding down the scree, I saw Uncle and Hap in the Land Rover, searching for us. I saw the trail, rocky and steep, infinitely long. Images came and went, like a slide show. The Kinka pissing at Moran Point. Trout flapping at the end of my line. The giant boulder tipping into the canyon. I watched as it crashed though rock and trees, sailing over the Redwall, tumbling across the Tonto Platform, falling into the inner gorge, sending a plume of water a thousand feet high. Warm water rained down upon me.
Something wet, dragging across my face, and voices. I opened my eyes, saw a pale, oval shape hovering over me.
“Why is the water warm?” I asked.
“Drink,” said the voice, low and light.
Arms lifted me to a sitting position; a cup found my lips. I gulped.
“Slowly.” A girl’s voice.
I drank until the cup was empty, then fell back into my dreams.
I drift downstream, water lapping at my sides. The canyon walls rise to the sky, the buttes march slowly past, sluggish monsters made of billion-year-old stone. I roll over rapids, rocks soft as gelatin, float through dark parapets of the Vishnu Schist, rock formed when the earth was a lifeless, molten ball. Ahead, a bridge, a figure standing upon it. The Phantom watches me pass, a smile upon her calm face.
Suddenly I am spinning, caught in a whirlpool, the water falling into a great, dark hole. I begin to swim, frantically grasping handholds in the water, dragging myself up the sides of the whirling funnel. I look back. The hole is growing larger, and now I can see light below. The tops of trees, rolling green hills, a meandering turquoise stream. The sides of the funnel have become almost vertical, as sheer as the Redwall. I kick and claw my way up the wall of water, gasping.
Voices.
The tent was bright with mottled sunlight, my mouth dry as ash. My leg? I felt only a heaviness there. I heard Tim talking, his voice low, then a second, higher voice. Harryette? No, it was the voice from my dreams. I raised my head and looked down my body. My foot was propped up on a rolled blanket, wrapped in a bird’s nest of leaves and grass. Only my toes, gray and dead looking, were visible. I willed them to move. The big toe responded, bending lightly, sending prickles of pain up my shin. I sat up, moving carefully, and rolled over onto my hands and knees. The pain was bearable. I lifted the tent flap and looked out. Tim, sitting on a log in front of the dead fire, was talking to a black-haired girl. She heard me moving and found me with eyes dark as obsidian.
“He is back,” she said.
ISABELLA
I CRAWLED OUT OF THE TENT; Tim jumped up to help me to my feet. I tried to put weight on my right foot, but almost passed out from the pain.
The girl, her expressi
on placid, said, “You must wait for the poison to leave your body.”
Tim helped me sit down. He poured some water into a cup and gave it to me to drink. “You’re going to be all right,” he said. “The bandage will suck the poison out.”
“That’s a bandage?” I asked, looking at the crudely tied mass of vegetation wrapping my ankle.
“A poultice,” said the girl.
I took a good look at her. She appeared to be about my age. Her skin was golden with sun, her mouth wide, her eyes sleepy. She wore a tattered pair of blue jeans and a long-sleeved shirt with snap buttons and embroidery over each pocket. Her feet were bare. A pair of battered hiking boots sat on the ground beside her. She had a knife on her belt, and her long black hair was tied back with a braided cord.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Isabella.” Her lips parted, showing brilliant white teeth.
“What are you doing here?”
“I saw your fire.”
“Where did you come from?”
She pointed downriver. I looked to Tim, hoping for a better explanation.
“She helped me take care of you,” Tim said. “She showed up just after you passed out. She knows about snakebites and stuff.”
“You live down here?” I asked.
“I am alive, and I am here.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I am a traveler, like you.”
A wave of exhaustion passed through me. I closed my eyes.
“You must sleep again.”
“I don’t want to sleep.”
“You will.”
“I had dreams.”
“Everyone dreams. This is how we know ourselves.”
Fragments of dream memory came and went. Warm water, carrying me through the canyon. The whirlpool. Knowledge bloomed inside me, a terrible hollowness, and dread. My eyes filled with tears. I turned to Tim.
“I know why the water is warm,” I said.
He looked at me.
