He groped, widening the furious search. Had Duggai found it, tossed it back into the truck? But Mackenzie had been watching him for just that—hadn’t seen Duggai stoop to pick anything up. Then where had the God damn thing gone?
“This what we’re looking for?”
Jay was thirty feet away. Mackenzie gawked at him, got his feet under him, crossed the slope lifting his feet as if from a white-hot surface. “Wind must have blown it around.”
“I don’t see what good it’ll do—it won’t even keep the sun off anybody.”
Mackenzie unfolded the packet. The plastic smelled musty. He stretched it out. Through it he could see the stars.
“Thank God.”
“Mackenzie, I swear to God I’m going to—”
“Come on.” He moved away muttering: “Duggai’s watching us of course. We’ve got to pick a spot he can’t see. If he knew what we were up to he’d come down here one fine noon and cut it to ribbons. We need a hollow—maybe some brush to screen it from him.”
Jay stopped behind him. “You’re going around the bend, Mackenzie. You’re babbling. Incipient paranoia.”
“Come on, damn you—over here, this’ll do.”
It was a dry ravine with irregular V sides not more than three feet deep at the center but it made an S-bend here and clumps of catclaw stood on either bank. You couldn’t see the bottom if you weren’t standing directly above it.
Jay approached with wary stealth. Mackenzie climbed down into the ravine. “Give me a hand. We’ve got to dig.”
“Again?” But Jay came painfully down the sloping bank and waited for instruction.
They scooped a bowl in the bottom of the ravine. Mackenzie used the unfolded raincoat as a pattern: they made the bowl a few inches smaller in diameter than the plastic.
The bowl sloped down to a bottom about two feet deep where Mackenzie carefully built up a large cup of earth, molding it like a piece of pottery. He cut half a sleeve off the raincoat, slit it open and used it for a liner in the cup. It had a capacity of perhaps three quarts—more than enough. The plastic liner ought to prevent anything from seeping into the ground.
The cool subsoil was slightly damp to the touch. That would be enough moisture to start the action; later it would have to be fed with earth and succulents.
Jay followed his instructions as if mesmerized. His initiative was pretty much gone. He didn’t ask questions and Mackenzie perversely volunteered nothing, withholding knowledge because mystery cemented his power. There was still the possibility of mutiny—Jay’s tractability of the moment might not last.
Mackenzie laid the raincoat carefully across the top of the open bowl of earth. He made gestures and Jay imitated his actions: they anchored it down all the way around with heaped earth and stones until the thin plastic was stretched like a drumhead across the top of the hole in the ground. Then Mackenzie placed a small stone in the center of the plastic to make it sag, the stone hanging directly above the plastic-lined cup beneath.
He knew it would work in theory.
But I’ll believe it when I see it.
The spines of the Senita scraped off easily with the knife—like rows of kernels slicing off a corncob. They sucked thin watery sap out of the cactus pulp until their throats no longer constricted in spasms. Mackenzie cut up the rest of it in chunks and dropped them into the hole under the taut plastic.
Jay was dubious. “It’s bone dry in there, Mackenzie.”
“Wait for the sun.”
Mackenzie tested the knife blade with his thumb. When the three of them went back across the hill toward Earle they hobbled like cripples. His feet felt twice their normal size. He limped painfully back into the bushes, impelled by rumbling volcanic pressures inside him. The beginnings of dysenteric diarrhea—unavoidable but frightening: if it got bad enough it would sap every vestige of strength. It ran through him painfully; he cleaned up as best he could with greasewood fronds; then he made his way as far as Earle’s bush and sat down, taking his weight on one palm to lower himself and sitting awkwardly on the side of one buttock to twist the soles of his tortured feet toward the air.
Shirley said, “Not to be gruesome, Sam, but how long has it been since you had a tetanus shot?”
“We get one every spring. Forest Service manual.”
“Then that’s all right. The rest of us could be in a bad way if you went lockjaw on us.”
Jay said, “A bad way compared to what?”
A sheaf of Shirley’s cutoff hair—the strands they hadn’t used up on Earle’s splints—lay weighted with a rock. Mackenzie considered it and leaned back on his elbow and propped his cheek against his palm. An ant climbed his arm and he flicked it away.
“Earle’s probably going to have chills tonight. We’ll need wood and dry tinder. Shave off some parings of that man-zanita bark. Bust up ocotillo and catclaw—it should make good kindling. Any of this brush around here will burn.”
Jay cackled. “What do we start it with? Rub two Boy Scouts together?”
Now just use your head before you go charging off in all directions.
You’re not going to catch anything in your bare hands. Not even a lizard—they move like hell.
Now think.
He listened to Shirley and Jay snapping off branches—the sounds seemed curiously far away. Earle’s breathing was deep and slow: the exhausted sleep of invalid weakness.
Mackenzie salivated over memories of desert cookfires on the Window Rock Reservation—his father roasting coatimundi on a spit.
The thing to keep in mind before panic set in was that the desert teemed with an astonishing amount of life. In the past twenty-four hours he had seen only a few buzzards, a cactus wren, some other high-flying birds and one lizard; but desert animals were mainly nocturnal. This far from water the available species would be limited to those whose metabolism made it unnecessary for them to drink—they absorbed moisture from the vegetation they ate—but that still left room for peccaries, owls, mice, kangaroo and pack rats, jackrabbits, kit foxes and probably scores more. Of one species he was certain: he’d seen the run several times as he’d made his way back and forth along the slope. It was a well-worn jackrabbit trail and he’d known it all the time but the knowledge hadn’t registered until now. Forty years was a long time; it was damn near impossible to resurrect specific memories that old. But he had to milk the memory cells of every drop now.
In the cool night breeze it was possible to think calmly and without urgency. Mackenzie had to do his best thinking right now because if he went much longer without food the brain would begin to starve for nourishment and the ability to reason and recall would be the first to deteriorate. Right now the initial adrenaline alarms had worn off, the stultifying furnace heat had dissipated, panic had receded: the organism was functioning as well as it was ever going to function. He had the next few hours and no more because after that protein starvation would make its effect and everything would begin to disintegrate unless they made fast improvements in their physical situation.
He heard a coyote’s yapping, so far away it was barely audible. Sound carried here; that coyote might be five miles away or more. But it was vaguely encouraging: a coyote wouldn’t stray too terribly far from some source of water. Sooner or later they were going to have to move out of this spot; the move must be toward higher ground; somewhere up there, the coyote told him, there was water. A natural water source would mean big game.
He turned his head slowly and waited for the coyote to speak again. When it yipped he turned his head quickly. The coyote’s announcements broke off and the desert went silent again; but Mackenzie had time to narrow it to the northeastward quadrant.
When we go that’s the way we’ll go.
First they had to have shoes. They wouldn’t be able to make more than a few miles each night because they’d have to carry Earle or drag him on a litter and they’d have to stop early enough to dig pits for themselves and dig a new hole under the plastic raincoat.
&n
bsp; But it would be better than staying here.
Lying on his side, he let his mind range loosely; it was the best way to recover information from the subconscious.
He put himself back inside his child’s skin, sat himself down beside his father’s campfire. In their hunting days they’d gone out sometimes by pickup and sometimes horseback; they’d explored hundreds of miles of reservation desert. His father had been a silversmith; the ostensible purpose for their expeditions had been prospecting for turquoise and agate and obsidian and the petrified wood that tourists paid dearly for; but it had been excuse more than purpose.
“Mackenzie” had been the missionary’s name. When the silversmith married the missionary’s daughter he took her surname. He was a full Navajo born and raised at Chinle in Cañon de Chelly in the heart of the reservation; his tribal name was Tsosi Simalie but it was common for the Navajo to take a second name that would go easier on white men’s palates. When Mackenzie was born his grandfather baptized him Samuel Simalie Mackenzie and his father Tsosi gave him the name Kewanwyti, which had no particular translated meaning in English. His father called him by that name only when they were alone together.
His father felt that Sam’s white blood entitled him to the fruits of Anglo civilization; Mackenzie silver was the best Navajo jewelry of the 1930s and even in the Depression there was money to give the boy the best possible education. Sam saw his father only during the summer holidays—the rest of the time he was a white boy—and now his memory picked its way through the sparse weeks when they’d crossed the desert together and his father had tried to reinforce that other half of Sam’s heritage.
The legends of White Painted Woman and Coyote. The campfire stories of Navajo history—the wars with the rival Apaches and Hopi; the Kit Carson debacle at Cañon de Chelly that had forever destroyed the tribe’s ability to make war; the Long March across New Mexico that had decimated the Navajo nation; the hunters and warriors and shamans and leaders who were the heroes of Navajo mythology.
His father showed him how to track bobcat, how to stalk the desert bighorn, how to keep downwind and move slowly so as to blend into the country. One year they ran a trapline along a stream but it snared only one old beaver. His father tried to teach him the ways of the Old People and the pleasures of the wilderness.
The silversmith was a contemplative man with a lyrical sense of awe. He would tell ancient stories about mesa formations and rock spires; he would speak poems about crows and snakes and mountains. He had a magic way of evoking in the small boy’s mind a long-vanished world of fantasy. He taught the boy the happiness of solitude, the astonishing fascinations to be found in a handful of desert sand or a single pitted crag. When he spoke to the boy he became luminous and reverent and filled with sly humor.
Now he remembered those lazy campfires, the talk late into the night, the glowing eyes of creatures that sat outside the circle of light and stared into the fire.…
The discovery pleased him; reverie was paying off Fire was the answer.
13
He plaited the fine strands of red hair into strings and made his way along the jackrabbit run to set his snares. They were beings of strange habit: for reasons that had no apparent connection to territorial urges or mating rituals or access to food they would run the same worn paths for years. The cause had never explained itself but from Saskatchewan to Sineloa the jackrabbit made his deep track across every patch and corner of desert as plain as signposted footpaths in a park.
The track ran in dogleg meanders from bush to bush. Wherever it ran under an overhanging limb of manzanita Mackenzie set his nooses—each snare an open oval loop a few inches above the ground anchored lightly to the earth with a forked twig hooked over it and the twig driven into the soil—to keep the snare from fouling in the wind.
By themselves the snares might do the job tonight or tomorrow night or sometime next week but Mackenzie couldn’t wait for chance: the traps had to be baited and fire was the bait.
They built the fire up-trail from the snares and Mackenzie made a little tinder pool and built a thatch of twigs on it and set the ocotillo branches close at hand. Then he settled down to the tedium of rock chipping.
The desert was littered with quartz. It wasn’t as sure as flint but it was hard enough to make sparks from the friction of collision. Mackenzie worked close against the tinder and shielded the work with his body against the steady southwesterly. The sparks were weak, ephemeral, mocking.
He blasted pale sparks into it for a long time and nothing caught. In the corner of his eye he saw Jay turn away with morose dejection. Mackenzie’s arms grew tired and his fingers began to cramp. He kept slamming the rocks together. The metered clicking was like the rattle of some primitive instrument: he saw Shirley’s head begin to sway. She was unaware of it.
He got down closer, shifted his alignment—perhaps it was the wind. “Move in here, Jay. Give me some shelter.”
Jay came reluctantly beside him and they squatted together and the quartz clicked like bones. Shirley said, “You look like figures in a cave painting.”
Finally a pinprick ember glowed in the tinder. Smoke began to curl. Mackenzie fanned it with his open hands. The ember went black.
Jay said, “Oh.”
Mackenzie picked up the stones again.
Jay said, “It’s no use, is it.”
“If you’ve got something better to do with your time—” He snapped it waspishly and regretted it; there was no point feeding Jay’s despondency with sarcasms.
Then it well and truly caught: he fanned it and watched the infant flame grow. And Shirley said, “Behold the invention of fire.”
Once it caught it went high and ravenous: the consumption of brittle twigs was ferocious and Jay started heaving armloads of brush on it until Mackenzie stayed him. Mackenzie rammed four long manzanita branches into it end-first so that they could be shoved steadily into the center and reduce the speed of consumption; they’d gathered a good supply but there was no point wasting it.
He’d had to position the fire on the rabbit trail rather than for Earle’s convenience; it meant they had to move Earle and this aroused half-coherent mutterings. They set him down close to the fire and Earle smiled in childish gratitude and sank quickly back into sleep.
The light flickered against their pale bodies. Jay, his spine hunched, brooded bleakly into the flames; his thick pelt of body hair emphasized an aspect of the scene and caused Mackenzie to realize what had put the caveman image in Shirley’s head.
She lay close by the fire half on her side, breasts askew, legs scissored; ruddy patches grew on her face. The fire brought the night closer around them and exacerbated the sense of malevolent isolation.
Then they heard the distant growl of the truck.
At first Mackenzie thought it was imagination. It was very far off—hardly audible. But he saw the others respond. He could hear the juddering whine of the transmission. After a few moments it stopped abruptly, switched off. Jay’s face, at first expectant and hopeful, collapsed. “Duggai. He’s coming for us. To finish us.”
“Not yet,” Mackenzie said. “He’s not sick of the game yet.”
It worked on their nerves. For a while no one spoke again. Shirley’s eyes had a vacant glaze. Jay picked sunburnt skin shreds from his nose. Earle’s breath began to raise frightened puffs of dust from the ground—like a fallen horse. Shirley put a hand to his forehead to gauge Earle’s fever and Earle uttered a thin startled little cry. His eyes opened to the fire: he looked over his shoulder into the darkness and winced from it like a galley slave.
Shirley said, “Duggai did that on purpose. To remind us he’s there.”
At least it confirmed Duggai’s presence; it was no longer a paranoid supposition.
Mackenzie saw something wink from the darkness—an animal attracted by the fire. Its motionless eyes gleamed. Mackenzie’s hand gripped the knife. There was nothing out here big enough to attack a man—nothing but Duggai—but Mackenzie’s
hand grew slippery on the knife. We’d make good targets for him against this fire.
But he knew Duggai this well: Duggai couldn’t kill them yet. There were reasons that would make no sense to anyone but a Navajo; but they were binding. Duggai would not attack—not yet.
Shirley ventured toward the fire; she began to hum a tune—her voice small but true. Perhaps she wasn’t aware she was doing it. She used to do that, he remembered—she used to sing to herself when there was trouble she couldn’t handle.
Jay watched, his chin tucked in with disapproval.
Mackenzie watched the disembodied glowing eyes out on the edge of the night. His father had taken such things as signs. His father’s spirits and demons had not been the sort of gods Mackenzie had ever understood very well; they were vain, whimsical, crafty, corrupt, easily bored and frequently inconsistent. But his father had been comfortable with them.
Earle startled him—not by speaking but by what he said, because it lapped across the drift of Mackenzie’s thoughts:
“Are you religious, any of you?”
None of them answered right away and Earle turned his plea on Shirley: “Are you?”
“I was,” she said. “I don’t know.”
“We’re still alive, aren’t we? God’s looking after us.” Jay snorted audibly.
“Jay, you may not believe in God but He believes in you. Yesterday I heard you praying. The Lord’s Prayer.”
“An aberration.”
“You’ve got no faith?”
“Faith? Crap. Faith is accepting something without evidence. No. What good’s that? You can’t eat faith. You can’t drink it.”
“God is keeping us alive. I don’t know why.”
“If you want to talk let’s talk about something else.”
“There’s nothing else to talk about.”
“Then shut up.”
Shirley said, “Jay,” with quiet reproach. Mackenzie caught a sour whiff of Jay’s sweat.
Fear in a Handful of Dust Page 9
