by T. F. Torrey
We thought about that.
“They might be looking for a place to cross somewhere downriver,” John said, “so that they can come after us.”
“So they could be doing anything,” I said. “The real question is, what are we going to do?” Erica and I both looked expectantly at John. He was the proven master.
“Let’s watch and wait a little longer.”
We did. Hiding from the sun in the shadows of saguaro cacti, we watched nothing happen and waited for almost two hours. The only things moving were the shadows, the sun, and the river; the shadows creeping to the east, the sun dragging to the west, and the river bubbling happily toward the Gulf of California.
Finally John made his decision. “Okay,” he said, turning to face Erica and me. “Here’s the plan. The first thing we have to do is survive, right?”
“Survive what?” I asked. “They’re gone, aren’t they?”
“The desert is still here,” John said flatly. “It’s not going anywhere. It’s still forty miles to Phoenix.”
“Yeah,” I said stupidly.
“The first thing,” John said, “is you and I are going down to the truck to get anything we can use.”
“I want to go,” Erica said.
“I need you right here,” John said. “You have to watch to see if they come after us. If they start to come back, don’t shout to us. Throw some rocks down near us and we’ll clear out.”
“What if they come after me?” she asked.
“Watch for them,” John said. “If they come this way, on this side of the river, throw some rocks down and run upriver. I’ll meet you up there.”
She looked hurt.
“I don’t think they’re coming back,” John said.
“I still want to go,” she insisted.
John smiled gently. “Erica, you can’t swim.”
“Wait,” I said. “I don’t like that plan.”
John was taken aback. “Why not?”
“If they come after her while we’re gone,” I said, “she’s a goner. With that limp they’ll catch her for sure.”
“So what do you think?” John asked. “You want to go alone?”
I shook my head. “I wouldn’t know useful from useless. I’ll stay here with her. You go to the truck. If they come this way, I’ll signal you and have her go the other way after you and I’ll fight them off with rocks until you get here.”
They both looked at me, surprised.
“Okay, Jack,” John agreed. “Let’s do that.”
I was amazed. Maybe I could be useful after all.
John kissed Erica “for luck” and went off down the hill, heading upriver. After about a hundred yards, he found another wash on the face of the bluff and began descending.
Suddenly Erica turned to me, smiling disbelievingly. “You would really stay here and defend me while I got away?” she asked.
I nodded. “No,” I said. “They have guns. Big guns. If they come after us, I’m running away with you.”
Her smile vanished. “You,” she said, “really are a jerk.”
I let it go.
***
It didn’t take John long to get across the river and to the burned-out hulk of the truck. He spent only a few minutes more pawing through the ashes. Soon he was crossing the river again, coming back.
We watched, but we didn’t see anyone coming. No Macy or Sharon. No poachers.
But I did notice something strange and familiar. Something that brought reality a bit more clearly into focus. I was hungry. And thirsty. The food in the coolers in the truck was surely burned and ruined. We didn’t have any water but the river, eighty feet below my perch and unsanitary besides. No food till Phoenix. No fun.
I didn’t tell Erica what was on my mind. Some things it’s better not to share.
Then John was back. Empty-handed.
“Any food?” I asked.
He shook his head. “They kicked it into the river.”
“Anything?” Erica asked plaintively.
“Just this,” John said ruefully, reaching into his vest pocket.
“A gun?” I asked hopefully.
No. It was only a canteen. A grubby old aluminum one-quart canteen, dented by the years and scorched by the fire. “There’s fresh water in it,” John said.
At least that was good. Erica unscrewed the top and we sipped some of the water.
“What do we do now?” Erica asked, wiping her lips with the back of her hand.
John sighed. “Now we wait again.”
“For what?” I asked.
“For Macy and Sharon,” John explained. “They weren’t around the truck, but they’ll probably go back to it like I did. If they go anywhere around here or there we’ll be able to see them from here.”
“What if they don’t turn up?” I asked.
“They will. They won’t go anywhere without us.”
“What if they’re waiting for us to find them?”
John shook his head. “Macy can’t sit still that long.”
He was right.
“What if the poachers come back first?” Erica asked.
“I almost hope they do,” John said.
“Why?”
“Because we’ll see them before they see us,” he said, “and we can trick them and take their truck.”
“How?”
He shrugged. “I’ll think of something.”
“John,” Erica began. “I’m hungry. What are we going to do for food?”
“I’ll get some later,” he said.
“Where?” I asked.
He just smiled. “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “Let’s just keep our eyes peeled for Macy and Sharon.”
“Or the poachers,” Erica added.
So we did.
All day long. We could see the hillside for fifty yards all around, and for miles in most directions beyond it, and by the end of the day we had everything memorized.
As the sun slowly plodded toward the western mountains, we kept carefully vigilant. We hid from the sun in the shadows as best we could. We tried not to think about the heat. It was damn hot. We tried not to think about food. I was damn hungry.
I thought about how far it was to Phoenix. I thought about how John might get food. I thought about how much I loved air conditioning. And I thought a lot about Macy’s revolver.
I thought entirely too much about Erica. Even after sleeping last night and running and swimming and climbing today, she still looked gorgeous. A gentle breeze dried her hair and blew it across her face, her chest. The brilliant sunlight revealed perfection in her clear blue eyes. Her hands had been softer than silk when she’d taken the thorns out of my hand. Her feisty personality only added to her magnetism. As long as I was stuck in the desert, I was happy to be stuck with her.
I wondered if the poachers had gone back to Phoenix, or the chemists back to their lab, or the smugglers back to their drop zone, or whatever.
We saw nothing. We thought of nothing ingenious. We watched the shadows crawl across the sand.
At last the sun began to disappear behind the western mountains. The three of us sat side-by-side on the west flank of the hill, overlooking the rim of the bluff, the truck wreck, and the sunset panorama, which somehow wasn’t as pretty as the previous night’s. Off on the southwestern horizon, dark clouds ominously crept our way.
John stood up and stretched. “Looks like it’s time for some food,” he said.
“What about Macy and Sharon?” Erica asked.
“No, I thought we’d have some fish,” he said.
“I meant, where are they?”
John shook his head and smiled soothingly. “They’ll be along,” he said. “In the meantime, I’m starved.”
“How are we going to catch fish without any fishing rods?” I asked.
John smiled like a wizard. “I’ll show you, Jack,” he said. “Come on.”
Erica and I followed him down from the hilltop toward the river.
Suddenly he stopped, l
ooking off in the distance. Erica and I followed his gaze.
“Wow,” he said solemnly.
“Wow, what?” I asked.
He nodded toward the clouds. Sweeping in toward us, the clouds had grown darker and rougher, looking more like rain every minute. “They’re coming in quick.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a monsoon storm, all right.”
“Hope we don’t get dumped on,” he said.
“Or struck by lightning,” Erica added.
“We’d better get—” John stopped suddenly and whirled around, facing the hilltop. Erica and I ducked reflexively and spun around.
Then we all heard it: the clattering of rocks. The noise people make when they’re walking up the other side of the hill you’re on.
“Shit!” I hissed. “The poachers!”
“What are we going to do?” Erica whispered urgently. “We don’t have any place to run to.”
We looked around quickly. She was right. We stood twenty feet from the bluff. Up- and downriver they could shoot at us all day from the hilltop. Over the rim was a forty-foot plunge to water that might not be very deep.
We were screwed.
“We’ve got no choice!” John hissed. He stooped and picked up a rock in each hand. “Come on, Jack!”
He crept quickly back up the hill.
I picked up a couple of rocks and followed him. I thought we were stupid taking rocks to a gunfight. My heart pounded in my throat. My eyes were fixed firmly on the hilltop. Any second they’d be there—
Down I went. I hadn’t been watching the ground, and I’d stepped in a hole big enough to knock me down. I fell all out of control, unable to catch myself. My body thudding on the ground jolted the rocks out of my hand, and they clattered noisily down the hill.
I looked sheepishly up at John. He stopped where he was, crouching and cocking his arm back.
We heard the other footsteps stop just over the hilltop from us.
Then the voice came over the hilltop to us, piercing and powerful like an eagle’s scream.
Chapter 16
“John? Jack?”
“Gus!”
“Glatts!”
It was Macy. Thank God it was fucking Macy.
John stood up and I got to my feet as Macy and Sharon walked over the hilltop to us.
“Did we scare you?” Macy asked, beaming.
“Nah,” John said. “Everything was under control.”
Except me. Now, for the first time, after all that had happened that day, I was shaking. Maybe it was because I was hungry, or because this time we had nowhere left to run. Or maybe I had finally realized exactly how close to the end of our rope we really were, and that scared the hell out of me.
Sharon rushed forward and hugged Erica. They went through the usual I-was-so-scared-for-you’s.
John put down his stones.
“Gus?” Macy asked me. “You haven’t called me that since we were teenagers, Jack.”
I smiled, still shaking. “Heat of the moment,” I said. Turning to John, I asked, “What the hell is ’glatts’, anyway?”
John smiled. “It’s the foulest word I know,” he said. “My ex-wife’s maiden name.”
Everybody laughed.
We swapped horror stories. Erica and John and I told them about the poachers attacking us and chasing us and us chasing them and us running across the river and hiding here all day and John sneaking back to the truck. Macy and Sharon told us they’d been fishing upriver when they heard the first shots, that they’d been headed back when their truck had exploded, that they’d heard more shots and guessed we were in trouble, that they’d seen us climb up the wash, and that after we were safe they’d gone upriver to find a place to cross. They had walked a long way upriver so that Sharon wouldn’t have to climb the bluff, because she was pregnant. Also because she was pregnant they had rested through the hottest part of the day. Then they had come back to the hilltop to find us.
“How did you know we’d be here?” John asked.
Macy beamed. “It’s the highest place around. The easiest to defend. Just like you always say.”
“Of course,” John said, smiling.
I thought Macy was a great apprentice.
Then we swapped ideas about what our attackers might be up to. Smuggling. Synthesizing drugs. Moonshine. John still insisted that they were poachers.
Finally John got around to asking the big question, the one we’d all been waiting for. “Macy,” he began hopefully, “you have your gun, right?”
Macy looked at the ground. We all could have stayed in heartbreak hotel. “I left it in the truck,” he said.
I turned and walked a couple steps away. All day I’d been hoping he’d kept his gun. Nope.
All day.
“Maybe,” Macy said, growing suddenly excited. “Maybe it’s still there, still in the truck. Fire won’t hurt it, right?”
John said nothing. I said nothing.
“John looked through the truck already,” Erica explained quietly. “They took the guns.”
Everyone was quiet for several moments.
“Hey!” Sharon piped up suddenly. “We better call the police!”
The silence continued. I had to fight off the urge to be viciously sarcastic.
“We’ll do that,” John said reassuringly, “just as soon as we get back to Phoenix. Right now I’m a bit hungry. I think I’ll go catch me some fish.”
The heat must have gotten to Sharon.
John walked down the hill to the edge of the bluff. We followed him. The conflicting feelings of relief and frustration were overwhelming. We’d been hoping all day that Macy and Sharon were all right. Now they were here, and they were all right. But they didn’t have the damn gun, and it was still a million miles to Phoenix.
The five of us stood at the edge of the bluff, watching the river and the waning sunset, as silent as our shadows on the hill behind us.
“How,” I asked John, “are you going to get fish with no fishing poles?” We all turned to him expectantly.
He flashed the wizard’s smile again. He took off his outback hat and turned it over. With his fingers he folded back the inside rim band. Under the band were several coils of fishing line, four barbed hooks, maybe a dozen paraffin-tipped safety matches, and a single-edged razor blade. “I like to be prepared,” he said.
“I’m glad you do,” I said, smiling wide.
“Hey!” Macy said. “That’s not high-test line. If you catch a really big one, it’ll snap that line like nothing.”
“We’ll just catch little ones,” John said. “But we better hurry,” he added, looking off at the approaching clouds, which were now blotting out the last light of the sunset. “It’s going to be cold and stormy here soon.”
He was right.
In front of us, a wash cut down the face of the bluff to the river. John and Macy made their way down the wash to catch some fish. Erica’s ankle was feeling much better, and she tagged along with them. I stayed on the rim to keep an eye out for the poachers. Sharon stayed with me because she didn’t want to climb down the wash being pregnant.
“Great,” she said sarcastically after they’d gone. “It’s going to be stormy.”
“It’s pretty warm,” I said. “A little rain might be … refreshing.”
“No, it won’t,” she said dejectedly, sitting down on the rocks. “The storm will make it cold. First the wind will blow dirt everywhere, so we’ll be cold and covered in dirt. Then the rain will hit us, and we’ll be cold and covered in mud.”
Sadly, she too was probably right.
“It could be worse,” I said.
“How? How could it be worse?”
We could have two of you, I thought. I said, “We could be here without John.”
“If it wasn’t for John, we wouldn’t be here at all. Until he met John, Macy never even liked the desert. He didn’t even know it existed.”
I let it go.
For the next hour or so we waited in
silence, only occasionally interrupted by more complaints from Sharon. I wondered if her kid would grow up to be a whiner like her. The night finished falling. Even in the dark it was still warm. The gentle breeze had gone away. Now the air was calm, only broken by gusts of wind like sharp breaths drawn in anticipation of the coming storm. The fishermen fished silently, and I was just beginning to become concerned about them when I heard them climbing back up the wash.
John came up first, followed quickly by Erica and Macy, and we five were together again. “Chow time,” John said.
“Where’s the fish?” Sharon asked.
Macy opened his shirt, revealing the fish. They’d cleaned and cut them down by the river, so actually what he had in his shirt was a stack of fillets.
“Great,” Sharon said. “Let’s get the fire going. I’m starved.”
“Whoa,” John said. “We aren’t building any fire.”
“Why not?” she asked. “You have matches in your hat. I saw them.”
“We’re not building any fire,” he repeated. “Those poachers would see it for sure, and I’ve had enough of being a target for one day.”
“You mean we have to eat this fish raw?”
“Don’t think ’fish’,” John said. “Think ’sushi’. It’s more expensive.”
“No, this is stupid,” Sharon said. She looked around desperately. “Why can’t we build a fire on the other side of the hill? Where they can’t see it?”
“Because,” John explained patiently, “we don’t know where they are.”
“If we build a fire we might be able to see them in the light.”
“Not before they see us,” he returned. “Look, if we had our guns it would be different, Sharon, but we don’t.”
“So we have to eat raw fish,” she said dejectedly.
Nobody else seemed to mind too much. We walked back up to our defensible hilltop position and ate like javelinas. I pretended I was in an expensive restaurant and I’d ordered sushi. It didn’t work. I wanted to send it back and have it cooked. And I wanted tartar sauce. And some wine.
“How come they get a fire and we don’t?” whined Sharon.
That wasn’t the kind of wine I’d been thinking about.
She was sitting on the hilltop where John had watched the poachers from earlier. The rest of us sat in the little depression, depressed. We’d mostly finished the fish.
