by Kate Wilhelm
The desert was claiming the land very fast on the lower slopes of the Cascades; sand had blown up to nearly cover a barn; the house had burned; the land was barren and very quiet. No other traffic was on the road, no cattle grazed in fenced-in fields, no life stirred anywhere.
They approached Bend from the north in the eerie, silent world of desert. On the outskirts of town, where there were fast-food restaurants, gas stations, and shopping centers, everything was still: boarded-up stores, barricades across driveways, emptiness everywhere. The bus turned off the highway into town, and now there were some people. Half a dozen Indians were on the side of the street before the bus station. There were national guardsmen there also. The bus stopped and Jean and one other passenger rose to leave it. The other person was an old Indian man. Jean had not noticed him before, had not noticed anyone else on the bus until now. There were three other Indians, two white men. They all stared at her curiously when she got off; she forgot them instantly.
“Miss? Are you sure this is where you meant to go?”
A national guardsman approached her, frowning. She knew they were stationed in all the abandoned towns, to prevent looting, to maintain order for the people to come back to when the drought ended. She nodded at the man. He was no more than thirty, and she suspected he had welcomed this duty because it was a paying job after all, even if it was in the middle of the great big nowhere the West had become again.
“Ain’t nothing here, ma’am,” he said doubtfully. “No stores, no gas, damn few people. You got a place to stay?”
Again she nodded.
He glanced at his companion, who was grinning slightly, evidently willing to let him get himself out of the predicament her arrival had caused.
“You see, ma’am, nobody’s allowed to come here unless they have a reason, a place to stay, water, all that. You from here?”
“I own a house here,” she said then. “I’ve come to straighten out my grandfather’s papers. He died a few weeks ago.”
The two guardsmen exchanged glances and the second of them came near. “We’ll have to see some identification, miss. It’s the law, you know. Only residents can come back, and they ain’t likely to because there’s nothing left.”
She produced identification and the deed to her grandfather’s house, and finally they returned the papers to her. The bus driver had been waiting; now he got back behind the wheel, the door whooshed closed, and he started the bus, drove away. The Indians were gathering up large packs the old man had brought with him. There were other packages, boxes, crates on the pavement. Her suitcases were there. She went to them and picked them up.
“May I go now?”
“Sure, Miss Brighton. Look, there’s no lights or anything here. You need anything, you just let us know. Wood, oil for a lamp, stuff like that. We can help you out for a couple of days, I guess. We’re at the Federal Building. Know where it’s at?”
“Thank you,” she said. She left them and started the walk home. The trees had been dying ten years ago; now most of them had been cut down. All the imported plants were gone, and only sagebrush and junipers lived here now. Miss Lottie’s Art Store was boarded up tightly; sand had pitted the paint, starting the peeling process that would leave bare siding that finally would turn silver with age, just as all living things seemed to do eventually.
Briscoe’s Garage had a sand dune edging up the side of it. Artie’s Magazine Store, boards for windows, a padlock on the door . . . There was no sound in the town, no wind blew, nothing rattled or creaked or moaned. The ghosts of this particular ghost town were at rest, she thought, and was pleased at the idea. It was fitting and proper that they should be at rest.
Along the river, now a wadi with water-patterned stones marking the final course, the grass that used to stay so green all summer had vanished, and erosion of the soil was well advanced, exposing the skeleton framework of the bluff that had given the appearance of a gentle slope. Across the dry river the mansions stood revealed as the alien structures they had always been. Unsoftened now by shrubbery and graceful trees, they rose too tall and too ornate and too fancy for a desert. Desert dwellings should be low, should blend into the sand and rocks, not stand out like sentinels, she thought, surveying them with satisfaction, as if she had always wondered about their secrets and now knew them all.
Her grandfather’s house was untouched by the changes in the climate. He had used sagebrush and junipers, instead of the imported plants, and his plantings were as always. Wide wooden steps led to the house through spreading junipers. She started up the steps.
“How can they live?” she had asked once, not here, but out on the desert, speaking about the tough mesquite.
“On dew and moonbeams,” he had said, and she had believed him. She still believed they endured on dew and moonbeams. It was enough.
The house was two stories, but it was built into the hillside and its height was not apparent. The cellar was cool in the summer and warm in the winter, she remembered. She was approaching from the front of the house, although the road was on the opposite side. The house overlooked the river and the foothills of the Cascades beyond it. There was a wide porch, with deep shadows now that the sun was dipping down behind the Sisters’ peaks. The sky was cloudless; there would be no fiery sunset that evening. There were long, timeless twilights here after the sun went over the mountains, but the day was not yet finished. During the hot summers this had always been the best part of the day; the air would lose its heat, and the light change, become softer while losing none of its clarity. She unlocked the door, but did not immediately enter the house. She looked at the hills, and if she focused her eyes on the more distant ones, they looked unchanged, the dead trees disappeared, and there were the long shadows she remembered, and the fuzzy outlines. Soon the wind would start blowing, she told herself, and a moment later a breeze touched her face, whispered in the junipers.
Satisfied, she entered the house, left the door open, the screen door unlatched. All the years they had lived in Bend, they had never locked a door. She knew she could not lock them now. She put her suitcases down and walked into the living room. It was as her grandparents had left it, as she remembered it. They had taken nothing with them except their clothes; they had expected to come home again.
There was a mammoth fireplace on one wall, with bookcases built around it. Firewood was in a woven basket by the hearth. There were large wooden chairs with plump cushions covered with Indian print material. An oval rug, a gift from Robert Wind-in-the-Tall-Trees, covered the wide plank floor. The sofa was brown leather, very soft and supple, always warm to the touch, as if it touched back. She opened the drapes on the casement windows and looked again at the hills across the river. The illusion was perfect; she had walked into her own past, ten or twelve years ago. The breeze had turned into a steady wind, and already the evening air was cooling.
She went through every room of the house, touching those things she remembered particularly well, feeling the cabinets, the oak table where she had done her homework, the cherry table in the dinning room. She ran her hand lightly down the china cabinet, careful not to touch the glass and leave smudges there. Then she went upstairs, carrying her two suitcases with her. She went to her own room and put the bags on the bed and opened the larger one. Folded neatly on top were her two Paraguayan tapestries. She took them out and shook them to release the wrinkles. With them over her arm, she went to her grandparents’ room. She paused outside the door, not actually listening, but rather as if allowing herself time to summon their faces, their forms. She entered the room then and went to the large high bed with its white wedding ring comforter.
“I brought you something,” she whispered. “I knew you would like them.” She arranged one of the tapestries on her grandmother’s side of the bed, then went around it and put the other tapestry in place. They looked very gay and pretty against the white. She looked around the room for another moment, then left it and quietly closed the door behind her.
It was growing darker now, and before night came she had to fill an oil lamp. She went down to the cellar and found the cans of kerosene where they always had been. She took one up with her and filled two lamps, and then returned the can to its proper place. Again in her own room, she unpacked her possessions and put them away neatly in drawers and on hangers in her closet. Many of the clothes she had worn here were still hanging, covered with dust wrappers, waiting for her return. Finally she went to her father’s room and this time she sat down in a chair at his window. The mountain peaks were visible from here, black and sharp against the fading violet sky.
She sat still until the sky was inky blue and the star patterns were visible. How many times had her father sat here to watch the stars turn on? There was so much she would like to tell him. All the years since then, everything she had done, the things she had not done. How she loved this room, she thought. Over there he had made model spaceships and space stations; he had drawn mazes, more and more intricate and complicated as he grew older. He never had lost that love for puzzles and mazes and tricks. Two bookcases were filled with the books from his childhood—fairy tales, fantasies, adventures with knights and dragons, and later Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe. Books of puzzles, limericks, games, tongue twisters . . . He always had loved words, language.
She had spent many hours here in this room when she had come to live with her grandparents. They had known it was all right, it was what she had needed. Sometimes her grandmother had come in also, and had sat on the stool before his desk, which filled one wall. Grandpa had made the desk for him, and he kept outgrowing it, she had said once.
Jean had become very thirsty. She picked up her oil lamp, looked about the room to make certain she had disturbed nothing, then left it and closed that door carefully also.
Next to the kitchen was a pantry with a pump that drew water from the cistern. There had been city water here, but her grandfather had wanted his own source of water also, and he had kept the cistern clean and the pump working. She began to pump slowly, rhythmically, the way he had taught her to work it, and finally, after a long time, she heard water gurgling as it rose in the pipes. She filled a kettle, making sure she caught every drop, and took it to the kitchen. After a long drink of the cool, sweet water, she laid a fire in the stove. The dry wood blazed instantly. She measured out two cups of water into the teakettle and started to prepare her dinner. She wanted little if anything to eat, but she knew she had much to do the next day, and she got out the cheese she had brought, and the bread and dried fruit. She put the fruit in a pan, added water and put it on the stove until it came to a boil, then she moved the pot from the heat and covered it. When her tea was ready, she ate the cheese and bread, and by the time she finished it, the fruit was ready, and the tiny fire was dying. She cleaned up the kitchen, carried the kettle upstairs, and prepared herself for bed.
She. left her drapes open in order to catch the rising sun on her face, her own alarm clock in this house, this room. She slept deeply, and remembered no dreams when she awakened. She felt better than she had for a long time.
She washed with the remaining water in the kettle, then dressed in her old boots, blue jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, a scarf. She carried her wide-brimmed hat down with her. She ate a scant breakfast of cheese, bread, raisins, and water, and then filled a leather water bag. When she was done, she left the house as untouched looking as it had been when she arrived. She locked the door this time, and after a moment put the key under a planter on the edge of the porch.
The sun was high when she stopped to rest and nap. During the morning she had skirted all signs of habitation, even though she had known the houses, barns, all the ranch buildings had been abandoned. Now she was on a mesa where a clump of junipers provided shade for the hottest part of the day. The wind was steady and hot; her face felt scoured by it; her eyes burned from the unaccustomed glare, and her feet hurt even though her grandfather had kept her boots well oiled. She was not used to walking.
She sank to the ground under the gray-green needles and rested her head against the trunk. After a moment she drank a little of her water. Now that she was out of the sun, the wind felt less hot, and it cooled her, evaporating the sweat as fast as it formed. Her feet throbbed but she did not dare take off the boots, or she might not be able to get into them again. Nothing moved in the midday heat, no birds, no small creatures. The sky was deep blue, cut raggedly on every horizon by mesas and mountains, fading to a paler color overhead, where the sun finally burned a great white hole in heaven. She closed her eyes; presently she took off her hat and put it on the ground, rested her head on it, and slept.
When she awoke there were shadows to lead her once more, and she pushed herself away from the ground stiffly. She sipped her water, adjusted her hat, and continued to walk eastward. But now her progress was slower as fatigue claimed its toll. She made herself examine the landscape, tried to ignore her aching legs and swollen feet. The world seemed to pulse before her eyes, keeping time with her own heartbeat. It brightened, dimmed, brightened again.
It was the same desert. Exactly the same as always. She had known it would be. “Deserts and oceans care nothing for droughts,” she said, and heard the words although she had not realized she was speaking aloud.
There were the mesas, the cliffs, the sharply defined rim-rock, the great granite and basalt and obsidian upthrusts and flows. Jasper gleamed in the sunlight, a rich chocolate brown that looked wet. Here a side of a cliff had been blasted out to expose a band of blue agate, streaked with white. Rock hounds had hammered at rocks, their marks clear, untouched by the years since anyone had had the time, energy, enough faith in the future to care about pretty rocks.
She crossed a fence line where the rancher had rolled up the barbed wire, lashed it securely to a fence post before he left. He must have loved the desert, she thought; his final act must have been to release it from a promise that somehow included fences. And he would be back, he had said when he lashed the wire so securely to wait for him there. It would not rust, not for eons; it would wait, and meanwhile the creatures, if any endured now, would come and go freely, unaware of the promise and the threat the roll of wire symbolized.
Half an hour later she overlooked a ranch where a row of poplars had died and now stood like spears left by giants. There was a dam that bisected barrenness; the shallow lake bed was crisscrossed with black cracks. She veered slightly to the south, unwilling to pass close to the house and yard being reclaimed by the desert.
She became aware of a long dark shadow that moved before her, and stopped in bewilderment, and then realized it was her own shadow. She could remember no thoughts at all for a very long time; it seemed almost as if she had kept walking, although she had fallen asleep. She reached for her water flask and remembered that she had emptied it. The flask swung at her hip, now slapping her thigh, now sliding against it. From a distance she heard a clear fluting bird cry and she looked for the source, but could find nothing. Another bird answered from a greater distance, and she started to move again. She no longer ached, and the world had stopped throbbing and was very steady in the stillness of the late afternoon. The wind had quieted. The drowsy time of day, her grandfather had called this. Now small creatures sniff the air, he had said as they sat together under an overhanging shelf of a high cliff. The little creatures waited for the heat to break, they emerged from their siestas very hungry, sometimes so hungry they forgot to be wary. He had pointed out a hawk circling high overhead. She looked up now, and there was a hawk. She smiled. It was as if this day and that were merging. She had known they would.
Now she turned to look at the Three Sisters, to gauge the time remaining before the sun crawled over their peaks and vanished. There was no snow on any of them; all the glaciers had melted, leaving rocks and craters that testified to the fiery birth pangs of this mountain range. Soon, she thought. Half an hour. She studied the landscape, and turned southward again, this time hurrying toward a mesa that rose almost perpendicu
lar from the desert floor.
Before she reached it, she saw a gorge, a narrow fault that cut the desert in half here. It looked velvety black from where she stood, so deep were the shadows. No longer needing to hurry, she walked toward it, and at the edge she looked down at the tumbled rocks at the bottom, hundreds of feet below her. She let a rock fall and it bounced against the side, then rolled and bounced the rest of the way. She began to walk along the edge, following it eastward. Finally she could look straight down without seeing the side of the cliff below her. She dropped a rock and watched it fall to the bottom. She could not see it hit among the boulders; the gorge was deeper here than where she had started following it.
The bird call sounded again, closer this time, and she wished with impatience it would just get on with it, find a mate and build a nest, or whatever it was that was on its mind at this time of year. She backed away from the gorge to wait for the return of the profound silence.
Only then did she sit down and start to unlace her boot. Her feet were very swollen, and it was difficult to get the boot off, but there was no pain. She pulled the sock off and stuffed it down inside the boot, then started to unlace the other one. Barefoot, she unbuckled the water bag from her belt, put it down beside her boots, then added her belt, and took off her jeans, folded them and put them on the pile. She unbuttoned her shirt, aware that her hands and her neck were sunburned, but not aware of them as painful. It was as if she were watching someone else ritually undressing. When she was finished, she took a pile of clothes to the edge of the cliff, then went back for the boots and water bag, the things she had not been able to carry in one armload. She was near the edge when she heard a voice.
