by Edward Abbey
“You said we could beat them to the Maze turnoff.”
“That’s right, but them fellas don’t think we’re headin’ for the Maze.”
“Why not?”
“Because the Maze is a dead end, Doc. The end of the road. The big jump-off. Nobody ever goes to the Maze.”
“And that’s why we’re going?”
“Doc, you figured it out.”
“And why does nobody ever go to the Maze?”
“Well, because there’s no gasoline there, no roads, no people, no food, most of the time no water and no way out, that’s why. Like I told you, it’s a dead end.”
Lovely, thought the doctor. And that is where we are going to hide for the next ten years.
“But we got some food there,” Smith went on. “We cached some at Lizard Rock and some over at Frenchy’s Spring. We’ll be all right if we can get to it before the Team gets to us. We might have a little trouble finding water right away, though if we get rain tonight or tomorrow, and it sure smells like rain, then we’ll be all right for a few days. If the Team don’t press us too hard.”
Not bad, thought Doc. Not half bad. We are four jokers on a dead limb. I’m afraid this night will never end. I’m afraid it will. He looks east at the rising waning sick oblate and gibbous moon. Not much hope there. He sees a jackrabbit scuttle across the roadway through the dusty columns of the light beams. Smith swerves to avoid it. Doc realizes that he has not seen cattle or horses now for many miles. Why so? he asks.
“No water,” Smith replies.
“No water? But the whole Colorado River is over there on our right somewhere. Can’t be more than a couple of miles to the east.”
“Doc, the river is down in there all right but unless you was a butterfly or a buzzard you couldn’t get down to it. Unless you feel like doing a two-thousand-foot swan dive off the rimrock.”
“I see. There’s no way down.”
“Hardly any, Doc. I know one old trail down from Lizard Rock to Spanish Bottom but I never found any others.” Smith checks the rearview mirror again. “Still doggin’ our tail. Them fellas don’t give up easy. Think maybe we ought to hide these here vehicles and take off afoot.”
Doc turns in his seat, peering back through the crawl hole and the bullet-shattered window in the rear door of the camper. A mile, perhaps five miles, in their rear—impossible to gauge the distance in the night—comes a pair of headlights, rising and falling on the rocky road. He is about to face forward again when he sees a streak of green fire glide upward, higher and higher, reach apogee and turn back to earth, trailing a wake of phosphorescent, slowly fading coals.
“Did you see that?”
“I seen it, Doc. They’re signaling somebody again. We better have a look around.”
Smith blinks his headlights. Hayduke stops, shutting off headlights but not motor. Smith does the same. All four get out.
“What’s up?” says Abbzug.
“They’re shooting flares again.”
“Where the fuck are we anyhow?” Hayduke says. He looks tired and depressed, his eyes bloodshot, hands shaky. “I need a beer.”
“Kind of parched myself,” says Smith, gazing ahead toward the dark walls of the plateau, then back at their pursuers. The lights have stopped for the moment. “Get me one too, George.” He looks into the sky, hooding his eyes with his hands, toward the north, northeast, east. “There it is. Forget the beer, George, we ain’t got time.”
“Whaddaya see?”
“A plane, I guess.”
They follow the line of his pointing arm and finger. One tiny red light blinks up there in the violet night, passing through the handle of the Big Dipper. Still too far away to be heard, it quarters across the northeastern sky.
“It’s a helicopter,” Hayduke says. “I can feel the vibrations. It’ll be coming this way in a minute. You’ll hear it.”
“So what do we do?”
“I’m having a beer,” says Hayduke, opening the rear of the camper.
He takes a warm six-pack from the icebox. No ice for days now. “Anybody else?”
A second Very light soars skyward from their enemy in the rear, at some indeterminate range, and rises to its zenith, hesitates and sinks, an elegant parabola of green flame. All watch, momentarily paralyzed.
“Why flares? Why don’t they use their radios?”
“Don’t know, honey. Different frequencies maybe.”
Pop! goes the top. A fountain of warm Schlitz rises over the truck, mimicking the flare, and showers down on Doc, Bonnie and Smith in a fine, diffuse spray. Hayduke cuts off the throbbing jet of beer by clamping his mouth over the bunghole. Sound of earnest suckling.
“Well,” Bonnie says, “let’s do something.” Silence. “Anything.”
“It appears to me—” the doctor commences.
Whock whock whock whock: rotating blades chop at the air. Coming this way, comrades.
“We better head out on foot,” Smith says. He gropes with both arms into the tumbled baggage in the rear of his camper and pulls out packs, day packs, six-packs, backpacks, all loaded with food and gear. Somebody thought of that (Abbzug); at least one thing has been done right this time. He throws out canteens, a half dozen of them, mostly full. He finds one small hiking boot and tosses it at Bonnie. “There’s your boot, honey.”
“I have two feet.”
“Here’s the other.”
Hayduke gapes stupidly at Bonnie sitting down to put on her boots, at Doc struggling into his sixty-pound pack, at Smith closing the back of the camper. Hayduke holds his foaming can of beer in one hand, the other five cans—bound together in a plastic collar—in the other hand. What to do? In order to function he must put down the beer. But in order to function he has to drink the beer. A cruel bind. He tilts the open beer to his mouth, chugalugs it all down, tries to jam the remaining five into the top of his backpack. Can’t be done. No room. He ties them on the outside.
“We got to hide these vehicles,” he says to Smith.
“I know, but where?”
Hayduke waves vaguely toward the black gulf of Cataract Canyon. “Down that way.”
Smith glances up at the helicopter, now cutting a big circle in the sky a few minutes to the north. Hunting for somebody.
“Don’t know as we have the time, George.”
“But we got to. All our shit in there—guns, dynamite, chemicals, peanut butter. We’ll need that stuff.”
Smith looks again at the circling helicopter, sinking toward the road a few miles to the north, and at the lights approaching from the opposite direction, now less than two or three miles away. Ambush in preparation: the closing jaws.
“Well, let’s get them as far off the road as we can. Down that way, over the slickrock so we don’t leave tracks. Maybe we can find a deep gulch we can drive into.”
“Okay, let’s go.” Hayduke squeezes the beer can in his hand. “You and Bonnie wait here,” he says to Doc.
“We’re staying together,” Bonnie says.
Hayduke tosses his crumpled beer can onto the road where Bishop Love can pick it up conveniently. “Then back in the truck, quick.”
“No need for panic,” Doc says, sweating already, “no need for panic.”
All aboard once again. Smith leads the way with his truck, pulling around Hayduke and the jeep, off the road and over the rocks between clumps of desert shrubbery to the open surface of the sandstone. Hayduke follows. Without lights, edging forward, they drive downslope toward the dark gulfs of space beyond the canyon rim. In the faint light from the moon, distances and depths become ambiguous, deceptive, offering shadows and obscurity but little cover, little safety.
No cover, thinks Hayduke, looking for the helicopter; we’re caught in the open again. Now comes the napalm. Smith eases to a stop in front of him. Unwilling to step on the brake pedal and flash a red signal to the enemy, Hayduke pulls his hand brake and lets the jeep bump gently into the rear of Smith’s truck.
Smith gets out to e
xamine the lay of the land. Looks, comes back, drives on. Hayduke follows close, grinding ahead in low gear. They creep toward someplace to hide. The helicopter, apparently set down on the road with lights switched off, can no longer be seen.
Good, thinks Hayduke. They’re waiting for us up there. Good. Let the fuckers wait. He pops the top one-handed from another Schlitz. When you’re out of Schlitz you’re out of Schlitz. Long dry march ahead, got to keep that old kidney stone built up, can’t have it dissolving on us in a lather of sweat and pothole water.
What else? He does a rapid inventory in his mind. What to carry: packs; the .357 and twenty rounds in his gun belt; the .30-.06 with variable sniper scope slung on his back, under the Kelty—“for deer, of course” (anticipating Bonnie’s question and Doc’s objections)—the Buck Special on his belt; carabiners, rope, chock nuts … what else? what else? Now, above all, must not forget something essential. Survival is the question coming up now. Survival with fucking honor, of course. With fucking honor at all costs. What else?
Smith stops again. Again Hayduke brakes by hand, bumping bumpers. Letting his engine idle, he gets out, walks to the lean arm hanging from the driver’s side of the pickup cab. Six eyes and a red cigar confront him from the dark interior of Smith’s truck.
“Yeah?”
Smith points. “Right down in there, old horse.”
Hayduke looks where Seldom indicates. Another ravine divides the slickrock, this one maybe ten or maybe thirty feet deep, hard to tell in the moonlight. Sandy floor. Much brush—scrub oak, juniper, sage. Overhanging wall on the outside of the curve, a rounded incline on this side. It might go, Hayduke thinks. It might.
“You think we can hide them down in there?”
“Yep.”
Pause. In the silence they hear only … more silence. No lights visible anywhere. All jeeps, Blazers, trucks, helicopters have been stopped and shut off. The Team will not so easily be outflanked this time. Over there in the dark, in those shadows under the plateau wall, the Searchers and Rescuers are waiting. Or not waiting; perhaps a scouting party has already been sent out, up the road, down the road, looking, listening.
“Too quiet,” Bonnie says.
“They’re still a mile away, at least,” Hayduke says.
“You hope.”
“I hope.”
“We hope,” says Doc, red eye glowing.
“Okay,” Hayduke says, “let’s drop ’em down in the gulch. Want me to winch you down?”
“No,” says Smith, “can’t have no motors running now, they might hear us. I’ll ride the brake down.”
“Use your hand brake.”
“Too steep. Can’t trust it.”
“Your brake lights will show,” Hayduke says.
“Smash ’em.”
Done. Smith eases his truck down the bulge of rock, twenty feet to the sandy bottom, and noses it into the shadows under the oak brush and juniper. Hayduke follows in the jeep. Dim moonlight falls on the wall above, that flowing curvature of stone stained with oxides of manganese and iron, but down in the bottom under the overhang all is dark. They unfold the camouflage net, stretch it over the trees and tie it down; concealing truck and jeep from aerial observation. Hayduke cases his extra firearms and hides them in a grotto in the wall, above the high-water line.
Floods? The sand is powder dry, the bedrock of the gulch as arid as iron. Nevertheless, it is a drainage channel.
“We’ll be shit out of luck if this place gets flooded,” Hayduke says.
“We’ll take some losses,” says Smith, “and I wish we had time to find a better hiding place. Sure as shootin’ it’s gonna rain.”
“Pretty clear now.”
“It’s building. See that ring around the moon? Tomorrow night you’ll see a solid overcast. Next day it’ll rain.”
“Is that a weather forecast?” Bonnie asks.
“Well,” hedges Smith, “like you might of noticed by now there’s two things a person can’t depend on. One of them is the weather and I ain’t sayin’ what the other one is.”
Three low hoot-owl hoots from Doc on lookout.
“Reckon we better go, George,” says Smith, hoisting his pack on his back, buckling the hip band.
Hayduke slings the rifle across his back and the pack on top of it. The rifle is light, a chopped-down sporting model, but it makes an awkward package wedged between his clavicles and the pack frame. He could sling it over one shoulder, and will later, but right now needs both hands free to scramble up the sandstone. He thinks: Ready anyhow, I guess, if a man is ever ready for anything.
Reinforcements coming for the Team. Three more pairs of headlights are moving up from the south, amber-colored in the dust. Got their flats fixed. The other vehicles remain shut down, invisible, their crews unseen. Same goes for the helicopter.
“They’ll be spreading out, I’d say,” Smith says. “We better head this gulch here and then turn north, single file if you’ll kindly foller me. Keep your feet on stone and leave no tracks and we’ll be all right, least as long as this slickrock holds out which it won’t all the way, naturally. Huh?”
“I said,” Bonnie says, “how far to the Maze?”
“Ain’t far. Watch out for this prickly pear, honey.”
“How far is that?”
“Well, Bonnie, I’d say we’re only about two miles—three miles at the most—from the turnoff.”
“You mean the turnoff to the Maze?”
“That’s right.”
“Good. So how far from the turnoff to the Maze itself? In miles.”
“Well it’s a pretty good walk but it’s a nice night.”
“How far?”
“The Maze, that’s a mighty big piece of country, Bonnie, and if you mean the near end of it or the far end of it that makes considerable difference. And that’s not counting the up and down.”
“The up and down what?”
“Canyon walls. The fins.”
“What exactly are you talking about?”
“I mean this country, it’s mostly stood on edge, honey. Some of it you can stand on but most of it goes straight up or straight down. You can get boxed in or rimmed up pretty easy. Which means that usually the long way around is the shortest way. Usually the only way.”
“How far, please?”
“Walk ten miles to get one mile, if you see what I mean.”
“How far?”
“Thirty-five miles to Lizard Rock. Where we cached some water. We could take shortcuts if there was any but there ain’t. None that I know about. But it’s complicated country and you never know what you’re gonna find.”
“So we won’t get there tonight?”
“We won’t even try.”
Hayduke, bringing up the rear of the file, stops to remove his pack and re-sling the rifle. In the pack he carries food, six quarts of water, ammunition and too much else. Plus the rifle on his shoulder, the loaded gun belt and holstered revolver, the knife sheathed on his hip. A walking arsenal and it hurts; but he is too stubborn to leave any more behind.
They pad ahead through the vague moonlight, staying on solid stone, skirting the lip of the shadowy ravine on their right. Smith pauses frequently to look and listen, then leads on. No sign anywhere of their enemy; nevertheless the enemy waits out there somewhere, in those shadows under the fifteen-hundred-foot cliffs, among the quietly breathing junipers.
Bonnie’s head is full of questions. Who brought in the helicopter—state police, Sheriff’s Office, Park Service, or other members of the Search and Rescue Team? If we can’t get to the Maze tonight, what do we do when the sun comes up? Also I’m hungry and my feet are going to hurt pretty soon and who put the pig iron in my pack?
“I’m hungry,” she says.
Smith halts, hushing her. He whispers, “Them other folks is out there, Bonnie. We’re gettin’ close. Wait here a minute.”
He puts down his pack and glides off like a phantom, a shadow, a Paiute, across the rolling sea of petrified dunes tow
ard the road. Bonnie watches his lanky figure recede into the moonlight, fading into moonshade, phasing itself out. Now you see him, now you don’t. Seldom becoming Never Seen. Bonnie and the others remove their packs. She unzips the side pocket and pulls out a Baggie full of her personal mixture of raisins, nuts, M & Ms, sunflower seeds. Doc chews on a stick of jerky. Hayduke stands and waits, staring after Smith. He unslings the rifle, resting the rubber butt plate on his boot.
“Why the gun?” Bonnie whispers.
“This?” Hayduke stares at her. “This is a rifle.” He grins. “This is my gun.”
“Don’t be vulgar.”
“Then don’t ask dumb questions.”
“Why did you bring that gun?”
Doc intervenes, the moderator. “Now now, let’s keep it down.”
For a minute or so they remain silent, listening.
Off in the desert, at an indefinable distance, an owl calls. One call. The great horned owl. They hear a second call.
“Two hoots?” Bonnie says. “What’s that mean, I forget.”
“Wait….”
From farther away again, or not so far, but from an opposite direction, comes the sound of another great horned owl, hooting gently into the moonshine and the night. The second owl calls three times. Meaning danger, on guard; meaning distress, trouble, I need help. Or meaning in owl language: You there, little bunny rabbit hiding under that bush, I know you’re there, you know I’m here and we both know your ass is mine. Come.
Which call is true? Which owl is false? Neither? Both? They hadn’t planned on real owls.
A whisper of light feet on rock. Seldom Seen emerges from the moonlight. Eyes shining, all tooth and ear and leather and hair, breathing slightly harder than normal, he says, very quietly, “Let’s go.”
Groaning and creaking, they struggle back into their packs. “What’d you see?” asks Hayduke.
“Them Search and Rescue people are all over the place and they’re not waiting till sunup to come find us. I saw six of ’em along the road and I don’t know how many more come in that goddanged infernal heliclopter up ahead. Every man I saw has a shotgun or a carbine and they’re all carrying them little walkie-talkie radios and spreading out in a skirmish line. Like beating the brush for rabbits.”