I crawled out of the wreck on my hands and knees. My palms were covered with blood. Otherwise, I seemed unhurt. Behind me, an orange fireball lit up the darkness. The Firebird exploded into flames.
TWENTY-TWO
Rescue Me
ORANGE FLAMES as high as the roof snaked around the wreck. Dry grass crackled and snapped in the fire. I cowered behind a boulder to shield myself from the burning debris. Burnt rubber seared my throat. A flaming wheel blazed past my leg into the desert. Overhead, fiery metal swarmed the starry heavens. The car’s hood blasted out of the inferno, flying so close it grazed my forehead. In the heat, both headlights exploded, the staccato pop pop of the glass like pistol shots into the inky prairie night. The driver’s door rocketed by, embers in its tail. Sparking bits of handles, panelling, and armrests showered all around.
Afraid something might drop from the sky and scorch me, I covered my head with both arms, my back protected by the rock. Before long, a burning brick-sized packet exploded in the dust within arm’s reach. It was powder wrapped in plastic, wrapped in newspapers. Burning packets started to fall all around me. Red puffs of dirt billowed off the ground each time one landed. Other flying packages ripped open and caught fire midair. Soon, a cloud of flaming powder snowed over the whole scene.
The Firebird had been trapped from the start. Lover Man moved dope, like Trang said. Of course, they’d sent Eagle Creek after me. It was about the dope, not the car. They’d played me for an idiot. I was a mule. A stooge.
My throat tightened, gasping for air. My intestines dammed up tight, their base primal urge barely suppressed. I turned and hugged the rock, digging my nails into its crusty lichens. I licked its ancient surface. Its rusty taste grounded me. I closed my eyes and pictured my fingers along the small of Marla’s back, around her pelvis, and down her long satin legs. My head in her lap. My arms wrapped tight around her waist. One by one, I counted the frizzy hairs around her navel. Every time I reached ten, I lost track and started over.
After what seemed like hours, the fury faded, the fire stopped by the rocky desert beyond the perimeter of burnt shrub and grass. The wreckage clanked with the cooling and contracting of twisted metal. Somewhere a coyote howled an all clear. A dispassionate crescent moon and a cold star watched overhead.
I released the rock and rolled over. Arms and legs trembled. White bone glistened through the rasped skin of my bloodied palms. To protect the open wounds, I held my clenched fists under my armpits. Futile. The effort only increased my agony.
On the road, the sound of an engine crept up from the distance. Lights appeared around the corner. For a moment, I feared that Eagle Creek, the relentless hunter, had me. But the car didn’t stop. This was someone uninterested in the troubles of a burning wreck in the night. It dissolved into the distance until silence returned. No one heard me. No one came for me.
At dawn, wisps of smoke still twisted from the razed Firebird, vaporizing in the cloudless sky. A couple of vultures rode the thermals. A mosquito drilled into my nose. I swatted it with a bloody hand and squinted at the shimmering horizon. Another car failed to stop.
In time, a pickup truck pulled over. I stayed flat behind the rock and watched a weathered tree of an old man limp his way around the boulders and shrubs toward the wreck. A tall heavy guy with jeans pulled high up over his gut. His unshaven double chin tucked into a brown-checkered shirt. He had the hands of a giant mole, shovels used to paddle the air while he walked. A tuft of white hair topped his head like an exclamation mark. At the wreck, he studied the scene, scratched his ass with one massive flipper, and spat a stream of brackish-brown tobacco juice.
It was time to move. Get away. Have my hands cleaned and bandaged. Find sanctuary. Revise my plans. So, on the chance the codger wasn’t a killer, I sat up. The old man noticed me right away. He came over for a look.
“What’re you doing behind that rock, son?”
“I’m hurt,” I said. “I need a ride.”
I raised my hands for his inspection.
“Sweet Lord, there’s a fine mess.” He whistled, impressed.
“I escaped the burning car,” I said. “I guess it could be worse.”
He reached under my armpits and lifted me to my feet, his hands like steel forklifts. The old boy still had a grip.
“Can you walk, kid?”
“Sure, I can,” I said. “I need my hands fixed.”
“There’s first aid in the truck,” he said. “Follow me.”
The windowless charred frame of the Firebird was beyond recognition. Warped bits of black metal scattered the prairie. Lover Man would demand retribution. Eagle Creek’s black eyes glared down from the blue. His knife slashed through the sky. At best, a painful death loomed.
The old man headed for his truck. He wasn’t concerned. My trouble was unknown to him. Unsure of what came next, I followed in hopes that somehow this would turn out right. We walked along the trail the car had torn through the brush, over the rocks, and back up to the highway. Both of us hobbled, for different reasons.
The pickup truck seemed even older than its driver. What looked like a bullet hole pierced the front windshield on the passenger side about where a person’s throat would be. In places, the scratched white paint revealed rusty brown stains in its dented body. In the back, a basset hound peered over the sides of the bed. Droopy eyes leaked doggy eye goop. Something reeked of carrion.
The dog barked a couple of times. Hey, Boss, whatcha scrape off the desert floor? This guy don’t look good.
The old man flipped down the tailgate and pointed.
“Sit here,” he said. “Don’t mind Albert. He’s harmless. Only smells bad.”
From the cab, he produced a red first-aid kit and a flask.
“Drink and then we’ll clean your hands with it,” he said. “It works for both.”
I took a long pull. It burned going down. Moonshine. It felt good. At first. Then I fought the urge to puke.
“Bet it works in the engine,” I said when I could breathe again.
“I guess it could, in a pinch,” the man said. “These old diesel engines will go on anything. Not like those no-lead-gas electro hybrid contraptions they got these days.”
A spurt of tobacco shot from between his unshaven lips and sizzled on the road. Without further ceremony, he splashed the moonshine over my wounded hands. It felt like he’d lashed me with a strip of barbed wire.
“What happened out here?” His huge hands scraped the dirt from my palms with tiny pieces of gauze.
“Hit a rabbit, I think.”
“Figures. We found one on the road over there.” He nodded his head in the general direction. “That’s why Albert stinks. The bugger likes to roll around in dead animals.”
Albert kept a close eye on the doctoring. Slobber foamed off his leathery lips onto my shoulder.
While he wrapped my hands in bandages, the man said, “You’re lucky this is all’s you got. Cars can be replaced.”
A rocky, jagged brown and red terrain without beginning or end surrounded us. Tufts of yellow grass and green shrubs dotted the landscape. Sun-baked boulders and buttes in harsh geometry littered the plain. Far off in the distance, where the arid earth blended with the windless sky, a couple of snowy mountain peaks shimmered like a mirage.
“Where’ve I landed?”
The man pointed up the road. “We’re about twenty miles from Moab.” His hand stroked the horizon. “Over them hills there is the valley of the Green River. Runs into the Colorado River. Across that and beyond eventually is the promised land, California,” he said. “They got a good hospital in Moab. I can run you over.”
My hands balled into fists. The bandages felt secure.
“I’m going to be okay,” I said. “I don’t need a hospital.”
Eagle Creek would be sure to check there.
“Well, then,” he said, “how about I take you over to the state troopers so’s you can file an accident report for the insurance.”
; “No, no police either.”
His blue eyes narrowed with new interest.
“You didn’t steal that car, did you, boy?”
“No. But it’s not mine, either.”
“You in trouble with the law, then?”
“No,” I said.
“Well,” he said, “it’s your own business, I guess. There’s no shame in being on the wrong side of the law. Hell, fugitives been hiding in the hills around these parts since Butch Cassidy come here after robbing all them banks and such.”
Albert barked at the mention of Butch Cassidy. He liked that story. More dog goober flew through the air.
“I’m not in that situation,” I said, “though I’d be grateful for somewhere to rest up.”
“Get in the truck,” he said.
The truck was from before seat belts. A 12 gauge Winchester over-under was racked in the back of the cab. I could see the road through a rusty hole in the floor between my feet. He fired up the engine. The radio sparked to life. Mavis Staples sang, “Praise the Lord,” through a cracked dashboard speaker.
He shot a squirt of tobacco juice over my feet through the hole in the floor, then rammed the truck into gear. In the back came a dull thud as Albert’s body lurched against the metal sides of the truck bed. The old man wiped some brown spittle from his chin and offered me his hand.
“Name’s Archie,” he said.
We drove along the two-lane blacktop for about twenty minutes. Archie didn’t talk. He looked at the road and steered the truck carefully with both hands on the wheel, like he was at the helm of a ship in an ice storm at night.
“Where’re we going, Archie?” I said after a while.
“The man I sometimes does chores for, he’s all right,” Archie said. “He’s okay. Not Christian but at least he’s an American, like us. His place is out of the way. Most folks around here never heard of it.”
It sounded good. No sense correcting him about who I was or where I came from. “Who is he?”
“He’s a Boo-dist. He minds his own business. Works on his land. Walks around counting ducks. Right now, he’s digging them a new pond. You can do some work around his place and rest a spell.”
My bandaged hands were starting to throb. “I’m not sure what work I can do.”
“Let’s see what he says.”
Nothing marked the turn when Archie veered the truck off the paved road into the desert toward the mountains. We rattled over a cow grate. The truck shook in all directions. In the back, Albert tossed from side to side stoically. His nails clawed the truck bed for traction. Archie spat another gob of tobacco out the window and geared down. He shut the radio off. The wind sighed through the grass. In the distance, a killdeer cried out. Prairie sage scented the air.
“It’s remote,” he said. “Mike built it up from nothing. Made it into a nice spread. He came in ’93 and spent the first winter in a tent.”
“He lives out here alone?” The land supported an occasional gnarled tree and a lot of red rock.
“Yep. He’s an odd guy, Mike. He likes to walk around out here. He went away for a while. Folks believed he was killed overseas. That didn’t turn out to be right.”
The track dipped into a small valley surrounded on three sides by snow-capped mountains. Unlike most of the place, which looked inhospitable, this valley rolled with emerald grasslands. Lanky poplars glistened in a slow breeze. The cool morning air filled my lungs, the first good sensation in some time.
The truck stopped in front of a big log cabin with a couple of rocking chairs on the wraparound porch. Behind the house stood a barn with a red roof. A rusty horse trailer rested on concrete blocks in the tall grass. It looked like it hadn’t moved in years. Next to it was a metal pen, like a cage for livestock, or maybe a trap for cougars and coyotes that came close to the house. The door stood open. An empty water bowl lay turned over on the concrete floor.
In the distance, a dust bowl gathered. A green and yellow tractor emerged from the cloud, coming straight for us at speed.
“He’s a maniac on that thing,” Archie said. He pulled up the handbrake. “He loves racing that John Deere. Even if he’s a holy man now. They’re not supposed to do things like that.”
“Like what?”
Archie watched the tractor bounce over the prairie.
“He says Boo-dists ain’t supposed to take pleasure from what they do.”
Albert barked at the tractor, his front paws up on the truck bed.
“Shut up, Albert, it’s Mike on his tractor.”
Albert continued barking like we were under attack until Archie tumbled out of the cab and made a half-assed attempt to whack the dog with his open hand.
“One of these days, I swear I’m going to whoop you.”
Albert growled, black lips pulled back over yellow fangs. Nevertheless, he moved out of range.
The tractor skidded to a halt beside us, swallowed by a haze of red dirt. Grit clogged my eyes and throat. Archie coughed, and Albert howled again. When the swirling dust settled, a bald man wrapped in an orange robe climbed off the tractor. He wore construction boots with the laces wrapped around his ankles. Dark welder’s goggles protected his eyes. Midforties. Thin. Fit. A half woman, half bird with a sword in hand danced around a sequence of mysterious geometric patterns tattooed down the wiry muscles of his left arm.
He peeled the goggles off his head and grinned.
“Greetings,” he said.
“Been digging?” Archie said.
“There’s always something to clear away.”
“Anyone out helping today?”
“Only the tractor. I call it a mechanical meditation so it sounds less pleasurable.” He chuckled and wiped his forehead. “I doubt I’m fooling anyone. Who’s this?”
Archie pointed his thumb at me. “He wrecked a car up on the service road.”
I showed my bloodied bandages. “Paul Wint.”
The man put his hands together in greeting.
“I’m Mike. Mike Pike.” He giggled at the sound of his own name. “You’re wounded.”
His ruddy clean-shaven face glowed. His open smile dispelled any notion that he had misgivings about harbouring a stranger. I felt welcome.
“Archie’s got me fixed,” I said.
“No doubt. His combat hospital training.”
I looked at Archie. He acted so of this place I couldn’t picture him any other way.
“Combat hospital?”
Archie shrugged. “Orderly. Drafted. Korea. Two years.”
He leaned on the hood of his truck and looked away.
“We’re brothers in arms,” Mike said. “Archie in Korea, me in Kuwait.”
“Desert Storm,” I said. “You were there? You look more like some Buddhist monk.”
Mike snapped his fingers in rhythm. “They taught me how to hate and they sent me to Kuwait.” He laughed. It rang pure, up from the soles of his feet. “I transformed.”
Archie studied the mountains and absently worked a fresh tobacco plug under his bottom lip. Mike tugged at the tractor’s spark plug covers. In the back of the truck, Albert farted and stretched out on his back in the sun. Somewhere, an eagle screeched. Its cry echoed off the distant mountains. All there was left on earth was this moment in this bewitching valley with its easy silence and its majestic views. For the first time since leaving Harmony Greeting Cards, I felt good.
Archie shattered the spell with a test shot, like he was calibrating the range of a new hunting rifle. Fresh brown tobacco juice exploded in the dust. Satisfied with the new chaw’s balance in size and consistency, he grunted. “He says the car weren’t his, but he didn’t steal it, neither.”
“Good,” said Mike. “Theft is pointless.”
“The kid needs a place to hole up for a spell.”
Mike adjusted his robes. His knobby legs rooted immobile into the boots. I glimpsed a tiger tattoo across his chest.
“Is that all right?” I said.
I hoped not to have to exp
lain my story in detail. It sounded implausible — or, at least, like trouble. Turned out, neither man cared to hear anything about what had brought me here.
“Everything’s exactly like it should be,” Mike said. He smiled again and opened his arms. “The ranch is a sanctuary to all who come in peace. We eat once a day at sunrise. No alcohol. No violence. Everyone helps with the work. Meditation at eight and three. If you don’t join me, you’re expected to be quiet. Lights out at nine. Archie will tend to your hands till they’re better.”
That settled it, for the moment.
TWENTY-THREE
Home on the Range
MIKE OPENED the screen door and pressed a pair of old, clean overalls along with some balled-up T-shirts into my hands. Archie led the way over the knoll away from the main house to a cabin in a stand of trees. A one-room hut big enough for a single bed beside a wood-burning stove. No power. No lights. In back stood an outhouse next to an outdoor solar-heated shower that fed off a wobbly water tower.
After Archie left, I gulped the pitcher of water he’d placed on the railing outside and then lingered in the shower for a good ten minutes till it ran cold. The last hours of the day were rocked away on the porch in the shadow of the Rockies that clawed at the cobalt sky. In the distance, between the hut and the mountains, a river frothed over rounded boulders along its banks on its surge to the sea.
Eagle Creek wasn’t going to find me here. If he found the Firebird burnt to a shell, he’d figure my body was consumed by flames. Vaporized. And if there was a trail to the road, that was where it ended, at the spot where the truck picked me up. On asphalt. No tracks. And even if he smelled blood and went down the highway on a hunch, where would he go from there? Which direction would he venture? Nothing marked this place. Archie said that for most people, this valley didn’t exist. For now, I’d vanished.
The first night, coyotes and owls serenaded me with a symphony of plaintive cries and whoops, while overhead outside my window stardust swirled across the galaxy. In the morning, a few white-tailed deer grazed near the cabin. Between the sun and the moon on opposite ends of the horizon, the grass glistened with dewy crystals under their hooves.
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