Five Skies

by Ron Carlson

  “Be careful, Ronnie,” Art called. “You could fall down. Don’t fall down.”

  The binoculars appeared in the window and Key took them. “Come on down. We’re here.” Arthur pulled the big truck two wheels off the road into the sandy loam, sending a dozen rabbits sprinting into the sage.

  They packed up behind the truck. The sky was an amorphous glaring canopy, and the horizons were all tattered in such bright haze. Darwin had the transit head in his pack, and Arthur took the tripod and measuring stick. They each wore the cheap sunglasses they’d bought in Mercy on the way over. They each carried a quilted quart canteen. “Let’s go see,” Arthur said.

  The soil was oddly like snow, packed but loose, blown in a speckled sheet for years without end, and each footstep made a three-inch-deep boot impression. They had to lift their feet, walking awkwardly in the bright windy day as rabbits were released in every direction, but it felt good to walk after the hot truck.

  They had spent a half hour in the town of Mercy, and while Ronnie went to the bank with his paycheck, Arthur and Darwin drove over to the little brick clinic. They’d made Ronnie promise not to stop at the Antlers, saying they’d get dinner there later. Arthur carried the cooler full of trout into the medical building, ringing the hanging bell as he did. He set it on the receptionist’s chair when the woman appeared, a white cloth medical mask across her face. “Here’s some fish for the good doctor,” Arthur said.

  “I love trout,” the dentist said, his face in the door. “How’re everybody’s teeth?”

  “So far so good,” Arthur said. “We’re brushing morning and night.”

  Now, with the wind tearing at their backs, the three men walked toward the river gorge. “These aren’t our rabbits,” Ronnie said. The little creatures were everywhere, running from bush to bush. “These are longer. And check those black ears. We don’t have any black ears.”

  He was right. These were some kind of jackrabbit with dark ears which lay flat when they darted through the sage. “Ten thousand years ago, the canyon got too deep for these guys to cross, and they were smarter than we are. They didn’t want to get to the other side. This is a whole different population.”

  Darwin stopped and glassed the area before them. “I don’t think it matters,” he said. “Let’s cut right a little. I hope we’re not too far off. It’s odd. We should be close.”

  Twenty minutes later, the terrain had not changed. They walked with the wind ripping and pushing at them. The high cloud sheet glowed, punishingly bright, and they squinted against it even with their plastic eyewear. It was as if the river had been pulled from the world. Then Darwin grabbed the back of Ronnie’s pack, stopping him.

  “What?”

  Ahead, the world presented another illusion. The three men shielded their eyes and tried to fathom the strange distance which appeared to be both near and far, a telescoped panorama. Kicking forward, they saw the trick become apparent and the granular face of the far cliff came into view. The plain had appeared unbroken, sand and sage, the rocky chasm out of sight until they stepped to it. Darwin glassed the far side, but could discern nothing. “I wanted to see the tent, at least. Are we north or south?” He handed the field glasses to Arthur.

  “Check it,” Ronnie said. He had baby-stepped up to the edge and then come wheeling back. “It is a little different over here.” Darwin went up and toed the demarcation between the sandy mesa and the yawning blue air of the canyon. The drop was a straight vertical line to the river, which looked blue and amber and about two hundred feet away when in fact it was almost a thousand.

  “Get back a little,” Ronnie said. He had backpedaled into the sage twenty feet. “This side is no good,” he said. “It’s all about to fall down.”

  “We’re south another mile,” Key said. He pointed. “I can see the tops of the electric poles, just barely.”

  “Darwin,” Ronnie said. “Let’s go.” He had noticed the sand here was oddly clear of rabbit tracks. “How do they know not to run over the edge?”

  “They just know.”

  Arthur Key walked up to the drop-off. “It is going to fall down,” he said. “In about five thousand years. Come on. We better keep moving.”

  The three men walked south along the rim, Ronnie staying farther from the canyon than Key and Darwin. “Did you tell Traci you’re coming in for dinner?”

  “I didn’t see her.”

  “You went down to the Antlers.”

  “I didn’t see Traci. I went to the bank.”

  “Then you went to the Antlers. What’d she say?”

  “She didn’t say anything because I didn’t see her.”

  They were making their heavy steps in the thick sand.

  Key continued. “Did she say she was looking forward to seeing you and your friends later and that she’d save the window booth for us?”

  Ronnie marched in the bright wind.

  “Did she say that she’d try to get off early so you guys could go back to her house and watch the television?”

  “She didn’t say anything because I didn’t see her, you asshole.”

  “You went into the bank. Then you went to the Antlers, which was mostly empty and Traci was not there, which disappointed you because you bear real affection for that girl, and you stood there and Marion told you, because she remembers you from having you broken down in her house and for some reason that woman thinks the world of you.” Key was speaking in short even bursts as the men did not mitigate their pace. “And she said that Traci was going to meet you later when you and your fine friends came in for their steak dinner, the wise older man and the strong handsome man, who doesn’t speak very much.”

  Darwin walked and breathed this in. He’d been watching the flurries of dust his feet raised blow out over the chasm and spiral up and disappear, each step a ghost. Hearing Arthur Key play with Ronnie, hearing Arthur Key talk this way gave him a feeling he hadn’t had for months, a kind of happiness that braced him in the day. “The wise man, who is dumb as a rock, is also quite handsome,” he said.

  “Oh for godsakes,” Ronnie said. “Not you too.”

  “But what did the note say?” Arthur Key asked Ronnie.

  “Shut up!” Ronnie called.

  Key stopped in the sand and slumped his shoulders, shaking his head. “You did. You wrote her a note. That’s good work. Notes are good.”

  “What note?”

  “Did you give it to Marion?” He rubbed his chin. “No, she might have read it. You kept it, didn’t you? Oh man.”

  “What note is this?” Darwin said again.

  “The note in Ronnie’s back pocket right now.”

  The young man was still walking, stabbing his steps into the soft ground.

  “A note is the first signal of a civilized courtship. You”—he pointed ahead to Ronnie’s back—“are a gentleman. Darwin, this is all getting good.”

  “Oh, it was good already.”

  “There’s no note.”

  Key started walking again, nodding his head.

  Soon they could see their worksite across the river canyon. The poles and the neat stacks of lumber and the tent were clear on the vast expanse. Again it was a different view and made their efforts small. Key was sobered by the panorama, and the vastness smothered his notions that the project might succeed. It was one thing, and a good thing, to secure a rail or build a step, but under the pressing sky and against this thousand-mile wind, and across the red and violet vacuum of the rocky chasm, every nail they’d pounded seemed a waste of time. The three men stood in the soft sand near the lip of rock in their sunglasses and looked across at their little jobsite. Ronnie used the binoculars for a moment and said, “Some blue table. Those guys have got one fine blue table.” For the first time they could see the palisades and protrusions of the rock wall under their camp as the cliff stood, broken and crevassed, all the way down to the river. Key pointed out the two eagle nests about halfway down, the red rocks washed white beneath the aeries.

&nbs
p; “If the wind blows like this during the big show on Labor Day, everybody’s going to die. They can’t afford even a breeze.” Arthur was setting up the tripod, screwing tight the brass fittings. They all moved slowly now, step by step lining up with the markers on Ronnie’s graded approach to the takeoff site across the canyon. When Art was satisfied, he secured the transit on the tripod in the sand. Darwin went south, stepping another hundred paces exactly, and stood the target stick in the ground, waiting. Key sighted straight through the open air where Ronnie had staked the base of the location of the ramp, focusing until he could see the plastic streamer twisting in the wind. Then he turned to Darwin and through the telescopic lens read the numbers off the stick, saying them aloud so Ronnie could write them down.

  “Just how does this magic work?” Ronnie asked. “Does it say a number in there?”

  Arthur looked at the boy and said, “Hold your hand straight out and hold up a finger.” Ronnie did it. “Now close one eye. Open it. Close the other.”

  “And?”

  “Now, if we knew how far apart your eyes are, we could find out where your finger was.”

  Arthur Key and Darwin changed places on the windy ledge. When Key was set again, he shot both alignments and Ronnie wrote them down. By the time Arthur Key and Ronnie rejoined him, Darwin had laid down the marker and again had the field glasses to his eyes.

  “What have you got?” Key asked him.

  Darwin handed him the glasses. “There’s a truck.”

  “Is something going on?” Ronnie stepped over.

  Key gave him the glasses and asked, “Do you know that guy? Who is the girl?”

  Ronnie could see two figures walking around the camp. He recognized the young guy in a black T-shirt as the younger of the men who had come at night. The girl was about nineteen, and she wore a white tank top that left her belly bare above her cutoff jean shorts. Ronnie watched her pull open the flaps of their tent and go in.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “What is it?” Darwin asked.

  “The girl’s in the tent,” Key said. He held the transit lens to his right eye.

  “The guy is one of the guys who tried to steal the lumber,” Ronnie said. “His name is Buster.”

  “Sit down,” Arthur Key said. “You too, Darwin. There’s no sense now in having them see us.”

  The girl came out of the tent and opened the galley box. The young man was quickly sliding around a little, making sure that they were alone.

  “It’s a ’seventy-five Ford pickup, white with one blue door.” He read the plate number to Darwin.

  “This guy’s on a mission,” Arthur said, watching the boy on the graded runway, pulling the stakes up out of the ground one by one all the way to the precipice and then hurling the whole bundle over the edge. The pine sticks flickered against the red rock cliff face as they fell. The young man turned and looked toward the girl; she must have called him. Key could see her waving their bottle of George Dickel. She’d scattered the cooking gear on the ground.

  “They’re going to trash the place,” Ronnie said.

  Now the girl had pulled her shirt off and danced with her hands above her head, swinging the bottle. The guy came over and grabbed at her breasts, and she swatted his hand away. He took the bottle from her and drank. Now the girl was standing on the table dancing. “She’s on the table,” Ronnie reported.

  “We can see it,” Darwin said. The kid came to the table and reached up, pulling at her pants, which she finally helped him with and stepped out of. Her ass was the whitest thing in the white day, and there was a smudged blue karmic circle tattooed there where her pants would have hidden it. Ronnie still had the binoculars. Suddenly the girl jumped onto the guy’s shoulders, his face lost in her, and they staggered back until he could set her down. Then she pulled him into the tent.

  “Let’s move back a little ways,” Arthur Key said. “Behind the sage.”

  “No way,” Ronnie Panelli said. “They’re in the tent.”

  “Easy, Ronnie,” Key said. “With this wind they can hear us.”

  “Good.”

  “No, I want this on them. Move back and watch.” The three men retreated to the first substantial bank of brush and knelt there. It had been a minute. “Good,” Key said. Now he went to the cliff edge again and clapped his hands three times, each a bass concussion, and he hollered once: a very deep “Hey!” He knelt out of sight. Five seconds later the boy appeared in the tent flap, tugging his pants on. He looked north and then out across the river and then north again. Now he was putting on his shirt and walking around the tent listening.

  “He can’t see us,” Arthur said.

  The girl came out struggling with her cutoffs and then snapping her sandals on one at a time. They both were looking north. The young man went to his truck, the wind pushing him. The girl went back into the tent and retrieved the whiskey.

  “That’s not the same truck from the other night,” Ronnie said.

  They saw the vehicle stop at the gate to the ranch road. The boy stood out on the ground again and the girl now helped hand him a rifle.

  “Don’t worry,” Key said. “He can in no way see us.”

  The kid lifted the weapon and aimed and fired a shot and then another into the large canvas tent. Then he handed it back for the girl to put on the window rack.

  “Goddamn it,” Ronnie said.

  “You didn’t know him?” Key asked Darwin.

  “They’re not from Mercy,” he answered.

  The truck had lifted dust as it bounced north on the ranch road.

  “Well, Diff must have offended them too.” The men stood and reassumed their packs. There was now a single line of blue along the western horizon where the ceiling had broken. Key sent Ronnie back to tie two orange construction streamers on the base of the sage at the landing site, so they could shoot it with the transit exactly from the ramp site. Now the men turned to face the unrelenting wind in the harsh brightness and started kicking dust-flashing footsteps toward the distant road.

  TEN

  AT THE ANTLERS, the three men sat in the window booth. There had been a discussion in the truck about hurrying to the site. Ronnie was hot to get back, maybe catch the intruders, intercept them on the farm road, “kick their asses,” then inspect the damage at camp, clean up, fix stuff. He waved his arms as he went through it. It was his camp and he was mad. But Darwin had prevailed: “Those two are gone and they aren’t coming back. Let’s have some supper in the town like we planned and then go back. There’s plenty of daylight.”

  Art had parked the big flatbed truck behind the wooden building in a weedy gravel lot and they had entered that way, past the small kitchen deck and into the bar and dining room which faced the street. There were two men sitting at the dark wooden bar in shirtsleeves watching the news on the elevated television on the cornice of the backbar. Sitting down in the dark room, they all could feel their faces burned by the day. It was disconcerting to be out of the wind. They put their sunglasses on the varnished tabletop and let their eyes adjust. Ronnie fingered the salt and pepper shakers which were two small Corona bottles with perforated caps.

  “We’ve got salt and pepper,” Key told him.

  “I wasn’t going to take them,” Ronnie said.

  The bartender came over, a woman in Levi’s and a faded blue turtleneck with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows. “Hello, Darwin,” she said. “Hi, Ronnie, where you been? Where’d you run to the other week? You just now missed Traci.”

  “Working,” Ronnie said, looking at where he bumped his thumbs together on the table.

  “Good, good. She said you’re quite the cook.”

  “He’s altogether skillful,” Darwin said. Ronnie held still.

  “This your whole crew?” the woman asked Darwin. She was looking at Arthur.

  “It is,” he told her. “This is Art. How have you been, Marion?”

  “I’m fine, same old. I’m trying to figure a way to raise the price of beer and bl
ame it on someone else.”

  Arthur Key looked once at the woman, her natural ease, her shape in the shirt and her smiling eyes, and he looked away. All of a sudden the day seemed full of women.

  “To hear it around here, it’s an invasion. There’s forty of you raising hell out at Difficulto.”

  “It’s just a summer project,” Darwin told her. “Diff gets everybody riled up. He likes that.”

  “I know it,” she said. “And he’s done it. You’d think the federal government was out there building a god knows what. You guys eating?”

  “You got any of the sirloin tips?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “That’s me,” Darwin said. “With that little salad and some ranch dressing.”

  She looked at the other men. “You want menus?”

  “No, ma’am,” Arthur said. “I’ll have the same.”

  “Cheeseburger,” Ronnie said. “I’ve been waiting for a cheeseburger with the fries.”

  “And could you bring us two pints of the Old Mill Dew?” Darwin said, looking to Arthur for his approval. It was an Idaho brewery. “And some lime Kool-Aid for this young chef.”

  “Coke,” said Ronnie. “We’re in town.”

  Outside the streaked and tinted front window of the Antlers, the bright day still flared, the traffic in town desultory and sparse, though the quiet street scene was a strange dimension to the men who had been out on the plateau for weeks. Each passing vehicle seemed an incursion, and the people crossing to the pharmacy or walking by talking or holding the hand of a child invaded the men’s attention. It all might as well have been a movie. Opposite such an active diorama, the little elevated television flickered its blue and red lights, faces eclipsing one another as the voices rang tinny and disconnected. Ronnie looked up at it.

  When Marion returned with the silverware and the beverages, she said to Darwin, “That’s Hector in the kitchen, if you want to say hello. He saw you come in.”