Thrilling Thirteen

by Ponzo, Gary

  Sounded like bees.

  I wetted my lips. My mouth was cottony, tasting of ozone. I cleared my throat, to ask Shelburne if he himself had done some water sampling on those site scouts he’d mentioned. His father had been out water sampling when he’d had his heart attack. Alone, Shelburne had said. Hadn’t he?

  I said, “Hey.”

  Shelburne didn’t hear me. Probably could not hear me over the drum roll of Walter snoring.

  Good thing, because I didn’t know how to phrase my question without accusing Shelburne of lying. Were you in Sacramento when your father died? Or did I misremember the timing?

  I shivered. I pulled the sleeping bag up to my neck. I noticed that Shelburne was cold, as well. He’d put on a wool cap, yanked down over his ears. He wore a puffy parka, one I hadn’t yet seen. A down parka is not recommended in the rain. Rain had stopped, though, thank you very much.

  If my backpack was in reach I’d drag it close and dig out my own down parka.

  Walter turned over, muffling his snores.

  Thoroughly chilled now, fully awake now, I figured I’d just ask about the timing. Clarify things.

  I cleared my throat, loud. “Good morning.”

  Shelburne turned. Just dipped a shoulder and angled his head. Acknowledgement. A listening man. In profile, backlit, he looked like he’d been sketched. An artist’s quick strokes, just framing the man. But, I now noticed, the artist got the nose wrong. It should be stronger, more hawk-like.

  I went very cold.

  It wasn’t Robert Shelburne.

  12

  Two things, in quick succession:

  I said shit and Walter stirred.

  I scanned the tunnel and saw that Robert Shelburne’s sleeping bag was empty.

  The figure at the mouth of the tunnel did not move. Not an inch. Shoulder still dipped. Head still angled.

  Holy holy shit.

  I tried to exit my sleeping bag. Too quick. Entangling myself. Making struggling noises.

  Walter slowly sat up. Looking at me. What?

  I nodded toward the entrance.

  Walter turned to look.

  The figure, unmoving, carved there by the artist for all eternity, watched us in turn. “How do you do?” he said. And then when we did not respond, “I do poorly.”

  His voice was soft, reserved. Frugal.

  ~ ~ ~

  Time passed. Seconds most likely. Possibly a full minute. The light outside intensified, as if an hour had passed and full morning had bloomed. A trick of radiating sunlight, tearing a hole in the fog. A matter of seconds.

  I said, “Henry?”

  He said, “Yes.”

  Walter spoke. “Henry Shelburne.”

  I thought perhaps Walter’s use of the surname was for my benefit, as if Walter thought I had just awakened, myself, and was in that exit-mode from the dream world where reality is conditional, as if I had another Henry in mind, one only accessed in memory.

  “We have five minutes,” the figure said. Henry Shelburne said, in his soft parsimonious voice. He shifted slightly, crooking his left leg so that he could more fully look at us. “I can’t come in.”

  Walter turned on the lantern.

  Henry Shelburne was still backlit by the day outside but now frontlit, as well, by the cool LED glow of the lantern. I could see that his cap was Sherpa-style, with earflaps. I could make out the color of the cap and parka: brown. Disappearing-phantom-in-the-woods brown. I could just make out his features. He looked remarkably like the wet-combed teenager from the Old West photograph. But, in this light, the marks of the years would not be apparent. What was apparent was his left hand gripping his thigh.

  In the photo, I recalled, in which Henry sat in the saloon chair, his left thigh had been strapped to a holster. No holster, now. No fake six-shooter. Just faded jeans encasing that thigh. Jeans, down parka, wool hat. Muddied hiking boots. Henry Shelburne looked like any other hiker on a foggy mountain morning. I tried to wrap my mind around this new Henry, the real deal, not the fragile teenager in the photo.

  Walter said, “How do you do, son. My name is Walter Shaws and my associate here is Cassie Oldfield. We’re geologists in the employ of your brother, who has been searching for you. Who is extremely concerned about your welfare. But I expect you know all that.”

  Henry Shelburne’s hand tightened on his thigh.

  “I’m quite sorry to hear that you’re doing poorly,” Walter said. “How can we help?”

  “You helped,” Henry said.

  Walter nodded. “I assume you mean in the sense of leading your brother here.”

  “Yes, I mean that. That was resourceful, Robert.”

  I looked beyond Henry but if Robert Shelburne was out there he was masked in the fog. Henry’s thought processes were…off. Chaotic, as Robert had said. Still, the word resourceful. The phrasing. Henry Shelburne was well-spoken. I didn’t know why that surprised me. A chaotic mind did not mean an ignorant mind.

  I said, “What did you mean by we have five minutes?”

  Henry lifted his left arm. His parka sleeve was too short. It rode up. He rotated his arm and looked at his wrist, as if demonstrating the concept of telling time. There was no wristwatch on his wrist. His wrist was still stick-thin.

  Off, chaotic, confused? Or just making a point? I asked, “What happens in five minutes?”

  His left hand began to tremble. The tremor traveled up his arm.

  Neurological effect, I assumed, of mercury poisoning. Yeah, he was doing poorly.

  He caught me staring and jerked his hand back down to clutch his thigh. He said, “We need to travel.”

  “Travel where?”

  “You go home. I go back.”

  “Back where?”

  “Where Robert is waiting.”

  I asked, “Where is Robert waiting?”

  “Out there.”

  “He left his gear behind.”

  “He doesn’t need it right now.”

  “Why doesn’t he come back in and tell us himself?”

  “He wants you to see I am doing well.”

  Walter spoke. “You just told us you’re doing poorly.”

  Henry Shelburne put his hands to his head. His fingers splayed across his temples. “You need to stop following. From now on. You need to stop looking for … for the black rock. For the black rock. I lost the word.” He closed his eyes. “It’s in the microscope, Henry. Look Henry. And there’s a cross. What is that called? Look it up Henry, look it up Henry. It’s a black rock and there’s a white crystal with a black cross. The cross is beautiful, it’s like a sign to show the way….”

  Like a crusade, I thought.

  “… it’s called a … what is that?” He drummed his fingers on his temples. “Look it up Henry, it’s…”

  “It’s called chiastolite,” I said. “Henry.”

  His fingers stilled. He opened his eyes and stared at me. “Yes, it is.”

  Walter said, “And the black rock is called hornfels.”

  Henry slammed his hands down onto the floor of the tunnel and twisted his body to face Walter full-on. “I know that.”

  “Take it easy,” Walter said.

  Very slowly, Henry Shelburne pushed himself backward, pushing down on the floor to lever his body up, uncoiling with surprising control, given the tremors in his hands when he’d unloosed them. He stood now at the mouth of the tunnel and he shoved his hands into his parka pockets and gave a little nod in our direction, into the tunnel, a nod that I read to say I’m outta there. I’m free.

  And then I thought, watch yourself lady. Don’t read things into Henry Shelburne.

  Don’t act as if you know him.

  ~ ~ ~

  By the time Walter and I had extracted ourselves from our sleeping bags and scuttled up to the entrance of the tunnel there was nothing to see outside but the fog-tricked walls of Shoo Fly Canyon.

  We stood shivering, me in my silkies and Walter in his thermals.

  “We should consider
our options,” Walter said.

  “First things first,” I said. “Do we think Henry is armed?”

  “My call, it’s possible.”

  “I concur. That parka could be hiding a belt holster.”

  “In which case,” Walter said, “the question is whether Robert went with him willingly, or at gunpoint.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Arguing in favor of gunpoint, that would explain why Robert didn’t wake us and tell us he was going.”

  I took note that Walter was now referring to our client by first name. Had the gunpoint scenario made it more personal? Sure it had. I said, “On the other hand, if he went willingly, the question is why he didn’t wake us, thank us, tell us to go home and the check will be in the mail.”

  “Do you have an answer in mind?”

  “Occam’s razor,” I said. “The simplest explanation—he was honoring his brother’s wishes. Henry just made it clear he doesn’t want us to join them. Think it through. Henry shows up—unarmed in my scenario—and wakes his brother. I know I know, he doesn’t like enclosed spaces, but maybe he gathers his courage and just dashes inside. Or maybe he stands at the entrance and calls to Robert.”

  “And we slept through that?”

  “Evidently we did.”

  Walter considered. “And then, Henry waits for us to awaken so he can tell us to go home?”

  “I don’t think he waited. He was humming. That woke me up.”

  “Meanwhile,” Walter said, “Robert is waiting out there in the canyon. Willingly.”

  “In this scenario, yeah. Robert’s achieved his stated goal. He’s reunited with his brother. He can take it from there.”

  “Take it where?”

  “To the hornfels site, I assume. Assuming that Henry already found it. Which I admit is a large assumption, given the state of his mind and the short time he’s had in the field. Then again, he evidently spends a lot of time in this neighborhood. And, he is an amateur geologist.”

  Walter snorted. Amateur.

  I was once an amateur geologist and I didn’t do so badly. Then again, I was working under Walter’s tutelage.

  “In a nutshell,” Walter said, “we have two scenarios. In the first, Robert left voluntarily. In which case, I would like a formal declaration that he no longer requires our services. In the second scenario, Henry took Robert at gunpoint and presumably secured him somewhere. In which case, our client is potentially at risk.”

  “In which case we should call for help.”

  “I doubt we have cell service up here.”

  I unzipped the grab pocket of my pack and took out my cell phone and slipped on my Crocs and went out of the tunnel and tried. No signal. I returned to Walter and said, “You’re right.”

  “We could hike downcanyon until we reach a place where we can make the call. And then we wait for … hours?” Walter grunted. “We don’t have hours to spare. Robert Shelburne may be at risk. Henry Shelburne is a very unstable young man. At risk, himself.”

  “Which means we don’t know what we’d be walking into.”

  Walter gave me a look. Eyes sharp as quartz. “We have a contract, Cassie. To save a life.”

  Actually I wasn’t so clear what page of the contract we were on. The page that said we’re trying to prevent Henry Shelburne from committing suicide? Having finally met the man, I had no idea if he was suicidal. I had no idea if he was homicidal, either. Or which damn scenario—if either—was the right one.

  Walter waited. The dance of who goes first.

  Contract or no contract, I didn’t see a moral path to walk away from this. But I had a feeling as strong as I have ever had that we would be walking into something we weren’t prepared for. I said, “Okay but we go on alert.”

  “Indeed.”

  Once decided, we hurried. Wrangled into clothing, into boots. We decided to carry day packs for faster travel. We packed parkas, ponchos, headlamps, first aid kit, trail mix, water, field knives. A geologist should never be without a field knife.

  We headed out of Shoo Fly Tunnel.

  For the briefest moment we paused. Which way had they gone? Upcanyon, or downcanyon? The most reasonable assumption was that they were heading for the hornfels site and that—judging by the float we’d been following—was upcanyon.

  We did as we were trained to do: follow the geology.

  13

  We headed upcanyon.

  We traveled like thieves in the night, mindful of every truck-sized boulder that could hide a man. We scanned the cliff tops. We saw fog-wrapped trees that looked more human than arboreal.

  It was not easy hiking.

  We followed the creek, on the lookout for scat that would promise a deer trail or bear trail up ahead, but as with yesterday’s hike there was no trail, no path, just the boulders and gravel and the odd patch of fog-slicked clay soil.

  Walter slipped on a wet rock, and cursed.

  “You okay?”

  “Could be worse.”

  All right then. We had a name for this trek. It Could Be Worse.

  At a promising riffle in the creek, we stopped to sample. I ventured out on a wedge of slick boulders, courting balance, and was rewarded with two pieces of chiastolite hornfels float. A mineral pledge that we were on the right track.

  Getting better.

  The way grew rockier, spinier, and I jammed my right boot into a crevice and ignited the talus-bruise from yesterday’s hike. Weeks ago, it felt like. The top of my foot throbbed.

  But it could be very much worse.

  Farther along we came to an incursion into the northeast wall of Shoo Fly Canyon. It was a skinny side canyon, feeding a skinny creek down into our creek. We sampled another few dozen yards up Shoo Fly Creek and determined that the now-familiar hornfels float was no longer to be found. We retreated to the confluence with the side canyon and sampled up that way, and we found our float again, same old same old salt-and-pepper diorite and cross-studded hornfels. We were too skittish to say much in the way of woo-hoo.

  We simply nodded at one another and started the hike up Skinny Canyon.

  Scanning the cliff tops. Gingerly navigating the rocky banks of the creek. Walking on Shoo Fly eggs.

  Same old same old.

  Farther up Skinny Creek the float was more abundant, the edges of the hornfels sharper—barely rounded by transport. Not transported far, at all, from the source.

  And then the canyon made a little bend and precipitously narrowed, a dozen yards ahead where the rock walls closed in and formed a V-notch.

  My heartbeat ramped up. Up there was something new.

  A thumb of rock stood at the notch, webbed to the right-hand wall.

  We crept forward carefully, quietly, thieves in the night.

  We halted at the thumb. Waiting, listening. Straining to hear what, if anything, was occurring beyond that notch. Nothing, it seemed.

  We had all the time in the world to take out our hand lenses and glass the thumb to identify the white and black minerals as the constituents of diorite. We turned our attention to the wall and took note that the familiar bands of cherts and metasandstones and gray-green slates had a new member, a lens of darker-gray slate flecked with black spots like an Appaloosa horse.

  I considered the rocks. If I were a young intrusive diorite dike and heated my way into the old Shoo Fly Formation, this is what I would look like. If I wanted to cook up some hornfels, this would be my neighborhood. If I wished to include Maltese crosses in my hornfels, I’d roast those carbonaceous spots in the slate.

  If I were Henry hunting the family legend, this is what I would see.

  Walter grunted. “We’re in fat city.”

  “Nearly.”

  We’d found the general contact zone but not the hornfels itself. Fat city, perhaps, was on the other side of the notch.

  “Then shall we?” Walter moved.

  I said, “Wait.”

  He stopped.

  “Do you smell something?”

  It wa
s a faint odor, drifting through the fog, drifting our way, so faint that it took Walter a full minute to acknowledge it.

  “Mountain misery,” he finally said.

  “And smoke.”

  We looked at one another.

  I said, “Do you want to continue?”

  “Let’s just nip through the notch and see what we can see. And then we can figure out what to do next.”

  A sketchy plan. But I did not have a better one.

  I followed Walter through the notch.

  14

  Skinny Canyon opened into a small valley that extended several dozen yards before narrowing at the far end and canyoning upward again. It was a lush valley, thatched with brush and trees, bisected by a creek—our own Skinny Creek—and caged by high walls.

  What first caught my attention was a clearing at the far end of the valley. It boasted a rock ring holding timber tented over a brushy pile of kindling. The brush was brown, dried, but nevertheless I identified the crinkled ferny leaves as mountain misery. What else smelled like that?

  My nose stung.

  The timber smoked. The fire had almost gone out. Despite all logic, I ached to draw near. Add some of that dried kindling, help the fire along. Warm my feet.

  Walter whispered, “See anybody?”

  No. The fog was capricious, clearing the rock walls but lingering in the trees. I whispered, “I think that’s a tent back there in the trees.”

  We waited, watching.

  After a time Walter whispered, “Fat city, phooey.”

  I turned to him.

  He pointed. “It’s hard to see, what with the fog and the bend in the southern rock wall, but there’s a tunnel opening.”

  I turned. Peered. Saw it.

  “This place,” he said, “has already been mined.”

  “So,” I said, “what about abandoned mercury flasks?”

  “It’s not out of the question.”

  Just great. I expelled a breath and refocused on the tunnel. “Perhaps they’re in the tunnel.”

  “Henry hates enclosed spaces,” Walter replied.