Canyons

by Gary Paulsen

  “Research. We … I’ve been doing some research.” He thought it best not to mention Homesley.

  “See?” His mother put her hand on Bill’s arm. “I told you we didn’t have to call the police.”

  “You were going to call the police?” Brennan asked.

  “We already did,” his mother said. “They should be here any minute.”

  “Ahh, Mom …”

  And he could see it all then—everything. He could see the police coming in and the questions they would ask and what they would have to do—take the skull. They would have to confiscate the skull and it would go back to the National Forest, back to the government and they would put it on display in a museum somewhere, stick it in a glass case with a little plaque saying what it was and he could see it.

  See it all.

  And as he saw that he also knew what he had to do; what he had to do immediately.

  He must take Coyote Runs back. He must follow the dreams, the instructions in the dreams. Now it was all there, all clear; he knew what would happen and knew what he must do.

  He must take Coyote Runs home.

  He grabbed the skull from the table, made for the back door.

  “Brennan.” His mother’s voice stopped him. “What are you doing?”

  “Mother …” There was nothing he could say to make it right for her; no words to explain what he had to do. “Mother—I have to leave for a few days.”

  “Why?” She stood. “What are you talking about?”

  “He … needs me to do something.”

  Outside he heard a car pull up in the driveway. The police were arriving. Great, he thought—just great. Now I’m running from the police. I haven’t done anything wrong and I’m running from the police.

  “Who?” his mother asked. “Who needs you to do something?”

  Brennan raised the skull. “Him.”

  “The skull?”

  “Coyote Runs. He needs me to—well, just needs me.”

  “But Brennan …”

  “I’ll be back in two or three days. I have to do this.…”

  “But …”

  “Mother. Please.”

  “But …”

  And she either nodded or he thought she nodded.

  Either way it no longer mattered. Time was gone.

  Brennan moved through the back door and was gone.

  22

  The darkness seemed complete, thick, black, close around him, and he took it as a friend. There was a time when he was afraid of darkness and it surprised him faintly that he had changed.

  Changed so much.

  He had set an easy pace north. For all of the day, through the morning and into the afternoon he jogged lightly through the city and out past the suburbs and Fort Bliss and into the desert.

  Fifty, sixty miles.

  It was between fifty and sixty miles to the canyon country where he had found the skull. He remembered that from the camping trip.

  He had never run or walked any distance like sixty miles—across a desert—yet he did not doubt he could do it.

  The skull—Coyote Runs—would help him. He did not know how, or why, or where he was going but he knew he was not alone.

  Take me, spirit …

  Fort Bliss extended some miles north of El Paso—missile-firing and artillery-impact ranges overlapping. Signs along the road warned of unexploded artillery shells. For that reason Brennan stayed along the road until he thought he was well past the last signs, then he turned into the desert.

  He had stopped at a convenience store and purchased a small knapsack and a couple of granola bars and a quart of bottled water. He put the skull and water in the pack and adjusted it to ride loosely on his back.

  When darkness had first caught him he stopped and lay against the side of a sand dune to rest and stretch his legs. He had rested several times during the day just for ten or fifteen minutes each time to keep his legs from cramping. He had also drunk most of the water—amazed how fast a quart seemed to go.

  He had stopped using the water in midafternoon, when the sun was hottest, and as he lay in the dark to rest he felt his cracked lips with his fingers. They were bloody. He had taken a small mouthful of water then, enough to wet his lips, and gone into a fitful kind of half sleep.

  When he opened his eyes it was pitch dark, dark that wrapped him, and he thought for a moment how nice a fire would be. There was a chill in the air and dampness that came down on him.

  I won’t be able to see to move, he thought.

  But as soon as the thought came he began to make things out. Clumps of mesquite on sand dunes, openings between the dunes appeared first as shadows, then took on solid shape and meaning.

  There was enough light from the stars and a sliver of a new moon for him to see where he was going.

  Off in the night he heard the faint sound of cars on the highway as they passed.

  He stretched, bent at the waist and pulled at the backs of his leg muscles until they almost snapped.

  Then he put the pack on his back and started off, moving easily between the dunes. He found the Big Dipper then the North Star and he set off to follow it.

  And he knew things then without knowing how it was he could know them.

  It was this way in the old times.

  The voice—more a felt sound, an echo in his mind, than an open sound. It was his own voice, in his mind, but not his mind.

  It was this way in the old times that when a man ran in the desert at night he would push a stick ahead through the sand for the small snakes.

  Brennan found a length of mesquite, broke it off about four feet long. One end had a slight curve and he held this end to the ground so that it slid along the sand.

  He started moving again, a half run, half shuffle, the stick sliding along in front of him.

  A good trick, my friend, he thought. I had not thought of snakes. My friend. Yes. My friend.

  It was this way in the old times that when a man was thirsty he would find the stalk of the plant with long quills and eat of it and find sweet water.

  The plant with long quills? What could that be?

  Oh. The yucca. That must be what he was talking about.

  He turned out a sidewinder that had been half buried in the sand. He flicked it off to the side with the stick and it buzzed angrily before looping off to the side in the darkness.

  And I knew that, he thought. I knew he wouldn’t bother me.

  I knew it.

  Off to the edge of a dune he saw a yucca plant, the spiny base looking like a porcupine hunkered in the shadows. He went to the plant and squinted, trying to see better in the darkness.

  Sticking straight up from the center of the plant was a stalk about three feet long. He pushed at it, touched it, and found it to feel heavy, soft.

  He worked it back and forth and broke it off even with the base down in the spines.

  With a little more effort he broke the stalk in two and put one broken end to his lips.

  The end fairly dripped with liquid. He tasted it and found the fluid to be a sweet-tasting water—almost like watermelon.

  He bit and chewed on the stalk, eating it a few inches at a time, swallowing the sweet water gratefully before spitting out the pulp and taking another bite.

  Thank you.

  It was this way in the old times.…

  Thank you. He ate the whole stalk as he trotted, broke and ate another and moved through the night in the easy trot, refreshed by the sweet juice from the yucca and the coolness of the desert night.

  Well before dawn he sensed light, felt the temperature drop a bit more and stopped to rest.

  No. It is not time to stop.

  But …

  They are too near. We must not stop.

  What …

  Go now. Keep going now.

  I am tired. I am so tired, he thought. But his legs kept driving, pushing, pounding.

  Another snake—this time not a sidewinder but a larger rattler—was pushed into a
warning rattle by the stick.

  Brennan moved easily a step to the right as it struck at the stick and kept moving. This, he thought, from a boy who was afraid of spiders and snakes.

  He had changed in some basic way. He was still Brennan but more, much more, so that he was part of the night and part of the desert and part of the sky and part of the snake and knew these things, knew all about them and did not fear them.

  Into the light from dawn he moved; until the buttes and canyons rose above him to the right, he moved; until he could see boulders and lines he moved. He could not, not move.

  Stop.

  The thought, word, feeling, cut through the fatigue, the movement, and he stopped.

  It was here. Here where the pony soldiers found us and chased us and brought Magpie down. His chest went out before him.

  Here.

  Brennan felt an enormous sense of sadness, a deep remorse. An old friend died here. A close friend.

  And here we ran, and here, my horse running well but not fast enough and there by the cut across the land they hit my horse, hit my leg and I was down.

  Brennan felt it, knew it and fell to his knees.

  Here—it was here that it all happened.

  He heard noises, heard sounds and thought for a moment that time had warped and that he would turn to see the soldiers riding at him.

  But the sound was real.

  Voices.

  He heard voices out ahead—faint. Near the canyon mouth.

  He held his breath and listened.

  Men. It was the sound of men talking. He could not understand the words but heard them as a low sound, a familiar low sound.

  Then he heard one voice he knew.

  His mother’s.

  His mother had come with men to look for him.

  To stop him.

  “Mother,” he said half aloud. “Mother is here with some men.”

  He moved closer to the voices, keeping sand dunes and low bush between them for cover and staying low.

  When he was fifty yards away he stopped again, lowered to his stomach, and—dragging the pack—made his way closer until he lay not thirty feet from his mother.

  She was dressed in jeans and tennis shoes and was wearing one of Brennan’s old jackets. There were two sheriff’s deputies standing near her, and Bill, and off to the side a few paces, Homesley.

  “He hasn’t been acting normally,” Brennan’s mother was saying. There was worry in her voice. “Ever since the camping trip when he found the skull.”

  The deputies said nothing for a moment. One of them nodded to her and the other looked up into the canyons and coughed politely into his hand. “You think he ran here from El Paso in one day and a night.…” The tone of his voice was clearly skeptical.

  “Maybe not yet.” His mother stopped the deputy. “I don’t think he could be here. But we have to stop him before he gets into the canyons. I’m worried about what may happen if he goes up in there alone.”

  “He’ll be fine.” Homesley had been silent all this while, standing off by himself. But he moved toward the others now. “There’s nothing whatever wrong with Brennan. He just has something he must do.”

  “What?” His mother’s voice was sharp, hard-edged.

  “I’m not sure. Something with the skull. Maybe take it back. I don’t know for certain.”

  “It appears to me,” Bill cut in, “that if you hadn’t helped him with all this, none of this would be happening.”

  “No.” His mother held up her hand. “None of that. Brennan has learned a lot from Mr. Homesley—I won’t hear people throwing blame around. There’s nobody to blame about anything—I’m just worried about Brennan.”

  Good for you, Mother, Brennan said to himself silently. I could end it here, just stand up and end it. What am I doing anyway? This is crazy, wacko.

  But his legs did not move him. He did not stand.

  Instead he slid backward on his stomach until a dune with mesquite all along the top hid him. It would be a simple matter to walk around them and head up into the canyon.

  But a new sound stopped him.

  Engine. Truck engine. He worked forward on his elbows, dragging the pack with the skull up to the top of the dune where he lay in the mesquite and could see all below where the desert road ended in front of the canyon.

  Bill’s van was there, and the sheriff’s car with the engine running.

  But now a carryall wagon pulled up. On the side were written the words MOUNTAIN RESCUE.

  It came to a halt in a swirl of sand and two men jumped out. They were dressed in climbing clothes.

  “We came as fast as we could,” one of them said to the deputies. “How long has he been lost?”

  “Who are these people?” Brennan’s mother asked.

  “Rescue is always called in when somebody is lost.” The deputy shrugged. “It’s standard procedure. Always.”

  “But he’s not lost,” his mother said. “At least I don’t think so.…”

  “Still.”

  “How long has it been?” the rescue man repeated. “Dehydration may be setting in while we stand here talking.”

  Not likely, Brennan thought, remembering the yucca stalk. Then he felt like a snot—here all these people just cared about him, were worried about him. And he was treating them like they were enemies. Well, he thought—enough of this. He wouldn’t let his mother worry.

  He stood up.

  23

  It was like a scene from a bad movie. The boy gets lost, Brennan thought, and they find him in the nick of time and everybody lives happily.…

  “There he is!” one of the rescue men yelled. “Right there!”

  Brennan was only fifty feet away from them and looked at his mother.

  “I didn’t want any of this,” he said. “Not for you to worry—none of it.”

  “I know,” she said. “But …”

  “I have to do this,” he said.

  Homesley stepped forward. “I brought them when your mother called me. She was worried.”

  “I know. It doesn’t matter.” Brennan stopped. The deputies and the men from the rescue unit were spreading out.

  “You ran here in one day?” Homesley asked.

  “And a night. Yes. He taught me what to do.”

  “Remarkable.”

  “Just a minute.” Brennan held up his hand. “What are you doing?” The men had moved apart, slowly, seemingly without reason, but always apart so that they now faced him but spread away from each other.

  “Nothing,” one of the rescue men answered, smiling. “Why?”

  “Don’t come after me.…”

  “You have to realize that you can’t just take off up into the canyon.”

  “Why not?” Brennan tensed his legs. He closed his hand tightly on the knapsack holding the skull. They were going to come for him. My God, they were going to make a move on him.

  “We have your mother’s call that she was worried about your … status. You might be depressed, upset—we can’t allow you to go up there alone. You might get into trouble. We can’t allow that.”

  “I take back my complaint.” Brennan’s mother brushed hair out of her eyes. The morning sun was directly in her eyes and she had to squint. It made her look like a picture he’d seen of her when she was young, squinting into the camera, and Brennan smiled.

  “It doesn’t matter,” the rescue man said. “He could still get hurt—he can’t be allowed to go up there alone.…”

  “Run, Brennan,” his mother yelled suddenly. “Go now!”

  It surprised Brennan so that for an instant he did not move. But only for an instant. The two rescue men jumped suddenly toward him and the deputies moved to the side to get between Brennan and the canyon mouth.

  Brennan moved without thinking. He virtually fell backward off the dune through the mesquite and brush.

  His legs windmilled beneath him and he somehow landed on his feet. The two rescue men came loping around both ends of the dune, arms out
stretched to grab him.

  He had one moment when he almost smiled—wondering what they were supposed to be “rescuing,” then he felt their hands on his arms.

  He rolled left and right quickly, slipped from their grip, and was away.

  Now, he thought—or thought he thought. Now away. Up into the canyon. The voice was there, in him, of him, around him.

  Take me, spirit …

  He scrambled up the trail, heard the men coming behind. They were experienced at climbing, in good shape, but Brennan moved faster. His feet found the old trail and he ran lightly, exulted in his freedom. I can fly, he thought, and made the mistake of looking back.

  Looking back once to see if the two men were gaining on him. His right foot came down on a rounded stone and his ankle turned. He felt/heard it pop.

  An almost-click and pain roared up his leg and he went down on his side.

  No.

  It was this way before. They came and I was hurt in one leg. Do not stop. Do not stop. Do not stop. You must not stop. Ever.

  They had him. He felt their hands grabbing him.

  “No!”

  One leg, he thought. I have one leg.

  On his hands and the one good leg he rose, looked into, directly into the face of one of the rescue team.

  “Listen,” the man said. “Take it easy and listen to me. We don’t want to hurt you …”

  But Brennan didn’t hear him, didn’t see him, didn’t see the rescue man.

  His eyes were wide, he felt the heat and dust and heard his own breathing as wind whistling and echoing in some empty place.

  And he saw a cavalry soldier.

  Saw the blue wool of his uniform, the skin of his neck over the collar of his tunic, the stains from his sweat; smelled the horse in his clothing, saw the stubble on his chin.

  All real.

  “No!” he screamed again, and kicked backward with his one good leg and broke loose once more.

  Then up.

  Then up into the rocks and the heights of the canyon. Never to stop.

  Up to safety.

  Up.

  24

  They would not give up.

  Two of them.

  They must have left their horses at the bottom of the canyon.