The Maze

by Will Hobbs

  On his left and below, a very large bird was flying in his direction. As it neared he saw the broad wings, the distinctive wing tips, the featherless gray head. Lon’s missing condor, he realized. It was M1, returning home in advance of the storm.

  A glance at the variometer told him he had risen from 6,200 feet at launch to 7,560. Concentrate, he told himself. Stay focused. Take a deep breath. This is just the beginning.

  Over the Standing Rocks the glider took a powerful buffeting. He clung tight as the wing shuddered with the turbulence. The variometer kept chirping as the glider was rocked by more and more turbulence. Still, he pushed back slightly from the bar and kept rising. He needed altitude. It was taking all his strength to hang on to the control bar and fly the glider. He knew now for certain that he was inside a thermal, a very powerful thermal.

  Rick saw the earth’s spinning, dizzying retreat below him, and he fought the panic that accompanied his sudden loss of equilibrium.

  Keep fighting, he told himself. Keep flying it. Don’t let it get away from you.

  He didn’t know if he was strong enough to keep the wing tips down. One or the other kept threatening to go too high on him. He kept yanking hard on the side he wanted to bring down.

  Ride it! Fight it!

  Up, up, up he went, on an increasingly powerful column of rising air. He checked the variometer. He was at eleven thousand feet and climbing at a rate of a thousand feet per minute.

  Eleven thousand feet!

  It was getting cold. His face was cold, his teeth were cold.

  High enough! There was a river below, but he couldn’t tell which one. It was all a sickening blur.

  He had to break out, find Jasper Canyon.

  Rick pulled his weight over the bar, but the variometer kept chirping. A glance told him he was rising now at a rate of eighteen hundred feet per minute.

  The turbulence was getting worse, much worse.

  Ride it! Fight it!

  He heard the snap of lightning, and some time later, the unraveling thunder. How long was the interval—ten seconds? The storm was only ten miles away, and closing in how fast?

  Twelve thousand, thirteen thousand, fourteen thousand feet. It was becoming nearly impossible to hang on to the bar and keep the wings down. He didn’t know how much longer he could hang on. He had to start thinking about the parachute.

  Icarus, he thought ruefully. I’m pulling an Icarus. “Wasn’t ready to fly a thermal,” Lon had said.

  Sixteen thousand feet. It was cold, cold, and getting harder to breathe.

  From the variometer he glanced up and saw the base of a massive cumulus cloud not so far above. He could picture exactly what was going to happen, and soon. He was going to be inside that cloud and unable to tell up from down. Tucking and tumbling.

  This is the way I’m going to die.

  Wildly he forced his body as far forward of the control bar as he possibly could. He spread his hands wide and held on with all his strength.

  Finally, finally, the glider nosed down. He heard the buzzing that told him he was losing altitude.

  He kept his body forward of the bar, kept fighting the glider down. It felt like he was dropping fast, fast.

  Suddenly the nose dived much more steeply than he wanted it to, and his stomach went into free fall. He pushed his body back, but not too far back. More than anything he didn’t want to stall the glider.

  Abruptly he found himself in relatively stable air, and realized what had happened. He’d just gone over the falls, and was free of the thermal.

  With a look around, he knew he didn’t have much time. On all sides the clouds were darkening and the altitude of cloudbase was descending fast. He could see the two great rivers joining below the Island in the Sky. He could see the Maze incised into the sea of white slickrock, and he could see red-walled Jasper Canyon making its straight run from Chimney Rock to the Green River.

  Rick began his downward revolutions. He’d lost three thousand feet when the variometer began to chirp again. Another thermal, he realized, and he fought his way free of it before it could take him. He continued down, steering toward the midpoint of Jasper Canyon.

  He was looking hard up and down the drainage for a tiny patch of red, desperate to spot Lon’s rain suit. So many side canyons! So many places Lon could be! Rick hit the mike button on his glove with his thumb. “Lon,” he called. “Do you read me? Lon, can you hear me? Do you read me? Over…”

  Nothing.

  His eyes kept searching for a tiny patch of red, artificially bright red. No matter how hard he willed it, it just wasn’t there.

  He was still too high up. Get closer. You have to get closer before you can see anything. Before he can see you. Before the two-way can work.

  Ten thousand feet. Nine thousand.

  “Lon, do you read me. This is Rick! This is Rick. Look up, look up! Do you read? Over…”

  No reply.

  Suddenly there it was, directly below and slightly in motion: a tiny spot of artificial red. There, on the slick floor of an extremely narrow side finger of Jasper, on Jasper’s west side. “Condor-man!” he cried. “Lon, look up, look up! This is Rick, this is Mav-rick, this is Icarus! Over…”

  Suddenly the earpiece in his helmet crackled, and crackled again. “Get down, Icarus!” came Lon’s voice through heavy interference. “Storm’s about to break! Over…”

  “Got you spotted! Over…”

  “Save yourself, Rick!”

  His glide had taken him quickly out of eye contact. Suddenly Rick couldn’t identify the side canyon where Lon was trapped. He circled back, losing altitude all the while. The weather was about to break. Lightning exploded close by, and thunder boomed seconds later with a concussive blast.

  There was Lon, waving for all he was worth.

  Rick studied the shape of the terraces above the rim. Lon was a couple hundred feet below the rim, caught between two pour-overs in the northernmost of two huge side canyons that joined before draining into Jasper. At the rim of Lon’s canyon there was a distinctive triangle of three junipers growing out of the slickrock, with a knob of redrock close by that was surrounded by white.

  The rain broke. He was going to have to get down in the rain.

  The rain, at a slant, was driving from the south. At least it made reading the wind direction easy. He had to land into the rain, from north to south.

  It was getting dark, so dark. The sky above was nothing but a mass of storm cloud. He had his eye on a broad white terrace only a few hundred yards north of the side finger where Lon was trapped. How level was that terrace? He pushed his weight over the bar and forced the glider down, down, flying to the north.

  Rick made his turn into the wind, the way Lon had taught him. He remembered to pull the draw cord to open the bottom of his harness so he could free his legs when the time came to de-prone.

  It was starting to rain harder, but he could still make out the flat white expanse ahead.

  He might overshoot his landing zone, he realized, unless he got down fast. He forced his weight far forward over the bar, then eased back a little.

  The ground was rushing up. He kicked his legs free, then slid his hands from the control bar to the tubes above. He was hanging vertically now, no more than forty feet above the ground. He slid his hands farther up the tubes, but not so high as to stall the glider just yet.

  Now! he decided, and he flared the nose up, felt the stall.

  As his legs touched down, he was in perfect position, but a violent gust of wind lifted the right side of the wing as he was running and pitched the nose in an instant down to the slickrock. He heard the chinpiece of his helmet dragging as he scraped to a stop on his chest.

  He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t think he’d broken any bones, but the breath was knocked out of him. His lungs couldn’t draw air.

  The wind was dragging the glider across the slickrock, and him with it. He was powerless to do anything about it. The rain was pelting him, lashing his face. He
lay on his belly, gasping for air.

  At last, in painful gasps, his breath was coming back. He was able to turn on his side and unhook.

  He stood up, he fell down, he got up again. It was difficult to see, but he could make out the three junipers and the mound of redrock. He was where he’d wanted to be. But something was broken, he realized. His left arm was hanging useless by his side. He wasn’t feeling pain for some strange reason, but he could see it was broken.

  The side canyon drained an enormous area of slickrock. Waterfalls were pouring into it from all sides and running red. He had to hurry. Time was everything.

  He fought his way out of the harness bag. Struggling one-handed, he removed the coil of rope from the compartment in the back.

  Rick heard the glider behind him being swept away over the cliffs, but he didn’t turn to look. With his good arm he slung the coil of rope over his head and onto his shoulder. He started down into the side canyon. Lon was a ways down in there, hemmed in by the walls. The only route to get to him was going to be right down the bottom of the drainage.

  Where possible, Rick kept away from the streaming floor of the narrowing canyon and skittered along its stony flanks. But he kept getting cliffed out, and was forced to wade from one side to another. It was difficult to keep his balance, yet he had to move fast. The water was up to his knees and rising. He marveled that his arm wasn’t screaming out in pain, but still he felt nothing.

  The tumult of rushing water was intensifying behind him and above and in front. “Lon!” he hollered. “Lon! Lon!”

  No answer. He looked up through the slashing rain; he could still see the rims. Lon would have gone farther down this canyon to find cover if they were shooting at him from above.

  Up ahead the current raced through a boulder jam and down onto a steepening raceway of slickrock. Then it bent away and out of sight.

  Rick wedged his way down through the boulders, then lost his footing immediately below, fell backward. He’d fallen on the broken arm. Sudden, piercing pain shot through the arm as the current swept him straight down the chute and into a roiling pool.

  He was spun around and around, and then he was washed out onto the shallows. He struggled to his feet.

  Lightning seared the sky immediately above him, and the thunder struck like a bomb going off. It was starting to hail. “Lon!” he screamed as he waded forward toward a boulder jam at the edge of the next drop.

  “Riiiiiick…” came the voice in reply.

  He clambered onto the boulders and looked down. Ten feet below, right there on a lip of rock to the side of the pool below the waterfall, stood the man with the beard, dressed in bright red. “A rope!” Lon shouted, with a grin spreading across his face. “You even brought a rope! Can you tie to those big rocks up there?”

  “Ten-Four,” Rick yelled back through the rain. He waded upstream, looking for the right boulder. The water was thigh-deep and swift; he had to keep fighting for balance.

  Here was the boulder he needed. Using one hand and his teeth, he struggled to brace himself and secure the rope. It was taking much too long, and all the while he heard nothing from below, only the roar of the floodwater. Was Lon still okay? Finally his knot was tied, and he was able to toss the free end down.

  Rick saw the hands appear first, then the arms, then the fierce blue eyes, the hard white scar, and the tangle of beard. Rick jammed a foot against a rock for balance and offered his good arm. Lon took it, then came on over the top, and they both followed the rope to where it was tied.

  “Do we need the rope?” Rick yelled. The fingers of his right hand were picking at the knot, but he was getting nowhere with it.

  Lon’s eyes went to Rick’s useless left arm. “We might!” he hollered back, and quickly undid the knot. Lon coiled the rope as fast as he could and slung the coil over his head. “Let’s go!”

  It was still raining hard. Everything ran together, the rising water and the pain and the rock walls. At one point Rick was swept from his feet. Lon leaped after him and scooped him up. Half a minute later Rick slipped again; it felt like all the strength had drained out of him. He felt Lon’s grasp. “Right arm around my shoulder,” he heard his friend say.

  Rick felt Lon’s arm clutch his side like a band of steel. He felt new strength in his legs and new determination. “Gotta go for it—let’s march!” Lon shouted, and they started out side by side.

  It was all a blur. At last, stumbling, they climbed out of the flooding canyon bottom onto the slickrock. In the pouring rain it was as slick as its name. Rick looked up; it was going to be a steep climb, a hundred feet or so, to the rim. Lon stopped, freed one end of the rope, and tied it around Rick’s waist. “Just in case,” Lon said.

  The rope helped. Lon short-roped him up the steepest pitch, and at last they scuttled into a shallow cave tucked under the rimrock.

  They slumped against the wall and heaved for breath. Lightning struck again and again. Through a curtain of water an arm’s length away, they watched the deluge coursing below. Where they’d been just minutes before had become unthinkably impassable.

  “Big-time flood,” Lon said. “Big time. Not a moment too soon, Rick. I’ve never seen such a sight in my life, you up there flying that kite.”

  “I think your hang glider’s history, Lon.”

  “But you aren’t, thank God. Where did you start from?”

  “Condor Cliffs, above camp.”

  “That was no sled run. How did you know you could do that?”

  “Thought I could. Needed to do it. I knew it was dicey, but I couldn’t get out to call Josh. On account of Carlile.”

  Suddenly he was in agony with his left arm. It must have showed on his face.

  “Josh is due tonight,” Lon said, “unless the storm delays him. I’ve got some serious pain medicine here in my pack, in my first aid. We’ll find something to splint your arm with as soon as the rain slows down a little. What about Carlile? Are we going to run into them?”

  “They went out.”

  “They’ve got a second cache.”

  “I know. Did you see it?”

  “Only glassed it for a few seconds, but yeah, I saw some metal boxes. They started shooting at me. I had no choice but to run where I did. You see my bird by any chance?”

  “Sure did. I think you’ll find her back home with the others.”

  It was nearly dark when they struggled into camp. It was still raining. Lon counted five condors up on the rim. The rain was exciting them into a joyous frenzy. They were leaping around the rim, chasing one another, spreading their wings.

  “Goofballs,” Lon said fondly. “There’ll come a day when they start pairing up. It’ll be a few years yet, but it’ll happen. I can really see it—that first egg.”

  “A condor lays only one egg?”

  “That’s right. On the floor of a high cave.”

  Rick closed his eyes. “Won’t that be something. Back in the wild and on their own.”

  It was nearly midnight when Josh’s headlights appeared on the dugway. Rick wanted to cry for joy, but he couldn’t. There was no escaping what would come next.

  The truck pulled into camp at last. The rain had quit, but lightning was still attacking the mountains to the east. A young man and a young woman got out and stepped into the light cast by the propane lantern under the tarp.

  “Who’s your friend?” Josh asked.

  “Rick,” Lon replied. “His name’s Rick Walker—and he can fly like a bird.”

  24

  “All rise,” the bailiff instructed.

  Holding his breath, Rick came to his feet. As before, the judge swept into the courtroom from the door on the right. His ominous black robe billowed with his passage.

  “Take your seats, please,” the judge said impatiently. “Let’s make this expeditious.”

  Rick exhaled, sat down. He glanced quickly to Lon, seated to his right. Lon looked different with his hair cut and his beard trimmed, new clothes and all, but the scar was t
he same.

  “Just do your best,” the deep baritone voice whispered. “Just be yourself.”

  Rick nodded, then looked over his left shoulder past Janice Baker, the social worker, to Mr. B., who smiled nervously.

  The judge was opening the file folder in his hands while frowning at the clock. The clock read 5:35 P.M.

  Rick returned his eyes to the judge. The Honorable Samuel L. Bendix, with fingers to forehead, began to read. As yet he hadn’t looked at anyone with more than a passing glance. He hadn’t looked at Rick at all.

  Nothing was going to be different. The judge was just as out of sorts as before. Bad luck, Rick thought, that Samuel L. Bendix hadn’t died in the last six months. He was old enough.

  Quit thinking like that, he told himself. He’d promised Lon he was going to stay positive.

  Suddenly the judge looked up and stared over his reading glasses, directly at him. The judge didn’t seem to recognize him. Rick forced a weak half smile as the judge’s eyes moved past him and acknowledged the adults. Rick remembered all too well the judge’s “enormous discretionary power.”

  “Would you identify yourselves as I call your names?” the judge said. “Mr. Lon Peregrino.”

  Lon raised his hand.

  “And Mr. Timothy Bramwell. Thank you, gentlemen. Now I can attach faces to these documents.”

  “Your Honor,” spoke up Janice Baker, “we would like to thank you for granting this hearing. We recognize its unusual nature.”

  “Unusual, indeed, this plea for no further incarceration. Escape from a detention facility is considered a major offense, Ms. Baker.”

  “Yes, it is, Your Honor.”

  The social worker said nothing further. The judge’s eyes dropped to the folder in front of him, and he resumed reading. He turned a page.

  Rick’s hopes sank. The judge hadn’t read Lon’s letter beforehand, or Mr. B.’s. If the letter from the judge in Arizona had arrived that morning by overnight mail, as Janice Baker assured Lon it had, the judge obviously hadn’t read that either. The judge had been hearing other cases all day, and right now he wasn’t reading carefully. He only wanted to go home.