Picnic in the Ruins

by Todd Robert Petersen

  The Japanese man leaned forward. “Some show,” he said without taking a break in his sketching.

  “It’s the only way this particular day could end.”

  “But it’s not very cowboy.”

  Reinhardt laughed and shook his head. “No, it’s not, is it?”

  “It’s okay though. I’m here for all this corny stuff. My name is Kenji,” he said, extending his hand. “I am from Osaka.”

  “I am Reinhardt. From Berlin.” They shook hands.

  “Wow,” Kenji said. “What a world where the Axis powers can be on vacation together right in the heartbeat of America.” He looked down and wrote a note to himself.

  “Your English is excellent,” Reinhardt said.

  “My father hired a tutor for me and my sister. He wanted us to follow him into business. I used English to watch old cowboy movies. I love John Ford, Sam Peckinpah. Your English is also good, but you’re German, so it makes sense.”

  “Thank you?” Reinhardt said.

  “Every German I know can speak excellent English.” Kenji closed his notebook and stood. “I would love to stay and chat it up with you, but I have preparations to make for a big meeting. It was nice to make your acquaintance.”

  When he walked past, Reinhardt saw that Kenji had a large image of Hello Kitty painted on the back of his leather jacket. As the Emporium closed back around him, Reinhardt pulled his plate back and tried another bite of the thick beans, then the corn bread, then the cake. The band returned to the stage and started playing a song about cool, clear water.

  Day Five

  They did not go to town for beers : It’s from a movie you never saw : There’s no bad ideas in brainstorming : The elusive Antilocapra americana : Just ask Bruce : Complex questions usually require complex answers

  Byron woke to the sound of peeing. He lay still, waited for it to stop, then listened to the bobbling of the toilet paper roll. Moonlight filled the room, and he wanted to shut the blackout curtains, but he didn’t want anyone to know he was awake. He felt the spot next to him, which was empty. The room’s A/C unit kicked on. Lonnie was asleep in the other bed, and Leia, the woman next to him, sat up.

  “Is that you?” she said.

  “Yeah. What time is it?” the other woman said from the bathroom.

  “2:12.”

  “How long were we supposed to keep an eye on these guys?”

  “Till that Scissors guy comes back. Maybe this afternoon.”

  “Come smoke with me.”

  “He said we have to stay with them.”

  “They’re sleeping. How’s he gonna know?”

  The toilet flushed, and he heard a zipper close. “Come smoke with me,” she repeated.

  Byron listened as the women dressed and left the room. When they were gone, he crawled across the bed, opened the drawer of the nightstand, and reached inside.

  “No,” he said, sitting up. “No, no, no.”

  He stood and tore through the room naked, opening all the drawers and slamming them shut. Lonnie awoke and rolled over. “What’s wrong?” he groaned.

  “The money! Where’s the money?”

  “You’re naked, man,” Lonnie said. “Where’s the girls?”

  “I put the money in the nightstand last night.”

  Lonnie pointed to the safe, which sat above the minifridge.

  “Why’s it in there? Never mind.” Byron squatted in front of it. “What’s the combo?”

  “Mom’s birthday.”

  “I mean what’s the number?”

  “You don’t know Mom’s birthday?”

  Byron pushed LOCK and held the button until the word SUPER appeared, then he tapped the 9 button until the safe opened. Inside were both envelopes. He opened them and thumbed through the bills.

  “It’s February fourteenth. Valentine’s Day. You should know that,” Lonnie said.

  “I don’t need a lecture.”

  “Where are the girls?” Lonnie asked.

  “Smoking.”

  “They could smoke in here. It’s that kind of room.”

  “I’m just telling you what they said.”

  “Do you think they’ll be back?”

  “Yeah,” Byron said, “I think they will. They’re working for Scissors.”

  “Like us?”

  “This is different. We need to get out of here.”

  “It’s, like, the middle of the night.”

  “We’ve gotta go home.”

  “That’s the one thing Scissors said not to do.”

  “We ain’t listening to him no more.”

  While the girls were out, the brothers snuck through the casino, crossed the parking lot, and drove away. Lonnie slept through most of the trip. Byron kept himself awake with another snort of meth and a Mountain Dew chaser he bought while he gassed up the truck using the Visa card Scissors gave him.

  At some point he’d have to come clean on the fact that he kept one of the maps, but for the moment he focused his attention on getting home, getting that map, and gathering up the gear they’d need to make their own way onto the monument and start digging. He thought about how he’d make his parole check-ins and how the only thing a person like him could do for a living when he came out of prison was go right back into the life that put him there. He was glad Lonnie was asleep or he’d have to talk to him about jellyfish or Myanmar or anvil lightning or electric airplanes or the Guinness Book of World Records. What he wanted was some quiet so he could make a plan without being interrupted.

  They climbed through the gorge, blew through each of the towns along the way, and slipped back into the quiet desert. The stars reappeared when they were away from the lights of the city, and the Milky Way presided over the dark expanse.

  Byron knew the turnoff to their home by feel. The change in direction woke Lonnie up. He overshot their rutted driveway slightly, then looked behind and backed in. The sky was starting to lighten in the east. When they got close to the single-wide prefab house, Lonnie hopped out and guided Byron as he backed the truck past it, stopping him a few inches away from the tongue of their small travel trailer that looked like a shabby canned ham, even in the half light of the morning. Byron hopped out of the truck and ran straight into the house as Lonnie unfolded the crank and lowered it down. He set to work securing the hitch and connecting the travel trailer’s lights to the truck’s wire harness. When Byron reemerged, he said, “We get ten minutes, then we’re gone.”

  “How does he even know where we live?”

  Byron pointed to the end of the drive. “It says ASHDOWN on the mailbox. You painted it there, you idiot.”

  Lonnie stood and lurched up the stairs after his brother. “Quit calling me that,” he shouted. Byron jumped into the house and tried to close the door, but Lonnie leaned against it with his shoulder and slowly gained leverage.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Byron growled.

  Lonnie wedged his shoulder against the door, then he reached around and grabbed Byron’s ponytail. Byron roared and tried to grab his brother’s hand, which caused him to lose control of the door. Lonnie pushed in a few more inches and was able to yank on the ponytail even harder. Byron cursed and fell to the ground, pulling his hair free of Lonnie’s fist but also allowing the door to jump forward and pinch him on his back fat. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. All right! What’s wrong with you?” Byron shouted.

  “Nothing’s wrong with me,” Lonnie said, stepping over his brother’s body. Lonnie went into his room and took an old canvas duffel and filled it with clothes and the pillow from his bed. He stripped and put on new underwear and socks, then he dressed the rest of the way. He took a hat and a pair of old aviation goggles he used in the desert. From a shelf above his bed, he selected two books and a spiral notebook with a pen jammed into the wire coil. He closed up the bag and took it to the front room.

  Byron carried two smaller bags of his own, one in each hand. He had the map rolled up under one arm.

  Lonn
ie walked past him with his bag and tossed it on top of the tools. “What’s that?” he asked.

  “It’s one of the maps. That one we tried out. I kept it.” He leaned the map against the side of the single-wide.

  “Maybe that’s why he sent those girls. We need to find him and give it back.”

  “And what? Apologize?”

  “If that’s what it takes.”

  “Guys like Scissors don’t just say, ‘No biggie, it’s water under the bridge.’ They throw you off the bridge. What’s done is done. Let’s go.”

  Lonnie went back to the travel trailer and pulled a piece of stovewood that chocked the wheels. “We’re just gonna keep running, then? Like the cat in those cartoons?”

  “What cat?”

  “The one that gets a skunk stripe, then she gets chased the whole time. Scissors is going to keep coming for us like that skunk.”

  “That’s why we’re doing this. Down there we’re sitting ducks. Now we’ve got insurance.”

  “I don’t like running. And it’s Pepé, by the way.”

  “Who is?”

  “The skunk. His name is Pepé. I forgot the name before.”

  “Seriously? You know this guy might just kill us—I’m not going to even—look. We ain’t running, we’re hiding. Plenty of people have done it. Butch Cassidy, Sundance, Billy the Kid, the James Gang.”

  “The James Gang is a band.”

  “I’m talking about Jesse James, you moron.”

  “They got that guy from the Eagles in it.”

  “I don’t know how I start off talking about us getting killed and you end up talking about the Eagles.”

  “You said James Gang. It got me off track. Stress gets my wires crossed,” Lonnie said.

  Byron changed his posture; it looked like he was lowering his center of gravity. He set down his things on the ground next to the truck, and he did it so gently that Lonnie grew nervous. “Brother, this moment in time is not about your word associations or idea showers, or your—”

  “Chains,” Lonnie said, and he knew it was a mistake, but he had to finish the thought. “They’re idea chains. And I don’t try to do it. It just happens.”

  Byron shook his head and held up a finger. “The only advantage we have over Scissors is we know this place. You’ve seen how he dresses. He might be city tough, but off-roading isn’t one of his skills. I don’t have time to get into it with you about physics or chaos theory or any of it, Lonnie. We have time for you to put some food and ice in a cooler or we’re dead.”

  “You came back for the map,” Lonnie said, ignoring the rest of it. “That’s why we aren’t, like, on our way to Mexico or something.”

  “So what?” Byron said. “You’ve counted that money. It’s ten grand for each of us. How long you think that will carry us?”

  Lonnie shrugged. “I can stretch it.”

  “That map is the goose that laid the golden egg. When things get tight, we’ll head out, dig something up, turn it into cash.”

  Byron went back into the house and returned with a Phoenix Suns duffel bag and his rifle. Then he went back inside and came out with a spotting scope and a tripod. He put the rifle in the rack and packed the duffel bag, scope, and tripod behind his seat in the truck. Lonnie went in for the food. “Don’t take everything,” Byron said. “Do something to make it look like we’re coming back.” Lonnie took every other box from the pantry, and a few things out of the fridge: some cheese, a couple of limes, a thing of baloney. He packed it all away, then sat down at the table. He took an envelope and flipped it over and wrote:

  Dear ladies, make yourselves at home. Went to town for beers. Be back soon. Byron and Lonnie.

  He took the envelope and slid it into the thin aluminum frame that went around the window. Byron made one more pass through the house, came out and picked up the map, stopped to read the note, nodded, then got in the truck. He put the map in the top slot of the gun rack and checked on the trailer behind them, then he turned and put the truck in gear.

  ___

  Sophia rose in the dark five minutes before the alarm on her phone went off. She went into the trailer’s Spartan galley and started a pot of coffee. While she was waiting, her phone flashed and buzzed, and she lifted the screen to see the calendar banner, which read BACKCOUNTRY ADVENTURE WITH PAUL. This was going to be a welcome break from gathering data.

  As she drove, she remembered a course she took as an undergraduate about ecosystems. The professor told a story about a trip he’d taken with students the summer before into the jungles of Costa Rica. He said that while he was lecturing about climax ecosystems his voice just vanished. Everyone’s attention turned to the space left behind by his silence. They noticed that the chatter of the birds and monkeys also ceased. Somebody asked what was going on, and the professor whispered, “Jaguar,” as he spread his arms and tried to sweep them back down the trail. The professor said they all looked up and saw the dark symmetry of the cat crouched upon a tree that had fallen but was still suspended by the neighboring trunks, a narrow shaft of daylight painting a stripe of black-and-orange prints in the fur across the shoulders of the beast. The animal lowered its head and pulled back its ears. They watched its chest expand and collapse like the bellows of a forge, and then, without warning, it leapt from the fallen tree away from them to the floor of the jungle. They heard leaves rustle, then the return of their own breathing, and after a time, bird calls and the chittering of a monkey somewhere overhead.

  “I’ve been researching this place for fifteen years,” their professor said, “and that was the first time I’d seen something like this.”

  Sophia hoped she might return to school with such a tale to tell. Something that would give her work some field credibility. Most of the time graduate students returned from fieldwork with ribald drinking stories or tales of bribing officials. They’d regale each other with stories of insects eaten, inclement weather endured, equipment stolen, equipment damaged, data lost. There were volumes on diarrhea, the diameters of spiders, the lengths of snakes, “Why did it have to be snakes?” Most stories were wild, but light on true adventure and with very little romance. Now that she was in the field, she realized that the stories were there to offset the banal repetition of gathering data. What she was doing with the impact of tourism wasn’t going to stop any hearts, but maybe something worth telling could happen on a side trip with a certain local legend.

  Paul Thrift never spoke of his own exploits, but others did. She’d heard of how Paul once dove out of an airplane and parachuted into a slot canyon that had been unexplored because any other approach would have taken too long. He traveled the deserts with almost nothing. He could feed himself out there, find water with a forked stick. She worried, a little, that this trip would be too austere. She’d gone over her gear obsessively, packing it, trying the backpack for weight, unpacking it, winnowing, packing it again. In addition to food, clothes, tarp, first aid kit, notebook, pencil, and camera, she had her phone (for the audiobooks), a sharp multi-tool (in case she had to cut off her own arm), a hat, bug net, compass, tiny jet stove, and backpacking pot that belonged to her father. All of that.

  In addition to her gear, she was bringing a few things for Paul, who could walk from the North Rim to the South Rim for meetings but who had trouble making it to town. Paul had sent her an ascetic list: pecans, sunblock, wet wipes, brewer’s yeast, some kind of bodybuilding protein powder, and two books that had come for him at his post office box. One was Loren Eiseley’s The Firmament of Time and the other was called Altered States: Buddhism and Psychedelic Spirituality in America.

  The Eiseley was a book she’d recommended to him. Seeing it here in his resupply box made her smile and quickened her pulse ever so slightly. She’d read it in a paleontology course she’d taken as an elective, and she’d mentioned it to him only once, weeks ago when they first met. The only other thing on his list was so strange it gave her pause. He asked for Jolly Ranchers, which seemed antithetical to the mytholog
y surrounding Paul: sugar, plastic, artificial flavor?

  She loaded everything into the truck and noticed that the sky was beginning to glow, and through the trees a few wisps of cirrus clouds soaked up the pink dawn glow. She closed and locked the door of her trailer, then saw a light come on at Mrs. Gladstone’s. The door opened, and she stood behind the screen, wrapped in a quilt. Mikros leapt up at Mrs. Gladstone’s feet and began yapping at her.

  “Going out again?” Mrs. Gladstone said. “You’re a workaholic.” Her hair was wrapped in a flowered silk scarf.

  “Oh no. This trip is for pleasure.”

  Mrs. Gladstone picked up Mikros and held her next to her face. “Good for you. All work and no play makes Jill a dull girl.”

  “I’m still going out to the monument.”

  “Boring. I thought you were going to say Las Vegas.”

  “Paul is taking me to a place called the Swallow Valley,” she said.

  “Swallow Valley, huh? People have been talking about that place for as long as I can remember. I think it’s a fantasy.”

  “Paul said he thinks he’s found it. We’ll have to climb to get there.”

  “Sounds dangerous.”

  “It could be,” Sophia said, smiling nervously.

  “A little peril always got my propellers turning,” Mrs. Gladstone said, “but it’ll probably be safer out there than it would be here, what with some cat burglar running loose in town.”

  “Cat burglar?”

  “He broke into the Cluffs’ house while I was there yesterday. As if there hasn’t been enough tragedy for Raylene lately. I’m glad nobody got hurt.”

  “Well, I hope you’re okay.”

  “Nothing a Valium can’t fix. And I have Cleopatra in case he tries anything here.” The dog barked boldly from the safety of Mrs. Gladstone’s arms.

  “Be safe,” Sophia said. “We’ll be in the Antelope Flats area. Paul says it’s near the junction of County Roads 16 and 14. I wrote it all down.” She handed Mrs. Gladstone a slip of paper, which she tucked inside her brassiere. “If we’re not back in forty-eight hours, send in the cavalry.”