“Just the pants,” Paul said.
Sophia laughed a little to release some pressure. She stood and watched Paul pick up his weapon and set it on the hood of the turquoise pickup.
“I notice you have a radio,” the man said, “but I haven’t heard you call anything in.”
“This isn’t a performance evaluation,” Paul said, walking around the man, who kept his bent arms rigid like fins on an old car. Paul checked on the body lying facedown, then moved to where he could see into the draw.
“Sophia. I’ve got two guys down. Is that right?” he called out.
“I think so,” she shouted back.
“Sophia?” the man said, toying with Paul. “So you know each other.”
“Shut up,” Paul said, returning to the man with a pair of handcuffs. Sophia watched Paul as he cuffed one hand, then the other, and stood the man up. As Paul turned the man around, he struck out with his forehead and knocked Paul backward. The man dropped to the ground, slipping his cuffed hands behind him as he fell. In a single motion, he pulled his feet through the ring of his arms and reappeared standing, with a pistol he’d pulled from an ankle holster.
Paul was still reeling from the head butt when the man shot him point-blank in the chest. Paul staggered back. The man shot him again, and Paul disappeared over the sheer stone edge of the box canyon.
Sophia screamed, drawing the man’s attention. He turned, with his hands still cuffed, and shot at her until the pistol emptied. Bullets ricocheted off the cliffs, and she ran away through the sage in a straight line, leaping over boulders. The man’s voice followed her, now amplified through the speaker in Paul’s vehicle. “SOPHIA! I RESCIND THE PREVIOUS OFFER!” She cut through a row of dense bushes that tore at her clothes. Ahead of her was a wash that might lead to a hiding place. She ducked into it.
“ONCE I NEUTRALIZE THESE VEHICLES, I’LL COME FOR YOU AND MY MAP!”
___
Reinhardt figured he was about eight kilometers from his Mustang, going in what seemed like the right direction. The sameness of this sage flat would have turned him around if not for the sun burning in its transit across the sky. With all this walking, he hadn’t even made it back to the place where he’d encountered the strange man wearing golf pants. He crinkled the water bottles he carried in each hand and felt the dryness in his mouth modulate to a dull throbbing ache. He stopped and selected a white stone from the side of the road and placed it into his mouth. This lozenge was warm and rasping on his tongue. Saliva gathered around it, which he swallowed, knowing there would be only so many times he could recirculate his water this way.
The sky was filled with proportional white clouds. Behind them was a belt of gray. Rain fell from two of the clouds in separate sectors of the sky, neither of them near. He told himself that this road led to the state highway, and if he could just keep going, he would meet up with a vehicle. It was a national monument after all. As he trudged, the sun dropped steadily from its zenith toward the west. When his eyes went out of focus, he rubbed them only to discover they were crusted in salt. He dabbed a finger to his tongue to confirm. The flavor made his stomach growl.
He kept walking, checking his phone periodically for a signal, noting that it was after 16:00. Eventually, he switched the phone off to preserve what battery was left. For the last two hours he’d been talking to himself in German. He told himself that he was in good physical condition, and that he would know enough to be able to monitor his own vital signs.
As he walked, he took note of the distant cliff formation and the occasional relics of recent human occupation. Everything was so vast and still and bright that the space was difficult at times to look into, so he kept his eyes to the ground. The most common signs of humanity aside from the road were the wind-blown plastic bags. He noted glinting fragments of broken glass, and the flattened bodies of small birds, snakes, lizards, and mice. So, people did come down this road. All was not lost.
Occasionally, a beetle moved deliberately through the gravel of the road, a single crisp point of blackness trundling toward some objective. Reinhardt tried to imagine what it was heading for, but he applauded its singleness of purpose. At random intervals, a bar of shadow would sweep across the landscape. His skin could sense the transitions from light to dark with the sensitivity of a phonograph needle. He was also acutely aware of his sunburn. The hat he’d fashioned from a few thin branches and the same grocery sacks he saw blowing around did little to offer shade.
Eventually Reinhardt looked up and realized that he could sense no visible progress. He did some quick calculations and decided that, if no one came along, continuing on would certainly kill him. He set his backpack on the ground and opened Mythstructures for Blockbusters and skimmed the section on The Ordeal, part of The Descent. As powerful as this mythology felt to him, Reinhardt rejected the idea that a hero must die and be reborn. If he was unable to save Kwon, how could he save himself? So, he turned back to retrace his path.
In the distance, he focused on a gray mesa and the green backs of pine-covered mountains. He began walking, though each step was agony. He lapsed into a meditation so deep, his wrecked car surprised him when he came upon it.
He opened all the doors and sat inside with the seat fully reclined. It was scorchingly hot, but his body savored the rest. After a few minutes, he went through every inch of the car. There was a red-and-white-striped candy wrapped in plastic deep in the crack of one of the back seats. He placed it in his mouth and felt a zing of Christmas.
He imagined that with a tarp he could build a solar water collector. He’d built one once, as a boy, for a school project, and it worked. He thought about how Wolf would take the news that he’d left the tour and died in the desert like an outlaw. He tried to remember if he’d learned anything useful from any of the teepee gatherings he had been to in college and with Wolf. They had learned archery, how to shoot guns, and he could make fire without matches, but these skills all seemed ridiculous now. He did not need to build a fire using a bow, a spindle, and a length of leather cord. He was useless out here. He had learned nothing, and he would be remembered as a fool. The tour group would use him as a cautionary tale. “Remember Reinhardt Kupfer, who was devoured by vultures and coyotes?” At that moment, Reinhardt took solace in the fact that he was unmarried and childless.
A breeze picked up, and Reinhardt felt some relief. He reviewed the order in which his body would close down: his urine would darken from the color of a pilsner, to an ale, to a porter, to a stout. His heart rate would spike because of his thickened blood. Then his body would shut down any organs that were not key to survival. He would be unconscious when his liver failed. Animals would feast upon his remains. They would have to identify him by the rental car paperwork.
Reinhardt looked over at Mythstructures for Blockbusters and thought about how this should be the time for supernatural helpers to arrive. He picked up his phone and recalled what Kenji said about the digital assistant and powered the phone on. There was no signal, so he stared at it until he decided to check the photograph of the map. He saw the circles of Antelope Flats, which he felt like he passed long ago. Everything was so close on the map and so far apart in reality. At this point, he was closest to the ruins called Las Casas Altas and a cluster of three wavy lines with a word he couldn’t read, but it ended with “tsuvats.” The map had a number of these glyphs spread across it, difficult to see while pinching and dragging. He had 4 percent battery left. The tsuvats-glyphs were nearby, close to the road, so he powered the phone down, took his empty bottles, some jerky, and walked southward.
He could see a long way down the length of road, and there was nothing but a smaller road, unnoticeable to anyone in a vehicle. He followed it to an abandoned homestead. In the harsh light, he saw an old wood barn collapsing on itself and a fence line that ran for thirty feet. Past the fence was a cluster of green trees and shrubs at the base of a large rounded hill, popping out against the brown and the blown-out white sky.
&nbs
p; At the center of this oasis, in the shade, was a moss-covered cluster of rocks. From the bearded chin of the lowermost rock, a single clear drop of water swelled, broke free, and fell into the mud at the bottom. The land reclaimed the water into its own secret cache. Another drop gathered immediately, not quite, but almost, forming a trickle.
Reinhardt found that he could lie next to the glorious damp rocks in such a way that the droplets would land in his mouth. His mouth would fill every twenty minutes. He wouldn’t die of thirst this way, but this was certainly no way to solve his problem quickly. After two mouthfuls, he set up his bottles and let them fill.
The day was waning, and he did not think he would die of thirst tonight.
From the shade, Reinhardt watched a jet cross the sky, the contrail miraculously threading its way through the many clouds. He thought about how strange it was to be absolutely and utterly alone and also in plain view of two hundred people, close enough to be seen but as unreachable as people on their way to Mars. With winged boots, it would be a six-mile walk to that airplane. In a couple of hours, he could be up there with his thumb out, and soon after, hitching his way to Los Angeles, where he would crawl into the crisp sheets of a hotel on Sunset Boulevard with bottles of San Pellegrino scattered about. He would cash in all of his frequent flyer miles then and fly home first class. What good is money if you can’t use it to save your own life?
He untied his boot laces and ate some of the very dry jerky that remained in the bag. The pemmican was gone. Venus appeared in the deepening blue, and without preamble, one of the clouds lit up, the interior flashing twice, with the faint tracery of electric blue following after.
___
By midafternoon, Dalton quit working and drove home to tackle the repairs his house would need before he could sell it. He started weeks ago but let it sit until he had a free day, which never came. It’s always easier to resist a chore near the beginning than it is at the end. Now it was clear that the shower would not re-grout and seal itself, no handyman would straighten the gutter and nail it in place, and the weeds would continue to encroach. Dalton felt he’d been set before the crank of a massive dynamo that powered everything around him. He could turn this crank and keep everything going or rest and enjoy the darkness.
Each chore on his list began as a plain and innocent task that quickly became a vexation for which he did not have the proper tools, know-how, or patience to complete in a single afternoon. He originally thought he might cross a half dozen or more items off his list, but he ended up finishing two.
When hunger and the long shadows of evening stopped him, he realized he had nothing to show for his labor, so he threw in the towel and drove to the Shake Stop for a cheeseburger, fries, and a strawberry malt. He paid, and the girl handed him a number on a small plastic A-frame.
A woman standing behind him in line asked, “Sheriff? Is it true? All that stuff they’re saying in the paper?”
Dalton turned around. He felt suddenly self-conscious wearing a T-shirt, cargo shorts, and running shoes instead of his uniform. “I haven’t been keeping up,” he said.
“You know, about Bruce taking his own life because the government is coming after his Indian stuff.”
“Does that sound like something Bruce would do?” he said.
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t sound like him. Suicide doesn’t sound right either, a good church member like him.”
“Lots of people take their own lives, Emmalene.”
“Not in Utah.”
“I wish that was true,” he said. “We get more than our share of that trouble.”
“But, you know. This kind of thing has happened before. Down in Page. Anyone that knows anything about when the FBI came looking for pots and arrowheads says this is just like it was then. It’s too much government.”
“I know that’s what Stan Forsythe says, but I don’t see it like that, and I’d be in the know if that’s what was happening. But it’s not. So, don’t worry about it.”
“Stan’s been talking to people.”
“I’m sure he has,” Dalton said.
The girl called Dalton’s number and he went up to get his food, which they gave to him on a plastic tray. “Could I get this to go?” he asked.
“We’ve got the liberals to thank for it. Never should have been parks or monuments in the first place. Nobody wanted it. We finally have someone in Washington who can get these parks straightened out. We should get the land back in the hands of people who’ve lived here and raised their families on it.”
“You mean the Indians?” Dalton asked.
The woman laughed and gestured to the buildings and streets around them. “None of this was built by Indians.” Her arm settled at her side, and she smiled.
“The Paiutes have a different story about that,” Dalton said. The girl slid Dalton’s food through the window in a pulp-fiber tray, the malt jammed into one of the cutout slots, the food warm in a paper sack. He thanked her and turned back to Emmalene, nodded, and left before she had a chance to say anything else.
He got right in the car and decided he didn’t want to go home and surround himself with failed projects, so he drove to the office. He thought he might just sit at the computer and start the listing on the real estate website. The next time Karen called, he wanted to be able to show some progress. As he drove, he spotted a cluster of thunderheads to the south. They were deeply shadowed at the base and almost specular at the top, the light shearing them into flat stacked planes. A thin flicker of lightning pulsed twice in the core of the cloud, and in the gathering dusk, the evening star came on in a single pulse. It was a little early for monsoons, but it was nice to have things cooling off.
Dalton pulled into the building, unlocked the door, and found LaRae inside, sitting at her desk. “I didn’t think anyone would be here after hours.”
“I’m getting some work done. No sense sitting at home thinking about all this, you know,” she said. “Plus, it feels better being here, you know, with everything coming in at once. I mean, I know none of it is official.”
“Yeah. I get it,” he said.
“Most people think it was the one thing, but now we know it’s something else.” She moved her hands around her head to show a process. “It makes me crazy watching all the bits and pieces whiz by, and I can’t say anything about it. It’s just a lot, you know.”
“More than I was expecting.”
“Have you read the ME’s report?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
“Well, you should. I mean, I peeked at it. I don’t know if that was okay. But you should read it.”
“You’re fine.”
“Doesn’t help me being home alone, thinking about it. You brought your dinner, and I’m stopping you,” she said.
“Yeah. I was going to—I was going to come here to list the house tonight. They want me to use a website.”
“I know you’re supposed to,” LaRae said. “Karen’s been calling here all week.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I told her you’re underwater. I could help you with some of it,” she said.
“You don’t have to. This is my thing.”
“After what you did for me when Thom left, I figure I owe you.”
“I appreciate that. You don’t owe me. And you don’t have to worry.”
“I didn’t tell her anything specific. Karen, I mean.”
“That’s good.”
“She asked, but I didn’t tell her.”
“She’s used to knowing.”
“But she did say something weird. She asked if I thought everything Stan Forsythe’s been saying would make it hard to sell a house. I guess she’s been following his blog or something. Maybe it’s on Twitter.”
“You can’t put any stock in it.”
“He’s stirring the pot.”
“I know it. I’m old-fashioned, I don’t use my phone for anything but calls. Keeps my blood pressure down.”
“You should eat you
r dinner before it gets cold,” she said.
“I’m starving.” Dalton went past her and looked down at the stack of papers and mail on her desk. “Is that all for me?”
LaRae nodded. “Let me know when you want it, and I’ll bring it to you. But you should look at the ME’s report, but maybe after you eat. It’s got pictures. Also, I called the Beehive House about Raylene. They say you can pick her up tomorrow. They aren’t sure what you’re hoping to get out of it.”
“A lot of Bruce’s stuff is missing. More was taken during that last break-in. I’m trying to see what she remembers. I was thinking maybe a Sunday drive onto the monument might bring something to light. They said old memories aren’t all the way gone at first.”
Dalton let himself into his office and logged into his computer. He spread his food out on the desk and googled Red Cliffs Realty. As he ate, he filled out the fields and clicked the check boxes, but each one made him more and more furious.
He switched over to his email and opened the secure link to the ME’s report. He scanned down to find the cause of death. It said homicide. He pushed the food aside and leaned in.
The report described two wounds. The first was an impact to the side of the head, a traumatic blow to the pterion, rupturing the middle meningeal artery. Blood from this wound had begun to gelify when it was over-sprayed by a second event, a gunshot that entered between the eyes at the glabella and exited through the occipital bone at the base of the skull, an angle difficult or impossible to self-inflict.
___
Sophia ran until she could not continue, stopped, and leaned against a boulder. When she looked up, the world around her darkened at the edges, forming a vignette. At the center was a pool of blue against orange against buff. She stepped forward and turned and steadied herself, moved the hair out of her eyes, and said, “You can keep going. I believe in you.” Then she felt herself jerk upright and continue on. At first her feet did not know where to land, and she was too muddled to place them. Then they began to understand the trail, allowing her to shut that part of the thinking down and watch the stones along each side of her path drift out of the way. She smiled at them, and they nodded silently back at her.
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