When she became thirsty, she saw the water bottle emerge from the pack and received it. “Careful. Careful,” she said. “Stop running. It all needs to go inside of you.” She felt her legs stiffen, so she handed the bottle back and ran on.
Ahead of her, at the top of an incline, she saw two women sitting together wearing chadors. They looked like her aunts back in Iran. When they saw Sophia, they lifted their arms and beckoned her. She ran to the top, using the stones as steps, and she stopped when she saw that it was only the top of a ridgeline, dropping away at the other side. The women reached out and held her hands. She saw the fine tracery of the henna tattoos on their hands, the silver rings. Their hands slipped away, and when she turned to thank them, they were gone.
The valley filled with thunder, then the echo of it drained slowly out.
Behind Sophia was the ground she’d crossed, the cinder cone, and the miniature backhoe jerking silently in the distance, a tiny pickup truck carried in the bucket, lifted high into the air. The scene looked like toys photographed with a tilt-shift lens, focused at the center and foggy at the edges. She sat on a flat orange stone, hands braced on her knees, and she tried to process what was happening. Three stories played simultaneously: the one where a man she did not know was killed in front of her, the one where the invincible Paul Thrift was murdered, and the one where the killer was now coming after her. Stacked on top of those stories were three more: how she interrupted two grave robbers, how another man was killed offscreen, and how she was now running for her life with a map valuable enough to set all of this off.
Each time a story would come at her, she would gently relax and let its own momentum carry it beyond her. Eventually, they struck at her and regrouped enough times to make her grow tired and confused. During this slowness, she reached out and chose the running-for-her-life story and the finding-a-map story, then she tied these long, rippling streamers together as they fought against the wind. When she pulled the knot tight, she felt the sounds of the desert returning: wind, the thrumming of insects, the rustle of hair against the collar of her shirt, and in the distance, the crash of a pickup truck dropping to the ground.
Her skin drew taut. Her eyes came back into focus. Her Plan A was to wait, get back to the truck, and drive out, which was probably the man’s Plan A, which is why he was destroying the vehicles. So Plan B was hiking out, back to the state highway. She unzipped her backpack and sized up the not-quite-one-liter of water she had in there. This guy would be on the road, so she’d have to go overland, which would be a death sentence. She dropped her head into her hands and decided Plan C would be to make her way to the Dellenbaugh ranger station, which was twenty miles away. This would be the least likely plan to be on his list and the most likely to put her in touch with people. Dellenbaugh Station was the population center around here. She would wait until night, find her way to the road, and hike in the cool hours to minimize her water loss.
Lightning flickered in the clouds again, leaping and pulsing from the column of the clouds like the bones of a bat wing. A cool breeze riffled the leaves and carried petrichor to her nose. When she realized it would rain, she felt options opening. She’d be able to replenish her water, and the man would be out of his element. He was, after all, wearing a panama hat. She kept to Plan C, wanting to stack the odds in her favor.
She had some food, but she didn’t want it. After two sips of water, she dug in her bag and found, to her surprise, one more loose watermelon Jolly Rancher, which triggered the memory of Paul staggering backward over the cliff. She caught the panic loop before it knocked the wind out of her. Eventually, when Paul did not report in, someone would take notice, and they would investigate. But given Paul’s habit of disappearing into the desert and his reputation for being a master of this landscape, waiting to be rescued was no plan at all.
She stood, stepped away from the rock, and turned her back on the catastrophe to look over the other side of the ridge. Now that her vision had come back into focus, she saw a thin road running down through the bones of the canyon. That road split into a pair of smaller ones. She pulled out the map and unrolled it. She saw the spot where she was standing circled in ballpoint pen and all the names and dates clustered in this area. With her index finger, she traced the curve of the mesa that ran all the way into the Dellenbaugh Valley. She turned the map to match it to north and guessed that the smaller of the two forking roads would take her to the station. After returning the map to her pack, she noticed a strange momentary glint. It was a car, a black car parked down there. Okay, on to Plan D.
Without thinking, she clambered down the ridge, skating on the loose stone, catching herself on scrawny junipers and pinyons until she realized she just might kill herself trying to get to safety. She thought of something her mother always said, “Slow is fast, baby.” The sky surrounding her was darkening, turning the color of blue she thought only happened in Spielberg movies. There wasn’t a lot of time until darkness would come, but she imagined a timeline where she fell, shattered her knee, and had to crawl to the road on her belly. She thought about the phone call she’d make when this was all over. Mom, Dad, I’m okay. I just wanted to let you know that I remembered combat breathing and I remembered slow is fast.
As she descended, she realized she was crying and thought it was stupid. She had also lost sight of the car but kept moving in the same direction, hoping to find it again. In the dimming light, something flew toward her. She crouched and looked up in surprise as an owl revealed itself in its passage overhead, its wide wings and round head unmistakable. She expected to hear the pulsing of its wings as it passed over, but there was nothing but the sound of her own breathing.
When she stood, she saw a bright orange section of cliff in the midst of the shadowed valley, and in a straight line across the middle of the façade, she saw a line of rectangular windows, like the granary. Five of them in a row. Las Casas Altas, she thought. They were on her list of sites to record, but she hadn’t gotten to them yet. She was two weeks from that section of the monument.
At the bottom of the slope, she crossed a short flat shoulder and jumped from a low berm onto the road. The black car was a Mustang. The hood was up and the doors open. The driver’s side seat was reclined, and a single leg emerged from the interior, the calf resting in the notch formed by the car frame and the open door. The man in the car was whistling a simple five-note tune, something familiar. She remembered it from middle school dances. Was it “Wind of Change” by the Scorpions? She followed along in her head, and when he sang the chorus aloud, she let out a chuckle that made the man sit up.
“Wolf, is that you?” a voice called out.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Oh,” he said. “Not Wolf. Someone else.”
“No, not Wolf.”
The man stood weakly and supported himself with the car. He was scarlet red with a mad look in his eyes. “Wolf is my medical partner back in Germany.” He blinked and looked around, held up an empty water bottle, and crinkled it. “Oh, that is right. I am still in America on this adventure. The dream was vivid.”
In the dim light, it took a moment, but she soon realized she knew this man. “You’re the doctor from Bryce Canyon,” she said.
“Berlin. I’m actually from elsewhere. The home of Alexanderplatz and the Brandenburg Gate. Not jelly donuts. That is a great goof—blown out of proportion.”
He came across as drunk, but it was clear that he was reeling from dehydration and exposure. “Why don’t you stand here,” she said, taking his hand and placing it on the car. The black metal was still hot.
Sophia looked at the car to size things up. A mire of black fluid flowed a few inches from under the front of the car, then soaked into the dust. In the failing light she could barely see it. The man cleared his throat. “Excuse me, but I was wondering if you had a vehicle we might use for a rescue. It is all mixed up though. This is the road of trials, but I thought I was through the first gate, but you are obviously the su
pernatural aid. It is all out of order.”
“Supernatural what?”
“Aid. You know. But that is for act one. You were the one who told me about these places, that they existed. That was the call to adventure, but I didn’t heed it. Kenji was there, too, for the second call. He said he was a gatekeeper, but perhaps not. This ordeal seems more appropriate for—” The man doubled over with his hands on his knees, and he growled through his teeth. “Oh, this is not good.”
“Are you okay?” When he nodded, she asked, “More appropriate for what?”
The man breathed deeply a few times, then stood again. “For act two. I cannot tell which part of the story we are in right now.”
Sophia realized that this poor man was trying to talk to her about Joseph Campbell. She tried to refocus him. “What happened to your car?”
“This is not my car,” he said, trying to take a few steps.
“How did you get out here, then?”
“It’s a rental.”
“Oh no,” Sophia said, “there’s really no time for this.”
“It’s okay. I paid for the insurance,” he said with absolute seriousness.
She intercepted the man and took hold of his shoulders. “Do you have any water? We are both in a life-and-death situation.”
The man laughed and ducked back into the car for his backpack. He then walked past her, beckoning with his hand. He looked as if he might collapse at any moment. As he walked along, he babbled incoherently about someone called Kwon or maybe Krause or maybe he was talking about two people. He said Kwon died, that it was now his time, and he walked on.
“Where are we going?”
“To the water,” he said, shambling. He mentioned Wolf again and talked about the sisterhood of coyotes, who were also supernatural helpers. So many supernatural helpers. He talked about all these things as if Sophia were familiar with them. Soon they arrived at a cluster of green trees and shrubs at the base of a large rounded hill. Even in the gloaming, the green stood out against the dryness and the clouds gathering around them. At the center of this oasis was a cluster of moss-covered rocks. The man sat on them and placed his hand under the drip. “Here is the water. We’ll have to be patient,” he said, then he toppled over.
Sophia ran to his side, knelt down, and lifted his head, setting it on her thigh. She opened her pack and took out her water bottle. Only twenty ounces remained. She remembered that when she was growing up, her mother would tell any guests they brought bliss to her home, so she swirled the water and took a sip, then put the bottle to his lips. “Drink this,” she said, and when the water touched his lips, she watched them curl and open. He stopped himself.
“This is yours,” he said.
“My water belongs to the tribe,” she said.
“Yes, we are all one tribe,” Reinhardt said.
“No, it’s not that, it’s something my dad used to always quote from his favorite book.”
Reinhardt nodded, then reached up and lifted the bottle and drank some more. “Not too much,” she said, “you’ll get sick.”
“Hyponatremia,” Reinhardt croaked. “You are correct. I am a doctor, which makes all of this worse because I know what is happening to me on the inside. I will sip. Sip, sip, sip, sip.” He took another small amount, then licked his lips and handed her the bottle. “Take this from me. I will not be able to stop myself.”
She screwed the lid back on and the man collapsed more fully. Her leg was starting to tingle with numbness, and she strained her ears for the sounds of a car. The trees above them shook in the growing breeze, and the air temperature dropped. She heard a pap, pap, pap of raindrops in the dirt and looked up. The sky above them was a swirl of purple, gray, and abalone.
“Have you seen a man in a silver car? Dressed funny, like for the golf course or something?”
“If I were tiny, I could slip into this bottle for a little swim,” he said.
“A silver car,” she repeated. “Have you seen anyone out here like that?”
“Yes,” he said. “He was lost, I think. Or his friends were lost. Maybe we could take your car back to town.”
“Mine is out of commission. What is wrong with yours?”
“The transmission is gone, which is my fault.”
“Do you have a phone?”
“I do, but the battery is now dead.”
“Can we charge it with the car?
“That is dead, too. It is also my fault, but I don’t know how I did it. I think I was trying to use the fan.”
“Can you sit up? My leg is going to sleep.”
He lifted himself and sat cross-legged. “Put your bottle under there. It’ll be full in a few hours.”
There was a flash in the sky, and a clap of thunder cracked overhead, the echo bouncing from wall to wall like stones in a giant metal box. The wind picked up even more as the squall line came closer. Rain began to fall with greater frequency. Sophia could feel it on her skin. Three small birds passed above the car and flew in undulating lines toward the cliff dwellings at Las Casas Altas.
“This is a gift from the goddess,” Reinhardt said.
The rain picked up, pelting them. “We should look for shelter,” she said.
Large raindrops peppered the ground, coming in half notes at first, then the tempo sped up. Initially, Sophia thought they might be able to wait out the storm in the Mustang but realized they were right on a road, too visible, so she led the way across the sage flats toward the cliff dwellings. There were no channels to fill with flood waters, and the cliff would make sure nobody could come up behind them. Reinhardt marched on with his arms out to the side to maximize his exposure to the rain. Overhead was another stroke of lightning, the flash painting the junipers and cholla bone white.
“Hey, we need to get to the cliff,” she said. “This isn’t safe.”
“But it feels wonderful. I am renewed. Perhaps reborn.”
Thunder crashed through the space, startling the man.
“The lightning is the least of our worries,” she said.
Reinhardt spun and ran in wobbly circles. Sophia chased him, attempting to capture his attention, like someone trying to gather up a loose chicken. “Look, mister. There’s a crazy person out there trying to kill us. Not us, but me.”
Reinhardt stopped. “I know about this part. This is the initiation. After the road of trials, I am supposed to meet the goddess.” He pointed at Sophia, then at himself. “And we emerge from the abyss transformed.” He stopped spinning, and the rain grew more intense. “It is absurd,” he said, patting his backpack, “but everything in the book keeps happening.”
“What book?”
He pointed to the rock overhang. “I will show you under the cover of these cliffs.” Then he ran. Sophia followed. She realized that any plans she had for getting to the ranger station were going to depend on having water, and they were soon going to have the problem of too much water and nowhere to put it. When they got to the overhang, they huddled on the dry flank of dirt at the base of the cliff. To one side were a series of openings, like the orbits in a massive skull. “There,” she said, and they scurried inside.
They stood as they dripped. Reinhardt put his pack on frontways and opened it. He withdrew a large book and showed it to her.
“It’s too dark. What does it say?”
“Mythstructures for Blockbusters,” he announced. “It is a book for writers.”
“Blockbusters? You think we’re in a movie?”
“No. It’s about how our story is all stories.” In what remained of the daylight, she saw Reinhardt’s teeth. His voice sounded like a smile.
“You’re dehydrated, and we have to hide.”
“From what?”
“From the man in the silver car.”
“You saw him, too?”
“Yes,” she snapped. Sophia began to shiver, so she hugged herself and rubbed her arms. She watched the world outside the cave tiptoe into darkness. In the west, a single bleached-out vortex
punched through the black sky, which was only a shade lighter than the black of the cliffs, which was a bit lighter than the black of the ground.
Reinhardt looked at Sophia for a moment, then he ran into the rain and returned with a small bundle of sticks. “Wolf gave me a small fire starter, which I have with me in my pack.”
“That guy would see a fire,” Sophia said.
“We could build it back here, in the innermost cave.”
“No fire. And I can see what you’re trying to do here. I have a master’s degree in cultural anthropology. We’re not doing the monomyth, and I’m starting to lose my mind.”
“And yet the cave is right here, around us,” he said. “I feel much better by the way, though I think some diarrhea is coming.” Reinhardt reached into his open pack and withdrew a head lamp, which he slipped around his head and switched on. As he looked around, he saw pictographs. “Look,” he said, walking up to the wall.
“Don’t touch them,” Sophia yelled. “The oils in your hands—” When Sophia saw the images, her breath stopped. On the wall was a series of six enshrouded purple figures, each the length of her forearm. A seventh figure was over to one side with considerable space between. It was the same size as the others but lighter, faded. This figure was robed in stripes, with a long beard running down the front. Its eyes were wide and round like rings and its mouth was drawn with two parallel horizontal stripes.
“It looks like a robot,” Reinhardt said.
“Shhh,” Sophia said. “Let me borrow your light.”
Reinhardt handed it to her, and she placed it on her forehead. The panel contained other images: a crescent moon, stars, water glyphs, and spirals. To the left of the figures, below them, someone had carved J. NYE 1954 and below that NEPHI P. -67. She looked around the cave and found charred wood, a pack rat nest, a tin can smashed flat and rusted almost black. The ceiling was black from smoke that came from an unknowable number of fires. She reached for her phone to take a photo, then remembered it was broken. She did not have her other camera with her, so she took out her notebook and sketched the whole panel quickly and deftly, then she drew each figure more slowly and carefully.
Picnic in the Ruins Page 23