by Gwen Florio
But the words that followed spoke to the impossibility of that notion. “Time for me to go. Listen. I know you don’t believe me, but I probably did you a favor. You’ll be up here just long enough.”
A long swishing sound mimicked the wind.
“Hágoónee’.”
The Diné word that people used for goodbye. Its truer meaning, Edgar had told her once, was closer to “That’s settled, then.” Lola supposed that whatever was happening, the meaning applied.
She waited for the next words. But they never came.
Lola counted to ten the slow way. One-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, one-thousand-three. She finished in a rush despite herself. Her fingers twitched. She did the count again, then tore at the blindfold, loosening it just enough to slide it above her eyes. She cast a glance around the ledge to assure herself that she was truly alone, then dropped to her hands and knees and crawled toward the cliff edge.
The ladder was gone. It looked as though it had been severed below the ring bolts that fastened it to the cliff, then pushed backward until it broke away far below of its own weight. But if the ladder was gone, where was her tormenter? She heard a hissing sound and drew back, afraid of rattlesnakes, doubly so after glimpsing something long and slithery just below. But the thing was all wrong for a snake, sliding down the face of the rock. A rope, moving fast through the ring that had once bolted the ladder to the wall. She remembered Naomi’s words: I taught him. You know how it goes—get kids doing something physical, something that they like, and they stay away from drugs. It his case, it worked.
“A shame you didn’t teach him not to kidnap people,” Lola whispered now.
A form briefly bounced away from the cliff, darker than the starlit sky beyond. So he was belaying, or rappelling, or whatever they called it, his way down. She lay flat and inched forward on her belly. If she shook the rope, could she dislodge him, sending him tumbling to his death? And then what?
“One thing at a time,” she told herself. Whatever he was up to, he needed to be stopped. Lola dragged herself another inch forward, whimpering. Vast space yawned mockingly ahead of her. She dug her fingers and feet against the rock, seeking nonexistent purchase, and forced herself to look down. Her head spun. She closed her eyes and ordered herself to focus. When she opened her eyes, she saw another flash of movement far below. He was nearly to the desert floor.
“Dammit!” Lola forgot about the height, almost—enough to reach one hand to the rope, yanking hard against its resistance. It flew hissing through her grasp, burning layers of skin from her palm. She clenched her teeth against the pain and pulled harder. The rope went loose.
“Yessss,” she said. Maybe she’d dislodged the bastard. Then, “No!”
The rope whisked free. She drew her hand back and blew on it, sliding away from the edge all in the same movement. But not before she saw the figure far below, sprinting across the desert floor toward the car.
FORTY
Lola scrambled backward, not rising to her feet until she’d put a few yards between herself and the edge, the ruins reassuringly at her back.
The walls were losing their heat. She leaned against the bricks, trying to soak up what was left. When she’d set out from the house, what seemed like hours ago now, the heat had been oppressive. But the temperature had done its nighttime dive. A breeze slid past. She revised her timeline of the increasing chill. She was in for a long, cold night—and then maybe a long hot morning before she somehow managed to attract the attention of someone looking for her, or even just passing by. The wind sliced at her again. Something alien rode it. Lola raised her head and sniffed a familiar odor. She inhaled more deeply.
“Dog shit?”
Even as she spoke, a scratching sound reached her. “Jesus Christ!” She leapt away from the wall. Anything could be in there. A rattlesnake, its scales dragging across the desert floor. One—or more—of those tarantulas. Rats, maybe. Lola removed herself with alacrity to the narrow strip of safety, the section of the ledge out from under the overhang, so spotlighted by the moon that she’d be able to see any approaching creature but still far enough from the edge as to keep her vertigo in check. She listened for the sound. There it was again, a frantic quality to it, this time accompanied by a whimper. She cocked her head. It came from beyond the cliff house. She tried to remember her visit there, visualized the site’s layout. The kiva was back there.
Step by stiff-legged, ready-to-run step, she advanced upon it, fighting the impossible hope rising in her heart, booming like thunder against her ribs. She reached the kiva. Stood a moment to let her eyes adjust to the darkness. Dropped to her knees and looked down into it. Saw white against black, flashing like a miracle as Bub flung himself again and again at the kiva’s wall.
His fur was rough, his ribs newly prominent. Lola sat on the floor of the kiva, her arms around him, twisting as his tongue polished her face. “Bub. Oh, Bub. How is it you’re still alive?”
He answered with a yelp, turning away and looking up toward the lip of the kiva.
“Right. Let’s get you out of here. That’ll be the easy part. Then we have to figure out how to get ourselves down from this cliff. Or get somebody up here to get us down.”
When Lola stood up, she could just see over the kiva’s edge. She thought of Bub hurling himself at the walls for three days straight, handicapped by his missing leg, always falling short of the mark. When she ran her hands over his body, seeking injuries, he whimpered and trembled. Nothing seemed broken, but he must have been badly bruised. “How’d you get here, buddy?” Another thought struck her. “And how in hell are you still alive?” He could have survived three days without food, but lack of water, even in the cool of the kiva, should have killed him after the first day.
She shook her head and hoisted him in her arms and carried him to the kiva wall. Her foot struck something and she stumbled, nearly dropping him. Metal clanged. “Hold on.” She put the dog down and felt around on the darkened floor. Her fingers encountered a familiar shape. A bowl, with a quarter-inch of water in the bottom. Lola crouched, swirling her fingers in the water, thinking hard. Maybe someone, too soft-hearted to kill Bub outright, had dumped him in the kiva to let him die there. Given the events of the past few hours, that someone must have been Thomas. But why, then, bring the dog water? What was the purpose of keeping him alive? And what was the purpose of leaving Lola stranded on the cliff? Bub leaned against her leg and whined.
“Sorry,” she said. “First things first.”
She hoisted him again. “Count of three,” she said. “One, two—” Fifty pounds of dog careened skyward. Toenails scrabbled on adobe. Lola leaped and shoved at his butt. He disappeared over the lip of the kiva.
“One down,” she said, breathing hard.
She reached up. The kiva’s edge was about shoulder height. She put her hands on it, jumped, and pulled—and fell back. “Ow.” Bub’s head appeared over the edge. “Give me a minute,” she said. She climbed to her feet and tried not to think about all the times she’d dismissed Charlie’s suggestion that she join him in lifting weights.
“The running is great,” he’d say. “But you want upper-body strength, too.”
“Yeah, and I should eat more vegetables,” Lola, a ravenous carnivore, had always responded.
“That too,” would come the placid reply.
Now she wondered: Would it have hurt to have picked up a barbell now and then? She shook out her arms, backed up to the center of the kiva, took a running start, and leapt for the kiva’s lip, this time getting her elbows onto the rim. She felt herself begin to slip, made a superhuman effort, and threw a knee over the edge. Another pull, and she lay gasping on the surface of the ledge, Bub prancing around her in paroxysms of canine joy.
“Don’t look so happy. We’re out. Now what?”
Hours later, the rock spires began to emerge from the night, a deeper shade of bl
ack than the softening darkness. The first real suggestion of dawn was still a couple of hours away, but hints of light seeped into the landscape. Lola welcomed the promise of warmth, but she knew that with warmth would come thirst. She thought of the skim of water in the bowl, wondered how quickly it would become appealing, then put the thought out of her mind. Besides, she wasn’t sure if she could get herself out of the kiva a second time.
“Come on, Bub,” she said. “Let’s see how bad this is.”
A ten-minute exploration of the ledge—staying as far from the drop as possible—told her that things were very bad indeed. The ledge was tucked into a bend in the wall. It arced like a giant C, curving in a great shell to the very edge of the cliff, which plunged down as precipitously as the walls above climbed high. She had thought to find a way around, or maybe even a route up and over and back down the other side. She sat with her back against the wall of the cliff house and gazed out over the lightening desert. Bub lay beside her with his head in her lap. She stroked him, remembering the day when she’d clung to the ladder and watched the truck dissolve into a burst of flame and smoke. She’d been able to see the road from the ladder. So, logically, motorists on the road would be able to see her, especially given that Charlie and others had to be out looking for her. She calculated the distance to the road. A half-mile? More like a mile.
The trucks and cars on the faraway main road had been easy to spot, the sun glinting off their metallic surfaces. But would a lone person be so noticeable? Especially high above the road, where likely no one would expect her to be? Those looking for her would probably explore surfaces, gullies, canyons, washes. The places where someone might slip and fall, or—the thought would have occurred to Charlie—dispose of a body. Which brought her back to wondering why Thomas hadn’t flat-out killed her.
Maybe he didn’t have the stomach for it, Lola mused, the same way he apparently had no stomach for killing the dog. Or maybe he’d stranded Lola and Bub on the cliff in hopes that no one would find either of them, and they’d die a slow death there. Maybe he thought people would attribute that to natural causes. “No way.” Lola addressed her own speculation aloud. Too many people knew about her fear of heights to imagine she’d have gone to the cliff houses on her own. And besides, there was the matter of the vandalized ladder. Maybe he’d just wanted her out of the way for a while. But why?
She thought, with a pang that bent her double, of Margaret’s fear at her mother’s disappearance. Impossible now to pretend that her family wasn’t a target. Margaret would want Charlie to find her. But she’d also want him to stay close, afraid of losing him, too. And Charlie would see that terror, would want to reassure Margaret—but wouldn’t dare bring her along with him on a search for fear of putting her in danger.
If—Lola’s mind balked at the thought—no one found her within twenty-four hours, the next day’s search would be disrupted by the tribal meeting, this time attended by mine executives several pay grades above Kerns, necessitating extra security. A moment later she was on her feet, shouting “No, no!” as Bub yelped beside her.
The meeting.
Thomas was going to bomb the meeting.
“Help!”
The car crawled beetle-like along the blacktop far, far away, oblivious to Lola’s gyrations on the ledge. She leapt and shouted, stripped her running tank over her head and flapped it above her. “Get me down from here!”
The car vanished around a curve. Lola collapsed in the dirt and put her shirt back on. It was inside-out. She didn’t care. “Oh God, Bub. What are we going to do?” He leaned against her and licked her cheeks. She raised her head. The desert floor grew lighter by the moment, the reddish tone of the rocks emerging from the gray. She guessed it was about seven in the morning. The meeting was more than twenty-four hours away. But what if Thomas got spooked, did something ahead of time? Surely Edgar and the mine executives would be huddling today, planning strategy. Lola thought about Charlie’s grief if his brother was killed just as they were beginning to reconnect.
And then there were the others. The faceless mine executives, all with families who’d grieve equally. Tribal officials and elders. The magnitude of Thomas’s probable scheme washed over her like a splash of ice water. She dug her fingers into her palms as her brain clicked through the scenario. Now she was sure why Thomas hadn’t simply killed her. After all, she’d be able to finger him as the bomber. But it wouldn’t matter. “He’s going to kill himself, too,” she told Bub. “He’s going to kill them all. He just needs me out of the way long enough to do it.”
Bub cocked his head and looked at her out of his blue eye.
“You’re right. That’s crazy,” she said. It was crazy. She was imagining things. How could Thomas justify killing all of those people?
Even as she tried to push it away, the reality shoved back at her, urging her to her feet. She’d written too many stories overseas about fanatics. One last grand action. The sacrifice—the collateral damage, a term Lola had always despised—worth the result. Such an attack would guarantee that no corporation would ever again consider the Navajo Nation worthy of development.
The sun grew brighter still. The rocks glowed red. Lola cast a last look toward the useless motorists on the useless road and uttered the impossible.
“We’re going to have to get down from here ourselves.”
FORTY-ONE
Too many minutes later found her flat on her stomach, her chin resting on the edge of the cliff, her hands clutching the rock. Bub danced back and forth along the precipice, surefooted on his three legs, tail wagging in anticipation of action. Lola told him his delight was premature.
“Because that’s just not going to happen,” she said. Even though she knew it had to.
That being the barely perceptible trail zigzagging down the side of the cliff, the one the guide had pointed out the day of their tour. “Just imagine,” he’d said. “They went up and down that every day. Whole families, little kids, moms with babies on their backs and pots on their head. Carrying big bundles of firewood, heavy jars of water, seeds for planting, and crops they’d harvested.” At the time, her sweaty hands slipping along the ladder, Lola had thought its rungs none too reassuring. Now, as she studied the ladder’s wreckage, it loomed in her memory like a grand sweeping staircase, the sort of thing she’d have descended without a second thought.
She glared at the pieces of ladder that mocked her from the desert floor. But the ladder’s bottom half remained intact, held in place by other bolts. Lola’s eyes narrowed. “All we have to do is make it that far,” she said. Then half-laughed, half-sobbed at the notion. The ladder, with its solid rungs and firm side-rails, had nearly defeated her before. The trail—now she could see where it met the ledge, the slightest of indentations in the rock—mocked her.
“No,” she said.
She closed her eyes and thought of Margaret, of Charlie. Imagined her child’s velvety cheek against her own, Charlie’s arms around both of them. What if they, too, got caught up in whatever Thomas was planning? She thought of all the times she’d spoken to Charlie about her suspicions involving his brother. She needed to get down, if for no other reason than to apologize. Her jaw tensed.
“Yes,” she said.
She’d thought to crawl—something reassuring about being low to the ground, less likelihood of teetering over the edge. But the trail was simply too narrow, the pedestrian’s version of what cyclists called a single-track, demanding one foot planted firmly in front of the other, not even room for both side-by-side. The first steps were the worst, her body swaying high above the cliff edge. She crouched, trying to hold onto the lip, but then her butt stuck out into thin air. “I can’t do this,” she said. She conjured her daughter’s face. “Margaret,” she said, and took a step.
“I can’t,” she said.
Then, “Charlie,” and another step.
It was easier, just, after the
first few steps, when the rock was waist high, then over her head. She pressed her chest and stomach against it, savoring its rough physicality, so reassuring as opposed to the terrifying expanse of air surrounding her. She’d started off staring fixedly at her feet, but it had proven too easy for her eyes to stray farther downward still, her gaze slipping over the edge just inches from her toes, plummeting to the desert floor. Her mind tugged at her to follow, to just lean out and let go. Now she trained her gaze on the cliff face, hands hard against it, and let her feet feel for the trail, an inch forward at a time. She sought a rhythm. Breathe. Slide. Breathe. Slide. She achieved maybe a foot before she stopped again.
Bub, bless him, seemed to be doing fine but wisely stayed far behind, although the occasional heaving sigh warned her that he’d have been happier scampering ahead. But there was no room to pass. Just as well, she thought. So much as the brush of fur against her calf might have sent her over the edge. The sun jumped above the horizon and shone full force, turning the cliff into a vast, vertical griddle. Sweat slicked her hairline and dampened her singlet against her back. Her own sigh echoed Bub’s. Even if she made it down, there was no guarantee she’d be able to get to the police in time to stop Thomas.
Again, her mind sounded its siren call: Better, maybe, just to lean back, fall onto the air as though it were a cushion. That way, if her worst fears came true, she’d already be dead, no agony over the fate of her family. Her family.
“Margaret,” she said through gritted teeth. Step.
“Charlie.” Step.
Lola stared at the rock an inch in front of her face and thought of the water bowl in the kiva. How much had it held? Not even an inch, or a half-inch. Just enough to moisten the bottom of the bowl. Slicks of dog saliva atop it. Her throat convulsed. If someone had handed her the bowl at that moment, she’d have loosed a hand from its death grip on the rock, snatched the bowl away, and bent her face to it, slurping up the few drops that remained, dog spit and all. Even though she knew, as the mirage faded, that she’d have been obligated to share the bowl’s paltry contents with Bub, panting a few feet behind her. Her head swam. Her stomach felt knotted down to the size of a walnut. A few hours earlier, she’d been hungry. Now hunger had vanished in the face of a monstrous thirst. She tried to remember the last time she’d had something to drink. At the house, certainly. Probably some of Naomi’s high-test lemonade. At this moment, she’d have been grateful for straight vodka. Rotgut, even. Motor oil. Anything liquid.