by Ray Garton
"Sure. I s'pose so." She folded her arms tightly, walked between Bent and Coll and around to the front of the trailer.
Kotter approached them sheepishly. "Hey, look, I'm really sorry about this. If you just give me tonight to talk with her, I think I can work things out for ya. She's got a soft spot for kids, 'specially since we never been able to have any. She's just still, y'know, upset with you. That's all."
"Okay," Bent said, nodding. "I'd appreciate anything you can do for us, David. This really is important. More important than some story."
"I can tell. Don't worry, I'll talk to her. You come back in the morning."
"Can you tell us how to find the nearest hotel?"
"I think you mean motel," Coll said. "You're not going to find a Hyatt Regency in this part of the desert."
"Okay, the nearest motel? And where we can pick up a telescope?"
"Tell you the truth," Kotter said, "I got no idea."
"Do you have a phone book?"
He shrugged. "We don't have a phone, so we don't need a book."
Bent sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Okay, okay." He turned to Coll. "You ready to go?"
"Oh, yeah, sure." Coll chuckled. "Looking forward to it."
They found a place about twenty miles away called the San-Dune Motel. It was one of those overpriced, pine-scented, antiseptic places with a humming ice machine, an OUT OF ORDER soda machine, and a very overweight man behind the front desk with unwashed hair, who wore a T-shirt that said I’M WITH STUPID above a hand pointing to his right, even though he was alone.
They got two rooms, unpacked, then agreed on a wake-up time.
"You do know, of course, that you're nuts," Coll said as they talked in Bent's room. "That woman is completely out of her mind. I mean, I suspected as much because the Inquisitor latched on to her, but after I met her ... well, I've got to admit ... she's loopier than a pretzel, Bent. You're chasing the hallucinations of a crazy person."
"Maybe so. But it's all I've got. And you have to admit, it's pretty creepy that the most sinister computer network we've found is based just sixty miles or so from here. Right? Am I right?"
Coll sighed. "Yeah, well ... okay. At least it's not boring." He smiled as he stood, moving away from the ugly orange vinyl upholstered chair in which he'd been sitting. "Get some sleep. I'll see you early."
"Yeah. Early."
3
They awoke at eight the next morning, had breakfast in a small diner called The Cow Patty Palace, then went into Palm Springs. Then, they drove around looking for a place that might carry telescopes. Most of the stores were closed, but they were willing to wait. They finally decided to try a department store, and once it opened, they went inside, looked around, and, knowing nothing about telescopes, took the salesman's word for it and ended up buying the most expensive one there.
After that, they returned to the motel. Bent still had a story to turn in, so he wrote it up quickly — a mostly empty story, made up of a lot of imagination and padding, covering the continuing search for the Walkers' little boy and how well the family was holding up through it all — and sent it through his portable fax machine.
They stopped by a grocery store, got a few bags of food to help make them more welcome by the Kotters, then drove back to the trailer, agreeing to take a long walk into the desert in the safe light of day to see if there was any residual sign of what Nattie claimed to have seen.
"You have any canteens?" Coll asked.
"Do you think we'll need any?"
"Well, who knows? We may get lost. And besides, it's a desert, right?"
"We'll leave a trail of bread crumbs," Bent said, chuckling.
When they arrived, David Kotter was out front, head buried beneath the open hood of the pickup. He came around the truck and walked toward them, wearing a dirty white T-shirt and old faded jeans, wiping his hands on a filthy once-blue rag, smiling at Bent and Coll as they got out of their car.
"I'm glad you came back," Kotter said.
"Did you talk to your wife?" Bent asked.
"Yeah, we talked. She's feeling a little better about things. She's fine. She's in the Liberace room just now, so I'm leavin' her alone. That's the rule. Gotta leave her alone while she's in the Liberace room, y'know."
"Well, we brought some groceries," Bent said, but was interrupted before he could continue.
"What for?" Kotter asked.
"If it's okay with you, we'd like to stick around for a while. At least, during the night. Maybe settle behind your trailer and keep an eye on the desert until morning? We'll go back to our motel during the day. We won't be in the way, I promise, and we brought plenty of food, enough for all of us for the next few days and nights."
"Sure," Kotter said. "I got no problem with that. I appreciate the groceries, really. I mean, well ... we could use 'em, y'know? But you're talkin' to the wrong person. Nattie's feelin' better about things but ... well, she's the one needs convincing."
Bent smiled. "Well, I don't think that'll be a problem." He turned to Coll. "Will it?"
After they'd taken the groceries inside — happily going along with Kotter's somewhat embarrassed request that they be quiet as long as Nattie was in the Liberace room — they went back outside into the late morning's growing heat and told Kotter that they planned to take a walk into the desert to see if they could find any trace of what Nattie had described to them.
"You mean, you really do think she saw something?" Kotter asked, making no effort to hide his surprise.
"Yes," Bent said, "that's why we're here."
"Oh. Well, I just wasn't sure, that's all. Sometimes ... well, I wonder about the things she says. A lot, 'fact."
Coll said, "We believe there's a great possibility that she did see something out there, and if so, there might be something left behind to prove it."
"So we're going to take a little walk out there," Bent added. "We just hope we don't die of thirst, or something."
Kotter tossed his head back and laughed hard. "Oh, man, you city boys, I tell ya. You don't have to worry 'bout that. Course, if she saw it in her telescope, it's at least a mile out there, but you ain't gonna die." He laughed again. "Hell, I've walked around here a lot myself. The desert's a beautiful place, long as you're not afraid of it, or nothin'. If you want, I'll go with you."
"You've been out there before?" Coll asked.
"Yeah. Well, not as far out as Nattie says she sees that stuff, but that's only because ... well, um ...” He looked around, as if to make sure his wife was not in earshot. "Like I said, I never took her too serious. But if you wanna go that far, yeah, sure, heck, I'll go with ya."
Bent and Coll looked at each other for a long moment as Kotter smiled at them as if they were children. Then Bent turned to him and smiled. "Sure. If you don't mind ... we'd love to have you along."
Kotter went into the desert with them, chatting amiably about nothing in particular as their feet crunched over the layer of fine gravel atop the crusty dirt.
The sun beat down on them like a sledgehammer from the clear blue sky. Although they all wore sunglasses, they were not protected from the heat, which was stifling.
Neither Bent nor Coll had been in the desert before. For them, the thought of the desert conjured images of enormous, rippled sand dunes and poor lost souls crawling in the sun, near death, with puffy, chapped lips and blistered skin.
"You guys've seen too many movies." Kotter laughed as he walked with them, taking long strides. "It's nothin' like that out here. Just lotsa plants and trees and desert animals. Mostly lizards during the day. It's a lot more active at night, y'know."
Kotter was right. As they walked into the surprisingly rocky desert — as Bent and Coll tried hard to keep up with Kotter's effortless pace in the shadeless heat — lizards scattered before them like cockroaches scattering at the flick of a light switch.
It didn't take long for the two of them to begin to sweat and get out of breath in the heat.
"Whoa, hold it a sec, okay, D
avid?" Bent said. "We're not really used to this. We're city boys, remember?"
"Oh, yeah, sure, y'want me to slow down?"
"Yes, please," Coll said between breaths. "We both smoke, okay?"
Kotter chuckled and slowed his pace as a long, pale desert iguana scurried across their path and shot up the trunk of a nearby ironwood tree, disappearing in its thorny branches. A whiptail darted in the opposite direction a few feet ahead and hid from them behind a thorny creosote bush. In fact, everything here seemed to be thorny — even the lizards — as if the desert itself had hardened them against the softer, lazier world beyond its perimeters.
They walked and they talked ... and Bent and Coll perspired a great deal, each frequently wiping his forehead or scrubbing a hand back and forth over the back of his neck.
"Is it gonna be much farther?" Bent asked, his voice hoarse and dry after walking what felt, to him, like a mile at least, although he wasn't sure.
Kotter smiled at him, and when he spoke, he sounded no different from when they had started. "Well, I told you it was at least a mile. I figure we've gone some ways beyond that by now, what with — " He stopped, turned, and looked back toward the trailer, shading his eyes with one hand. " — well, yeah, a mile at least. Course, I coulda been wrong, y'know." He turned back around and they began walking again. "That telescope can see a long ways, so I'm not sure if — "
There was a thump as Kotter's foot hit something and he fell forward, landing flat on his face with a breathy grunt. Bent and Coll hunkered beside him, helping him up.
"You okay, David?" Bent asked.
Kotter got to his feet easily, laughing as he brushed himself off. "Guess that's what happens when I start talking and stop watching where I'm going."
They started walking again, slowly at first, and Bent glanced back to see what had tripped Kotter. It was just a rock, about the size of a shoe box. Rocks of every size were everywhere, from house like boulders to the tiniest pebbles, and every few feet the landscape changed, from rocky to dusty, from crusty sand to crunchy gravel. But this particular rock was different from the others; it was partially black, as if it had been spray-painted.
Bent gave it a couple of glances, but dismissed it as they continued walking and chatting.
"So, what exactly're you guys looking for, anyways?" Kotter asked.
"I wish we knew," Bent said. "Unfortunately, we, um ... we're not sure, actually."
Coll laughed cynically and shook his head. "Boy, you're gonna have a hard time explaining the bill for this little jaunt to your bosses, Bent."
"Hey, as long as they're getting their story, what do they care?"
"Ooh-kay, don't say I didn't warn you."
They stopped talking for a while and listened to the hot, dry silence around them.
It was a foreign silence to Bent and Coll: no traffic sounds, no sirens, no shouting voices or horns honking or boom boxes throbbing with rap beats. Aside from their crunching footsteps — now moving more slowly than before — there was just one sound in the distance, a melancholy sound that carried across the flat expanse of the desert: the sound of a train rolling over a strip of lonely tracks that cut through the middle of nowhere.
"I still don't know where the tracks are," Kotter said, "but you can hear them trains all the time out here. The sound carries, y'know." Suddenly he stopped walking, and the other two turned to him. "Look, you guys, you wanna stop and rest, or somethin'? Maybe you can figure out just what it is you might be lookin' for."
Bent looked around, thinking silently.
"Well, if you're not going to speak up, Bent," Coll said, "I'd just like to say that now that we're out here, I think this whole thing sucks. It's a mistake."
As if preparing to listen to them, Kotter went to a nearby rock about the size of a Volkswagen Bug and leaned back against it, folding his arms over his chest and smiling slightly.
"But we haven't even done anything yet," Bent said quietly.
"No — no — no — no," Coll said with machine-gun rapidity, "we haven't found anything yet. And do you know why? Because we don't even know what we're looking for!"
"But think about it, Coll, this place is perfect! I mean, if she really saw what she claimed she saw, this is the perfect place for them to do it. Do you see any houses or neighborhoods, anything? If they had the right kind of vehicles, they could drive out here and do whatever they wanted."
"Have we seen tracks?"
"Well ... come to think of it, we haven't been looking for any. But I did see something that looked odd." He turned to Kotter. "Did you get a look at the rock you tripped over back there?"
He shrugged. "Didn't pay any attention to it."
"Well, part of it was black. Like it had been painted or something. Maybe even burned. Is that common out here?"
"Not that I know of. Far as I know, all the rocks around here are pretty much the same color ... just different shapes and sizes. Course, once in a while, we get campers out here in the desert. Sometimes they make fires at night. But not often."
A frown worked its way slowly over Bent's forehead, then he turned to Coll. "Walk around a little. Start taking a look at the rocks."
Coll gawked at him, shocked. "Are you kidding? We're collecting rocks now? You know, if I leave you out here long enough, we'll be leaving with a corkboard with suspect desert insects pinned to it!"
Bent was already looking. "Just do it, dammit. I think it might be something."
Coll sighed, but started looking, murmuring to himself, "Might be something ... might be something ... hah! ...”
They crunched slowly over the ground, hunched down to get a good look at the rocks scattered all around them, rocks of all sizes.
Kotter joined them with a look of mild confusion on his face, searching the ground for ... something or other.
"Not that anybody asked," Coll mumbled, "but I feel like a real dink."
Bent said, "Give it a little time and maybe you won't."
"Well, I'm starting to think this is all a big waste of time, because you know as well as I do that we're not going to — " Coll was interrupted.
"Is that what you was talking about?" Kotter asked, standing straight with a rock the size of a soccer ball in his right hand.
Bent and Coll hurried to him to inspect the rock.
It was the same color as all the others, except for a blotchy strip on one side that appeared to have been charred to a coal-black.
Kotter said, "Looks to me like this rock's been used for a campfire, maybe. Like I said, sometimes people camp out here."
Bent looked at him with a very serious frown. "Do you think what your wife saw through her telescope might have been a campfire?"
"Yeah, sure, it's possible. That's what I tried to tell her. But she kept sayin' that the flames were too high. That it was like a bonfire that was raised up off the ground, or somethin'. She kept saying it was some kinda altar, with lotsa people standing around in black robes and hoods."
Bent took the rock in his hands and looked at the black spot. "This is from a fire, all right. But if it's from a campfire, why didn't we find it in a little circle of other rocks just like it? That is what an abandoned campfire looks like, isn't it?"
Kotter looked at the rock thoughtfully. "Yeah. I suppose so."
"And this is just one rock," Bent continued, "like the one you tripped over back there. One burnt rock with plain old clean rocks around it. Now, doesn't that sound like somebody intentionally scattered these things around? You know, separated them so they'd be inconspicuous?"
After a moment, Coll said, "I think you wasted those years at the Times, Bent. You were born to write for the tabloids. You think like a tabloid, for crying out loud. Are you hearing yourself?"
Bent ignored him and tossed the rock to the ground by the boulder where Kotter had been leaning. "Let's keep them all together as we find them."
"Find what!" Coll barked.
"The other rocks. We'll find more, I'm sure of it. Let's just spread o
ut and keep looking."
Coll muttered sharp complaints as they went in three different directions, hunched over to look for more charred rocks. But his complaining stopped abruptly when Bent called out, "Hah! I found another one!"
And, within the next five minutes, they were all finding them. Most of them were just blackened in one section, but some of them were stained with something else ...
"What the hell is this?" Coll asked, holding one of the rocks as they gathered around the pile to see what they'd found so far.
Kotter frowned at it. "Looks sorta like rust. I found some of that stuff on some of the other rocks, too."
"So did I," Coll said, "but I didn't pay any attention to it."
Bent touched it, then ran this thumb over his fingertips in small, slow circles. "Feels greasy."
Bent and Coll looked at each other for a long moment, their eyes narrowed, their foreheads creased.
Coll whispered, "Look, it ... it could be a million things, okay?"
Then their eyes returned to the rock.
It was about half again the size of a football, vaguely the same shape, and had been exposed to flames, just like the others, with a large blotch of black over a third of it. But one section was covered with a blob-like section of dark brown crust that had dribbled down the sides in narrow strips that ended in small tear shapes. There was something else on it, something that felt to Bent like grease ... as if he'd rubbed his three fingers over a grill in a diner. Some of the brown crust had come off, too, and stuck to his fingertips in little flakes that scraped through the grease and crumbled beneath the pad of his thumb. But worst of all were the fine strands of something stuck in the grease like substance.
Hair.
"Okay, okay ... let's find the others," Bent said. He was unable to hide the slight quaver in his voice that was coming up from the fluttery, slightly sick feeling just beneath his gut. As they looked through the pile, Bent muttered nervously, as if to himself, just to keep calm: "Didn't notice any of that stuff myself ... not on the rocks I found ... course, I wasn't looking for it, so ... maybe I just didn't see it, you know? That's all ... that's all...”