by Edward Abbey
Nine-thirty: he should have been on his way three hours ago, with the rising sun and the gas station attendants. He knew that, he remembered it, but he did not move. Yes, he was late—not a mere three hours but nearly twenty-four, practically a whole day behind schedule. Four hundred and fifty miles to Duke City. And he didn’t even care; nothing could have interested him less.
The last trip? He only half-believed it, smiling a little at the thought. The same resolve had come and gone a dozen times in the last three years; he was accustomed to it. How did he know? how could he say? There was the money to think of, not only the hills above the Shenandoah, or the interesting condition of his—the word seemed to him to be exactly correct—of his guts.
Speaking of guts, he thought, there was no point in eating breakfast this morning;—not that he was sick: simply didn’t feel like it. Wasn’t hungry. After all, he had been living for years on coffee, cigarettes, and diesel fumes.
He lit a cigarette.
I can take it, he told himself; I can last for another ten years, if I want to. He thought of the girl back in the aluminum diner on the edge of Oklahoma City, and smiled involuntarily. Twenty years, he said silently.—But why should I?
As a matter of fact he was full of sentimental notions now, indulging himself as he had not done for a long time. For the last day and night he had been haunted by the remembered image of that gill’s face and hair, and by a hazy aureole of ambitions, adolescent dreams, memories and sensations surrounding the image. He felt himself suffering from—or being elevated by—an uncomfortable thawing and leavening of the sensibility. A peculiar strain of experience: he was disturbed both by the novelty and the old familiarity of it.
Hinton became aware of an intense irradiation of heat focused on his lips; he removed the butt of the cigarette and crushed it in the ashtray. Might as well, he thought, might as well shove on. Tonight the haul will be over; I’ll have time to think about these things at last. And of other matters I’ve been putting off for too long.
Getting up, he felt the odd rather interesting crimp somewhere deep in his abdomen: a tough knotted ache, firm and definite and not particularly painful—almost pleasant, in fact. Just a little baby, he thought; an old friend. He paid for his coffee—four cups—and stepped outside.
The wind screamed in his face, clawed at him, sucked his breath away. He staggered back, surprised and laughing, clutching at his cap. Between here and the North Pole, he recalled, nothing but bobwire. The wind rushed at him from the north, cold and powerful and thick with dust… . Baaaah! he muttered, spitting and grimacing; he held tightly to his cap and pushed his way through the massive torrent of air, stumbling a little, toward his truck. He squinted, looking for the silver and red—
ANOTHER LOAD OF ACME BATHROOM FIXTURES! AMERICA BUILDS FOR…
—Saw it, about where he thought he had left it America builds, he said. The wind pushed and shoved at him, an angry gritty quarreling wind; he lurched forward, his jacket whipping and snapping about him, the collar flicking his mouth. Dammit, he said, staggering sideways. The power of the wind, he thought; he felt slightly ridiculous, fighting and falling his way through this semi-invisible flood. More dust in his teeth—the sharp pleasing alkaline flavor of South Dakota, the old dry horse-chips taste of Kansas.
The wind embraced him, drew at his mouth, flayed his skin with its bitter ardor. He was laughing with excitement when he finally reached the truck.
16
… STRIDING DOWN THE COURTHOUSE ALLEY, THE radio jeep and two dust-tan Chevrolets waiting for them—“Morey!” Six men bearing arms: pistols, shotguns, submachineguns. “Hey Morey!”
Johnson sat down at the wheel of the jeep. The radio operator got in beside him, wearing a pistol. “You fellas aren’t coming with us,” Johnson said. He loosened his belt a notch, trying to get comfortable in the cramped space between steering wheel and transmitter; Glynn and the three others stared at him.
“Morey!”
Johnson said: “Glynn, I want you and one of these fellas to go on up on the Rim. That’s where you two are gonna spend your time. You have the binoculars?”
Glynn nodded. “Yeah—”
“You know how to get up there?”
“Aw Morey, for chrissake—!”
“Hey Morey!”
Johnson unwrapped a stick of chewing gum. “Well take off. Get up there as soon as you can and when you do, radio me. And I don’t want you both just sittin in the car readin funnybooks: you have to cover about ten miles of trail. Did you bring any lunch with you?”
Glynn shook his head.
“All right, then get some on your way out of town. Fill your canteens and water bags. Don’t try to sneak any beer up there—this is no picnic. Don’t leave the keys in the car.” Johnson turned up the collar of his leather jacket. “Now you know what to do when you get up there?” Glynn nodded. “Okay—take off. And keep your eyes skinned—the sooner we find this vaquero the sooner we come home.”
“Okay, Morey…” Glynn got into one of the cars; another deputy carrying a sawed-off shotgun followed him.
“Hey Morey!” One of the jailguards stood in the alley door, still shouting at him. Johnson turned his head, frowning. “Morey…?” the guard said tentatively.
“No,” Johnson said.
“Gutierrez called up, says he wants to go along.”
“No,” said Johnson. He faced the otter two men who stood there watching him. “Now I’d like you boys to run out to the Pueblo and pick up a man named Pete Sandia. He’s a tracker. He’ll be waiting for you at the postoffice. After that join me out in the mountains, I’ll be at the old Brown homestead. You know where it is?”
“You mean me?” one of the men said, “There’s two or three old places out there. I don’t know which one you mean.”
“This place is right near the mouth of Agua Dulce Canyon; there’s a spring there with three big cotton-woods. The house is an old wreck with a cholla growing on the roof.” The man nodded then. “You know where I mean now?”
“Yeah, I know.” He nodded again. “I been there.”
“Okay,” Johnson said. He started the engine of the jeep. “We’ll expect you in about an hour. Don’t come without that Indian—hell probably be drunk but bring him anyway.” He let the engine idle at a moderate speed, warming it up. “If he doesn’t want to come arrest him for drunkenness and bring him along.” The two deputies grinned. “Okay?” said Johnson; they nodded and got into the other automobile. Johnson craned his head around and backed the jeep off the parkinglot and into the alley.
He stopped by the rear door and spoke to the guard standing there: “Has Hernandez come in yet?”
“No…”
“When he does ask him to check again with the State Police about that airplane. He’ll know what I mean. And tell him the Marshal is picking up the Federal prisoner named Bondi today.”
The guard bobbed his head up and down. “Okay, Morey…”
Johnson drove on, turned out of the alley and went north on Second Street. Neither he nor the radio operator spoke; the jeep was only partially closed, with a frame and canvas rig, and the cold morning air rushed through it at forty miles an hour. Johnson regretted not having worn gloves.
They drove for two miles north through the gray bleak city, the streets nearly deserted, the sidewalks empty; nobody passed them in the opposite direction except the drivers of a few freight trucks. They turned east on Mountain Road, passing through one of the more substantial sectors of the city:—row on row of brick and glass boxes squatting under a dense thicket of television antennae, housing engineers and Buicks and dentists; not far away, beyond the golf course, was an Episcopal cathedral rising in imitation gothic above the shrubbery and lost balls; beyond the house of God lay an expanse of expensive formal gardens not easily distinguishable from the golf course, a “Memorial Park” so new that it had as yet found few, and these most reluctant, tenants; beneath those luxurious lawns, if all went well, the neighboring d
entists and engineers would someday be interred, to enjoy in sub-pastoral elegance a leisurely recreation they had never known in life.
Past the limits of the city proper now, Johnson and the radio operator jounced along in their hard-sprung jeep, watching the inert passage of a few bars and gas stations and small farms on their left and right. Mailboxes presented themselves, flagged and numbered, and when Number 424 appeared the sheriff slowed for an appraising look at the low adobe house among the tamarisk and apricot trees, at its weed-grown corn patch, the jungle of sunflowers, the outhouses, corral, woodpile, backyard.
“Whatcha lookin at?” the radio operator said, breaking the long silence. Johnson gave no answer. “What’s here?” the operator said, looking out himself.
Johnson stepped on the gas again. “That’s where this fella Bondi lives,” he said. Used to live, he meant He chewed slowly on his gum, speculating.
“Oh…” the operator said. “And that’s where…?” He twisted his head around to look back. “Yeah…” he said softly; he put one hand down on his pistol butt.
On they went, through the rural fringes of the suburbs: small farms, irrigation ditches, yellow cotton-woods and long brown patches of corn stubble, barbed wire fences, more mud houses, old Chevies blocked up and disemboweled amid a litter of tools and worn parts, red chili peppers and colored maize drying on the walls, small angry dogs yapping under the wheels, Mexicans sagging in off-plumb doorways, pickup trucks parked in wagon sheds, the smell of horse manure, burning cedar, greasewood, sand, rock, the long cool smoky blue dawn…
Johnson stepped on the brakes, pulled at the wheel and the jeep skidded around a corner fence post, rattled over a wooden bridge and then rolled east and upward across the desert toward the shadowy, intangible mountains.
“How far out there?” the radio operator asked; he held on to the dashboard with both hands as the jeep swayed and bumped over the seldom-graded road. A flying stone clanged against the muffler. “Huh?”
“About ten miles to where we’re going,” Johnson said.
“You think you know where this Burns character is out there?”
“I think so.”
The jeep nosed suddenly down into a wash, bounced over rocks and potholes, roared up the other side. The operator braced himself against the floorboards, while his stomach rose, shook and sank again. “Ah… did you—” The jeep jolted over a ridge of base rock that underlay the road. “—Did you go out there last night, Morey?”
“Yes.”
“What makes you so sure he’ll still be there this morning?”
“Nothing.” Johnson lifted one hand from the wheel and scratched the inside of his thigh.
The road climbed to the edge of the mesa and then straightened out on the long broad plain that rose gradually toward the base of the mountains. Here the road’s surface had acquired the character of a washboard, an unbroken succession of lateral corrugations which made the jeep shake and vibrate with such vigor that it seemed certain to fall in pieces before another mile was covered; however, Johnson merely stepped harder on the gas pedal and as the machine’s speed increased it achieved a kind of aerodynamic synchronization of velocity and traction with the ribbed road, reducing the bone-and-bolt-shattering vibrations to a steady, rhythmic, dependable rattle.
The radio operator took advantage of the comparative stability and lit himself a cigarette, though not without wasting several matches in the wind. His cheeks distended, his eyes half-closed, he puffed out smoke that shot past his ears like a fleeing soul. “Haven’t been up this early since last deer season,” he said cheerfully. He looked through the windshield at the long dark horizontal wall of the mountain, which seemed to recede before them as they approached. Las Montañas del Sangre de Cristo. “Been a long time since I watched the sun come up.” He looked for this phenomenon in the yellow sky above the mountains and within a minute, as if his words constituted a celestial command, the sun began to appear above the mountain rim, looking dull, reddish and somewhat late. “Must be a lot of dust in the air,” the operator commented. But even so the light was strong enough to make him squint.
The jeep raced over the road after the retreating edge of the great shadow. Behind them the dust boiled up and hung in the air along the road like a long limp dirty wind-cone.
“Might be a nice day yet, though,” the operator said. “You—” The road fell steeply beneath them, the jeep hurtled down into a deep wash, crashed through a congregation of tumbleweeds, went zooming up the opposite bank spitting fumes, dust and gravel from behind. The road led on, climbing and winding among boulders, cactus and scattered junipers. Johnson shifted into second gear. The operator completed his statement: “You never can tell for sure just by how things happen to look in the morning.”
The sun rose higher through the eastern haze; it began to burn and glare, a hot shimmering disc of fire. The operator squinted and grimaced; Johnson pulled the forebrim of his Stetson farther down.
The road followed a fence; here and there were survey stakes, outlining the streets and lots of an imaginary suburb; a big billboard, alone and conspicuous in this wilderness of rock and sand, addressed them in flattering terms: OWN YOUR OWN MOUNTAIN RANCH ESTATE HOME—Barker Realty, Inc. Johnson grunted. The jeep clattered over an old wooden cattleguard, past a National Forest marker and up into the foothills, the dark wall of the mountain rearing above them, shutting off the sun again.
They came to a junction of roads, one going northeast toward the base of the main wall, the other south across the mesa and around the foothills. The sign pointing left and northeast said: Public Campgrounds, 2 miles; Ranger Station, 4 miles;—the other sign said: US 66, 12 miles; Duke City, 22 miles. Johnson turned to the right.
This was a wider, better road, paralleling the face of the mountains; Johnson followed it for about three miles, then turned east at the bottom of a sandy wash, steered between a pair of junipers and up over rocks and sand toward the canyon known as Agua Dulce. The wheels thrashed and spun in the deep sand; Johnson engaged the front wheel drive, shifted into low range, and the jeep ground ahead, whining and shaking and still in second gear. What they drove over now was not a road but a pair of dim tracks, an ancient wagon trail with beds of sand sucking at the wheels, shale and slate to slash the tires, potholes and ledges and fangs of rock ready to break an axle or shear through an oilpan. Juniper boughs whipped across the windshield, cactus clawed at the wheels, dead brush exploded under the bumper and fenders, but Johnson, with a kind of resigned abandon that seemed to evade disaster only through a fatalistic indifference, drove the jeep—property of Bernal County—up, over, into and through every kind of obstacle that a difficult fate and spontaneous nature had ranged in his path.
The wash narrowed and deepened ahead, became an arroyo with vertical banks and overhanging bluffs. Johnson drove on, upward, around a turn—cotton-woods appeared, three giant sear-leafed trees with elephantine trunks, and beneath the trees a patch of grass and reeds and the ledge of limestone that embraced the spring. The sheriff stopped the jeep, shut off the engine and climbed out; the radio operator hauled himself out on the other side, stumbling and nearly falling on his face.
“Jesus, Morey…”
They heard a hissing of compressed steam, the chug and burble of water—spontaneous noises coming from under the hood of the jeep. “Jesus, Morey…” the operator mumbled again. He wiped- his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket.
Johnson, studying the ground under the trees, made no reply; he observed the droppings of a horse near the patch of grass, hoofprints in the damp sand, a sprawl of sliding impressions on both banks of the arroyo. He stared up the arroyo, up the hill beyond it, up into the canyon behind it, up at the remote and tortured face of the mountain towering beyond and far above the canyon. The sensation of awe was perhaps not a part of Sheriff Johnson’s repertory of emotions; yet something in those heights of naked, perpendicular crags and cliffs made him halt in his tracks and suspend, at least for a few momen
ts, his chain of guesses, facts, and inferences. He stared upward, unblinking, at that implacable wall.
“Hey, Morey!” The operator had scrambled up the bank and was now standing on its edge. “There’s an old house up here—this the old Brown homestead?” He received no answer. He glanced around, looked down, stooped, then knelt for a close scrutiny of something on the ground. “Morey,” he said eagerly, “somebody’s been walkin around up here! Jesus—the biggest shoe-prints you ever saw in your life. They don’t look human…”
Johnson did not answer; he scarcely heard. The expression on his face had changed, losing its air of general apprehension, and become tense, concentrated, fixedly attentive. Far up that canyon, twisting slowly up through the dawn air, he had seen or thought he had seen a wisp of smoke. But too frail, too distant—he closed his eyes for a few seconds, then opened them and looked again. He was not mistaken; he saw smoke. A blue thread of smoke, pale and shifting, hovering on the bounds of invisibility, and a long way off.
“How about these feet, Morey? You oughta come up here and have a look. My God, they’re gigantic…”
Johnson relaxed, scratching his groin; he spat the wad of gum out of his mouth. He turned and went back a few steps and sat down on the fender of the jeep. The radiator was still sizzling and bubbling, though with less agitation than before.
“Morey…?”
Johnson looked up at the operator. “That’s all right,” he said; “don’t worry about them. I made them tracks myself, last night. Come on down here, see if you can contact any of the boys.”
“Okay…” The operator stared westward, down and toward the north reach of the city. “There’s a car comin across the mesa now. The other guys, probably.”
Johnson looked in the same direction and saw a funnel of dust creeping toward the mountains, following the long hairline over the plain that marked the road. Ten miles and nearly a half hour away, he estimated. “Come on down,” he said to the operator.