Where the Rock Splits the Sky

by Philip Webb

  Kelly turns in her saddle. “Sure was going outta your way to blend in back there in town. Guess you ain’t so strong on your lonesome, huh? Without the rest of Jethro’s gang. They’da lynched you in that saloon if they got wind of what you really are.”

  “Wanna know how come I lasted so long in wretched towns like that, up and down the Zone?” he drawls for effect and turns his collar up against the rain — such a natural gesture. “I watch your kind real close. And I kill any human that ‘gets wind of what I really am.’” The Visitor bares his teeth at Kelly — more of a warning than a smile. “Reckon I’m gonna let you live for a while. Two females’ll give me all the cover I need to blend in ’til we reach White Sands. But the wetback here — he ain’t gonna be so lucky.”

  He pulls up his horse and flicks his gun at me. “Come on, child. You know the score. There’s a shovel in my pack. Get busy with it now.” His voice is utterly callous. Only now do I see the hopelessness of reasoning with him. We have been led as lambs to the slaughter.

  “You can’t,” I stammer.

  “I can and I will.”

  “You’re gonna shoot him,” Kelly says flatly. It’s as if she has just realized that this is not a game.

  “Yep. When there’s a big enough hole to put him in. This seems as good a spot as any.”

  Luis says nothing, just glares at the Visitor in defiance.

  “Spare him,” I say when I can be sure my voice will hold steady.

  “He’s one surly son of a gun and he’s been itching to land one on me since I bailed you out that sa-loon. I ain’t riding a hundred miles to the rendezvous watching my back every step of the way.”

  “Then let him go.”

  “So he’s free to sneak up on us ten miles from now?”

  I get ready to beg, though I know it will do no good. The cruelty of the Visitor knows no bounds, and worse than that, it is casual, everyday. There is a pitiless logic to it — the grave is only to hide Luis’s body from the prying eyes of Brokeoff’s citizens.

  Luis takes aim and spits at the Visitor’s face. He speaks in Spanish, to me, knowing the game is up.

  “I am ready before God. I’ll go to my family. This is for you to win, Megan.” These are last words and I cannot bear to hear them. My heart is already broken as I start to plead with the Visitor.

  “Nope. He’s a dead dog, and if you ain’t digging, then he can die now.” He cocks his gun.

  “No! Wait!” Kelly cries. She jumps from her horse. “I’ll dig.”

  I stare at her, insensible, undone.

  The Visitor nods, pleased that his control of the situation is complete.

  Luis breathes to Kelly, “Cava lento.” Dig slow.

  She answers him in Spanish. “I’ve won prizes for my slow digging.”

  “Our friend is not so good at blending in with Mexicans, then,” says Luis.

  The Visitor doesn’t react. So he doesn’t understand Spanish or he doesn’t care.

  I stare at my companions in stunned silence. They have won a reprieve I could not have won — a bargain with the devil. Another few breaths of life in return for digging a grave. And while there’s life, there is still a chance. I quiet my terror and feel out into the Zone around me — a silent prayer of sorts. But the Zone does not answer. It is aloof from human concerns.

  “Hey, wake up, Zone girl,” says Kelly to me in Spanish. “I need distractions. And it’d be real handy to know weak spots on these critters.”

  “Enough talk,” barks the Visitor.

  Kelly yanks the shovel free from its straps. She throws me a wide-eyed look, then she thrusts the shovel into the mud with grim gusto.

  “So, White Sands,” she says, like we’re talking about a vacation. “What happens there?”

  I think she is mad, baiting the Visitor like this. But then he answers, in a distracted manner, bitter and bored. Almost as if he is talking to himself. “Gotta get the right side of them land rivers before they get up a head of speed, else you can’t make north more than Flagstaff.”

  Kelly throws me a questioning look, perhaps in reference to land rivers. But I have no idea what they are.

  Distractions. Any throw of the dice is worth it now.

  “My father knows I’m coming,” I try. “He sends me messages.”

  The Visitor shakes his head.

  “You don’t believe me? I’ve got a map in my pack that leads to Canyon de Chelly. Navajo Nation.”

  With one eye on us, the Visitor rifles through my expedition pack on Cisco. He pulls out my Rand McNally atlas, and the hand-drawn map flutters free.

  “This where you’re headed? Mavis Pilgrim mail route?” He thrusts the map at me. “And them graves? What’s the cemetery?”

  Over his shoulder, Kelly inches closer, all the while keeping a steady rhythm with her digging.

  “Spider Rock. There’s a grave I must find.”

  “Whose grave?”

  I squint at him through the rain, floundering for something, anything that will keep this conversation going. He doesn’t know about the cemetery, he doesn’t know about the grave.

  “My mother,” I blurt at last.

  Kelly winces like I’ve said the wrong thing.

  But the Visitor’s reaction is remarkable. “Your mother! That witch! We should have hunted her down sooner.”

  “What did she ever do to you?” I cry. The misery of her death rises in me — I was too young to know her.

  A dreadful expression passes over the Visitor’s stolen face — a kind of gloating disgust.

  “You don’t know, do you?” he says at last.

  My heart begins to hammer.

  “Know what?”

  “La cabeza, Kelly,” says Luis. The head.

  And that’s when Kelly lands the back of the shovel full force into the side of the Visitor’s skull.

  For a moment we all just look at the Visitor lying awkwardly in the mud.

  “Had it pegged from the get-go,” says Kelly. “Might be from outer space but I can spot the type. Used to get them coming in the Taco Shacko all day long. Long-distance truckers fixing to shoot their mouths off.”

  This deadpan claim so astounds me that I can find no reply. I untie Luis in a daze.

  Kelly prods the Visitor with her boot. “Reckon it’s dead?”

  As soon as he’s free, Luis snatches up the loose handgun from the dirt. “Dead? Not yet. The sheriff, he say between the eyes.”

  “No! Luis, no!” I cry.

  Kelly pulls him back. “Whoa there, cowboy. Not ’til it’s told me what I wanna know. That thing’s gonna spill it all — Valentine, abduction, who’s dead, who’s alive. Every damn detail. Then we can both finish the job.”

  “No one’s going to do any killing!”

  “What the hell do you care, you lame-ass? They popped your aunt. They’re sure as hell gonna pop you soon as they get what they want.”

  I think about the Visitor at the sheriff’s office in Marfa — how I could not murder it even when it pushed me to do so. Why? I feel no qualms — it is more like a line I cannot cross.

  “We have to learn from the Zone to defend ourselves. Pa said killing in cold blood wasn’t the way,” I manage, struggling to keep some authority in my voice.

  Kelly is genuinely amazed. “It ain’t got any blood like ours, Megan. Except what it’s stolen. It’s a parasite!”

  “What do you know about it?” I challenge. “I’ve told you everything you know about Visitors.”

  “Even that!” she splutters, working up her rage. “The way you call ’em Visitors. Like they’re just coming over for a chili cookout. Like frickin’ neighbors! They ain’t visitors, they’re invaders. Meat-eatin’ hunters. And they’re here to stay!”

  “You will gain nothing by killing this creature.”

  “This is war!” she shouts at me. “Lock ’n’ load. It’s the enemy! Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t blow it straight to hell right now.”

  She strides over to the Vi
sitor’s horse and pulls free the shotgun. “They’re all dead anyhow, right? My folks. Everyone I know in that town. Give me one good reason.”

  She has stoked herself into a fury of fear and hate, on the edge of tears. She lines the shotgun barrels up with the Visitor’s head and closes one eye.

  My thinking right then is cold and it is clear. I remember the sudden rage that rose in me at the saloon at Kelly’s rash behavior — that inescapable urge for violence. In Kelly now, that urge must be countless times stronger, where murder is the only release. I never felt like that even when Pa disappeared, even when my aunt was gunned down.

  “I’ll give you three reasons,” I say quietly.

  Luis hangs his head, drops his handgun back onto the ground. But Kelly moves her aim closer, as if that will harden her resolve.

  “You are in the Zone,” I say. “And the Zone judges you.”

  “Bull crap.”

  “What you do here, your deeds and the outcome of your deeds, are part of the Zone. That is how it works in this place. An unnecessary stray shot alerts our presence to others. You cannot predict the consequences of a reckless act.”

  Even as I say this, my mind hovers over a truth that remains just out of reach. Something about the Visitor lying there defenseless. Something about the Zone, about what it really is …

  The shotgun shakes in Kelly’s hands.

  “They are the enemy,” I say. “But slaughtering this one Visitor will not help to defeat them. They turned the moon into dust. They stopped this world on its axis. They take our flesh at will. We cannot match them in a straight conflict. We have to understand them if we are to save ourselves.”

  “Swear to God almighty, reason number three gotta be better than one and two.”

  And then it comes to me. It is a revelation that I feel sure my father must have uncovered because he did not try, like others, to raise an army. He went into the Zone … The Zone is something the Visitors have created, or unleashed. It has a purpose. It was not here before they came. And yet. They do not control it. This Visitor maintained a perimeter as trackers do. He was mindful of it, as if it holds just as much peril for them as for us. He seeks to reach White Sands because that is where Zone travelers may cross land rivers before they get a head of steam. They cannot traverse this country any more easily than we can.

  Kelly gives me a wild look, daring me to stop her.

  Luis steps forward and holds his hand out for the shotgun.

  “What? You goin’ soft on me? What about your family, Luis? What about them?”

  His face darkens in anger but he does not reply.

  “If you pull that trigger, Kelly, we’re through,” I tell her. “You’re on your own. That a good enough reason for you?”

  She gulps at her breaths, scrapes away her tears.

  “Goddamn Miss High ’n’ Mighty! Ain’t gonna be a soul to miss this sonofabitch!”

  “That’s true. But just think about afterward, Kelly.”

  “Shut your mouth!”

  I think about how she won’t be the same Kelly Tillman if she shoots this defenseless Visitor. None of us will be the same. I look at Luis and he is staring at me, more miserable than I have ever seen him. He has given up on her already — he whispers something in Spanish quickly. A prayer, I think. For the words are rote. A prayer not for the Visitor, but for us. We will unravel if she shoots. He senses it as well as I. We will not survive the Zone apart. But as three we are strong. I see it so clearly, but I cannot force her — she must see it on her own, or not at all. If she would only look up at us, it would save her. In that moment, I can think of nothing else. I want us to be just as we were. Before Brokeoff.

  She steadies her aim. I really think she’s going to do it — all her frustration rising to a peak …

  She pulls the gun to one side and fires. One, two, three rounds into the mud.

  The noise stirs the Visitor from his groggy state. He looks then in abject fear at Kelly — is it real, this emotion? Or mimicked to save his life?

  Kelly flings the gun into the grass, drops to her knees, and delivers her hardest punch into the Visitor’s face. He slumps back with a grunt.

  She shakes out her fingers. “Well, what we gonna do with it? We can’t just leave it here.”

  I’m so relieved, I want to embrace her. But she does not meet our gaze, somehow furious with herself or with us — I cannot say.

  It is Luis who moves first. He takes rope from Cisco and ties the Visitor’s arms and legs together as though hobbling a steer. Then he tosses the captive’s boots into the scrub so the spurs cannot be used to wear down the rope. Finally, he gags him with a neckerchief. I cannot imagine what Luis is thinking as he does this — by all rights, he should be dead. By now, the Visitor is conscious again, straining every sinew, eyes popping.

  “Good as dead anyhow if you leave it like that,” mutters Kelly.

  For an uncomfortable length of time we stare at his pathetic form rolling about like a trussed turkey.

  Finally, Luis unropes the Visitor’s pack mule and leads it down the hill a way.

  “Hey, what you doing?” cries Kelly.

  Luis slaps its rump hard and whoops at it to be gone. It charges away back toward town.

  “Great. You wanna check in with us before you do stuff?” yells Kelly.

  Luis glares at her. “Like you. At this saloon. You gamble with our lives, Kelly.”

  “They see a loaded-up mule in that town, they’re gonna send out a search party!” She points at the captive. “You want it coming back on our trail? Now I’m gonna have to kill it all over again!”

  The only sound comes from the hiss of rain and the horses sloshing about in puddles. Cisco shakes and whinnies.

  “What were you doing in the saloon?” I ask at last. “We were supposed to be keeping a low profile.”

  “What is this — the third degree? I was earning us some greenbacks, Your Honor. That supplies run cleaned us out case you never realized. Don’t believe me, ask the Boy With No Brain over there.”

  “You were selling our horse to stay in the game when I last checked.”

  “So what? I knew what I was doing. That’s what you do in poker — laugh at their goddamn jokes, drink their whiskey, make out you’re a sap on a losing streak. I softened them up for three hours before that hand …”

  All this is true. I have seen it happen before at the Welcome, though rarely with such style. And yet, there is more than what Kelly is telling me. I can see it in the way she turns unnecessarily on the Visitor captive.

  “Will you quit rolling about?” She shoves him onto his side with her boot. “If you must know, I landed us enough dough for another horse. And while I was at it, I found out about the Mavis Pilgrim …” She looks to the sky in disgust. “Hell, I just saved our asses here! You all just forget that?”

  “Megan …” As I turn to face Luis, he tumbles into my arms.

  Over his shoulder, I see Cisco swaying and then his forelegs buckle.

  Luis searches for my eyes, as though his sight is failing him. “The Zone, Megan. The Zone …”

  And then I feel it also. Too late. I have allowed my perimeter to lapse. I have made the unforgivable mistake of ignoring the Zone. It is upon us. A creeping slumber over the mind. Sleeping sickness. It settles, as numbing and soft as new snow. The Visitor ceases to struggle against his bindings. Kelly’s anger drifts into rambling. And I fall to my knees.

  This trance has no feeling. Pieces of my mind mist over — just a mere stump of reason keeps me moving. I know we will surely die if we succumb to sleep. We will lie down insensible in the wet mud and wither from thirst or exposure. This prospect is a firebrand in my head, but I feel neither fear nor sorrow. It is the Zone come to take lives, as it does every day, without passion or remorse.

  Kelly is still on her feet, mumbling nonsense, weaving into the scrub like a drunk. I call to her, but she hears nothing.

  The Visitor who brought us here lies corpselike, his e
mpty sleeve unpinned and trailing in a puddle. I scarcely remember a thing about him.

  Luis is too heavy to hold. I let him go as gently as I can, grasping for the answer to a question that now eludes me. The answer is … horse. The question is … how to escape. There will be currents, even in this sluggish veil — gradients perhaps, where a person may remain at least alert enough to move.

  I drag Luis by the belt over to Cisco. My horse gives whinnies of distress as though smarting at nightmares. Blinkers of darkness draw around my eyes, leaving only a tunnel of light. But once I reach Cisco’s flanks gleaming in the rain, I feel a little stronger, and he, too, launches himself upright. It is as though we give succor through touch, one to the other. It takes all my strength just to hoist Luis up and across the saddle. I stand there for what could be hours for all I know, gathering up my wits and losing them again.

  God only knows how long it takes me to mount Cisco and corral the other horses. I use rope, fumbling with it like a child, pulling the creatures into a gaggle around me. I have to call out my purpose over and over in a mantra to keep focused, and several times I look at the hopeless loops in my hands and wonder what I’m doing. I dare not dismount — the dumb breathing of the animals is all that lies between the sleep and me.

  I try to maintain my perimeter, staring down a closing tunnel of blindness. The sleep comes in waves, sweeping down from the mountains, I think, like the ghost of a glacier. At last I find Kelly, more by luck than judgment. She is swaying with her arms outstretched, oaths spilling from her lips, drowning slowly — just anger sustaining her now.

  I cannot afford to tussle, so I rope her with a lariat, take the strain onto the pommel of my saddle so the line pulls tight around her shoulders, and draw her stumbling from the slopes. Riding through rough country, with Luis on board, leading the other horses, not to mention Kelly, demands all my concentration. Instinct takes me back toward the highway, and for a brief spell my head clears. I need to turn west to skirt the southern spur of the Guadalupe Mountains, then head north toward Lincoln Forest — this is the most sensible route toward Canyon de Chelly. But I haven’t walked Cisco more than a hundred yards toward the sun before a great front of sleep lays down over me. It nearly unseats me, and in a panic so maddening and clumsy, I U-turn — east along the 180. Just exactly where I don’t want to go. But it’s as if the Zone, becalmed for so long, is now goading us along a corridor with invisible currents.