The Same River Twice

by Stephen Legault

“Well, that’s the end of the road. In the book, Horse Canyon is where Hayduke got into the gunfight and faked his own death. Robbie and I were in Horse Canyon in September. We came at it from the Green River side of things. I don’t see anything,” Silas scanned the horizon with Katie’s binoculars. “We’d better get a move on.”

  They drove on. Lizard Rock loomed closer. All around the landscape was composed of vertical outcrops of red and white sandstone, but Lizard Rock was singular. Rising nearly a hundred feet in a narrow spire, and topped with a bulbous head that looked like the mouth of a lizard, the rock was a landmark on the Flint Trail and a magnet for climbers. Silas breathed a sigh of relief that nobody was on the tower that afternoon.

  They slowed on the road and Silas was out of the truck before Katie had stopped. He was looking for another ammo box. He circled the tower once and, finding nothing, circled again. Katie searched along the roadside, looking in the rabbit brush and saltbush.

  “There’s nothing here!” Silas was panting, more with panic than fatigue.

  “He said Lizard Rock, right?”

  Silas took the note out. “It says Thirty-five miles to Lizard Rock. It’s a line from The Monkey Wrench Gang, when Seldom Seen Smith is explaining to Bonnie how far they are from their destination. It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

  They walked in opposite directions around the rock but found nothing. They stopped near the road at the crude trail register the Park Service had put up. Silas leaned on it, dread spreading across his face. Then his face brightened.

  “What? What is it?”

  Silas opened the trail register’s lid and hurriedly pulled out the notebook there. He flipped to the final page. There was an entry in the same juvenile handwriting he first saw in his wife’s journal a year and a half ago. “The ultimate world … the final world of meat, flood, fire, water, rock, wood, sun, wind, sky, night, cold, dawn, warmth, life … and loneliness …”

  “What does that mean?”

  Silas was silent for a moment. “It’s another line from the book. Remember? When Hayduke and Smith are at the end of the chase scene, trying to wait out the National Guard near Standing Rock. It’s the end of the line. It’s the last jump-off. It’s Hayduke’s last stand.”

  KATIE DROVE THROUGH the mid-afternoon sun. The Flint Trail rolled across the plateau; the canyons branched off from this high divide and fell into dark, sculpted defiles on either side of them. Far in the distance the red walls of the Island in the Sky, forty miles away and on the other side of the Green River, reflected the glow of autumn. Behind them the Orange Cliffs were backlit by the failing sun. The world was still and silent except the deep growl of the truck passing over the landscape.

  There was a loud bang, and another. Silas ducked and Katie hunched behind the wheel. Two more loud bangs and the vehicle ground to a halt. Silas reached for the door handle.

  “Wait!” shouted Rain.

  “That was the tires—”

  “I know. But that wasn’t a sharp rock on the road that blew them out.” She unholstered her sidearm and opened the door, ducking down behind it as she got out. Silas did the same. He could smell rubber. All four tires were flat.

  “Jesus Christ,” Silas muttered. “Caltrops.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Caltrops. They’re all over the road.”

  “Did Josh put these here?”

  “Yeah. It’s another thing from the book, remember? Doc used them to slow down the Search and Rescue Team. But that was supposed to be back on the White Canyon Bridge.”

  “He’s changing the narrative.”

  “What else is he going to change?”

  “Silas, I really think—”

  “Listen, Katie, I’m not calling in Taylor. We can’t now anyway. We’re committed.”

  She was silent. He could hear her breathing on the other side of the vehicle. “Alright. Let’s gear up. How far to Standing Rock?”

  “Less than a mile. If he sticks to the narrative in the book, it will be another few miles out onto the mesa to Horse Canyon.”

  “Get your gear then. Let’s go.”

  EACH CARRIED A light pack. Katie had removed the dash-mounted GPS and stowed it in her bag. They left the road. Silas argued that there might be more notes, or messages, but Katie countered that the message might come in the form of an ambush. “As long as Josh is changing the game plan, then so should we. Let’s get off the road and find some cover to move under.” They walked along the narrow plateau overlooking the folds and fins in the earth called the Maze as the sun sank toward the horizon.

  “Alright,” said Silas, watching Standing Rock from behind some low brush. “This is where we split up.”

  “Silas, are you sure about this?”

  “No. But we’ve got to interrupt his plan. We can’t let him get Robbie out to Horse Canyon. If he does, we’re going to run out of options. Listen, I’m sorry to have dragged you into this. I mean, all of it. It’s dangerous, and it’s out of control. I know that.”

  “Well, when I helped you look for Penelope last fall, out on the Island in the Sky, I will admit I didn’t see this coming.”

  “We get through this, I’ll make it up to you.”

  “You’re going to invite me over for a Hungry Man frozen dinner, are you?”

  “Funny. I mean it, Katie—”

  “Alright, enough. Let’s go get your son back.”

  She unfolded the map he had given her and studied it for a minute. Smiling at him, she kissed him on the grizzled cheek. “It’s going to be alright,” she said, and then was gone.

  He watched her trot off toward Standing Rock, hunched low, her pistol held close to her side, watching the horizon for signs of trouble. He felt an ominous sense of déjà vu.

  “I’LL BE FOUR, maybe five days.”

  “Where are you heading this time?”

  “I haven’t figured that out yet. There are a lot of variables.”

  “You’re the only person I know who has variables when it comes to backpacking. Can’t you just decide on a hike and then do it?”

  “It’s not just a hike, Silas.”

  “I know, Penny. It’s never just a hike with you.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing. This is important to me. If you came with me sometime, you’d understand.”

  “I’ll come sometime. It’s just that right now it’s the end of term and I’ve got a hundred papers to grade. If you’d schedule these things when I’m not busy with school—”

  “Silas, the desert is hot in the summertime and snowy at Christmas. There’s a reason I hike in the spring and the fall.”

  “Are you going to call me when you know where you’re going?”

  She kissed him on the forehead. “It will be within a day of Moab, one way or another.”

  He looked up from his papers. “There’s a lot of country within a day of Moab.”

  “I know, isn’t it wonderful?”

  45

  STANDING ROCK WAS ANOTHER PHALLIC spire in a land of pillars. Silas stood on the road, his hands at his sides, trying to look unthreatening. The sun was low on the horizon and long shadows drew away from the naked stone as if the skin of light that stretched over the world was being pulled taut by an invisible hand.

  He carefully circled the column of stone. There was a breeze blowing across the desert and he could smell the sweet fragrance of sage. In the distance the La Sal Mountains, always his compass, glowed in the late afternoon light. There was fresh snow on their summits; another year come and gone.

  He had checked the register at the end of the road and there was no message from Josh. There was no ammo box containing a line of prose from Edward Abbey. Just stillness; just silence, only the wind and the occasional croak of raven.

  “Hayduke!” he called.

  There was no answer.

  “Josh, I’m here. I want my son!”

  Nothing. He closed his eyes and felt the wind gently touch his face.

 
Then there was a noise. It was like the sound of a rock being dropped on the sand floor of a wash. He tensed. He turned to look around himself. All that existed was the naked earth. From Standing Rock to the Chocolate Drops—pillars of muddy brown stone beyond the canyons of the Maze—to Elaterite Butte on the horizon, nothing moved.

  “Hayduke!”

  “I’m right here, Silas.”

  Silas spun around but there was no one there. He took a few tentative steps toward the pillar of stone. “Where?”

  “Here.” Josh Charleston’s voice seemed to float on the wind.

  “Robbie? You alright?”

  “He’s fine.” Hayduke was above him, standing at the base of the chimney of stone, high on the talus cone that formed at the sheer rock’s base. The sun was behind Josh so Silas had to shield his eyes to see him. His son was there too, bound and gagged, silent. He looked haggard, his hair standing on end, one of his eyes swollen with bruising. Hayduke had his revolver in his right hand.

  “I’m here, Josh—”

  “It’s Hayduke, for fuck’s sake!”

  “I’m here, Hayduke. Now, what do you want?”

  “I want to end the game.”

  “Then let’s talk about how we do that.”

  “You know how this ends.”

  “It doesn’t have to. I’ve done what you asked. I’m here alone—”

  Hayduke interrupted him with laughter that sounded like a bark.

  “I’m here alone, no FBI, just like you said. Let Robbie go and you and me, we can go out to Horse Canyon and write a new ending to the story.”

  “Like what?” Hayduke was walking over the rough terrain toward Silas, pushing Robbie along as he did. “What’s the new ending? Everybody lives happily ever after? I don’t think ol’ Cactus Ed would have liked that.”

  “But they did—everybody lived.”

  Hayduke was in front of him now. Silas looked Robbie over. He was bruised and bloody. He had a gash along his hairline above his left temple and his face was black and blue. Silas’s eyes locked on his son’s. He tried to convey that everything would be okay while Robbie seemed to be saying something else entirely.

  “Let Rob go; he’s not part of this story.”

  “I thought we’d use him as the scarecrow that goes down into the flood. You know, the one that Hayduke dresses up and throws down into the canyon to fool everybody into thinking that he’s really dead?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Sweat was beading on Silas’s forehead. He pushed it away with the back of his hand. “Let Robbie go and you and I can go out to Horse Canyon and just talk this through.”

  “Talk? Talk? That’s all you ever want to do! No fucking action, man. Penelope was the same in the end. Same goddamned thing. All talk. No action. We never could all get together on that one.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s from the book; Smith says that, right here, right fucking here, in the book. We never could all get together on that one. When he leaves Hayduke. When he walks away in the rain. Walks all the way back up the Flint Trail. Ten miles in the rain.”

  “Get together on what?”

  “On the fucking dam.”

  “What are you talking about? Listen, I don’t care what’s happened before. I just want Robbie back.” Silas shifted nervously.

  “Did you like my notes? They led you right here.”

  “Yes, very clever.”

  “I thought you would like them. You say you hate him, but nobody knows Abbey the way you do.”

  “Jo … Hayduke, where is this all going?”

  “You know where it’s going!”

  “Let’s just be calm. Hayduke could have walked away. Why don’t we rewrite the ending?”

  “He was desperate.”

  “But you’re not. It’s just us. You could leave Robbie here, walk to wherever you left your Jeep, and nobody would ever find you. I’d tell them you’d gone to Canada.”

  Hayduke stiffened. He pushed the pistol into the side of Robbie’s head. Rob winced and Silas’s face registered panic. “You’re a filthy stinking liar, you know that, Silas?”

  “I wouldn’t tell anybody.”

  “You weren’t alone out here. You brought the girl.”

  “What do you—?”

  “The girl. The FBI woman. Rain. You brought her.”

  “What have you done?”

  “I took care of things.”

  “Josh, what have you done?”

  “Let’s just say your plan to catch Hayduke failed. I slipped the net.”

  “I just want my son back—please?”

  Hayduke pressed the barrel of the heavy revolver into the side of Robbie’s head. He thumbed the hammer but didn’t cock the pistol. With a violent surge he swung the butt of the pistol into the young man’s temple and Silas heard the crack; Robbie crumpled to the ground. Silas rushed forward but before he reached his son Josh raised the weapon and pointed it at Silas’s head. “Stop!”

  Silas skidded to a stop as Hayduke, his face twisted and mad, rushed at him. In a second Hayduke was on him, swinging the heavy pistol, the weapon clipping Silas in the face. Blood bloomed there. Silas stopped, looking at his son on the ground.

  “Now, Dr. Pearson, let’s finish up this little game of ours, shall we?”

  46

  “I’M NOT GOING WITH YOU, Hayduke.” Silas stood looking at Josh Charleston, standing before him, ragged, sweating, and wild. Josh’s extended arm still held his .357 Magnum pointed at Silas’s forehead.

  “You and I are going to march out to the end of this plateau and we’re going to put a final exclamation point on this whole fucking business. Now get moving!”

  “I’m not leaving Robbie. And Katie? Where is she?”

  Hayduke swung the pistol and the barrel smashed into Silas’s face. More blood painted the red earth of the desert. Silas spit a stream of saliva and blood onto the ground. “What was this all about? Were you in love with my wife, is that it? But she wouldn’t have you, so you killed her?”

  “It had nothing to do with that.”

  “Then what?”

  “I know this is the part of the story where the hero gets the villain to confess to his motivations right before he’s rescued and saved from oblivion, but as you can see,” Hayduke gestured with his pistol to the empty landscape all around, “that’s not going to happen.”

  “You said you couldn’t all get together; did you mean about the dam?”

  “It was always about the dam, you stupid fuck. Now, get on your goddamned feet and walk.”

  Silas sat down in the sand, his hand covering the wound on his cheek, blood leaking between his fingers. He leaned over and spit again. He had to brace himself with his hand to keep from passing out.

  Hayduke took another step forward. He was standing over Silas now. Silas looked up at the young man. “I thought you were helping me.”

  “You were wrong. If you won’t walk out to Horse Canyon then we’ll just have to be satisfied with ending the story here.” He pressed the pistol to Silas’s forehead.

  The desert for a hundred miles around Silas was silent. It rang in his ears. Even the wind seemed to have been sucked from the landscape. Where moments before he had heard birdsong at the end of the day, now there was nothing. He felt alone. Everything he loved was gone and he was staring into the oblivion of a madman’s gun.

  “Fuck you, Josh. You were a pathetic Hayduke.”

  “Feels good to get that out?”

  Silas closed his eyes. Hayduke thumbed the hammer on the heavy pistol.

  Even in the perfect silence of the Canyonlands, Silas didn’t hear the shot.

  47

  EARLIER

  ROBBIE’S HANDS WERE BOUND BY duct tape behind his back, which made sitting in the passenger seat of the Jeep both uncomfortable and awkward. The effects of the chloroform had worn off hours before, but his head still ached from where Josh had hit him. They were driving along a rough road—re
ally little more than a trail—out into the heart of the desert. All around them the land was circled by cliffs and in the distance he could see the snow-capped mountains close to his father’s house in the Castle Valley. Hayduke drove in silence.

  They followed the road past a series of pillar-like rocks. At one point Josh stopped the Jeep, got out, and removed a box from the back of the vehicle. Robbie tried to turn his head to watch what he was doing, but he was stiff and he couldn’t see the man from where he was sitting. When Josh got back in the Jeep he was smiling.

  “Why are you doing this?” Robbie asked.

  “I thought that would be pretty obvious to a smart guy like you.”

  “I get it that you’re using me as bait. That much is clear. But why? What did my father ever do to you? I thought you were … friends?”

  “We were never friends. He was using me to find Penelope.”

  “But you killed Penelope. And the others. Did you kill Tabby Dingwall?”

  Josh smiled again. It wasn’t the wolfish grin he had affected as the personification of Hayduke but instead was sly and menacing.

  “Where are we going?”

  “All the way to the end; all the way to the end.”

  “The end of what? The road?”

  “All the way to the end of the story.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You and I are going to be playing the role of Hayduke. You’ll be the scarecrow and I’ll be, well, me.”

  “I haven’t read the book,” Robbie lied. “If you want me to play along you’re going to have to fill me in.”

  “Jesus Christ. At the end of The Monkey Wrench Gang Hayduke tries to get at a food cache the Gang has stashed at Standing Rock, but the National Guard has set up a camp there. He gets spotted and runs all the way out onto the neck of stone that overlooks Horse Canyon. It’s a long fucking way, and I always did wonder what Abbey was thinking when he wrote that … But fuck it; he runs all the way out and hides in a crack in the rock. There’s nowhere else to go. And then the Guard shows up and there’s a big shootout. Hayduke even shoots down a helicopter! But he’s trapped, so he dresses up a shrub in his clothing and uses it as a scarecrow. It gets the hell shot out of it, and falls down into a huge flood in Horse Canyon. That’s going to be you. I get to escape.”