Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness

Husk nodded eagerly and stared so hard his eyes watered, trying to see through the lifeless rock the buried slowly disintegrating hoard. Then Mr. Graham pulled up sharply to clear a bulging escarpment. Husk felt his stomach sink into his bowels. He saw the horizon rise in a queer way far up on his right and to the left where the earth had been a moment before was only blue sky, empty space, a bottomless gulf.

  That evening they made the deal. For a consideration of $2250 (half the amount of the cashier’s check) Husk gained a forty per cent interest in Hotrock Mountain Mineral Development Company, as they decided to call their joint enterprise. An agreement four pages long was drawn up by Mr. Graham’s secretary, signed by both parties, notarized by the secretary and witnessed formally by the grimy hand of a man in oily green coveralls who crawled out from beneath Mr. Graham’s aircraft when needed. With his carbon copy of the contract in hand Husk went home to give the good news to his wife.

  Early the next day Husk went to work. Mr. Graham provided him with a Geiger counter and probe, a geologist’s hammer, standard uranium ore samples, a canvas ore sack, and extra cans for water and gasoline.

  At first Husk had wanted to take his wife and kids along to the San Rafael but Mr. Graham talked him out of it, pointing out that the family would be much more comfortable in its present camp near the amenities and conveniences of Moab. He said that he would look after them in Husk’s absence and furnish them transportation into town when needed. (The claims lay far away beyond the rivers, more than a hundred miles by road, including some fifty miles of jeep trail and the last ten miles where there was no road or trail at all.) So Husk loaded his pickup with tools, bedrolls and enough food for two weeks, said goodby to his wife and little girls and drove off, taking only the boy along.

  Late that afternoon during the hottest part of the day Mr. Graham left his office and strolled down the street to the Club 66. After a couple of beers he got in his car and went for a drive. Five miles north of town he stopped his car under the shade of the big Cottonwood at the outlet of Courthouse Wash. The sheepherder’s trailer stood with its screen door sagging open. Flies drifted in and out and a white butterfly with wilted wings rested on the dust of the doorstep. There seemed to be nobody home. Mr. Graham knocked on the trailer wall. Nobody answered but he thought he heard the sound of laughing children in the distance. He walked slowly up the canyon through the stifling heat, keeping to the shady side. At the first turn he halted. Through a screen of willows he looked at the two little girls splashing in the water, and at Mrs. Husk, half undressed, sitting at the edge of the pool. Her long straight yellow hair, wet now, hung before her eyes; indolently, with languid grace, she was combing it. Mr. Graham watched for a few moments then backed off quietly, returned to the trailer and waited there.

  All summer long Husk and his son toiled over the rocks above the trickling stream of the San Rafael. They struggled up the debris of talus slopes, clambered along ledges, pulled themselves up the boulder-choked defiles of side canyons. At every gray outcrop of Morrison and Shinarump, the uranium-bearing formations, they probed with the counter foot by foot, now and then getting a static of excitement from the instrument, and they hammered and picked at the rock and loaded their sack with specimens. During the middle of the day they rested in whatever shade they could find—under an overhang or juniper, sometimes under the truck itself—and in the evenings went painfully down to the stream to wash up a little and lug cans of water back up the trail. Much of the time they spent making a road for the truck, hacking through juniper stands, filling in washouts or blasting a hole down through rimrock in order to reach a slope. At night they camped wherever they happened to be, cooking their supper over an open fire and sleeping in the bed of the truck for fear of scorpions and rattlesnakes. And rose before dawn to resume the hunt, covering as much ground as they could before the glare and withering heat of midday.

  About every two weeks Husk and Billy-Joe returned to Moab for fresh supplies and for repairs, parts and sometimes new tires for the truck. Each time Husk showed Mr. Graham the samples he had collected. All of them proved to contain a little uranium or thorium but none, according to the report of Mr. Graham’s assayist, were rich enough to be of commercial value. Mr. Graham did his best to encourage Husk, bought him drinks at the Club 66 and staked him to new batteries for the Geiger counter. Husk said that what he really needed was a new truck. Mr. Graham laughed, patted him on the back, and reminded him that he’d soon be riding around in Cadillacs.

  Preoccupied—almost obsessed—with his work, Husk was only dimly aware of the change in his wife’s response to him. With each visit to the home camp she seemed a little more irritable, more disinclined to intimacy, somehow more distant. She submitted to his love-making with indifference, sometimes with reluctance. Husk was faintly troubled; but grateful on the other hand that she seemed so unconcerned by the rapid reduction of their savings and the so-far worthless results of his prospecting. Therefore he did not attempt to question her but returned to his search with anxious eagerness despite the heaviness in his heart.

  One afternoon during the last week in August Mr. Graham sat in his office checking the action of the small pistol which he kept in his desk. He was alone. He loaded a clip and slipped it into the pistol, drew the slide back and pushed it forward, placing a round in the firing chamber. Carefully he let the hammer down and put the pistol into the pocket of a light jacket which he sometimes wore. Taking the jacket he went to his helicopter, filled the fuel tanks, climbed into the pilot’s seat in the center of the cockpit and started the engine.

  Husk and Billy-Joe were cooking their supper over a fire of juniper sticks when they heard the thrashing racket of noise come over the edge of the mesa. The sun was down, the new half-moon hung nearly overhead. In the blend of sunset and twilight they saw the flickering lights before they saw the machine itself coming like a bright metallic dragonfly out of the east and circling once, twice above them before landing. The gusts of wind blew sand and twigs into their fire, into the open pan of corned beef and beans. Billy-Joe’s new straw cowboy hat took off from his head, whirled toward the brink of the mesa and sailed off into space. In silence they watched the tall figure of Mr. Graham emerge from the helicopter’s plastic bubble, stoop under the slow-turning blades of the prop and walk toward them.

  Billy-Joe did not clearly understand everything that followed during the hour or more of conversation around the campfire. He knew that his father was unhappy even angry with Mr. Graham and the tone of the argument did not soften when Mr. Graham unzipped the left-hand pocket of his jacket and produced a half-pint of whisky which he passed to Billy-Joe’s father. Husk accepted the bottle and drank but soon afterwards was saying things which made Mr. Graham sit very still, very quiet, with a look on his face which frightened the boy. And after a pause Billy-Joe heard Mr. Graham say a thing about his new mother—his father’s new wife—that was strange and ugly.

  His father stood up suddenly and roared. He stepped straight through the flames of the fire toward Mr. Graham. And Mr. Graham already standing, backing away, pulled the dark gleaming thing from his other jacket pocket, cocked it, thrust it forward. There was a flash of light and a small explosion. Billy-Joe saw his father stop, grab at his stomach, and lunge again at Mr. Graham. Who fired again. His father doubled forward, head close to his knees, and sank to the ground. Mr. Graham shot him a third time, in the back. His father, gasping and clutching at his belly, rolled slowly over onto one side.

  Billy-Joe stood up wanting to speak. Mr. Graham shielded his eyes from the glow of the campfire and looked for him with the gun. Where are you, Billy? he said.

  The boy could not say a word. But his body, his legs, reacted for him. He stumbled backward, turned, ran. Ran madly into the gloom. He heard the gun go off but felt nothing. He kept running and heard the heavy feet of Mr. Graham coming after him. He plunged through brush, through a tree’s branches and over the edge of a ravine. He felt himself falling, falling, then a stunning blow as he
crashed into sand and went sliding and tumbling all the way down to the bottom of a great dune, all the way to the ravine floor. He tried to move and a sickening jet of pain coursed through his shoulder. He lay still on his back in the shadows, looking up at the scarp over which he had fallen. There was Mr. Graham silhouetted against the sky, walking back and forth, hunting for a way down. A few pale stars shone through the moonlight. The boy and the desert and the night waited in perfect silence for whatever might happen next.

  Breathing hard, for he was really somewhat out of shape, Mr. Graham went back to Husk’s camp to get a flashlight. There he discovered that his partner was still alive, crawling inch by inch away from the now fading campfire toward the jeep truck. Mr. Graham paused, stepped carefully around Husk and went to the truck, which was parked with chocked wheels on a slope above the rim of the mesa. Beyond that rim the world dropped away at an angle of ninety degrees, down sheer for eight hundred feet or more to a talus of broken slabs in the bottom of a side canyon of the San Rafael canyon. Mr. Graham found a flashlight in the truck, also Husk’s rifle. He sat down on the runningboard to rest, to regain his wind, and watched Husk crawling slowly toward him.

  When Husk was nearly close enough to reach the toes of his boots Mr. Graham shot him again, this time in the head and with the rifle. He dragged the body into the cab of the truck and slammed shut the doors. He thought for a while, then opened a five-gallon jerry can and poured gasoline over Husk’s body and all over the interior of the cab. He found a second gasoline can, unscrewed the lid and set it in the right-hand corner of the cab, on the floor. Mr. Graham was sweating badly, his hands shaking, his chest painfully constricted. He was about to light a cigarette but thought better of it. He sat down near the truck to rest for a while.

  Thinking carefully, Mr. Graham decided to ease the truck down close to the edge of the mesa, stop it there and toss a match in on his partner before pushing the whole works over. The truck was parked parallel to the rim, not facing it, so Mr. Graham after removing the rocks from in front of the wheels climbed into the driver’s seat, pushing Husk’s legs out of the way, and automatically, out of habit, turned on the switch. He had almost stepped on the starter before he realized the danger. Without starting the motor he disengaged the clutch, took the truck out of gear and turned the wheels downhill. There was an awful lot of loose play in the steering. As the truck began to roll Mr. Graham’s right foot groped for the brake pedal, found it and pushed it down to the floorboard without meeting the slightest hint of resistance. In sudden alarm he grabbed for the parking brake and found the handle missing. There was nothing there. All at once Mr. Graham knew that more than anything else in the world he wanted to get out of that truck.

  As the end of everything swept toward him he struggled with the battered door, got it open and tried to roll out. But as he tumbled from the fast-moving truck the inside door handle, projecting forward, slipped into the open pocket of his jacket. Mr. Graham’s feet touched solid ground only briefly before he was jerked like a hooked fish over the verge of the abyss. Lightly attached to one another, weightless and free, the truck with its open door and Mr. Graham went off all together into space. He saw the horizon swing in a queer way far up on his right, and to the left, where the earth had been a moment before, was only the sky, a few stars, the tranquil moon floating far below.

  The rising sun discovered the boy still alive, stirring feebly in the sand. After some time, moaning softly, he got up on his knees. One eye was swollen shut. His left arm hung limply from a dislocated shoulder. When he tried to lift the arm a wave of pain surged through his body. Nausea rose from his bowels. He waited and when the pain and sickness subsided he hugged the injured limb to his chest with his good arm and got slowly to his feet.

  The pain came again, ebbed and returned. His shirt hung in tatters from his shoulder. With a shred of it he made several turns around his left forearm and slung it from his neck. Slowly, tentatively, he started down the bed of the ravine, downhill. Going through a willow thicket the rags of his shirt caught on the branches. He freed himself by stripping off what was left of the shirt. And trudged on.

  Not once did he look back or upward.

  At noon he found water. Beneath the shade of boulders jammed in the middle of the streambed lay a basin of quicksand with a pool at its center. The heart-shaped prints of deer led in and out. Billy-Joe waded through the mud, went down on his belly, cleared the slime from the surface of the water and drank. Through most of the afternoon he lay there. When the sun had moved beyond the canyon wall he crawled out of the sucking sand and went on.

  Now he was hungry. He found a bush with red berries like currants and ate them. In a dank and shady place he found a cluster of plants with large white trumpetlike flowers the color of moonlight. The flowers were fragrant, tender, inviting; he ate them. He walked on, following the downward course of the dry streambed. When he began to feel a little dizzy he sat down again to rest.

  Although it was still day the new moon could be seen in the slot between the canyon walls, drifting among clouds. Staring at the moon the boy saw it surrounded with hazy rings, rust-colored. The dark vibrations in the sky hurt his eyes. He looked down at the sand between his legs.

  The dry sand, scattered with pebbles, seemed alive. The surface of the ground was palpitating softly, steadily, as if breathing. And each pebble, formerly so dull and sun-bleached, now shone like a jewel. He had never seen anything before so beautiful. He passed his free hand before his eyes and saw the bones glowing through his translucent flesh. He stared and stared and then something off in the corner of his field of vision caught his attention.

  There was a bush. A bush growing out of the hard sun-baked mud. And the bush was alive, each of its many branches writhing in a sort of dance and all clothed in a luminous aura of smoky green, fiery blue, flame-like yellow. As he watched the bush became larger, more active, brighter and brighter. Suddenly it exploded into fire.

  Whimpering, Billy-Joe pressed his hand to his eyes and felt the joints of his bones grate together like glass. He held himself rigid against the convulsions that swelled with a droning murmur through his body. They grew more powerful, overwhelmed him, possessed him. Yielding, the agony passed out of him and beyond and all became quiet again, marvelously still.

  He lowered his hand, opened his eyes. The bush was in place as before, writhing and glowing but not in fire. The walls of the canyon towered over him, leaning in toward him then moving back, in and then back, but without sound. They were radiant, like heated iron. The moon had passed out of sight. He saw the stars caught in a dense sky like moths in a cobweb, alive, quivering, struggling to escape. He understood their fear, their desperation, and wept in sympathy with their helplessness.

  He watched and a meteor passed beneath the web, gliding more slowly than a ship across what seemed an infinite sea of vibrant, curling waves. In the wake of the meteor streamers of flame expanded with languorous, unhurried ease, fading out as they grew larger but leaving the sky in some way transmuted, stained by their burning passage.

  The boy looked down at the bush, at the pebbles on the sand, at his hand. When he looked up again the meteor had crossed about two-thirds of the interval between canyon walls and was still advancing. Before it passed over the farther wall he fell asleep. And when he awoke late the next morning he remembered all that he had seen but no longer as anything strange. For everything appeared to him as equally strange.

  The still-smoking wreckage of a truck which he passed in the middle of the day, with ravens picking at fragments of burnt meat crammed inside the crumpled blackened steel—this did not seem to Billy-Joe in any way extraordinary. Farther down the canyon he stepped over parts of a human body—an arm encased in the sleeve of a jacket, the shoulder gnawed down to the bone—and a head, the head of a man, separated from its trunk by a blow of some incredible violence. He looked at these things and he saw them but did not pause. He shuffled past them without glancing back, neither slowing nor i
ncreasing his pace.

  The ravens watched him go, croaking with satisfaction, and swept down again upon the remnants. They approached their meat in a stylized, formal fashion with little dancing steps and covered it under widespread, glossy, blue-black wings.

  In the afternoon he came into a larger canyon, through which flowed a small stream. The place should have been familiar to the boy—the warm, unpleasant-smelling water, the mudbanks encrusted with alkali white as salt, the tamarisk and pickleweed—but he did not recognize it. He drank the water and bathed his eye. The swelling was beginning to go down and he could open the lids enough to see through. He followed the water.

  All through the day clouds gathered in the sky, wind whistled above the walls, and by evening he could hear from far away the mutter of thunder. At night whenever he awoke for a few moments he saw flashes of lightning reflected in the sky. But no rain fell where he was. His hunger made him sick with misery, worse than the pain of his arm and shoulder to which he was now accustomed, or the fiery discomfort of his sunburned back.

  When morning came he got up and tried to go on but could not walk very far. He crawled into the shade of a giant cottonwood tree, long dead, that lay across the streambed with its roots exposed and its bare limbs pointing up the canyon. The cool damp sand felt good to the boy, with the water trickling over his feet and ankles. He was not going to walk any more. He would wait now for whatever had to happen. He was tired. And everything was strange.

  He might not even have heard the coming of the flash flood. It began as a dim toneless resonance in the distance, like the sound made by a train entering the far end of a very long tunnel. Gradually the vibrations grew in volume until the canyon filled with a dull and heavy roar. But the flood itself did not yet appear. Half-conscious, Billy-Joe dreamed of home.

  One two three four small gray birds fluttered out of the willows beside the stream and flew in circles to a perch high on the canyon wall.