Dastardly

I wake gradually and every part of me is hurting like hell. I wake, and close my eyes again.

  Where am I? What the hell just happened? It takes me a moment to remember where I am.

  Oliver. And I remember driving and sleeping and the next day climbing a trail in the wilderness with Oliver.

  The current situation I’m in also dawned on me gradually. I have fallen. I am somewhere out in the middle of nowhere. No one knew I’ve gone anywhere and no one knew where I am. Oliver fell before I fell. I went down when the ledge collapsed.

  What about Marsha? She’s gonna worry about me, isn’t she? Sure, she’s gonna worry herself sick over me. Or had I left things in a bad way with her? Oh, I wish I hadn’t left things in a bad way, if I had. Where is her writing buddy? What happened to her amigo? That’s what she should be wondering right now. Would she be wondering it?

  Horror. I am a damn horror writer. And here’s some real life horror and I can’t stand any of it.

  The teeth issue. That had changed stuff. She won’t worry about me now because she has too many other worries. And I’d wanted to repay her. Now I’ve fallen off a cliff in the middle of nowhere.

  Here I am. Awake suddenly and finding myself. In a predicament. At the bottom of a cliff. Guess I’m lost, dying, perhaps. With a nitwit.

  I turn my head carefully. Well, my spine isn’t broken, I guess. That might be a good test of whether my spine is broken. I let my eyes focus and look around. Good thing a mountain lion hasn’t found me.

  What’s over there? Almost able to pick it out. Something draped over rocks. Old bag of clothes. Oliver took off his clothes? Stink old guy he was apt to do—

  Picking out something else. Picking out feet in shoes. How would the shoes be there if there weren’t feet? So there are feet. So that’s Oliver.

  Not able to pick much out.

  Oliver?

  “Oliver!”

  He’s lying not far from where he’d fallen. An almost dead nitwit as a companion. Staring off into space with his dumb hobo face, full of liquor and nonsense.

  But maybe he’s not dead yet.

  Gotta get seated. My leg! There’s a fucking big gash on my leg.

  It takes me so much time to get up. How much time do I have? Without water and injured, how much time can I take? I hobble near Oliver.

  “Hold on!” I say for some stupid reason.

  “You—”

  His eyes close and he shudders. His last shudder.

  I’d let myself fall for the old man’s nonsense. Now was the old coot happy in his death? How old was he anyway? Eighty? Ninety? How old would he have to be in order to have a real Jake leg? Old enough to have lived through Prohibition and been old enough to drink, but he might have drank rot gut in the south after Prohibition. Maybe Oliver never claimed he had a Jake leg. I couldn’t remember anything anymore. Or maybe he was lying about that, too. Anything was possible. Poor old fool.

  The sun set. My first day. Gather all my strength to leave the dead man and find a stick. That’s it. Hobble about with the stick and put a few rocks on top of him. There’s a good one. Can only use one arm, but I can drag this rock over.

  Probably put one on his chest. And another for his neck and one for his face. Would keep his head on his body when the coyotes found him, which wouldn’t be long now.

  “You—”

  Oh God! He’s not dead! Leave the fucking rocks! Stop gathering the fucking rocks and get back to him.

  “Hold on. Hold on old timer! I’m sorry.”

  I use my good arm to knock some little rocks that fell on his chest and his neck. I haven’t put any on him yet. Thank goodness.

  “Youuuuuu...” he says.

  “Hold on there. Hold on. I’ll get some help for us. I haven’t got a cell phone signal, but maybe I can hike to a spot with a signal. I’ll get us some help.”

  He looked at me for an instant. His eyes close again. I vow I will sit with him until… Sit with him.

  He’s gonna say something. Maybe his last words.

  “Life’s not all molasses and white biscuits,” he whispers.

  “Sure, sure, old timer. It isn’t.”

  Eyes stare off at the clouds and get a funny empty look.

  Dead now. Truly dead.

  But isn’t it terrible if the animals find him? I’m not thinking straight. Want the corpse to be protected. Don’t want it pulled apart. But I gotta save my strength. Maybe his sister would tell police he was missing. Well, it would be a long time before anyone finds us. But what about those hikers? With cell phones. If they came back around this way? What if they saw everything? What if they saw us on the ledge and saw us fall…

  Did they see us? Did they?

  No, there was no sign of them. The canyon is silent.

  A trail could be there. The two men we saw could be sitting in their car looking at me with binoculars. They could have witnessed the whole thing and be driving to the sheriff right now. Where is the dust? Freeze in your tracks, I think.

  Still, still. Be still and see if there is any movement in the mountains over there.

  But there’s nothing.

  Why be worried about the old man now? Animals find the corpse and they will find me, too. Get a move on. Go on.

  Happy, oh yes. Such a strange smile on the old man’s face. Triumph of getting another person deep into Fuckville, U.S.A. Or maybe he enjoyed the whole thrill of the search for something he knew wasn’t real. He’d gotten them out there and broken his neck and broken my arm. It’s broken, for certain. Oh, the fucking agony is starting to hit me. And the cut in my leg. But I have to walk out.

  Use a stick as a crutch. That was what I thought of before and it’s clever of me to think of that, too. A stick will work as a crutch and the pain won’t be so bad. So all I have to do is find a solid stick near a tree.

  Look around. Look for something that will suit my purpose. The world’s my oyster. I can see a tree with some dropped branches a little ways into that canyon.

  That way. That’s where I should head.

  Damn smart of me to think of a crutch. The heat and the injuries aren’t getting to me so much yet. My brain is still functioning well.

  There’s a good branch.

  Stretch down. Ouch. Grab the branch.

  A funny little thing. What’s that? Running up my arm?

  Shit!

  Feel a stabbing pain. Near my damn elbow. No, over there.

  “Fuck!” I shout. “Fuck the fucking fuck! A fucking scorpion!”

  Of all the damn stupid things to have happen to me. God, it hurts like hell, but at least I know a scorpion bite won’t kill. I learned that when I was researching my fucking stories. I read it wouldn’t kill unless… I’ve lost a lot of blood or been injured badly or went days without being found. All of that doesn’t seem so fucking unlikely now. Not remote anymore. I might have broken my arm and there isn’t any water for me until I get back to the car. Hey, but those hiker guys saw us and they might come through, well, maybe, they would come back.

  Sure, they would. And they would see me. And they would offer to take me to the hospital.

  Why sure, that was what was going to happen. A happy ending after all.

  Sure as shit. It stood to reason they will come back this way. One way in and one way out. Even if they plan to camp overnight they’ll be out in a day. Winter isn’t over; it still a little severe. So if I can sit still and stay warm the two of them will come along—

  How to explain the fact there was only one of them now. Fess up to the fall? That’s it. But how will I explain what we’d been doing there? Tell them everything? Tell them they were searching for gold. Why not? Made no difference now. Now I know the whole thing is a stupid fantasy to make a poor man kill himself.

  The rocks on his head. Why didn’t I put rocks on his face? Now the coyotes might get him. I’ve already told myself all about that. Why am I interrogating myself? Can’t stand the thought of my good friend being gobbled by the coyotes. Messy scene and all t
hat. Know what the coyotes do to a corpse. Dragging the head around like a goddamn soccer ball.

  But if I am such a good friend of Oliver’s why is he dressed like a hobo? Simple. I’m not a snob. I am always friendly with old men who live under underpasses and in abandoned cars. You have to be when you worked at the rodeo grounds. People at work, Chet, would say hobos often visited the museum. Had anyone heard our plans? Well, I can tell them about the gold pot. That won’t matter. I was humoring the old fool and things turned out badly. I couldn’t stop him from running up a vertical slope and the old fool fell.

  Why did I listen to such a fool? And that fall. Oh, it was hard to watch the fucking old fool fall. He fell with a thud. Nothing seems funny to me now.

  Except a funny feeling. Funny heat. Thank goodness it’s February, not the worst month in Arizona for broiling to death in these mountains, though the sun feels fucking hot on my back in this black shirt, thank you for nothing. Could have been worse. Could have been summer. Sure, summer would have been deadly, much deadlier, much quicker, too.

  No one knows I took the old man out and no one will miss us. Why didn’t I tell Marsha where I was going and what I was doing? I can’t remember why I didn’t. She would have wished me well. She would have known where I was going, if I had told her. She would have talked me out of it, though. She’s too sensible to fall for a buncha crap from an old drunk. Only I can’t believe now that I was stupid enough to believe in the tales of gold filled Dutch ovens tucked in between rocks. Marsha wouldn’t have believed in it. When I didn’t come back, she would have filled out a missing person report with the police and told them I went to a ledge below Kneeling Nun Rock.

  Am I sure I didn’t tell her?

  Sure, I’m sure. I’m a fucking smart-ass and I thought I was too smart to tell anyone what I was doing, not Rodney or Pablo or Marsha.

  But won’t she miss me? Wouldn’t she search for me?

  Nah, could take weeks for her to even notice. She’s wrapped up in Bailey’s teeth problem and writing her latest romance novel. Hey, she never even called me that time I went to Rocky Point with that hot chick I met. Never thought of that before. Never noticed how disloyal she was until now. She didn’t even look for me. She won’t now either. I had left for two weeks that time and she hadn’t even been concerned when I mentioned it to her.

  And the rodeo museum. What about the other ticket takers and the committee? They’ll wonder where I’ve gone. They’ll call. And maybe good old Rodney! Hope he isn’t using this time to get closer to Marsha.

  But they won’t contact the police, not right away. Not even soon. Someone will fill in for his shifts at the museum and Rodney and Marsha will assume I’m with a girl…

  If anyone found the body, well, it was at the base of a cliff. A cliff far back from a place far away.

  Buzzards! Why hadn’t I thought of that before? Maybe it was good I kept those rocks off him. Let the buzzards find him. That was the answer. But wait, they weren’t usually around until a little later in the year…