Moonlight Water (16 page)

“My job. And you're interfering with it.” Zahnie kicked a little sand on the ground between her legs to cover the fluid that wasn't there.

Attitude. Go, Zahnie
.

“And just what would your job be,” said Roberts, “forty miles from freaking nowhere?”

“When did you get into my chain of command?”

Hernandez twisted a corner of his smile. “You'll have to do better than that.”

Red's mind spun like a clothes dryer, thoughts tumbling. He wondered what story she would come up with.

“We got a report of possible looting in Lukas Gulch, I'm checking it out,” she said.

Whoops, she told the truth.

“We got the same report, Officer, this is our sting, and you locals are getting in the way.” This was Roberts. “Albuquerque office told your boss and the sheriff, all local law, to stay out of this, all the way out.”

“We thought you'd gone back to your air-conditioned offices. Besides, we get reports like this all the time.” Red figured she was whistling “Dixie” now. Her mind was probably more on whether the feds would spot him.

McFay called from the copter, “The head guy at Moonlight BLM, Yazzie Goldman, says she's out of his headquarters and following his orders.” He jumped to the ground, which was surprising. He must have weighed three hundred pounds. He had a pasty face that read
smiley-but-dumb
.

“He lying to cover for you?” said Roberts.

“What's going on, Officer?” said Hernandez. “You trying to get in on the action? Or are you trying to protect some friend or relative from what's coming down?”

“You don't know up from down in this country. Go home,” Zahnie snapped.

Jeez, Zahnie.

Roberts pulled out a handheld GPS and said, “Latitude thirty-seven degrees, fifteen minutes north, longitude one hundred nine degrees, thirty-eight point zero four minutes west.”

“That's what I mean. This country is not a map, and this place is not a GPS number. It's a real spot in a hostile desert, where mean critters live, and city boys die.”

Red's skin crawled.
Easy!

“We think you need to learn to be a team player,” said Roberts.

“We could overlook it, maybe, for a little better look at—”

That was it. Red started to launch himself out of the rocks and realized his foot was caught in the crevice below the chock stone.

“Shut up, Hernandez,” said Roberts. Then Roberts's eyes turned to Zahnie and bored in on her. “Get in the copter.”

Red heard Roberts's tone, saw the effect it had on Hernandez. Some kind of power struggle was going on between those two. Roberts's barked order had the effect of a slap—Hernandez seemed to shrink several sizes.

“What about my vehicle?” said Zahnie.

“Not my problem.”

“What about—?”

“Get in the copter.”

Zahnie hesitated. “No.”

“Cuff her, Hernandez.”

The big Mexican strode two steps and grabbed her elbow.

She jerked away. “Never mind,” she said. “I'll go easy.” She turned her head sideways to glance toward Red. Her eyes said,
I'm sorry!

Roberts smirked, mistaking her expression. “Smart choice.”

Hernandez added,
“Chiquita.”

Zahnie looked at Hernandez like she was queen of the desert, her chin in the air. “Now I understand why generations of Navajos have disliked Mexicans.”

She walked to the helicopter like it was her idea. Clarita in training. With Zahnie's lip and her attitude, she could probably stand the assholes off. Or was that himself, whistling in the dark?

People climbed up, the rotors whirled, and the bird carried Zahnie away.

 

19

STRANDED

Don't pretend to pray or cry. It's asking for someone in your family to die.

—Navajo saying

 

And now what about Red Stuart, previously Robbie Macgregor and Rob Roy—what would he do out in this desert?

He smiled at himself.
I set out to get lost, and this is about as far as lost goes.

He looked at the sky, a perfect azure, innocent of a tuft of cloud or even a speck of dust. “Grandpa,” he whispered, “I don't see any messages written up there.”

As the last hint of sound of the copter faded, Red mulled over the spot he was in. He wouldn't worry about Zahnie, he told himself. She was a cop in the custody of cops, headed to face the questions of more cops—probably just bureaucratic bullshit. Might be smart to keep his mind on his own circumstances. His hands had just stopped shaking. What could he do to send the last of his over-pumped adrenaline out and away?

He said aloud in a mock-musical voice, “Let's find out if the keys to that Bronco are in the ignition.” He pictured driving into town, finding that guy Hernandez, and—

Red clambered down the crack and out into the sunlight. He swallowed hard.
What if?

He tiptoed to the passenger side and stuck his head in the window. No keys in the ignition. Check the floor—no keys. Check under the front seats—no keys. No spare keys in the glove box or above the visor, either. None in any of the four wheel wells in a magnetic box. None under or in back of the bumpers. None on the frame. None, none,
nada
.

He got the gallon plastic bottle off the back floor and swigged some water down. He thought word by word,
I will act cool. Be cool. Sit and eat lunch and enjoy and not worry about being stranded in the middle of the freaking desert with no idea which way is home and no way to get there anyway.

The word
home
stumped him for a minute.
I don't have a home.
He cackled. Then he yelled, “This is my destination, this Epicenter of Nothing at All. This is my heart, the holy chamber of Nothingness. This is my home, vista upon vista of emptiness!”

He heard Zahnie's voice. She was right. He needed to get over himself. He should start with dumping the theatrics so that he could think straight. If he didn't pull it together, he wouldn't be
on
the planet long enough to get over himself.

He took his pack and two sack lunches out of the backseat. A banana in each and a sandwich of braunschweiger, over-heated and slimy. The water bottle.

He didn't feel safe in the Bronco. If the assholes came back, he wanted to have a choice about meeting them.

He decided to go for a new hiding place. He filled a pack, tromped some scrub desert, scrambled up a shaley slope, and sat against a boulder that offered shade and a good angle for his back. He splayed his legs and ate all of what he had.

Then he lifted the gallon bottle and drank deep of the water.
Better mete out the water wisely,
he lectured himself.
You can die in the desert without water.
He thought of the headline:

ROB ROY DIES OF THIRST IN DESERT

Contrast with First Death by Drowning

He splashed water over his head, wiped his eyes, and ran his fingers through his sopping hair. Then he capped the bottle, stepped into the sunlight, and eyeballed the ultra-blue emptiness of sky. He scanned the red emptiness of desert. Well, the thing about emptiness, there ain't nothin' to see, nothing at all.

Vigorously, he launched into his own version of an old song:

“Oh, I got plenty of nada,

And nada's plenty for me.”

“Bleak,” he whispered.

On that note he turned onto his side and propped his head on the pack. He let his mind drift back to last night, a wild night of dreams and fantasies about Zahnie Kee, all unmentionable. Maybe sometime he'd be allowed to touch the real woman again. He then exercised one choice that hadn't abandoned him. He went to sleep.

*   *   *

Through the late afternoon Red dreamt of shadows flitting across his sky, boiling into black clouds. Or were the shadows giant black buzzards that had gobbled up all brightness?

“Ed?” he called in his sleep. “Ed?” But the bird, the one enormous bird, it wasn't Ed. Red could tell.

Lightning flashed and turned into thunder.

Red shuddered and started and sat up, half-awake. He was shivering, in a drizzle.
Holy shit, San Francisco weather in the June desert.

He looked up higher and saw an overhang that sheltered a small ruin. “Hey,” he said out loud to cheer himself up, “Heartbreak Hotel.”

The slope felt a little slick, but a fraction of an inch below the gooey surface the earth was parched. He muscled himself up twenty steps and into the alcove. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness of the overhang. Then he took in the white walls and ancient mud mortar and—
incredible!
—on the wall above there were dozens of figures drawn on the red rock. They danced around the stone corner and into the twilight.

He lay down and dozed off again. The last twenty years had been pretty exhausting.

*   *   *

Later Red woke up restless and wondered,
Where the hell am I?

Oh yeah, the rock figures. They'd been pecked or chipped into the walls. There were animals—goats or mountain sheep, from their horns. Also antelope and one gigantic bird. Oddly, the sheep and antelope looked real, but the bird looked mythic, a creature risen from the eye of the imagination, not the eyes of the head.

Red wondered what he'd been doing in his dream.
Well, goofus, maybe you've been dancing with these old guys.
He missed dancing. His body missed dancing.

Red creaked to his feet and meandered in and out of the four rooms of the little ruin. He snuffled the air and tasted it on his tongue. He watched out of the corners of his eyes, on the chance he might see something. He chuckled at himself.

There was figure after figure here—what seemed to be a waving rope but might have been a snake. Zigzags of mysterious purpose. A sun, with beams radiating out. Two spirals of different sizes. Then there were lots of handprints and a score of human figures. In one group three human stick figures lined up, each with one knee raised, dancing.

Wait, around one corner was the humpbacked trader who played a flute. Miss Clarita's personal angel. Name…? Kokopelli.

Red shook his body like a dancer.
Do they still step to your tune, Old Koko?

The main thing to Red was that Kokopelli was a musician.
When you play it, will I get to hear it? If I stay long enough, if I listen hard enough? If I catch your rhythm, can I sing along with you? Are you playing the music of the spheres?

He looked at the big stone flutist. For now he couldn't hear what Old Koko was playing. Red went close and put his ear on the stone just below the end of the flute.

Oh, spirit trapped in stone—do you want to dance?

That tickled Red.
You do. You want to bust out of the rock and step lively.

Here's an idea. You pipe your tune, I'll back you on the guitar, and you'll be set free for the first time in a thousand years. You'll
boogie.

*   *   *

In the last of the light Red pulled the sweater on and he rolled up in the poncho. Though he thought of using one of the rooms in the ruin, he made his bed outside. Wide awake, he propped his head on his pack and looked around at the desert. A tough environment it was, even hostile, but it was intriguing. Both the desert and Zahnie Kee were intriguing. And forbidding.

Red had no idea where civilization was, no idea where water might be, no idea how to find food. He was on a short leash out here, and suspected there would be no manna dropping from heaven. For whatever reason, he wasn't scared.

Then he heard the growl. He sorted out the textures of sounds, so he knew what it was before he saw it. In a few seconds a purple and white ATV came into shadowy view, cruising up the road in the half dark.

Was the ATV really purple and white?
Twilight could play tricks with colors. Red wondered if it was really Kravin.
And where are you sneaking off to, you stinking bastard?
Red grinned.
I've got your weapon.

The ATV driver stopped at the Bronco, walked around the car, and seemed to check the license plate. Then he opened the front door and rummaged around, then the back door, then the rear hatch. Thief? Or just nosey? Kravin? If Kravin was looting ruins, he'd damn well want to know who else was around. Red would tell Zahnie all about it.

Red looked up into the violet sky and saw it—a buzzard circling right over the Bronco and ATV.
Hi, Ed!

Red chuckled at himself.

Kravin mounted the ATV, started the engine, and buzzed off.

The vulture left its circle and wing-flapped off to the left of the setting sun, the south, probably toward the river.

The ATV turned north off the road into a side canyon where Red could see no road.

Curiouser and curiouser.

 

20

THE RANGER RESCUES TONTO

Don't laugh at old people, or make jokes about them. One day you'll be worse off than they are.

—Navajo saying

 

Honk-Honk!

Red blinked. Light all around him, full sunlight.

Honk-Honk-Honk!

He sat up. The sun was shining directly into this overhang early in the morning.

Honk-Honk-Honk!

He shook his head but didn't get all the cobwebs out.

Honk-Honk!

He looked out toward the road. A white van with the Harmony House logo stood bumper to bumper with the Bronco. A head craned out the window. Zahnie, the lonely ranger rescuing the lonely Tonto.

Red wondered what her mood would be this morning.

Honk!

He tiptoed out into the sunlight and waved at her. She was out of the van now, next to the driver's window, peering around.
Honk-Honk-Honk!
She didn't see him. She was going to wake up the whole country. Good joke.