Fear in a Handful of Dust

12

It wasn’t where he remembered it falling. Something heavy sank through his throat-a hollow sensation of abject fright.

He went down on his knees and searched. “Help me find it-it’s got to be right around here.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Little rectangle of clear plastic. Folded up. Maybe eight inches by four inches.”

“What good would that do us?”

He made no answer; he swiveled desperately on his knees, pawed at the ground, searched the pale silver earth in starlight. So clearly last night he’d seen Duggai’s scheme; he’d kicked the raincoat out of the truck knowing it could make the vital difference-then forgotten it perversely in the tangle of fears.

He groped, widening the furious search. Had Duggai found it, tossed it back into the truck? But Mackenzie had been watching him for just that-hadn’t seen Duggai stoop to pick anything up. Then where had the God damn thing gone?

“This what we’re looking for?”

Jay was thirty feet away. Mackenzie gawked at him, got his feet under him, crossed the slope lifting his feet as if from a white-hot surface. “Wind must have blown it around.”

“I don’t see what good it’ll do-it won’t even keep the sun off anybody.”

Mackenzie unfolded the packet. The plastic smelled musty. He stretched it out. Through it he could see the stars.

“Thank God.”

“Mackenzie, I swear to God I’m going to-”

“Come on.” He moved away muttering: “Duggai’s watching us of course. We’ve got to pick a spot he can’t see. If he knew what we were up to he’d come down here one fine noon and cut it to ribbons. We need a hollow-maybe some brush to screen it from him.”

Jay stopped behind him. “You’re going around the bend, Mackenzie. You’re babbling. Incipient paranoia.”

“Come on, damn you-over here, this’ll do.”

It was a dry ravine with irregular V sides not more than three feet deep at the center but it made an S-bend here and clumps of catclaw stood on either bank. You couldn’t see the bottom if you weren’t standing directly above it.

Jay approached with wary stealth. Mackenzie climbed down into the ravine. “Give me a hand. We’ve got to dig.”

“Again?” But Jay came painfully down the sloping bank and waited for instruction.

They scooped a bowl in the bottom of the ravine. Mackenzie used the unfolded raincoat as a pattern: they made the bowl a few inches smaller in diameter than the plastic.

The bowl sloped down to a bottom about two feet deep where Mackenzie carefully built up a large cup of earth, molding it like a piece of pottery. He cut half a sleeve off the raincoat, slit it open and used it for a liner in the cup. It had a capacity of perhaps three quarts-more than enough. The plastic liner ought to prevent anything from seeping into the ground.

The cool subsoil was slightly damp to the touch. That would be enough moisture to start the action; later it would have to be fed with earth and succulents.

Jay followed his instructions as if mesmerized. His initiative was pretty much gone. He didn’t ask questions and Mackenzie perversely volunteered nothing, withholding knowledge because mystery cemented his power. There was still the possibility of mutiny-Jay’s tractability of the moment might not last.

Mackenzie laid the raincoat carefully across the top of the open bowl of earth. He made gestures and Jay imitated his actions: they anchored it down all the way around with heaped earth and stones until the thin plastic was stretched like a drumhead across the top of the hole in the ground. Then Mackenzie placed a small stone in the center of the plastic to make it sag, the stone hanging directly above the plastic-lined cup beneath.

He knew it would work in theory.

But I’ll believe it when I see it.

The spines of the Senita scraped off easily with the knife-like rows of kernels slicing off a corncob. They sucked thin watery sap out of the cactus pulp until their throats no longer constricted in spasms. Mackenzie cut up the rest of it in chunks and dropped them into the hole under the taut plastic.

Jay was dubious. “It’s bone dry in there, Mackenzie.”

“Wait for the sun.”

Mackenzie tested the knife blade with his thumb. When the three of them went back across the hill toward Earle they hobbled like cripples. His feet felt twice their normal size. He limped painfully back into the bushes, impelled by rumbling volcanic pressures inside him. The beginnings of dysenteric diarrhea-unavoidable but frightening: if it got bad enough it would sap every vestige of strength. It ran through him painfully; he cleaned up as best he could with greasewood fronds; then he made his way as far as Earle’s bush and sat down, taking his weight on one palm to lower himself and sitting awkwardly on the side of one buttock to twist the soles of his tortured feet toward the air.

Shirley said, “Not to be gruesome, Sam, but how long has it been since you had a tetanus shot?”

“We get one every spring. Forest Service manual.”

“Then that’s all right. The rest of us could be in a bad way if you went lockjaw on us.”

Jay said, “A bad way compared to what?”

A sheaf of Shirley’s cutoff hair-the strands they hadn’t used up on Earle’s splints-lay weighted with a rock. Mackenzie considered it and leaned back on his elbow and propped his cheek against his palm. An ant climbed his arm and he flicked it away.

“Earle’s probably going to have chills tonight. We’ll need wood and dry tinder. Shave off some parings of that man-zanita bark. Bust up ocotillo and catclaw-it should make good kindling. Any of this brush around here will burn.”

Jay cackled. “What do we start it with? Rub two Boy Scouts together?”

Now just use your head before you go charging off in all directions.

You’re not going to catch anything in your bare hands. Not even a lizard-they move like hell.

Now think.

He listened to Shirley and Jay snapping off branches-the sounds seemed curiously far away. Earle’s breathing was deep and slow: the exhausted sleep of invalid weakness.

Mackenzie salivated over memories of desert cookfires on the Window Rock Reservation-his father roasting coatimundi on a spit.

The thing to keep in mind before panic set in was that the desert teemed with an astonishing amount of life. In the past twenty-four hours he had seen only a few buzzards, a cactus wren, some other high-flying birds and one lizard; but desert animals were mainly nocturnal. This far from water the available species would be limited to those whose metabolism made it unnecessary for them to drink-they absorbed moisture from the vegetation they ate-but that still left room for peccaries, owls, mice, kangaroo and pack rats, jackrabbits, kit foxes and probably scores more. Of one species he was certain: he’d seen the run several times as he’d made his way back and forth along the slope. It was a well-worn jackrabbit trail and he’d known it all the time but the knowledge hadn’t registered until now. Forty years was a long time; it was damn near impossible to resurrect specific memories that old. But he had to milk the memory cells of every drop now.

In the cool night breeze it was possible to think calmly and without urgency. Mackenzie had to do his best thinking right now because if he went much longer without food the brain would begin to starve for nourishment and the ability to reason and recall would be the first to deteriorate. Right now the initial adrenaline alarms had worn off, the stultifying furnace heat had dissipated, panic had receded: the organism was functioning as well as it was ever going to function. He had the next few hours and no more because after that protein starvation would make its effect and everything would begin to disintegrate unless they made fast improvements in their physical situation.

He heard a coyote’s yapping, so far away it was barely audible. Sound carried here; that coyote might be five miles away or more. But it was vaguely encouraging: a coyote wouldn’t stray too terribly far from some source of water. Sooner or later they were going to have to move out of this spot; the move must be toward higher ground; somewhere up there, the coyote told him, there was water. A natural water source would mean big game.

He turned his head slowly and waited for the coyote to speak again. When it yipped he turned his head quickly. The coyote’s announcements broke off and the desert went silent again; but Mackenzie had time to narrow it to the northeastward quadrant.

When we go that’s the way we’ll go.

First they had to have shoes. They wouldn’t be able to make more than a few miles each night because they’d have to carry Earle or drag him on a litter and they’d have to stop early enough to dig pits for themselves and dig a new hole under the plastic raincoat.

But it would be better than staying here.

Lying on his side, he let his mind range loosely; it was the best way to recover information from the subconscious.

He put himself back inside his child’s skin, sat himself down beside his father’s campfire. In their hunting days they’d gone out sometimes by pickup and sometimes horseback; they’d explored hundreds of miles of reservation desert. His father had been a silversmith; the ostensible purpose for their expeditions had been prospecting for turquoise and agate and obsidian and the petrified wood that tourists paid dearly for; but it had been excuse more than purpose.

“Mackenzie” had been the missionary’s name. When the silversmith married the missionary’s daughter he took her surname. He was a full Navajo born and raised at Chinle in Canon de Chelly in the heart of the reservation; his tribal name was Tsosi Simalie but it was common for the Navajo to take a second name that would go easier on white men’s palates. When Mackenzie was born his grandfather baptized him Samuel Simalie Mackenzie and his father Tsosi gave him the name Kewanwyti, which had no particular translated meaning in English. His father called him by that name only when they were alone together.

His father felt that Sam’s white blood entitled him to the fruits of Anglo civilization; Mackenzie silver was the best Navajo jewelry of the 1930s and even in the Depression there was money to give the boy the best possible education. Sam saw his father only during the summer holidays-the rest of the time he was a white boy-and now his memory picked its way through the sparse weeks when they’d crossed the desert together and his father had tried to reinforce that other half of Sam’s heritage.

The legends of White Painted Woman and Coyote. The campfire stories of Navajo history-the wars with the rival Apaches and Hopi; the Kit Carson debacle at Canon de Chelly that had forever destroyed the tribe’s ability to make war; the Long March across New Mexico that had decimated the Navajo nation; the hunters and warriors and shamans and leaders who were the heroes of Navajo mythology.

His father showed him how to track bobcat, how to stalk the desert bighorn, how to keep downwind and move slowly so as to blend into the country. One year they ran a trapline along a stream but it snared only one old beaver. His father tried to teach him the ways of the Old People and the pleasures of the wilderness.

The silversmith was a contemplative man with a lyrical sense of awe. He would tell ancient stories about mesa formations and rock spires; he would speak poems about crows and snakes and mountains. He had a magic way of evoking in the small boy’s mind a long-vanished world of fantasy. He taught the boy the happiness of solitude, the astonishing fascinations to be found in a handful of desert sand or a single pitted crag. When he spoke to the boy he became luminous and reverent and filled with sly humor.

Now he remembered those lazy campfires, the talk late into the night, the glowing eyes of creatures that sat outside the circle of light and stared into the fire.…

The discovery pleased him; reverie was paying off Fire was the answer.