Badwater

15

The radiator drank a pint. We came to an accord. Shut off the air conditioning and roll down the windows.

I turned the Blazer onto the road up the fan toward the rugged front of the Panamint Mountains. The twisted strata were weathered into pinks and purples and winey reds. The fan was a gray gravelly tongue, cracked by dry stream channels. We bumped along, sending up a rooster tail of dust. I checked my rearview mirror — the West Side Road was empty. At the canyon mouth, the fan road dropped into a wash. We paused to grab a sample and then pushed on. As the road roughened into the canyon, the Blazer gave a lurch and I wrestled the wheel and Walter folded his arms and looked out the window.

Out the window, rock formations lined the walls like shelved books. We passed a few million years of history and a couple of branching side canyons, and when we’d plunged still deeper into the geological record and come to the gray and orange banded dolomites of the Bonanza King formation, I stopped the car.

We got out. Wicked hot but the canyon walls threw shade and my bones were no longer rattling. I felt, suddenly, giddy. “Hey pardner,” I said, “you fixin to rustle up a piece of that geology?” Walter chuckled. As he opened the field kit and laid out his tools, he broke into song: “In a cavern, in a canyon, excavating for a mine…” I joined in. “Lived a miner, forty-niner, and his daughter Clementine.”

He knew all the verses. We filled our specimen dishes, exhausting Clementine.

A coyote screamed.

I was casting about for a coyote tune — and the thought was forming that it’s too hot and too early for coyotes — when Walter said, “Someone’s in trouble.”

We went rigid, listening.

It came again, unmistakable this time. Help.

The thought was forming that it’s Roy Jardine up there somewhere — stewing in his vat of radionuclides and hearing us — but the cry was high-pitched and he surely wasn’t looking to be found.

Help, again, urgent.

The sound came from above. Over the rim into the next side canyon? Sound in a canyon is a tricky thing.

“Which way?” Walter said.

“I don’t know. I don’t like it.” I got my cell and dialed Soliano. Roaming. Nothing. In a cavern in a canyon, got no service for my phone. The cry came again. Walter tried his phone, which proved as useless as mine.

Help. A scream.

Walter yelled back, then started downcanyon.

I stopped him. “What are you doing?”

“Let’s try that side canyon.”

“Okay, let’s drive.”

“We can’t drive up that side canyon, Cassie.”

“I don’t like it.”

He said, “What if it’s snakebite?”

Lord. Snakebite. Walter’s only real fear. The canyon floor was sparsely haired with sage. Do sidewinders hole up in sage? I got the first aid pouch from our field kit, grabbed a water bottle, and we started downcanyon.

I recalled two side canyons, one branching off in each direction. We rounded a bend and came to the fork. We yelled, and waited for the cry that could not be pinpointed. Silence, now. Walter plunged into the north canyon. I followed. The canyon was narrow, sage climbing its slopes, and as we gained elevation it steepened and twisted. We yelled, rounding every twist. All I heard in reply was blood pounding in my ears.

Walter stumbled. I caught his arm. “Slow down.”

He didn’t, but it didn’t much matter because within a few minutes the canyon dead-ended in a wall of trilobite-speckled shale. Walter’s face was beet red. Mine felt on fire. I drank then passed the water bottle to him. His hands shook. I thought, there’s things worse than snakebite. There’s the mini-strokes, which have hit Walter twice these past two years, numbing his legs and slurring his speech, making him ask silly questions. He said, now, “Shall we go?” which was not in the least a silly question.

We retraced our route in silence.

In the main canyon, Walter glanced at the south-branching fork.

“We’re going back,” I said, “and turning the car around and when we get onto the fan we’ll try the cell again, and if it doesn’t have service we’ll drive all the way into Furnace Creek and find a ranger.”

“All right.” His voice was dry as sandpaper.

We trudged upcanyon, my worry deepening. Snakes, strokes, surprises.

I thought, there’s hundreds of old mines in Death Valley so what’s the chance the first canyon on our list is the right one? Tiny, minuscule. Point oh five percent.

We rounded the bend and I saw that I was wrong.