CHAPTER THREE
"Clarity"
Curt couldn't believe his eyes. How did she get there? They were miles from nowhere in a desolate wilderness yet there she stood by the side of the road as if waiting for a bus. He looked at Ronnie.
"I see her," Ronnie said, quickly closing the ashtray to hide the joint. As if an old woman standing in the desert had any interest. He felt anxious, foolish and absurd all at once. He laughed at himself.
"Maybe she's lost," Curt said.
"How did she get out here?" No car. No bike. No horse. She stood next to the road with her wizened face turned expectantly toward them.
"Maybe we should ignore her," Curt said.
"No, man. We can't just leave her standing there. She might need help."
"We are not heading back into town," Curt said with finality.
"No, man. Let's just ask her if she's all right. She looks like she's waiting for us."
Curt stopped the microbus by the side of the road. The pale cloud of dust they'd been trailing slowly overwhelmed them pouring in through the windows and covering them with grit. The old woman stood on the right, or south side of the road. She was about five two, wore a shapeless potato sack dress and her head was covered in a beaded shawl. Ronnie didn't see how she could stand it.
Up close it was obvious she was Native American from her coppery skin and bulbous nose. She could have been anywhere from fifty to a hundred.
"Are you all right, ma'am?" Ronnie said through the open window.
She came close and peered in through the window, standing on her toes to glance in the back. She had mis-matched eyes; one brown, one silver. Like a Malamute.
"Have you seen my son?" she said.
Ronnie and Curt exchanged a glance.
"No ma'am," Ronnie said. "You're the first person we've seen since leaving Last Chance this morning. How did you get out here? Did you come with your son?"
"I warned him. I warned him about that woman."
"How did you get out here, ma'am? Did somebody drop you off?"
"He is very tall. His father was a shaman too."
The old woman was obviously touched.
"Give her one of the canteens," Curt said. "We've got plenty."
Ronnie leaned back and snagged one of the sweating canteens, covered in canvas. He held it out through the window. "Here take this. Are you sure you're all right?"
The old woman took the canteen and looped it over her shoulder. She shrugged, turned and walked into the blazing heat.
The boys stared.
"Maybe we should go after her," Ronnie said.
"And do what? Forcibly restrain her? I don't think that's a good idea. Listen. If she's still here when we come back we'll take her into town with us."
They watched for a few minutes as she receded into the sandy landscape. Curt put the VW in gear and they headed east toward the mountains.
Two hours later they found themselves running parallel to a gash in the earth when the road forked. The left turn laid a beeline for the horizon. The right veered toward the chasm.
"Take the right," Ronnie said.
"You sure?"
"Take it."
Five minutes later they came to the chasm and a precarious-looking wooden bridge that spanned a ten foot gap to a free-standing butte. And from there, another ten-foot bridge to undulating desert. They got out of the bus.
The chasm was twenty feet deep at that point but they could see where it dropped lower up ahead.
"I don't know, man," Curt said.
Ronnie walked out on the bridge. "Feels solid." He jumped up and down in the middle causing pebbles, gravel and dust to gyrate. "It's good. Let's take it."
The bridge creaked ominously as they traversed it. Ronnie relit the joint and passed it to Curt. The land descended toward a series of buttes and crevices in the distance. They drove down a switchbacked slope and their ears popped. It felt as if they were below sea level. A half hour later they spotted an odd rock formation off to their right. Ronnie got out the binocs. "Looks like a decent spot to lay up."
The microbus jounced and jittered over the rock and sand. The formation, which looked like a mushroom, was further than it first appeared and it took them forty-five minutes to finally pull up beneath the overhang of a sandstone ledge that jutted from the earth like a natural stonehenge. It was a little after four.
The boys got out to stretch their legs and walk around the odd formation. It was bigger than it looked, with several jagged routes up and into the crown. Ball cap pulled low over his forehead Ronnie boosted himself up onto a boulder to climb inside the crown.
"Careful of rattlers, hoss," Curt reminded him.
Ronnie hesitated. "It's hot and sunny. Hopefully they're all sleeping."
"No man. They lay up at night. They like the heat."
Ronnie wore over the ankle hiking boots. They wouldn't do much good if a rattler lunged for the calf or thigh and he paused before each step. There were numerous cubby holes in the rock, dark places where snakes could hole up. He wished he'd boned up more on rattlesnakes.
"Wait a minute," Curt said from the ground. "I'll get the snakebite kit." He returned to the bus and located the plastic, lozenge-shaped capsule. Carrying a backpack and canteen he followed Ronnie into the crown. It only took a few minutes to reach the summit, an uneven confluence of two rounded boulders leaning together and surrounded by jagged shards of granite and sandstone that formed a natural parapet.
They scanned their surroundings. No snakes. Curt reached into the backpack and removed an aluminum foil bindle. He unwrapped it revealing two beige capsules.
"Ready to launch?"
Ronnie reached out and took one of the caps. "Let's do it."
The boys swallowed the acid. Ronnie took out the Zeiss and leaned against the waist-high stone, slowly examining the horizon. Curt sat in the shade cast by a broad shingle, took a fat doobie from his shirt pocket and lit it with a Zippo emblazoned with the Grateful Dead symbol.
Soon they were mellow. They waited for the acid to kick in. Ronnie took long swigs from his canteen, got up again and resumed his watch. Afternoon sun lit the desert like the Radio City stage, the crown of rocks casting a long shadow to the east. Pale cumulus hung on the horizon glowing gold in the lowering sun. It was October and the desert would grow cold at night but they had plenty of sleeping bags in the bus.
Curt's gaze focused in on a half inch crack in a roundish boulder and he saw a large black spider with gold markings industriously wrapping a beetle in silk. He knew the acid had kicked in. Here was life in all its horror and glory. He reached for his backpack and withdrew his sketch pad and a mechanical pencil.
They grooved in a timeless space. A tendril of chill insinuated itself up Curt's shirt like the breath of a waking ice giant.
"Curt."
"What?"
"Curt."
"What?!"
"Come look at this, man! Look at this fucking butte, man! It looks like that drawing you made!"
It took Curt a couple seconds to remember how to move as he shifted first to one hip, then to his feet. He joined Ronnie at the rail looking east at the distant violet mountains.
"What?"
Ronnie handed him the Zeiss. "Five after twelve, man. Doesn't that look just like that butte you drew?"
Curt took the glasses. His wavering grip found the rock at his waist, the sand, the horizon. The butte escaped him.
"Can't see jack shit, man."
"Here," Ronnie said, taking the binocs and laying them on a flat shelf, a giant chipped tooth. He crouched and carefully adjusted the binocs. "All right. Don't touch 'em. Just carefully get down here and look?"
Curt did as he was told. As usual, he saw nothing at first but he kept looking and the flickering trick mirror coalesced--a minor distortion revealing the tiny, quavering chimney-like rock of his dreams.
"Whoah."
"Yeah. Let me see that sketch."
"I gave it to the bartender."
Ronnie did a double-take. "What?"
"Yeah. She asked for it. I didn't have tip money anyway."
A dark blue crept behind the mountains indicating the night to come.
"That's where we're going, man," Ronnie said.
"Bullshit, Ronnie. Look at these canyons."
Ronnie turned toward him with feverish eyes. "Don't you see? There's a reason you drew that place! It's too similar to be a coincidence. Someone or something is telling you to go there!"
"Oh. Wow," Curt said as revelation dawned. He stood and stretched. His up thrust arms topped the long shadow of the crown like horns. "The only place we're going is back to the bus. Aren't scorpions nocturnal?"
"We been out here all afternoon and ain't seen diddly. I say we build a fire and camp up here, man."
All they had was a small camp stove. It would take hours to gather enough scrub brush from the desert floor to build a fire that would last minutes. There was nothing resembling a branch much less a log.
"No fire. It would make the stars more difficult to see."
Ronnie nodded. "That's right, man."
Curt seemed to have modified his earlier policy. As the sun settled into the west they climbed down to the bus, retrieved their sleeping pads and bags and returned to the crown. They set the camp stove up in the center of the crown on a flat spot but now the acid raced through their veins and neither was hungry.
As twilight gave way to night they lay back with their heads on their rolled up bags and gazed at the celestial display. Back in college, they may as well have been in a tent when the stars came out. Light and air pollution had dimmed the heavens to a faint backgrounds glimmer.
Out here, miles from the ubiquitous neon and spotlights, the stars spanned the heavens to infinity. Millions of them. The whole Milky Way, a carpet of diamonds. Far to the east a meteor fell to earth leaving a blazing trail.
"Wow," Ronnie said.
"Yeah," Curt said. "Clarity."
Ronnie looked down. A pale scorpion hustled across his ankle. It tickled.
Far out, he thought.
Eventually they fell asleep.
***