“What about Soliano?”
He blinked.
“Walter? Shouldn’t we look for Soliano?”
He said, “I hadn’t thought that far.”
I sagged. How could he not think that far? Soliano had called while we were on the West Side Road. Walter had put his cell phone on speaker. We’d told Soliano our plans, that when we’d finished here we planned to catch the Greenwater Valley Road and check a couple of candidates over there, and then rendezvous when it got dark at Furnace Creek. Unless we phoned to say otherwise. How could Walter not think of Soliano?
He cleared his throat. “Of course. We must get down to the road. We must be visible.”
I relaxed an inch.
We sat five minutes more, gathering ourselves.
I wondered when Soliano would take note that he hadn’t heard from us, whether he’d check his watch and calculate that we must, by now, be over in Greenwater Valley, in which case the most direct route from the talc mines was not via the West Side Road. If he didn’t find us elsewhere, though, sooner or later he’d surely come this way. Two people on the West Side Road would stick out like sore thumbs.
That is, until it got dark.
I roused myself and got the flashlight from the tire-changing cubby.
Walter rose, gathering our meager belongings. He stuffed them into my emptied pack.
I took my field knife and Hap’s bandana from my pocket. I sawed the cloth in half, then dipped the halves in the radiator water. The red cloth darkened to hematite. I gave Walter one half and he understood. We squeezed the water over our heads and bodies, repeating the process until the radiator was dry, then draped the wet bandanas around our necks.
“You are a genius,” he said.
“Girl Scouts.”
We had to laugh.
He recovered his hat and shades.
I put on mine. I cleared my throat. “Well, pardner?”
“Let’s vamoose.”
I scooped a handful of dolomite-weathered soil and put it in my pocket. We’d come up here for samples and I was not leaving without a sample.
17
We headed downcanyon.
At the fork there were scuffed prints heading into the south canyon. Further down, around a gentle bend, there were tire tracks. Not ours. Smart place to stop, because there was room enough to turn around.
I said, “You did hear a car on the West Side Road.”
“We should have waited.”
Wouldn’t have helped. The perp, tailing us, wanted to remain unseen. She comes around that curve, sees our car stopped beside the saltpan, backs her car up. Rolls down her window. Waits until she hears our engine start again. Then creeps around the curve, sees our rooster-tail going up the fan. Follows when it’s safe. Comes just shy of the bend, gets out to walk. Takes the south fork and climbs its ridge. Maybe she sees us; maybe she just hears us. We don’t hear her because we’re singing our fool heads off. She gets inspired. Yells for help. We head downcanyon. And she scrambles down from the ridge and does her business. Then, while we’re up the north fork, she escapes downcanyon with her prize: the ice chest, the soil map, all our work. She gets in the pickup, does her three-point turn, and exits the canyon.
At least I had to hope she’d exited.
We followed her tire tracks out of the canyon. At the head of the fan we paused, scanning the landscape below. No white pickup. No FBI-RERT convoy, either.
We started down.
The giant fan was veined with channels, some several feet deep, in which a person could flatten herself and her shotgun and not be seen from the road that cut down the center. I did not brood on that for long. I did not have the strength. I brooded instead on the heat that rose from the desert pavement and sucked the radiator water from my clothes. The ground was paved in rock chips mortared with sand. We could fry an egg on that hot smooth pavement, had we an egg. We could bake a quiche — the rock surface had collected a coating of iron and manganese oxides and that black desert varnish reflected heat like a convection oven.
Frying eggs. Egg McMuffin. My stomach turned
We tramped down the road until our faces were varnished red and then Walter croaked “need a break” and I croaked “okay.”
We left the road and cut across the desert pavement to the nearest channel. It was blessedly unvarnished, washed clean by floodwaters. We climbed down into the sandy gravel bed and huddled against the southwest wall, which cast a lip of shade. We could see just over the rim. The Badwater basin spread below us. If I saw a car anywhere in the basin, other than the white pickup, I planned to get up and wave.
We drank the water down to a trickle.
When my saliva had thickened, I put a pebble in my mouth. I passed one to Walter. “Suck on it.”
After a time, Walter mumbled, “Could’ve shot us. Didn’t.”
I thought that over. “Good.”
He was silent. I turned. His Sahara hat was pulled low and all I could see was his jaw working.
I said, “So you do think it’s her? Shotgun.”
He removed his pebble. “Men carry guns too.”
True. But whoever it was evidently got what he wanted. She wanted. Therefore we didn’t have to worry any more? I spat out my pebble. “Perp might still shoot us.”
“Then I’d be wrong.”
We had no more heart for talk.
Five times, we saw cars on the Badwater Road across the saltpan and I roused myself and stood and signalled. The sixth car, I didn’t bother. We sat until shadows reached the head of the fan. The sun dipped behind the peaks above, reddening the clouds. We removed our hats and sunglasses and brooded on the nuclear sunset.
“We must go,” Walter finally said.
I nodded. Going to get dark. Nobody going to see us up here.
We rose, shaky. I shouldered the pack. We crossed the desert pavement to the fan road. There came a hot breeze that lifted the sweat-plastered hair from my scalp. The breeze went away. My feet swelled with each step. The ventilating mesh did not ventilate enough. I feared my boots would burst. We descended and, astonishingly, reached the West Side Road.
We collapsed and sucked the last drops from the water bottle.
An eternity passed. Three more cars passed on the other side of the basin.
I tried to speak but my tongue had stiffened. I elbowed Walter, and pointed across the saltpan at the Badwater Road. We rose, shakier than before. I tried to estimate the distance. Couple of miles? Five? More? Who knows? Everything looks closer than it is out here.
We broached the saltpan.
Life clung at the edge. We bypassed bristling shrubs and scuffed through sand and silt and then passed onto blisters of salt. Still, there was life. Rubbery plants, here and there. Pickleweed. Stems like stacked pickles. You want to break one off and pop it in your mouth. We Girl Scouts tasted it. Puckery. Walter fingered it, in passing. Adaptable, he mouthed. I nodded. My mouth was sealed. Nothing to say. No spit to say it with. No sound out here but the crackle of salt beneath our boots. We walked on meringues awhile and then the ground hardened and smoothed. Floodplain. White and flat, a frozen lake. Looked like hell froze over.
Not even pickleweed out here. Nothing adaptable enough to live out here.
My tongue quilted. We were in a giant bathtub but there was no water. Too hot. Water had evaporated and left bathtub rings. Rings of salt. Saltpan shimmered in the dying light. Looked like water. My throat swelled. I thought I might drown.
I thought of the thing I’d seen from the car, eons ago. Well, hours ago. Hotter than hell on the saltpan then. What living thing would be out here? Creeping through hell.
Must have been a mirage.
“Rest,” Walter croaked.