But right now he’s still up there with one eye on the truck and the other eye on the rocks around him. Maybe he’s even sitting inside the truck.
Only the one way to handle it, for sure. I hope I’ve got the fuel for it. It’s a God damn long walk.
The yucca plant had broad leaves like those of a giant artichoke. Each leaf was the size of a man’s forearm. The edges were serrated with spines.
He broke off eight big leaves and rubbed their edges against the coarse surface of a boulder until he had removed the spines. Again he made lashings of tensile bark. Again he had shoes: yucca-leaf soles layered four leaves thick. They lasted, amazingly, clear to the bottom of the range before they shredded away. Then he made footpads from creosote as he had done before-the yucca did not grow down here-and he continued. One foot before the other: one measured advancement after the last: goal and purpose fixed precisely in the dwindling bright core of his consciousness.
Nearly dawn and he had to hurry. He’d intercepted the game trail a while ago; he’d followed it past the point where he’d found Jay in the pit. The holes were still there. The game trail took him a pace at a time through the ravine where they’d first seen the javelina pack.
When the footpads wore away this time he went on barefoot.
He kept listening for the sound of the truck. If it came now he was lost.
When he dug the pit he broke off a half-dead catclaw bush near the ground-it was brittle enough to give way. He climbed down into the pit and placed the bush above him across the opening to conceal it.
The light grew and he watched the sky through the interlaced branches. He licked fresh water-from the water hole-off his shriveled lips and let his eyes drift shut. Suspended in unthinking existence he listened to the wind. The cold damp earth enveloped him. Possibly he would not be able to rise from it. He was beyond worrying about that. He would do what he could; no one could ask more than that of him.
But he thought, I have not yet failed.
There was lucidity enough in his mind for thoughts that ranged far beyond his body and the hole in which he lay buried. Without willing it he speculated that there might be a future. He rated the chances at about one in a hundred but the possibility was there and he had nothing else to think about and he couldn’t afford to sleep because he had to listen for Duggai.
Thoughts jazzed like butterflies and he couldn’t hold onto them. He wondered if he would return to the mountain station and find the dog waiting. He pictured the fire tower and the table of solitaire cards. If I have a chance, if I live, will I go back to that?
He’d go back, if only to find out about the dog, but would he stay?
The sensible thing to do would be to settle in the middle of the biggest city he could find and surrender to the comforts of civilization. A tap that provided water whenever you wanted it. A refrigerator with an automatic device that made ice cubes endlessly. Air conditioning. Bedsheets on a king-size mattress. Butter-soft steaks from a butcher’s frigid meat-storage room. An air-conditioned car with a thermos of water kept freshly filled at all times. A woman to ease his nights and make inconsequential talk: someone with whom he’d never again have to pry straight through to the rock bottom of existence. The freedom to be trivial, the luxury to take comfort for granted.
He would clutch at it-greedily, just as he’d clutch now at a filled canteen-but the brain in his dehydrated skull throbbed with a glowing residue of desperate health and the knowledge seeped through it that his brain would need more than comfort: it would need stimulus, challenge. This thing of Duggai’s had bred restlessness in him. He couldn’t settle for anything: he couldn’t go back to the solitaire pack.
No way to foresee what form it might take. Adventure came in many ways. Duggai’s weren’t the only demons: there-was an endless variety against which a man could pit himself.
But he couldn’t go back to forestry. Or psychiatry. Or even to Shirley.
Shirley. That had been another world. In any case she’d decided at the last to make her peace. She and Jay had found each other again. Mackenzie had left them comforting each other like children in the dark: holding hands while the world ended. If it didn’t end after all-if they lived-they would go out of this place fused into unity. They weren’t Navajos, they weren’t built to play Duggai’s games, but they were whole, within themselves. Mackenzie had seen them grow stronger. The final setback had shocked them into temporary surrender-they’d given up, accepted the fate Duggai had decreed, but they’d resolved to do it together and that was the thing they’d remember when it was over.
It’s not that I don’t want her. Maybe I always will.
But the memory of all this would make it impossible. The same experience that had welded Shirley and Jay together would pry Shirley and Mackenzie apart. She would look at Jay and remember how it had brought them together, how they’d found the strength in each other; then she would look at Mackenzie and remember how he had come between them; and any warm feeling she had for Mackenzie would be destroyed, in time, by the awkwardness of gratitude. It would get in the way of anything deeper.
In his dank grave, waiting silently, Mackenzie felt eased by fatalism.
There’ll be another woman somewhere, sometime.
He could wait.
He was getting good at waiting.
When the truck came he listened to it with critical attention. His body was lax in the shaded hole. Messages of pain from his feet threatened to drive everything else from his awareness and he had to force pain from the arena. There was no leeway now for anything but the two contestants: gladiators in the sand.
He sat up until the top of his head lodged against the branches of the catclaw. He couldn’t see the truck from here; he hadn’t expected to; but his ears placed it and in his mind’s vision he watched the truck.
It went along past him, below his level. Growling slowly along the uneven ground. A dry axle-spring creaked dis-rhythmically. At its closest point it probably wasn’t more than twelve feet away from where Mackenzie sat hidden. It went on, went as far as it could and then stopped. The engine switched off. In the sudden silence he heard the metal ping with heat contractions.
The truck door opened. Springs creaked. The door chunked shut. Mackenzie heard a dull click-Duggai locking the door?
He was neither surprised nor gratified that Duggai had obeyed his prediction. The luxury of such emotion was far behind him: he had room left now only for pragmatic objectivity.
When he turned his head he could see the sun and he judged the time: probably around eight o’clock. Not hot yet. He heard Duggai’s footsteps. They didn’t alarm him; Duggai wouldn’t come this way. Coming to this spot Mackenzie had eradicated every footprint behind him. In any case he’d left no spoor on the rock. There’d been a smear of blood but he’d scrubbed it off.
A wave of faint dizziness toppled him against his shoulder; he rested against the wall of his foxhole and drew long deep breaths. He felt the engine skip a few beats, then pick up again. Not yet, he thought. Not just yet.
Duggai made random noises; it wasn’t possible to tell what he was doing. Mackenzie waited in mindless patience.
When he heard the splash he made his move.
He pushed the catclaw aside and got out of the hole and sculled on elbows and knees and toes to the rim of the cliff. Inch by inch he lifted his head until he could see down the face of the sheer rock.
Beneath him and to his left was the water hole. The salt lick threw scattered reflections at him; the pool itself was out of the sunlight. Insects jazzed around above the tanque.