The next morning, Asa woke up hungry and without a fever. Håkan’s knees almost faltered with relief.
“You will live,” he said, turning away from Asa when he felt his eyes well up.
After breakfast, Asa asked him to get ready to leave. Håkan refused. They could not risk aggravating the wounds and having the fever return. Asa did not listen. The brethren, the Wrathful Angels, the bounty hunters, the law would all close in on them soon. Their only hope, he believed, was to get to the cañons. If they did not get lost there themselves, they would surely manage to lose their pursuers. The discussion ended when Asa tried to ride his horse. With great difficulty, Håkan managed to get him on. The pain distorted Asa’s features as he sat on the saddle, and his face turned white when his injured leg started bouncing against the moving horse. Håkan helped him dismount before he fainted. They tried different kinds of splints and straps, but once on the saddle, the pain was always too intense. Defeated, Asa picked a more secluded recess where they would settle down for a few weeks.
Time went by slowly. At first, Håkan thought that they would enjoy their rest in that benign spot—close to fresh water, surrounded by plentiful trees and bushes, in the path of easy game—but the first few days, Asa was so vexed by his condition that he barely uttered a word. Håkan went on short expeditions in search of some of the ingredients he knew that Asa liked. For the most part, they would rot by the fire pit. Gradually, Asa’s irritation turned into anxiety. He would not allow Håkan beyond a narrow area around their crag. They were coming, he said. No doubt. Someone was coming. It was a matter of time. Håkan believed him—as he always did. After all, he owed Asa not only his life but also the world, which he had lost after the killings. Still haunted by the lives he had taken, Håkan felt sullied and fallen. The shame of being, for almost everyone, a murderer, a murderer of women—Helen’s murderer—was enough to make him want to shun the society of men forever. But the world had returned. Asa had brought it back to him, brimming with meaning and purpose.
Despite his constant uneasiness and his somber mood, Asa never failed to express his admiration and gratitude for Håkan’s healing abilities. He had seen too many people perish in similar circumstances—a fall, a fracture, bleeding, gangrene, amputation, delirium, death—to take Håkan’s talents lightly. The story of how he set his leg fascinated him, and no matter how many times he heard it (“Tell me about the leg, and what you did,” he would ask Håkan over and over again, like a child), Asa always listened with gaping reverence. Each compress and salve that Håkan applied, each bleeding, each suture was received with solemn devotion.
When he was not looking for food or tending to Asa’s wounds, Håkan worked on new crutches and different kinds of splits, whittling, stitching, and patching together all sorts of materials. Eventually, Asa started cooking again. They had to stock up on cured meats and preserves for their trip to the barren cañons.
“The cañons are our only hope,” Asa repeated every evening. “Too many days lost here. We can’t outrun anybody. But maybe we can lose them.”
One night, after much hesitation, feeling foolish for having waited for so long, Håkan asked, “What is the cañon?”
“I’ve never been myself,” Asa responded. “They say it’s a land like no other. Like a bad dream. Red tunnels carved by long-gone rivers. Like old scars in the ground. Very deep. For leagues and leagues. Few go in. Fewer get out.”
Later that night, long after they had gone to bed, Håkan woke up. He could feel Asa thinking behind him—his thoughts had woken him up. He could also sense that Asa knew that he was awake.
“We can’t go to California now,” Asa said at last. Then, after a long pause, “They’ll be looking for you. You’d never make it. We’ll go to the cañons. Wait there.” He was quiet for a while, as if his silence were a small sample of that wait. “Then, to San Francisco. I don’t know how, but we’ll make it.” Another pause. “There, I’ll find my friends. They can get us on a boat.” Another silence. “We’ll sail to New York. Nobody will be looking there. You’ll be safe there. We’ll be fine.” Pause. “And we will find your brother.”
Something within Håkan melted. Only now, as it softened and evaporated, did he realize that for years he had lived with a frozen lump in his chest. Only now that he knew he would see Linus again—for there was no doubt that, with Asa’s help, he would see him again—did he feel how much pain this cold shrapnel had caused him. And he understood that up to that moment he had never had a chance of finding his brother. Getting to New York? Finding him in that endless city? How would that ever have happened? Love and longing had kept him going, but now, with Asa by his side, he saw how hopeless his search had hitherto been, and how doomed it would have been without Asa’s aid.
How could he respond to Asa’s words? Like a magic spell, they had changed reality just by being uttered.
19.
The day to leave came at last. Asa’s leg had improved enough for him to move around with a pair of crutches Håkan had made him. Out of bones, wood, leather, and tarpaulin, he had also devised an articulated brace that allowed Asa to mount with greater ease and dulled the impact of his leg against the horse’s side while helping the bone stay in place. Their two spare horses were loaded with the water and provisions they had gathered during the past few weeks.
It got warmer, redder, and drier. The mountain chain was reduced to a few crooked pillars. The forests died out, and only some prickly gray things sprouted every now and then. Birds no longer flew in flocks—only a bird here and then, later, maybe, a bird there. The air felt tense, as if the entire sky had inhaled and pulled back while holding its breath. And the sun, always the sun. Small in the sky, immense on the ground.
Asa reckoned they would travel about one hundred leagues through the cañons, making a stop halfway, before reaching the forests. The horses were his main concern. The country had few watering places and was almost barren of feed. Luckily, the animals were quick to spot edible desert scrubs and a fleshy, almost harmless variety of prickly pear. They also fed on forbs and shrubs and learned to nibble on malformed piñon pines and stunted tree yuccas. When everything else failed, they licked salty rocks and ate dirt. Their ribs started to show, and there was something increasingly deranged in their bulging eyes, but they kept going. One of them, the one that had belonged to the sheriff, had a great talent for detecting water underground. He would stop, snort, and dig with his forelegs. Håkan helped. The horse was never wrong.
It was sudden. Somehow, without ever having climbed up, they were looking down. It took their eyes a few moments to adjust to the darkness below. Cool air came wafting from the depths. The feeling was so pleasant, Håkan had to take a step back when he pictured himself plunging into the shady chasm. The deep gorge, branching out in angular streams, looked like a black horizontal flash of lightning.