A few moments later, a breath of desert wind wafted an odor of beans over to our nostrils, beans with a touch of garlic and the smell of fried onions.
“Louie,” I asked, “what is that?”
“That there,” he said with pride, “is a dish of my own invention. You cut up a couple of onions fine, put ’em in a little water, and let ’em boil down to a dry pan. Then you add a little grease and fry ’em up. Put in a little garlic, then open a can of beans, and put in some syrup. That there grub will stick to your ribs, and it ain’t goin’ to taste bad.”
Helen and I sat side by side on the blankets watching the western sky as some invisible artist went about painting a desert sunset, working swiftly with vivid colors, and a bold brush.
We were still watching the colors when Louie pushed steaming plates into our hands. “Here you are,” he said, “all dished up. You eat it on the one plate, arid what I mean is you clean it up.” And he grinned at us.
We went to work on the grub. It tasted better than any cooking I’d had for months, with fresh sourdough French bread to sop up the gravy that was left in the plate after we’d cleaned out the mixture of beans, onions, and garlic.
Helen sighed. “I think that’s the best food I’ve ever tasted. Donald, why didn’t you think of this sooner?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’m dumb,” I said.
The afterglow faded from the west. Blazing stars came out to hang in the sky overhead.
Helen said, “I’ll do the dishes.”
Louie was insulted. “What does a nice girl like you know about doin’ dishes? Not camp style, anyway. Look, sister, out here in the desert we don’t have much water, see? I’ll show you how it’s done.”
He took the dishes out to a place about fifteen yards in front of the car, turned on the headlights, squatted on his heels, and scooped up sand. He piled sand in the plates and started rubbing. By the time he’d finished, the sand had soaked up everything that had been left on the plates and scoured them clean. Louie poured boiling water over the dishes, just a few spoonfuls to each dish. The water cleaned off what was left of the sand, and left the dishes bright and clean.
“There you are,” Louie announced proudly, “a lot cleaner than you coulda got ’em with a whole dishpan full of water. Now we’ll stack ’em up on the running-board and be all ready for breakfast. What time you want to roll out?”
“I’ll let you know,” I told him.
Louie said, “I thought I’d pull my blankets over here and—”
“This is all right,” Helen said. “I’ve got the three beds made, side by side.”
Louie waited for a few minutes, then said, “Okay.”
We sat around on the blankets for a while.
“How about a campfire?” Louie asked.
I said, “Someone might be looking for us along the road.”
“Yes. I suppose so. How about a little music?”
“Got a radio?” I asked.
“Somethin’ better,” Louie said.
He pulled a harmonica from his pocket, tenderly wrapped his warped fingers and battered knuckles around the instrument, and raised it to his mouth.
It wasn’t the sort of playing I’d expected. I’d been prepared for Home Sweet Home and some of the harmonica classics, but Louie gave us everything. The music which poured forth from that harmonica seemed somehow to blend in with the calm tranquillity of the desert night. It became a part of the darkness, the stretches of silent sand, and the steady stars.
Helen came over to lean against my shoulder. I slipped an arm around her waist. I could feel her steady, regular breathing, the warmth of her cheek, could smell the fragrance of her hair. Her hand stole into mine, slender and soft. I felt her shoulders heave as she took in a deep breath, then gave a long sigh.
The night was still warm. Twice within an hour we heard the distant snarl of approaching automobiles. Headlights danced vaguely up and down the main highway, casting weird shadows. The sound of the approaching car grew to a whine, then rapidly faded as the glare of the brilliant headlights gave place to the glowing red of a receding taillight. There were only those two cars within more than an hour. For the rest, we had the desert to ourselves.
Louie’s music had the majesty of organ music. It was, of course, due in part to the environment, the desert, and the steady stars, in a sky which looked as though it had been freshly washed and polished by some cosmic housekeeper. Louie played by ear, but he was an artist, and he made that harmonica accomplish things one would have thought impossible.
Then, after a while, Louie quit playing, just let the music fade into silence, and we sat there, looking up at the stars, out at the dim outlines of the automobile, of the sagebrush against the sand of the desert, feeling the eternal silence.
Helen said softly in a half whisper, “It’s close to heaven out here.”
I could feel the warmth of her body through her clothes and mine, could feel the weight of her head settling down against my shoulder. Once or twice her muscles gave involuntary little twitches, as the nerve tension relaxed, and her body surrendered itself to drowsiness.
After a while, a breeze so faint as to be all but imperceptible stole over the desert, but that breeze was cold. The warmth simply vanished. The breeze grew stronger. You could feel the air moving now. Helen snuggled closer. She doubled her legs, and pushed her knees hard against my leg. For a moment, warmth returned, then the breeze came again, and Helen straightened with a shiver.
“Gettin’ cold,” Louie said.
“Bedtime,” Helen announced. “Mine’s the end bed. Donald, you sleep in the center.”
She moved over to her blankets, slipped out of her outer clothes. It was too dark for details, but the starlight showed the general contours of her figure as her outer garments slipped down her smooth limbs. I watched her without curiosity and without self-consciousness. It was as though one were seeing a beautiful piece of statuary by starlight.
She slid under the covers, twisted and turned for a moment, slipping out of her underclothes, then sat up in bed to pull pajamas on and button them around her neck.
“ ’Night,” she said.
“Good night,” I called.
Louie, slightly embarrassed, kept silent, pretending to think she had been talking only to me. She raised herself on one elbow. “Hey, Louie,” she called.
“What?”
“ ’Night.”
“Good night,” he mumbled self-consciously.
We waited a few minutes until she had settled herself in her blankets, then Louie and I got out of our clothes and snuggled down into our covers in our underwear.
I wondered how cold it was going to get. I could feel the tip of my nose getting cold. The stars were hanging in the sky directly above me. I wondered if one of them might fall, and if so whether it would hit me — then suddenly I opened my eyes, and an entirely different assortment of stars was in the heavens. The ground was hard underneath, and my muscles were cramped, but the clear fresh air, keen with the tang of dustless cold, had purified my blood, sucked the poisons out of me, and left me feeling as relaxed as though I’d been sleeping for a month.
I closed my eyes again. Once I woke up just before dawn to see the frosty glitter of bluish green where the sky was just beginning to take on color above a band of pale orange. I watched the orange grow vivid, saw a little cloud leap into crimson prominence. Listened to the rhythmic breathing of the girl on one side, heard Louie’s placid snoring — thought about getting up at the “crack of dawn,” and then snuggled down into the warmth of my blankets.