“We might make Pinecliffe today.” Teach looked back again, obviously gauging Eric’s fitness. “Maybe not. Then it’s another day and a half to Highwater.”
Eric couldn’t place the name. “Highwater?”
It was Teach’s turn to think a second. “Nederland in the Gone Times. That’s where we live. It isn’t safe to cut any closer to the Flats than that, and there isn’t a good trail anyway.” Nederland, Eric recalled, was an old mining town twenty or thirty miles into the mountains and not too far from the Continental Divide. A big difference between twenty and thirty when you’re walking, he thought. A granite boulder blocked their path. Eric drug his hand across its rough face as they walked around, but another one the same size stood next to the first. A wall of boulders choked the mouth of the narrow canyon they were about to enter. “Your dad did all this?” Eric asked. He thought, what an immense project!
“Persistent man,” said Teach as he ducked into a narrow passage. The rest of the men had vanished. There must be many entrances, thought Eric. Dodge and Rabbit pushed into the corridor behind him. Rock framed a narrow band of sky. Dust kicked up in the passage scratched Eric’s eyes, and he rubbed his wrist across his nose to keep from sneezing. Then they broke into the open on the other side and Eric could see the extent of Teach’s father’s work. From side to side boulders choked the skinny opening of the steep valley. A man on foot would have no trouble getting through, but Eric doubted that one could lead a pack animal through the jumble, and a car, of course, would be stopped. Coal Creek, a three-foot wide ripple, tumbled down beside the two-lane asphalt road and dove under a pair of the boulders. Dodge walked to the creek’s edge and knelt to take a drink. In a move frighteningly fast for a man his size, Teach reached him and grabbed his wrist. For an instant the tabula was frozen, the hulking, leather-clad savage bent over the slight child. Eric’s breath seized in his chest.
“Don’t, son,” Teach said. “Not till we’re at Highwater.” He released Dodge and turned to Eric and Rabbit. “Let me see your canteens.” After sniffing them disdainfully, he dumped the water on the ground.
“You’ll drink from our supplies till I tell you different.”
Friend or foe? thought Eric. The ribbon of asphalt wound up the valley. The group walked single file now, Teach in the lead, then Eric, the boys, and the rest of Teach’s men, his students as Teach had called them. Students of what? What does Teach, teach? Not too far ahead, maybe a mile, the bush-covered hills gave way to more rugged mountains, and Eric could see that granite, canyon walls swallowed the road and Coal Creek.
Dodge pressed close behind Eric and whispered, “They’re Bugbears, Grandpa. I was just thirsty. He’s mean.” Dodge sounded more angry than frightened. Eric reached back and patted him on the arm. They rounded another corner. Here the old road builders had calved away a portion of a landscape to make way for the road. The bed cut deep through a hill, leaving almost vertical walls on either side. The clean cut revealed layers of different colored rocks. A million years an inch, thought Eric, and when mankind is done, we’ll be no thicker than a coat of paint on top of all of it. He walked close to one wall and saw that the road builders had cut into a seep. A line of dampness oozed at about head height and stretched the length of the cut. He reached to touch it, then drew his hand back. The seep looked unhealthy. Instead of clear water, it was red, and it thickly stained the rocks below. He stopped walking. For fifty feet in front of him, the red moisture coated the rocks, and he smelled something from it, coppery and foul. Coal Creek, only a couple of feet wide here, and fast, rushed by the base of the cut. Red leeched into the stream. Tendrils of it eddied in little pools, then vanished in the water that snatched it downstream.
In the length of creek from the boulders to here, not a thread of algae waved in the current, and, he realized, he’d seen no minnows, water striders or tadpoles, and not a single bird near the stream. He thought of the poem he’d made up that morning, where he’d compared the sun to a red whale surfacing on the horizon, but now he thought of the Earth as the whale, and somehow it was cut, and here it was wounded. Layers of rock scraped away like skin.
As if reading his mind, Teach stepped beside Eric and gazed at the red slime that slid down the crusty rocks into the tiny stream. “The land bleeds,” said Teach.
Chapter Ten
MORE PRECIOUS THAN WATER, AND NOT SO THIN
After five miles of riding his bike down U.S. 6, throwing himself to the gravel shoulder once when a truck rocketed by on the other side of the median heading west, cringing at the sound of a distant shot, too drained and frightened to consider crying, Eric decided to jump the waist-high concrete divider and head south to Littleton on the smaller streets. He crossed the two-lane frontage road into Union Ridge Park, where the grass was uncut but well watered. Sprinklers at the far edge of the park popped up and sprayed long streams. Sun rainbowed in the mist, and the air smelled wet and green. He paused at the swing sets. Their metal seats hung motionless above well-worn grooves in the grass. I used to swing, he thought. Feet in the air, head down. Whoosh. He imagined sitting quietly, hands wrapped around the chains, his feet dragging in the dust, waiting for Dad to give him a push. When his hip began to go numb from the bike leaning against it, he realized he hadn’t moved for minutes. A sound behind him made him start to turn. Then it seemed his head swelled, the ground slipped away—he was falling—and as he fell, he twisted and saw the sky. Slowly, so slowly it seemed, it turned to black.
Waves marched out of the horizon, green and glassy, building as they got closer. A hundred feet from shore, Eric saw a dark form in the water. A seal? he thought. Dad said there might be seals, but it was a patch of seaweed riding up the solid-looking slope. A frond waved forlornly at the crest, then disappeared as the wave slid in. Seconds later the smooth, cascade leaned too far forward, toppled from the top into foam and noise to rush up the beach, spent at his toes. Sizzling like bacon, the water slid back into the ocean to be swallowed by the next wave.
He scooted a foot closer to the sea, playing a game with the waves.
Far away from the beach, in another world, Eric strained against consciousness. His head hurt, and something pulled against his chest, holding him under the arms.
I’m dreaming I’m three. It’s the San Francisco trip when I was three, and we spent an afternoon on the coast.
He didn’t want to wake up—the world was bad; awful things waited for him there—he forced himself back to the dream.
Wind pushed spray into his face. He wiped the salt from his eyes. The next wave spilled itself on the sand, but stopped a yard short. He scrunched closer, and the next wash of water sent him scurrying backwards like a crab. He giggled. We’re playing tag, he thought. The film of water, no thicker than his hand, rushed away from him. Eric jumped up. Sand fell off his calves, and he brushed the back of his overalls. He loved the brass buttons that snapped the shoulder straps on because he could do them himself. Not like his shoelaces; they still gave him trouble. He rushed down the firm sand after the retreating wave. Water wants to play, he thought. I’ll chase it. But the wave retreated too quickly. I’ll catch you. He ran, hands outstretched, reaching, laughing, toward the ocean. Then, the next wave towered above him, and he stopped, his feet rooted to the sand. The dreamer Eric whimpered—he heard himself make the noise out of his dream—it was one he had often. The wave, that huge, unstoppable wave looming up, and panic, like frozen oil filling his head. Oh, Dad, he thought, and in the dream he looked back up the beach and saw his dad, a tiny figure, miles away it seemed.