The Big Dirt Nap (13 page)

Thirty-one

A former colleague once dragged me to a foreign film called
The Wages of Fear,
starring Yves Montand, a French hottie from the fifties. The movie was about a couple of guys who were so broke they agreed to drive a truck filled with nitroglycerin across the proverbial hundred miles of bad road. Most of the film showed a nervous, white-knuckled driver and a wild-eyed passenger stopping and starting the car while they navigated the treacherous road.

All I needed was the passenger.

Farther on from the spot where I’d spoken to Lucy, the road had fewer switchbacks, but other than that, it was really only good for mountain goats or Dall sheep. The kind you see in
National Geographic
magazines and wonder how the hell it is they don’t fall off the side of a craggy bluff. Luckily the Jeep is the automotive equivalent of a mountain goat. All of those car commercials that are so obviously Photoshopped to show cars at the tops of arches and hoodoos in Colorado or Utah actually have some basis in reality.

As long as I kept to a snail’s pace, I made progress. The road had to have been at a forty-five-degree angle in some spots and even more in others with only intermittent stretches where I could kick butt and drive a whopping eight or ten miles an hour.

Even with my brights on I could only see about twenty feet ahead of the car. Without another vehicle in front of me as a frame of reference, the road seemed to get narrower, at times seeming just inches wider than the Jeep. Branches scraped both sides of the car. I pulled left to avoid them on the right and a stubby shrub reached in and left a long scratch on my cheek, scaring the hell out of me. Then I overcompensated and hugged the mountain so closely on the next turn that I smacked in the passenger-side window. The sound startled me and I stopped to survey the damage. To the car and to my face.

I slid out of the car, clinging first to the door, then the hood. In the headlights I saw hundreds or maybe thousands of gnats or midges, so dense they looked like mist rising from the ground. I brushed them from my arms and flicked them away from my face and hair. I inched around to the passenger side and saw the mirror hanging by a shred of plastic. I tried to snap it off, but one thick plastic-coated wire wouldn’t give up the ghost. I held the mirror and looked at my distorted reflection. There was a long pink line on my face that was puffing up but no blood. I convinced myself the image was magnified and the scratch wasn’t really as long as it appeared.

The bugs were getting to me so I hustled back to the driver’s side of the car, stumbling on a few loose rocks. I remembered reading somewhere that small rocks gouged out of a road or hiking trail were frequently evidence of bears looking for food. Oh, good. Another thing to worry about. I climbed back into the driver’s seat, and continued creeping uphill for almost another hour.

The mountain flattened out a bit after the next two sets of switchbacks and I had my fingers crossed that I could get past them before the sun went down completely. I unconsciously leaned in with every turn as if that would make a serious aerodynamic difference inside a two-ton vehicle. I was so intent on reaching the mesa I forgot my promise to call Lucy and didn’t do it until reaching the relative safety of a clearing just short of the top.

Until I stopped driving and got out of the car I hadn’t realized how tightly I was gripping the steering wheel; when I released it the tension drained from my neck and shoulders.

Just to be on the safe side, I reached back into the car to put on the emergency brake; that’s when I noticed the odometer read 24,507—I’d only gone six miles. I speed-dialed Lucy’s number but there was no answer—she must have still had the phone turned off; I’d check back in fifteen or twenty minutes.

I hadn’t eaten anything all day and was starting to feel it. I never kept food in the car, other than the occasional Zone bar, and I checked the storage box between the driver’s and passenger’s seats to see if I’d get lucky.

Bingo. Chocolate mint. Okay, it was a little hard, but it was better than nothing. I walked to the back of the car and opened the hatch. The case of bottled water I usually had stashed in the car was covered by the tarp and garden tools that had shifted in the course of my climb up the mountain. I moved the tarp, the pitchfork, and some hand tools and cracked open a bottle of water. I sat in the back dangling my legs and looking at the stars.

High on the mountain, I thought I saw a light. Hopefully it was Lucy in the Crawfords’ cabin. Then I looked down at the long slow climb that I’d just made, and saw something else—two specks of light. Moving slowly, but definitely moving. Judging by how long it had taken me, it would take whoever it was at least an hour to get to me, so that gave me an hour to get to Lucy.

But I had a bigger problem. First there was the overpowering smell. It was a steaming pile of fresh scat. Which is a nice way of saying bear shit. Then there was the long low growl.

Thirty-two

When you’re hiking in black bear country and confront a bear, half the guidebooks tell you to drop into a fetal position and cover your head. The other half tell you to wave your arms like a lunatic and make noise—some parks even sell bear bells that you’re supposed to jingle to make the bears go away. This struck me as contradictory advice and I had about three seconds to decide which to follow—but I’m not a fetal position kind of gal.

What the guidebooks never tell you to do is throw a Zone bar and a cell phone at the bear, but that’s what I did. It wasn’t intentional, it was a reflex—they just flew out of my hands. I remembered the bit about making noise and reached into the Jeep, grabbing two hand weeders and furiously clanking the tines together. Then I thought,
Just get in the freaking car!

The same reflex as before made me fling the weeders in the bear’s general direction and jump in the car, closing the hatch from inside. I scrambled to the driver’s seat and raised the windows as fast as I could. The black bear is generally harmless and would really prefer eating berries or garbage to human flesh, but when you’re on foot and so is he—despite the fact that it’s a different animal and you’re on a different continent—visions of King Kong pop into your head and that, inevitably, makes you the screaming, writhing Fay Wray.

I had the presence of mind to lock the doors and was catching my breath when the bear lumbered over, stood on his hind legs, and put his front paws on the driver’s side of the car. In the bear’s mouth was the Zone bar, the wrapper sticking to his teeth. He didn’t mind that it was stale. He seemed to like it, even the paper. In his paw was my cell phone, which must have looked like just another hunk of chocolate to him because that was what he ate next.

The bear took his sweet time walking in front of the car, swatting at the gnats, turning over rocks looking for fat juicy bugs, and finally lumbering off into the night. When I lost him in the headlights it was the first time in hours I was glad I couldn’t see that far ahead of me.

Now I had no food and no phone. Lucy didn’t know where I was and I didn’t know if her hosts, the Crawfords, had returned. The two specks of light I’d seen below had disappeared, probably struggling to negotiate one of the switchbacks, but whoever it was he was getting closer and closer the longer I sat there, so I put the car into drive and took off again.

There was a surprisingly flat stretch of road ahead of me; still I was careful not to get too cocky just in case there was a sheer drop or a second bear on the other side.

The flickering lights above me grew bigger. That was either good news or not; by this time, every tree stump was a bear, every screeching owl was an assailant, and I still didn’t know what I’d find at the cabin.

I put the radio on for background noise and that’s just what it was, all static. I neurotically went around the dial twice as if that was going to improve the reception. Then I remembered AM. I switched frequencies and got a little buzz, then an oldies station. It was better than nothing and helped keep my mind off lions, tigers, bears, and whoever was in the car behind me. Half an hour later I was listening to Freda Payne singing about her unfortunate wedding night. I was mouthing the words when the road simply ended. No more turns, no more switchbacks, no more nothing. Just the hint of a footpath between the trees.

I stopped the car, opened the moon roof, and stood up on the driver’s seat, trying to get my bearings and find the flickering lights I’d seen before. There they were. And this time I could see the faint outline of a cabin.

I climbed into the backseat to look for anything that might be useful. The battery in the lantern was dead. I had a tarp, a few bungee cords, and a pitchfork. I had no idea what I was going to do with them, but I wanted to feel prepared, so I took them just in case.

The folded tarp fit under my arm, I wrapped the bungee cords around my waist, and I carried the pitchfork in my right hand, using it to hold back branches as I made my way through the brush to the cabin. There was a small clearing in front of it, but the cabin was carved into the side of the mountain, Anasazi style; without any lights on it would have been nearly impossible to see. I crept closer to the door, desperate to hear any sounds inside. Nothing. I rapped on the door with the pitchfork.

“Don’t . . . don’t come any closer,” yelled a shaky voice from inside. “I have a gun.”

“Lucy, it’s me, Paula.” I took a deep breath and straightened up from my fighting stance.

“Thank god,” she said, opening the door, white as a ghost.

She had an iron fire poker in her hand and if it hadn’t been me, she would have been prepared to use it. I had the pitchfork. We looked like a couple of settlers about to go at it.

“That’s not a gun.”

“What was I supposed to say, ‘I have a poker’? And what is that,” she asked, looking at the pitchfork, “a house gift?” Her color came back and so did her smart mouth. Neither of us wanted to admit we’d been scared.

“Mother told me never to go visiting empty-handed,” I said, hugging her.

She squeezed back, then pulled away, smacking me on the shoulder. “You didn’t call me.”

“A bear ate my phone,” I said, tossing the pitchfork and tarp on the table. I don’t think she believed me.

The cabin was two rooms with a packed-dirt floor, rough-hewn cabinets, a wooden table and chairs in one room, and two monastic beds in the other. One window was carved out of the mud that was the front of the structure.

“I like what you’ve done with the place. So where are you and Claude going to register? Tuba City Trading Post?”

“Shut up. You caught me at a weak moment, I was very vulnerable. You’re right, it was crazy. Now, can you please get us out of here?”

Good question. We could make it to the car, but I didn’t love that drive in the daylight going forward, I’d probably hate it at night going backward until there was a spot wide enough for me to turn around in.

“Is there a flashlight here?” I asked.

“No. There weren’t exactly a lot of cabinets to check. I bet when these guys misplace something they don’t have to look for it for very long.”

I went into the other room to search under the beds for any boxes where tools or supplies might be stashed, but no luck. Lucy ran in a few minutes later.

“Paula . . .” she whispered. “I hear something. What’s that?” Lucy grabbed hold of my hand and squeezed so tightly my fingers went numb. I closed my eyes to shut out everything else. Apart from the pounding of my own heart, I heard something, too.

Whoever it was would be able to get in; all we had going for us was the element of surprise. We shoved the heavy table closer to the door and rearranged the chairs; I planned to use one of them as a weapon, if necessary. If it was someone familiar with the cabin, tripping over the furniture would slow them down and give us some time. I unwrapped the bungee cords from around my waist, criss-crossed them at ankle height three feet inside the door, and stretched them from the cabinet legs to one of the beds and from the chairs to the other bed so that in the dark, anyone entering would think he was okay and then be tripped up a few steps inside. It would buy us a few minutes at best. I told Lucy to line up our arsenal—the pitchfork, the poker, a chair, and the tarp.

“That’s it?” I asked. “No big frying pan à la Wile E. Coyote?”

“I guess the boys don’t cook much, they certainly didn’t offer me anything. I haven’t eaten for hours and you know how cranky I get. I was kinda hoping for those big Navajo pancakes like you get outside of Vegas.”

“I know where you can get some of those,” I said. “Keep it down.”

She chattered quietly about Claude and about her stay, just to keep herself calm, almost like a mother soothing a baby, all the while the cracking of twigs and muttering of voices grew louder.

I told Lucy to find some matches, then kill all the candles and the lanterns except for one. “And get your poker. You may need it.”

Thirty-three

The faint rumble outside grew louder. Lucy was hyperventilating. She stood up and held the poker like a golf club with instructions from me to aim at the knees, shins, or forearms—a cute cop in Virginia had once told me those were the best places to go for. Minimal strength required, maximum damage inflicted.

The door creaked open and we stood flattened against the wall behind it. In seconds, as I hoped, bodies tumbled over the bungee cords; in the dark I couldn’t tell how many. I threw the tarp over them and Lucy started maniacally flailing away to a chorus of screams and “what the . . .” A figure in skintight jeans stood in the doorway, taking off a helmet and shaking out her hair. Babe Chinnery.

“Stop, stop.” I pulled Lucy back before she killed somebody and three unhappy men scrambled to their feet.

“How did you get here? I would have sworn you weren’t even going to get my message,” I said.

“Alba’s a good kid. She said you sounded
funny,
which at her age could mean anything from indigestion to an oncoming freight train. Then I remembered seeing you tear out of Springfield yesterday looking like the devil was chasing you, so I thought maybe something was up. Luckily Charlie, Danny, and Ken were in the diner when you called.”

They had been heading back to Marcus Dairy to pick up Danny’s bike. Since men don’t usually say no to Babe, she had had her choice among three Harleys and she got them to take her to the reservation and then climb the mountain.

“I’d just gotten my turkey and cranberry wrap,” Danny said, rubbing the life back into the thigh that Lucy had whacked. “It’s probably all soggy by now.”

“You have food?” Lucy asked, sidling up to him.

“You gotta be kidding. First you crack me in the leg with a poker and then you expect me to give you my dinner?”

“Some people might consider it foreplay.”

“Ooooh, I like this girl. C’mon outside, honey, dinner is served.”

“You’re lucky Caroline Sturgis isn’t here, too,” Babe said, following Danny and Lucy out to the bikes.

That stopped me in my tracks. “Are you serious?”

“She’s been camped out at the diner for thirty-six hours with some news she’s itching to tell you,” Babe said. “She needs to get out and have more fun . . . like you girls.”

Oh, yeah, this was big fun.

“The ride was sweet,” Danny said, climbing onto his bike with Lucy wrapping herself around him. “Until we met those a-holes.”

“What a-holes?” I asked.

“Some big guy and a runt trying to get up the mountain in a crappy Toyota,” Danny said. “They had a hell of a blowout. Looked like they drove over a steel claw.”

“Hey, we told them we’d help them out on our way back, but they got rude, yelling in some foreign language. They left their car on the road, and started back down the hill, smacking each other and taking turns swigging from a bottle of vodka.”