Unassigned Territory (36 page)

Ahead of him the ground rose sharply, bending toward the ridge, taking him by surprise with its angle of ascent. He looked up, bending himself backward toward that spot where the red stone met the sky. He kicked a rock with his shoe and started a miniature landslide. He heard the girl say something behind him. It crossed his mind to say something witty. Timber—or bombs away. Something really witty, like that. The ascent was making him short of breath, however, and he didn’t say anything. He turned his head a bit to see where she was. He saw a shaft. Turning his head pulled him slightly off course. He stumbled over some pieces of wood set close to the ground. There was more wood directly in front of him. He started toward it. He was thinking about the red rock and the hole in the cliff. The girl said something. He looked at the sky. He was looking for that line of rock, the collision of red and blue. He walked onto the wood and he stood there, looking toward the west. He didn’t stand there for long. The wood beneath him was old and gray, bleached until it was the color of oatmeal. One fool had used it to cover a shaft. It had taken another to find it. The thought was a fleeting one. Face still turned skyward, Harlan Low sank like a stone, the wood beneath him coming apart as if it had no more to it than the fragile balsa wood wings he’d built for his gliders as a boy. The red rock vanished, taking the sun.

D
elandra saw him disappear. She saw a rainbow-colored streak that marked the disappearance of his flowered shirt followed by the black slash of his glasses. The straw hat seemed almost to hang suspended for a moment above the ground as if this were some kind of cartoon where the guy falls and his hat remains hanging in the air for comic effect. It was something like that only it was far from comic and Delandra found that she had begun to scream as she ran toward the spot on the hillside where Harlan Low had vanished.

Harlan heard the screaming. For a moment he believed that he had screamed himself, then saw that this was not so. It was dark and he couldn’t see much. The feeling was gone from his right arm and hand but there was a hard shooting pain moving out of his shoulder, around his collarbone, and up into his neck. It was clear to him that something was broken but it was hard to say exactly what it was. He seemed to have come to rest on some kind of platform because when he tried to move, whatever he was on moved as well and he could hear bits and pieces of something falling and hitting something else much farther down. The things that fell, fell for a very long time.

There was a patch of sky at the end of the hole above his head. The way in which the boards had broken made the sky look jagged around the edges. Eventually the head of Delandra Hummer appeared in the patch of ragged sky and Harlan was somewhat relieved to see that he had not fallen as far as he had at first believed. He guessed the distance at somewhere between ten and fifteen feet.

“I’m okay,” he said right away, but then found it necessary to amend the statement. “I’ve broken something,” he heard himself say. And there was something about hearing himself say it out loud which scared him—as if his fears had in some way been confirmed: he was indeed a clumsy ox. He might well die here. It was the second time in just over a week that such thoughts had flooded his mind and it occurred to him that a man could only push his luck so far. It was clear the girl would never get him out by herself and for a moment he thought he was going to puke. The sky seemed to go dark and light several times above him. The feeling lasted for several seconds and then passed. “I’m hurt pretty badly,” he said. “You’re going to have to get help.”

With the sun off to the side, behind the ridge, there was no light going into the hole, and looking into it, Delandra could see nothing at all. The effect was disturbing. “I can’t just leave you here,” she said.

“You’ll have to. You’ll never get me out by yourself.”

“Maybe I can find some rope.”

Harlan shook his head, though no one could see him. “It’s no good. I’m too heavy, and my arm’s shot.”

Delandra dragged a hand through her hair. She suspected he was right but figured she might at least take a look around. If there was a rope she could tie one end to the car, drag him out that way. “I’m going to look for something up here,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

Harlan ground his teeth against the pain. He tried to calm himself, to think it through. The girl’s head was gone and the sky was empty above him. Jesus, he thought, what if she falls into something too? There was an idea for you. He was wearing a watch, but when he tried to move himself in such a way as to see its face, the thing he was on made a kind of grinding noise and terrible pains moved through his shoulder and up into his head. He lay still and watched the sky.

After some indeterminate length of time the girl came back. “There’s nothing up here but wood.”

“Listen to me,” Harlan said. “I’m not on the ground. I’m on some kind of platform and it doesn’t feel that sturdy. We’re going to need a winch and some line. You’re going to have to go find someone. There’s a Ranger station not far from the beginning of the dirt road out there. I passed it on my way out of the valley. They would know what to do. And it’s mostly downhill getting out of here. You should be able to make better time.”

Delandra thought about the drive back. It had taken them hours to get this far. Still, it was clear she had to do something. It would be dark soon. “You think you will be all right?” she said. It struck her as a fairly ridiculous thing to say.

“I’ll be all right,” Harlan replied.

Delandra was a moment in replying. “Okay,” she said at last. “Just hang on. I’ll go as fast as I can.”

Harlan looked at the vacant sky. He heard the girl moving away from the hole. He wondered if he would be able to hear the car. He listened for some time. There was nothing to hear. A musty draft moved along the edges of the hole and something brushed his face. Harlan lifted a hand. He believed himself to be completely alone now and began to talk out loud to himself. He was interrupted, however, by the voice of Delandra Hummer—whose face now appeared above him once more. “I hate to say this,” Delandra said, “but I think you’ve got the keys.”

Harlan Low looked skyward. His first impulse was to laugh. His second was to scream. He squeezed at the pocket in his slacks with his good hand. The keys were there. He experienced a moment of amazement at the stupidity of it all. “Yes,” he said. “I have the keys.” He dug them out, wondering if he was going to be able to throw them high enough to reach her.

He didn’t think about it for long and his next move was inspired by equal parts rage and panic. Bringing as much of his arm as possible into play he tossed the things upward. The platform groaned beneath him and seemed to tilt several inches to the right. The keys kicked off a piece of wooden shoring and fell back toward him. They landed on his leg. Somewhere in the middle of it all he was aware of Delandra shouting at him.

“For God’s sake!” Delandra yelled. “Hang on to the bastards!” Harlan clutched at the keys. His heart had begun to pound. All he could think of was throwing them again.

“Will you listen to me?” the girl called. “There’s all kinds of sticks and boards up here, and nails. I’ll rig something and lower it down. You can hook the keys onto it.”

Harlan looked stupidly toward the light. It certainly made more sense than trying to throw them out. “Of course,” he said. And he put his head back against the floor of the platform and tried to work some moisture back into his throat. Of course. That was how it was done. Use your head, man. He squeezed the keys, allowing the cold hard shapes to dig into his flesh. He squeezed them until the metal began to feel hot in his grasp. He looked into the ragged blotch of orange sky above him and he waited. And at some point—he could not even guess how long it had been—it occurred to him that he had been waiting too long.

O
badiah didn’t ask any more questions about the crystals. When they had seen the hill, they returned to the trailers. The sun had by now come to rest upon the mountains which lay to the west, creating the impression that the entire range had begun to erupt. Soon it would pass from sight altogether and the air would begin to cool, as the woman had predicated.

He sat on the ground beneath one of the canvas awnings, his back against the side of a thirty-foot fifth-wheeler. He was watching the fat guy someone had called Jim turning chicken legs on a beat-up-looking grill. The smells of burning fat and barbecue drifted toward him across the hard-packed dirt. Bill Richards, still wearing his safari tans—shorts and a short-sleeved shirt with epaulets on the shoulders—was standing at the far corner of the compound talking to a couple of guys who had shown up while Obadiah was on the hill. They had come in a jeep. It seemed to Obadiah that he had seen three men from the hill. Perhaps he had been mistaken. Perhaps the third man had been from the camp. The jeep the men had come in was parked alongside Bill Richards’s Land-Rover. There was a pair of bumper stickers on the back. One was a Confederate flag, the other something about Billy Graham.

One of the men was tall and thin. He had on jeans and work boots, a shirt like Richards’s. He had red hair and a beard and he was wearing one of those Australian cowboy hats—the kind with the brim turned up on one side. The hat had a camouflage pattern on it. The other man was shorter, and thicker. He was without a shirt, but he had a vest, a leather one with fringe on the back. He wore jeans and a pair of high-topped moccasins which rose to just below his knees. The shorter man wore one of those Greek fisherman caps pulled down tight on his head. The hair which stuck out from beneath it was bright black in what was left of the light.

Obadiah got off the ground and walked in a leisurely fashion toward the jeep and the Land-Rover. He wanted to appear nonchalant about it. He had this idea he was being watched. He pretended to look for something in the back of the Land-Rover. He saw Bill Richards’s silver hat on the floor. Through a dust-streaked window he took a closer look at the jeep. There was a two-way radio in it and a rifle between the seats. On the rear bumper, between the stickers, there was a beat-up license plate frame upon which the name Victorville was visible through the dust.

Obadiah got out of the Land-Rover. The sun was back of the ridge now, leaving the camp in shadow. Jim stood before the orange flame of his grill. He had been joined by the men from the jeep. Richards was alone by a storage trailer, drinking a beer. When he saw Obadiah he chucked the can into a trash barrel and crossed the yard.

There was something about the way he did this which struck Obadiah as odd. In a moment he realized the guy was half in the bag. This struck him as odd as well. They had not been long off the ridge. The trip had already begun to turn a little funky at the edges and the sudden image of Bill Richards as a bad drunk didn’t do much for it. The man soon stood leering at him in a way which seemed to suggest he was privy to some joke of which Obadiah was the butt.

“Begun to miss the little lady?” he asked.

Obadiah shrugged.

“Take ’er or leave ’er, huh? A regular Lance Romance.”

Beyond Richards’s shoulder Obadiah could see Jim putting chicken onto plates. He had intended to ask Richards about the crystal. It struck him that now was not the time. The man, it appeared, had something on his mind.

“Yeah, well,” he said, “you know these cunt are all alike. I imagine she’ll be there when you get back.”

“I don’t know,” Obadiah said, “I’m not so sure.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” There was something distinctly belligerent in Richards’s tone, as if he found in the suggestion cause for offense.

“It means she may not be there. She didn’t think a lot of this particular expedition.”

“That dirt bag?” Richards said. He was clearly bothered. About something.

Obadiah nodded. He had to admit that he rather enjoyed seeing Bill Richards bothered. “She thinks maybe you guys were bullshitting me about those crystals. When I asked the woman on the hill about the ones you found here she didn’t seem to know what I was talking about.”

Richards made a kind of snorting sound. The light was getting poor now. It did things to Richards’s face. “Uh huh,” Bill said, “well, she should know. About bullshit artists, that is.”

Obadiah assumed he was talking about Delandra.

“Listen, if you’re not doing anything real important there, why don’t you come over here for a minute. I’ve got something I want you to look at.”

Richards didn’t wait for Obadiah to say anything. He turned and walked off across the camp. Obadiah stood there for a moment. He looked around. There didn’t seem to be much point in not going. It was like the song said: Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

Richards was waiting for him on the step of a storage trailer. The trailer had no windows, just one pair of sliding glass doors which had been left open. There was a light on inside.

Obadiah went up the step. The trailer was one long rectangular room maybe thirty feet in length. There was some electronic gadgetry and camping equipment piled around one end. The other end was empty save for a wooden box the size of a coffin.

Richards waited for Obadiah to go into the trailer, then stepped in behind him. He stood at Obadiah’s shoulder and waved toward the box. “Take a look,” he said. “I think maybe you two are old friends.”

Obadiah went to the box and looked inside. He did so with a combination of anticipation and dread. Neither, it turned out, were called for.

The head was not bad. There were large cavernous sockets with something that looked like shriveled egg yolks in them and beneath that a yellow set of sharp, canine teeth. There was a kind of thin, mummified skin stretched taut across a bony skull, but even the face was not perfect. If you looked closely enough at the neck where it attached to the skull, just behind the jaw, you could see a small patch of raised chicken wire. The body was not as good as the head. There was what looked to be rabbit fur on the chest and a lot of feathers along the arms, but the whole arrangement had something hollow and lifeless about it. A corner of newsprint was plainly visible at one wrist.