Black Sun Descending (20 page)

The woman's eyebrows rose almost imperceptibly.

SILAS AND HAYDUKE
drove in their separate vehicles to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Silas had only been to the South Rim once. As he neared the east entrance to the park and the Desert View watchtower, he remembered the day.

HE AND HIS
wife stood in the woods near the park visitor center. It was an hour to sundown.

“Why don't we take the trail like everyone else?” he asked Penelope.

“Because this is better.”

“We're just going to wander around in the woods?”

“Well, no . . . we're going to walk
through
the woods. It's different.”

“How is it different?”

“Trust me, Silas. This is important to me.”

They had only been married a year. Silas was in the third year of his tenure and already he was distracted by term papers and his own publications. He looked at his watch. He wanted to get back to Flagstaff that night. If they could just get to the South Rim and get back, they might beat the traffic heading into town on a Sunday evening.

He felt Penelope take his hand. He relaxed a moment and looked at his wife. “Alright, lead on, Macduff.”

She squeezed his hand in hers and they began to walk through the juniper and piñon pine forest. In a few minutes the drone of traffic at the visitor center was behind them. The woods were cool on this day in late September. They smelled rich and filled his head with memories of his childhood on the coast of British Columbia. The memories weren't entirely pleasant, but the feeling of his young wife nearby consoled him.

“What are you thinking about?” Penelope pressed her arm into his and they stayed that close until they had to step over a fallen pine.

“Nothing. These woods are so different from those I grew up in, but it makes me think about walking in the trees with my father.”

Penelope kissed him on the cheek. “You did that a lot?”

“No. Almost never. But when we did, it was like the world stood still. But we didn't do it very often. He was . . .”

“What?”

“Distracted.”

Penelope was silent. The woods around him momentarily faded and Silas was two thousand miles away, and forty-five years younger, holding hands with his father, whom he had rarely seen and who had been dead now for half of Silas's life.

“Come back,” he heard his wife say. Silas snapped out of his reverie. They walked for a few minutes, weaving their way between downed logs and stalwart trees, the heady aroma almost intoxicating. Silas felt the change before saw it. The air seemed to become lighter; the scent shifted from being thick with the aroma of juniper boughs and pine duff to being almost earthen, sharp and dry. The light changed too.

“Where are we?”

“You'll see.” Then they emerged from the woods, the stunted trees yielding easily. They were on the rim of the earth, the great canyon before them, the raw light splashed like a spray of red and orange paint swatches tossed across a display table. Penelope pulled Silas forward and they crossed the paved South Rim trail; she led him onto a small promontory of stone. They stopped. There was nowhere else to go. A few feet from where they stood, the Kaibab Plateau disappeared and fell fifteen hundred feet straight down, broken only by tiny ledges of rock and a few distressed junipers that clung for dear life to the shoulder of the gorge.

Silas opened his mouth as if to speak but stopped. Penelope looked at him and then out over the sixteen-mile distance toward the North Rim.

“I never take the same path. I always follow some random course through the trees. That way I never know exactly when I'll emerge from the woods. It's always a surprise.”

They sat on the sandstone slab and watched the colors change and fade. A pair of ravens glided overhead and tucked their wings tightly into their jet black bodies. The birds dove into the grotto, spiraling a thousand feet down in a manic game of chicken before pulling out of the dive and floating back up on the evening's rising air mass.

Other people passed behind them but Silas was oblivious to them. He was lost in the magnificence of the Grand Canyon and what his wife called the greatest, most commonplace show on earth: sunset.

SILAS REMEMBERED IT
as if it were yesterday, but it had been almost ten years before. He had promised to take her there every fall but it had never happened; fall was always a busy time for a professor, and before he knew it he had forgotten about the ordinary majesty of the Grand Canyon and what it had meant, for that one day, to make a clean break with his own history.

When this was all over he would bring his sons to the Grand Canyon and walk through the woods, and if they would let him, he would take their hands like he had when they were boys, before he had left and they had grown up without him.

OVER THE OBJECTIONS
of Hayduke they purchased a camping permit for Phantom Ranch. “It's my national park. I paid for it. I fought in their fucking oil war and defended my country. Now I have to pay for it again?”

Silas ended up paying for both permits and they set off down into the canyon, heavy packs straining their shoulders and backs. In April the trails were busy. Many experienced hikers knew that come June, the inferno of the canyon would make hiking nearly impossible, so they were out in abundance. Hayduke grumbled as they dropped through the layers of sandstone and siltstone.

“You'd rather they were driving or taking a scenic over-flight?” Silas asked when the young man's protests grew tiresome.

“No.”

“Then shut up and be happy.”

They reached Indian Garden Ranger Station in just two hours and soon found themselves striding out along the Tonto Plateau toward the jump-off into the Inner Gorge.

As they started into the black strata of the Vishnu schist—the billion-year-old stone that formed the foundation of the Grand Canyon—Silas couldn't stop thinking about his last conversation with Special Agent Dwight Taylor. He watched the burly young man in front of him stride down the trail. Silas walked a little faster and caught up with Hayduke at a switchback.

“I've got something I want to ask you.”

“Nobody stopping you.”

Silas cleared his throat. “Last fall, after that business at Comb Ridge, you told me you didn't want to get mixed up with the
FBI
because you had a record.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, Taylor brought it up when we were talking the other day. He said you had been arrested for assault three years ago.”

“Listen,” Hayduke said, stopping so quickly that Silas nearly ran into him on the narrow trail. “I got into in a bar fight with some dudes. I busted up a guy's jaw, maybe used a chair on another asshole. It was a bar fight, that's all. I got charged, pled to simple assault, and served ninety days. I got a temper. Like I told you, a couple of tours in Bush War II will give a guy a penchant for violence. I blame the system.”

Silas just nodded. “The
FBI
was asking why you and I keep running into each other, that's all.”

“Tell them it's because I'm following you around the desert, watching your every move, and when it looks like you're going to get yourself killed, I step in and save your skinny ass.” Hayduke's furrowed brow slackened and he grinned a broad, toothy smile through the mats in his beard. “I'm just shitting you, lighten up. I'm helping you find out what happened to Pen. Tell 'em that the two of us have done more to help figure out what happened to her than
they
ever did. They can go fuck themselves if they don't like it.”

“I'll try that out and see how it works.”

“Alright, good. Now let's hump these packs down to the river. I think I stashed a six-pack in mine, and if you stop busting my ass about my jacket, I might share with you.” Silas nodded and the two of them descended through the ancient rock to the Colorado River, which rushed between the gargoyle-like rocks at the basement of time.

THEY CROSSED THE COLORADO RIVER
on the Bright Angel Suspension Bridge, the water coursing below them. The river was the color of tomato soup and looked nearly as thick. It surged between the gray-black walls of the Inner Gorge; the light that reflected off the polished stone was sharp and elemental. Silas, who never wore sunglasses when he hiked for fear of missing some evidence of Penelope's passing, pulled his hat down low on his brow. The temperature five thousand feet below the South Rim was nearly one hundred degrees. Sweat poured from Silas's face and soaked his shirt. He felt the heat from his pack burning his back. Just across the bridge, on a wide sandy wash formed by Bright Angel Creek, cottonwoods promised shade.

“Do you see the boat party?” Silas asked Hayduke, who seemed impervious to the searing heat.

“Not yet. The boat beach isn't visible from here. It's up around the bend where the South Kaibab Suspension Bridge crosses the river. Let's go and set up camp and wait for the party there. We'll see them from the campground.”

“You've been here before?”

“Sure, lots. Hell, I did a trip down the Colorado once. Oar-powered, of course.”

“You didn't tell me that.”

“Yeah, it was years ago. Five, six. I can't remember. It was great!”

“Penelope did a trip—”

“That's where we met.”

Silas felt like he had been hit with a brick. He grabbed the railing of the suspension bridge and closed his eyes. “Why didn't you tell me that?”

“I thought I did. Shit, sorry, man, you okay?”

“I couldn't make that trip.”

“Yeah, I know. Hey, listen, it's alright.”

Silas felt Hayduke step next to him. He felt the man's big hand on his shoulder. “You didn't really miss much. Just a bunch of rapids and shit. Nothing to write home about.”

“Hayduke, is there anything else about your relationship with my wife you haven't told me?”

“You mean, like, were we getting it on? No way. Penny was a one-man woman. She talked about you all the time. Shit, she wouldn't shut up about you. Between saving the Southwest and her
wonderful
Silas,” Hayduke mimicked a woman's voice, “that was all we ever heard about.”

“Who is
we
?” Silas was looking down at the Colorado.

“Me, Pen, sometimes others, like Jane Vaughn and Darcy McFarland. There were lots of people who were interested in helping set this river free and protecting the places that Ed Abbey loved.”

“When we get topside again, we're going to sit down and go through Penelope's journal and I want you to tell me all the people who worked on this stuff with her, what the status of all the work was, and who you were up against.”

“Sure. That's no problem. Fuck, I can tell you who we were up against: the whole fucking United States Senate. Shit, that motherfucker C. Thorn Smith had the entire Republican majority of the Senate against us. The House too. And then, let's see, there was just about every oil, gas, fracking, logging, mining, and hydro power company in the continental United States to contend with. The list is pretty fucking long.”

“We're going to make that list,” said Silas. “I want to know everything, Hayduke. Alright?”

“Shit yeah, but listen, we need to get out of the sun. You don't look so good. Let's get to the ranch. You can sit in the creek there. Cool your jets and what have you. We can't ambush Love and Hinkley and their cronies if you're puking from sunstroke, can we?”

IT WAS LATE
in the afternoon. Hayduke was nearby, but Silas had put the young man out of his head for the time being. The revelation that Hayduke and Penelope had met on a trip down the Colorado brought bile into Silas's throat. Once again, Silas realized how much of his wife's life he had missed, how much he had chosen to ignore. He had opted out and now he was paying the ultimate price: she was gone, and he was dealing with a young man who seemed to know her better than he did.

“I see them.” Silas heard a voice close by. “They are coming up the trail.”

Silas looked at this watch. It was five-thirty. Hayduke was perched atop a rock along the creek, his binoculars clutched in his massive hands.

“I see Love leading the way, and I got Chas Hinkley, all decked out in his superintendent's uniform right behind him. Then—oh, this is rich! Then we have Joan Crocket, the Republican Congresswoman for Arizona's First Congressional District, which includes Grand Canyon. I don't recognize any of these others, but it looks like there's maybe eight other guests and that bunch of boatmen humping gear. Shit, that chick is hot.”

“Are they heading to the ranch?”

“Yeah. You want to brace them now?”

“No, let them get settled in. We'll go and have a chat later on.”

“Suit yourself. I've got to check on something in the meantime.”

“Hayduke?”

“Yeah?”