The Dog Stars (21 page)

Before I augured in the three stakes and tied her down facing into her takeoff, before I put two of Bangley’s Eggs of Death in the pockets of my jacket, and slung the AR over my shoulder and walked away from the Beast, I did the first not dumb thing all morning. I took out the jugs and using the strut climbed over the wings and poured one each, the last fuel in each wing tank. Fuel up now. Better to fuel up before you get your undies in a bundle. And I took the key. Put it in my right jeans pocket and said Hig. The key is in the right jeans pocket.

Never know how much of a hurry you might be in later.

III

Well she was not nude waiting for me by the creek, not even dressed out in the grass in front of the house singing, she was nowhere. Need not have tied myself to any mast. The smoke that had leaked from the chimney and billowed downcanyon was gone.

Place looked suddenly dead. Bucket kicked over in the yard, a dirty cooking spoon beside it. The cattle, a few sheep, were there heads down in the meadow all facing downstream. Ribbed thin, sharp hips, nearly starving. One big bird high up on the high wall gyring along the rock face. A peregrine. The ledge marked with a white ribbon of guano must be her nest. Circle out, circle back. Pity the ducks that angled down into this hole. No chickens. That occurred to me. Because of the falcon? No, the old coot had a shotgun. Because they would need a rooster then, or two, to maintain the flock—probably too loud every morning if you want to stay hidden, like letting the whole damn country know you’re here. Smart.

I turned the scope upcanyon to where the creek spilled over the wall in a twenty foot falls. The top of the hole completely boxed off by this cliff. And two sides soaring. Pretty neat spot. A length of dead pine was propped against the rock beside the waterfall, limbs stubbed in a crude ladder. Okay. If they went that way in flight they didn’t pull up and hide the ladder, maybe only because it was too heavy or they didn’t have time.

I was lying at the very rim, scrunched between two rocks looking straight down. Here my cliff was about a hundred feet high, maybe less. I was wedged tight and had to slide the holstered Glock around to my back so it wouldn’t scrape.

Think like Bangley. That’s what you need to do. Bangley’s voice, I can hear it:

Goddamn, Hig. Old man and a scrawny girl got you all in a bundle. So far you got more firepower on your right hip than he’s got by a factor of ten
.

Yeah but what if there’s more of them? Or if he’s got more than the shotgun?

You see any sign of more? Stools in the yard, clothes hanging, bedding, old shoes?

Huh.

Good you’re thinking like that, Hig, can’t take that away. Ticking off the exigencies. Hig is an old dog but he learns shit little by little. But you gotta look at the intel staring you in the face. I’m not saying there aren’t three more guys with weapons hidden in the trees. Good to plan for that, too. But you gotta act on what you believe. Plus you also got the rifle, you got the grenades. You got the grenades, right?

Yeah, two.

Hig?

Yeah?

What are you doing here?

Silence.

I mean what do you want? What the fuck do you want?

Silence.

You can’t form a plan unless you got a mission. You can’t have a mission if you don’t know what the fuck you want. First rule. Have a clear mission, have an exit strategy
.

I thought the first rule was Never Negotiate.
Negotiate, Hig, and you are negotiating your own life …

That’s the first principle. Anyway what the fuck does it matter? You got a bigger problem to solve first. Which is: What the fuck, Hig, do you hope to accomplish?

The canyon darkened and I shivered. A cloud, a swollen cumulus tugged its shadow across the cut. Bearing away the last chill of a long winter. The shadow smelled like ponderosas. It passed over and the sun on the arms of my jacket smoothed out the goosebumps. It was comfortable snugged like this in the rocks. I could hear the buzz of a deerfly but it didn’t bother me. In the moment I realized I could lay my head on my suntoasted arms and go to sleep no problem. My nose was inches from the ground. I watched an ant climb the stem of a small purple aster. Smelled good here. Like flinty dirt and new grass, mesquite.

Hig!

Uh, yeah. What?

Focus, goddammit. Get your dick outta your hand. Every minute you are lying out here not knowing what the fuck you are up to, you are vulnerable. So is the plane. Whoever was down there may be working their way to the rim to scout your sorry ass. Planning right now how to neutralize the threat that is Hig. What we would be doing and fast. Stead of just lying down there vulnerable, exposed, the way you are doing right now
.

Huh.

Fuck. Hadn’t thought of that. I blew out, nearly whistled. What is up with you? Are you completely out of it? Have you so totally lost your edge?

Did you ever have an edge?

Hig!

Uh what?

Know why you are sleepy? Why suddenly you could just stretch out and snooze til sundown?

Why?

Because you don’t know what the fuck to do! I don’t mean you wouldn’t know what to do if you had a purpose. I’ve seen you, Hig. When you have a purpose like getting away from nine marauding motherfuckers and dusting their ass you’re pretty goddamn good. Hig on wheels. But you don’t have a clue what you’re doing here. You’re acting like a goddamn lost puppy. One look at a tall girl who maybe doesn’t have the sickness and you’re goddamn gaga
.

That’s not it.

Why’d you risk the plane then? I saw that little maneuver. Pretty fucking dicey. Risk everything for a closer look at a crack. What if she hates men? Ever think of that?

Bad enough to risk it all for Something Known is what you’re saying.

Then I thought: We’re more likely to risk it all for something unknown. For some perverse reason.

I told you, Hig: Get all philosophical in a tactical situation and you’re toast
.

Toast.

That sounded good. Two pieces of lightly browned toast with butter and jam. Hadn’t had butter in nine years hadn’t had milk. I bet those cows gave sweet warm milk every day. One or two. I shifted the scope down into the meadow to scan for a swollen udder and I saw them. Pure dumb luck. He must have had at least two guns, which made sense to have a hunting rifle as well as a shotgun, because this was the flashing glint off his scope. A bare instant. Enough to let me place him in a thicket of cattails, at the edge of the creek, on the meadow side, away from the house. A large sandstone block about the size of a car had tumbled there and he was hard against it. Right where I would’ve sat. Same basic strategy as we used at the airport: the house would be the draw. He sat where he, or they, could sight the open ground between the creek and the little stone house. All of that within shotgun range. Could take care of most passing threats with the two shots from the double barrel. And he, they, had the rifle too for long shots, or for after. They. Once I placed him I could just see the barrel
of his rifle, darker, straighter than the reeds, and I could see her shift a mass of dark hair. She had the other gun. Shotgun. And he was not looking across the yard he was sighting straight up at me. Fuck.

The blast blew chips of sandstone from my snug rock all over the right side of my face. I jerked back. The second twanged in air just over my head. Fuck.

Blinked. Stone dust in my eyes. Right side of my face now stinging too. Hand to temple. No blood this time. Fucking Gramps. That’s twice. Old bastard had my head bracketed. If I wasn’t more goddamn careful the next shot would be dead center.

I could hear Bangley laughing. As if he were three feet away. Laughing out of the ether, like a not totally benign ghost.

Pickle, huh Hig? A quandary. All you want to do is make friends and now you might have to shoot somebody
. Laughter loud and long.

Had a point, old Bangley, my tactical superego. The old bastard down below was a wicked good shot. Like professional good, like Bangley. He had nearly taken me out with a shotgun, like the Beast and I were just one big blue winged teal. Pretty good.

Why was I so giddy? Somehow the pickle I was in made me very glad. I mean, it wasn’t a pickle. I could walk away. But. I had an image of a white rag tied at the end of a stick stuck over the edge of that cliff. Waving it like some Hollywood cliché. No one ever tried that with us back at the airport because A) it was always night, and B) we, mostly Bangley, shot them dead before they knew what was happening. If someone had tried that back there, then
what? Never negotiate. Bangley would have gained maximum tactical advantage, called to them,
Okay come out in peace
and then he would’ve blown their heads off. Good old Bangley.

Yup, that was going to take some depth of faith and trust and even then it was a flip of a coin, and plus I didn’t have anything white.

I scrambled back a bit, stood up, stretched. Refreshed almost like I’d had a nap. Then I trotted back to the Beast. I kept a stack of Xerox paper in the back seat pocket and a couple of crayons. Also a few palm sized stones and rubber bands. This so if I needed to drop a note mostly to the families I could. But a couple of times I dropped notes on wanderers camped out on the roads too close to the airport who didn’t seem to understand my catchy NorthSouthEastWest song:
Turn back north or die etc
. Nor a stick of dynamite. These messages, the ones wrapped around the stones and dropped from the Beast, were very succinct and graphic and they always worked. Power of the pen. I was always very proud of myself when I crafted four lines that got a refractory band of pirates to pack up and scurry back up a road. I picked up half a dozen sheets and a black crayon and gathered up Jasper’s quilt and trotted back across the park.

I was grinning. I could feel it stretching my smarting cheeks. I hunkered back down by the edge of the canyon and wrote on one sheet vertically as big as it would go:
I

The satisfaction of composing. Remembered that Dylan Thomas sometimes would set down one word of a new poem then walk down to the pub and get shitfaced in celebration. For breaking the void of silence.

Well. Let’s see how this goes over before I waste any more sheets.

Crept, wriggled to the edge of the clifftop which for my purposes was auspiciously formed in a real lip, sharp and dropping to a vertical, if not overhanging, face of sandstone. Keeping my precious splintered head well back, I reached out pushed and shook the quilt off the edge, unfurling it like a flag. Made sure the hunter and the flushing pheasant and the dog were right side up from the bottom’s point of view and made sure my fingers did not go past the lip.

Most fun I’d had in years except maybe fishing and I think it’s because it was a lot
like
fishing, except there were people at the other end of this line. Catch and release.

Soon as the quilt reached air another shot. Creased air right over my hands, head.

You hear bullets make the sound they always do in Westerns and war stories and guess what? They do. They make a
phhhht
like someone opening a poisonous can of soda. The Soda of Death. Like a vacuum following itself at the speed of a diving duck. Followed almost simultaneously by a little hum, a musical exclamation point.

Okay shoot at my quilt if you want. I have needle and thread.

Then silence. Quizzical. That’s what it felt like.

Often fishing you can feel right away the spirit of the fish on the other end of the line. That connection. I mean you know right away: is it fierce, scared, experienced, young and dumb, wily, panicked, resigned, confident, mischievous. Any of it in a rapid tugging and zing of line. I often thought of the silence between people in the same way.

I unfurled the quilt and the shot blasted at nearly the same instant and then silence. A puzzled silence. I grinned. I knew Gramps was scoping the blanket, studying the repeating pattern, thinking,
What the fuck?
I knew from that distance with his scope he would be able to make out the scene. I scrabbled the ground for two heavy stones and weighted the top of the quilt and let it hang.