Darren arrived promptly at four-fifteen on Friday. Barbara was watching for him with her backpack ready. Her sleeping bag was strapped to it, and she carried a hooded jacket over her arm, ready for whatever weather the desert had to offer.
“Off to see the wizard,” he said after stowing her things in the back of the truck and they were both belted in.
“I’m afraid part of the trip won’t be a yellow brick road,” she said. “Probably a yellow dust road for the last ten miles or so.”
“We’ll have a breath-holding contest for the last leg,” he said and started to drive.
They didn’t speak again until they were on Highway 126 east of Springfield, beginning the ascent over the Cascades. She loved the mountains all seasons, but especially now when the sumac and poison oak had turned red, and the cottonwood trees glowed like yellow torches here and there, vivid against the fir trees so dark-green they looked black. Now she could spot the giveaway red foliage of the mountain huckleberries and blueberries.
She glanced at Darren and caught his glance toward her. “You were smiling,” he said.
“I like this drive.”
“Me too.”
“How’s Herbert working out?”
He laughed. “Yesterday when I got home he was teaching Todd rope tricks and Carrie was playing Frisbee with Morgan. The cat was sulking on the roof.”
“Who’s Morgan?”
“Hard to tell. Part sheep, not sheep dog, but sheep, all gray-and-black curly hair and shaggy. Part goat, according to Herbert, taking into consideration what the brute eats. Part bloodhound, because of a superkeen nose. Herbert is a remarkable man. First thing he did was put in a security system at my place, wired to a camera and infrared light, and then to a bright light. First the picture, then the scare, he said. He’s wiring the restaurant, too, and caulking their windows, putting in the same hours Carrie does.”
“They’re letting him do that?”
“He said they have to consider the harm a bunch of wild four-year-old kids could do if they wandered in. He mentioned to Lupe and Carlos that one four-year-old and one match could burn down a forest. That sold them. All he wants in return is a lesson making an authentic molé.” He glanced at her again. “He said Lupe makes the best chili relleno burrito he ever ate. Are you sure about his qualifications?”
“I’m not,” she said. “But Bailey is.”
“Good enough, I guess. What we’ll do is head for Redmond, then out past Prineville to John Day. A few miles beyond that there’s a little campground where we’ll haul it in tonight. Primitive campground, but with good water, and even a privy. Tomorrow we’ll be at your ranch by early afternoon. Okay?”
“Sounds good,” she said. “I went fossil hunting with some pals out by John Day once. Have you seen the painted hills there, the petroglyphs?”
“Yes. Todd and I collected fossils one year.”
He was planning a long drive, she knew, and it would be dark when they made camp. But it couldn’t be helped, that’s how distances were out here.
“I’d like to do some of the driving,” she said, fully expecting him to object, thinking of something her father had said a long time ago: don’t get between a boy and his dog, or a man and his truck.
“Okay,” Darren said. “Tomorrow, after we clear the mountains. The truck is a little tricky until you get used to it.”
They went over the pass and headed down the other side to the high plateau of the Oregon desert. The luxuriant growth of the fir forest changed to scattered pine trees, their trunks glowing red in the late sunlight, then juniper trees with a scant understory of sage, and then even the juniper trees yielded and there was only a solitary sage plant here and there, and clumps of tough desert grasses. The plateau stretched as far as she could see until encircling mountains formed a fringe against the sky.
Near Redmond he pulled into a campground. “Break time. I have some sandwiches and a thermos of coffee. It’s going to be a while before we have a real dinner.”
“You don’t think we were followed, do you?”
He shook his head. “I doubt it. I’ll know for sure when we start again.”
They used the bathrooms, ate sandwiches and had coffee, and then he drove on through the campgrounds, to a red lava-rock road and emerged on the highway some miles farther along.
The first time she had gone into Prineville she had been amazed at the sudden, steep downgrade in a land that had appeared perfectly flat. It still was startling to realize how the land fell here, down to a valley with many trees and houses, a river and a reservoir. The eastern sky was showing streaks of cerise and avocado-green against clear blue as they left Prineville. Darkness fell swiftly in the desert she knew, watching the cerulean blue of the sky darken to navy blue, then purple with bands of brilliant colors: red and yellow, a glowing orange, peach. The bands of clouds began to fade and turn black against the deep sky, and finally all merged to darkness.
Headlights appeared now and then, drew near, passed and vanished. No headlights had been visible behind them for a long time.
Darren slowed at the small town of John Day. “Practically there. Ten more miles.”
The camp was as primitive as he had warned, and the temperature had nosedived after the sun went down. They sat huddled near a small fire and ate hamburgers and spicy black beans prepared on a camp stove.
“We’ll stop before dark going back,” Darren said. “I’ll do a little better than this in the way of food.”
“You couldn’t,” she said. “It’s delicious.” Her teeth were chattering.
Darren crawled into the truck and came back with thick, woolen ponchos for both of them. “You might want to put that over your sleeping bag tonight,” he said. “The truck is going to be like a refrigerator by morning.” He put a blackened kettle over the fire to heat water for their dishes.
When they were finished eating she was yawning.
“You get the bench with a foam pad and your sleeping bag,” he said. “I’ll take the pad on the floor. About ready?”
“I’m afraid so. It’s been a long day.”
“That and the desert air and cold night. I’ll get our beds set up.”
The canopy of the truck had been expanded to allow another eight or ten inches of head space, but it was still too low to stand in. He entered, crouching, and she could hear him moving about. When he backed out again, he turned the lantern to low and set it inside. “Whenever you’re ready. I’ll douse the fire and do some housekeeping. Yell when you’re tucked in.”
Inside, she took off her boots and stowed them under the bench, pulled off the poncho and her jacket and tossed them to the foot of the sleeping bag, then wormed her way into the bag and zipped it. “Ready,” she called.
When he turned off the lantern the blackness was intense. She had forgotten how dark the countryside was at night. She could hear him moving about, then his own zipper being pulled up.
“Are you warm enough?” he asked.
“Getting there.” Her feet were like lumps of ice.
When he spoke again it was like hearing a disembodied voice from a void. “I said some things a while back that need a little explaining,” he said. “I called you stubborn without looking at the other side to see that you’re reasonable along with it. Unstoppable, but for a cause. That’s not bad. Arrogant, but you have a right to be. You know what you have to do and let nothing interfere. See? I’ve been thinking about that night.”
“Please, Darren. I’m too tired for this. I don’t want to quarrel with you.”
“No quarrel. What I’m saying is that I was wrong on most counts, except for one. I said you were dangerous, and that one’s right. I think I recognized that the first time I saw you in action.”
“Darren, stop!”
“Not yet. This is about me now, not you. See, well you can’t see, but understand. My life was in order. I had my work at the clinic. My boy was coming to live with me. I had my bridge club and chess buddies. An occasional date. Stable, that was my life. I was content to be in a stable life, and I knew that you threatened it. Except for Todd and the clinic, I was filling in the hours, that’s all. Just filling in the hours.”
She closed her eyes hard, but it was no darker inside her eyelids than with her eyes wide open. She had thought more than once that his was the most seductive voice she had ever heard, that, strangely, the more upset he became, the easier the cadences he uttered, and now his voice was almost musical as he continued.
“And it’s not good enough,” he said. “There’s more to life than just twiddling your thumbs waiting for tomorrow. I asked you once what you were afraid of. I won’t ask it again. Another question instead. Why was it that every time we were together more than a few minutes you got so mad at me?” He became silent for a moment, then said, “Good night, Barbara.”
She was almost rigid in her sleeping bag, staring into darkness until her eyes burned. It was true, she had become angry with him repeatedly and now couldn’t think why. Because he was arrogant? Self-satisfied? Because he knew who he was, he knew who lived under his skin. She realized that it was not a question. She had known so few people who knew that, and she did not count herself as one.
When threatened, the first two instinctive reactions were to flee or to fight, she thought suddenly, and she had chosen to fight. She closed her eyes and drew in a breath. After their first conversation she had thought him a dangerous man, she remembered, and now understood that at an unexamined level, even then, she had sensed that he posed a danger to her, no one else. She didn’t want a new entanglement, a relationship that was certain to end in heartbreak or disillusionment. She knew more than enough about both, and she was through with all that. A relationship with Darren would not be a lighthearted affair, one easily started, easily ended, she also sensed, thinking of Will Thaxton and her dates with him, how easy they had been. How meaningless. Twiddling her thumbs waiting for tomorrow.
“Not now,” she told herself under her breath. She was too tired to think this through. She would think about it tomorrow. But she couldn’t stop her thoughts, and it was a long time before she drifted into sleep.
She awakened smelling coffee and bacon. The poncho was spread over her sleeping bag, and she was warm enough not to want to get up, but the breakfast smells were stronger than the pull of comfort and warmth.
She was lacing her boot when Darren opened the back of the truck. “Good morning. I thought I heard a stirring of life. Breakfast is ready.”
When she stepped outside, frost glistened in the shadow of the truck and the long shadows cast by rocks. He had not made a fire that morning, but the sun was up and it was a beautiful clear day. The frost vanished before they finished the bacon and eggs. He scrubbed the dishes, filled the thermos and the water can, and they were ready to start again.
“I’m feeling pretty useless,” she said climbing into the passenger seat.
“After we reach 395 you can take over the driving for a while,” he said. “We have about a hundred fifty or sixty miles to go.”
“I should show you my map, where the turnoff is.” She drew it from her purse and they studied it together. “It’s the Atherton ranch, about ten miles down that dirt road,” she said, “or else we have to go up to the interstate, then over and back down what looks like a real road. That way is almost fifty miles farther, but might be easier driving.”
“We’ll have a look at the ranch road and decide then. Okay?”
“Yep.”
He started to drive.
The day before they had talked very little, but now Darren began to talk about the different kinds of deserts he had visited, how cruelly this land was being punished by a continuing drought, and the difference between deserts that had given up hope and this land that was waiting.
Everything was dun-colored and dust-covered. Where there was any water seepage, juniper trees struggled for life, but fields that might have grown wheat had been left fallow, waiting for the rain to return. To the right, the Blue Mountains rose, forested where the high altitude caught moisture from drifting clouds that had been wrung nearly dry by the time they got this far inland. To the left, the desert spread out to the Ochoco Mountains, dry and scrub covered.
At U.S. 395, with the highway devoid of traffic for the most part, she drove for a time. She was used to everything automatic, she realized quickly. And, even when uncontested for road space, this truck needed more handling than she would have guessed from the ease with which Darren drove. Empty country, she thought, recalling Frank’s words, hundreds of miles of empty country, with no farm in sight, no buildings, no towns, just the endless high, barren desert and an occasional dirt road that vanished quickly as it twisted and wound around rocks.
The day became warmer, hot in the sunlight, although still cold in shade cast by escarpments and an occasional rocky hill. As the sun climbed higher in a cloudless sky, the shade disappeared. They stopped for lunch several miles before the turnoff, then stopped again to consider the dirt road.
“Passable,” Darren said. “I’ve driven worse roads.”
“It could get worse,” she said.
“Oh, it will. Let’s give it a go.”
The road became much worse as soon as they rounded a big boulder. He slowed down, shifted gears and kept moving forward over rocks and rutted tracks, so badly eroded in places that the road was indistinguishable from the surrounding countryside. Jouncing, lurching, followed by a cloud of dust that caught up with them now and again, they kept going. He slowed to a crawl when they came to a dry streambed, then headed downward and up the other side. The truck tilted, straightened, tilted again as they inched their way over more rocky ground, steadily climbing now. Finally, he came to a stop.
“There it is,” he said.
Below, in a verdant valley, was a ranch house shaded by golden cottonwood trees, several manufactured homes in a cluster beneath another copse, cars and a truck, and a corral with horses grazing.
“Paradise in hell,” Darren said, shifting gears again to begin the descent into the valley.