Because of the dust, Harry kept his equipment tightly wrapped. In the morning he went off by himself and unpacked everything and lined up the items on burlap shrouds, as neatly as if they decorated the mantel of a fireplace. He couldn’t help his smiles as he admired one piece after the other. He picked up a log book, bound and sealed in metal. On sale for two years now, the price stair-stepping downward every few months. No one had ever come close to buying it—still too expensive; also big and heavy. The prospectors liked their pocket-sized notebooks and didn’t listen to Harry when he explained how easily lost or destroyed such a flimsy tidbit could find itself. History, Harry said, slapping the metal binding. Brain cooked by the sun, a prospector was not likely to understand the lofty notion of history, a record of something beyond today and tomorrow. They were as a group pretty foggy about concepts. Protection, Harry said, slapping it hard. Protection against all forms of destruction. His final argument. But neither did they believe they’d need something indestructible. It was like buying fire insurance on your house. Who was going to believe your own house up in flames?
So now the log book was his. He checked around for a pen to write his name inside. Voices called him to breakfast. “Harry!” “Harry!” Every voice took a turn, each one a different note. There was that song again, the one Harry could never finish. He dawdled, just so the voices would call again and clarify the tune. He began to tremble, admiring his lineup of supplies and listening to the singing. He was trembling, he realized, with joy. Soon he would be a partner with Jo in this operation, and soon he and Timothy would be working the old copper mine. He’d be sole owner of that but who knew, perhaps Jo would decide to come aboard. If they got married, she’d be a partner by default.
“Harry.” It was Jean, standing beside him.
“Oh,” he said.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Didn’t you hear us calling?”
“I was just . . . listening.”
“Listening to us call you over and over again.” Jean made the question into a statement that called Harry himself into question. “We’re having breakfast.”
“I know.”
“Don’t not eat,” she said. “Don’t even think about it. Don’t make me worry about you because I don’t want to have to worry about you.”
“I’m eating,” Harry said. “And don’t worry about me. I’m eating a lot.” In fact, Harry had awakened with the sensation that beset other folks on a daily basis. He was hungry, exceptionally hungry. Starving for any burned morsel that Timothy might tong out of the fire.
“Come on, Harry.”
“Coming.” He wrapped the Mineralight in its satchel, left the other stuff out. He gave Jean a comradely hug as they walked back. The hug surprised even him. Jean pulled back and tugged his forearms until she got his proper attention. She stared up at him. She didn’t say anything. “What?” he asked.
“Are you going to make me say it?”
“What?” he asked.
“Oh God, it hurts my neck to look at you. Harry . . .”
Her eyes were that turquoise, a color that craved more blue or craved more green, and not getting either shone all the brighter. He would never forget those eyes. And why had he suddenly thought that? They were going to be working together, after all. He’d be seeing those eyes again and again.
“What?” he asked. “What’s wrong?” Some kind of menace pricked at his neck and his hairs stood on end.
“Harry, you know we can’t stay.”
“But we’ve found it.”
“And that’s nice. But we have to go back, the children and me.”
“For how long?” Harry asked.
“At least for the summer.”
“Well, okay. That’s all right. The kids need a break. And then you can come back.”
“And then there’s school, Harry.”
Harry fought against the strange foreboding. “You can still . . . You’ll still be a part of it. You can come back and check up on things. I’ll keep things going. I will. I’ll keep it going. And Jo and I will let you know and then maybe Charlie can come back out now and again.”
“Okay, Harry, keep it going for us.” Her tone was dismal, but her eyes were lit up, that irradiated color in search of a base. Harry didn’t believe a word she said. They’d stay. This was just the doomsday style she tried on each morning. By afternoon she’d change her mind. In the last couple of days she had looked better than ever, younger and more eager. And if she did take a break, the desert would send her home a person renewed, and it wouldn’t be long before she realized she needed to be back here. Harry loved the desert, how its harsh challenges stripped you down to the essential decisions. He never wanted to leave it, and now he wouldn’t have to. She’d find out; it would just take her longer, being from Ohio.
For breakfast Timothy served black toast topped with canned meat and bubbling slices of cheese. Harry beheld the black and crusty and fatty gob in his hands and began to rethink this hunger business, but his gushing good cheer needed to be filled with something so it might as well be food. Aside from this, his new responsibility toward the others would have forced any meal, defective or not, down his throat. Although Flaherty came across as their leader, Harry knew that in a crisis it would come down to him. He looked at Flaherty sitting in his camp chair. The legs that poked out of him were the type of sticks that wouldn’t ever take on any bark. Everything had gone to his stomach and whatever was happening in there was pumping more redness and sweat into his already flushed, perspiring face. If he died today, it would be a tragedy but not a surprise.
Over coffee, Vincent Flaherty pulled out a pillbox and passed it around. “Salt tablets. Do you a world of good.”
“Thank you, sir,” Timothy said.
Harry was squatted down on his tiptoes. He couldn’t squat the way the kids could. Down low on flat feet, rear ends not an inch from the ground, Charlie and Beth were both balanced sturdy as plywood boxes. Harry dipped a tea bag into a cup he held between his knees. The cup handle was so hot he had to hold it with a bandana. Normally he’d be sneaking glances at Jo, thinking up ways for them to be thrown together. Now he was content to keep his distance, knowing they were partners. Freed from the pressure to force each moment into a headline-grabbing event featuring another of Harry’s Superior Merits! he could relax and let time rally to his aid, the slow crescent of days, his virtues and dependable disposition incrementally revealed. Harry wasn’t a wow person. It took more than one second to get to know him. That wasn’t a bad thing.
“Who’s that?” Beth asked.
Squatting on his tiptoes, Harry swiveled and lost his balance. His arm shot out, the cup of tea held up like a toast.
“Celebrating my arrival, I see.” He strolled right into their camp circle. Just as Harry was thanking the slow tick of the hour hand, here came Jimmy Splendid, a wow person if there ever was one, and in one second he had taken command.
“Creeping up on us like a mountain lion,” Flaherty said.
Trailing behind Jimmy was Leonard Dawson.
“I don’t get a hello?” Jimmy asked.
The stunned women were silent.
“I’ll have some more coffee,” Flaherty said to Timothy. “And then, Jimmy, you can explain to us poor dumb folks here what in the world you’re doing in our camp. Uninvited. You know the rules, Jimmy.”
“And you don’t. Reason I’m here.”
Leonard Dawson scraped forward. “Hello, Jo.” He reached to fluff her hair, but she turned away.
“Hey! Whoa whoa whoa.” Flaherty shot up his hand. “You talk to her later. Let’s not get into the niceties without a little information first about the not-so-niceties. Not so nice of you to pull an ambush on us.”
“How are you?” Dawson asked Jo.
“Hey! Did you hear me?” Flaherty made an attempt to get out of his chair by himself, then plopped back.
“I’m talking to my wife.”
“Shut up,” Jimmy told Dawson.
“I can talk to my wife!”
“You’re married to her. You can talk to her the rest of your life.”
“Explain yourself, Jimmy,” Vince said.
Jimmy said, “Vince, everyone knows what’s going on. Belinda told me, of course, but I knew. I’m not meaning to ambush you. Just the opposite. Thought I could help is all. Came up to the ladies’ campsite and this man here, Mrs. Dawson’s husband, he showed me the map and we followed it.” He tipped his hat to Jean. “Hello.”
In Dawson’s hand was Charlie’s map panel. “Here,” Dawson said, handing it to Jo. Jo didn’t look up. He tapped her head with it, then tapped again.
“It’s not mine,” Jo said to the dirt. But Leonard Dawson rapped her again with the map.
“It’s Charlie’s, you know it’s Charlie’s!” Harry grabbed the cardboard panel from Dawson. He held the map behind his back so no one would notice his shaking hands. The blood in his shoulders and arms was writhing insanely and his throat thickened with a heavy fullness. He wondered if he was having a heart attack. He couldn’t sense his heartbeat at all, yet everything in his chest was filling up.
Flaherty said, “You’re getting real close to doing something you shouldn’t be doing, Jimmy.”
“And who would know better about that?”
“You didn’t hear me about the coffee?” Flaherty demanded of Timothy.
“Making more, sir,” Timothy answered. “On the way.”
Jimmy said, “You’ve got servants now, Vince. That’s nice.”
“Turns out Timothy here’s a regular Epicurean of the potables and edibles.”
“I’ll have some coffee, too, thank you,” Jimmy said. He took a seat on a rock.
“Oh, please don’t feel the need to make yourself at home. The uninvited among us are now invited to be on their way.”
“Vince, nobody invited you to jump my claim, yet I’ve broken bread with you on more than one occasion since. I’ll have the coffee,” he said to Timothy, who was hesitating. Jimmy grabbed a cup and shook it out. “Pour.”
Jean said, “Mr. Flaherty, there’s no reason Jimmy can’t have a cup of coffee with us.”
“I usually don’t provide coffee to someone who’s arrived in the very manner of a claim jumper yet refers to me as the claim jumper. My dear, in your part of the country that might not mean much, those words. But here you don’t throw those words around. People have been shot for less.”
“I don’t think he meant it,” Jean said.
“Epithet retracted, coffee proffered.”
“That’s right, keep the distractions coming with all the word games.”
“Simple English language, Jimmy.”
“And so predictable, too,” Jimmy said. “Hot!” Halfway through getting his coffee poured, Jimmy whipped out his bandana for use as an oven mitt. “I come out here and I see it starting: it’s all going according to how I thought it would. Vince comes on board and completely takes over and every single one of you lets him. Do you know what’s next? This has happened before, folks, and it’s not a pretty sight. When Vince gets involved . . . Harry, I’m surprised at you. You know his record. I thought you’d at least look out for these ladies. It’s a good thing I showed up.”
“I’m looking out for them,” Harry said.
Jean jumped in. “Jimmy, that’s not kind of you. There’s really no call to talk to Mr. Flaherty like that.”
“Let him release his venom, my dear,” Vincent Flaherty said. “It’s the only way to calm him down. Then he’ll go back to contentedly sunning himself for a while.”
“That all your equipment back there, Harry?” Jimmy asked.
“Yes,” Harry said.
“Figured,” Jimmy said. “Looks like salesman stuff. Won’t get you too far.”
“It’s gotten me pretty far.”
“You know, Vince,” Jimmy said, shifting away from Harry, “I just knew I’d walk into camp and find you sitting like the king of Sheba, on a chair, no less—your throne, Vince?—while everyone else scampers around you. Did you all know that’s how it works before you signed up with this man?”
“Jimmy, let’s not have a fight,” Jean said. “After all, Mr. Flaherty got us here in his helicopter.”
“He’s good at doing that.”
“Well, yes he was,” Jean agreed. “I don’t know how we could have done it without him.”
“You could have done it with me, that’s how,” Jimmy said.
“You were too busy with Belinda,” Jean said.
“Why exactly are you here?” Harry heard himself speak and hoped he sounded firm.
“Harry, is that you, Harry? Did you say something?”
“Sir, he asked you why you were here.” Timothy was still on his knees, fiddling with coffee-making. His voice was unperturbed.
Jimmy didn’t answer, but he couldn’t ignore Timothy either. All the things that were dirty and scruffed up about Timothy served to repulse women but somehow earned a man’s respect. Jimmy’s silence to Timothy’s question was a thrown spear, landing at their feet.
Flaherty picked up his cigar pouch and took his time looking for a cigar and lighting it up. He didn’t do it with his usual flair, however.
“Why am I here?” Jimmy asked. But his delay had sent more warning prickles swarming over Harry’s body. “I’m here to save you, literally and financially. Don’t laugh, Vince.”
“No laughs here,” Flaherty said.
“Because he likes to laugh and tell jokes to get you distracted.”
“No laughing, no jokes,” Flaherty said, taking a puff of his cigar.
Dawson was the only one not paying attention to Jimmy. He was looking straight at Jo, straight at her profile as she tried not to acknowledge him.
Jimmy reached for Jean’s elbow. He drew her toward him until she acknowledged his gaze. “Did you bother to ask him his record before you decided to throw in with him? You didn’t ask, did you? Because it had nothing to do with him. I wish you would have talked to me. That wasn’t really fair, was it?”
“Maybe not,” Jean said, not pulling away from his grip.
“So to spite me for some reason I’m not clear on, you made a deal with the devil.”
Jean sputtered a false start.
“Say what you want,” Flaherty said. “A devil? I’m flattered. Just don’t call me a claim jumper.”
Jimmy pulled Jean aside so he could face Flaherty straight on. “That’s what you are.”
“Little help, Timothy,” Flaherty commanded, reaching out from his chair. With a single yank Timothy blasted Flaherty into the air and he was propelled against Jimmy’s chest. Coffee surged from both cups as they bumped apart. The coffee took flight as a brown pair of wings. “What did you say? Come again, Jimmy?”
“I said, and I’m saying, you jumped my claims.”
“You staked on withdrawn lands,” Flaherty said.
“And you jumped the claims I’d already made.”
“That’s okay,” Jean said. “We don’t need to argue about this. Ancient history.” Her hands gripped Flaherty’s shoulders and pulled him away.
“On withdrawn lands,” Flaherty said, stumbling back. “I staked after the withdrawn status was cancelled by the government of the United States of America. Those are the laws I happen to obey, not the laws made by the United States of Jimmy Splendid.”
“And you jumped my claims.”
“The government canceled the withdrawn status and then I staked my claims. As I had a legal right to.”
“You staked your claims over my claims.”
“You had no claims. For God’s sake, Jimmy, get it through that wooden noggin. You had no claims!”
“It was unethical.”
“It was entirely perfectly legal.”
“It was entirely perfectly immoral,” Jimmy said. “You jumped my claims.”
“I didn’t jump anybody’s claims!” Flaherty took his cigar and stepped forward and stabbed it into Jimmy’s shoulder. Jimmy slapped the cigar away. Flaherty fell back against Jean and they both plunged to the ground.
Jimmy showed no reaction, either to his smoldering vest or to Flaherty on the ground. Jean quickly pulled her dress down over her thighs and stood up and waved Harry away. “I’m fine,” she said, brushing herself decent. He and Timothy rolled Flaherty over to his side and wedged him up that way.
Settled in his chair, Flaherty was silent. Jean handed him a glass of water and he sat with it on his lap. Harry began to get worried, not for what Flaherty said but for what he wasn’t saying at all. His face, almost always an apple in shape and color, had lost all tone, and the bursting plumpness divulged a slight but discernible hollowing in the cheeks. Most alarming, he did not address Jean with concern for her own well-being or with a grand merci for the water.
“Where do you keep your nitroglycerin pills?” Harry asked.
Flaherty gulped in a clenched inhale. His hand dropped to the cigar pouch by his chair. In the cloth pouch, the cigars were shoved in loose, some of them crumbling. Buried in the crumbs of tobacco were tiny white pills. When Harry picked out a pill, a pinch of tobacco came with it. Flaherty deposited the wad under his tongue.
“Mr. Flaherty,” Jean said.
Flaherty held up a finger.
“Are you in pain?” Jean asked.
Tears of sweat ran down Flaherty’s cheeks and dropped off his chin.
“Let me explain the situation to the ladies,” Jimmy continued.
“Not now, Jimmy,” Jean said. “No more fighting. No one meant to cheat anyone before. No one’s cheating anyone now. There’s enough uranium for everyone.”
“So you’ve determined that?”
“I believe with all my heart that Mr. Flaherty did not mean to cheat you.”
“All right,” Jimmy said. “I’ll accept that. You say there’s enough uranium for everyone?”
“There’s plenty,” Jean said with disgust.
“Do you personally know that?”
“Yes, we do,” Jo piped up.
Jimmy said, “I guess convincing yourselves is about the only thing left to do in the desert.”
No one answered.
“What makes you so sure?”
“We took some readings,” Jo said, sounding very professional.
“Okay,” Jimmy said.
“We ran a probe right down through that there pinnacle,” Timothy said.
“Dare I ask how you did that?”
“Helicopter.”
“Criminy,” Jimmy whistled. “Well, what are you going to do now?”
“We’ll proceed,” Harry said.
Jimmy said, “Next step’s core samples, it seems to me. Right, Vince?”
Flaherty didn’t answer.
Jimmy continued: “Vince doesn’t have a mining camp, see? Doesn’t have one. The equipment you’re going to need for core samples? Where’s he going to get it? Right down the road, all the equipment you’re ever going to need. From me.” He paused to let it sink in. “Jean. Why didn’t you just ask?”
“I told you. You were so busy with Miss Dazzle I didn’t have a chance.”
“Okay.” Jimmy stretched back and worked his jaw muscles. “All right. I thought it might be something like that.”
“Let’s not have this conversation now.” Jean went back to Flaherty, her fingers stroking his temple.
“Later then.”
Flaherty prodded at his face with a bandana. He covered his eyes and blew out a whispered ten count.
“Right, Vince? You don’t have the equipment for core samples, right?”
“Jimmy, wait! Better?” Jean asked, kneeling beside Flaherty.
Flaherty counted up to twenty before huffing out a “Thank you, my dear.”
“Ssh. Enough, Jimmy,” Jean said. “We all get it. You have the equipment and we don’t.”
“I can get the equipment here tomorrow or the next day.”
“Fine!” Jean said.
“Did you hear that!” Dawson whispered to Jo, pulling her into him.
Jimmy said, “Unless I hear no from you, Vince, I’m going to assume everyone agrees. Vince?”
“Mr. Flaherty?” Jean took the bandana from him and wiped at the rivers of sweat. “How are you feeling?”
In a clenched voice Flaherty said, “Once I get up to two hundred and fifty, I’m okay.” He ground out his breaths in rhythmic pants.
“Where are you now?” Jimmy asked.
“Hunru.” Pant. “Thir-sev.”
“He’ll never make it,” Jimmy said.
Harry and Charlie showed Jimmy where the petrified wood was found. “Holy moly,” Jimmy said. Jimmy’s body was jammed into the entrance and at this point it was one and the same to go forward or retreat. “I think I’m stuck.”
Harry hadn’t considered this possibility as he slipped inside. He was taller than Jimmy, but that didn’t mean bigger. The entrance crevice, spacious for legs and hips and head, bowed outward in line with Jimmy’s barrel chest. The rock’s smooth surface had ushered Jimmy into a vice grip. “Just two more steps,” Harry encouraged.
“Don’t lie to me, Harry.” Jimmy’s voice held a little concern. He sucked in his breath, grunted. He panted, expelled his breath, then grunted again.
“It widens out here,” Harry assured him. He waited for a glimpse of a wedged body part.
“It’s pitch black, Harry. I can’t see a thing. Shine your flashlight in here.”
“You’ve got the flashlight,” Harry said. “Just one more step. Then you’ll be able to see perfectly.”
Harry stood in the shaft. It was good-sized, and it opened to the sky way above them. A ladder of sunlight shot down so hard that Harry could almost believe its sharp outline was climbable.
Jimmy’s arm freed itself and lashed blindly in the air. Harry grabbed on and pulled in rhythm with Jimmy’s convulsive exhales. Jimmy disgorged into the shaft with a volcanic wheeze. “Criminy,” he whispered, wiping himself off.
Next came Charlie, quick as a lizard.
A couple of culprits hadn’t helped matters any, Jimmy told them, slipping off his vest. From one chest pocket he tugged out a cigarette lighter and case; from the other pocket a small but thick log book. Made his big chest just that much bigger. A bullet hole from Flaherty’s cigar had singed through the vest. Harry checked Jimmy’s shirt and there was a hole through there as well. Though he had showed no reaction, Jimmy must have gotten burned.
Jimmy aimed his flashlight into the high recesses of rock. The walls were just as in Harry’s daydream, streaked with such a rich black they might have been leaking pitch. It threw Harry back in time. This was how you used to search. Nowadays all the new equipment did your searching for you, probing through stuff your naked eye would otherwise walk away from. Things had gotten so modernized since the uranium rush started, you forgot canyon walls like this still existed.
“We’re not looking at carnotite,” Harry said.
“No, we’re not.”
“You’re running a carnotite mine over yonder, aren’t you?”
Jimmy didn’t answer.
“I’d say we’re looking at pitchblende or vanadium.”
Jimmy said, not kindly, “How would you know, Harry?” He kicked through the shaft to its false end.
“There’s a hanging garden behind that.”
Jimmy stared up at the fissured shelf of rock. “Do I see petrified wood?”
“That’s where Beth got it from.”
“Who’s Beth?”
“Charlie’s sister.”
“Right.” Jimmy glanced down at Charlie.
“And there’s more behind this,” Harry said.
“I’ve squeezed through enough for one day. We’ll have to blast an opening in here just to get ore samples. What do you think of that, Charlie?”
“Yeah, okay,” Charlie said.
“You mind if we blow up this place a little bit?”
Harry didn’t treat Charlie like that, asking dumb questions, paying him this phony kind of respect. “That all right with you if we do some blasting?” Jimmy repeated. Charlie shrugged and moved away, straight into the ladder of sunlight and Harry had that sensation again that someone, Charlie this time, could grab hold of the light and climb up.
“There’s a little hanging garden getup behind that rock at the end,” Harry said.
“You told me already, Harry. I’ll take a look after I blast a bigger doorway. As it stands now, I’m wondering if I’m gonna be able to get out of here.” Charlie took Jimmy’s vest for him and slithered back outside. Jimmy prepared himself with several exhales, deflating his chest as much as possible, then sidestepped into the crack as Harry guided him into the best position. Jimmy fled into the blackness—as if speed could boost him out of there. Harry heard him run out of breath and start gulping.
“All right?” Harry asked.
No answer. Several moments later, “Okay, Harry, come on through.”
Jimmy seemed satisfied enough with what he had seen to start staking claims with Harry and Timothy. Charlie tagged along. Each time Jimmy spoke to Charlie, saying something like When my men get here, Charlie, you’re going to have to set them straight, Harry hoarded another misreading of this boy Harry prided himself on never underestimating.
Every so often Jimmy lifted his head and barked out, “Dawson!”
A cloud of gnats seemed to be sparking about Harry, poking him with a strange anxiety. The hairs on his neck were erect. Harry swiveled in a circle. Every direction was the same direction with the same landscape and the same simple choices: yes, no, go, come. That was all the desert demanded of a person; that was all it had ever demanded. Nothing had changed. There was nothing wrong. He squinted at the sun— that had changed, however. He was surprised by its stain of pink. The noon sun typically beat with a fierce invisibility, but now it was soaked in the beginnings of color, as if sunset were approaching.
“Dawson!” Then to them: “Is there dinner or anything like that?” Jimmy had grown increasingly irritated.
“Seems kind of early for that,” Timothy said.
“Not when you’ve been working. Dawson!”
Harry picked up his metal log book and logged in another claim, then scribbled out a claim notice and stuck it in one of Timothy’s empty tobacco tins.
“Harry!”
“What?”
“Who’s the cook here?” Jimmy asked. He looked from Harry to Timothy, perusing each of them like an item on a store shelf. And what did that look mean, Harry wondered: that if Jimmy did you the honor of selecting you, you’d jump off the shelf and go cook for him? Why did you start feeling you had to do Jimmy’s bidding? As soon as he showed up, anywhere, in a room or out in the desert, he stood there as the wow man in charge.
“Dawson!”
“Yeah, what,” Dawson said, finally appearing.
“A little help staking claims here!”
“I need to be with my wife,” Dawson said.
“Since when?” Jimmy said.
Dawson ignored him. His neck and ears were filthy, and his hair had been sweated into bare threads. Despite something beaten in his huge slumped shoulders, Dawson exuded a strong scent of pride. Harry had not noticed before that Dawson had no eyelashes. He could see how it was when Dawson had met Jo, scrubbed up clean for a first date (he would hope so!), hair shampooed into thickness, and then those naked eyes calling out with a newborn’s plea for love and protection. Jo: too soft to resist.
“You can still work,” Jimmy ordered.
Dawson turned his back on Jimmy and left.
“Is that man as lazy as he seems?” Jimmy spat out the dust in his mouth and drank from his canteen.
Jean climbed up to them. Still hadn’t bought herself a pair of boots. She was wearing dress shoes but lower-heeled than the cocktail-party ones Harry had found her in.
“Lunch is here.” Jimmy sighed and straightened up expectantly.
Harry squinted at the sun again and saw that it was taking on a deeper blush. He scratched at his neck. Jean told Charlie it was time to get back. Jimmy pulled off his hat and swiped the bandana from this back pocket and cleaned his face. Jimmy didn’t have any idea what Jean was really meaning. Harry hoarded this secret, too.
As Jean turned and headed back, Jimmy said, “Excuse me, Jean, I thought you were calling us for lunch.”
“Lunch? We brought stuff to make sandwiches,” she said. “Do you like peanut butter and jelly? Didn’t you tell him we had stuff, Harry?”
“Didn’t know you did,” Harry said.
“Do you have anything else on the menu?” Jimmy asked.
“Cheese,” Jean said. “Spam. Mustard.”
“Anything hot?”
Jean looked stumped. Timothy said, “I can make you coffee, ma’am.”
“Coffee,” she said to Jimmy.
Jimmy smiled. He had an infectious smile whenever he decided to try it out. Harry supposed he was the type women found irresistible although the block shape of Jimmy’s face and body reminded Harry of a totem pole painted with a white man’s face. Jimmy was smiling now with his white teeth, his eyes fastened on Jean, who was clearly sidetracked by Charlie. Harry thought, looking at the perplexed mother, Well, you’re the only person on earth to get a smile from Jimmy Splendid upon not delivering the goods he demands. He’d like to see Jimmy give anyone else that smile when they said no to him.
He and Timothy continued with the staking after Jimmy left them. Timothy, who had been silent with Jimmy around, started up talking again, about Vincent Flaherty’s nautical abilities, about Vernon Rutledge’s nautical abilities, about how nice Mrs. Dawson looked, about how it seemed to him though he was no expert on the matter, that she was dressing up especially for Harry. Timothy was likely the only other person who had not experienced the mysterious tides between a man and a woman, how they can hate each other and hate each other and hate each other and crash and hate each other and choke and drown and come up for more. Harry’s fitting company in ignorance about love was someone who thought ships and planes were interchangeable, who still had a clothespin dangling from his ear, even though at this point it was an entirely optional part of his wardrobe, and who ate the stubs of his rolled cigarettes rather than pollute the ground.
“Where’s that coffee!” came a distant shout.
“Looks like I better get water boiling,” Timothy said and left.
Harry lay down on the slickrock. It was cool in the right places and warm in the right places, and lumpy and concave just where his sore muscles needed it. He was in two kinds of pain, his back and his heart. The slickrock helped his back. It did nothing for his heart.
He found he could keep his eyes open. The sun’s color had dulled it to viewable. He stared at it without seeming to know what it was: the sky’s heart, beating red. The sky was leaking blood and the throbbing sun sucked it up. He could detect the sun swelling, then contracting. He sat up. Something quickened his blood.
Rock surrounded him. In the distance were the cliff alcoves with their ancient granaries of ancient people. At every compass point was a battleground of turrets and domes and geological disasters now resting as boulders. The same landscape. The same landscape as always. The desert’s simple message: Make your choice, Harry, yes, no, go, stay.
Except this time. A menaced buzzing brushed near him. The message was different.
It said: Leave.
He bolted up and found himself twirling like an idiot, feverishly glancing about for a presence.
Some water from a canteen, a bite from the jerky he now kept in his pocket. The electricity shivering down his spine lessened.
Time to rejoin the others.
The red sun was lurid as a sunset as he climbed down. His mother had always said that sunset was the best time to think. It was the time of day that encouraged reflection: about this particular day that was ending, or this particular evening that was coming on, or about all your days in general. And then she’d add, wiping her hands on her apron and sitting with him for a moment on the back porch, but I’m too tired to have any thoughts. What about you, Harry, what are you thinking? And Harry was forever afraid to tell her because all his thoughts were about escaping.
In the nearly six years that he had been trundling from one mining camp to another, Harry had sold every kind of instrument and machine piece dedicated to finding an ingredient coveted by the United States government without much conviction about where it all would lead. He knew he was doing something his country encouraged, and that gave him a vague sense of himself as a patriot. Vague because he himself was vague and he had to stop being that.
The sun’s red ball was beautiful. Naturally it was beautiful. There was nothing out here that wasn’t gorgeous. And now what were his thoughts as he sat on the desert’s back porch? What was he thinking? His mother was the only one who had asked that question of him. She had never lied to him, not intentionally, but the covetous, ravenous interest of a parent was itself the lie. She was once one of those too-young mothers he had seen at the Mormon camp, and she had turned to Harry, a son, to make her life right. And what had he done? Nothing. He hadn’t entered into a celestial marriage. He hadn’t entered into any marriage at all. He had sold supplies.