Day Five

They did not go to town for beers : It’s from a movie you never saw : There’s no bad ideas in brainstorming : The elusive Antilocapra americana : Just ask Bruce : Complex questions usually require complex answers

Byron woke to the sound of peeing. He lay still, waited for it to stop, then listened to the bobbling of the toilet paper roll. Moonlight filled the room, and he wanted to shut the blackout curtains, but he didn’t want anyone to know he was awake. He felt the spot next to him, which was empty. The room’s A/C unit kicked on. Lonnie was asleep in the other bed, and Leia, the woman next to him, sat up.

“Is that you?” she said.

“Yeah. What time is it?” the other woman said from the bathroom.

“2:12.”

“How long were we supposed to keep an eye on these guys?”

“Till that Scissors guy comes back. Maybe this afternoon.”

“Come smoke with me.”

“He said we have to stay with them.”

“They’re sleeping. How’s he gonna know?”

The toilet flushed, and he heard a zipper close. “Come smoke with me,” she repeated.

Byron listened as the women dressed and left the room. When they were gone, he crawled across the bed, opened the drawer of the nightstand, and reached inside.

“No,” he said, sitting up. “No, no, no.”

He stood and tore through the room naked, opening all the drawers and slamming them shut. Lonnie awoke and rolled over. “What’s wrong?” he groaned.

“The money! Where’s the money?”

“You’re naked, man,” Lonnie said. “Where’s the girls?”

“I put the money in the nightstand last night.”

Lonnie pointed to the safe, which sat above the minifridge.

“Why’s it in there? Never mind.” Byron squatted in front of it. “What’s the combo?”

“Mom’s birthday.”

“I mean what’s the number?”

“You don’t know Mom’s birthday?”

Byron pushed LOCK and held the button until the word SUPER appeared, then he tapped the 9 button until the safe opened. Inside were both envelopes. He opened them and thumbed through the bills.

“It’s February fourteenth. Valentine’s Day. You should know that,” Lonnie said.

“I don’t need a lecture.”

“Where are the girls?” Lonnie asked.

“Smoking.”

“They could smoke in here. It’s that kind of room.”

“I’m just telling you what they said.”

“Do you think they’ll be back?”

“Yeah,” Byron said, “I think they will. They’re working for Scissors.”

“Like us?”

“This is different. We need to get out of here.”

“It’s, like, the middle of the night.”

“We’ve gotta go home.”

“That’s the one thing Scissors said not to do.”

“We ain’t listening to him no more.”

While the girls were out, the brothers snuck through the casino, crossed the parking lot, and drove away. Lonnie slept through most of the trip. Byron kept himself awake with another snort of meth and a Mountain Dew chaser he bought while he gassed up the truck using the Visa card Scissors gave him.

At some point he’d have to come clean on the fact that he kept one of the maps, but for the moment he focused his attention on getting home, getting that map, and gathering up the gear they’d need to make their own way onto the monument and start digging. He thought about how he’d make his parole check-ins and how the only thing a person like him could do for a living when he came out of prison was go right back into the life that put him there. He was glad Lonnie was asleep or he’d have to talk to him about jellyfish or Myanmar or anvil lightning or electric airplanes or the Guinness Book of World Records. What he wanted was some quiet so he could make a plan without being interrupted.

They climbed through the gorge, blew through each of the towns along the way, and slipped back into the quiet desert. The stars reappeared when they were away from the lights of the city, and the Milky Way presided over the dark expanse.

Byron knew the turnoff to their home by feel. The change in direction woke Lonnie up. He overshot their rutted driveway slightly, then looked behind and backed in. The sky was starting to lighten in the east. When they got close to the single-wide prefab house, Lonnie hopped out and guided Byron as he backed the truck past it, stopping him a few inches away from the tongue of their small travel trailer that looked like a shabby canned ham, even in the half light of the morning. Byron hopped out of the truck and ran straight into the house as Lonnie unfolded the crank and lowered it down. He set to work securing the hitch and connecting the travel trailer’s lights to the truck’s wire harness. When Byron reemerged, he said, “We get ten minutes, then we’re gone.”

“How does he even know where we live?”

Byron pointed to the end of the drive. “It says ASHDOWN on the mailbox. You painted it there, you idiot.”

Lonnie stood and lurched up the stairs after his brother. “Quit calling me that,” he shouted. Byron jumped into the house and tried to close the door, but Lonnie leaned against it with his shoulder and slowly gained leverage.

“We don’t have time for this,” Byron growled.

Lonnie wedged his shoulder against the door, then he reached around and grabbed Byron’s ponytail. Byron roared and tried to grab his brother’s hand, which caused him to lose control of the door. Lonnie pushed in a few more inches and was able to yank on the ponytail even harder. Byron cursed and fell to the ground, pulling his hair free of Lonnie’s fist but also allowing the door to jump forward and pinch him on his back fat. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. All right! What’s wrong with you?” Byron shouted.

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Lonnie said, stepping over his brother’s body. Lonnie went into his room and took an old canvas duffel and filled it with clothes and the pillow from his bed. He stripped and put on new underwear and socks, then he dressed the rest of the way. He took a hat and a pair of old aviation goggles he used in the desert. From a shelf above his bed, he selected two books and a spiral notebook with a pen jammed into the wire coil. He closed up the bag and took it to the front room.

Byron carried two smaller bags of his own, one in each hand. He had the map rolled up under one arm.

Lonnie walked past him with his bag and tossed it on top of the tools. “What’s that?” he asked.

“It’s one of the maps. That one we tried out. I kept it.” He leaned the map against the side of the single-wide.

“Maybe that’s why he sent those girls. We need to find him and give it back.”

“And what? Apologize?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

“Guys like Scissors don’t just say, ‘No biggie, it’s water under the bridge.’ They throw you off the bridge. What’s done is done. Let’s go.”

Lonnie went back to the travel trailer and pulled a piece of stovewood that chocked the wheels. “We’re just gonna keep running, then? Like the cat in those cartoons?”

“What cat?”

“The one that gets a skunk stripe, then she gets chased the whole time. Scissors is going to keep coming for us like that skunk.”

“That’s why we’re doing this. Down there we’re sitting ducks. Now we’ve got insurance.”

“I don’t like running. And it’s Pepé, by the way.”

“Who is?”

“The skunk. His name is Pepé. I forgot the name before.”

“Seriously? You know this guy might just kill us—I’m not going to even—look. We ain’t running, we’re hiding. Plenty of people have done it. Butch Cassidy, Sundance, Billy the Kid, the James Gang.”

“The James Gang is a band.”

“I’m talking about Jesse James, you moron.”

“They got that guy from the Eagles in it.”

“I don’t know how I start off talking about us getting killed and you end up talking about the Eagles.”

“You said James Gang. It got me off track. Stress gets my wires crossed,” Lonnie said.

Byron changed his posture; it looked like he was lowering his center of gravity. He set down his things on the ground next to the truck, and he did it so gently that Lonnie grew nervous. “Brother, this moment in time is not about your word associations or idea showers, or your—”

“Chains,” Lonnie said, and he knew it was a mistake, but he had to finish the thought. “They’re idea chains. And I don’t try to do it. It just happens.”

Byron shook his head and held up a finger. “The only advantage we have over Scissors is we know this place. You’ve seen how he dresses. He might be city tough, but off-roading isn’t one of his skills. I don’t have time to get into it with you about physics or chaos theory or any of it, Lonnie. We have time for you to put some food and ice in a cooler or we’re dead.”

“You came back for the map,” Lonnie said, ignoring the rest of it. “That’s why we aren’t, like, on our way to Mexico or something.”

“So what?” Byron said. “You’ve counted that money. It’s ten grand for each of us. How long you think that will carry us?”

Lonnie shrugged. “I can stretch it.”

“That map is the goose that laid the golden egg. When things get tight, we’ll head out, dig something up, turn it into cash.”

Byron went back into the house and returned with a Phoenix Suns duffel bag and his rifle. Then he went back inside and came out with a spotting scope and a tripod. He put the rifle in the rack and packed the duffel bag, scope, and tripod behind his seat in the truck. Lonnie went in for the food. “Don’t take everything,” Byron said. “Do something to make it look like we’re coming back.” Lonnie took every other box from the pantry, and a few things out of the fridge: some cheese, a couple of limes, a thing of baloney. He packed it all away, then sat down at the table. He took an envelope and flipped it over and wrote:

Dear ladies, make yourselves at home. Went to town for beers. Be back soon. Byron and Lonnie.

He took the envelope and slid it into the thin aluminum frame that went around the window. Byron made one more pass through the house, came out and picked up the map, stopped to read the note, nodded, then got in the truck. He put the map in the top slot of the gun rack and checked on the trailer behind them, then he turned and put the truck in gear.

___

Sophia rose in the dark five minutes before the alarm on her phone went off. She went into the trailer’s Spartan galley and started a pot of coffee. While she was waiting, her phone flashed and buzzed, and she lifted the screen to see the calendar banner, which read BACKCOUNTRY ADVENTURE WITH PAUL. This was going to be a welcome break from gathering data.

As she drove, she remembered a course she took as an undergraduate about ecosystems. The professor told a story about a trip he’d taken with students the summer before into the jungles of Costa Rica. He said that while he was lecturing about climax ecosystems his voice just vanished. Everyone’s attention turned to the space left behind by his silence. They noticed that the chatter of the birds and monkeys also ceased. Somebody asked what was going on, and the professor whispered, “Jaguar,” as he spread his arms and tried to sweep them back down the trail. The professor said they all looked up and saw the dark symmetry of the cat crouched upon a tree that had fallen but was still suspended by the neighboring trunks, a narrow shaft of daylight painting a stripe of black-and-orange prints in the fur across the shoulders of the beast. The animal lowered its head and pulled back its ears. They watched its chest expand and collapse like the bellows of a forge, and then, without warning, it leapt from the fallen tree away from them to the floor of the jungle. They heard leaves rustle, then the return of their own breathing, and after a time, bird calls and the chittering of a monkey somewhere overhead.

“I’ve been researching this place for fifteen years,” their professor said, “and that was the first time I’d seen something like this.”

Sophia hoped she might return to school with such a tale to tell. Something that would give her work some field credibility. Most of the time graduate students returned from fieldwork with ribald drinking stories or tales of bribing officials. They’d regale each other with stories of insects eaten, inclement weather endured, equipment stolen, equipment damaged, data lost. There were volumes on diarrhea, the diameters of spiders, the lengths of snakes, “Why did it have to be snakes?” Most stories were wild, but light on true adventure and with very little romance. Now that she was in the field, she realized that the stories were there to offset the banal repetition of gathering data. What she was doing with the impact of tourism wasn’t going to stop any hearts, but maybe something worth telling could happen on a side trip with a certain local legend.

Paul Thrift never spoke of his own exploits, but others did. She’d heard of how Paul once dove out of an airplane and parachuted into a slot canyon that had been unexplored because any other approach would have taken too long. He traveled the deserts with almost nothing. He could feed himself out there, find water with a forked stick. She worried, a little, that this trip would be too austere. She’d gone over her gear obsessively, packing it, trying the backpack for weight, unpacking it, winnowing, packing it again. In addition to food, clothes, tarp, first aid kit, notebook, pencil, and camera, she had her phone (for the audiobooks), a sharp multi-tool (in case she had to cut off her own arm), a hat, bug net, compass, tiny jet stove, and backpacking pot that belonged to her father. All of that.

In addition to her gear, she was bringing a few things for Paul, who could walk from the North Rim to the South Rim for meetings but who had trouble making it to town. Paul had sent her an ascetic list: pecans, sunblock, wet wipes, brewer’s yeast, some kind of bodybuilding protein powder, and two books that had come for him at his post office box. One was Loren Eiseley’s The Firmament of Time and the other was called Altered States: Buddhism and Psychedelic Spirituality in America.

The Eiseley was a book she’d recommended to him. Seeing it here in his resupply box made her smile and quickened her pulse ever so slightly. She’d read it in a paleontology course she’d taken as an elective, and she’d mentioned it to him only once, weeks ago when they first met. The only other thing on his list was so strange it gave her pause. He asked for Jolly Ranchers, which seemed antithetical to the mythology surrounding Paul: sugar, plastic, artificial flavor?

She loaded everything into the truck and noticed that the sky was beginning to glow, and through the trees a few wisps of cirrus clouds soaked up the pink dawn glow. She closed and locked the door of her trailer, then saw a light come on at Mrs. Gladstone’s. The door opened, and she stood behind the screen, wrapped in a quilt. Mikros leapt up at Mrs. Gladstone’s feet and began yapping at her.

“Going out again?” Mrs. Gladstone said. “You’re a workaholic.” Her hair was wrapped in a flowered silk scarf.

“Oh no. This trip is for pleasure.”

Mrs. Gladstone picked up Mikros and held her next to her face. “Good for you. All work and no play makes Jill a dull girl.”

“I’m still going out to the monument.”

“Boring. I thought you were going to say Las Vegas.”

“Paul is taking me to a place called the Swallow Valley,” she said.

“Swallow Valley, huh? People have been talking about that place for as long as I can remember. I think it’s a fantasy.”

“Paul said he thinks he’s found it. We’ll have to climb to get there.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“It could be,” Sophia said, smiling nervously.

“A little peril always got my propellers turning,” Mrs. Gladstone said, “but it’ll probably be safer out there than it would be here, what with some cat burglar running loose in town.”

“Cat burglar?”

“He broke into the Cluffs’ house while I was there yesterday. As if there hasn’t been enough tragedy for Raylene lately. I’m glad nobody got hurt.”

“Well, I hope you’re okay.”

“Nothing a Valium can’t fix. And I have Cleopatra in case he tries anything here.” The dog barked boldly from the safety of Mrs. Gladstone’s arms.

“Be safe,” Sophia said. “We’ll be in the Antelope Flats area. Paul says it’s near the junction of County Roads 16 and 14. I wrote it all down.” She handed Mrs. Gladstone a slip of paper, which she tucked inside her brassiere. “If we’re not back in forty-eight hours, send in the cavalry.”

“I’m sure you’ve thought of everything. Girls have to these days.” Mrs. Gladstone re-hoisted the dog and re-gathered the quilt around her.

Sophia said goodbye and drove to the grocery store. She picked up some rice, bouillon cubes, jerky, raisins, Dr Pepper, and B vitamins. At this hour, the store was almost empty. A few employees were stocking the last of the night freight. She worked through her list, and the last thing on it was ChapStick. In Princeton, she’d lose a tube before it ran out. Here in the desert she went through it so fast it caught her off guard. Her hair, skin, and lips felt stiff, like clothes left out on the line.

As she came around the end of the vitamin aisle, she saw the two jerks from a couple of days ago on the monument. The tall one with slumped shoulders had his arms filled with cans of beans. The shorter one was squatting down to get at the cans that were near the back of the shelf.

“Not that kind,” one of them said.

“This is the kind I like. They’ve already got seasoning.”

“It’s too salty.”

“The salt is what I like.”

Sophia turned, backed up until she was out of sight, and stopped to listen.

“Now’s not the time to get picky. We’ve got bigger problems right now than salty beans.”

The other one chuckled, then said, “The problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”

“Three who? What are you talking about?”

“Nothing. It’s from a movie. You never saw it.”

“Well, there’s only two of us. So shut up and get a cart.”

She went up the next aisle and hoped to stay away from these two. It was becoming clear how the walls of a small town were always up. She was the stranger, and they were locals. The store employees were locals, too. What must it be like to live in a place where you knew everyone but mostly only interacted with the steady flow of tourists who might only spend an hour or two in your hometown? She remembered once waiting for a table at a restaurant and seeing four kids from the university on a double date saying hello to an older woman who was leaving the restaurant. When the woman and her husband left, the students talked about how weird it was to run into a professor out in the world. One of them said, “I know it’s dumb, but I guess I never think about how they have, like, this whole other life.”

A whole other life.

She made her way to the back of the store and turned to consider the lip balm. She grabbed her go-to basic, then noticed all the choices. Some had SPF protection, some had color, the whole gamut of shades from plum to rose to aubergine. She picked a color she liked and held it in her hands for a few seconds before putting it back, feeling a little crazy about lingering like this. Eventually she picked an unscented tube that offered sun protection and would be less likely to attract pests. Boring but useful.

She asked for a bag of ice, paid, went to the truck, put the ice and soda into her cooler, loaded everything into her pack, then stopped at McDonald’s for breakfast. She ate, leaning against her truck in the morning light, then she threw away all the trash so Paul wouldn’t know about her culinary indiscretion. She liked the greasy comfort of the sandwich but felt the shame of Paul’s paleo-super-macro diet, a practice that would possibly keep him alive forever. She poured her coffee from the Styrofoam cup into her vacuum mug and drove south toward the monument.

___

The Ashdowns left the grocery store and drove out to the state highway, then went twenty-five miles west before turning onto a road that was close to invisible until you were right on top of it. Byron followed each turn of the road with absolute certainty, following a series of branching dirt tracks that shrank down to a pair of ruts in the underbrush. Lonnie pointed to a red rock alcove fifty yards into the sagebrush.

“We camped there once,” he said.

“Not here,” Byron said, and he kept driving.

“I like that spot.”

“This ain’t about liking it. We need a place where we can see our house without anybody seeing us.”

“An ugly hideout isn’t, you know, like some mark of quality. Plus, we can get a line of sight from a bunch of places.” Lonnie folded his arms. They bounced in the cab for a couple more miles before Lonnie asked how much gas was left.

“There’s enough,” Byron snapped. “Plus, we brought the gas can. I don’t need a backseat driver right now.”

“I’m sitting shotgun, though,” Lonnie said.

Byron slammed on the brakes, which bounced Lonnie’s face off the dashboard. He came up holding his nose with both hands. “Uncool,” Lonnie said, examining the blood on his palms. He massaged the sides of his nose with his middle fingers.

Byron’s eyes were tight and dark like the cut ends of a steel rod. “How many times do I have to remind you that we are running for our lives right now?”

Lonnie shrugged.

“I thought you would have a little more focus.”

“Thinking about us getting killed gets me weird, so I let my mind think about other things. I let it go where it wants to like my meditation DVD says to.”

“One of us needs to be on task, don’t you think?”

“Probably.” Lonnie reached up for the handle above his window. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to think about since I’ve never been killed before. You know, or had somebody trying to kill me because his brother stole a map he wasn’t supposed to steal.”

“No wonder Mom worried about you.” Byron started driving again. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Lonnie had both pinkies up his nose and he was trying to adjust something. Neither of them said anything about it. In a few minutes, Lonnie noticed a bare patch of sun-dried dirt next to a single mature juniper tree, and he pointed to it. Byron slowed and rolled down the window. He raised himself up a little, looked into the distance, and said, “Yeah, we’ll have a good view from here.”

Byron pulled over, and they worked together silently to unhitch the trailer and chock the tires. When they were done, Byron said, “That Las Vegas SOB ain’t going to sneak up on us here.”

“We should get a bag of rattlesnakes and throw them in his car,” Lonnie suggested. “I brought a pillowcase, so we could if we wanted to.”

“Who’s gonna fill it with snakes?”

Lonnie shrugged. “There’s not supposed to be any bad ideas in brainstorming.”

“Is that what we’re doing?” Byron asked.

Lonnie set down his duffel. “Well, we don’t have any ideas other than being here, do we?”

Byron spat on the ground. “Not yet. Come take a look.” He walked past the truck, up a gentle incline, and stood on a bluff that overlooked the tiny cluster of ranch houses, mobile homes, and trailers that made up their outpost neighborhood. From this distance, everything was tiny, the size of Matchbox cars. “If he comes looking for us at the house, we’ll see him before he sees us.”

“Then what?”

“We’ve been hunting before,” Byron said. “We’ll set up the soft blind,” then he closed one eye and pantomimed firing a rifle. Byron went back to the truck and pulled the soft blind out and began erecting it. They brought two camp chairs, a cooler, the gun case, and the spotting scope over to the blind, then made themselves comfortable and dug in for the duration. Byron opened the cooler and handed his brother a beer. “I’m finally calming down,” he said.

After a few sips of beer Lonnie said, “How do we know he’s coming?”

“Because that’s how people like him make money. Nobody’s going to pay him for leaving loose ends. That’s why he’s called a cleaner, because he does the dirty work.”

Lonnie and Byron sat back in their chairs and watched the valley through the slit in the blind with their eyes unfocused to take in everything at once. They’d learned this as boys, when they were poaching deer with their father. They had to keep an eye out for the bucks and for State Fish and Game. He told them when you’re watching for something in particular, you won’t really see anything.

As they sat, time broke down into segments, the way ice clears a stream in springtime. They each drank a second beer, then they nodded off, woke and slept, woke and slept. Still nothing out there. Clouds spread across the sky, gathering, boiling, pushing shadows across the valley floor. A crescendo and decrescendo of sunlight. Another beer. Handful of salted nuts. Checking the spotting scope. Nothing but the door to their house, everything unmoving. One distant crack of thunder. No rain. Lonnie got up to pee and came back. Then Byron went. The shadows shortened, and with the sun overhead, they put on wide-brimmed camouflage hats. Above them at intervals the white trails of jets skimmed the belly of the stratosphere.

Byron crashed. His whole body collapsed as if the connective tissue had been removed. His head flopped back, hands dangling almost to the ground. Lonnie pulled the spotting scope over and focused again on their house, down in the valley. In the bright disk, at the center of the crosshairs, he watched a silver Chrysler Sebring creep up the driveway. Lonnie nosed the scope over so the windshield was right at the middle. It was Scissors.

Byron snuffled and settled a little deeper into his chair. Lonnie wasn’t sure he should wake him right away. Maybe the whole thing was like hornets. Stay still and they’ll fly away. If Byron woke up, he’d try to take him out, and there was no way he’d make that shot from here. There would only be one chance, and Lonnie didn’t like the odds.

Through the scope he saw the car door open. Scissors got out, reached into his jacket and pulled a pistol from a shoulder holster, then closed the car door with his foot. He looked around, stooped, and took a pinch of dirt in his fingers, dropped it, and stood again. He went up the stairs to the front door, stooped to peer inside, then without hesitating, he broke the glass with the barrel of the gun and reached inside to open the door.

“Hey,” Lonnie said without thinking.

Byron heard him and started awake. “What’s going on? Is he here?”

“Down there.”

Lonnie didn’t take his eye from the spotting scope, so Byron took the rifle and pointed it toward the trailer, using it to see. “Is that his stupid car?”

“Yep. He’s inside the house,” Lonnie said.

“Give me the clip,” Byron said, holding out his hand.

“I don’t have it.”

“We’ve got a gun and no bullets?”

“I mean, maybe. It’s not my gun, so how would I know?” Lonnie said.

“Seriously, there’s no bullets? At all?”

“There could be some in the truck. You’re not supposed to keep it loaded. We went through that with the cop.”

“Don’t lecture me on the law,” Byron said.

“I don’t think shooting at him is a good plan,” Lonnie said.

“I don’t plan to shoot at him.”

“I’m not sure anyone could make that shot the first time.”

Byron kept looking through the rifle scope and swearing in a steady stream. “What’s he doing in there?”

He watched Scissors emerge from the single-wide and head to the shelter where they kept their travel trailer. He searched around until he found a red gas can, which he lifted and shook to take stock of how much fuel was left.

“I guess we forgot the gas can, too,” Lonnie said.

“Shut up,” Byron said.

They watched as Scissors doused their house and the rickety front porch, and they both swore when he lifted the cover of their gas grill and lit it with the piezo switch.

“You got anything in there that matters?” Byron asked.

“My winter coat. Picture of Mom and her sisters. Books. A box of football cards,” Lonnie said, his eye still on the spotting scope. “It’s a good coat. How about you?”

Scissors carefully tipped the grill over on its side. Flames leapt out of the interior and raced across the patio, turning at a right angle when they hit the wall.

“I got what I need. Prison teaches you to strip down.”

“I think that’s maybe not exactly what you meant to say.”

Byron ignored the comment and adjusted his position, then dry fired the rifle with a click. “I know a couple of guys who could make a shot like this. They’d do it just to see if they had it in them.”

“I really don’t think jail made you a better person,” Lonnie said.

“No, it did not,” Byron said, sitting back and setting the rifle in his lap. “But that’s not what prison is for, little brother. It’s just another way for some rich guys to get richer.”

“It’s burning pretty fast, huh?” Lonnie said.

“What’s he doing now?”

“Getting into his car.”

“This lets you know what that guy was gonna to do to us,” Byron said.

Lonnie sat back in his chair. He got two beers out of the cooler and passed one over. They cracked them open at the same time and drank in silence. Above the top of the blind, they could see the billowing column of black smoke coiling skyward.

___

An hour into the drive, Sophia crumpled the wrapper of a small caramel and glanced in her mirrors. Behind her was a column of black smoke, to the northwest near Cane Beds, near the Paiute reservation. While she was watching the smoke, a pronghorn antelope bounded alongside the truck, keeping pace through the golden mesh of grass. Its stark white face ignored her. This was a creature so present in its own motion, the world was an afterthought. As she reached for her phone to snap a picture, the antelope pulled ahead, cut in front of her, and burst diagonally across the open ground, following the receding line of steel giants carrying power from the hydroelectric dams on the Colorado River to Las Vegas and L.A.

After so many weeks in this new place, Sophia realized that even though she was meant to be studying the past, she was, in fact, deeply involved in a long sequence of present moments that served as historical muses, creating a rhythm for the long view. Clouds would gather and dissipate. A snake would uncoil itself across the road. Dry grasses would oscillate in the breeze. Birds would chase one another beneath the open sky. Each moment gone in the instance of its unfolding. Each day so much like the others that had come and gone before.

The terrain changed. Flat roads gave way to gentle undulations. After a time, she came across a rise and saw a white NPS Jeep parked at the junction of two county roads. Paul was wearing regular clothes, stretching his hamstrings. As she slowed and approached, he looked up to greet her. He looked exhausted, but immediately asked about her voyage. The word threw her. Why not say “trip”? “Street clothes, huh?” she asked instead of answering his question.

He shrugged, “All work and no play. That’s why I’m leaving the Jeep here.”

She watched him close up the Jeep and lock it. He moved deliberately, like someone doing Tai Chi.

She circled back to his question and said her “voyage” was uneventful except for her encounter with an antelope.

“Pronghorn,” he said. “Antilocapra americana.”

“I can’t believe how fast it was. I must have been going forty.”

“Fastest creature in North America. Amazing stamina.” Paul transferred his gear to her truck and said he hoped it was okay if she drove. He’d been doing a lot of it lately. Then he switched topics and asked about the resupply.

She said she got everything on the list. “You can go through it while we drive.”

“I’ll wait. We should just catch up,” he said. “That’s what I’m looking forward to.”

Within a few minutes, they were under way. The sky that was empty in the morning had filled with clouds during the day, and a few dumped dark patches of virga into the air. They drove out of the open into a different place, where the rocks emerged from the soil like the bones of something buried eons ago.

They spoke of the land and the weather. Paul talked about the mundanities of the monument, the complications of politics and budgets. Sophia talked about her research and how she was trying to clarify, for herself, at least, what the work of archeology should be. This led to a discussion of museums and repositories and eventually they returned to parks. She told Paul about her presentation at Bryce and the idea that people should have access. At the same time, people have a habit of ruining what they love. She told Paul about the man’s heart attack and the doctor who had saved him. Paul asked her what mattered to her most, and she said it was the truth. She wanted her work to cut through the bogus ideas that museums have put into people’s heads. She was also worried that sometimes parks are sacrificial. You have to let people ruin part of a place so you can save the rest of it.

Paul nodded. “We think about that a lot,” he said. “It’s a hard call. I don’t think we always get it right. I mean, we didn’t used to, when a park meant a lodge. I mean, we don’t do it like that anymore. It’s not supposed to be Jellystone. Some people in charge don’t know that.”

As they drove on, they spoke less frequently. Paul would point out a remarkable red-rock fin or an anomalous tree on the dry plain tapping into some scarce underground water. After a time, Paul pointed to a spot in the distance where the low cliffs gathered into a kind of promontory. “Up there,” Paul said. “That’s the trailhead.”

“Here?” she asked. “But there’s no road.”

“Where we’re going, Sophia, we don’t need roads,” Paul said, grinning.

Sophia took note of the odd rhythms of his speech. His language was graceful when he spoke on the subject of the natural world, but it was an odd grab bag of movie and TV quotations when it came to anything else. She decided to meet him halfway. “Since this truck doesn’t fly, I wouldn’t mind a good road,” she said.

“If people had flying cars there wouldn’t be any place left worth going to,” he said, turning to look out the window.

Sophia put the truck into four-wheel drive and abruptly turned off the road, which banged Paul’s head against the window. He sat back and adjusted his seat belt.

“Sorry,” she said, trying not to laugh.

The truck whined as it climbed and bounced over the rocks. In a few hundred feet, she came to dry open ground scattered with bone-colored rocks. Around the perimeter were a number of small blooming cacti. Paul said they could park there. “You can’t do this up at Bryce, but the monument is different, and parking here helps hide the vehicle,” he said.

They got out of the truck, stretched, and started pulling gear out of the bed.

“How come we’re hiding?” Sophia asked.

“I don’t like people to know about these sensitive sites.”

“But it’s public land. I’m not criticizing, I’m just trying to figure out what places like this are for. I’ve got my ideas, but I’m interested in yours.”

“Well,” he said, opening the top of his pack, “it is public, but that doesn’t mean we have to advertise. We’re supposed to preserve the resource, and sometimes the best offense is not even being on the map. GPS coordinates don’t come with safety instructions.” Sophia looked at him with a squint that Paul noticed. “Swallow Valley is special because it was lost,” he said.

“It’s not on any of the official maps or the inventories I’m working with, but it’s everywhere in the oral history,” she said.

“Not anymore. Everyone around here has gone silent. They’ll talk your ear off about UFOs and Aztec gold, but ask them about Swallow Valley, you get nothing.” Paul said. “Only one guy would talk to me about it, but he just died. I thought we might come up here to honor him. He had maps he drew himself. Wouldn’t let anybody see them. You had to be on the inside. The Paiutes are the only ones who know more about this place than him, and they aren’t talking to anybody either. I don’t blame them. Every time they do, they get burned.”

“With nobody talking, we’re going to lose the knowledge,” Sophia said. “In a generation it’ll be gone. This is our Library of Alexandria.”

Paul looked at her and grinned.

“What?” she said, then she opened her pack. “I have a tent. I thought we could split the weight between us.”

“Maybe we could do without a tent on this one,” Paul said. “We’ll be hauling these bags up a lot of cliff faces. Any extra weight we take in there should be water.”

Sophia frowned and pulled out her tent and stowed it in the cab. Sophia showed Paul his box of things, and he quickly parceled out what he needed, taking note of the books. He held up the one she’d recommended. “I’m looking forward to this,” he said, “and to these.” He held up the Jolly Ranchers. “Thank you. These are my weakness.”

They loaded the water into the center of the packs, then packed around it. Paul carefully loaded one last red stuff sack into his bag, checked it, and cinched everything down.

After an initial scramble over some boulders and a low cliff, they made their way through the high chaparral. Paul navigated by sight toward a mesa in the distance that was flanked on either side by miles of running cliffs forming what would have, from the air, looked like a long funnel. Small clusters of sage and agave transitioned to larger juniper, which burst into the mechanical racket of cicadas as they passed.

Paul’s pace was indomitable. Even so, Sophia sensed that he was throttling back. She tried not to take it personally. He’d have to throttle back for just about everyone. He looked like a creature who could walk forever. Antilocapra parkrangerus. As they hiked, Paul asked her to say more about her research, what she’d been seeing in the data she was gathering about the degradation of sites on the monument.

“It’s complicated,” she said. “And I’m trying to avoid confirmation bias.”

“Bias about what?”

“The belief that people ruin everything.”

“They do,” Paul said, then he corrected himself. “We do, and I hate that there’s a term for it.”

“Right? I feel like I’m a scorekeeper for the Anthropocene. It’s like watching a house burn down.”

“And taking notes.”

“Crazy notes. Never-ending notes.”

Paul stopped and turned. He bit the rubber tube of his hydration bladder and sipped. Without a word, he pointed toward the west, where they’d come from. They’d gained enough elevation to bring them high above the valley floor. From this position, they could see the high voltage lines in the distance, small now like toys, running to the horizon where the dark green of the mountains was broken only by the defiant red escarpments of the cliffs to the north. Paul noticed the tiniest thread of smoke rising in front of the Vermilion Cliffs. “Huh,” he said. “A fire in Cane Beds.”

“I saw that earlier.”

“I hope they get it under control, or it’ll run wild across that grassland and up into the Kaibab Reservation.”

Paul turned to the south and the ridge dropped away precipitously, revealing at some distance a lava field that drew a sharp line of contrast against the tawny desert floor. “This whole area has seen volcanic activity in the last two hundred years. If you look across the plateau to the first escarpment there, you’ll see the cinder cones. They’re like the most geometric landforms out there.”

In her mind, Sophia repeated the word, “geometric.” These were the sentences she liked.

“What?” Paul said, distracted by her pause.

“Keep going,” she said. “Talking, I mean. I’m okay to hear more about all this.”

“That lava flow has some interesting history. Paiutes used it as an escape route or a place for ceremonies. They have almost invisible pathways through the middle of the lava that they made by carrying tens of thousands of basket loads of cinders in there. And over there, a few miles past, that’s where a crazy old hermit lives in a school bus. This place is a lot of things.”

“What’s that?” Sophia asked, pointing to a cluster of houses.

“Carvertown,” Paul said. “It’s a little bit militia, and a little bit rock and roll. Just kidding, the Carver family’s been ranching out there since the 1880s. They think of us as the intruders. Over there across from Fandango Wash is another recent volcano. People call it El Sombrero, you know, for ‘hat,’ but the root word actually comes from the Spanish word for shade.”

“Ha,” she said, “I’ll bet it throws great shade.”

“Not at midday,” Paul said.

She was about to explain her joke, but instead she said, “I think most people imagine you as some kind of stoic protector, but really you’ve got some solid natural history standup moves.”

“I’ll be here all week,” Paul said, sipping from his tube and continuing on. After a time, she thought about how easily her body assumed the pace and the weight of her pack. She felt as strong as she had ever been in her life, and she thought about how this research project would be over before she knew it, another passing moment among many. She wished she could more easily switch to geologic time and recalibrate. These bursts of pressing human concern needed proper perspective.

They hiked on through the scrub, climbing higher and higher, boots crunching in the sandy soil.

“How do you know we’re going the right way with no trail?” she asked.

“The layers,” he said. “Each band is a different kind of rock that cuts through the whole area. If you know the shapes of the exposed layers, it’s kind of like a map, or a slice of a map.” He held his hands out like he was casting a spell. “We’re on the Kayenta Formation right now. It’s the blocky stuff, kind of crumbly. Lots of broken ledges. The Navajo Sandstone—which is a lot thicker—that’s above us. It used to be part of a massive sand desert.” He pointed to the high cliffs ahead with tall vertical cracks. “It starts red and turns gray at the top. Above that is the Carmel Formation. We came up through the Wingate. You can kind of piece the whole area together in your mind and see where we’re supposed to be going.”

“So, you’ve been there before?”

“Not really. But it’s been described to me.”

“So, you’re in the know?”

“A little bit. More than I would have thought.” Paul stopped and unzipped a pouch on the belt of his pack. He took out two Jolly Rancher candies and handed one over. She got grape. “You have a green apple?” she asked, handing hers back. Paul dug around until he found one. She took the tiny brick, unwrapped it, and slipped it into her mouth. The acidity drew saliva into her mouth like a pump, and she closed her eyes to focus on the sensation. In the dry air, the effect was like a sugary sweet heartbeat against her tongue. She opened her eyes and saw Paul watching her over his lowered sunglasses.

“Shut up,” she said.

“It’s good, right?”

“I had no idea,” she said.

Paul pushed his sunglasses back up onto the bridge of his nose and held out his hand. “I’ve got a place for the plastic,” he said. His hand stayed out until she placed the wrapper in his palm.

The sun dropped halfway to the horizon as they came to a vertical cliff that went up about twenty feet. It was flat with no obvious handholds except for a corner that was almost ninety degrees. Paul carefully set down his pack and tied one end of a length of parachute cord to the top loop and took the other end in his teeth. He placed both hands against the rock, then one foot, followed by the other. Before she could process how he was doing it, he was at the top, sitting on the edge, hauling up his bag.

When he untied his pack, he dropped one end of the cord. “Tie it on. I’ll haul it up.”

Once her bag was clear, Paul said, “It’s called stemming. The trick is to get the friction from your feet. You’ll think it won’t work, but if you get out of your head you’ll be fine.” She started the same way: hand, hand, foot, foot. Her weight pressed her palms and soles against the sides of the corner. Bit by bit she inched her way up. When she came to the top, Paul’s voice broke her focus. “Inch your feet up and you’ll come right over.”

She didn’t think it would work, but suddenly she was sitting on the edge looking down. She noticed that the massive boulder they had just climbed was not brown like the surrounding stone. It matched the red rock from above.

“Nice climb. I knew you wouldn’t have a problem,” Paul said.

“I wasn’t so sure,” Sophia replied.

“You’re really good . . . for a gym rat,” Paul said.

“Thanks?” she said, and he shrugged, grinning.

She could see they were now in the new layer of Navajo Sandstone, and the whole environment had changed. The shapes, scale, colors, and rhythms of the fractures in the rock were different. Across the expanse to the east were a series of buttes, the color bands matching the rock she was on: orange separated by gray, topped by a buff-colored layer at the top.

They hiked on. After a few minutes, Sophia asked, “Is it true that you jumped into the Colorado River in some kind of sea monster outfit?”

“Who told you that?”

“Everybody.”

Paul paused. “It was a dry suit with hand paddles. I wanted to see if I could go rim to rim on my own without a bridge.”

“I see,” she said. “And the pilots say they take you and your bike places and just drop you off, you know, in the middle of nowhere.”

Paul filled his cheeks with air, then let them deflate. “Yeah, I wish they’d stop telling those stories.”

“It’s a pretty wild mythology.”

“Honestly, it makes me feel self-conscious. I should tone it down.”

“You know they’re not making fun of you. You’re like their Captain America. I didn’t mean to make it feel weird. I wanted to see if it was truth or legend.”

“Everybody’s a hero,” Paul said. “That’s my message.”

She watched his face when he said it, and she could see that he was telling the truth. As the way rose higher, they came to a boulder field and hopscotched across the stones’ bald backs. After the boulders, they traversed a long ridge of stone that curved past protean columns of rock that seemed more like frozen gas than eroded solids. Eventually, they arrived at the mouth of a slot canyon that was plugged with rockfall.

“This is the technical part,” Paul said.

“What have we been doing for the last three hours?”

“The approach. This is as far as I’ve come before.”

Paul opened his pack, removed a red stuff sack, and set it aside. He then hauled out ropes, harnesses, and an array of other equipment. He arranged all of it carefully on a black nylon drop cloth. He carefully repacked the stuff sack into his bag. “This is the route we talked about. We’ll climb two pitches here, then on into the great unknown.”

As he set up for the climb, he talked through the route, suggesting that he’d climb lead, and she would clean. She mostly climbed routes that were top roped, so this would be a new challenge, something she had wanted to try for a while. Paul handed her a harness and shoes, then looked upward. “The first pitch will end at the midpoint of that rubble.” He pointed to a place where the rock curved under, casting the faintest of shadows. Sophia nodded and donned her gear and stowed her boots and socks in her pack. They went over their belay signals, then roped up.

Paul climbed easily and with a lightness. He moved so quickly she had to work constantly to keep the rope from going slack, but her hands fell easily into the quick rhythm of it, the pull of the ascending rope offset by the weight of the brake side threaded through the figure eight. At intervals, Paul would stop, select one of the wired nuts, slip it into a crack, test it, clip the rope into place, and climb on. When he completed the first pitch, the rope went slack, and they began hauling up their packs on the length of static cord Paul sent down. Sophia tied on Paul’s pack and tugged the line. The pack floated into the air and spun as it rose. Moments later the unknotted cord descended.

“Now yours,” Paul called out.

She repeated the process.

With both packs up, Sophia then tied into the rope and felt the slack come out of it, the tension transferring to her pelvis. She loved how the climbing shoes transformed the smallest protrusion or horn of rock into a platform with its own kind of certainty. By moving slowly and methodically, she found herself rising quickly, the tightness of the rope giving her confidence. Climbing made her acutely aware of her balance and strength, but she was always surprised at how engaged her mind was. She didn’t zone out. It was like solving a massive three-dimensional puzzle. When she came to one of the colored wire stoppers with its carabiner, she removed it and clipped it to her harness. She did not feel an immediate mastery in this cycle, but she found a peace in it.

The belay ledge was small, but Paul had everything organized, and they were able to reset and trade places. In a few minutes, Paul was climbing again, setting protection, clipping in, and climbing on. Soon he disappeared from view, and Sophia only knew he was there by the tugging and resistance on the other end of the rope. The process repeated itself, bags first, Sophia’s leading the way, since it was the last one tied. Because of the angle of the cliff face, her pack swung out into space and spun in the air as it ascended. When the cord returned, she tied on Paul’s pack. As his pack went out and up and across the overhang, it caught on a small tree growing impossibly from a void in the sandstone. He raised and lowered the pack a number of times to no avail.

“Hey,” Paul yelled down. “My pack is caught. I think if you lean out, you might be able to unsnag it.”

“I don’t know if I can,” she said.

“It should be okay,” Paul replied.

“How about I get up there, then we figure it out?”

“It should be okay if you just nudge it a little,” he repeated.

She climbed up to the overhang and strained to reach the pack, which was just out of reach. “Can you just pull harder?” she said.

“I don’t want it flying around,” he shouted.

She tried again and almost reached one of the straps before she lost her grip and fell. The rope caught her, stretched, and yanked her against the rock. Immediately, she was upside down, heart pounding, her whole body electrified with adrenaline. The swinging of the rope dislodged Paul’s pack, and the small tree that snagged it fell past Sophia and into the space below before hitting the ground. After a few inverted seconds, she fought her way back into position and found new hand- and footholds. She clung there with the belay line slack as Paul hauled his pack to the top.

When the belay was ready, Sophia shouted, “Climbing!”

“Climb on,” he called back.

As she climbed, she ignored the suggestions Paul made, using the anger to help her focus.

At the top, Paul apologized for the accident.

“Was it an accident?” she said. “Because—I don’t know—it seemed like something else.” Sophia untied the rope and sat on a rock to remove her climbing shoes. Her heartbeat felt audible, her jaw tight. After a few moments, once she relaxed, she began to hear the insects again, and then the taffeta of the wind through the vegetation, and finally, somewhere farther up the canyon, the dry croak of a raven.

___

Dalton told LaRae that he had to run a personal errand, and after that he was going to stop by the Beehive House and pay Raylene Cluff a visit.

“You want me to call ahead?” LaRae asked.

“It’s better if I just drop in,” he said.

“They told me they’d prefer a heads-up.”

“That’s why I like to drop in,” Dalton said, winking.

“Before you go, I wanted to let you know the trailer fire over in Cane Beds is out. They also said they’re okay if you still want to take a look at what’s left.”

“Thanks. I’ve got my eye on it.”

“But Cane Beds is in Arizona,” she said.

“When two weird events pop up in the same week, I lose interest in jurisdictions.”

LaRae thought about Dalton’s answer and looked like she might ask another question, then decided not to. “I’ll hold down the fort,” she said.

Dalton drove into town, letting his to-do list wash over him until he got to Red Cliffs Realty. He looked up and down the street to see if anyone was watching, and there was nobody he knew on the sidewalk, so he went inside. The only person in the office was the receptionist. She was young and he didn’t know her.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I guess I need to sell my house,” Dalton said.

“Oh, fantastic. Can you fill out our online form?”

“Is Jim Gardner still here?”

“No, Jim’s retired.”

“Oh, I hadn’t heard. Maybe I could leave my name and number.” Dalton took out a pen and looked for a slip of paper.

“The web form is really easy, though.”

“But I don’t like web forms,” Dalton said.

“But then you’ll know the information we have on you is right,” she said.

Dalton stared at her and she stared back.

“I guess you’ll want me to do that from home.” Dalton put the pen back.

“Or you could do it on your phone,” she said.

Dalton walked out of the office without saying goodbye and drove to the Beehive House, where social services had temporarily relocated Raylene Cluff. It was an assisted care facility in a pioneer home with a large brick addition attached to the back. A hand-painted sign out front featured a logo with a blue beehive surrounded by a few simple bees. Dalton’s mother had lived here until his sister moved her to Salt Lake to have her close at hand. Bruce and Raylene had no children, so this is where she landed, too.

Dalton wanted to talk to Raylene about the missing items and the break-in. He hoped she might be able to shed some light.

The orderly at the front desk greeted him.

“I’m here to check on Raylene Cluff, ask her a couple of questions. She ready for something like that?”

“I’ll have to get permission,” he said and excused himself.

Dalton took in the surroundings. They hadn’t changed much in five years. It was cramped, full of oddly matched donated furniture that had come from several different decades. The orderly returned with a harried woman wearing a Kane County Fun Run T-shirt over her blouse and blue half-moon reading glasses on a chain around her neck. She had a wild arrangement of white hair tied back with a flowered scarf. Her name was Catherine Mowbley.

“What do you need to see Raylene for?” she asked.

“I’m trying to clear up some things for the report on her husband.”

“You know she’s not lucid,” she said. “The stress of the situation isn’t settling well with her. We’ve had her on sedatives since she came in.”

“Catherine, this is one of the big pieces of the puzzle.”

She looked at him. “You might not get much out of her. She hasn’t said more than a couple of words. They also just gave Raylene her meds. She’ll be out of it pretty quick.”

“Can I give it a shot?” Dalton said.

The orderly sent them through to a common room, and in a few minutes, Catherine appeared with Raylene in a wheelchair. Dalton noticed she was strapped at the wrists, a blanket tucked around her legs.

Dalton took a chair from one of the tables and brought it closer to Raylene. An orderly locked the wheels on the chair and stepped back. Raylene looked ashen and exhausted. Her silver hair was unkempt. Her thin arms pulled at the restraints.

“Sheriff,” Raylene said. “These assholes think I’m going to run off and join the circus.”

Dalton was surprised by her cursing. He’d known her for a long time. She worked as a librarian, and she’d dress down rowdy teenagers for 10 percent of the language he’d just heard. When Catherine saw his face, she told him this kind of language was a new development for Raylene but not uncommon for people in her situation.

He nodded, then said, “All this could just be a safety concern, Raylene.”

“They’ve got me locked up so they can steal from me and Bruce. While I’m here, they’re off ransacking my house. You talk to anyone. They’ll tell you.”

“Raylene, you’ve known me and my parents for a long time.”

“You’re the one married to Olma. I didn’t know you were a cop.”

“Olma’s my mother,” Dalton said, looking at Catherine, who had her hands on her hips. “I’m Patrick, Henry Dalton’s boy.”

Raylene blinked and turned her head a few degrees.

“Yesterday there was a break-in at your house—”

“I told you they were trying to rob me.”

“Now, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t any of these people. It was in the middle of the day, and I’ll bet they were all working. It seems like the people who broke in were after some of Bruce’s things. I found a couple of spots where it looks like things used to be, but now they’re gone. A lot of artifacts Bruce used to have in his study, it looks like they’re gone, too. I mean, all the pots are gone, Raylene. I have some photographs. Could you take a look and—”

She waved him off with a dismissive hand. “You should just ask Bruce. He’s got all of that stuff cataloged.”

“I’d like to ask Bruce, but he’s—”

“Sheriff,” Catherine interrupted. “Let’s talk, over here.”

“Bruce is what? He’s supposed to be coming to pick me up.”

As Dalton and Catherine stepped away, the orderly tried to make Raylene comfortable. “She doesn’t know what happened. We thought maybe it was the shock. Maybe she was in denial about what happened, but I think we might be looking at the onset of dementia.”

“You mean, like Alzheimer’s or something?”

“I’m not a doctor, but yeah. I think that’s what we’re looking at. If you drop anything about Bruce taking his own life, she might withdraw again.”

“I’ve got to ask about the break-in. Is she going to have trouble remembering that?”

“Why was there a break-in if Bruce killed himself?” Catherine asked.

“Well, that’s a good question, isn’t it?”

“A lot of times people with dementia have trouble with new memories. Older stuff, well, there’s more connections in the brain. It’s better encoded. She might forget today altogether. She doesn’t know why she’s here. Last in, first out,” she said.

“Then I better get cracking.” Dalton took out his phone and went to the photos app. “Am I okay to show her these pictures?” He thumbed through to pictures of the empty spots he’d found in the dust.

“Sometimes old memories are fine. Sometimes they’re not. Give it your best shot.”

Dalton went back to Raylene and sat in his chair. “Can I show you a couple of pictures? I’m wondering if you could tell me what is supposed to be in these spaces.”

“What’s wrong with Bruce?” Raylene asked, her eyes soft and unblinking. “I’m not stupid.”

“He’s had an accident,” Dalton said.

“Well, I want to see him.”

Dalton looked to Catherine for guidance. She shrugged and touched Raylene softly on the shoulder, which didn’t soothe her.

“He wants to see you, too,” Dalton said.

Dalton showed her the first photo of a small disk left in the dust.

“That’s where the Swallow Valley bowl goes, the one with a monster inside. It’s one of Bruce’s favorites. It doesn’t look like much from the outside, but what a surprise when you look into it.”

“Was it valuable?”

“Oh, yes. But he’d never sell it. Those things mean so much to him. He’s had a hard time letting that one go. He’s saving it for last.”

Dalton wrote himself a note that said: Saving it for what?

“Okay. How about this one?” Dalton showed her the next photo with the square space in the dust. On one side was a large agate bookend, and on the other was a potted cactus.

“That’s where his inventory goes. It’s his whole book of everything. The list of all the things. Everything with a catalog card and everything on one of his maps is in that book.”

“Could you tell me what it looks like?”

“It’s a blue thing with a stiff back, like we used to use in chemistry.”

“It sounds important.”

“It used to be.”

“Tell me what that means.”

“A while ago Bruce started taking everything back.”

“Is that what you meant when you said Bruce is having a hard time letting things go?”

“That’s right.”

“So, what’s going back?”

“All of it. His whole collection. A few years ago, he had a change of heart. He said he thought that when he died all his things would lose their meaning. They’d just be something for somebody to sell. That’s why he’s doing it. He’s old, though, and he’s been getting help.”

“Do you know who that helper would be?” Dalton asked.

“Oh, some young man. He’s not from around here.”

Raylene’s eyes drooped, and Dalton could see that her meds were starting to set in. Dalton reached over and put his hand on hers. He noticed an ornate turquoise ring. There was a second ring on the other hand. “Are these in that blue book?” he asked, gesturing to the jewelry.

“Bruce found the turquoise for this one in a burial pit,” she said, extending her left hand. “Ever since he was a teenager, he found things nobody else could. He had a nose for it. He said he found these stones folded together in a piece of hide and stuck in a mummy’s fist. It was covered in blue feathers, and there was a crown of yellow feathers all around the head. He said it looked like a leather sun. The whole thing was lying in a little room full of sand and stones. Imagine that. A human head like a tiny little star in there. He brought the stones home and turned them out on the kitchen table. He had a Navajo he knew in Chinle make this one for me, then he gave it to me for my twenty-fifth birthday.” She wiggled the fingers on her other hand. “This one was made in Mexico. I don’t remember the story for it.”

Dalton thanked her and said, “It helps to hear your perspective, Raylene.” Then he stood and returned the chair to the table, thinking about someone far in the future finding Raylene’s rings loose in the loam of her remains, no story, no body, just the stones and silver. What would she think of that person slipping the ring on their own finger, trying to imagine her?

“When are they going to let me go?” Raylene asked.

“Once they know you’re not going to run off and party with your girlfriends,” Dalton said.

“When Bruce comes home—he’s going to come get me, right?”

“He will,” Dalton said.

The orderly took Raylene away, and Catherine showed Dalton out of the room. “I shouldn’t have let you in here.”

“I’m glad you did, though. I have to ask you not to talk about it, though. Especially not to Stan Forsythe.”

“I don’t talk to that man unless I have to,” Catherine said.

Dalton knocked on the door, and he was buzzed out. “Hey, Sheriff,” Catherine called after him. “If Bruce didn’t kill himself, then what the heck is going on?”

Dalton shrugged. “I’d sure like to find out.”

___

The way from their climb to the white sandstone domes led them through thick, luminescent chollas, bristling with light. Where there had been no trail before, a subtle path emerged from the random placement of stone and vegetation, and they followed it for the ease of the passage. They moved into shadow, and the sunlight became a white corona behind the stone ramparts. They hiked for another hour through this rough architecture, climbing upward until they stepped at last into the cool space of a sandstone amphitheater at the center of which was a series of small connected brick structures nestled under a thick natural overhang. Off to the side was a miraculous pool of standing water, fed by an invisible spring.

Sophia gasped. Paul turned around, beaming. She dropped her pack and began digging around for her camera.

“No pictures, okay?” Paul asked.

“Why not? The grant gives me clearance,” Sophia said.

“This trip is not quite on the books.” Paul made a face that was neither smile nor grimace. “Actually, it’s one hundred percent off the books. You can’t tell anyone we came here.”

“Are you kidding me? This isn’t on any of the maps. It’s like the discovery of a lifetime.”

“It’s really just a rediscovery,” Paul said.

She looked at the silent cliff dwellings with their thin black windows and narrow slotted doors. “This site could help me establish a baseline for my research. I’d have a pre-tourism basis for comparison.”

“Maybe,” Paul said. “Maybe. But if you write about it, people will come. And if people come, then we’ll have to file a management plan, and once we do that, it’s probably over for this place. I can take you to sites that have essentially the same features, and—”

“But if this is really Swallow Valley, we’d be able to make important connections that are just educated guesses right now.”

“The Paiutes don’t need us to interpret this place for them, and tourists don’t need an explanation for something they aren’t going to see.” Sophia noticed a look of uncertainty flash across Paul’s face. “It would be a huge favor to me if you just soaked this place in, without recording it. The USGS is pulling sites like these from their maps because they feel like they are aiding and abetting the looters. Some people think we should redact everything from the maps and write in ‘here be dragons’ like in the good old days.”

Sophia stopped digging through her bag. “You know I agree with you about the trouble with tourism, but being able to gather data on this site would change everything for me when I get back to Princeton.”

“And it would change everything for this place. Tourism here would be catastrophic. That’s what you’re researching, right? Can you imagine a ladder bolted into that cliff? With everything that’s going on in D.C. right now, climate denial, all the push to let energy companies in here, anonymity is the most efficient way to save this place.”

“Efficient?” Sophia said with no attempt to mask her anger. “There are a lot of efficiencies in this world that make it a worse place to live. And there’s a world of difference between studying a place and posting it on Instagram.”

“Okay, ‘efficient’ was the wrong word. But it’s just me and a million acres out here. I can only be in one place at a time. They cut our budgets every chance they get. We’re being led by bureaucrats who hate the idea of public land. This is a no-win situation. If I can redefine even a couple of the parameters—reduce the number of people, keep it hard to access a site, make sure the legislature doesn’t even know what’s out here, and quit painting a target on every amazing thing—if I can do that, then maybe I’ll stand a chance.” Paul was going to say something else but he stopped and took out a blue hardback lab notebook from his pack. “Let me show you something. The guy I talked about who’d been up here fifty years ago, he cataloged it, drew pictures of what he found. He came back twenty or thirty times over the course of a decade. Never told anyone about this place, except for his wife.”

“And you.”

“That’s right. He took things out of here, said he was rescuing them.” He handed her the notebook. “This will give you a sense of what he was up to. Take a look.”

She opened the book, which was filled with studious notes and sketches of artifacts. Each entry featured a drawing with careful crosshatching that gave the images a heft; around these flowed physical descriptions written in an impeccable hand, all of it done with thin black and red lines. The meticulous descriptions told the dimensions of each object and the conditions in which it was found. For some entries there was a second sketch showing the proximity to other artifacts in the inventory, the orientation within a room, chamber, or kiva, or there was a rendering from the side showing the depth of the object in the ground. Sophia stopped at a page featuring a detailed sketch of a clay jar with a corrugated outer surface. The notes said: White slip clay body, quartz sand temper with beautiful tool-dented corrugated surface design. Moenkopi style. Each entry gave a date of discovery, some going as far back as the 1970s. Many of the entries had a second date written in the margins in pencil, and there were initials, too: KT and PT. The pencil dates were all in the last five years.

“The level of detail here is amazing.”

“He was self-taught.”

“What are these dates in pencil?” Sophia asked.

“He’s been reviewing his collection. That’s where I’ve been helping.”

Sophia closed the book. It was old but in good condition, meant to last. She noticed a fine stippling of brown across the back cover. “Helping how?” she asked.

Paul retrieved the notebook and put it away. “Let’s look around,” he said. Paul led the way across the amphitheater down near the pueblo structures. The wind bent the grasses lightly, and as they drew closer the sun moved through a notch in the cliffs, illuminating the rock with a warm golden light while the buildings remained in shadow.

As they crossed, Sophia noticed the shallow depressions of irrigation ditches that had been almost completely refilled with rock and soil. If she hadn’t known what she was looking at, she wouldn’t have noticed anything, but as they walked on, they skirted the midden and she spotted potsherds and lithic fragments among the vegetation. She knew there would be more if she had the time to work through the area, but Paul pushed toward the circular pits ahead.

Their roofs had collapsed, and a quick look inside showed the stone pilasters against the walls that marked them as kivas and the whole site as late Pueblo II, maybe early Pueblo III. Her arms and hands filled with electricity. In the rubble at the bottom, she could easily make out the hearth ring and the remnants of a ladder. Again she wanted to linger, but the tangible lure of the cliff dwellings drew them on. The plaza was filled with sage and rabbit brush. What she had seen so often depicted as an abstract delineation on a flat diagram was now a real space with wind and sound and the scent of pinyon and juniper in the air.

The first row of freestanding ruins transformed from shapes to textures as they approached. The adobe had flaked off, and the precise angular stone masonry beneath it showed its intricate patterns. They stopped and allowed their eyes to float up beyond these broken structures to the horizon, where this frozen curve of striated sandstone blended seamlessly into these stacked linear rooms. At the center of the structure was a tower with three doors facing outward. These buildings spoke with their stillness, vibrating like the soundboard of an ancient instrument. She wanted to explore everything at once but she knew she had to measure out her excitement. To take it all in at once would be to take in nothing at all.

“There are so many sites like this out here. But the thrill of finding a new one never goes away. Parks can be a problem, but they are also pretty good harbors, sometimes . . . when they let us do our jobs,” Paul said.

Sophia was gone, her attention returned to the first block of rooms, which were decimated because they had been too exposed to the elements. Luckily, most of the vertical planes remained in place, giving a sense of the organization and size of the original structure. Sophia allowed her hands to rest upon the walls as she moved throughout the spaces, though she knew she should be wearing gloves. Above this structure was a higher level of buildings, constructed in a secondary alcove. They looked like something from a story told to amuse an emperor. Any attempt at a description would always be insufficient. You could not do it with data or with poetry. It was simply impossible.

“I have to go back for something,” Paul said. “You keep exploring. I’ll catch up with you.”

“Yeah, um, sure. I’m just going to . . .” Sophia drifted past the closest structure to those built into the rock under the massive cliff brow. She drew close and peered through the narrow door, the wood lintel and doorframes still in place, smooth and lithe, holding their former shapes as limbs and branches. They were low enough that she had to stoop. The interior space was cool. Her eyes had to adjust to the dim light. When they did, she saw that the space inside was small by modern standards but proportioned in a purposeful way. In the opposite corner, she saw a haphazard cluster of sticks leaning against the wall. Next to them was a pile of desiccated corn cobs and a wooden ladder leading from this space through a square hole in the roof. No baskets or pottery. No tools. The room was devoid of what she’d seen in many years of slideshows, drawings, photographs, textbook descriptions, and exhibits in museums and repositories. Nonetheless, it left Sophia with the singular thought that any claim of newness for this continent, any sense of it as a “new world,” was undeniably and irredeemably false.

Sophia skirted the rest of the buildings in the block, and she turned at the corner, where she discovered a natural approach on the rock itself that gave her access to the second story. From this vantage, she could see back along the path from the overhead view, which revealed the genius of the people who planned and built this place. The line of roofs revealed four ladders spaced at nearly even intervals. More than anything she wanted time to explore and document these spaces. She also knew that trying to gain entry would risk catastrophe. Along the rock floor of the alcove was a room with the perfect right-angled shadow of a door.

Overhead, cliff swallows swooped back and forth. The entire overhang was filled with the churring calls of these acrobatic birds. Perhaps the alveolar clusters of bulbous daubed nests above were the inspiration for these adobe buildings, or perhaps it was a deeper design. She looked out again, her position granting her a clear view of the amphitheater and back across the desert from which they had ascended. Through notches in the ridgelines looking west she could see Antelope Flats, and behind that, the Vermilion Cliffs. The sun had dropped just below the horizon, holding its intensity. Dusk would soon follow.

Sophia moved to the door and looked inside. Again, she waited for her eyes to adjust, hoping for the slow materialization of objects: pot, basket, metate, something. But the room was barren except for an indistinct pile in one corner. She looked around and did not see Paul, so she stepped through the threshold and into the darkness. The pile turned out to be a heap of seashells of all sizes, most broken, but many intact. Sophia began to understand that Swallow Valley had already been picked clean by others. The shells had likely been held in some other vessel, upended and stolen years ago. She withdrew from the room, scanned the area, and saw Paul looking around before descending on a ladder into one of the kivas whose roof remained intact.

He said he left something behind. Sophia descended the cliff trying to decide whether or not to call out to Paul or to keep the element of surprise in her favor. In the end, she decided she wanted to see what he was up to for herself.

The kiva was off to one side, set above the ground on a brick-and-adobe rim rather than lying flush to the ground. Three roof poles emerged from one side, extending three feet past the short walls. Sophia lay on her belly and peered down into the kiva entry. She spied Paul crouching in the far corner, awash in the yellow glare of his head lamp, his knees splayed out frog-like to either side, a small bowl in one hand. With the other hand, he moved the soil aside, set the bowl into the well, and turned it. From his shirt pocket, he took a small branch and feathered out the soil to erase his presence.

“What the hell?” Sophia said. “I’m coming down there!”

“Nothing. No. Don’t. I’m coming out,” Paul said.

“Is that pottery?”

Sophia turned and came down the ladder, the thick wood stable, showing no signs of weakness or wear. Her attention was split between the interlocked wood poles that comprised the cribbed roof and Paul standing up and brushing off his hands.

“Put your light on it,” Sophia instructed.

Paul turned his head until the bowl was illuminated. The exterior was undecorated but starting at the rim there was a red band, and after that, diagonal lines that covered the interior. She stepped forward and dropped to her knees to see inside the bowl. There was a striking humanoid face there, red with large obovate eyes and an open mouth set on the top and bottom with rows of triangular teeth.

“Is it intact?”

“Yes.”

“Where did it come from?”

Paul didn’t answer.

“Did you move it from somewhere else?”

“That’s a complicated question.”

“No, Paul. It’s pretty simple.”

“Okay, well, then it’s got a complicated answer.” Paul stepped around the bowl, picked up a scrub oak branch and cleared his tracks as he came past Sophia, mounted the ladder, and climbed past, switching off his head lamp.

“You’re not going to leave that here,” she said.

“Yep. That’s what I’m doing.” Paul stepped out of the portal and was gone.

Sophia followed Paul out of the kiva. He was walking away from her toward the plaza and their backpacks. The amphitheater was in the full shadow of evening, and while it wasn’t cool yet, the blue sky was deepening, and the rock was turning from orange to purple.

She called after Paul, but he kept going.

“You weren’t supposed to see that,” he said.

“Then why bring me on a super-secret site-destruction mission that you knew would infuriate me?”

Paul stopped and turned. “For all the rest of it,” he said, spreading his arms. “And because you told me you were missing out on some cool summer international dig in Jordan, and this was your consolation prize research. I thought maybe you’d like the adventure. And who knows . . .” Paul stopped and crouched next to his pack and returned a red stuff sack to the interior. He took out the blue lab book and made a notation.

With so much theft and vandalism, the idea that somebody might return an artifact was unthinkable to most people. It would be a high-risk move for him as a government employee. Part of her wanted to dive right into that conversation. Another part of her wanted to stay on the moral high ground. What she couldn’t do was walk away. “You know, anyone who finds that pot will discover a lie.”

“Sort of.”

“They’ll think it’s something it isn’t. This place has been stripped, Paul. There’s nothing here but that bowl.”

“But that bowl is where it belongs.”

“How do you know that?”

Paul held up the notebook. He flipped through the pages and stopped at a rendering of the bowl, a detailed description of its location in the kiva, even a sketch of the exterior with its low wall and ladder. “I know it was taken in October 1973. And I know he asked me to return it six weeks ago because he knew he would never make it back.”

“Who has you doing this? It goes against so many regulations—it was Cluff, wasn’t it?”

Paul nodded.

“So, you’re up here for him, not because you wanted to spend time with me.”

“Well, can’t it be both?”

“I’m glad I can be another one of your efficiencies.”

“It’s not like that.”

“It’s exactly like that. You dragged me up here to kill two birds with one stone. That bowl was in your pack, which is why I swung around upside down on a rope. So, what am I supposed to do now, report you? I thought we were doing something else.”

“Something else? Look, you don’t have to file a—”

“Of course I do. Dammit, Paul. And I have to take that bowl with me. I have a professional obligation.”

“And put it where? It’s right where it belongs. It’s just been on loan. But isn’t that what you want? Aren’t you the one who says museums are complicated?”

“They are, and all this—whatever it is, a date or a field trip or some kind of backward heist movie—did not un-complicate any part of it, for me.”

“It’s what Bruce wanted. His death changed the timeline.”

“But it’s not Bruce’s bowl, Paul. It belongs to the people from this place.”

“They moved and left it. There’s no sign of violence in this place. It was abandoned.”

“No violence in this place, yes. Violence to this place? That’s a different story.”

“Well, like I said, you weren’t supposed to see this,” Paul said. He swung the pack onto his shoulders. “I’m going to set up camp for the night.” Sophia stood and put on her pack.

She walked out of the amphitheater, watching where Paul stopped on a ridge facing west. Eastward the clouds were blazing red and orange, tall kachina clouds full of rain and lightning. Beneath them were the cliff walls of Swallow Valley, the dwellings tiny and delicate at the base.

Sophia made her camp away from Paul. She ate without speaking to him, watched the sunset burn away and the stars prick the firmament. After twilight had dissolved, a meteor arced across the belly of sky through the constellation Leo. It burned for a full second before pulsing once and fading.

“Paiutes call that putsuywitcapi. It means star excrement,” Paul called out.

Sophia lay back and slapped a mosquito. “You ruin everything,” she called back.