Three days later the old man disappeared.
We were staying with Aunt Marian in Alamorgordo, Grandfather and I, sleeping in her guest room, eating at her table. I was scheduled to leave for the East on the following day; Grandfather wasn’t supposed to be going anywhere. But he went. He vanished. And I saw him go.
That first day and night after we separated him from his ranch he was a sick man. He would not speak to anyone, he would not look at anyone. He simply sat on a chair or lay on his bed, eyes wide open, staring at nothing.
Aunt Marian called in a doctor and the doctor treated the old man’s eyes, which had been hurt but not seriously burned by the tear gas. He gave Grandfather a going-over with his instruments and said he could find nothing wrong except a temporary condition of what he called nervous shock. He prescribed sedative pills and plenty of rest.
Grandfather seemed to improve a little the next day. He ate a light meal, sat outside in the shade during the afternoon watching the neighbors ride their gasoline-powered lawn mowers over their tiny patches of lawn, and spoke a few words to me and my aunt. He wanted to know if the horses had been provided for.
She told him that the horses were all right, that Lee was keeping them on his place east of the city. The old man had to repeat his question; the almost continual roar of jet planes overhead was making conversation difficult. My aunt repeated her answer, and the old man said nothing more. I don’t think he slept much that second night: he woke me up twice with his mumbling and getting out of bed to wander through the house.
The third night he left us. Soon after we were all in bed and the lights were out and the house was silent except for the mutter of the appliances and the braying of the traffic uptown and the thunder of jets above, he crawled out of his bunk, dressed himself in the dark, and padded across the room to me. He must’ve been feeling much better, in his way: a cigar was burning in his hand.
“You awake, Billy?”
“Yes sir.”
He sat down on the edge of my bed and put his huge gentle hand on my shoulder. For a while he said nothing, just puffed on the cigar. At last he spoke:
“Billy, you remember that ride you and me and Lee took up to the mountain last June?”
“Sure, Grandfather. I’ll never forget it.”
“Remember how thirsty you got and how we kidded you about the canteen?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever tell Lee?”
“Tell him what, Grandfather?”
“That I was packing a canteen in my saddlebags?”
I thought for a moment. “No, I don’t think I ever did. No sir, I’m sure I never told him—you asked me not to.”
“That’s right. And you never told him?”
“No sir.”
His cigar flared up a little in the dark and then died down. I could see him fairly well by that time, as my eyes got used to the dim light coming in through the curtains and blinds. The old man was wearing his hat.
“I’m leaving here, Billy.”
“I know, Grandfather.”
“How did you know?”
I paused. “I can’t—I don’t know why. I just knew it.”
“All right. Well, that’s what I’m doing. I’m leaving. I’m running away tonight, just like a kid.” He was silent. “No sir, I can’t stay here another day. I have to pull out. Now I want to ask you this: Do you know where I’m gonna be?”
“Sir?”
“I’m going to hide, Billy, and I think you know where I’m going to do it. Don’t you?”
I thought that over for a moment. “Yes sir.”
“Sure you do. I knew you would. But we won’t mention it because when they all get on you—Marian and Lee and maybe Isabel will be here too, or your mother—when they start putting the pressure on you, why you can say I never told you where I was going. You won’t have to lie too much. Do you follow, Billy?”
“Yes sir.”
“That’s good. And you promise not to tell them?”
“I promise, Grandfather.”
“Fine. That’s the idea.” He started to rise from my bed.
“Let me go with you.”
“What?”
“I want to go with you, Grandfather.”
He puffed on the cigar. “No, Billy. That we can’t do and you know it. You have to go home now. Maybe next summer—
“Home?”
“Yes. What’d I say? But next summer, maybe, you can join me again. We’ll see how things work out.”
“I wish I could go with you.”
“I know. But this time I have to go by myself.” He stood up slowly; I heard him sighing as he looked down at me.
“Goodbye, Billy.”
I couldn’t answer him; I was afraid to say goodbye and I was glad he could not see my tears. In the darkness I watched his tall figure turn, saw him take a small bundle off the dresser by his bed and move to the bedroom door. He faded away, stepping quietly down the hall and out the front door. listening intently, I heard the sound of the pickup truck as he started the engine and drove off.
It took me a long time to get to sleep that night. And when I did sleep I was troubled by a dream: a dream of fireflies, of marvelous blue-flaming stars that kept receding from me, of a pair of yellow eyes burning in dusk and silence.
The excitement began the next morning when I walked into the kitchen for breakfast. My Aunt Marian and her husband were sitting there drinking coffee.
“Where’s your grandfather?” she asked.
“He’s okay.”
“Somebody stole his truck last night,” her husband said. “But don’t get excited,” he added, as I seemed to hesitate. “Don’t tell the old man; he might get upset. I’ve already called the police about it. They’ll probably find the truck before the day is over.” He finished his coffee as I sat down at my place. “I told him several times he shouldn’t leave the keys in the ignition. It’s a bad habit which he’s got to learn to break if he’s going to live in town.” He folded the newspaper and got up from the table. “I’ll see you at dinner-time—and for godsake don’t let the old man worry about the truck. I wonder if he has insurance on it? Oh well—I’d better go.” And he rushed off to work.
My aunt set a bowl of hot cereal before me. “Isn’t your grandfather going to have breakfast with us?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Is he all right?”
“Sure he is.”
“I think I’ll have a look.”
“He’s sleeping.”
“I won’t wake him up, Billy,” She walked out of the kitchen and down the hall to the bedrooms. I stirred a spoon in the cereal and braced myself for the scream. She didn’t scream but when she returned a minute later she looked pale and awfully serious. She gripped my forearm and gave me her sternest look, right in the eyes. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t lie to me, Billy. Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“You knew he wasn’t there, didn’t you? You knew he was gone.”
“Yes.”
“Then where did he go?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.”
She went to the telephone. She called her husband’s office, she called the city police and the country sheriff and the state police, and she called Lee Mackie:
“He’s disappeared. What? … No, we don’t know … We don’t know when—sometime last night … Yes, in the truck … Who? … Yes, he’s here. … But he won’t talk. … He says he doesn’t know. … Yes, that’s what I think. … Yes, we notified the police. … Can you come over? … We’ll be here. … That’s good. … Yes. … See you then.”
An hour later the State Police called and informed Aunt Marian that the pickup truck belonging to John Vogelin had been fund in El Paso, abandoned in an alley and stripped of its tires and other parts. Soon afterwards Lee arrived.
“Why on earth would he go to El Paso?” he asked me.
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Billy!” my aunt said. “You could at least be polite.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“That’s better.”
“Why would he go to El Paso?” Lee insisted.
“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me where he was going.” I stared at the table top and wished they would both go away.
“I wonder if it’s a trick,” Lee muttered. He put his hand on my shoulder. I shook it off and slid my chair farther away from him. “Look here, Billy,” he said, watching me severely, “your grandfather is not well. He may be very sick. If you know where he went you’d better tell us.”
“I don’t know.”
“He might need help. He might be in trouble.”
I was silent. Lee and my aunt stared at me, grimly, until I had to turn my head away and look somewhere else. I looked out the window at the neighbor’s wall and forsythia bush, through the neighbor’s window at his television set.
“Does the old man have friends in El Paso?” Lee asked my Aunt Marian. “Can you think of any reason why he would get up in the middle of the night to go there?”
“No, I can’t. I suppose he knows people down there but I don’t know who.”
“Did he take money with him?”
“I don’t know. He left almost all of his clothes and things here.”
Lee looked at me. “When’s this boy supposed to fly home?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Well, keep an eye on him. Don’t let him sneak away.”
“Don’t worry about that.”
Promising to return after lunch if Grandfather failed to appear, Lee put on his hat and left us. My aunt put in a long-distance call to her sister in Phoenix and told her what had happened. She made some effort to do her housekeeping while we waited, and prepared a lunch for the two of us as the morning passed on to noon. She would not let me out of her sight.
Late in the afternoon Lee came back.
“Any word?” he asked Aunt Marian.
“Nothing.”
“Anything from El Paso?”
“Not a word.”
“You called them?”
“Lee, I’ve been calling the police and the sheriff’s office about every half hour. Nobody has seen a trace of him.”
Lee sat down at the kitchen table with us, removing his hat. He ran his hand through his thick black hair and turned his dark eyes on me. Unsmiling. “Marian,” he said, watching me, “I cannot understand why he would go to El Paso. Nobody can understand it. There doesn’t seem to be any reason for it.”
“There’s no reason for his leaving my house in the middle of the night without even saying goodbye.”
“I know. It’s strange. We have to try to guess what was going on in his head. Maybe we can reconstruct what happened. If the boy here will help us a little.”
“Stop staring at me,” I said, “I don’t know where he went.”
“Didn’t he go to El Paso?”
I hesitated. “I don’t know. I guess he did.”
“How did his truck get there if he didn’t go there? It didn’t drive itself. You didn’t drive it. How did it get there, Billy?”
“I don’t know, I tell you.”
“Billy, don’t you yell at Lee.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Lee kept looking at me all the time. “You know,” he said, speaking to Marian, “when you called me up this morning, my first idea was: I bet that old horse thief went back to the ranch. That’s the first thing I thought of. So I called the marshal and I called the Air Force Police. I thought they might be having another war out there. But no, they said everything was quiet—nobody had gone out that way last night or this morning.”
I smiled. Too late I raised my hand to cover the smile. They pounced on me like a pair of FBI agents.
“Billy!”
“Did he go out there, Billy?”
I paused, glowering back at them. They had me cornered. “All right,” I said. “I’ll tell you the truth. He said he was going to Old Mexico.”
They stared at me. “Is that the truth, Billy?”
“He said he was sick of this country.”
They were silent for a moment. Then Lee reached out and tried to put his hand on mine. I pulled my hand away. “Billy,” he said, peering into my eyes, “I think you are the biggest liar that ever hit Guadalupe County.”
I said nothing.
“I think you are the biggest liar in southeast New Mexico,” he went on. “Maybe in the whole state—outside of Santa Fe.” He paused. “I think I’ll take a ride out to the ranch.”
“I want to go too,” I said at once.
For the first time that day he smiled. “Get your hat.”
“I’m going too,” Aunt Marian said.
“No, you’re not,” Lee said. “This is a job for men. Get your hat, Billy.” And we left her there to wash the dishes.
As we climbed into Lee’s big car, he said: “Maybe we ought to trade this for a jeep. What do you think, Billy?”
“What for?” I said sullenly.
He looked at me in a careful way. “Because I think your grandfather is up on the mountain.”
I stared bitterly out of the window as we drove up the street. “Why can’t you let him alone?”
“Billy, I just want to make sure the old man is all right. We’re not going to kidnap him. If he wants to stay there we’ll let him stay there.” He tried to touch me again; this time I let his hand rest on my arm. “Does that make you feel better?” he asked.
I did not reply. I did not feel any better, I felt worse. I felt like a betrayer. A traitor.
Forty-five minutes later we were barreling south on the highway in a rented jeep, bound for Baker and the old man’s ranch. When we reached the village Lee stopped in at Hayduke’s place and the Wagon Wheel Bar to make inquiries: everybody knew that grandfather was missing but no one had seen him. We got back in the jeep and turned west over the familiar dirt road. Lee inspected the road for tracks—there were too many. “Looks like an army’s been out this way today,” he said.
We drove on under the grand clear desert sky. The sun burned along its high summer track, drifting towards evening, the dunes shimmered with heat and the bright white salt flats glittered like frosted glass, painful to look at. Lee put on a pair of sunglasses.
“What are those?” I asked.
“Sunglasses. What do they look like?”
“They look like hell.”
“Things change, Billy. Even the Indians wear them now. Why don’t you stop fighting the world and get in step? I mean—there must be a better way of saying it.”
“Keep trying.”
“You try them.” He handed the dark glasses to me and I put them on. To my surprise the sky looked bluer, the sand a deeper shade of tan, the yucca blades a more interesting green. Something wrong here, I thought; I don’t understand this, Silently I gave the sunglasses back to Lee.
“They work, huh Billy? You have to admit they work, they even make thinks look prettier.” He grinned at me. “We have to be smart like the other Indians, Billy. We don’t take everything the white man tries to dump on us but we make choices, we take what we can use and we let him bury himself with the rest. You understand?”
I nodded. I did not understand but I thought I could see a few dim tracks.
“Whoa!” Lee shouted. He slowed the jeep, stopped, backed it through our trailing cloud of dust. “Did you see what I saw?”
“No,” I said.
He stopped the jeep again and looked over the ground to our right: perfectly parallel and fresh, the twin imprints of rubber tires veered off the road over the rocks, through the sand, and twisted among the shrubs of creosote brush and mesquite toward the northwest.
“Why would anybody drive out there?” Lee asked. “I’ll tell you why: to get around the guards up ahead, that’s why. Your grandfather drove this far, remembered the guards at the gate, and decided to detour around them. Like you did when you walked this road.”
“Are you going to follow the tracks?”
“What for? We know his destination. We’re going straight to the cabin.”
“But—if the truck’s in El Paso?”
Lee started the jeep forward. “Oh, he’s real tricky, your grandfather. He probably picked up some wetback or soldier in Alamogordo and made a deal, maybe paid him something to bring him out to the hills and then told him he could keep the truck. Whoever got the truck would naturally drive it to the big city to strip it and sell the parts.”
“Why not hide the truck out in the mountains?”
“Because he wanted to steer us way off his tracks. Don’t you see? Real tricky. There’s only one thing now I can’t figure out.”
“What’s that?”
He grinned at me through the dust. “How he thought he could fool me.”
He trusted you, I thought. But I didn’t speak it aloud—I was guilty too.
Reading my thoughts again, he squeezed my shoulder. “Stop your brooding, Billy. We can both keep a secret. We won’t let him down.”
“What about Aunt Marian?”
He paused. “Yeah … that could be a problem. Well—if we have to we’ll lie to her, that’s all. Can you tell a lie as well as you can keep a secret?”
“I guess I’m not much good at either.”
“You’ll improve. At both.”
The Air Police halted us when we reached the gate; Lee produced the pass he’d been using for the past couple of weeks.
“This pass is no good any more,” the guard said. “Vogelin doesn’t live here now, Mr. Mackie, you know that. What’s your business today?”
Lee wasn’t quite ready for the question. “We’re looking for a horse,” I said.
“That’s right,” Lee said. “An old horse.”
The guard eyed us warily. “Okay, Mr. Mackie, we’ll let you through this time. You promise to come out again before sundown?”
“Yes, sure. Thanks a lot.”
“That’s all right, Mr. Mackie. Just be sure you’re out by dark.”
We drove on through. “Great to live in a free country,” Lee said, “with well-trained and courteous cops everywhere you go. Now keep your eyeballs skinned and we’ll see where the old man came back on the road.”
But we didn’t.
“Well, he decided not to take any chances, that’s all,” Lee explained. “I guess he drove clean around the ranch. Don’t worry, we’ll find him.”
That’s what I was worried about.
As we crossed the ancient lakebed where the loading pens were—empty corrals, abandoned now to the weather and the bombing practice: they’d make satisfactory targets—we saw a funnel of dust boiling up from the other side of the basin and at its forward tip a gray government sedan, speeding toward us.
The driver of the car flagged us down. We stopped side by side on the road and Mr. Burr leaned head and elbow out of his window to talk to Lee. The marshal was alone this time. “Where are you two going?” he asked; his tone and his expression were hostile.
“We thought the old man might be at the ranch,” Lee said.
“I told you this morning there wasn’t anybody out here.”
“I see.” Lee fingered the dust on his jaw. “I thought he might possibly show up this evening.”
“It won’t do him any good. If he does you better bring him out again.”
“That’s why I came.”
The marshal looked at our jeep, at me, at Lee’s hard brown face. “You’re not allowed in here after sunset,” he said.
“We’ll be out.”
The marshal considered us once more with his insolent, lazy, lizard eyes, withdrew into his steel shell and drove off. We continued on our way, while I looked back to make sure the marshal didn’t turn around and follow us. Lee also was glancing at the rear-view mirror.
“You think he might try to follow us, Lee?”
“I was thinking of that. But he’d have a hard time getting that car across the Salado. And even if he made that he couldn’t drive it very far up the trail road.”
“He could walk.”
“He’s too fat and lazy. It’d kill him.”
“I hope he tries then.”
“I know how you feel, Billy. I sure hated to have to be so polite with that—toad. I could’ve killed him the other day. I would’ve killed him if he’d hurt John.”
We topped out on the ridge above the ranch buildings, stopped and looked down. There was no sign of human life below—no smoke in the chimney, no light in the window, no pickup truck or car in the yard under the cottonwoods. Even the dogs and chickens were gone, as well as the horses and the milk cow. The only movement we perceived down there was the slow turning of the windmill as it continued to pump water into the tank and from there into the ditches that watered the garden and filled the trough in the corral and carried whatever surplus remained to the pasture beyond the corral. And while we watched, the breeze died, the gray vanes slowed their whirling, paused and waited. The whole place became still, silent, dead.
“This was a man’s home,” Lee murmured. “This was home for a dozen different people and their children and animals. Now it all goes back to the spiders and the rattlesnakes. And the Government.” He looked up: the sun was getting closer to the western mountains. “Let’s go, Billy.”
We drove down the hill, down to the ranch, and through gates left open that didn’t have to be closed anymore right up to the edge of the Salado wash. Lee shifted into fourwheel drive, we dropped into the sand and stormed across through the sand and over the dry streambed and up the bank on the far side. The pale leaves of the cottonwoods twinkled above our heads with a dry rustling noise that seemed meaningless now. A pair of ravens roosting on a dead limb croaked like wizards when we passed. We began the journey to the mountains.
“I see jeep tracks all over the place,” Lee said. “You’d think the Army was having maneuvers out here. If the old man cut back this way we won’t find his sign now.” He drove as fast as he could over the rocky trail, through pockets of sand and in and out of deepening arroyos, straight toward the glare of the sinking sun.
We approached a scene along the road that looked familiar yet uncomfortably changed: a certain arrangement of bushes, rocks, a curve in the ruts—the bristling bayonets of a giant yucca. An instant later I recognized the place and realized, as we passed, what was wrong: the great twelve-foot stalk of the yucca, with its cluster of dry seed pods at the tip, now lay prone on the sand, hacked down by somebody with a big knife or machete. I said nothing to Lee. We bounced and rattled on, trailing a plume of dust that hung in the air for half a mile, golden in the evening sunlight, obscuring our view to the rear.
Down into the ravine and up the other side: another windmill appeared, standing up against the sky, with its water tank, corral, loading chute. No cattle, no horses, waited for us there now. Hot, dusty, thirsty though we were, Lee drove by without slackening his speed, past the mouth of the canyon and up the narrow wagon road into the foothills.
“I’m not even looking for his tracks now,” Lee yelled at me through the noise. “I feel so sure he’s up there.” He gestured toward the peak of Thieves’ Mountain.
The engine groaned as the pitch grew steeper, the rear wheels spun on the loose stones, and the back of the jeep swung toward the edge of the drop-off. Again Lee had to stop and engage the front axle; with four wheels pulling we ground up into the canyon pine and juniper, over the burnt flowerless weeds of August, pursuing shadowy birds which fled before the clamor of the machine. We passed the south ridge trail, drove beyond the point where Lee and I had routed the Army, and finally reached the junction of the old mine road and the wagon trail. But there we had to stop: several felled pine trees blocked the way that led up to the cabin.
Lee nudged the jeep against the first log and shut off the motor. “I guess we walk from here on up, old buddy.”
We climbed out, stretched our limbs, listened to the quiet stirring of the trees, the dim bird cries, and looked at the barricaded trail. “He doesn’t want visitors,” Lee said. “Not on wheels, at any rate.” He looked around. “My God, it’s quiet up here now. Remember how lively it seemed last June?”
“I remember.” I looked to the north: far out that way, past several fields in the mountain, my mind came to the awful spot where Grandfather and I had found the lost pony with his head broken, his belly ripped open, the vultures feeding on his entrails. “Let’s get up there to the cabin,” I said. “Maybe we better hurry.”
“Listen!”
I was still. A tree limb creaked, a few pinyon jays screeched below. And I heard the drone of an engine coming up the mountain. “My God!” I said. “He followed us.”
“Sounds like a jeep,” Lee said, cocking his head. “It is a jeep. Maybe it’s not the marshal at all.”
“Those Air Police had a jeep.”
“Yes. Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now. Let’s go up to the cabin.”
“But—we don’t want to—” I hesitated.
“Come on. It’ll be all right.”
I wasn’t sure about that but when Lee climbed over the fallen trees and started marching up the trail I went after him. As we climbed, the sun went down behind the mountain peak and the vast shadow covered us, covered the fear in my heart. We walked up the road through a filtered twilight, cool and gloomy, with the pine boughs whispering over our heads. A huge bird with long dark wings flopped off a limb and sailed away: the limb rose up, trembling.
“What was that?”
“What, Billy?”
“That bird.”
“I didn’t see it. I was watching the road. I think your grandfather walked up here last night. Or early this morning. See this bootprint? That’s him.”
We climbed faster, breathing hard and not talking much. Every now and then the noise of the jeep floated up from the hills below, coming closer.
At last we reached the end of the road and saw before us the level park of waving gramma grass, the corral, and the cabin set against the cliffs which rose up and up toward the summit of the mountain. We stopped for a moment to rest, to catch up with our breathing, and started toward the cabin. A man sat against the wall near the open door, hatless, facing us but with his head bowed, looking at the ground between his legs. He did not see us.
“Grandfather!” I shouted, waving my hand. There was no response. Was it really the old man? At that distance, with the glow of the sunset in our eyes, I could not be certain. I called again: “Grandfather?”
The only reply came from the mountain, as the cliffs echoed my voice. We hurried forward, staring at the man who sat by the cabin door, completely unaware of our approach.
“Hey, John,” Lee said, as we came close, “are you all right?”
Grandfather did not lift his head. He made no move. He sat in a strange, slumping, boneless way, supported by the wall, his hands resting on the ground, his glasses missing, his eyes half open and gazing blindly at the earth between his sprawled legs. His hat lay on the grass nearby, where it had fallen.
We stood awkwardly in front of him. “Grandfather?” I said softly.
A fly buzzed near the old man’s face and a faint, queer odor hovered in the twilight. I squatted down, looking into his eyes. The eyes I looked at could not look back at me. I reached out to touch him but my hand stopped of its own volition before I made contact. I willed the hand to move forward but it seemed to be paralyzed. I was unable to make myself touch the old man’s body.
Lee took off his hat and brushed the sweat from his forehead. He dropped the hat, put his hand on my shoulders and drew me back. “Your grandfather’s dead, Billy.” He stepped past me, put his arms under the old man’s back and laid him gently out on the ground. He closed the eyelids, picked up the salt-rimed old hat and placed it on Grandfather’s chest.
“He’s been dead for hours, Billy.”
I shook my head unable to speak, and backed away a few steps, staring at the old man. No, I thought, but I could not say it.
“Too much for him,” Lee said quietly. “Seventy years—too much trouble. Hiking up this mountain last night, chopping down those trees—oh the goddamned old fool. …” And Lee, kneeling on the ground beside the body, lowered his head, put his hands over his face and began to cry. “Oh the old fool—why did he do this?—damned crazy stubborn old. …” His head sank lower, his back shuddered in an uncontrolled spasm of sobs.
The sight of Lee Mackie bent double with grief, the awful sound of his weeping, somehow seemed to me more shocking than the death of the old man. I backed off further and turned away, stared out over the hills, watched the shadow of the mountain advance like a wing over the brilliant golden light on the desert. I too wanted to weep, to wail like a child, but I couldn’t do it. I felt only a cold stillness in my nerves, a dark and nameless anger. I envied Lee and his tears, realizing at last that he was closer to the old man and loved him more than I ever had.
After a while Lee stopped crying, got up off his knees and came to me. He put his arm around my shoulders and together we looked out at the light on the plain. Far off to the northeast we could see the first tiny lights of Alamogordo appear, the flash of a beacon on the mountains beyond the city. “Getting dark, Billy. We better take him down.”
“Take him down?”
“We can’t leave him here. The wild beasts will tear him to pieces. We’ll have to carry him down to the jeep.”
“But wait—” I hesitated. “Why—let’s bury him here.”
“We can’t do that. We can’t do that, Billy. People will have to see him. The coroner, the undertaker. Your aunts will want to see him, other relatives. … You know how they do this thing now, Billy.”
I was silent.
“Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t bury him here. Six inches down we’d hit nothing but granite.”
“He wanted to be here, Lee.”
“I know that.” Lee said nothing for a few moments. “We shouldn’t do it,” he said.
“We could cover the body with rocks. Isn’t that what they used to do?”
“Rocks,” Lee muttered, “rocks.” He looked around. “But they could roll off the rocks, take him away.” He rubbed his jaw in thought, his eyes shone as he searched the field, the corrals and cabin, the edge of the woods, the lavender evening, seeking an idea. His glance went to the cabin. “Yes. Here’s what we’ll do, Billy. We’ll cremate the body. We’ll give him a fire, the biggest funeral fire you ever saw in your life. That’s it—we’ll put the old man inside, inside the cabin, on the bunk in there, and we’ll set fire to the cabin. Why not? We’ll launch him off to the stars like a Viking. He’d like that—his name’s Vogelin, isn’t it?”
And Lee went to work. Tenderly he picked up the old man’s body and carried it into the cabin. He laid him on the cot and dragged the cot to the center of the floor, shoving the table aside. But then he hesitated again and stopped. Thrusting his fingers through his tangled hair, he gaped at me in doubt:
“Billy—what are we doing? Do you realize what we’re doing? We can’t ever tell anyone about this.”
I stood inside the doorway, watching. “Why not?”
“It’s against the law. We could get into all kinds of trouble. They might even think—Look, Billy, you must never tell anybody about this. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Lee.”
“This is a secret between you and me. For the rest of our lives. Agreed?”
“I agree.”
“Okay. Now let’s take the kerosene out of this lamp—”
“Hold on there!” another voice spoke sharply. Marshal Burr stood in the doorway, frowning at us, wiping the sweat from his face. “What are you fellas doing here?” He looked at the body laid out on the cot, the closed eyes, the folded hands, the hat placed like a wreath on the old man’s chest. “Say, what’s—what’s going on here anyway?” He stared at Grandfather. “What happened?”
Lee said, “You can see. He died. Died of heartbreak. We found him here when we came up.”
The marshal came into the cabin, staring suspiciously at the body of the old man. He stepped beside him and picked up Grandfather’s wrist and held it. At the same time he bent down, taking off his hat, and put one ear to grandfather’s mouth. After a minute, satisfied, he replaced the hand as we had arranged it and turned toward us. “Very sorry this had to happen. Very sorry.” He looked sternly at Lee and slapped the hat back on “It’s too late to get anybody out here this evening. But I’ll notify the county sheriff and he’ll get the coroner and an undertaker out here first thing in the morning.” He looked about. “I suggest we close up this cabin tight to keep the varmints out. What was he doing here?”
Quietly I unscrewed the burner from the fuel bowl of the lamp.
“I guess he came back here to die,” Lee said.
“You knew he was here?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Lee paused. “I didn’t want to see you and DeSalius and all your dirty-fingered military cops hounding this old man any more. Now get out of here before I lose my patience and kick your ribs in.”
Mr. Burr paled a bit and backed carefully to the doorway, his hands raised and alert, his eyes intent on Lee. I judged the time had come to pour the kerosene.
“You’re talking to a United States Marshal; you’re threatening an officer of the law.”
“I know it. Don’t irritate me.”
The pool of kerosene spread over the floor under the table and chairs, soaking into the aged, dried-out boards. I took matches from the box on the stove.
“What’s that boy doing?”
“We’re going to cremate the old man’s body,” Lee said. “I advise you to step outside if you want to watch. Strike a match, Billy.”
I struck a fistful of matches and dropped them on the spreading stain. Instantly the yellow flames sprang up, lapping at the furniture and reaching toward the wall.
“You two must be crazed,” the marshal said. “You can’t do this. It’s illegal. We don’t even have a death certificate.” He came in again, moving toward the body on the cot.
Lee picked up a chair and raised it over his head. “Don’t you touch him.”
The marshal stopped. I pulled ancient yellowed newspapers out of the cupboard shelves, spilling tin dishes to the floor, wadded the papers and threw them on the fire. They billowed up in flame, curling around the table legs.
“You can’t do this,” the marshal shouted. “It’s against the law.” Again he made a tentative move toward the old man.
“Stand back,” Lee hollered, “or I’ll brain you.”
The fire began to grow along the edge of the floor, eating at the warped and exposed board ends. A few flames flickered up the wall and touched the shelving. Smoke gathered under the rafters. I stepped toward the doorway.
“Get out of here, Billy,” Lee said. “I’ll hold him off.”
I edged around the marshal and reached the doorway. The light of the fire made the world outside seem dark as night already.
“I can’t let you do this!” the marshal shouted at Lee. “You can’t dispose of a body this way. And this cabin is now Government property. You’re wilfully destroying Goverment property.”
Lee smashed the chair in the table top. He kept one leg of the chair clutched in his right hand and pushed the other pieces onto the fire. Holding the chair leg like a club, he stood against Grandfather’s bier and faced the marshal. I could see the light of the flames in his eyes.
“I’m going to file charges against you,” Mr. Burr yelled. “You’re going to regret this.”
Lee grinned at him, holding the club aloft. The fire crept around him over the floor, licked at the mattress on the cot, grew bigger under the table and broken wood, filled the cabin with smoke.
The marshal backed toward the door as the heat became unpleasant. “This is going to hurt you,” he howled at Lee; “You’re going to have the record against you for the rest of your life.”
Lee grinned at the man again, squinting through the smoke. The marshal cursed, turned abruptly and marched out of the doorway, pushing me to one side. His eyes were red with fury and the sweat poured down his face. Lee came outside and stood beside me as we watched him stomping across the field, fading into the twilight.
The table collapsed inside, one leg eaten away, and the fire rose up with added vigor. We faced the cabin, staring at the flames, and waited. Waited till the whole interior of the cabin became a seething inferno moaning like the wind, and bits and pieces and sections of the roof began to fall in. Grandfather on his bunk disappeared within the fire, wrapped from head to foot in flame, and cell by cell, atom by atom, he rejoined the elements of earth and sky.
The fire now seemed the brightest thing in the world as evening covered the mountains and desert and the first few stars emerged from the sky. Far away to the northeast and to the south the light of Alamogordo and El Paso twinkled like tiny beds of jewels in the velvet dark. If anyone out there cared to look, he’d see our funeral bonfire flickering like a signal, like an alarm, high on the side of the mountain of thieves.
The fire burst through the roof and streamed around the walls of the cabin, flaring wild and magnificent in the darkness, blazing with angry heat. Lee and I stepped back, our faces hot. He squeezed my shoulder and smiled at me, that foolish and generous smile, his face grimy with dust, sweat and smoke.
“The old man would like this, Billy. He’d approve of this.”
The walls crackled and crashed, forcing us still further back. We stared in awe as the fire achieved the climax of its energy and towered above the cabin, rolling up and up in a pillar of smoke and sparks and flames that illuminated for one moment of splendor the entire height of the granite cliffs beyond the rim.
Far above on the mountainside, posed on his lookout point, troubled by the fire, the lion screamed.