Eight hours, Arthur reflected. Four hundred eighty minutes. Twenty-eight thousand, eight hundred seconds. He took a deep breath and let it out. With more than a thousand miles of mountainous terrain ahead of him, it still didn’t seem like enough time. He had begun to feel the heavy weight of his role in this game he was being forced to play. A game that he must engage in fully, because the grand prize was Sharon’s life.
He began moving through the maze of possibilities, trying to pursue each forking pathway to its logical end. Kanesewah was running. Keeping out of sight and moving with purpose, making his way north to some unknown destination. Had he already reached wherever he was going, and taken refuge? Or had he been smarter than the average runner and succeeded at misdirecting everyone? Arthur rocked his tired head back on his broad shoulders. If he had learned anything about the patterns of runners during his years of tracking them across the desert, it was that he should continue north until his gut told him differently. And he had always trusted his gut. Just as he had that time when he discovered six UDAs packed like sardines beneath the rubber mat in the cutout bed of a pickup truck. He had chuckled at the sight of their astonished faces as the mat was peeled away from their claustrophobic hiding place.
He filled the Bronco’s tank in Moab and crossed the Colorado River at Lion’s Park. Driving over the split highway bridge that spanned the roiling green water, he saw the Moab Canyons Pathway walking bridge off to his right. Normally, it was alive with vacationers and hikers, but on this rain-soaked late afternoon, it stood empty. Back on solid land, he followed the highway’s gradual turn past the tall, reddish canyon cliff on his right and the campground on his left, then the small power substation and the western entrance to Arches National Park.
His parents had taken him there when he was fifteen. Arches Scenic Drive snaked past majestic towers and into the vast primeval splendor of petrified sand dunes, where dusty arteries had been carved into the red rock by fifty million years of rain. He remembered gazing at Balanced Rock and marveling at its harmony. If only he could achieve such balance.
He remembered almost losing the sight in his right eye after aiming his camera into the opening of North Window. The optical magnification of the sun through the lens had temporarily blinded him, scaring his young body into trembling as he managed to wander through the blurred surroundings to a place where he could sit down and whisper his prayers. After a short time, the Sun Father answered his earnest prayers, and his vision slowly returned. He had vowed then and there never to look at Jóhonaa’éí again while he was making his journey across the sky. He never told his parents.
Ten miles out of Moab, he passed a resort with its log-cabin souvenir shop, campground, mock-up schoolhouse, and gas station. They had even thrown in two spurious-looking Native American tepees for good measure. Still, he had to hand it to the creators of this whole tawdry spectacle for backdropping it against a magnificent red sandstone butte.
Twenty silent minutes later, the winding snake of Highway 191 met with Interstate 70 at Crescent Junction. Ak’is, apparently tired of the rain and wind, decided to hop into the back seat and curl up for a nap as they drove on. Thinking had become wearisome for Arthur, so he tried not to think. His brain was tired of pondering, tired of concocting, tired of imagining scenarios that hadn’t played out anywhere but in his exhausted mind. Letting go of his frenetic thoughts, he pushed on through the heavy rain.
Now, as the Bronco rolled beneath the expansive bridge deck of I-70, Arthur spun the steering wheel and felt the tires drop off the end of the pavement. He guided the truck into a spot in the dirt lot of Papa Joe’s Stop & Go to consider his options. Pulling a tattered road atlas from the overhead shelf above the windshield, he propped it open against the steering wheel. He quickly located the page assigned to Utah and pored over it, noting every road, every path of escape.
Kanesewah would have thought twice before heading east into Colorado, because that would mean staying on the busy interstate and increasing his odds of being spotted by any tourist, long-haul trucker, or watchful state trooper he might stumble across. The only way to keep a low profile would have been to head west a few miles and get himself back on 191 just past Green River. After that, it would be easy enough to roll past Elliot Mesa and Mount Elliot and get across the Price River. From there, Arthur followed his finger north through Helper, deeper into the mountains. It would be another almost three hours to Flaming Gorge. Once Kanesewah passed the ranger station at Dutch John, he could easily wind his way deeper into Wyoming. He nodded to himself. That was the route he would use if he were on the run.
Arthur closed the atlas and shoved it back onto the overhead shelf, getting the eye from Ak’is the entire time. It was the look that meant the waves in his bladder were cresting. Arthur let him out to water the mud and then hit the head in the Stop & Go before pointing the Bronco back onto the blacktop and up the I-70 entrance ramp. He would make Rock Springs, Wyoming, in about four hours.
As the rain beat steadily on the roof and hood, he found himself slipping into past mornings on the mesa, with Sharon lying beside him while the rain tapped out its rhythm on the ribbed steel roof. More times than not, he would wake to the tinkling of her wind chimes in the morning breeze. In summer, it meant that the hot, dry winds had made their way east across the high desert to White Mesa. In the fall, however, it represented the cool, bracing air that crept in and heightened the sweet scent of the black and silver sage surrounding their home.
He would turn his attention past the wafting curtains to be greeted by the clear, bright azure sky that often canopied their corner of the world. Sometimes, framed like a moving portrait in one of the windows, a pair of red-tailed hawks could be seen floating effortlessly on the wind in the near distance. He would watch them sail, their wings spread in enviable freedom, before they spiraled out of sight. Then he would roll onto his left side, prop his head in his hand, and gaze at the sleeping face of his wife. Sometimes, a lock of black hair would have fallen across her face during the night and come to rest near the corner of her mouth. As he’d watch her sleep, a soft breath might lift the errant lock into mystical flight, then let it float down and fall gently back into place.
Grudgingly, he would roll back over to look at the time on the docking station. Ever since building their house on the mesa, one of his private joys had been to rise while darkness still covered the high desert, dress comfortably, and pad quietly downstairs to make a pot of coffee. He would shrug on his long Pendleton coat and go out into the morning twilight, his hands warming against his coffee mug.
He had his favorite spot, too: a long ledge of sandstone that curved away from him and disappeared down the canyon wall at the end of the mesa. There he would sit, overlooking the canyon floor, his back against the sloping wall behind him, the mug of coffee warming his hands, and wait. Wait for the tranquil silence to be given life while the sun climbed over Hooded Mesa’s six-thousand-foot spine and spilled its light as if molten gold were being poured from a crucible into the canyon before him. Sometimes, the cry of a hawk would echo on the dawn breeze. He would then glance toward Spirit Lake and watch the newborn light dance on its shimmering surface, turning it into a glistening mirror on the canyon floor. Then, as the land began to come awake, he would stand as his father had taught him, facing east, eyes on the horizon, and slowly turn clockwise until he had completed a full circle.
“This is who I am,” he would say aloud. “This is who I am.”
He also remembered those rare mornings when Sharon would join him. He would speak the early morning blessing that told of how the mountains were their spiritual home and how, in the middle of this home, would be a warm fire. Of how thoughts would be good and plans would be made. Of how life would be blessed in this home where hope resided and where, together, they would sing as the morning unfolded.
Arthur’s mind quickly jumped back into reality when the large green 191 exit sign loomed above the interstate ahead. As he peeled off from the superhighway, his body began to feel the toll from the early start to his day. And if that weren’t enough, the drag of the afternoon tugged relentlessly at his tired, overworked mind. Add in the melancholy of unrelenting rain, and the choice became clear: at Rock Springs, he would pull off for some welcome shut-eye.
Unless he found that he couldn’t sleep. Then he would find the biggest pot of coffee he could, drain it, and keep going, hoping that his calculating guesswork had not been flawed.