Orbit 20 Read online

  Dazed, she pulled the shade aside. It was not yet light.

  “This is a parking lot!” a man yelled at her. “Move it out of here.”

  It was bitter cold that morning and the sky was uniformly gray. She turned the radio on to the weather channel and nodded glumly at the report. Freezing level three thousand feet, snow in the higher passes.

  All morning she crept along, sometimes in the clouds, sometimes in swirling snow, sometimes below the weather. At one o’clock she realized she had left the cold front behind her; she was east of the mountains, heading north in Oregon. The sun was brilliant, but the wind speed had increased enough to rock the camper, and she fought to hold it to forty miles an hour.

  The rain forest had given way to pines on her left, and off to her right there was the desert. Later in the afternoon she turned east on U.S. 26, and after a few miles stopped at a rest area for lunch. This was the Juniper Wayside Park, a small plaque said, and went on to extol the virtues of the juniper tree. The trees were misshapen, no two alike. Some grew out sideways like shrubs, some were almost as upright as pines; none was over twenty feet tall. Beyond the small grove of junipers the ground was flat, brown, dotted with sagebrush and occasional clumps of wire-like grass. The wind screamed over the empty land. Shivering, Victoria got back inside the camper. She made a sandwich and studied the instructions Sam had written.

  She had less than sixty miles to go; it was four-thirty. She should be there well before dark. A truck thundered past the park, and she jumped, startled. It was the first vehicle that had passed her since she had turned east. But, she thought, it proved other traffic did use this highway; she would not be totally alone on the desert.

  When she started again, no one else was in sight. The road was straight as far as she could see in both directions, and it was a good road, but she had to slow down again and again until she was driving no faster than thirty-five miles an hour. Even at that speed the wind out of the northwest was a steady pressure against the side of the camper, pushing, pushing. When it let up, she rebounded. When it gusted, she was almost swept off the road.

  To her left—she could not judge distance in this treeless country—there were hills, or mountains, and sharply sawed-off mesas. Now and then a pale dirt road appeared, vanished in the sagebrush. Her highway was sending out feelers, tendrils that crept toward the hills and never reached them.

  Milepost 49. She shook her head. Those little roads were being swallowed by the desert. It was all a joke. Sam had not meant for them to drive on one of those go-nowhere roads. Milepost 50, 51 … She slowed down even more, gripped the wheel hard enough to make her hands ache. There was no place she could stop on the highway, no place she could pull over to consider. U.S. 26 was two lanes; there was no shoulder, only the desert. When Milepost 57 came, she turned north onto a dirt road. She felt only resignation now. She had to keep driving; the road was too narrow for two cars to pass. On either side there was only rock-strewn, barren ground, sagebrush, and boulders, increasing in size now. She could see nothing behind her except a cloud of dust. The sun had dipped behind the mountains and the wind now hurled sand against the windshield. The road curved and she hit the brakes, gasping. Before her was a chasm, a gorge cut into the land so deeply she could not see the bottom, only the far side where sharply tilted strata made her feel dizzy for a moment.

  Some ancient river, she thought, had thundered out of the hills, an irresistible force that no rock could withstand. Where was it now? Gone forever, but its passageway remained. A mighty god, it had marked the land for centuries to come, its print cruelly raked into the earth. The forests it had nourished were gone; the bears and otters and beavers, all gone; the land was deserted, wailing its loneliness. She roused with a jerk. It was the wind screaming through the window vent. Soon it would be dark; she had to find a place where it would be safe to stop for the night.

  She read the directions again before she started. Sixteen miles on this road, turn right, through a gate, a short distance to a second gate, twelve more miles. She glanced at the odometer frequently as she drove, willing the numbers to change. The cliffs on her left were already dark in shadows, and the gorge she cautiously skirted appeared to be bottomless. This narrow road had been blasted out of the mountain; it threaded upward in a series of blind curves.

  Every step for six months, she thought, had led her to this: driving alone on the desert, miles from another person, miles from help if she should have an accident. Driving on a track that seemed designed to make any stranger end up at the bottom of a ravine.

  She realized there was a wire fence on her right. She could not remember when it had first appeared. She had been climbing steadily, slowed to ten miles an hour on hairpin curves, with no attention to spare for scenery. Now the land was flattening out again. She almost cried out her relief when she saw the gate. She had to turn on the headlights to see how to open it: she drove through, got out and closed it again and stood looking at the western sky, streaked with purple, gold, and a deep blue that almost glowed. The wind stung her eyes and chilled her. She turned around to study the track ahead. It could not be called a road here, she decided, and knew she would not try to drive another mile that day.

  “I’m sorry, Sam,” she murmured, climbing back into the camper. She humped and ground her way only far enough from the dirt road not to be covered with dust if someone else drove by, and then she turned off the motor. Without that noise, it seemed that the voice of the wind intensified, filled all available space. She closed the vent tight, and the high-pitched wail stopped, but the roar was all around her. Now and then the camper swayed, and she thought perhaps she should move it so that the wind would not hit it broadside. She sat gripping the steering wheel, straining to see ahead, until she realized how dark it had become; she could see nothing at all with the headlights off. Night had come like the curtain on the last act.

  She pulled the shades tight, checked the locks, and thought about dinner, decided it would be more trouble than it was worth. Instead, she looked in the liquor cabinet, chose Irish, poured the last of the coffee into her cup, filled it with the whiskey and sat on a bunk sipping it as she pulled off her shoes. Her shoulders and back ached from her day-long battle with the wind. When her cup was empty, she lay down and pulled the covers over her ears. The wind roared and the camper shook and she slept.

  She awakened and sat up, straining to hear; there was nothing. The wind had stopped and there was no sound except her breathing. A faint light outlined one of the windows where she had failed to fasten the shade securely. Wearily she got up, not at all refreshed by sleep, and very hungry. She went to the bathroom, looked at the shower, shook her head, and went to the refrigerator instead. Food, then a cleanup, then drive again. As she sipped her second cup of coffee she opened the shade and looked out, .id for a long time didn’t even breathe.

  It was not dawn; the brilliant light was from a gibbous moon that had never looked this bright or close before. She stared at the desert, forgetting her coffee, forgetting her fatigue. There was an austere beauty that would drive an artist mad, knowing the futility of trying to capture it. Not color; the landscape was revealed with a purity of light and shadow from hard platinum white through the deepest, bottomless black that seemed for the first time to be a total absence of everything—color, light, even substance.

  Slowly Victoria pulled on her coat and stepped outside. The sky was cloudless, the air a perfect calm and not very cold. The clumps of sage were silver—surreal stage props for a fantasy ballet; grasses gleamed, black and light. Nearby a hill rose and she started to walk up it. From the top she would be able to look out over the strange world for miles, and, she thought, it was a strange world, not the same one that existed by sunlight.

  She walked with no difficulty; every rock, every depression, every clump of sagebrush was clearly, vividly illuminated. Light always symbolized warmth, she thought, comfort, the hearth, safety. But not this hard, cold light. She looked behind her at the campe
r, silver and shining, beyond it to the pale road, farther to the black velvet strip that was the gorge, the black and white cliffs, the sharp-edged mesas .. . For a moment she felt regret that she would never be able to share this, or explain it in any way; then she turned and continued up the hill.

  She saw boulders on the crest of the hill and went to them and sat down. To the east the brilliant sky was cut off by high, rounded hills; far off in the west the horizon was serrated by the Cascade peaks. Closer, there were mesas and jumbled hills, a dry wash that kept reversing its ground-figure relationship, now sunken, now raised. She lost it in the hills and let her gaze sweep the valley, continue to the dirt road she had driven over earlier, the kinky black ribbon of the gorge . . . Platinum whites, silver whites, soft feathery whites, grays . . .

  Something stirred in the valley and she shifted to look. What had registered before as a large shadow now had form, a hemispherical shape that looked solid. Suddenly chilled, she pulled her hood up and pressed back against the boulders. A patch of pale orange light appeared on the shape and something crossed before it, blocking the light momentarily. Then another shadow appeared, another .. . The shadows moved onto the desert floor where they reflected the moonlight just as her own camper did and, like her camper, they were vehicles. Campers, trucks with canopies, trailers, motor homes, station wagons . . . They lined up in a single column and moved toward the dirt road, without lights but distinct in the brilliant moonlight, too distant for any noise to reach her. More and more of them appeared, bumper to bumper, a mile of them, five miles, she could not guess how far the column stretched. Now they were reaching the dirt road. When the first one drove onto it, headlights came on; it turned south, and she could see the taillight clearly. The next one followed, turning on lights when it entered the road. The third one turned north.

  “Of course,” she breathed. “On 26 they’ll divide again.” Suddenly she began to laugh and she buried her face in her hands and pressed her head down hard against her legs, needing the pain. “Don’t move,” she told herself sternly. “They’ll see you.” After a few minutes she looked up. The hemisphere was a shadow again. The line of campers and trailers was halfway across the valley. Down the road she could see many sets of rear lights. Those turning north were hidden from view almost instantly by the cliffs.

  Moving very slowly she stood up, keeping close to the boulders. She began to pick her way among the tumbled rocks. She had to stop often to fight off dizziness and the laughter that kept choking her as she stifled it. She could no longer watch where she was going, but groped and felt her way like a blind person. “The birthplace of recreational vehicles!” she gasped once and nearly fell against a rough boulder, then clung to it. “Biggest damn mother of them all!” she sobbed.

  She was running and couldn’t remember when she had started to run. They would train instruments on the surrounding hills, she realized, and they would come to eradicate any witnesses. They would have to. She knew she must not run over this ground, knew it and ran blindly, stumbling, seeing nothing, falling again and again. She screamed suddenly when something caught her arm and dragged her to a stop.

  “Whoa now, honey. Just take it easy. You’re pretty far from the nearest bus stop. You know?”

  She struggled frantically and was held, and gradually she could hear the voice again. “… calm down. Steady now. Nothing’s out here to hurt you. Coyotes, jackrabbits, seven head of the damnedest dumbest cattle . . .”

  Then he was saying, “That’s right, just take a look. Reuben’s the name. Honey, you’re as cold as a trout in snow water. Come on. That’s the girl. Build up this little fire. Here, wrap yourself in this.”

  She was holding hot coffee, drinking it, and still he droned on, his voice warm and comforting, almost familiar. He was talking about cattle.

  “Spotted them yesterday with the plane, but no way you’re going to bring them in with no plane. Nope. Me and old Prairie Dog here”—a great pale dog lifted its head, then put it down on its paws—“we come up like we been doing forty years. Not him, acourse, he’s only eight or nine, but only one way to get seven head a cattle back in the herd, and that’s on a horse.” He paused and leaned toward her. “You feeling a bit better now? Not shaking so hard?”

  “I’m all right,” she said. She glanced around. They were in a hollow with hills and boulders all around them. “How did you find me?”

  “I was asleep,” he said. “I heard this thing crashing all over the place and thought you was a coyote, to tell the truth. But old Prairie Dog didn’t. He knew. Took me straight to you.” He laughed, a deep growly snorting noise. “Thought at first I was still asleep and dreaming a pretty girl come to keep me company.” He refilled her cup, felt her hand, then sat down again, satisfied. “You’re okay, I reckon. Now you tell me what the hell you’re doing out on the desert three o’clock in the morning.”

  He had been asleep; he could not have seen it, then. Victoria opened her mouth, looked at the fire, and instead of telling him about the thing in the valley, she said, “I woke up when the wind stopped and just walked out a little from my camper.”

  “An’ saw something in the moonlight that scared the bejeesus outa you.”

  She looked at him quickly, but he was turned away, facing the cliffs.

  “I know,” he said, almost harshly. “When the moon’s big and bright, you see things out there. It’s when you start seeing them in daylight that it’s time to hang up the saddle.” He stood up. “You came through the gate back by Ghost River. Right?”

  “I don’t know the name. By the gorge.”

  “Not far,” he said. “Key’s in the thing?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m going to get it, bring it over here. You sit tight by the fire. Prairie Dog!” The dog jumped to its feet. “Come over here, boy, here. Stay, Prairie Dog.” The dog sat down by Victoria. “He won’t move till I get back. Won’t be long.” He took a step or two, then stopped. “Call it Ghost River ’cause nights like this some folks claim they can hear the water crashing down the rocks.” Then he left and she was shivering hard again.

  It wasn’t like that, she wanted to cry out at his back. She had seen something! The dog put its head on her knee, as if in sympathy, and she whispered, “I did see it!”

  The cowboy returned, took her firmly by the arm and led her out of the hollow, through a second gate. “That’s a mighty nice machine, Miss. Very fine. Just lock up tight and get some sleep. Going to be fine weather tomorrow, you’ll have a nice driving day.”

  He opened the door and almost pushed her inside. “I’ll be right down there, but you’ll be all right now. Just lock it up and get some sleep.”

  She snapped the door lock, heard a distant “Good night,” and shrugged off her coat and let it fall. She kicked off her shoes and fell into bed again and had no memory of pulling up the covers.

  “Why would I tell such a ridiculous lie?” Victoria cried. “That’s the right question,” Sam said.

  She had reached the designated spot at ten, and two hours later Sam had arrived. She had coffee and sandwiches ready, and as they ate she told him about Mimi’s accident. Sam, she thought, had been impressed that she had driven here alone. Then she told him about the thing in the valley, knowing even as she started, while she still had time to back out, that she was making a mistake.

  Sam started to unload his backpack, jerking things out with furious energy. He hadn’t actually called her a liar. What he had said, snapped, was, “Story time’s over.”

  “Why do you think I’d tell any lie at all?”

  “Maybe to pay me back. I know what kind of a drive that was. When that front came through I was prepared to wait three, four days. I can imagine how it was, bumping over rocks, sliding down gullies, hugging the cliffs over a thousand-foot drop-off, hating me for getting you into this. Fix old Sam. Tell him this cockamamie story, watch his eyes bug. You tried. It didn’t work. No amusing little anecdote to hand over to your pals. Sorry.”

/>   “I didn’t lie to you.” She tried to keep her voice calm and matter of fact, but she heard the indignation in every word.

  “All right! You dreamed it then. Or hallucinated. You were stoned, or drunk. I don’t care what you call it, it isn’t true!”

  “Because I didn’t get an affidavit or photographs?”

  “Christ! Victoria, look, I know this country. There is no little hill back there. There are cliffs and mesas and chasms. No little hills you can stroll up in the middle of the night. That’s point one. Two: do you have any idea in the world how scarce water is out here, how far apart the wells are? Too goddamn far to take the old faithful dog along, you idiot! You carry water for your horse, for yourself, if you have the room. You don’t carry water for a fucking dog! Your old pal the cowboy had a nice fire blazing away, coffee on! What in Christ’s name was he burning? You expect me to believe anyone would waste water making coffee in the middle of the night, have a fire burning away while he slept? And the seven head of cattle. That area’s fenced off to keep cattle the hell away from there. No water, larkspurs in the spring— that’s poison, Victoria, like arsenic or ptomaine. There wasn’t a gallant cowboy. No ghost river. There wasn’t a thing spewing out campers!”

  He hit his palm hard against the now empty pack. “Let’s get started. I have two hundred pounds of rocks up there.”

  Angrily, in silence, Victoria pulled her pack on, adjusted the straps and waited for Sam to lead the way up the mountain. Much later it occurred to her that Sam’s fury had been all wrong. If he had believed she was lying, or mistaken, he might have laughed, might have been contemptuous or scornful. But furious? Full of hatred? Why? She could feel the shivering start again deep inside. When she looked up, Sam was watching. He turned and walked on.