Orbit 20 Read online

  Sam looked from him to the woman.

  “He won’t sign,” she said.

  “I don’t understand. Why won’t he file a claim?”

  “He says he should pay the company,” she said, and although her face remained impassive, she spoke bitterly. “He says a man should be happy to give up an arm to see the face of God.”

  “He’s crazy!” Sam looked at the Indian for the first time. He had been looking at a claimant, a statistic, one like many others he had seen before and recognized instantly. Now he studied him.

  “You have a right . . .” he started, then fell silent.

  The Indian shifted to regard him and Sam thought, He has seen the face of God. Harshly he demanded, “Who’s going to take care of your family? Hunt for them, earn money? Who will go up to the mountain to get firewood? You have only one arm!”

  “It is enough,” the Indian man said, and turned his gaze back to the desert.

  Sam filled out the claim and the Indian woman signed it. He drove away as fast as the company truck could take him. That was the last case he handled; two months later he quit his job.

  For seven years, he thought, he had searched for something that would give him what that son of a bitch had. They called him an artist now, and he knew that was a lie. He was a good craftsman, not an artist. He understood the difference. He was using the rocks he found, making something, anything that would permit him to survive, that would give him an excuse to spend days, weeks, months out on the desert. It amused him when others called him an artist, because he knew he was using a skill to achieve something else; he felt only contempt for those he fooled —the critics, the connoisseurs, the buyers.

  He would have it, he knew, if he had to risk an arm, both arms, Victoria, Farley, anything else in the world to get it. He would have it.

  III

  Farley watched Victoria. She rode reasonably well, held her back straight and trusted her horse to know where to put his feet, but she would have to do a hell of a lot of riding before it looked natural on her. He planned to watch her and if she started to slump, or her hand got heavy on the reins, he would call a halt, walk her up a ridge or down a valley, anything to rest her without suggesting that that was his intention.

  Watching Victoria, he thought of Fran, riding like a wild thing, so in tune with her horse, it seemed the impulses from her brain sped through its muscles, in a feedback system that linked them to create a new single creature. The last time she had come back, they had ridden all day.

  When they stopped to water the horses at one of the wells on her father’s land, he asked, “You aren’t happy in Portland, are you?”

  “I get so I can’t stand it. Begin to feel I’m suffocating, there’s no air to breathe, and a million bodies ready to smother me. So I come back and can’t stand this either. Too much wind, too much sand, too much sun and sky and cold and heat. Too much loneliness. When I start wanting to scream I know it’s time to go back to the big city. Heads I lose, tails I lose.”

  Fran was beautiful, more so now at thirty than she had been at fourteen, or eighteen, any of the lost years. He had loved her, and had left her when he went to school. A year later she had married a doctor from Portland. She had two children, and Farley no longer tried to sort out his feelings about her. When she came home they spent days together out on the desert. When she was gone they never corresponded.

  “You should have told me you’d leave here with me,” Fran said that day. She tossed rocks down a hole in the ground where an earthquake had opened a fissure ten thousand years before. “We could have made it work, half the time in town, half out here.”

  He shook his head. “Then we’d both be miserable, not just one of us.”

  “Aren’t you miserable? Aren’t you lonely? Is this goddamn desert all you really want out of life?”

  He had not answered. His life was his answer. He had tried to live in town, during, immediately after his college days, and he knew the city would kill him, just as a cage kills. His mother was dying in Bend where she had to remain for daily cancer treatments. His father was dying, too. The small town of Bend was killing him. He was like a caged animal, the luster gone, the sheen, the joy of living, the will to live, all leaving him as surely as her life was leaving her.

  Fran was gone the next day. He might see her again in a month, or six months, or never. He continued to watch Victoria.

  They skirted an old alfalfa field; it looked as dead as the rest of the desert this time of year. Even the deer passed it up for the greener range high on the mountains. But if the winter rain didn’t come, if the summer persisted into fall, into winter, the cattle, deer, antelope, rabbits would all be here grazing, and they would bring in the coyotes and bobcats. There would be some ranchers who would start yelping about varmint control, bait stations, traps, and he would try to talk them out of it, as he had done before. Farley knew they could never control the coyotes and bobcats; only water or the lack of water could do that. In the desert everything was very simple.

  They had reached the trail leading up Goat’s Head Butte, and he called a brief rest to water the horses. He and Sam had inspected this pump and well only last week.

  “There are trees up there,” Victoria said, pointing.

  “Snows up there just about every year, not much, but enough to keep them more or less green,” Farley said. “We’ll take it nice and easy. It gets a little steep and narrow up there, and, you’ll be happy to hear, cooler. I’ll go first and lead one of the pack horses, then you, Victoria, then Sam with the other pack horse. Okay? Just give Benny a loose rein and he’ll stay exactly where he knows he should.”

  They zigzagged for the last hour of the climb; the curves became tighter, hairpin turns joining rocky stairsteps that let them look directly onto the spot where they would be in a few minutes. Then suddenly they were on the top, a mesa with welcome shade and waist-high bunch grass for the horses. The grass was pale brown and dry, but good graze. A startled hen pheasant ran across their path into the grass, closely followed by a dozen or more half-grown chicks. A hawk leaped from a tall pine tree into the sky and vanished, gliding downward behind the trees. From up here they could see other trails, most of them easier, but Farley would not bring horses up through the sparse woods and grasses. Such life was too precious on the desert, and horses were hard on trails. He had chosen the north climb because it was barren and rocky, and would suffer little damage from their passage.

  “Do we get off now?” Victoria asked. She sounded strained.

  Sam was already dismounting. He gave Victoria a hand. “Tired? Sore?”

  “Tired and sore,” she said, standing stiffly, hardly even looking around. “And scared. My God, I’ve never been so scared in my life! What if that horse had stumbled? We’d still be falling!”

  Sam laughed and put his arm about her shoulders. “Honey, you did beautifully. You came up like a bird.”

  “I was afraid to move! What if I had sneezed, or coughed, or got hiccups? What if the horse had looked down?”

  Serena had packed beef chunks and chopped vegetables, and within an hour stew was ready. They ate dinner ravenously and took coffee with them to the western end of the butte where they sat on rocks and watched the sunset over the Three Sisters in their chaste white veils.

  No one spoke until the display was over and the streaks of gold, scarlet, salmon, baby pink had all turned dark. The snow on the Sisters became invisible and the mountains were simple shapes, almost geometrical, against the violet sky.

  “They look like a child’s drawing of volcanoes,” Victoria said softly. Then: “Why do they call this Goat’s Head Butte? It certainly looks like no goat’s head I’ve ever seen.”

  “A mistake,” Farley said. “The Indians called it Ghost Head, the source of Ghost River. A U.S. Geologic Survey cartographer got it wrong.”

  Victoria drew in her breath sharply. “It really is called Ghost River!”

  She sat between Sam and Farley. There was still enou
gh light for them to see each other, but shadows now filled the valley below; the moon was not yet out. For what seemed a long time no one spoke. Farley waited, and finally Sam said, in a grudging tone:

  “I didn’t know it then, Victoria, or I wouldn’t have said what I did.”

  “Piece by piece it’s coming together, isn’t it?” she said. Before either of them could respond, she said, “We’re too far away.”

  “What do you mean?” Sam asked.

  Helplessly Victoria shrugged. “I don’t know what I mean. I think you have to be closer to feel anything. I don’t know why.”

  Sam stood up, but Farley motioned him back. He put his hand lightly on Victoria’s arm. “Tonight we observe,” he said matter of factly. “Tomorrow we’ll crisscross the valley and tomorrow night we’ll camp down there. Relax, Sam. Just take it easy.” Without changing his tone of voice he asked, “Victoria, what did you see in that valley that night?” He felt her stiffen and tightened his clasp on her arm.

  “I told you.”

  “No. You told both of us your interpretation of what you saw. You translated something into familiar shapes. If you ask a primitive what something is that he never experienced before, he’ll translate it into familiar terms. So will a child.”

  “I’m not a primitive or a child!”

  “The part of you that interpreted what you saw, that has been reacting with terror, that part is primitive. I’m not talking to that part. I’m talking to the rational you, the thinking, sane you. What did you see? What was the first thing that caught your attention? Not what you thought it was, just how it looked.”

  “A black dome,” she said slowly.

  “No. Not unless you could see the edges beyond doubt.”

  “A black shape, dome-like.”

  “Let’s leave it at a black shape. Are you certain it had a definite shape?”

  “No, of course not. It was night, there were shadows, I was on the hill over it.”

  He was silent a few moments, and finally Victoria said, “It was just black. I remember thinking it was a shadow at first, then it took on shape.”

  Farley patted her arm. “Then?”

  “There was a door, when it opened, a light showed . . . That’s not what you want, is it?”

  “Just how it looked, not what you thought it was.”

  “A patch of pale orange light. No. A pale glow. Orange-tinted. I thought of a door, the way light comes through an open door.”

  They worked on it painstakingly, each detail stripped of interpretation, stripped of meaning. Victoria began to sound tired, and Farley could sense restless small movements from Sam.

  “I knew they were vehicles of some kind!” Victoria cried once. “They reflected light, they moved like automobiles—in a straight line, gleaming, and they turned on headlights at the road.”

  “But what you described doesn’t have to be vehicles,” Farley said. “What you said was clusters of gleaming lights, like reflections on metal.”

  “I suppose,” she said wearily. “They were spaced like cars on a road, and they moved at the same speed, in a straight line, not up and down, or sideways, or anything. Like cars.”

  “And when they turned on lights, could you still see the reflections?”

  She sighed and said no, she didn’t think so.

  “You’re getting tired,” Farley said gently. “We should get back to camp, get some sleep. One more thing, Victoria. Look down there now, the moon’s lighting the valley, probably not as brightly as that night, but much the same as it was then. If you had been up here that night, Victoria, would you have been able to see what you saw?”

  Farley still had his hand on her arm. The moon behind them made her face a pale blur; it was impossible to see her features clearly, but he felt a tremor ripple through her, felt her arm grow rigid.

  “No!” The trembling increased. “We’re too far away. You can’t see the road from here.”

  “Not because we’re too far to see it,” Farley said. “The road’s lower over there than the valley is.”

  “You mean I couldn’t have seen it from the hill either?”

  “No.”

  Victoria rose unsteadily and stared at the valley, turned her entire body to look at the cliffs surrounding it.

  “What is it?” Farley demanded. “You’ve remembered something, haven’t you? What?”

  “This isn’t the right place.”

  “It’s the place. You were over there. You can see the boulders, the pale shapes near the end of the ridge. Below that is the ranch road where you parked. It’s the right place.”

  “It’s wrong! It isn’t the right place! I was on a hill. It wasn’t like that!” She closed her eyes and swayed. “I was on a hill, and I could hear … I heard . . .”

  “You heard what? You heard something and saw something and smelled something, didn’t you? What was it?”

  She shook her head hard. “I don’t know."

  Farley made her face the valley again. “Look at it, Victoria. Look! You’re hiding among the boulders on that ridge over there. You know they might see you. You keep in the shadows, hiding. Don’t move! Don’t make a sound! What do you smell? What do you hear?”

  She moaned and he said, more insistently, “You smell something. What is it, Victoria? You know what it is, tell me!”

  “Water!” she cried. “Water, a river, a forest!”

  “You’re running,” Farley said, holding her hard. “You’re on the hill and you’re running. Your eyes are open. What do you see?”

  She tried to push him away. “Nothing! I can’t remember that part. Nothing!”

  “Look at the ridge. Look at it! You couldn’t run up there! There’s no place to run!”

  “It’s not the same place! I told you, I was on a hill, there was grass. I ran until that man, Reuben, stopped me.”

  “You’re terrified they might hear you. You smell the river and forest. You hear the rushing water. You run. Where are you running to? Why?”

  “The trees,” she gasped. “Bushes under the trees. I’ll hide in the bushes, in the mist.” She pulled harder, her voice rising in hysteria. “There isn’t any forest or river! Let me go! Let me go!” She began to sag. “I can’t breathe!”

  Farley and Sam half-carried, half-led her back to the campfire, which had burned to a bed of glowing ashes. Sam built up the fire and Farley held a drink to Victoria’s lips, keeping one arm around her shoulders. She sipped the bourbon, then took the cup and drank it down.

  “Better?” Farley asked. She nodded. “Sit down. I’ll get a blanket to put around you.” Wordlessly she sat down by the fire. Sam was making coffee.

  No one spoke until they all had coffee. Then Farley took Victoria’s hand. “We have to finish it,” he said.

  She nodded without looking at him. “I’m crazy,” she said. “I would have killed myself that night if that cowboy hadn’t been there to save my life.”

  “You saved yourself,” Farley said. “You panicked and you ran. You knew there was no forest, no river, no mist, but they were there. You invented Reuben, you projected him, because you couldn’t resist the evidence of your senses. You had to have help and no one was there to help you, so you helped yourself, through Reuben.”

  “I’m going to bed,” Victoria said dully. She made no motion to get up.

  Farley was not certain if she could accept anything he was saying. He could not tell if she heard him. “You acted out of self-preservation,” he said.

  “It was all just a dream or a series of hallucinations,” Sam said. His voice was hard, grating. His angular face looked aged; his full beard made him look Biblical, like an old bitter prophet.

  “You can’t regard it all as one thing,” Farley said. “That’s the mistake you made before, the same mistake the psychiatrist made, that if part of it was false, it all was. Obviously the cowboy figure is right out of romantic fiction, but that doesn’t make the rest of it false. I wondered if Victoria rejected the truth because she wa
s convinced the truth was impossible, and accepted instead the illusions that could have been possible.” He paused, then added, “Both in what she saw in the valley, and again in the cowboy.”

  Victoria stirred and shook her head. “I don’t understand anything,” she said, but with more animation now, as if she were awakening.

  “I don’t either,” Farley said. “But you did see something, and you smelled and heard Ghost River. I bet not more than a dozen people today know it was ever called that, but you renamed it. That’s what I keep coming back to.”

  “That’s crap!” Sam shouted. “She saw something and ran. Probably she stumbled and knocked herself out. You know you can’t run over that country, not even in daylight. She dreamed the rest of it.” He had risen to stand over Victoria. “The only important thing is what did you see in the valley?”

  “Not what you want me to say!” Victoria cried. “It wasn’t a god figure. Not a burning bush or a pillar of flame. Not good or evil. Nothing we can know.”

  Farley reached out to touch her and she jerked away. “You said we have to finish it. We do! I do! Sam, you wanted to know my nightmare. Let me tell you. I’m wearing tights, covered with sequins, circus makeup, my hair in a long glittering braid. Spotlights are on me. I’m climbing the ladder to the tightrope and there’s a drum roll, the whole thing. I know I can do this, the way you know you can ride a bike, or swim, or just walk. I smile at the crowd and start out on the rope and suddenly there is absolute silence. I look down and realize the crowd is all on one side of the rope, to my left: no one is on the right side. The audience is waiting for me to fall. Nothing else. They know I’ll fall and they are waiting. They aren’t impatient, or eager, they have no feelings at all. They don’t care. That’s when I panic, when I realize they don’t care. And I know I must not fall on their side. I try to scream for someone to open the safety net, for someone to take my hand, for anything. Then I am falling and I don’t know which side I’m on. I won’t know until I hit. That is what terrifies me, that I don’t know which side I’ll die on.” Her voice had become almost a monotone as she told the dream. Abruptly she rose to her feet. “I’d like some more bourbon, please.”