Point of Law (23 page)

THIRTY

I
CAN SENSE
the sun’s heat above the gap’s high walls but feel none of it. The night’s deep chill lingers on the canyon floor. A slight breeze magnifies it. It’s frustrating to think that just a hundred feet over our heads the desert sun is probably beginning to bake the rust-colored earth. Sandwiched between Oso and me, Kim still shivers in her sleep as my stomach clenches with hunger and cold. It has been a long night.

I peel myself away from her curved back and climb unsteadily to my feet. My body feels worse than if I’d abused it by drinking tequila all night. Sand is plastered to my skin from where I’d scooped it half over me in a vain effort to stay warm. Standing, I feel a heavy ache in one shoulder and one hip. My left forearm is black, blue, and yellow, but otherwise unmarred. Oso’s teeth had not punctured the flesh when I’d surprised him in the water right after he was shot. I try to stretch as I take in our surroundings.

The shallow water a few feet away is very still and very green. It turns to deep blue about fifty feet out where the walls open up into the tiny hidden cove. The gap itself is only five feet wide; the walls are close to a hundred feet high. In the other direction, the gap is floored with fine-grained sand. It stretches back a hundred yards or so before twisting out of view. I can see my footprints from the night before, when I’d staggered between the walls in a hopeless search for some shelter.

I swing my arms in circles and again try to ignore the rumbling in my stomach. And the way the cold seems to have clenched all my muscles into tight fists. At my feet, Kim and Oso, still spooning, are showing signs of life. Kim moves her head and coughs sand into the fur at the back of Oso’s neck. The beast rumbles, flexing his forward claws. The homemade bandage of Kim’s T-shirt and jeans looks crusty with a mixture of dried blood and sand.

Kim’s back, butt, and legs are naked. Sometime during the night I’d persuaded her to take off her wet underwear and bra. Cotton doesn’t dry easily and wet clothes just make you colder. I’d taken off my own shorts. The undergarments, now almost dry, lay spread on the sand in front of Oso’s head. I pull on my shorts before Kim looks around so as not to make too obvious a certain embarrassing stiffness. Despite the night’s terror and fury, the feel of her bare skin against mine is something I suspect will be branded in my mind for a long time to come.

My attraction to her had already made itself more than evident in the dark some hours ago. As I held her, trying to both give and receive life-saving heat, my independent-minded limb swelled up between her naked thighs. “Anton, what are you doing?” she asked not exactly in alarm, but not in rapt pleasure either.

“Nothing. It’s a natural reaction”—I breathed against her neck—“caused by the cold.” I thought about mentioning that she was having an apparent reaction to it as well—right where my left hand cupped one of her small breasts—but decided against it. Other than the feel of her skin, my only other comfort in the night was the sensation of that pointed nipple in my palm.

She made a noise, almost a cough. “I’m glad to know it’s the cold and not me that gives you a hard-on.” I thought she moved her hips just slightly, pushing them back harder into me.

“Well, I might’ve lied about the cold part,” I whispered carefully, as if my voice might wake Oso. It was a pointless concern—the beast was surely awake. I felt his head twitch beneath my right hand each time I spoke. I knew his eyes were wide with discomfort—both from his wounds and from having Kim wrapped around him, and me, in turn, wrapped around her. “Actually, I’ve been climbing in Alaska for weeks at a time without a hard-on. It’s you. Only you, Kim.”

I waited without moving for her response. It took a long time in coming—but the tension took away all thoughts of my wounded dog, my caged brother, a kidnapped girl, and the brutal desert cold. While I waited I continued to blow gently onto the back of her neck with my lips just a fraction of an inch away. For a moment I sensed that we were on the edge of a cliff, ready to tumble off in one another’s arms.

But then she pulled us back by saying, “I can’t deal with this right now, Anton. I really can’t. You’re a wonderful man, unbelievable in some ways. But there’s just too much going on.”

“I’m going for help,” I tell her, my first words of the day. She’s still curled tightly against Oso’s broad back. Her face remains buried in his coat and all I can see of it is her sand-encrusted eye patch beneath the tangle of dirty black hair. I drape her sports bra and underwear over her side. Turning my shoulder to her, I squat beside Oso’s head. The beast tries to get to his feet but I put a hand on his shoulder to keep him down. “Easy, boy. Stay.” I’m afraid that if he gets to his feet the wound will split open and start bleeding again.

“How does he look?” Kim asks through his fur and her own hair.

“Better. He’s not in shock anymore, and that was the real danger last night. Now it’s just infection and tendon damage that I’m worried about.” My stomach clenches again. “We need food.”

I hear the snap of elastic as Kim tugs the sports bra into place. When I turn to see her face for the first time this morning, she looks down shyly. It’s surprising to see this beautiful, self-assured woman acting timid—almost as if she were the one who had made a fool of herself last night instead of me. Neither of us mentions it.

I dip my foot into the water, then jerk it out. After a night of teeth-chattering cold, the water feels like it should be skimmed with a layer of ice. In reality it’s probably almost sixty-five degrees. But the thought of immersing myself in it and having to swim is appalling. Like all breeds of fear, I know it’s best to confront it immediately, without hesitation. I look at Kim, still huddled and shivering in her bra and panties, and I look at Oso panting and bloody, and I think of Sunny and Roberto. Then, with a gasp, I march into the water.

“I’ll be back in an hour, I hope. It should warm up before then.”

“Be careful,” Kim calls after me.

God, the water is cold. It takes all my will not to dance uncontrollably in the shallows. When I lunge headfirst into the gap, the cold rips the breath from my lungs. My calves try to cramp in rigid protest. I crawl-stroke hard down the gap and into the small cove, hoping the exertion will at some point warm me.

The cove has none of the menace from the night before except for where the air-filled bow of Sunny’s Sea Ray points out of the water like the white tip of an iceberg. And where a single red shotgun shell floats nearby. The top of the west wall shimmers red and gold in the morning sunlight. I pause, treading water, to look around for a moment. The place would be perfect for a postcard picture if the cold and the night’s terror didn’t still have its grip on me. Deep-blue water, a sign of great depth, causes me to give up any hope of diving for my gun.

I swim through the low arch leading to the sub-canyon, and up that toward the bay. The steady stroke is finally beginning to warm me, but it’s tiring, too—it’s been years since I’ve done any serious swimming. The muscles in my shoulders and back burn as if I were on a long climb. I welcome the lactic acid’s heat. After ten minutes I try to rest by floating on my back, but it’s not much of a rest because I keep sinking. I remember that fresh water is far less buoyant than the salt water I swam in as a child. So I forget about resting and just swim on.

Coming out into the bay, I’m disappointed to neither hear nor see any sign of other boats. It’s too early for the sightseers to be out. There’s just a flock of white birds that spins and dives in formation far out over the water. I turn to the south, my right, and crawl on toward the canyon with the houseboat on the beach.

I’m almost to the canyon when I hear a hollow pumping sound. For some reason it brings back memories of high school and college. I wonder if the cold is making me delirious. Then I latch onto a memory and pinpoint the sound—it’s the heaving of someone’s stomach after a night of excess. The gut-wrenching sound is actually welcome to me. Turning the canyon’s corner, I find the big houseboat with two speedboats tied to the side. A beefy young man with sleep-tussled hair is leaning over the boat’s second-story rail. He’s spasming with a long series of the forceful contractions. I head toward the closest end of the beach, wanting to approach on foot rather than like a thief from the water. And I’d rather not swim through his vomit.

The sand feels good under my feet. I stagger on it as I come out of the water, my legs having turned to wet noodles. They’re too tired from the swim to respond to the ordinary demands of walking upright. I feel like I’m drunk myself—my mind and limbs are so numb with cold. And like something out of an alcoholic daze, what appears on the beach is beyond surreal.

Three topless girls are sunbathing just a few yards away. They stare at me in horror as I trip and splash face-first into knee-deep water. “Oh my God!” one of them says.

Back on my feet, I stumble toward them. One girl springs to her feet with the agility of a startled deer and sprints on board the enormous boat. The other two fumble with their swimsuit tops before standing awkwardly, unsure if they too should flee.

“There’s been an accident,” I say to them, trying hard to look as inoffensive as possible in my clinging underwear. “I need help.”

During the long swim I had decided to tell no one here at the lake about the shooting and kidnapping. To do so would mean hours spent with the local police and whatever federal agency had jurisdiction over a national recreation area such as Lake Powell. It is imperative that we get back to Tomichi as fast as possible, where we can enlist Sheriff Munik’s help in finding Sunny. If he refuses, I’ll go to the FBI, the Forest Service, or anyone else who will listen.

The girls evidently decide I’m harmless despite my scarred face and lack of clothes. One of them tilts her sunglasses down on her nose and looks me over. “You’re the guy who was with the woman and the dog, right?” Apparently having been seen in the company of a beautiful woman and a dog gives me some credibility.

“That’s one badass dog,” the other says. “Was he hurt?”

“My friend and my dog are okay, although my dog cut his leg pretty badly in the crash. But our boat sank. Can somebody here give us a ride back to the marina? I’ve got to get my dog to a vet.”

The girls look at one another and at the speedboats. “Sure,” the one with the sunglasses tells me. “It sounds like fun. It’s getting kind of boring here anyway, just listening to the guys puke.”

They explain to their friends on the houseboat what they’re doing while I sit on the sand, warming in the sun. Even though I can feel its hot touch on my skin, the shivering won’t stop. The young men on board glare at me suspiciously but they are too hungover to argue much. I borrow a pair of shorts and a T-shirt for Kim, and even manage to beg a box full of granola bars. I’m out of luck, though, when I ask for water. “It’s all gone,” one of the girls tells me cheerfully. “All we’ve got left is beer.”

I can’t hold back a smile. “Then I guess that will have to do.”

By speedboat it takes the two girls, named Candy and Amber, sorority sisters at UNLV and indistinguishable from one another, only ten minutes to take me under the arch and into the cove. Delighted by the hidden wonder, one of the girls pulls out a camera and starts snapping pictures. They wait in the hidden cove with the big engine idling while I swim up the gap to retrieve Kim and Oso.

Kim is still trembling violently in the slot’s perpetual shade when I come out of the water. She’s kneeling beside Oso, massaging his fur.

“How’s he doing?” I ask.

“He started growling and tried to stand up when he heard the boat,” Kim reports, proud of her patient’s spirit. “You found help, I take it.”

“Wait till you meet our rescuers.”

Together we ferry Oso out into the cove. The girls chatter like concerned birds as they struggle with us to lift Oso’s mass into the boat. They apparently fall in love with the wounded dog at first sight, feeding him half a box of granola bars before I ask them to stop. One of the girls gives Kim the clothes I’d borrowed along with a beer. She looks at the proffered can in amazement until I explain the lack of drinking water.

The improvised bandage on Oso’s hind leg smears the white vinyl cushions with blood, but the girls are thankfully more concerned about the dog than the damage. He’s bleeding again from the swim. As we motor back out into the bay, I use the medical skills my father had taught me and the boat’s first-aid kit to cleanse and rebandage the wound. In the daylight the damage to his haunch looks even more severe than it had felt the night before. The shotgun blast tore away more than two inches of muscle along the back of his leg. I’m not certain what the permanent damage will be—he’ll probably have a limp at the very least—but I’m pretty sure he’s not in danger of dying. Better news is that the wound appears to be clotting well despite the fresh soaking. I think it won’t do much more harm if we wait to get back to Tomichi before taking him to a vet. Kim tells me that she’s friends with the woman who runs the animal hospital there. It will save time and save me from having to explain to an Arizona vet just how my dog managed to get shot.

The speedboat creeps back under the arch and into the canyon and then into the bay beyond. I ask if we can pick up the pace a little. “You bet!” one of the girls tells me. She shoves the throttle forward and the twin engines dig deep in the water. Twin plumes explode from behind the propellers as the boat rears like a panicked horse.

We’re getting out into the main channel when I’m struck by the whole surreal scene. Just eight hours ago, someone was trying very hard to kill me, my dog was wounded, and a friend had been kidnapped; meanwhile, my brother self-immolates in jail and another young man sleeps on a stainless steel bed in a coroner’s cutting room. And here I am being taxied at high speed by two college girls in bikinis and a one-eyed woman I’m infatuated with, amid the lake’s equally spectacular scenery. I sip my second beer and shake my head.
This can’t be real.