Valley of Fire (12 page)

Reckon we made it two more miles before it got too dark to keep walking. Rattlers come out in the dark, and I didn't fancy stepping on one. There was some scrub and grass, and a bit of a depression, so we had something to block the wind. The earth was sandy, and I tried to scoop out a seep hole to get us some more water, but didn't get nothing but dirty hands. Would have had to dig 500 feet before finding water.

I handed Sister Geneviève a piece of jerky.

“Chew it slow,” I told her. “Make it last. That's all we got to eat.”

Even in this wasteland, a body could go a long time without food. Water was another matter.

I bit off a hunk, too, slipped the rest back in my pocket, and tried not to let the good nun see me shivering. The wind had picked up, coming down from the mountains, and it was cold.

About that time, the coyotes started singing.

Sister Geneviève stopped chewing and turned northeast, toward our sweet serenade. Them coyotes just yipped and yapped and sang out.

“They ain't close,” I told her. “Sound travels far out here, especially at night.” The wind helped carry their yips and yaps. “And a coyot' is more scared of us than you need to be of them.”

Wasn't much longer before they wasn't singing no more, but barking and snarling and fighting amongst themselves. The wind carried that noise to us, too.

“What are they doing now?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Well, they ain't always sociable.” I swallowed my jerky, and kept the gall from rising up my throat.

No, sir, I thought. Coyotes ain't sociable, not when they's fighting over their supper. A supper of one lightning-struck horse trader, a big farmer with his brains leaking out of the hole in his skull, a dead horse and . . .I had to spit . . . that lame blue roan they'd likely already taken down.

“Take one sip of water,” I told her. “Make it small. Make it last.”

She done real good. But I seen her trembling all over.

“You cold?”

“No,” she lied.

There was other sounds on the wind, nighthawks and screech owls, bugs and birds, the wind rustling through the grass. The coyotes soon had company. Wolves be my guess.

“What made you become a nun?” I asked, trying to take her mind off the feast and fighting going on two miles away.

I slid closer to her. She had pulled her legs up, wrapped her arms just below her knees, and was rocking. See, the problem was that Demyan Blanco had packed his extra duds for the summertime. Cotton drawers and a cotton shirt. The Sister was used to black wool.

“My father,” she said, still rocking, “was a priest.”

“Oh.” I nodded, then done some silent studying. Except for that brief little Mass in Anton Chico, I hadn't been in too many churches—and no matter what the
Daily Optic
wrote, I did not steal the candles, cross, and coins from the collection plate from the parish in Socorro in September of '82. I can prove it, too. You check with the jailer in Bisbee, Arizona Territory. I spent six weeks there during that time. So I wasn't a frequent churchgoer no more, but Rocío and them other Sisters of Charity had taught me some things.

“Priests ain't allowed to marry,” I finally told her. She kept rocking. “Never said he did. Marry, I mean.”

“Oh.”

We had another one of them long pauses. Silent. Nothing to hear but the wind and angry coyotes and wolves. Finally, the animals turned silent. Reckon they'd figured out there was enough meat there for everyone, and only the wind blowed, the Sister rocked, and I shivered, even though the wind and the walk had dried me out some. Just not enough.

“You just . . . wait.” I laughed. “Wait . . . till . . . tomorrow. You'll be wishing . . . it was . . . cold . . . like now.” My teeth chattered. “You just . . .” I started rocking, too.

“Mister Bishop.”

I looked up.

She stopped rocking, let go of her legs, and opened her arms. “Will you . . . hold . . . me?”

See, it made sense. I mean, two folks alone in the cold desert, me in still-wet clothes, and her in nothing more than thin cotton. Made sense. I slid over to her. Taken us awhile to find a proper position. I mean, she didn't smell like lilac no more, but she sure didn't feel like no nun. Especially when my arms went around her, right underneath those breasts, and then we kind of locked together like spoons, and laid down, and, well, I mean, it's just that she was a woman, a young woman, a beautiful young woman, and she wasn't wearing nothing but a dead man's clothes, his underpants at that, and a shirt so thin it was . . .

Well, you got to consider and recall that I'd been locked up in this miserable dungeon they call a jail in Las Vegas, and been stuck in a coffin full of rats, and then in a boxcar where a goat had peed on me. And it's just that I hadn't been with no woman, any kind of woman, even that one in Dodge City who had given me some wretched little sickness that sent me to that drunk pill-roller who didn't give me no pills, but had this little copper tube that . . . Never mind. What I'm trying to write down is that I was a thirty-year-old man and she was a handsome woman, and sometimes you just can't control certain parts of your body.

“That thing's got a mind of his own, don't it?” Geneviève Tremblay didn't say that. That's what a concubine I'd knowed in Durango had once told me, and she was right.

What Sister Geneviève said was, “Tell me a story.” Her voice was soft, all Illinois.

Not that I knowed what all Illinois sounded like. “What kind of story?”

“Any kind.”

“Like a Bible story?”

“If you like.”

What I liked was how her body felt next to mine. It taken some considerable thinking on my end to even think of a story, most of which I promptly rejected. After all, the stories told at poker tables and faro layouts and in brothels ain't fitting to relate to a nun. And I didn't recall nothing about them years before I'd wound up at the Sisters of Charity orphanage in Santa Fe.

Finally, I said, “Well, there was this woman. No, there were a bunch of women. All of them was beautiful. That's why they was all there. Hundreds of them. And they was all brought to this palace, and they was all given perfumes and great food—peaches, I reckon. I've always been partial to peaches.”

“Me, too,” she murmured.

Another reason I loved her.

“Well, good food and the best clothes. They could swim, and get their hair all pretty, and wear pearls and silver and gold. They did all this because the king had asked them all to come. He had to pick one of them to be his wife. Well, the king kept them there for a whole year.”

“So, finally, the big day comes, and all them beautiful women are decked out in the best duds, and they've got rouge on their faces, and pearls and diamonds and, well, they's all beautiful. But this one woman, she comes down, and she ain't wearing no pearl necklace. She ain't got on earrings. She's dressed, but her dress is real plain. And all them girls in their finest duds and with all that rouge and smelling like, like, like beautiful things, well, they all see this girl wearing just a plain white dress, and they all sigh, and I bet a few of them even cuss their luck.

“'Cause it ain't no contest. They all knows it. The king knows it. He lifts his crown, not his crown, you know, but the crown for his queen, and he beckons the plain girl to come up. And she bows, and he puts the crown on her head, and she becomes his wife. She's wearing plain duds, but she sure ain't plain. Didn't need nothing, she was that beautiful. I bet her hair could be soaked with rain, and she could be burned from the sun and wind, and I bet she could be wearing . . . wearing . . . a man's shirt, and . . . and she'd still be the most beautiful girl in New Mexico Territory.

“Her name was Geneviève.”

“Did they marry?” she asked.

“'Course. The king of Spain—guess that's where he was from, it being New Mexico in them olden days—he tells you to marry, you marry. Had to. But she didn't mind. And you know what?”

“What?”

“The king loved her. That's why he picked her. A body couldn't help but love Queen Geneviève.”

“Go on.”

I obeyed.

“Well, the thing was that this queen, Geneviève, she had this terrible dark secret. She was married to this New Mexican king, and he was Catholic, on account he was Spanish. He had to be. But the queen, Queen Geneviève, she come from Carbondale, Indiana.”

“Illinois,” she said.

“Oh, yeah.” It's hard to concentrate when your arms are wrapped around this lovely woman, and you got all this desire, and you're trying to recollect a story that you ain't got no idea where you heard it or why or how come you're telling it while laying on the sand, and the wind's blowing, and bull bats are buzzing around eating flying bugs, and you know that you ain't got a chance in hell of making it to Gran Quivira.

“Illinois,” I said anyway. “Then the king of New Mexico, he issues a law. It says that anybody from Illinois must die. They put them to death. Maybe it was in Southern New Mexico, what they started to call Arizona back in them times, not like where Arizona is now. That's it. It's during the Rebellion, when the rebels invaded New Mexico, took over the southern part of the territory called Arizona. That's it. So this king, maybe he's a general. Yeah, he's the Confederate general in charge down in Mesilla. Well, he says any Yankee from Illinois, male or female, granddaddy or kid, they must die. He's gonna put them all to death.”

“Are there that many people from Illinois in Mesilla?” she asks.

“Passels of 'em,” I tell her.

“Did he kill his queen?”

“He would have. This general, he was strict. Martinet, that's what the boys called him behind his back. You couldn't call on him without an invitation, but Queen Geneviève did that. She knowed she had to do something. She had to be brave. Not for herself. But for all them Illinoisans living in Mesilla. So she come into his office, and she knowed that the last person who called on him without an invite wound up in front of a firing squad. But the king, I mean, the general, he just smiled at her, told her she looked lovely, which she did. She always looked lovely.

“She asked the king, er, general, if she could take him to supper. He said, yeah so they went out to eat in this place on the plaza that served really good posole and enchiladas, with the best damned green chile you ever tasted. Spicy hot, but just wonderful. So they's eating, and she told the general that she's from Illinois. She told him that he must kill her.

“And the king, he liked to have choked on his sopapilla. He just stared, and that's when his heart, which had been harder than granite, turned into mush. That's when he realized how much he loved her, how much he needed her. And he kissed her. And he repealed his order. And the Yankees went on to win the war, but the general was happy. And he and Geneviève lived happily ever after, and they even throwed a party every year. A Feast. Guess it's on Cinco de Mayo 'cause it happened on the fifth of May.”

My lips touched her neck, accidentally, and I lifted my head, and whispered, “How's that?”

I didn't feel cold no more. I felt . . . never mind. None of your business.

“Her name was Esther.”

“Huh?”

“She was Queen Esther. She wasn't from Illinois, but she was a Jew. Haman planned to kill all the Jews in the empire, but Esther prevented this. She told Ahasuerus that she was a Jew, and Ahasuerus had Haman hanged, instead. The celebration isn't Cinco de Mayo. That's when the Mexicans celebrate the victory at their battle of Puebla. The celebration is the Feast of Purim. It's on the fourteenth day of the Hebrew month of Adar. I think.”

Think.
She knowed.

“But I loved your story,” she said so sweetly, and she reached over and squeezed my arm, which was asleep from supporting her.

A moment later, she was asleep. And there was me, wide awake, trying to remember when in hell I'd heard that Bible story that I'd gotten all mixed up. And she was asleep. And I wasn't. What I was doing, wide awake, was staring at her face, so beautiful, even though I couldn't see nothing in the darkness, but I didn't have to, because I knowed. She was more beautiful than Esther. And I really wanted her to be awake and I wanted . . .

I laid my head down. Taken in her scent. Closed my eyes, but I knowed I couldn't sleep.

It was the worst night of my whole life . . . in some ways. But in others, I reckon it was one of the best.

“Drink this.” Just speaking them two words took effort. I held the canteen to Sister Geneviève's badly cracked lips. Sand coated her face, her eyes was closed, but when she smelled that water, hot and awful as it was, she like to have gone crazy, behaving like some wild animal. This time, I had to warn her. “Not too fast. Not too much!” I pulled the canteen away, unfortunately spilling a decent swallow. She lunged, caught herself in the sand, panting, heaving, my hat falling off her sweaty head.

After I corked the canteen, I eased her back against a brush that gave us some shade.

“Rest.” I leaned next to her, wanting to drink from that canteen, too, but knowing better. “We . . . rest.”

“How . . . long?”

“Toward dusk. Then we'll go as far as we can.” I pointed. “See that mesa?”

She rose up just enough, squinted, shielding her eyes from the sun. Even out yonder, where things look closer than they really is, that purple ridge looked a million miles from where we was.

“Is there . . . water . . . there?”

“Uh . . . no. But that's where we're headed.”

That night, after she'd gone to sleep, and I was all restless, I'd spied the north star. Drawed me an arrow in the sand pointing toward it. When dawn broke. I found north, then turned around and figured out southwest. That's where we was headed. That was the way to . . . to . . . ? Taken me a while before I could remember.

Anton Chico.

No no, that wasn't it. Gran Quivira.

“Beyond that's Gran Quivira.”

She sank into the dirt. So did I.

If you play cards, you get to be fairly passable at math. Counting cards. Figuring the odds. Things like that. A person could last maybe three weeks without food. But water? Three days. At the most. I figured we were, say, thirty miles from Gran Quivira. There would be water there. That's why folks had settled there. But that drought had come and water had dried up. People had starved. Left. That was higher up, and there was trees, and where they was trees, you could find water. Besides, Sister Geneviève said she had faith that we'd find help there.

I had faith in that nun.

But thirty miles. That's a long way to cover on foot, in the desert, without much water, and only a couple bits of jerky for food. 'Course we still had water. I figured we had enough to get us till . . . tomorrow.

I studied west, and shook my head. Yesterday, we'd been visited by the biggest, meanest, wettest turd-float of a storm ever I'd seen. Today, nary a cloud in the sky. Just a hot wind, kicking up blinding dust and stinging sand.

She started to say something, Geneviève did, but stopped, wising up to know she'd better conserve her strength.

It strikes me now, as I sit in this dungeon, that if you can spend most of a day, in the company of a beautiful woman . . . and you don't try to talk to her, and she don't try to talk to you . . . well, that's a good sign that you must be in love. I mean, that you don't feel the need to talk. Like that strumpet over in Roswell was always doing. Talk, talk, talk, talk about nothing and about everything and she didn't know nothing. She just liked to talk. And I ain't got no interest in nothing she has to say, and conversation ain't why I'd paid her a whole dollar.

But Geneviève didn't say nothing. We just sat there, enjoying each other's company. Sorta. I mean, the sun broiled us, and the wind practically tore the skin off us. Our lips were chapped beyond recognition, and our tongues would have strangled a bobcat.

The furthest we moved was to inch over to find better shade as the sun shifted positions. I found a pebble, put it in my mouth, trying to drum up some water in my mouth, but it didn't help none. Just tasted like dirt is all. I spit it out, and wished I hadn't. Took too much effort, and I had spit out some precious saliva.

Well, when the sun got fairly low, and the wind died down, I rose, slinging them canteens on my shoulder, reached down, helped the Sister to her feet.

“Which way . . . again?” she asked.

Taken me a long spell to remember. That's how much the sun had fried my brain. I looked west and even north, but finally got my bearings, got my head cleared, found that mesa. I pointed. “That . . . way.” I wet my lips, taken her arm, and led her in the general direction.

Conserve the water, I kept telling myself. What little we had. It had to last us three days. Maybe more, considering the slow time we was making. Three days. Three days.

We was out of water by next morning.

 

 

Can't say I remember much after that. Bits and pieces come and go, like snatches of a dream you might recollect. I knowed that Sister Geneviève tossed her empty canteen to the dirt, and that I picked it up. Big Tim Pruett one time was reading this Beadle & Adams half-dime novel. I disremember the title, but it's the one in which Jesse James is wandering through the desert and his canteen's empty, so he pitches it into the saquaro and keeps wandering, and Big Tim tossed that five-penny dreadful into the fireplace, saying only an idiot would get rid of a canteen in the desert, then told me what he'd just read, to which I had said, “I ain't never seen no saguaro in Missouri.”

There ain't no saguaros in New Mexico, neither. 'Cause I would have been able to use that knife and carve into it and eat some of it. I think I read that in one of them five-penny dreadfuls Big Tim Pruett once loaned me. I did, however, come across some saltbrush. I picked some of the leaves, popped them in my mouth, started chewing, and plucked some for Sister Geneviève.

Tastes just like pure salt. Enough to keep us going.

 

 

What else do I remember?

No rain. Not even clouds. The sky was a deep blue. At first. Then it turned pale. Wasn't long till it looked just white.

 

 

She fell, Sister Geneviève did. Just lied down, panting, Blanco's shirt tight against her. Staring at the sky, but not seeing nothing.

I picked her up. Not brag, just gospel. Picked her up and carried her till I couldn't carry her no more. Dragged her after that, till even that was too hard. Then I was on the ground beside her, my own breath ragged.

“Let's . . . rest . . . here,” I managed to say.

So we did. Baking in the sun, then freezing in the night, us huddled together, but me not getting no manly desires, not even with me spooning her like I was doing.

 

 

Another memory. Laying in the sand, it being morning, and we should have been walking, before the sun got too high, too hot, but my eyes was closed, hearing her breathing, letting me know she was still alive.

Then her saying, “What are those? Angels?”

Taken all the strength I could muster to pry my eyelids up. I looked at Geneviève, but she was just staring into the sky. I turned back, looked up, saw them angels. At first, I mean. With no food, no water, no chance, you see strange things. Mirage, I reckon you might call it.

Mirages don't last long. Your mind clears up, and you see that that pond of ice blue water is really just heat waves shimmering ahead of you. Same with them angels.

I rolled over, made myself stand.

“Buzzards,” I told her, and took her hand, pulled her up, made her walk. Made me walk. I wasn't gonna feed no buzzards. Not yet.

 

 

Big Tim Pruett was walking right beside me, Sister Geneviève on his other side. I know. That was a mirage, too. Or a hallucination. Or Big Tim's ghost. Walking, bigger than life, reading a Beadle & Adams half-dimer, laughing, saying only a fool would toss his canteen away while he was walking across desert without water.

I stopped, knocked that paperback out of his hand, and put my finger right under the scar on his chin that he'd gotten from a busted beer bottle in Tascosa when we was selling stolen horses.

“Let me tell you this, pard. You throw away the empty canteen because it's dead weight. You hear me! Dead weight. You ain't got no strength to carry the sumbitch. Can you understand that? Tell me! It ain't nonsense. It's extra weight. That's what it is. And you're dead. You been dead. And we ain't dead yet.”

I realized I was yelling and pointing at a dead cholla, nothing left but its brown spines. Good size cactus. Nigh as tall as me, but nowhere near Big Tim's size.

I laughed. Then I turned and saw Sister Geneviève, maybe fifty yards ahead of me, walking. No, more like weaving. I hurried to catch up with her, and left Big Tim. No, I mean I left the dead cholla.

Somewhere, I'd also left one of the empty canteens. Because I'd been right. And so had that colonel what's-his-name who had penned that wild, fanciful story about Jesse James lost in the Missouri desert.

Dead weight. You can't carry it. Not in Hell.

She was running, and I saw why. Then I was running, too, but it wasn't no mirage. She was kneeling by the pool of water, and cupping her hands, and bringing it to her mouth, and then I tackled her, knocked her away, felt water drops sprinkle my blistered face.

Geneviève was getting up, crawling for the pool, crying.

I fell, grabbed her ankles, and pulled her back, my heart about to bust, my lungs heaving. I tried to say, “You can't . . . drink it,” but if I said anything, I don't think it sounded human. Somehow I got to my knees, moved to her, leaned over, whispered because by that time that's all I could do. “You . . . can't . . . drink . . . it. Salt . . . lakes . . . water'll . . . kill . . . us.”

No tears was coming out of her eyes. Kinda like the dry heaves.

Reckon we laid there an hour, then I managed to get up, helped pull Sister Geneviève to her feet, and we moved through those small lakes, arms over each other's shoulders. That's the only way we could get through, without losing our minds, our reason, and drunk up that salt water till it killed us.

 

 

Two days? Three? I don't know. I remember once I tried to make myself pee. Sister Geneviève just watched. I wasn't ashamed. Wasn't embarrassed. Managed to squeeze out a couple drops that looked bright orange and smelled so bad, like ammonia, it practically made my eyes water.

“Our kidneys,” she whispered hoarsely, “are shutting down.”

“There are times,” I said as I buttoned my fly, “when you know too damned much.” Said it clear. Thought I did. Must have. 'Cause she laughed.

I looked around, my brain thinking clear, recollecting something I should have recalled long before. “There should be . . . playas.”

“Playas?”

“Seasonal lakes.” I didn't have time to explain to her. That monsoon from back whenever? Storms like that filled some pools. That's how animals and people managed to survive in this country. I ran to a lake bed, but it was hard-packed earth. I ran to another. Same thing.

Sister Geneviève caught up with me, reminded me that we was supposed to be resting in the heat of the day.

“If we rest, we die.” Then I sat down. Sat down and laughed. Yep. My mind was addled. Maybe gone.

“How long did Moses wander?” I asked her.

If she understood, she didn't show nothing. Nothing but fear.

On account I'd gone purely mad and grasped this round stone that could just fit in the palm of my hand. “Didn't he get water out of a stone? Do I have that right, Geneviève? Strike this stone, and water shall pour like beer through a tapped keg.” I hit it with the barrel of the Dean and Adams. Nothing.

“It don't work.” I looked at the blazing sun. “What's the matter, God? You'll help Moses, but not a Sister of Charity and a poor, miserable sinner?” I hit the stone again. Nothing. Didn't have strength enough to strike it hard. The pistol fell between my legs, Geneviève just stared at me, and I tossed the stone away, fell back, laughing, thanking God.

I turned my head, watched that stone roll and roll and roll, before it dropped and disappeared down a hole.

Geneviève and me both heard, clear as a bell, the splash.