J. Jance: Desert Heat

Joanna, smiling to herself, was comforted by the familiar baying of the hound and by the jack-in-the-box antics of kangaroo rats who leaped fender high in their scramble to get out of the approaching car’s path. Their comical frolics made her feel somewhat better, but still she worried.

She made her way out to the cattle guard that marked the boundary of their property, the High Lonesome Ranch, and swung onto the wider dirt road of the same name. During the early twenties, when water was plentiful, the High Lonesome Ranch with its mail-order Sears Craftsman house, had been one of the larger and more prosperous spreads in the Lower Sulphur Springs Valley. During harder times, one chunk of land after another had been sold off until all that remained of the original ranch was the scraggly forty acres that still held the house and outbuildings.

Just across the cattle guard, Joanna stopped the car, switched off the engine, and got out to listen. Here in a natural depression that was also the roadway, she was unable to see head-lights, but she could hear the steady whine of rubber tires on blacktop. While she listened, three separate vehicles went past without any of them turning east on the Double Adobe Cutoff.

Panting, Sadie trotted up to her side. “He’s not here, girl,” Joanna said, stroking the dog’s smooth forehead. “Let’s go on down to the corner and see if he’s there.”

They started south on High Lonesome Road. This time, Sadie was content to follow along behind the car, sticking to the left-hand shoulder of the road. Between the ranch and Double Adobe Road, High Lonesome crossed a series of four steep washes on the rickety spines of four narrow, one-lane-wide bridges. The bridges were old and no longer strong enough to handle heavy loads. Each year, after the rainy season, the county sent a bulldozer out to grade a track through the sand for over-sized loads.

Joanna was speeding across the third bridge when the moonlight glinted off something in the wash below. Jamming on the brakes, Joanna stood the Eagle on its nose, almost fish-tailing off the road in her haste to stop the car. With dust still billowing up around her, she leaped out of the Eagle and ran back to the bridge while her headlight-handicapped vision adjusted to the sparse moonlight.

“Andy,” she called. “Andy is that you?”

Without remembering how she got there, she found herself standing in the middle of the narrow bridge looking down on what she instantly recognized as her husband’s Bronco. It seemed to be mired down in the sand. Near the pickup’s front bumper she could barely make out a dark smudge on the lighter sand. Her first fleeting thought was that Andy had accidently hit a stray head of livestock, but that was only a trick her mind played on her to shield her from the terrible truth.

“Andy,” she called again. “Are you down there?”

There was no answer, but now she caught sight of a ghostly figure darting past the truck and realized that Sadie must have detoured down from the upper level. The dog stopped short near the smudge in the sand, although Joanna’s eyes still hadn’t adjusted sufficiently for her to see clearly.

“Andy!” Joanna shouted, more frantically this time. “If you can hear me, for God’s sake say something.”

For an answer she heard a terrible, low moan, one that struck terror in her heart. He was down there, out of sight and hurt, too. Petrified now, Joanna darted back to the end of the bridge and started scrabbling, hand over hand, down the steep embankment.

“Hang on,” she heard herself shouting. “Hang on, Andy. I’m coming.”

She found him sprawled face down in the roadway while Sadie, tail wagging, eagerly licked the back of his neck. Roughly Joanna pushed Sadie aside and fell to her knees beside the still, prone figure of her husband.

“Andy,” she cried desperately, while her heart hammered wildly in her chest. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

“JoJo,” he groaned. “Help me.”

Andy tried to raise his head, but the effort was too much for him. He fell back helplessly into the dirt.

“Andy, you’re hurt. Where? Tell me what happened.”

She was almost shouting in his ear, but there was no answering response from him. The only sounds in the desert came from Sadie’s heavy panting and the faraway, high-pitched yip of a distant coyote. Searching for answers, Joanna’s eyes scanned his back, but she saw nothing. With one hand on his shoulder, she waited for him to take another breath, but he didn’t, not for a long time. The realization that her husband was dying hit her full force.

Grunting with effort and blessed with a strength beyond her capability, she managed to turn him over onto his back. Only then could she see the ink-black stain that spread from just above his belt buckle to his crotch. Fearing the worst, she touched the dark spot with the tips of her fingers. They came away wet and sticky and covered with sand.

“Oh, God!” she whispered. “Help me.” It was both an exclamation and a prayer.

Andy’s eyes fluttered open momentarily. He coughed and a shower of wet sand spattered Joanna’s face, but at least he was still breathing. Fighting back the urge to scream, she leaned close to his ear. “It’s bad, Andy, real bad. Wait here. Don’t move. I’ve got to get help.”

Leaping to her feet, she scrambled over to Andy’s Bronco and tried the door. It was locked. She ran around to the other side and tried that one as well. It too was locked. For a moment she panicked, then she remembered the extra key to the truck on her own key ring in the Eagle. At once, she climbed back up to the roadway, raced to the idling car, shut off the engine, and grabbed the keys. Afraid she might drop them scrabbling back down, she shoved the keys deep in her hip pocket before starting the steep descent.

Once back in the sandy wash, she hurried to the door of the Bronco, pulling the keys out as she ran. Her hands shook uncontrollably as she tried to shove the key into the lock. It took three attempts before the key clicked home and turned. Sick with relief, she wrenched the door open, lunged across the seat, and grabbed the radio microphone down from its clip on the dashboard.

She pressed the button. “Officer down,” Joanna shouted into the microphone. “Officer down and needs assistance.”

“Who is this?” the dispatcher demanded in return. “State your location.”

Joanna Brady took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. “Joanna Brady,” she answered. “I’ve just found my husband. I think he’s been shot.”

“Where are you?”

She forced herself to answer clearly, ration-ally. Otherwise, help would never be able to find them. “Half a mile off Double Adobe Road on High Lonesome. We’re down in the wash beneath the second bridge.”

“Hang on,” the dispatcher told her. “Help’s on the way.”

Joanna flung the microphone back into its clip and ran back around the truck where she once more knelt beside Andy’s still, silent form. He lay just as she’d left him. This time w hen she knelt beside him and lay one hand lightly on his chest, he didn’t respond at all. “Andy,” she said, but still there was no answer.

In an agony of fear, she groped at his wrist. There was a faint, weak pulse, but his skin was icy cold to the touch. Rising panic threatened to engulf her, but she fought it off, rejected it. From some dim corner of memory, her Girl Scout first aid training reasserted itself and clicked into action.

Shock. Andy must be going into shock. Once more she scrambled away from him, this time returning from the Bronco with the clean but worn blanket he always kept in the back seat with his first aid kit and tool chest. Hastily she spread the blanket over his motionless body. She knelt beside him, holding his hands, willing her own warmth into him.