Nevada Barr - Blind Descent

Due to a small flu epidemic thinning the ranks of interpretive rangers, Zeddie said she had "one bitch of a day." Closing her eyes, Anna focused on the morning's breakfast banter. Like children on holiday, Zeddie and Peter had milkshakes for breakfast. Shoulder to shoulder, they sipped through candy-cane-striped plastic straws. Each time Zed-die looked away, Peter snaked his straw over at an angle and snorkeled up her ice cream. The picture triggered something, but not the information she wanted. What was it Zeddie had been saying while Peter pilfered her milkshake? "Off-trail in the morning and the Urinal in the afternoon."

From the scuttlebutt, Anna had deduced that the Urinal was a stretch of trail above the Big Room in Carlsbad Caverns. It was so named by the interpreters because it was about ninety minutes into the cave, the length of time the male bladder could comfortably transport a couple cups of coffee. A dark and twisty portion of trail afforded an irresistible temptation.

Years had passed since Anna had been in Carlsbad Caverns. Walking out of the twilight zone, she smelled the musty breath of the underground home of a dwindling but still impressive population of Mexican freetail bats. After the initial unpleasantness of leaving behind real air and the light of day, she was overwhelmed by the intricacy and immensity of the cavern. Wide and well kept, with discreet lighting, the path curved down through glossy formations and vaulted ceilings dripping with icicles of stone. Long buried, a statistic floated into her mind. Someone had once told her that more than two thousand formations a year were destroyed or stolen by visitors. On some level, she'd been expecting the cavern to appear tired, more shopworn than she remembered. The opposite was true. The park had rejuvenated the cave and the trails. Along the way she saw teams of volunteers unobtrusively tending to the resource. Four women in soft-soled shoes painstakingly tweezed lint from the rugged rock faces. Tons of lint and hair from tourists circulated on air currents. Without constant intervention the innards of the cave would take on the aspect of an overused clothes dryer. Another group, armed with sponges, brushes, and pails, erased muddy footprints of those insensitive enough to walk off the paved trail.

The expected pinch of claustrophobia failed to materialize, and Anna enjoyed the trip. After the suffocating confines of parts of Lechuguilla, the light, airy cavern felt like what it was: a walk in the park. Spiraling ever downward, each turn producing a view more splendid than the last, Anna considered the words she would use to share it with Molly. Inadequate metaphors were all she could muster: a cathedral, a ballroom, a whale's belly, a set for The Phantom of the Opera. In its uniqueness and magnificence, Carlsbad paupered the imagination. Unremitting opulence jaded the eye until it became possible to wander this unsung wonderland without seeing any but formations so stupendous they forced one away from the conversation of one's fellows or the contemplation of the dinner to be had when one returned to the world above.

Periodically Anna drifted by a troglodyte in the green and gray of the NPS uniform: rangers roving the trail, providing information, assistance, and a watchful eye for a resource so domesticated it could no longer protect itself. Cloaked in darkness and civilian clothes, she passed with a nod or a wave, happy to be another faceless tourist.

On a zigzagging segment where the path descended steeply toward the Big Room, a chamber the size of fourteen football fields according to the brochure, Anna found Zeddie Dillard. One foot on the low stone wall with which the Park Service bordered the asphalt-an attempt to keep people from stomping the entire cave floor into a likeness of a Safeway parking lot-she addressed a group of girls. Blue Birds or Brownies, something organized by age. Mellifluous in speech as in song, her voice hummed warmly in the dim cavern.

They were stopped at a natural viewpoint. A thoughtful government had provided a tasteful stone bench by the trail. Anna sat, half listening to the lecture and marveling at the panorama. The trail was considerably above the Big Room. Several more twists, turns, and tunnels would have to be negotiated before reaching the promised land. The zig where Anna sat provided a sneak preview, a peek from the stone shrouded mountainside into the valley. Faint lights marked a sinuous path through a vast plain dotted with unimaginable monsters frozen for all eternity. Seen from above, it reminded Anna of flying into a strange city by night: pinpricks of light, canyons of darkness, mystery, unvoiced hopes and veiled threats.

The gaggle of girls trickled downhill. Zeddie turned, the professional smile of the tour guide barely discernible even to eyes accustomed to the dark.

"Hey, Anna," she said with what sounded like relief. Dropping heavily onto the bench at her side, she said, "Boy, am I beat. I've got half a mind to come down with the flu myself. I could use the time in bed."

Both of them thought of Peter McCarty. Anna didn't so much as snicker, but Zeddie felt the vibrations. "Rest. Sleep. Hell…" Her words petered out. Then Anna did laugh.

Sniffing audibly, Zeddie said, "Do I smell Plumeria?"

"I've been playing with your toys," Anna admitted.

"Good for the soul. Even Xena the Warrior Princess wears a little eye shadow. I'm bored with men who think strong and sexy is an oxymoron."

"Heavy on the moron?" Anna suggested. Zeddie leaned over, bumping her with a shoulder that was no longer cold. Anna was touched. She liked Zeddie, liked to think well of her and be thought well of in return.

Two tourists, twined together like unpruned ivy, walked past. They smiled and nodded at Zeddie. The flat hat, the uniform, brought that out in people. Rangers, like firemen and comic-strip bears, were considered benevolent creatures. That as much as anything made Anna wince when she had to bust somebody. It was bad for the image.

"I oughtn't to be sitting," Zeddie said idly. "It looks bad." She made no move to get up. The morning's tour would have taken a toll even on such a robust specimen as Zeddie Dillard. She was tired, vulnerable. Anna might not get a better opportunity.

"Have you ever sung in the Big Room?" Anna asked, putting off the inevitable dissolution of their budding friendship.

"'Ghost Riders in the Sky.'"

Leaning her head back, Anna stared into a heaven eternally dark. Thunderheads, canyons, spires, defied gravity. Utah's Canyon Lands in a Salvador Dali nightmare. "Good choice," she said.

Carlsbad, the destination of as many as three-quarters of a million tourists each year, had none of the baffling silence of Lechuguilla. She and Zeddie were no more isolated than two women on a bench at the Guggenheim on a Sunday afternoon. In exposing the visual grandeur of the cavern, the soul of the cave had been compromised, as outer space was compromised by the bits of metal flung into it. Once man intruded, perfect solitude was banished. In this instance, Anna felt it was an improvement. Safety in numbers.

The comfortable quiet on the bench grew strained. Zeddie broke it first. "Dare I hope this is purely a social call?"

"I wish it were," Anna replied wearily.

"Are you going to accuse me of murder again?"

"More or less."

Zeddie snorted, but there was humor in the rude noise, and Anna took heart.

"Well, let's have it," Zeddie said. "Jealousy? A fortune in jewels? An inheritance: Frieda was my secret twin separated at birth?"

Anna searched for the words that would convey meanings only slowly becoming clear. "It's kind of a two-parter," she said. "There's Frieda. Then there's Sondra McCarty."

"Sondra's gone," Zeddie said with a frankness that caught Anna off guard. "And good riddance. That woman was a boil on the butt of humanity."