Brian Garfield - Fear in a Handful of Dust

It was time to carry Earle to his hole. Earle was twitching in his sleep. His skin was hot and dry. When they picked him up he uttered a low incoherent groan. They cleaned him where he’d soiled himself and lowered him into the trench. Shirley said, “I’m worried about him.”

“He’s suffering from shock trauma,” Mackenzie said. “Can’t expect anything much less.”

“What can we do for him?”

“Not a hell of a lot without antibiotics. If he doesn’t get salt fairly soon he’ll develop violent cramps.”

“Feed him saltbush?”

“Some. It may help. But too much of it, he’d end up worse off for the dysentery.”

“Then what can we do?”

“Go out on a salt hunt tonight,” Mackenzie said. “The odds aren’t too bad. This desert was an ocean floor at one time. There’s plenty of salt. Question is whether there’s any right at the surface.”

Shirley searched the horizon. “How could we possibly find it?”

“If it’s there the animals know where it is. After dark I’ll take a hike, see if I can pick up an animal trail, follow it along and see where it leads.” And try to stay out of Duggai’s sights, he thought dismally.

Churlishly it crossed his mind that they’d be in much better shape if Earle died. The leg was going to take at least six weeks to heal. Duggai wasn’t patient enough to give them six weeks or any significant portion of it; another day or two and Duggai would begin to get nervous, start looking over his shoulder, working out the odds that a plane or helicopter might come by.

They had to find some way to survive not only their nakedness and the desert but Duggai’s high-powered rifle as well. Thinking about that as he sank into his trench, Mackenzie felt a dispiriting wave of hopelessness. It was like a hurricane to a man in a small open boat: even if by extraordinary seamanship he managed to conquer one giant wave there was another right behind it and another behind that.…

Anxiety dumped him into a fitful sleep; exhaustion devoured him.

His face felt dry; it was covered with dust and insect bites. A wind blew sand across the top of the trench. His bowels were knotted. He made it up out of the trench and stumbled toward the futile shade of a bush. He had forgotten the heat; when it hit him he recoiled.

He leaned against a branch weak and sweating. Diarrhea burned him and vomit pain convulsed his stomach: he catted up a bilious stream. Bathed in perspiration, scalp prickling, he reeled out under the merciless orange sun. He felt his hair scorch as if it were hot wire.

Far off in the sky a jet made a faint sound like ripping cloth. He caught a tail-of-the-eye movement imperfectly and turned and discovered a small gecko darting into the shade: the only time you saw a lizard was when it moved. Now it sat under the bush, the pulse beating in its throat.

He lurched back to the trench and collapsed into it. For a while he dozed in feverish discomfort: in the heat time had no meaning. The pains came and went, rumbling uneasily in his belly.

Suddenly it was sundown. He lifted himself on his elbows and saw one pale star. Chills swept him furiously; he sank back. Something thick on his tongue had the residual taste of stale sleep but it was heavy and harsh, a sickening pungency that tasted like death. He was afraid. His pulse was thin, weak, rapid.

Shirley’s sudden silhouette above him: “How do you feel?”

He couldn’t focus on her: his eyes wouldn’t track. He muttered something. She swung her legs over, sat on the rim and dropped to her feet beside him. “You’ve got a fever, Sam.”

He rubbed his face, felt the cracked parchment of his cheeks. “Where’s Jay?”

“He went to look for salt.”

Duggai . He stared off into the twilight. Well, maybe it would be all right-maybe Duggai would let Jay stumble around out there wearing himself out in fruitless search. Maybe.

He saw she was carrying something in both hands and when she brought it closer to his face he recognized it-a small transparent bag cut from the raincoat’s sleeve; pendulous with water.

“Drink it. It’s beautiful. Fresh and clear.”

He took it into his swollen mouth a sip at a time. “Things I need to be doing …”

“Tell me. Jay and I will do what we can.”

If Jay ever returned. “How much water did that thing make?”

“The bag was full. Nearly a gallon, I imagine. It’s astonishing, Sam.”

“It’ll do the same tomorrow but you’ve got to feed it-by now it’s sucked a lot of the moisture out of that ground. Ought to urinate in there-around the cup, not in it. Cut pieces of cactus, dump them in there. Dig moist earth out of the walls of these trenches-put that in too. Every night we drink the fresh water and clean the junk out of the bowl around it. Start over again, feed it for the next day.”

“How does it work?”

“Sun heats the plastic. Draws moisture out of anything in there-the ground, cactus, anything. Principle of evaporation. Water condenses on the underside of the plastic, drips down to the low point, drops into the cup. It’s a solar still-it’ll condense pure distilled water out of any moisture in the hole.”

“It’s incredible.” She was behaving with deliberate composure that betrayed how close she was to wild hysteria: their lifeline was fraying.

He coughed; something dry rattled in his chest. “Listen-use some of that water to make clay pots. Bake them in the fire. Can you make a fire now?”

“It’s already burning. Jay made it before he left.”

“Make mud, shape the pots, bake them slow-not too close to the fire or they’ll crack. Got it?”

“What else, Sam?”

“We’ve got to start making some effort toward hygiene. We’ll end up with festering sores if we can’t clean ourselves. Got to make soap.”

“How?”

“Cooking fats and white wood ashes. Mix it up in a clay pot. There’s potash and soda in the ashes-mix it with grease and you get good soap. Stinks like a bastard but it cleans. Use the hair side of a piece of rabbit skin for a washcloth. Sponge baths.” He ran out of breath.

His consciousness skipped a few segments of time-instants or perhaps hours. When he looked up again she was gone; when he looked yet again he saw thin clouds scudding across the stars; next he awoke and heard echoes of a ranting voice that he recognized as his own and he knew he’d been delirious in his fever.

Shirley plied him with morsels of warm cooked jerky. He couldn’t swallow them. He took several swallows of water and coughed. “Where’s Jay?”

“He hasn’t come back yet. I’m sorry, Sam, I can’t lift you out of here alone.”

He went dizzy and nearly fainted. His eyes rolled shut and he heard her climb out of the trench, heard the muted song of her distracted humming. Why was it so incredibly hot?

Then it went cold-bone-chilling cold that rattled him with a trembling violence: the skin of his chest jerked with a palsied looseness and it radiated out to the farthest reaches of his body.

Shirley was trying to haul him up out of the ground. “Come on-help me, Sam, we’ll get you to the fire.”

But it was no good; he shook uncontrollably. His teeth kept banging. He tried to curl up into a fetal ball, clenched his hands between his thighs, felt the rough cold earth against cheek and shoulder and hip. Faintly he heard her speak, a catch in her throat: “We haven’t got blankets, Sam.” Then she curled soft against him, warm against his back, her knees under his, arms around his chest; she rubbed his chest hard with the flats of her hands. He tried to speak but reality swam away before he could voice his gratitude.

The fever broke and he came out of it as flaccid as protoplasm. At first he thought it was midmorning by the long shadow but then he saw he’d got turned around: that was the north wall and therefore it must be well past noon. Jay -had he returned?