Brian Garfield - Fear in a Handful of Dust

“How do you feel?”

“Terrible. But you know it’s a little like being up against a grindstone. Either it grinds you down or it polishes you up. Depends what you’re made of. Spiritually I feel much stronger than I ever did before. Whatever happens, I can take it.”

“Sure you can.”

Earle shivered. “Sorry. Ghost walked over my grave.”

“Jay’s gone looking for a salt lick.”

“I know.”

“If we can find salt you’ll be all right, Earle.”

“I’ll be all right whether we find salt or not. The companions of God are looked after. I really believe that, you know.”

Plainly he was clutching in desperation; but there would be no pleasure in the cruelty of planting doubt in Earle’s mind.

Earle said, “Are you all right now?”

“I expect so.”

“Good. You’re the lifeline for the Painters, you know.”

It made Mackenzie give him a quick direct look but Earle turned his face away; his eyes dulled. He had decided not to confide.

Mackenzie thought, he knows he’s dying but he doesn’t want to depress us. It made Mackenzie angry with Earle’s empty heroics. Better for all of them if Earle simply got it over with.…

Mackenzie winced at his own callousness. He sat furiously blaspheming to himself. Then he faced the truth. “Earle, listen to me.”

“Sure. I’ve got nothing else to do.”

“Don’t let yourself die for our convenience.”

“What makes you think-”

“Suicide is a mortal sin, isn’t it?”

“I’m not Roman Catholic. I’m Anglican-Episcopal.”

“Sorry. I heard you talking about sins before.”

“Hardly a concept exclusive to the Roman church.”

“Earle, I just don’t want to think you’re fooling yourself into some idea of noble self-sacrifice.”

Earle’s eyes turned smoky and hurt. “Have you seen me trying to slit my throat? Have you?”

“I want you to fight, that’s all.”

“I am fighting. I’d have been dead long, ago if I hadn’t.”

“You’ve got to start expecting to get out of this alive.”

“You’ve always detested me,” Earle said with practical sensibility. “Why are you so concerned about my survival?”

“Because there’s got to be a difference between me and Calvin Duggai.”

“Do you want to be cryptic?”

“We’ve got to prove we’re better than Duggai. We’ve got to survive- all of us.”

“So that’s the obsession that’s driving you.”

“Listen, you God damned son of a bitch, I intend to have Duggai’s head in a basket and I expect you to help me get it.”

Earle went all colors at Mackenzie’s profanity. Then abruptly he smiled. “You’re a mystic after all. You believe in that Indian witchcraft just as much as he does.”

“What do you know about that?”

“I know enough to figure out why he left us alive instead of shooting us. Devils and spells and demons. I read up on it when the lawyers asked me to examine him. Thought it might be a key. After all, he’s had cultural implantations a lot different from mine.”

“How the hell do you reconcile your religious faith with that behaviorist dogma?”

“God makes the laws. Our behavior is just obedience to God’s laws. I don’t see any contradiction, do you?” Earle coughed distressingly and then smiled. “You’re trying to change the subject.”

“What was the subject?” He was tired; he honestly didn’t remember.

“Your mystical obsession with proving that your devil power is stronger than Duggai’s.”

Earle fell back exhausted soon after and Mackenzie left him to rest. He’d tried to dismiss Earle’s speculations but their ripples disturbed him for a time.

Shades of lavender and lilac suffused the distance. He fed the fire and turned on his haunches to look for Shirley. He found her in dramatic silhouette: she stood on a boulder searching the horizons. Against the sky she was like a sculpted Diana. The picture was vivid and he held it, not moving, watching her and absorbing the sight: a wild dramatic work of graphic art.

Finally he went uphill toward her. She looked heart-breakingly beautiful.

He put his hands around her ribs and lifted her down off the boulder. She stood against him; she didn’t draw away.

She didn’t smile. “Can you feel my heart?”

“I thought it was mine.”

“Sam-right now I feel about sex roughly the way I feel about eating ground glass. But I want you to squeeze me until it hurts. I want to draw your strength into me.”

They cleaned themselves with wood-ash soap and scraps of rabbit fur; they sponged Earle down and he spoke softly of God’s bounties. Mackenzie built up the fire higher than it had been on previous nights: Jay would want a beacon to find his way back. He went down along the new trapline that Jay had set but it was too early and there were no prizes yet. They drank from the still and bagged the rest of the water, cleaned out the pit and spent half an hour gathering cactus and cutting it up into the hole to provide tomorrow’s water. Mackenzie found the tattered scraps of the moccasins Jay must have used on his expedition of the previous night; apparently Jay had made new moccasins for tonight’s travel. Jackrabbit hide was too thin to last long on this terrain-and Jay was foraging a good many miles out. Mackenzie had an idea what Jay’s feet must have been like by the time he’d returned to camp fourteen hours ago; it spoke of Jay’s courage that he had gone out again tonight. Maybe Duggai would leave him alone again.…

The clay bowls were clumsy but they were serviceable: Shirley improvised a thick soup from meat and blood and water and chopped saltbush. Mackenzie wasted nearly an hour searching a widening area for poles long and thick enough to make a litter but the land didn’t provide anything nearly substantial enough; they would have to carry Earle on their backs until they got into heavier growth somewhere.

When he returned to the fire he said, “We should plan to move out tomorrow night.”

“To where?”

He pointed toward the hills to the northeast. “I’ve heard coyotes up there.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There’d be water not too far away. Bigger animals. Maybe salt too. That’s the way we’ll go until we find what we need. When we can equip ourselves with more clothes and better footwear. Then we strike out due north. We move all night and hole up by day.”

“Why north?”

“There’s a superhighway.”

“How do you know that?”

“Senita. The little organ pipes. They only grow in Arizona west of the divide.”

“Where does that put us?”

“East of Yuma. Luke Air Force Gunnery Range.” He indicated the compass points. “That’s east, more or less. There’s a road that runs north from the Mexican border through one or two little towns, finally ends up at the highway junction at Gila Bend. We could strike out for that road but it might be a hundred miles from here.”

“That far? My God.”

“This thing probably measures five or six thousand square miles. That way’s the Mexican border. Might not be too far south of us but I don’t think there’s anything down there. Lava beds, craters, a lot of dry mountain ranges. They could have built towns down there in the past twenty years but I doubt it. That country’s even less hospitable than this.” He poked his chin toward the west. “That way we’d hit the Colorado River. Sooner or later. But we’d have to cross the Yuma flats to reach it-sand dunes. And again we don’t know if he put us down east or west of center-it might be only twenty-five miles from here to the river, then again it could be more than a hundred. From Ajo to Yuma it’s about a hundred and forty miles. It’s all gunnery range. No-our best shot’s north. The main highway between Tucson and San Diego. It can’t be more than forty or fifty miles.”