William Dietrich - Getting back

They camped in the riverbed that night, first drinking their fill from the slowly filling hole and then carefully refilling their water bottles. As Amaya had predicted, cleaner water had flowed into the hole, filtered by the sand. They drank and drank, and then collected more water to wash, a reminder of civility that helped revive their spirits. The success of the well restored their confidence. With patience, they could prevail.

A new moon rose and Daniel decided to go hunting. Taking his spear, he climbed out of the riverbank and into the surrounding bush, moving slowly and taking his bearings frequently so he wouldn't get lost. Twice he saw furtive movement and once he threw at it, hitting nothing. Still, his ability to negotiate the wilderness in the dark encouraged him. It was another step toward being at home here.

They broke camp before dawn to set out east again, having filled every possible container with water. The sun was fixing their schedule: a hard morning's hike, a siesta, another spurt toward likely water and camp. As they moved out some large forms bounded away in front of them.

"Kangaroos," Daniel breathed.

Even Ico, bent under his heavy pack, brightened. "Cool!"

"When are you going to hit one of those, Daniel?" Tucker asked.

"When they agree to stand still."

The sky was as shiny as blue porcelain, the desert as red as Mars. They wound eastward through shrubby trees spaced like slalom poles. Amaya spotted some sap on another mulga tree, collected some bits on a stick, and ate it. "It's sweet, like candy," she said. Dubious, the men tried it.

"Well, better than ant balls," Ico said.

"How do you know?" she teased him. "I haven't made one of those for you yet."

They found water again that night, this time in a series of pools on the surface, and Amaya found some wild passion fruit in the creek bed, splitting the orange rind and sucking out the seeds. Their sense of familiarity was growing. They built a fire again, and as its coals burned down Daniel slipped off to hunt once more, his confidence growing at his ability to navigate in the dark. He began to move slowly, walking a short distance and then stopping to stand perfectly still, his eyes searching the monochromatic moonscape for movement. After an hour, his effort was rewarded: a shape in the darkness moved, then hopped toward him. A kangaroo. He sucked in his breath and waited. It hopped closer. He raised his makeshift javelin, and as he did so his own movement alerted the animal and it bolted. By the time Daniel threw, it was a shadow bounding into the dark. He trotted to pick up his spear. Next time he'd have to stalk with his arm already upraised. Still, he felt satisfied he'd found big game. He spent a few minutes simply throwing: rocks, sticks, his spear. He was training unfamiliar muscles in a skill that dated back a million years.

As he slowly worked his way down the riverbed back to camp he heard some gentle splashing and stopped again, alert. Something was in a pool of the riverbed.

Slowly he crept ahead, his spear upraised, his head down. He pushed his head through some bushes and then stopped, sucking in his breath. It was Amaya, bathing. She was naked, standing in water to her thighs, her slim body luminous under the glow of the night sky. She was scooping up water and letting it pour onto her face, and then run down her small breasts and smooth belly. The drops glittered as they bounced off her, falling into a mirror of stars. She washed with the same unconscious grace of a wild animal, and Daniel was jarred by the natural beauty of it, entranced by her form's pearl luminescence under the night sky.

He didn't know whether it was best to try to retreat, possibly startling and embarrassing her with his noise, or to step into view as warning, intruding on her respite. Finally he decided to do and say nothing. She dipped to her shoulders in the cold water with a gasp and then sprang upward, the water spraying as she shook herself, her arms flung out. It was erotic to watch the water stream down her but also innocent, primeval. There was an abstraction to the scene. Her features were indistinct and so there was only the sculpture of her limbs and torso, bent this way and that. Daniel was transfixed. Finally she finished and waded to the shore to slip into her underwear and walk back to camp. She paused a minute and looked across the pool as if staring directly at him, then slipped away into the dark. He waited ten more minutes and then followed. She'd retired into her tent. He slipped into his own bedroll, looking up into a night sky that seemed like a pool of dark water itself.

The next day was long and hot, and the following evening they were on a scrub plain and couldn't find even a likely place to dig. They nursed what water they had carefully, sprawled on the red earth. After a few minutes Tucker sprang up again. "Ants! I'm on a damn nest!" He moved to a new spot, searching the ground carefully. "Some campground," he grumbled.

"All we can do is sleep as best we can and push on," Daniel said.

The dryness was beginning to be discouraging. He felt sunburned, insect-bitten, and grimy, and had yet to get close enough to an animal to successfully kill it. He knew he hadn't been patient enough but didn't want to hold up the group to take the time necessary to learn how to hunt. At some point, though, they would need the food- even Ico. Daniel mused about making a bow and arrow, but it sounded difficult and he knew the aborigines hadn't bothered even when shown them by visiting tribes; their spears and throwing sticks and rocks had been adequate to bring down game. All he was lacking was skill.

"We'd better walk tomorrow until we find water," Ico said. "Walk and pray for rain."

They hiked on the next day through the midday sun, conversation trailing off into numbed silence under the pounding heat. Red dust puffed up from their footfalls. The morning's birds disappeared and the desert was as still and radiantly hot as an emptied parking lot. Nothing moved except the flies, no breeze blew, and there was no sound except the creak of their gear, the trudge of feet, and the relentless buzz of the insects. They joked halfheartedly about missing beer, or air conditioning, or a winter blizzard, but after a while the jokes seemed lame. The liberation from noise and humanity was beginning to seem oppressive. It seemed like they'd been walking forever and had encountered only a vast nothing; that they were no closer to finding whatever it was they were looking for than they had been in the city. It was becoming harder and harder to pretend their outing was a good time.

It was sunset when they finally came to another riverbed, this one broad and shallow in a valley so imperceptibly sloped that they hadn't realized they were in one. There were no standing pools, no likely bends, and a test dig yielded nothing but dry sand. They slumped around the hole wearily.

"We're exhausted," Amaya said. "We'll have to ration what we have and search more carefully in the morning. We'll find a place for a well like last time."

"What if we don't?" Tucker asked.

She brushed her hair back from a dirty cheek, tired. "We will. If it was going to be easy, there would be no point in coming here."

Daniel nodded at her. He'd found himself looking and thinking about her differently since seeing her at the pool, and even though he hadn't said anything about it, he thought she noticed. She turned her head away shyly.

"This is fucked, you know that?"

Ico's complaint was ignored. What could they do?

He persisted. "I mean, dying of thirst was not a part of the brochure that I remember."

"Ico, stuff it, okay?" Daniel said with irritation, turning to unstrap his bedroll. He was tiring of the little man's attitude. "We're all hot and tired and thirsty."

"Maybe we're doing something wrong. Maybe we're going in the wrong direction."