Damon Knight - Orbit 20

“Dad. How’d I get here? Mother?”

“No talking. Supposed to call the nurse the second you open your eyes. No moving. No talking.” He pushed a button on the call box and after a moment of muted static a woman answered. “My son’s awake,” Will said. The nurse said she would call the doctor, to please keep Farley quiet . . .

“Tell me about Mother.”

“We buried her yesterday.”

Farley shut his eyes hard. “Christ! How long have I been here? What happened?”

“Six days. Now, Farl, I’m not answering anything else, so just don’t bother. You got a concussion, ten broken ribs, dozens of stitches here and there, and you are a solid bruise. Nothing seriously damaged. Now just shut up until Lucas gets here and goes over you.”

Then unabashedly he leaned over and kissed Farley on the forehead. “God, I’m glad to see you back, son. Now just relax until Lucas comes.”

“I’ve been out for six days?”

“Awake and sleeping, not really out all that time. Lucas said you might not recall much at first. Don’t stew about it.”

Farley started to speak and his father put his hand over his mouth. “Any more and I’ll go out in the hall.”

Lucas Whaite arrived and felt Farley’s skull, examined his eyes, listened to his heart, checked his blood pressure, and then sat down. “How much you remember now, Farley?”

“Being in here? Nothing. Or coming here.”

“You remember what happened to you?”

“We camped out, by the gorge near the old road ...” Suddenly it was all there. “Are they all right? There was an earthquake. Were they hurt bad?”

The doctor and Will exchanged glances. Will said slowly, “Listen, son. There wasn’t any earthquake. You were talking about it before, and we checked. Farl, someone came damn near to beating you to death. Looks like they used four-by-fours on you, then left you for dead. Was it Sam Dumarie and the woman with him? What for, son?”

“Where are they?”

“Wish to God we knew.”

Farley groaned and turned away. “They’re missing? Is that what you mean?”

“No one’s seen them since you all rode out together last week. The horses came back around noon Sunday and some of the hands scattered to look for you. They found you at the campsite, more dead than alive. Should have died too, I guess, out there in the sun bleeding like a stuck pig. Your friends were gone, their day packs and yours gone with them, nothing else. And they haven’t lighted yet. Now you tell us what the hell happened.”

Farley told them. Then a nurse came with his dinner and Lucas said he should eat and rest, and no more talk. He left, taking Will with him. The next day Lucas took out forty-nine stitches, from both legs, his back, his side and right arm. “Been run through a goddamn mangle,” he grunted. “Boy, there ain’t no way you’re going to lay where you ain’t on something that’s going to hurt.”

“Where’s Dad? What’s he doing about Victoria and Sam?”

Lucas lighted his pipe. “He’s sleeping, I hope. Told him we had hospital business to attend to this A.M.”

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

“Farley, I delivered you, took out your appendix, named your diseases as they appeared, wrote your prescriptions for ear drops, cough syrup, stitched you up from time to time. I know you don’t lie, son. But I also know there hasn’t been any earthquake in this whole territory for years. It’s the concussion, Farley. Funny things happen when the brain gets a shock like that.”

“You believe Sam Dumarie could do all this to me and be able to walk away afterwards?”

Lucas tapped out his pipe and stood up. He lifted Farley’s right hand and held it so Farley could see the knuckles—unmarked, normal. “No,” he said slowly, “you’d have him in worse shape. We all know that. But he’s gone, the woman’s gone, and you’re in here. Listen, son, I’ve held Tom Thorton off long as I can. Maybe there was a landslide, or maybe you fell off a cliff, but there wasn’t any earthquake, and he’ll know that just as sure as I do. Maybe you plain can’t remember yet. I’ll back you up on that. But no earthquake.”

Over the next two days Tom Thorton, the sheriff, questioned him, a state trooper questioned him, the search was resumed in the desert, and no one was satisfied. Farley told Tom Thorton he had been caught in a landslide and Thorton came back with a map for him to pinpoint the exact location.

This was how it had been with Victoria, Farley thought. No one had believed her and she had come to doubt her sanity. Thorton returned again looking glum.

“Look, Farley, I was over every inch of that ground. There ain’t been no slide or anything at all out there. You sure of the place?”

“You calling me a liar, Tom?”

“Hell no! But a man can make a mistake, misremember. I been reading about concussions. Down in San Francisco they been using a medical hypnotist, helping people remember things better. I been thinking—”

“No,” Farley said. “Why would I be lying, Tom?”

“I been thinking,” Tom Thorton said. “We all know this Dumarie’s been digging around them mountains for years. What’s he looking for? He makes fancy jewelry, right? So what does he need? Gold! Silver! What if he found it on your land and took you out to show you, and you gave him an argument about it, being’s it’s on your land and all. Gold comes between brothers, fathers and sons. So he waits till your back is turned and knocks you over the head with a rock, then he takes you over by the gorge and rolls you down the cliff, him and that girl with him. He doesn’t want you found anywhere near the gold.”

“Jesus Christ! Just go out there and find them, will you, Tom? They’re both dead by now, but they’re out there, somewhere near the gorge, or down in it, or in the fenced-off valley.”

The next day Lucas reluctantly agreed to let Farley go home. It had been ten days since they had made camp by the ranch road at the Ghost River gorge. On the way home Will drove by the small cemetery. It was wind-scoured; clumps of junipers, small groves in the barren land, were the only signs of the care given the burial ground where Farley’s grandparents lay near Farley’s uncle and a cousin; where his mother now was.

Standing at her grave by his father, Farley said, “I’m sorry I wasn’t with you.”

“I know. That last night she dreamed of you. She told me. You sang and danced for her, recited some poetry. She said she held her umbrella over you so you wouldn’t get sunburned. The dream made her happy. She died without pain, smiling over her dream.”

Both men became silent; the wind whispered over the tortured land.

Farley sat on a rock, aching, hurting, unwilling to move again soon, and watched Fran ride up. She made it look so easy, he thought, remembering how Victoria had sat in the saddle climbing Goat’s Head Butte.

Fran waved, but didn’t urge her horse to quicken its gait; it was too hot to run a horse on the desert. She stopped near his jeep in the shade of a twisted juniper tree, tied her horse, then joined him inside the fenced area. No one ever brought animals inside if they could help it.

“They all said you look like hell,” she said cheerfully, surveying him. “They’re right.”

“You just happened to be passing by?”

“I came when . . . I’ve been home awhile, thought I might as well hang around to see you. Want to talk about it?”

He didn’t know if she meant his mother’s death, or the landslide he had dreamed up for the sheriff. “No.”

Fran nudged him over and sat by him. The sun was low; long shadows flowed down the gorge like cool silent lava.

“It was here, wasn’t it?” Fran asked. She lighted a cigarette and pocketed the match. “Serena said you came out here right after breakfast. Been here all day?”