A QUICK TRIP TO MOAB 11. We’ll hunt in the morning; I felt a great relief; The water’s fine

Part 11 of the novel A QUICK TRIP TO MOAB

21. We’ll hunt in the morning

Lily settled into the bed of bark and duff we had fashioned under the branches of the massive, multi-trunked juniper tree that rose just inside the upper wall of the ancient stone ring. “Um, I don’t mean to get all personal, but I was just wondering. How old are you?”

“I don’t mind,” I said. “Thirty-five.” I adjusted the heap of juniper bark we were using as a pillow. “Gettin’ up there. You?”

“Twenty-nine,” she said. She sniffed. “Twenty-nine. A widow before I turned thirty. Jesus, that’s the first I’ve thought of that. That word. I’m a widow.”

We lay quietly under that tree. I could see the north star through a break in the overhead branches. I wondered if Chris would soon be a widow, too.

“So you’re a scientist or something.” Lily asked. “Is that what you do?”

“Well, kind of. I’m a geologist. A geomorphologist, really.”

“What do you do then?” Lily asked. “Study rocks?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I studied geology in school — you know, all about rocks and minerals, but I concentrated on things like how hills and valleys and modern landscapes got formed, how soils and sediments are laid down. Now I mostly work on environmental impact statements and things like that. Try to see what effect things like mines and highways will have on the land. It’s for planning. The theory is to try to make developments less damaging, not so ugly, to not wreck scenic or historic places too much.”

“So, what’s that have to do with a highway or something? You plan where to put it? Do you work for the highway department?”

“Well, I try to make suggestions about how to make things better. Not the engineering of roads and pipelines, but how they change the landscape, how they can damage other things. And I work with other geologists and water scientists and archaeologists, historians, all kinds of people. I help them with their studies — help them understand the land, how it was formed, things like that. We make recommendations. To the government mostly. Sometimes they listen, sometimes they don’t. I worked on studies for that big pipeline that runs right down the middle of that valley by the highway over there. Kind of where you were hijacked. Where I found you. That’s how I know my way around here a little bit.”

“You?” I asked. “Have you always been a truck driver?”

“I’m only a part-timer,” Lily said. “Well, I do have my license, and I do drive sometimes but Craig, he’s the trucker. I work in my family’s landscaping business. And I’m a potter. I make ceramics and sell them at art festivals and in little shops. And I’m a substitute teacher. I kind of mess around at a bunch of things.”

“That’s quite a mix. Landscaping, art, teaching. I’d like to see your ceramic pieces. Chris collects bowls and platters. We’ll have to come see your work. After, well, after all this is over.”

“It’s what I really love, what I studied in school, but, well, I’ve never made much money at it. Landscaping and teaching pay pretty well. I might go into teaching full time one of these days. I like it.”

“That’s gotta be rewarding,” I said. “Working with kids, helping them learn about the world.”

“Yeah, mostly,” she said. “Kind of depressing too, when you see how neglected some of them are, what shitty parents they have.”

“I admire teachers,” I said. “My mom was a teacher. She taught my third grade class for a while too. Kind of weird, having your mom for your teacher. Weird, but good too, I guess.”

“What about your wife,” Lily asked. “What’s she do?”

“She’s a lawyer,” I said. “Works for a big firm. Mostly tax law. Stuff I know nothing about. I guess she’s pretty good at it. Works hard. Works all the time.”

We lay quietly. The branches we had cut to augment the needle and bark duff under the tree gave off a comforting, gin-like aroma. I turned on my side and wiggled to move the duff away from under my hip and shoulders. Lily and Speck cuddled in close to my back.

“We’ll hunt in the morning,” Lily whispered.

22. I felt a great relief

The thought of hunting sent a twisting pang to my gut. Visions of sneaking around in the brush and tracking down and killing some animal ran through my mind. Shooting and crippling an animal, making it suffer and cry out in terror and pain as I walk up to it. I was worried about doing something I had never done, about being a completely incompetent idiot and making a fool of myself. Shit, I’m worrying about trying to impress this person I barely know, a person whose clothes are stained with the blood of her murdered husband. She is not just a person, I realize. She’s the only person in my world. She may be the last person I ever see. And she is a woman. I would be embarrassed to be a bumbling fool of a hunter whether in front of a man or a woman. But it’s different. She’s not a man. She’s a woman, and I am starting to have strong feelings for her. Not really sexual, I don’t think, but, kind of a longing, a dependence, a feeling of responsibility and vulnerability that makes me want to be my best, to be the best. Shit, what I need to do now is think about hunting. I’ll make a fool of myself. Shit.

Then I thought about how good some roast meat would taste. As I drifted off to sleep, I kept the thought of a good meal in mind, and it drove the fear of the unknown away. Thoughts about the ancient house we slept in and its original inhabitants entered my mind, and I dreamed Lily and I were in a large, domed room, and Speck and Chris and Craig were there too, and we had a fire and were cooking meat on a rack and we were laughing and telling stories and the morning came quickly.

“Let’s go,” Lily said. “Put a leash on Speck so she doesn’t spook any game.” She threw back the tarp and sat up. The faintest indication of an approaching dawn appeared in the eastern sky. I grasped Speck’s collar and held her while I fished in the rifle bag for the cord I was using for a leash.

“Is the clip in your rifle full?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“That’s all we’ll need. Too bad you’ve got military rounds in it,” Lily said. “Hollow points would be a lot better than these metal jackets, but we’ll be OK. Bring your knife too, and that cord.” She licked her finger and held it high above her head. “We’ll move upstream. The air is moving downstream. Game won’t smell us. As soon.”

“Why don’t you carry the rifle,” I said. “You know what you’re doing. Why don’t you take it.”

Lily reached out and took the rifle. I felt a great relief.

Lily led the way along the edge of the ridge, and kept us at about the same elevation above the stream. We moved slowly and carefully, her in front, me leading Speck a few paces back. The light gradually increased, and we carefully studied the land in front of us as we made our way north. Lily used the binoculars occasionally to examine something ahead or down below, but mostly she and I just scanned the meadows and openings in the vegetation. After a short while Lily stopped in the middle of the path and motioned with her hand for me to stop. She dropped to one knee and lifted the binoculars to her eyes. After about a minute of looking through the binoculars she let them hang on her chest, raised the rifle, adjusted the rear sight, sat motionless for several seconds, then fired. She stood quickly and fired again, then relaxed. She turned toward me and nodded. “Let’s go see,” she said.

A buck mule deer lay at the edge of a small, grassy clearing just above the stream. Blood came from its mouth, and feces oozed, steaming, from its anus. Just a moment ago it had been standing in this beautiful spot, eating grass or thinking about getting a drink, or dreaming of the rutting season, and in an instant it was gone, nothing but a body remaining. Could happen to us, too. A heart attack or lightning or an asteroid or a bomb or pirates could take us out and we would be gone before we could even contemplate death. I know some people think that would be the way to go, but I don’t know. I think I’d like some time, even a minute, to think things over. Or just freak completely out. Who knows.

“Let’s get to work,” Lily said, pulling the deer by its hind legs away from the tangled brush it had landed in. “Come on Stan, get out the knife. I’ll show you how to process a carcass.”

23. The water’s fine

Over the course of the next few hours, Lily guided me through the necessary steps of bleeding, gutting, skinning, and butchering the deer. We built a fire and roasted the liver and chunks of the tenderloin on sticks as we worked, stopping to eat in late morning. I had never liked liver, but this was one of the best things I had ever put in my mouth. Speck ate organ meat and whatever scraps we threw her, and when our hands and arms were sticky and bloody we walked down to the stream to wash them off. We worked quickly and cut the meat into long thin strips and hung it on willow poles we cut and suspended between the branches of exposed, south-facing trees and shrubs for good exposure to the sun. We draped the meat strands in rows and built small fires and waved branches every once in a while at the drying meat to chase away flies.

“If we can keep the flies away long enough for it to dry out a bit, the meat will be good, and won’t get maggoty,” Lily said.

I had seen a film in an anthropology class years ago of the Bushmen of southern Africa cutting giraffe meat in strips and drying it on bushes, just like we were doing.

“Look at my meat suit,” Lily exclaimed, her arms covered with strips of meat as she headed for the drying poles. “I’m Lady Gaga.”

“I like it,” I said. Mmmmmm, meat!”

We cooked ribs and roasts over the fire on a rack of green willows, and I went back to our camp to get the things we had left behind so we could camp nearer to the drying meat. When I returned I did not see Lily for a minute, then Speck ran down to the creek.

“Come on down,” I hear Lily call. “The water’s fine,”

Lily had found a small pool deep enough to sit in and bathe. She had washed her clothes, which were hanging on nearby bushes, and she was lying back in the water swishing her hair back and forth in the stream. It looked refreshing and wonderful, and I followed suit.

“Sure feels nice to get cleaned off,” she said. “It’s been what, a week.”

“About, I think,” I said. “Well yeah, a week. You got hijacked on Friday night, I came on Saturday, and today’s Saturday. A whole week. Seems like a lifetime.” It really did.

We bathed, arranged our clothes on bushes and branches to dry, and napped in the tall grass, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the cleansing feeling it gave us. When Lily rolled toward me and looked me in the eye, we touched hands, and I felt a cool energy run through her slender fingers, and it was a perfect moment. I wanted to embrace her, to make love to her, with her, and knew that our simple touch had accomplished that, as if we had given ourselves completely to each other. We touched hands there in that grassy meadow not too far from where we had killed and butchered a buck mule deer, and it seemed like an affirmation of our commitment, a sacramental act that absolved us for a time of the horrors that had been inflicted upon us, that melded our emotional energies in a way that seemed perfect. At that moment I loved her more than I had ever loved anything in my life, and the feeling seemed reciprocal.

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