CHAPTER TWENTY

The stretch between the Y and Tucson was a long road. It was interrupted by only one landmark he could remember. Of all the names of the past he’d forgotten, he remembered the name Picacho Peak. It was a tall, rocky outcrop that rose straight up out of the desert floor. A lone mountain in an expanse of flatland alongside the highway. It lay between the Old Man and Tucson.

The Old Man stood at the Y considering the messages and their conflict.

The bodies are old, maybe a few years. The carving in the road, who knew.

But the bodies are newer than the carving.

He started down the on-ramp leading to Tucson.

“Safety” means salvage.

Unless whoever left the bodies went there also.

I must go and see. I know already, this will give me no peace unless I have an answer to it.

Yes, but you could go back to the village. Do you need the answer bad enough to lose your life?

He didn’t answer himself and instead walked for a long time that morning and into the afternoon. He passed road signs that had not blown down but had been scoured clean by violent sandstorms. The remains of a gas station were his home for the night. It had been looted, and when he checked the tanks they were bone dry. This caused him to wonder.

Gasoline has other uses than just to run cars.

At twilight he ate a packet of spaghetti and meatballs from the third MRE. He ate pound cake for dessert.

You are making a pig of yourself. You won’t be used to having less.

In the night, after the fire died, he heard something in the bushes outside the station. He lay still and after a few moments it was gone.

In the morning he ate a light breakfast and drank some instant cocoa from the MRE. The morning air smelled like rain, though there were only a few clouds to the south.

The blue desert sky was wide and the land a flat brown. He could see for thirty to fifty miles at a time. On the far horizon, dark mountain ranges cut jagged borders against the sky. He knew it was time for the monsoons and that when they came it would be very dangerous on the desert floor. A flash flood could come upon him from out of nowhere.

I should stay out of gullies and ravines. Also, don’t sleep in dry riverbeds.

At noon he caught two more rattlesnakes on the road and carried them along for another few hours. He would roast them over the fire at dusk.

By now he could see Picacho Peak in the distance. Between lay the burned remains of another small gas station city off to the left-hand side of the highway and a wild pecan orchard on the right.