CHAPTER TWENTY

The Old Man looked at the temperature gauge again.

Already, the engine is too hot.

And still, it rises. Also, today the heat is merciless and I’m sure that will not help matters.

The tank cut through carved gashes within the burning, stony hills as they descended into wide iron-gray wastes.

All this must have once been under an ocean.

Long beaches of prehistoric sand fade for miles, falling away from rocky outcrops that were once islands. These islands of once-magma hover above the gray dust of the road and in time, even these fade into the red rock hills where stands of soft green feathery trees shelter among cracks in the earth.

Like the oasis the bee led me to.

Would I find water there in those stands of willowy green trees on this hottest of days?

Foxes for food.

Shade for rest.

Even a moment to think about what we’re doing as this infernal day turns into a bread oven and the tank’s engine heat rises like an overworked furnace.

How long can the engine run at this temperature?

“Natalie? General Watt?” The Old Man releases the push-to-talk button and waits for her reply.

“Natalie here.”

“This spaceship fuel is making the engine run hotter than maybe it should.”

Ahead the road opens out onto a steep grade that surely leads to the bottom of the desert, or so the Old Man thinks.

If the bottom is just ahead, then this has not been so bad.

“You can try,” replies Natalie through the static, “to shut the tank down until dark. Then continue on to the final descent. I am watching you in real time on a satellite I’ve managed to change to a higher, slower orbit.”

The final descent?

I thought this was the final descent. What will this other fall-to-the-bottom places of the desert seem like?

“I have bad news,” says Natalie, her warm voice suddenly clear, as though right in his ear.

“Go ahead.”

“The road that leads to the bottom of Death Valley might not prove serviceable. Once you pass a scenic overlook the road becomes impassable. You’ll need to find a way down by going off-road to continue on to the bottom of the grade.”

“Is that going to be a problem for you?” asks Natalie. General Watt.

“No. We’ll be fine.”

The Old Man wipes away the thin sweat that collects around his neck.

The road they must take, the one that leaves the 395, is mostly buried under drifting white sand. At the lonesome intersection they watch it carve away into the east, into red ridges and dark gullies.

According to the map, this must be our turn toward the valley. Toward the east.

“Poppa, I can see the road as it rises above the sand. That way.” She leans out of the driver’s hatch in front of him, pointing toward the red rock that cuts the horizon.

The Boy atop his perch near the main gun scans the bright sands, and the Old Man watches him nod.

“Try to follow it as best you can,” the Old Man tells his granddaughter.

Soon the sun is falling toward the west, and with every moment the color of the red rock deepens into rust and blood.

The engine temperature is high, but it isn’t in the red, not yet.

How hot will it be tomorrow, deep down in the oven at the bottom of Death Valley, off-road, crossing the baking rocks and hardpan?

The Old Man waits and does not hear an answer.

If we were in the boat together, Santiago, what would we do? Make a hat from the wet gunnysacks. How would we stay cool enough to get this tank across the bottom of the driest sea in the world, my friend?

The Old Man hears nothing and thinks only of the sound the waves might make as they slap against the side of their tiny boat. The sound he and his friend would listen to as they searched the silences in between for an answer.

They wind through the last of the low hills and in brief snatches they glimpse the basin far below.

It is so far below, I cannot imagine there could be a deeper part to this desert. It is like a giant hole in the earth. A hole we must fall into.

And …

It will be even hotter down there when the sun rises tomorrow.

At blue twilight they heave into a wide parking lot erupting in blacktop blisters.

Once the Old Man turns the engine off and shuts down the APU, he expects he will feel some relief from the relentless heat that has marked this day, but he doesn’t.

The early evening is like a warm cup of water left out in the sun.

He watches the engine temperature gauge grudgingly withdraw.

As though it does not want to, my friend.

I hope I haven’t ruined anything within the tank’s engine.

But would that be so bad?

He hears his granddaughter calling him. Telling him to come and look before it’s too late.

But still he watches the temperature gauge barely move toward its own bottom.

When he looks out the hatch of the turret he can see the Boy standing next to his granddaughter as she climbs up on the warped railing that guards the parking lot from the edge of the drop. She points at something far below.

The Boy is close to her and the Old Man knows, though he does not know why, that the Boy will not let her fall.

In the dark they camp far from the tank, lying against the warm sidewalk that encircles the parking lot. Stars beyond count begin their slow night dance above them. The moon, a fat crescent low above the hills, seems near and detailed as it shimmers above the ridges and rocks turned night-gray.

My biggest concern is the heat of the engine.

We’ll need to cross the desert as fast as we can tomorrow.

But if we go too fast, the engine will become even hotter.

And then there is food.

If it is anything like the worst parts of the wasteland, what food there is down there will be hard to find.

It is good we are all so warm and exhausted. They didn’t mention anything about eating tonight.

They also handed out the food, my friend, and they already know there is no food tonight. That is why they remain silent.

Are they asleep?

“Are you awake?” asks the Old Man in the night.

“Yes, Poppa. It’s too hot to sleep.”

After a moment the Boy whispers a tired, “I am awake,” as though he has been and does not want to be.

“We have a problem.”

“What is it, Poppa?”

The Boy says nothing.

“The fuel we pumped from beneath the runway is making the engine of the tank too warm. I don’t remember much about engines but I do remember that if they are too hot for too long they might melt.”

No one said anything.

“Tomorrow we will reach the valley floor. It will be even hotter down there.”

After a moment his granddaughter asked, “So what do we do, Poppa?”

“I don’t know,” confessed the Old Man.

It seemed like the admission of ignorance, the surrender to helplessness. His statement lured him into a brief moment where he may have been asleep or falling toward it.

“Then we must go now,” said the Boy quietly.

The Old Man sat up.

Natalie said the road we must take to the bottom is gone now. Off-road, in the darkness, feeling our way down the side of a cliff, that would be madness.

“It’s a good moon to see by tonight,” said the Boy as if reading the Old Man’s thoughts. “Good for traveling. In an hour or so it will be very cold. The desert is like that.”