Night at Council Rock

The phone rings.  Before I get it to my ear I hear my cousin already talking.  It confirms my theory about him:  Harry is always talking.

“I made it,” he says.  “According to Aunt May, you live near the university.  I’m at the College of Law.  That means I’m close to your place, right?”

“Right."  For a moment I consider giving false directions.

After I tell him how to get here, he says, “I’m on my way.”

When I hang up, I look at my burgundy backpack leaning against the wall, my brown hiking boots standing next to it, my water bottles scattered on the floor.  I’m rehearsing the lie again when I hear the car.  The lump in my stomach drops into my bowels.  I answer the knock at the door.  The yellow porch light shines on his head, revealing a receding hairline that surprises me.  He gives me a firm handshake, touching my right elbow with his left hand.  “Hello, Ronald,” he says.  “What has it been: five years, six?”

“Something like that.  Come on in.”

He looks around my small living room.  “I couldn’t live without a full sofa,” he says.

“Can I get you something?”

“What are you having?”

“Coffee.”

“Fine.”

“How do you take it?”

“Like I take my women.”

“Black?”

“No,” he says, giggling.  “Cream and sugar.”

While I pour the coffee, he looks critically at one of my recent oil paintings.  “The indirect light is wrong.  Too much phthalo blue.”

I set his cup on the coffee table, then sit in the brown leather recliner, looking past him to my backpack against the wall.

He says, “Aunt May tells me you teach at the college.”

“Yes.”

“Anthropology, I believe.”

“Right.”

“Archaeology?”

“Cultural.  You’re still in computers?”

“‘High Tech Harry,’ they call me, computer nerd through and through.”

“My mother tells me you’re in town for a couple days.”

“I drove down from Phoenix just to see you.”

“I wish I could spend some time with you, Harry, but I’m leaving tomorrow on a backpacking trip.  I’ve been planning it for weeks.”  I nod to my pack, still choking on the words.

“Tell me you’re not one of them,” he says, following my gaze.

“One of who?”

“Tree huggers.”

“I’ve never hugged a tree.”

 “Backpacking, huh?”  He furrows his brow.  “I’ve often wondered what people see in it.  Not my kind of thing, I’m afraid.”

“You’re welcome to come along.  I have an extra pack.”

As soon as I’ve said it I realize I’ve made a mistake.

“Why not?” he says.  “I’ve nothing better to do.”

I take a little too long to recover my composure.  “I’m leaving at six.  Rain or shine.”

My feeble attempt to dissuade him doesn’t work.

“Bright and early,” he says.

“Okay,” I say, wanting to kill myself.  “Make yourself at home.  I have to run out and pick up a few extra things.”

On the way back from the supermarket, I remember what my parents taught me about lies.  They come back on you.  It was because my mother refused to lie in the first place that Harry had come to visit.  When she phoned to say he was in Phoenix, I said, “Tell him I moved.  Say I’m living in Mexico.”

“Don’t be like that, Ron."

“I have nothing in common with him.”

“He’s family.”

“He’s an idiot.”

“I gave him your phone number.”

“Thanks, Mom, I’ll do you a favor sometime.”

At the apartment, he’s watching a late-night game show.  “This rube just won $25,000,” he says, leaning back in my favorite chair, pointing to the T.V.  “$25,000.  That’s a tenth of my yearly salary.”

I’m more tired than I’ve ever been.  “Why don’t you take the bed?” I say.  “I’ll sleep here on the floor.”

 “Good of you,” he says, quickly, proving I’ve learned nothing about Harry.  A minute later he disappears into the bedroom.

While I lie in my sleeping bag, watching car headlights speed across the dark ceiling, I consider my stupidity.  I’m furious.  I decide to make him pay.  We’ll go to Cochise Stronghold.  He’ll die from exhaustion.  His suffering will give me pleasure.

* * *

My old beige Land Cruiser bounces over granite rocks on the campground road in East Stronghold Canyon.  Harry sits with his foot on the dashboard.  “They’d save wear and tear on cars if they’d pave this road,” he says.  I stop at the campsite nearest the trail head, and we climb out of the high cab.  While I get the packs, he stands looking at early sunlight on the watermelon-colored mountains around us.  When we crawl into the packs, Harry says, “I’m feeling a little top heavy.  How do I walk?”  He bounces under the weight, testing his legs.

“One foot in front of the other.”

On the trail, we go at a slow but steady pace.  He leads.  We cross a dry creek bed where cottonwoods grow, their branches bare except for rusty leaves the wind has forgotten.  In the open, the winter sun gets hot, and we stop at Halfmoon Tank to remove clothing.  Harry takes off his stiff blue jeans and stands in his underwear, rummaging through my old green pack for a pair of khaki shorts.  “L.L. Bean,” he says, holding them up for me to see.

As soon as we get going again, he says, “Are there animals here?”

“Yes.”

“Rattlesnakes?”

 “They hibernate in winter.”

“The bears are sleeping, too, right?”

“Right."

“They’re the ones that worry me.”

He talks all the way to Stronghold Divide, where we climb out of our packs to rest.  Harry leans his against a tree.  I watch for him to rub his shoulders.  He doesn’t.  He stands looking down the valley to the mouth of West Stronghold Canyon.  “So this is where Cochise held out against the cavalry?”

“Yes.”

“I can see how he managed.  Did they ever catch him?”

“He died of old age.  He’s buried somewhere at the east end of the canyon.”

“What must it have been like to live here?  No conveniences.”

“No computers,” I say.

He says, “Ha.”

We share some of my trail mix before donning the packs again.  My shoulders hurt.  I know his do, too.  He doesn’t show it, though, climbing into his pack as if he’s eager to start.  Beyond the divide, the trail drops through a series of narrow switchbacks.  Harry looks around like a tourist in a foreign city.  I wait for him to trip on a rock and fall to his knees, scraping the skin off his hands.

 When I begin to think the descent will never end, the grade levels out.  At the bottom we reach another dry creek bed, where we set our packs against a round boulder and sit down to lunch.  Behind us, the granite of the Dragoon Mountains is bleached bone yellow by the sun.

We eat hard salami, Italian bread, granola bars, and dried apricots for dessert.  Between bites of food, Harry says, “So this is backpacking?”

I say nothing.

“What’s all the fuss about?”

I keep my mouth filled with food.

Suddenly, he starts laughing.  Every time he stops to let me in on the joke, he laughs harder.  It goes on for so long, I refuse to look at him.  Finally, he says, “Remember the time you, Linda and me were horsing around in Aunt May’s kitchen, when Linda pushed me and I fell?  I reached out for something to grab onto and accidentally pulled your shorts and underwear down around your ankles.  God–remember how Linda laughed?”

I give him a look he doesn’t see.

“The expression on your face,” he says.

“Jesus, Harry, I was nine- or ten-years old.”

“I know,” he says, “but the look on your face.”

I stand to put my food away.  I secure my top compartment and hoist the pack.  After I fasten the waist belt and adjust the shoulder straps, I look down at him.  He sits on the ground with his back against a blue boulder.  He shows me a worried face.  “You don’t think I did it on purpose, do you?”

“No, Harry.  Let’s get going.”

He jumps into his pack and starts off ahead of me.  I resent his stamina.

The trail turns into an old jeep road that drives straight through a jungle of catclaw to the west end of the splintered mountains.  Here the wind and rain have worked to sculpt figures from the stone:  hundred-foot high rock people, massive animal faces.  The road bends south and we spot Council Rock, an enormous white boulder, round like the moon.  “That’s where we’re spending the night,” I say.

By the time we get there, the sun rides low in the sky.  We walk through a granite tunnel into a natural rock shelter, where we unload the packs.  I lay out my ground sheet, foam pad, and sleeping bag.  Harry doesn’t have a sleeping bag.  When I told him this morning I had only one, he was undeterred.  “I’ll use this blanket from the bed,” he said, loosening the sheets as he ripped it off.  I don’t feel sorry for him now.  I want him to freeze his ass.

After we settle in, we go out to collect wood.  While we’re at it, Harry spots the pictograms on the side of Council Rock.  “Hey, look at this.  Rock pictures.  Lizard people, snakes, and what are these?”

I stand at his side.  “They’re crown dancers."

“Crown dancers?”

“Apache spirits.  There are five.  Four represent the corners of the earth.  The other is the Gray One.”

“The Gray One?”

I imbue my words with a foreboding tone.  “The unpredictable one:  disorder.”

If this has an effect on him, he doesn’t show it.  Instead, he says, “Shouldn’t we get the fire started?”

The juniper burns fast, but hot.  We sit close to the flames.  I boil water for freeze-dried lasagna, which we eat from plastic pouches.  Dehydrated peaches are brought to life with cold water.  After the dessert we drink coffee, watching while day turns to night outside the shelter.  Sparks from the fire drift heavenward, dying before they float through an opening in the slanted ceiling.  I look at the orange light on Harry’s face.

“What do we do now?” he says.

“Watch television.”

“So this is backpacking?”

“What did you expect, Harry?”

“Nothing."

Annoyed with the prospect of idle talk, I say, “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to bed.”

“I’m going out for a couple beers.”

I slip into my bag and pull the hood over my head.

He says, “Should we keep the fire going?”

I look out.  He’s spreading his blanket near the opening to the shelter.  When he lies down, his head is at my feet.  “Let it die,” I say.  As soon as I’ve said it, he starts snoring.  At first I think it’s a joke, but it gets loud and deep, like a buzz saw chewing at the marrow of a tree.  I cough a couple of times, but he doesn’t wake.

 I can’t sleep.  The snoring gets worse.  He begins making underwater gurgling sounds, animal grunts, whistling bombs.  I sit up in disbelief, convinced he’s doing it on purpose.  I find a baseball rock, weigh it in my hand, and toss it into the trees outside the entrance.  It does better than I expect, rattling through the foliage, clunking against a hollow trunk.  Harry doesn’t stir.  I try another.  It has less effect.  Finally, I say loudly, “Did you hear that?”

“There was no answer,” he says.  “The server could be down or not responding.”

“There’s something outside.  An animal, I think.”

“Garbage in, garbage out,” he says.

At least the snoring stops.  I’m thinking about sleep again when an owl starts.  At first the call is distant, and I pay no attention.  Suddenly it sounds as if it’s perched atop the rock I lie beneath: “Who?  Who?”  I’ve spent too much time with Native Americans.  Their owl superstitions have rubbed off on me.  As soon as I think this, I hear a woman speaking.  I listen carefully, but my heart pounds in my ears.  After a lifetime of holding my breath, I breathe again.  I’m beginning to calm down when I hear the woman speak my name.  I yell into the darkness: “HARRY!”

“What?” he says, jumping up.

“Do you hear that?”

“What is it?”

“A woman.”

“A woman?” he says.  He listens.  “It’s an owl, isn’t it?”

“You know what the Native Americans say about owls.”

“No.”

I say nothing in order to hide my embarrassment.

“A woman?  You must have been dreaming.”

 “Right.”

“Go back to sleep,” he says.  He follows his own advice, picking up with the snoring where he left off.  This time the noise doesn’t bother me.  I’m glad for his company.

I think I’m asleep, but I open my eyes in time to see the moon peeking through the crack in the ceiling.  I’ve never felt so odd.  A dagger of moonlight creeps down the rock face toward my heart.  I squirm in my bag.  Harry’s snoring sounds like trees rubbing in the wind.  The dagger gets closer.  I try to find a way to lie so it will miss my body completely.  I end up looking at the full moon.  It frightens me.  I’m trying to figure out why when a gray shadow sweeps across the opening in the ceiling.  As soon as it passes, I hear a thump outside the shelter.  “Shit,” I say.

Harry rolls out of his blanket.  “What is it?  Not the woman again?”

“An animal went across the crack in the ceiling.  I heard it land outside the entrance.”

“What kind of animal?”

“Something big.  Maybe a mountain lion.”

“Shit.  I forgot about them.”

“I’m getting the fire started,” I say.  I throw some kindling on and stir the embers until the flames lick up.  It’s still hot, so the bigger logs catch immediately.  We sit looking at the concern in each other’s eyes.

After a while without talk, Harry says, “There’s only one way to do this.  Come on, let’s go.”

“Go where?”

 “Outside.”

“For what?”

“To look around.”

“What do we hope to see?”

“I don’t know, but if we stay here we’ll be scared the rest of the night.”

“Is that so bad?”

“I don’t like being scared,” he says.

I follow him into the dark.  At first we stand near the entrance, surveying the immediate territory with my pencil flashlight.  Soon it becomes obvious we don’t need it.  With broad strokes of white, the moon makes everything visible.  Overhead we see familiar constellations: Orion and Taurus.  Harry says, “Let’s find a way to the top of the rock.”

I’m beyond argument.  My fear exhilarates me.  We can see perfectly now.  At the back of the rock we find a natural staircase, worn from years of use.  We climb up.  At the top we look out on a lunar landscape of granite dells.  Every imaginable form appears there.  We’re picturing things when a plaintive wail echos off the rock walls.  “That,” Harry says, “is an animal.”

“Yes.”

“What kind?”

“I don’t know.”

“What kind of backpacker are you?”

 We stand listening for it again.  It comes frequently, reverberating from different rocks.  “More than one?” Harry says.

I say nothing.

I have my back to him when he says, “There.”  I turn and follow his pointing finger to a large boulder in the near distance, a mirror reflection of the rock we stand on.  At the top, visible against the white backdrop of mountains, a black, dog-like shadow stands.  “There’s your Gray One,” Harry says.

“A coyote.”

“What are they like?”

“Timid.”

We watch it watching us until it turns and disappears into a crevasse beyond the moon’s reach.  We say nothing.  Because of the incident I feel closer to the night, a part of nature.  I think to explain it to Harry, but the feeling is beyond words.

“I did it on purpose,” he says.

“Did what?”

“I pulled your shorts down on purpose.  I told Linda I’d do it.  I pretended to fall so I could pull them down.  I wanted to make her laugh.”  He doesn’t look at me.

At first I don’t respond.  After a quiet moment, I say, “That was twenty-five years ago.”

“It’s the reason you never liked me.”

“That’s not true.”

“I know what I’m like.  I’ve been doing that kind of shit all my life.  Why do you think I envy you?”

 “Me?”

“You and Aunt May.  You both have class.  Even as a kid I knew it.”

I don’t know what to say.  We stand in silence while the substance of our conversation evaporates into the night.  After the moment has lost its grip, I say, “Why don’t we get some sleep?”  He follows me down the steps and into the rock shelter.  I crawl into my bag.  He wraps himself in the blanket.  I lie on my back.  The moon has slipped beyond the crack in the ceiling.  I see a sprinkling of stars before I fall to sleep.

* * *

When we reach the Land Cruiser the next day, the campground is full.  The first people we see are three cowboys throwing a red frisbee.  Beyond them, a long, green trailer takes up two campsites.  Four small kids run around it, naked except for faded t-shirts.  A radio blares pop music.  The people who camp next to our site have chained their Doberman to a small tree.  He bends the sapling lunging at us, hungry for a taste of flesh.  The woman at the barbecue grill smiles, as if she’d like to set him loose.  “Shut up, Gillis,” she says.  She slaps raw hamburger patties with a metal spatula.  Grease drips through the grate, making fire sputter on charcoal briquettes.  The smell of meat cooking rises on a plume of blue smoke.  The rest of her clan sit in a lawn-chair circle, surrounded by empty beer cans.

We drive out of the campground, back through the cardboard town of Dragoon, and onto the interstate, west.  When we come within sight of the concrete and aluminum spires of the city, Harry says, “I’ve decided to drive up to Phoenix today.”

At my place we take the equipment inside.  Harry transfers clothing from my old backpack into his alligator-hide suitcase.  In the living room, he stops in front of my oil painting, nodding.

Outside, we stand at Harry’s rent-a-car.  After he puts the suitcase in the trunk, he gives me a firm handshake.  “If I’m out here again I’ll look you up.”

“We can do some backpacking.”

He rubs his shoulders.  “Will the sores have healed by then?”

“You’ll get over it,” I say.

He gets into the car and drives away, waving once before he rounds a corner out of sight.  I go into the apartment and look at my painting.  I like it less than when I first finished it.  In the bedroom, I’m surprised to find the bed made.  I draw the covers back and crawl inside, thinking how good it will feel to sleep here.  I smell Harry’s body on the sheets, and the blanket stinks like campfire smoke.