Desert Places (Andrew Z. Thomas/Luther Kite Series 1)

I drag Luther, alive but fading, onto the porch and bind him with seventy feet of rope to the last available rocking chair. Then I lift the red fleece blanket I took from Orson’s bed and wrap it around Percy Madding and the woman beside him, who I assume was his wife. I want to bury them, but the ground is frozen beneath the snowpack. This is all I can do for the man who saved my life.

When I’ve managed to close Percy’s frosted eyelids, I wade out into the snow and turn and behold the dying and the dead.

The parting rays of a cold sun gild the spectacle of the front porch, a sight I will never be rid of: Percy Madding, his wife, Orson, and Luther Kite, each in a rocking chair, three dead, one not far behind.

It startles me when Luther speaks. He shivers now, his teeth clicking uncontrollably. I cannot imagine him surviving the night. I wonder whether he’ll bleed to death, or if the cold will claim him first.

“You stand there appalled,” he says. “At what, Andrew?”

“At all this blood, Luther.”

“We all want blood. We are war. That’s the code. War and regression and more and more blood. Tell me it doesn’t speak to you.” Luther’s black hair whips across a pale, bloodless face. He awaits my reply, but I have none.

At last, I approach my brother. Our faces are inches apart. Orson’s eyes remain open, his mouth frozen into the slightest grin. The abject violation of the Maddings and every other human being he butchered consumes me, and I scream at him, raging, my voice filling the desert: “Is this beauty, Orson? Is this truth?”

Then, like a fever breaking, finally I start to cry.

Eastward, I glide across the snow toward 191 under the purple immensity of the Wyoming sky, and the madness diminishes as the cabin falls farther behind. I wonder if Luther is dead yet. I wonder many things.

The skis scrape across the pavement, and I bring the snowmobile to a halt on the other side of the road. Alighting, I unfasten the two suitcases filled with clothes and the contents of Orson’s drawer. I sit down on the shoulder. The highway has been plowed—the only snow on the road is windblown powder. All is still. My left arm throbs, but luckily, Percy was wrong. The bullet tore through—I extracted the mushroom of lead from the back of my shoulder this morning.

The sun is gone. Ancient images of stars and planets commence filling the night sky.

The moon crawls above the Winds at my back, and I cast a lunar shadow across the road. The empty, pruinose highway stretches on, north and south, as far as I can see.

I’m so cold. I stand and stamp my feet on the road. Instead of sitting back down on the shoulder, I walk out into a thigh-deep drift and make a snow angel. Lying flat on my back, a wall of white enclosing me, all I can see now is the cosmos, and all I can feel is the steady infusion of cold.

My thoughts become electric.

I think of Orson’s poem. Defiant. Courageous perhaps.

If we’d never stepped into your tunnel, we’d still be in this desert.

Mom…

Walter…

I will not be returning to North Carolina.

As the cold strengthens, the madness seems to ebb, and my mind clears.

Peace overruns me.

I’m nearly asleep when the distant mumble of a car engine reaches me. For a moment, I consider whether I should lie here and die. I’ve stopped shivering, and false warmth flows through me.

I struggle to sit up. Headlights appear, heading northbound out of Rock Springs. I rise, brush the snow from my clothes, and trudge stiffly into the road. A transfer truck, I predict, and standing on the dotted line, I wave my arms when the beam strikes me.

Much to my surprise, the bumper of a long white suburban stops ten feet from my waist.

The driver’s window lowers at my approach, and a man several years my junior smiles until he sees the bruises that blacken my face. Elbows on the console, his pretty wife looks warily at me, the side of her face lit blue by the lucent dashboard clock. Three children sleep in the backseat, spread across one another in a tangle of small sibling appendages.

“Are you all right?” the husband asks.

“I don’t know. I just …I need a ride to the next town. Wherever you’re going. Please.” The man glances at his wife. Her lips purse.

“Where’s your car?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Well, how’d you get here?”

“Will you please take me to the next town? You’re the only car that’s passed all night.”

The man turns once more to his wife, their eyes consulting.

“Look, we’re going to visit family in Montana,” he says. “But Pinedale is about fifty miles up the road. We’ll take you that far. You can hop in through the back.”

“Thank you. I’ll grab my things.”

“Richard,” his wife mutters.

I lift my suitcases from the snow and walk to the back of the suburban. Opening the cargo doors, I stow my luggage on the floor and climb inside.

“Please keep it down back there,” the wife whispers. “We want them to sleep through the night.” She motions to her children as though she were displaying jewels.

The rear bench seat has been removed, so I find a place on the floor amid the family’s luggage: a red cooler, canvas bags, suitcases, a laundry basket filled with toys. With my suitcases at my feet, I curl up against the cooler and draw my knees into my chest. We begin to move, and I stare out the back window, watching the linear moonlit strip of highway spooling out beneath the tires with increasing speed.

We climb subtly for a half hour. Then we’re cruising along a plateau, and I’m looking back across the desolate flatland, scanning for two black specks in the sea of snow.

In the front seat, the woman whispers to her husband, “You’re a sweet man, Rich.” She strokes the back of his neck.

The vents channel warmth into my face, and the speakers emit a solacing oceanic ambience: sparse piano, waves and seagulls, the calming voice of a man reading Scripture.

And as Orson, Luther, and the Maddings harden on the cabin porch, in the massive desertic silence, I bask in the breathing of the children.