“I know what hot tastes like.”
“That’s because it’s been sitting in your truck in the sun. Take better care, Harry. What the heck are you doing, anyway?”
“It’s nothing,” Harry said. “Just my way of telling myself summer’s coming on.” To Paul Morrison’s harsh gaze, he said, “I’ll drink more.”
“You need the doctor? We’re heading into town.”
“What’s Randolph going to do except give me a blanket?” Harry said.
“You need a blanket?”
“Yeah, that would be all right.”
Paul Morrison glanced at Joe, who left the campsite and came back with a blanket. “Heatstroke,” Paul Morrison muttered. “You of all people. We’re all sitting here sweating, Harry, I want you to know that. We’re sweating and you’re shivering.”
“I’ll be all right.”
“You going to be more careful?”
“Thank you. Yes, I will.”
“And look who you’re imposing upon.” Paul Morrison turned to her mother. “I’ll take him into town if you want, ma’am.”
“He’ll be fine. We can handle him.”
“I’d say you’re lucky, Harry. You’re imposing mightily on a young mother and her two children.”
“I’ll give them a good deal on a Geiger counter.”
“Oh criminy, Harry.” Paul Morrison stood up and tugged his belt even higher. “Let’s go.”
Her mother didn’t say anything as they left. The men weren’t talking either or Beth would have easily overheard. The truck engine started up and painfully bucked into gear.
“Charlie, that was an Indian,” Beth said.
“I know.”
“Was his name really Joe?”
“I think that was another one of their jokes,” her mother said.
“What’s so funny about Joe?”
Her mother shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said.
THREE
Harry woke to the smell of baked beans and canned meat. He stood up and hurried away. The moon hadn’t arrived; he touched the canyon wall to guide him through the dark. He was rounding the rock when he couldn’t hold back. The campsite was a perfect amphitheater and as he vomited, the embarrassing detonations of his sickness—his stupidity—were perfectly reported back. He kept moving farther out. He left the rocks and dashed across the sand, but there was no privacy sound-wise to be had. Soon a flashlight was upon his back and he was handed a towel. That someone of the gentle sex had to witness this was to his discredit, but when she took his hand, he was taken aback by the strength of her grip. She helped him up. He wasn’t dizzy exactly, but he had long passed the deadline for watering his vital organs. His experiments never worked; he would just have to keep drinking as much and as often as everyone else. The lady’s grip had coiled around his upper arm, as if to keep him from staggering. He wasn’t staggering. He was Harry Lindstrom. He did not stagger. He remembered his mother, his real mother. He had never admitted to anyone how much he disliked the other one.
“I have to tell you something,” he said.
Her grip on his arm, helpful and distrustful, locked in.
“I’ve already been warned about you.”
“I’m not a threat. Did they tell you I was a threat?” Inside his head was a mute dried-up scream. Better shut up now but he knew he wouldn’t. The lady’s grip tightened so he wouldn’t fall. When he turned he saw the two black shapes watching him. She wasn’t meaning to help him. No, she was keeping him away from her children.
He wanted to prove that he was a gentleman but so far if he listed back the things he had just said they either made no sense or were frightening. The children’s mother had turned off the flashlight and his eyes as they adjusted brought her features to him, and she was assuredly scared of him. Somehow he needed to make her see the same picture he was seeing: a photograph of himself as father, his hand on the son’s shoulder while he leaned over with a smile and explained it to the boy, now stick this Geiger’s probe under a rock, keep an eye on the meter. . . . What boy wouldn’t want a dad like that?
“Go back to the camp,” the lady told her children. “Go back to bed.”
Harry found himself the last in line, pulled along, his hand secured in the mother’s. He plopped down by the piñon—his old spot. He liked the sound of that.
The mother stood over him. He could see from her wilted dress it had been a long hard day. He liked the way the flimsy scraps hung on her. Behind her the moon was now up, bright as a desk lamp, and it shone through the material. The body inside the dress made itself discernible as a black skeleton, not bone of course, or even bone thin, but flesh, nice flesh with a nice shape. The black outline swelled and shrank as he heard a sigh. “Do you have a tent? Do you need—?” She cut herself off. “You can take care of yourself. Do I need to worry?”
“I’m from around here,” Harry told her.
“So you’ve said.” The mother’s hands planted themselves on her hips. “So you’re okay.”
“Oh yes.”
Her black outline twitched, her hands dropped, and she turned away. She paused and her head angled back. “Why do you do this to yourself?” she asked.
“There was a man who ate nothing but air for thirteen years.” It came pouring out of him, this confidence. This man had frightened him for much longer than thirteen years. This man was strong as a horse but had eaten only air; the very idea kept him up all night when all his own training failed. Terrorized by this man, he had been training himself since childhood and it had all failed.
“Is that why you won’t eat?” the mother asked him.
“Oh, I eat. I’m trying not to drink so much.”
“I thought your religion didn’t let you drink.”
“So you know about that already. Water, I mean,” Harry said. “I’m training myself not to drink water.”
The mother squatted low, but her bottom did not touch the ground. The dress spread across the lap her knees had made. She rested her elbows on her thighs and brought her hands together. Her chin rested on her hands and she stared at Harry. Her eyes shone. Harry had never seen anything so wonderful as this elegant figure so awkwardly postured, so perfectly balanced. “Why?” she asked.
“Which why to what?”
“Why are you training yourself?”
“Because then I’m trained.”
“And then?”
“And then nothing bad will happen.”
He couldn’t see the expression on her face with the bright moon behind her, but her head shook no. “Something bad will happen. I trained myself to live without my husband and I succeeded. But other bad things will happen.” She stood up and the moon caught her. Her black outline walked away.
This was why Harry loved the desert and loved it at night. He could be lifted out of himself and sometimes he was floating toward a tragedy that never showed up. Sometimes he was floating toward a love that never showed up. At night in the desert people might say something to you they would otherwise save till their deathbed. Just like that he and the mother had each shared a secret. Her divorce. His monster. He was floating. Tonight it had showed up.
Vaguely he heard something