Panic!

Lennox pushes away from the granite profusion, again into the blinding glare of the sun. The few moments in the shade have helped his vision, and he can see again in a wavering focus. His eyes sweep the terrain: strange outcroppings of rock, tall cacti, mesquite and creosote bush and cat-claw, thick clumps of cholla climbing halfway along a volcanic cone—

What’s that?

There, there, off to the right?

Something ... bright yellow, fiendishly reflecting the rays of the sun. Something made of metal—a car? the hood of a car? Is there a road over there? Are there people? A car means both, a car means help, a car means escape—is that a car?

Lennox feels the welling of relief, but tempered by the dim reminder of mirage, of other possible explanations for the brilliant reflection, of shattered hope. He fights down the urge to fling himself in that direction; it is a half- mile or more to where he sees the glare and he cannot run a half-mile, not now. Steadily, that is how he has to move, steadily.

But it is no more than a hundred yards before he breaks into a staggering and painful run ...

Eleven

For Jana, it had been a quiet day.

Her sketch pad was now, in late afternoon, half full with charcoal and pencil drawings of the stark landscape which lay spread out before her, and she had made several notes and observations to be incorporated into the text of Desert Adventure. The intense heat had bothered her considerably after a while, and she had had to periodically relocate the blanket and her position in order to remain in one of the shifting patches of shade; but there had been nothing else to disturb her work—no inquisitive visitors, animal or human—and in spite of her mild aversion to her surroundings, she had immersed herself in the day’s project as completely as she had immersed herself in the outline yesterday.

Sitting now in the shadow of an oddly humped outcropping of granite, she laid the sketch pad aside and drank from the bottle of mineral water. Then she sat leaning back on her hands, feeling hot and drowsy, not quite ready to make the drive back into Cuenca Seco. She allowed her thoughts to drift, and when the image of Don Harper materialized, she did not recoil from it.

Detachedly, as if she were a disinterested third party clinically examining a relationship between two other people, she placed him mentally against a changing background of memories: Washington Square in the Village, gray sky, fluttering pigeons, leafless trees like skeletal fingers reaching upward, his cheeks flushed from the bitter- cold winter wind, laughing; an off-Broadway theatre with no name, a dramatic production with a forgotten title, sitting intently forward, brow creased, eyes shining, totally absorbed in the illusion being enacted under the floodlights below; the sparkling blue of Long Island Sound, streaked with silver afternoon light, cold salt spray flecking his cheeks as the bow of the sleek white sailboat glides through gentle swells, one large soft hand competent on the tiller, the other possessively on her hip, shouting merriment into the wind ...

It was good then, she thought, it was fine then, but only because I was in love then. I was in love with fun and with excitement and with handsomeness and with charm and with sophistication—but not with Don Harper, the real Don Harper, the man. I didn’t know him, then, and maybe I wouldn’t have cared if I had. But it could never have lasted, I can see that now, it could never have been for us. Don has no depth, he has a tremendous surface but it is only a thin, thin veneer laid across an empty vacuum. He loves being a hedonist, he loves being an important account executive, he loves things—but not people, I don’t think so. He doesn’t love his wife, his poor wife, he never once mentioned loving her even after he told me about her. No, it was his position that he did not want to jeopardize, his pursuit of pleasure. He cared for me only as a decoration, public on his arm and private in his bed; and when the decoration began to take root, he threw it coldly and carelessly back into the jungle where he had first discovered it.

Lord, she wished she had been able to analyze Don and herself and the affair as objectively then as she seemed to be able to do now. The bitterness might not have been as overwhelming inside her, she might not have been so utterly demoralized, she might not have been so susceptible to—

Jana roused herself sharply. All right now, girl, that’s enough of that. You’re having a quiet day and you don’t want to spoil it by slipping back into the dark caverns of the past and there you go again with those damned literary images you silly broad. Shape up, look at that desert out there, look at that man? man out there?

Startled, Jana pulled onto her knees, onto her feet, staring intently at the child-sized figure which seemed to be staggering toward her across the rocky ground. My God! she thought, and then she did not know what to think. She felt a vague apprehension, a tiny cold cube of fright beginning to form in her stomach. Who was he? What was he doing out there? What did he want?

Her first impulse was to conceal herself in the rocks, perhaps he wouldn’t see her; then she thought of gathering up the blanket and the other things and running to the car and driving away very quickly. And then it was too late to do any of those things, even if she had been able, because he was waving his arms awkwardly, loosely above his head—he had seen her, he was coming to her.

Jana moved back against the rock, watching his approach, and as he grew from a child into an adult, his features became clearly defined. He was thin and his face, his clothes, his hair were caked with dust and sweat; he ran as if in great pain, blistered mouth open wide, the dry gasping of his breath audible in the desert stillness.

He came up to her, stopping several yards away, and knuckled his swollen eyes. He seemed to sway slightly, and Jana thought for a moment that he was going to fall. Compassion pressed at the edges of her anxiety, diminishing it. She relaxed somewhat, standing her ground; but she was still ready to bolt at the first sign of provocation.

“Who are you?” she said to him. “What happened to you?”

His mouth formed words, but he had no voice for them. He sank to his knees in the soft sand and braced his hands on his thighs, looking up at her. Relief and entreaty were apparent in his gaze, and the last vestiges of Jana’s wariness transformed into concern. Swiftly she caught up the bottle of mineral water —a little more than half full— and ran to where the man knelt watching her. She extended the bottle. He pulled it from her hands, making a sound that was almost a whimper. Head thrown back, holding the bottle in both hands, he sucked greedily at the neck of it. Water spilled out in his haste and washed away some of the thick dust on his lips, revealing them to be cracked and beaded with flecks of dried blood. Jana looked away.

He finished drinking, allowed the empty bottle to fall into the sand and drew the back of one sun-reddened arm gingerly over his mouth. Then, painfully, he pulled one leg under him and gained his feet, stumbling, finding his balance. Jana took an involuntary step backward, watching him now, but he made no move toward her. One corner of his mouth trembled, and all at once she realized that he was trying to smile.

“Can you talk now?” she asked him.

Soft, shuddering breath. “I ... I think ...”—testing his dust- and heat-parched vocal cords—“I think so.”

“How long have you been out there, under that sun?”

“All day. Years.”

“What happened?”

“My car quit running,” he said. “And I got lost. I’m not much of an outdoors man.”

“You should have stayed on the highway.”

“I wasn’t on a highway. I was out in the middle of nowhere. I’m a ... rock hunter, you see. That’s my hobby.”

“You must be an amateur to go hunting rocks dressed the way you are.”

“Well ... this is my first time on the desert.”

“Mine, too, as a matter of fact.”

“You don’t live in this area?”

“No. I’m just a tourist.”

“Are you alone here?”

Her tentative smile faded slightly. “Why?”

“I don’t know. I just thought you might be. I saw the sun reflecting off your car, and then I saw you ...” He ran a hand through his dusty hair, and looked beyond her to where the roadbed was visible through the rocks. “Where does that road lead?”