wanted to ask him that, in the shade under the stone arch, but he had risen abruptly, telling her it was time to be moving again, they couldn’t afford to stay there any longer.
Now, following him across the rough ground, Jana wanted to ask him again. It was somehow important that she know more about this man, this Jack Lennox who had unwittingly endangered her life, and then saved it—if only for a little while. Maybe, she thought, it’s because he cares. And because he’s the first person I’ve ever known who could possibly understand what it’s like to live within the shell of oneself, lonely and afraid ...
The last of the flaming sun had dropped beneath the horizon, and the sky was streaked in smoky pink and tarnished gold, when he found a night refuge for them.
It was a large, flat, sheltered area hollowed out between several sheer pinnacles, a natural water tank that would fill with cool, fresh rainwater during the wet months; seepage and gradual evaporation under the drying sun had left the surface cracked and powder-dry, and so it would remain until the rains came once again. There was only one entrance, a narrow cleft which Lennox had very nearly missed in the sheer rock facing. It would be virtually impossible to locate once darkness settled; even with the wash of moonlight, deep shadows would hide the entrance—the dry stream path which angled upward through the cleft, crested, and dropped away into the hollowed tank several feet below.
On level ground, where the path began its rise to the rock spires, a barrel cactus grew rounded and green. Once Lennox had discovered and cautiously examined the tank, and returned to tell Jana of what he had found, he used the granite knife to slice off the crown of the barrel; they dipped out pulp hurriedly, watching their backtrail, sucking greedily at the bitter droplets of cactus juice. Then, silently, they soothed the cool pith over their rawly burned faces and climbed into the tank.
They lay on the dry floor of it, weak and spent. Half forgotten in the urgency of their flight, pain came to them again, harsh and lingering—the pain of hunger, the pain of sunburn, the pain of blistered foot soles. Dozens of tears and tiny holes in their clothing marked the location of stinging cuts and abrasions and cactus bites, and their exposed arms and hands were tapestries of scabrous scratches. The cactus liquid had soothed their burning throats, and momentarily appeased the bodily cry for moisture; but they were badly dehydrated and their need had grown greater, would continue to grow greater, with each passing minute.
Darkness settled, erasing the polychromatic sunset from the sky, and the moon leaped high with that surprising desert suddenness. The stars began to burn like fired crystal. Outside the tank, a soft, silvery wraith slipped quickly in and out of shadows—a bushy-tailed kit fox, the size of a large house cat, prowling for wood rats and kangaroo rats and other nocturnal rodents. Overhead, owl wings made faint, faraway sounds in the ghostly silence.
It was pleasantly cool for a time, and the night wind salved Lennox and Jana, soft, gentle. But then it turned cold and disdainful, chilling them, and they stirred and awoke, almost simultaneously. After a moment, without speaking, they left the tank and returned to the barrel cactus and drank again of its pulp. The air, there below, was filled with a heady fragrance that came from a night-blooming cereus somewhere nearby—and if it had not been for the pain and the weakness and the fear that was theirs, the night might have held a deep magic allure.
In the tank again, they sat facing one another, close but without touching. Jana said softly, “Talk to me, Jack. I need something to keep my mind off how hungry I am, and what’s out there behind us. And tomorrow—I don’t want to think about tomorrow.”
“What should I talk about?”
“I don’t know. You—Jack Lennox.”
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“Why not?”
“There’s nothing to say.”
“There’s always something to say.”
“Not in my case.”
“Jack,” she said simply, “I want to know.”
“All right. I’m thirty-three years old, a native of the Pacific Northwest, divorced and a gentleman of the road, as they used to say. I work when I feel like it, and play when I feel like it, and move on to new places when I feel like it.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s all.”
She was silent for a time, and then, softly, “Are you involved with those men out there?”
“What?”
“That story you told me about seeing them kill somebody—is that really true?”
“Of course it’s true.”
“And that’s why they’re chasing you—us?”
“Yes. What did you think?”
“I don’t know. You lied about your name ...”
“That has nothing to do with this.”
“What does it have to do with?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re running from something else, aren’t you?” she said. “Something besides those men.”
He stiffened slightly. “What makes you say that?”
“It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“Suppose it is. What difference does it make?”
“None, I guess. I just want to know.”
“Well, I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Why not—now?”
“You want my life history, but you won’t say a thing about yourself,” Lennox said. “Let’s try that tack for a while.”
“I told you all there is to know last night.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
Lennox studied her—and, slowly, he realized just what the bond was between them, the kinship he had intuited last night and today. “Maybe we’ve both got something to hide,” he said. “Maybe you’re running away from something else, too.”
A kind of dark torment flickered across Jana’s features, and then was gone. “Maybe I am,” she said.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No. I couldn’t if I wanted to.”
“Why?”
“It’s ... I just couldn’t, that’s all.”
“Any more than I can.”
“Any more than you can.”
They fell silent. Lennox wanted to say something more to her, but there did not seem to be anything to say. He thought: I wonder if it would do any good to bring it out into the open, I wonder if I could talk about it? He looked at her, bathed in the soft moonshine—the weary, pain-edged loveliness of her—and suddenly he was filled with an overpowering compulsion to do just that, to unburden himself, to lay bare the soul of Jack Lennox. He had wanted to do it, without consciously admitting the fact to himself, ever since he had impulsively confessed his real name to her that afternoon. It was as if the weight of his immediate past had become dead weight, too heavy to carry any further without throwing it off for just a little while. It had been coming to this for some time now, you can only dam it up inside you for so long, just so long, and then it has to come out; the levees of the human mind can hold it no longer. He was going to tell her. There was a fluttering, intense sensation in the pit of his stomach, the kind of feeling you get when you know you’re going to do something in spite of yourself, right or wrong, wise or foolish, you know you’re going to do it anyway. He was going to tell her, all right, he was going to tell her—
“Phyllis,” he said. The word was thick and hot in his throat.
“What?”
“That’s what I’m running from. A woman and a life and a hell named Phyllis,” and it all came spilling out of
