characters in this surrealist drama. A dun-colored set of Styrofoam rocks and artfully placed shrubs appeared against a scrim of deep blue sky.
Each and every one of the players was staring at her. It was opening night, and Anna didn’t know her lines. Why would she? She was the stage manager. Zach was the star.
“Why did you attack me?” Regis demanded. “I nearly died in that hole.”
Anna could not think of a single thing to say.
“Christ on a crutch, I should have you brought up on charges of attempted murder.”
“Easy, Reg,” Steve Gluck said.
“Leave her alone,” Jenny snarled.
The chief ranger and the sheriff had no more to say than Anna. Jim Levitt radiated unasked questions.
“I was trying to save you, God damn it!” Regis sputtered—sputtered because he kept pouring water down his throat even while he was trying to talk.
“You’re going to throw up.” Anna’s voice was flat and cold and sounded as if it came from some other place in time.
Like a good actor, Regis vomited on cue.
Behind him, Sheriff Patterson was backing into the mouth of the jar, using the plastic rungs on the slope to ease himself farther into the solution hole.
“Anna didn’t know it was you,” somebody said.
“I frigging told her it was me.” Regis was wiping his mouth on a red rag, the kind car mechanics buy by the bushel. Someone must have brought it from the truck.
“I
“Back off,” Jenny snapped at Regis. “Anna’s been through a lot. She was stuck down there a whole lot longer than you were.”
Regis blinked, seeming to consider her words. Anna watched him change: His shoulders relaxed, losing their proximity to his ears; his head rose up and settled on his spine.
“Yeah,” he said. He pinched his nose and squinted past Anna. “Yeah. Okay. It was dark as the inside of a cow, Jesus.” He shook his head and unclenched his hands from around the water bottle. “Sorry,” he said to Anna. She watched his lips form the word. He smiled ruefully. “The damsel in distress isn’t supposed to cold-conk and Mace the white knight.”
“Not Mace,” Anna said. “Buddy.”
Without invitation, Jenny came over and lifted Anna to her feet by the arm, one hand on the bicep, the other cupping her elbow. Lifted, not helped up; Anna was amazed a woman could be so strong. Since Anna didn’t care if she sat, stood, or was laid down on a slab in a butcher shop window, she didn’t fight her housemate.
Jenny put her arm around Anna’s shoulders and, still cupping her elbow, steered her away from the men, back in the direction they had come.
Walking away from a stage where the fourth wall had been summarily shattered and the make-believe world poured out into the real world, Anna began to gather herself together, reeling herself in as if she were a ball of string that had become unwound. At the pace of invalids, she let Jenny lead her over the broken ground. Mindful of tracks, they skirted the flagged area where Kay had fought for her life and lost.
Anna waited while Jenny opened the passenger door of the sheriff ’s truck and dumbly obeyed when she told her to get in. She watched Jenny walk around the hood of the truck and let herself in the driver’s door, lower the sun flap, catch the keys the sheriff had put there, start the engine, and crank the air conditioner to high.
They sat facing front, not talking. An awkward date at the drive-in movies. Anna finished winding up the raveled string. When she could again speak, she said, “Well, that was an unforeseen turn of events,” and was startled when Jenny laughed.
“Poor Regis,” Jenny said when she’d recovered. “Clubbed and skunked and left in a pit.”
“Yeah,” Anna murmured. “The monsters got away, didn’t they?”
“They’ll get them,” Jenny said. To Anna’s ears it sounded as if she spoke without conviction.
“Your monsters got away,” Anna said.
“Not from me, they didn’t.”
There was nothing to say after that until the men reappeared walking five abreast. Their faces set and grim, the sheriff with his cowboy hat pulled low over his eyes.
“The Earps,” Anna said.
“The OK Corral,” Jenny said.
If Anna remembered her film history correctly, that hadn’t ended well for anybody.
Gluck carried the canteen Anna had become so familiar with during her time in the jar. Looped over one shoulder, Levitt carried the two boat ladders. Regis hugged a water bottle much as Anna was prone to do after suffering so much from thirst.
“That canteen the sheriff is carrying was the one with the drugged water in it,” Anna commented with about as much emotion as she might have said, “That’s the T-shirt with the stripes on it.”
Because she felt vulnerable and marginalized sitting in the front seat of the cab as the men approached, Anna reached for the door handle.
“Wait?” Jenny cried, sounding alarmed. “Don’t go out there.”
“Why not?” Anna asked.
“I don’t know,” Jenny admitted. “I just had a weird bad feeling.”
“A lot of that going around,” Anna said and got out to stand on her own two feet. Regis saw her and waved and smiled.
“Hey, Anna,” he said as he broke the line and moved rapidly toward her.
It took all of Anna’s resolve to keep her face unreadable and resist the need to leap back into the truck and slam and lock the doors.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. For a moment it looked as if he intended to give her a hug. Anna held up one hand, the way the Indians in those same Westerns had done while bizarrely uttering, “How.”
Regis stopped. “I was just so blown away. I forgot how scared you must have been when I climbed down. You went through far worse than anything I did. I’m sorry I took my own fear out on you, that’s all.”
Anna said nothing. Bits of things she might have said skittered around in her skull, but making conversation was too pointless to bother dragging any one of them down to where her tongue could get around it. Lowering her hand was the best she could do. Unnerved, Regis looked over his shoulder at the other men. They had stopped several yards out from the truck and stood in a neat semicircle, a manly tableau against the canvas of the desert.
“You’re lucky she didn’t kill you,” Steve said without a trace of humor. Broken by his words, the tableau came to life again.
“Where’s Kay?” Anna asked Steve. He didn’t answer right away, and Anna was afraid there was no body, the body was gone or had never existed. “Did you find Kay?” she insisted, louder this time.
“We just dug enough to assure ourselves she was there,” Steve said. He hadn’t wanted to speak, Anna realized, because he knew it would be hard for her to hear. She didn’t like him for the kindness. She didn’t like or dislike any of them. She didn’t care because they didn’t care, not in any way it mattered. Not in any way that would ever make anything right.
“Frank’s going to have the county coroner out here. They’ll recover the body and take it back to Escalante. He’s going to work with us to identify her. If we’re lucky she’s been reported missing.”
They didn’t know she was wearing nothing but underpants. Anna hadn’t told that part of the story. It was ugly and it was hers and she would keep it. For now at least.
“We’ll take good care of her,” Sheriff Frank assured her.
“She’s dead, and I didn’t know her,” Anna said, but she remembered how important it had been to her that Kay’s hair be combed from the sand, not yanked, and she remembered sacrificing the tempting panties so Kay could retain a scrap of dignity.
Regis unscrewed the cap of his water bottle as the sheriff and Jim loaded the ladder and canteen into the bed of the pickup.
