No coverage, not even one bar; the battery was dead anyway. Still daytime, but with an overcast, the sky had a perfectly even dullness, so there was no way to tell what time of day it was, much less which direction was north or south or anything else for that matter. A two-lane blacktop road snaked up the desert hill in the distance and disappeared behind looming Saguaros, snaking back down before disappearing again. What sounded like a two-stroke chainsaw sounded in the distance, but it was impossible to tell how far away as the desert deceives more than the eye. Two different ways to go, with a dead battery and no bars and nobody left to blame.
Pauly should have left the cabin before the batteries on their phones died. They hadn’t planned anything well over the past three days. And not in the days before. The phones had been dead for two of the past three.
“Turn yours off while I try mine,” Kaja had said.
He didn’t listen.
“Just take one outside and try it. We’re on the same plan. You don’t need to waste the batteries. Save one, so when we do get a signal, we have a working phone.”
He didn’t listen.
He’d stopped listening after the first day. They still had a little food, and he’d left her with some water before he left her alone, probably to die in a cabin in the middle of the mountains. Deserted mountains were more like it. Nothing was out there.
And cabin? Not even close. She kept calling it a cabin. It might deserve such a warm and giving name if it saved their lives, but he was determined to give it no respect until then. It was a shack. It probably hadn’t seen human life in a hundred years or more. It was not a cabin.
One last look at the frail dusty shack left a sickness in his stomach. He didn’t love the idea of leaving her. Not in her condition. But with everything that had happened, he had to get help. When he yelled hello out to the wilderness, his voice bounced from cactus arm to cactus arm. That chainsaw could be miles away in any direction, and he’d lose precious time trying to find the helping hands behind the blade.
Pauly spun once more, his head hanging low before holding his arms out, begging the sky not to take her while he was away. Like a small child stomping in the dirt, he pounded his feet, and with his head tipped backward, Pauly twisted his ankle. Just like that, throwing a tantrum put them both, all three of them, he remembered, at risk.
Yelling again to the sky, this time with his butt in the dirt, he resigned. For the first time since realizing they might be in trouble, he resigned himself to the fact that he might not be the man she needed. He might not have the strength to save her.
The old man never wanted Pauly to save her. He wanted to be her hero himself. Pauly knew the whole thing had been a setup. Kaja’s brother set him up to fail. Pauly knew. But he’d show them. He’d survive, and he’d save her. He’d win her back and try to change himself. He had reason to now—more than ever before.
Gripping the hard ground, small rocks dug into his skin. Wondering when he would learn to stop harming himself, Pauly jumped up, balancing his weight on the good ankle, and reminded himself to walk it off. Down the mountain would be best. The road might lead up, but that didn’t mean anyone was up there. No matter how far away it was, the village was down. He had to believe in salvation despite her belief the old man drove up the mountain after leaving them to die alone.
What would he do if he found the old guy anyway? He and his El Dorado and his guns and all those drugs in the backseat were nothing but trouble.
His tendon rolled, then clicked and throbbed as he hobbled down the mountain. Going up might have been easier on the ankle. But salvation had to be down. The El Dorado, the grey-haired man, and his drugs were up. Along with his weapons. With one last look at the shack keeping them safe, he turned and hobbled again. It wasn’t a full sprain, just a twist. Maybe he’d be able to walk it off. Walk it off was what his track coach always said when he’d limp onto the grass and fall to the ground. “Don’t sit still. It just leaves a place for blood to pool and swell. A swollen ankle won’t win races. Walk it off.”
A swollen ankle won’t save his life. Or hers. Or the others.
Several steps down, his ankle numbed more than it felt better. It was swelling. The sun was also hot, and he didn’t have water. Maybe any fluid left in his body would build in his ankle, causing pain and inability to walk, solving all his problems with one fell swoop off a cliff. A small pivot on the good ankle proved the shack to be out of sight. He’d traveled far enough to forget his woes and carry on with any plan he wished. He hadn’t been master planner of his world since she came along. A moment of clarity and control might change his life forever.
A path rockier than the one he limped down the mountain could be changed if he hobbled away. From her. From their choices. From the consequences. Hobbling down this mountain was a consequence. He wasn’t willing just yet to take full blame for meeting the El Dorado man, but only because he wouldn’t have even gotten into this mess had it not been for her and her damned brother anyway. But he did agree. And they needed the money.
You got yourselves into this mess, and I can get you out of it, her brother had told them both. All they had to do was meet someone in a dark alley, exchange some goods for money, and keep a large portion of the proceeds. What could go wrong, her brother had asked. It’d be great if I’d just knocked that smirk right off his face, Pauly thought. I should have knocked him out and taken what was in his wallet. Then I’d have a few bucks and my sanity.
The chainsaw started again. It was louder than before. Maybe farther down the mountain than the shack. Maybe he could hobble to it. A chainsaw might be a crew of men working or just a lonely mountain man gathering firewood for the upcoming winter. It could also mean friends of the old El Dorado man.
The sun’s warmth grew hotter farther down. Pauly discovered an old blacktop road beneath his numb foot. Covered in dust, he may have missed it altogether, except his good foot gained stability. Pauly still hobbled. Altitude wasn’t his friend when he was high above the tree line. It was more an enemy as he descended the hillside. His ankle swelled to the point rest was necessary. He’d passed several large boulders away from the perceived safety of the road before deciding to sit. Just his luck, when he was ready for a seat, none were to be found. The ground hit hard when he plopped right down.
This was when the throbbing started. And the blood. There must have been blood before, but it had stopped before drying onto his athletic sock just at the edge of his shoe. Sitting down wasn’t the best thing to do. He knew this. But it was a better idea than taking off his shoes and socks. After yelling out to no one because no one was around, on the other side of a chainsaw or not, no one was near, he peeled his sock off his ankle. It wasn’t just twisted. And walking it off wasn’t appropriate for cuts and gashes. Gashed indeed. Not just cut. But cut through and through. Cut through his sock, cut through the skin, and cut through muscle below.
If it weren’t for the swelling, he might have made it the rest of his journey with his shoes, but after taking them off and using the good sock and lace from one shoe to tie the sock around the ankle to stop new bleeding, his twisted and mangled foot wouldn’t fit back in. He’d have to walk hot asphalt barefoot. He had no idea what could have cut his ankle. Who knew? Maybe the old El Dorado man cut it before they ran from him the first time. Maybe he’d been cut when it rolled like a twist of fate. Maybe he wasn’t meant to walk down this mountain at all. Maybe. Just maybe.
Ready to give in and give up, dehydrated, and exhausted, Pauly met the crow who came to talk. The sun sat high in the baby blue sky. He’d traveled past the tree line and into the full-blown desert. This was where the cactus stood tall and proud and dared man to a spar before passing. The crow sat on the lowest arm of the tallest cactus. The one right next to injured Pauly, ready to throw his head back and give up.
He didn’t need any assistance, thank you very much. And he tried to tell the crow so, but his mouth was dry. He’d been parched since leaving the shack. They only had a small bit of water left. She’d told him to take it because he’d be in the elements. She’d be under shelter. But she needed to stay hydrated too. Her nausea had gotten worse, not better over the past month, and water helped.
The crow sounded again as if yelling at him. Another joined, but this one was a cactus arm higher than the first. They looked at one another, the first crow looking up, the second looking down as if having a conversation about how to tackle the injured man lying on the hard earth. The second squawked, and the first responded.
He tried to tell them to go away. He didn’t need help. And he wasn’t ready to be dinner. They were of no use to him, and he of none to them. But they didn’t go away. They stayed. Each one took turns watching the horizon, probably gauging something he couldn’t see like salvation down the mountain, and watching him. Once he told them he had this, he didn’t need their help, their determination grew. Motion comparable to synchronized swimmers, the second crow moved to the lower arm of the looming cactus while the first flew to the ground.
Beady black eyes stared at his bright blue eyes. The sun was hot but high, so the burn didn’t hinder their eye contact. He told the crow just how much his ankle hurt and asked the blackbird to go away and leave him be. The crow nodded as if to acknowledge. It was a good thing, too, because the rock in the man’s hand would have hit that crow right between those beady eyes.
In unison again, both crows took flight. The rock flew through the air landing a few feet beyond the cactus. Something rattled. Pauly might be killed by a rattler and eaten by crows if he didn’t start moving soon. He yelled out again to no one. When the crows were near, he didn’t feel ridiculous speaking out loud. Without them, his voice thundered in his ears, out of place in the hot desert.
He had this and said so by yelling again. His voice echoed from one cactus to another across the mountainside. Got this…got this…got this…this…this, as if the cactus spoke back to him. He could lie there on the hot dirt and wait for the rattlers to take him. It might be easier than trying to use one leg to get back up. But he had to try.
Another few screams bounced back at him from each surrounding hillside as he put all his weight on his good ankle and used the bad ankle to balance while standing from a one-legged squat. Once he was up, he regretted not crawling around for a long stick to help him walk. His steps were slow, but each one got him closer to something farther from the shack.
He wondered how she was doing. Had she peed yet? She hadn’t last night at all nor this morning when they woke. Dehydration was her first risk. The stomach cramps that would come from dehydration would cause her more issues yet. Maybe she’d found water. She’d talked about lifting floorboards for hidden treasure. The only treasure she needed to find was a crate of water bottles. She might not have enough food, but more water would make the difference between a warm body and a cold body when he got back to her.
Her brother told them both she’d be peeing all the time when he found out the news. In the bathroom all the time, he’d said.
He wanted a high five, celebrate manhood and all, but it wasn’t good news. Pauly knew he had swimmers. He needed his swimmers to drown so he could have fun with the ladies and not worry or payout so much every month. Maybe dehydration would be a small blessing after all. He didn’t want anything to happen to her, but he wasn’t attached to the baby just yet. He wasn’t attached to any of his babies.
After a long night drinking on the patios of city bars, Pauly had a heart-to-heart with himself. His heart wanted him to be a good guy. His mind, however, couldn’t grasp exactly what that meant. He couldn’t stop the game. Gambling was just money and time. Sometimes he had the money, but mostly he had the time to hustle. Women, on the other hand, were his weakness.
She was different. Kaja, she’d told him when he asked her name. With a J, she’d said. Pauly thought on that for a bit. He couldn’t wrap his head around what she’d said. Spelling was never his thing anyway, but he could envision her legs wrapped around him. She had legs that never ended until she bent over the pool table to shoot. Four, corner pocket, she’d said. He didn’t even say anything about the eight-ball going in with her purple ball. He’d noticed exactly where her long legs ended, and he wanted in.
Maybe she was no different than all the rest. But he was different. Once he had her, and he had her good, right there on the green felt, something changed inside him. He wanted to be a better man. He wanted to do right by her.
It was her brother. He was the problem. Frank. He was in the way. And then he tried to help them, but Pauly knew it was a setup. When they got to the alley to exchange the goods for the cash, El Dorado man revved his engine from behind. He’d been hiding around the corner. He tried to run Pauly over, but Pauly was quick. He grabbed the driver’s door and popped it open, sliding in the speeding car, then stopping it before it got to where Kaja was hiding in the shadows.
What he hadn’t expected was the butt of a gun over his head. When Pauly woke, they were tied together in the shack in the Arizona desert. From the floor of the shack, before the grey-haired El Dorado man left, Kaja told Pauly about a village they’d passed on the way up the mountain. She didn’t say anything else until the old man left them. It took that whole day to untie the knots bound around their wrists and feet.
Pauly had known her brother for the past few years, so he’d known Pauly’s bad side. Pauly was the bad guy. He was the thug. Kaja deserved better. Pauly knew it. Kaja’s brother knew it too. Kaja didn’t like their arguing. She’d told her brother how much she loved Pauly, but Frank argued she only loved Pauly’s attention. Her brother was right. But that was until the baby.
Kaja’s baby wasn’t Pauly’s first. But the others he didn’t know. He’d just seen his face, his eyes, his father’s ears, or his mother’s nose on the children of the women he knew. But those women were all married to other men and never came asking for anything from Pauly. He’d always been a free good time—one with no strings.
Focus. Pauly tried to concentrate. Thinking back to what was and what might have been was fruitless unless he could save himself and Kaja. He must have walked another mile since his last rest. The chainsaw hadn’t made its brattle in quite some time, but the crows did come back. He had no plans for dying out there. Pauly yelled at the crows again. One squawked before both flew away.
The sun started its path from the high noon arc down toward dinnertime. Pauly didn’t wear a watch. He’d always had his cell phone in his pocket, but he knew the sun wouldn’t hang in the sky much longer. No matter where in the sky the sun sat, Pauly had been walking toward it for hours. Once it was down, he wouldn’t be able to navigate direction.
Sailors used the stars, Pauly’s grandfather used to say. Pauly didn’t know enough about the stars. He could identify the big dipper and maybe the warrior’s belt, but he’d never know which stars to follow to the village below the mountain tops. Maybe there was no village after all. Maybe he’d been going in circles on his swollen ankle in bare feet for nothing because nothing was at the bottom of this hell hole.
The more the sun went down, the more he wondered if he was heading down or across the mountainside. Rocky terrain slowed him more than the washing numb and the waves of pain in his ankle. The third time the crows visited, one flew over his head as if tracking him. The second, Pauly wasn’t unaware of until the squawk from behind caused him to jump then fall on an ankle too swollen for shoes and too bloody for the sock he’d wrapped to stay in place. His worsening injuries didn’t go unnoticed to the crows.
As night fell across the desert, the sun’s rays hit the vast western skies far away as stars popped from the night sky above. The moon hid behind the clouds, but Pauly had hoped it might light up the desert floor enough for him to keep moving. He couldn’t think of the last time he’d bothered to look up at the moon, so the bright clouds covering what looked like a nearly full moon was a welcome surprise. Maybe they’d clear.
Pauly carried on through the darkness and the desert chill. As the moon traversed the sky, Pauly’s body shook with fever. He didn’t stop. He didn’t talk anymore. His mind didn’t think. He continued as if his body were asleep as his legs took him farther down the mountain, one step at a time.
Pauly overlooked the crows following. He didn’t feel the pain from his ankle. He didn’t notice the morning sun’s rays behind him light the white flowers of the highest cactus. He kept moving because he was trained to survive. He’d made some bad choices in his life, but he’d make it different from here on out. He’d have this baby with Kaja and treat her like a queen. Kaja. Pauly wondered if she was still alive. If she’d found water. He wondered if he’d see her again.
God, if you are listening to me, give me a chance. I’ll show her. I’ll show them all. I can be good. Pauly’s voice disappeared with hydration. It spoke to no one.
He fell right there on the desert floor. One crow stayed with him while the other traveled west, following the sun’s rays over one last ridge to the crowd waiting below. If Pauly had been conscious, he might have heard the search party getting ready to break from their morning meeting in various directions to find him. He would have also heard the old man El Dorado calling Pauly various names. Names Pauly deserved, but no one wanted to hear.
If Pauly’s legs had been able to walk another fifty yards, he might have laid his eyes on Kaja, her hands on her belly as if hugging it in place. He’d know she was safe. His breathing labored, and his eyes fluttered. His mind recognized morning. He stared at the crow standing on the ground near him. He’d made it to morning. The crow squawked and took flight calling his partner back to Pauly.
A returned squawk from the crow heading toward the crowd got the El Dorado man’s attention. He’d trained his crows well. They’d stayed with Pauly all day and night, and when Pauly had given up, just as the old man knew he would, his crows announced Pauly’s location. The old man pointed beyond the ridge and spoke to the crowd just on the other side of the ridge. That’s where Pauly was. The crow above Pauly circled in the air, viewing the ground from his vantage point.
Another forty minutes passed before the old man and his crew reached Pauly. Kaja stayed behind with the crowd who’d gathered around. It was the fifth day, and the number of people who’d shown to help had dwindled. When Kaja and Pauly first disappeared, the sheriff arranged search parties to find the missing couple. It took the old El Dorado man the first two days to convince the sheriff he’d taken over any search for his daughter and the man who’d raped then kidnapped her, or so Frank had tried to convince him. Sheriff and the old man went back years when the old man drove his El Dorado with the same tall hat and same badge on his chest.
Frank stood next to the woman he’d known as his sister most of his life and all of hers. He knew that baby she was holding on to wasn’t Pauly’s just as much as she knew it. Just as much as the packages of wrapped cellophane sitting in the back of the El Dorado were simply compounded and milled flour. Kaja’s brother also knew his father, the man who took him in when he was dropped at the old sheriff’s house at the age of three when the sheriff and his wife were expecting their first baby, a daughter they’d name Kaja, wouldn’t have left Pauly to die out under the desert sun. He’d had his crows trained on the drifter through the entire sting.
With Pauly’s survival, Frank lost. He’d agreed to let Kaja continue to think of him as her brother and to never lay a hand on her again as long as Pauly survived. The old Sheriff agreed to let off Frank seducing his daughter and knocking her up if Frank walked away. Frank tried hard to get Pauly out of the picture. Setting up a drug sting that involved the old Sheriff and bags of flour cocaine was smart indeed.
Frank had depended on Pauly not surviving. When he sent the old man up the mountain to search for Kaja and found Pauly in a shack full of drugs, the Sheriff had no choice but to beat Pauly down. He couldn’t allow drugs in his family. He couldn’t let his daughter get wrapped up in illegal trafficking. When Frank met Pauly and Kaja in the alley selling the bags of cocaine, he expected to knock him out and keep him out, but Pauly hit back. Frank drove to the shack with Pauly in the trunk before calling his foster father to let him know where to find that bastard, Pauly. The old man, knowing the law as he did, decided to hide the drugs in the mountains himself. Treasure hunters had been searching for gold in these hills for a hundred years with no luck, so some hidden bags of cocaine would surely find their way to the wind.
Pauly! Her voice angelic brought Pauly back from a brink he feared he’d crossed. She handed him his cell phone, telling him she’d charged it overnight after her father came back to the shack to pick them up.
Your father? Pauly, dehydrated and confused, had no idea who Kaja’s father was nor what he had to do with the shack.
Her father, she’d explain to Pauly, had taken the drugs and hidden them in a cave at the top of the hill, then came back to get them both. The old Sheriff, old man El Dorado, as Pauly had come to think of him, knew Frank had figured a setup, but Frank hadn’t thought it through when he tied both Pauly and Kaja up inside the shack.
The old man and a guy much younger and stronger held Pauly upright. Water. Pauly heard the word, could almost feel wet on his tongue but had no idea who’d spoken. Someone said something about needing water over here, but for Pauly, it was a voice in the wind. He hobbled on his good leg while dragging the other swollen and mangled carnage of a foot on his other half through the dry dirt. He wouldn’t be moving at all if it weren’t for the old man he’d feared for the past several days.
Frank, or the guy Pauly had known from the bar, stood in the back of the crowd next to an old Indian motorcycle. Old man El Dorado looked across the people waiting to see the man they’d been searching for and yelled out at Frank. His words sifted through the breeze, and all Pauly heard were words about a son no more. The old Indian started with a catch and a hum before shifting the sand beneath the tires and squealing off the blacktop. The crows, who’d circled above Pauly the last several yards of the hike over the ridge, swooped down and circled above the old man. He threw a couple of live crickets into the air and watched as each bird caught their treats.
They made their way through the crowd and back to the El Dorado. And as they approached it, a crow flew directly over their heads and landed on the hood and then looked at them. They stood some distance away and watched the crow watching them. Another crow flew directly overhead and landed beside it. The first crow squawked, and then both flew away. They watched the crows disappear, looked at each other, and then got in the El Dorado. Only one way to go this time, with five bars and a full battery.
~Stella Samuel ©2018 & ©2021