Death Pans Out Read online

  Where had she come from? What was she doing out here, alone and half nude?

  She wasn’t old but she wasn’t young.

  He wasn’t young either. If he were young he could start over again, get away from all this before it was too late, have a different life, a real life. He would live in Hawaii or maybe Florida, go to the beach, swim in the ocean. He had never been in the ocean, never swum in translucent green water with white sand below, never sat under a palm tree with a cold drink. Were there palm trees in Florida? Yes, of course, but were they originally there or had they been brought in like the orange trees?

  It didn’t matter. Palm trees, ocean, orange trees, a new life…

  His elbow slipped and he lost her again. He held his breath and scanned the hillside, moving his head with the glasses, sideways, up and down. She was gone, gone, vanished into the dry air, yet another mirage, never real in the first place—ah, but there she was.

  She had stopped for a drink in the shade of a juniper, balanced on the slope with her head tilted back. She drank, drank again, attached the water bottle to her belt, cinched the belt. She bent to pick something up off the ground, aiming the dusty bottoms of her shorts straight into his eyes, the cloth stretched tight. She stood, bent her head over her hand, dropped whatever she had picked up, and went on.

  Her back glistened in the sun. From sweat? She was too far away to tell. His own back was clammy. He was sweating, he was always sweating, he had spent his whole sorry life sweating, hot sweat and cold sweat, the sweat of labor and the sweat of fear.

  She topped a rise, was silhouetted for a moment against the dark ridge beyond, and then vanished behind the hill. Patiently he waited, the glasses trained on the slope beyond the rise. She was heading up and would soon appear again. Long, hot minutes passed. His arms ached. A fly crawled on his sticky neck and he slapped it with one hand. He hated flies, hated when they landed on his plate, would not eat food a fly had walked on.

  The dead fly stuck to his hand. He flung it away with disgust, wiped his palm on his pants, and searched again through the field glasses, but she did not come back into view. She was gone gone gone into the stony land and he was alone in the silent afternoon, alone as he had always been and always would be. He wrapped the cord around the glasses, slid them into the case, and turned back to his work. He might have imagined her but probably not, not with the rolled shorts and the scratched legs. Had he imagined her, she would have turned around, and she would have had red hair. He had always liked red hair.

  Chapter Five

  The instant she woke up, Neva thought of the truck and felt certain that it had been Dooley pulling out after all, the sound of the engine exaggerated by the stillness of night. But as she slipped her feet into the flip-flops next to the bed, she heard the whine of the quad and hurried out onto the porch to check where he was going today. It sounded as though he was heading upstream toward Billie Mountain the way she had walked yesterday. Although she had not asked how long he meant to stay on the creek, their conversation had taken the edge off her uneasiness. He was looking for artifacts, and once he’d explored the immediate area he’d move on. Over the years he had been just about everywhere in the drainage, he said, “just rammycackin’ around,” as he put it. “But you never can see everything. It’s amazing what you miss. That’s why I come back every year.”

  Today he was certain to be gone for hours, but still Neva was driven by a sense of new urgency as she put her soap and towel in the basket and took the short trail to the old mining pond to wash off yesterday’s dust and sweat. The pond was downstream from Dooley’s camp, and like the camp, it was hidden by trees. About half an acre in size, it was roughly triangle-shaped, with an earthen dam as the base and the creek flowing into the apex.

  Even though she knew that placer mining required water, she had been surprised to find a real pool given the small size of the creek and the general dryness of the high desert country. On her first day at the mine she had stood on the bank for a long time gazing at the water. The still surface had mirrored a perfect blue sky but as she watched, images appeared as though in a crystal ball, revealing depths where dead trees stood, their drowned limbs trailing algae. At last she had stripped but continued to stand on the dam, naked and uncertain, her attraction to the water struggling against irrational fear. The plain fact of being hot had finally driven her down the bank into the silky cold water, which gave off a musty-sweet, secret perfume, an underground smell of clean earth and old leaves. She had stuck close to shore, avoiding the dark drop-off into the deep center, paddling up and down where her hands could touch bottom.

  Before her second swim, she had constructed a proper bathing spot with materials scavenged from around the mine. Short eight-by-eight timbers wedged into the clay made three steps down the face of the little dam. At the top of the steps she laid down an old wooden door for a changing and sunbathing platform, and next to it she set a wooden bench. That she had not thought of bringing a swimsuit to the mine was due more to habit than her expectations about whether she would or would not find a swimming hole—she rarely swam where she couldn’t go in nude. Like discovering fresh-roasted coffee or locally made bread, it’s impossible to go back to a lower standard, and swimming in any sort of garment definitely rated low once you’d felt lovely water slipping over every bit of your skin. The craving for sun on her skin was different; that was for healing, for letting the clean, strong light into every cell in her body. Water was purely for pleasure.

  The bottom of the pond was soft but she had learned to push off without stirring up the silt. Every day she paddled a little farther from shore, vowing that before her stay at the mine was done she would swim from one end of the pond to the other right above the dead trees. The water felt particularly sweet and fresh this morning after a day without bathing, but Neva didn’t take time to float on her back or lie on the towel while her hair dried. Listening for the sound of Dooley’s scooter, she dried briskly and returned to the cabin.

  It was still early enough to be slightly cool in the shadows when she set out walking, heading for the ridge on the east side where Dooley had gone yesterday. She had walked on that side of the creek before, but had not climbed out of the canyon bottom. Now she chose any faint remnant of a road or game trail that led away from the creek. Where there was no trail, she picked her way among scattered pines, sagebrush and rocks.

  As she zigzagged upward, the pines thinned and the ground grew rockier. In a small meadow, larkspur made a carpet about six inches tall, the flowers a concentrated blue. Everything glistened today, the fine spider webs strung between trees, the needles of young pines, the silvery lupine leaves, the smooth obsidian chunks embedded in the hillside, the brushy tops of new grasses, even the fine hairs on her own arm. Her leg muscles felt like springs, and warm air moved freely in the new space between the tops of her thighs.

  It had not been like this when she arrived at the mine. Was it really just two weeks ago that she had come here, weak and exhausted? She had never been a heavy woman, but as she had started up the creek trail for the first time the weight of her unexercised body had felt like more than her bones could carry. That she had made it to the mine at all was a miracle born of desperation. How could she have been so blind to her own depression? She had been so cocky, so sure she would sail through breast cancer with ease because what are breasts, after all, except lumps of fatty tissue stuck on the chest? Losing her breasts was not like losing arms, legs, or a lung. Her breasts had nursed a child and served her well in a womanly way for more than thirty years, but they were no longer essential to her life or happiness. If she had to trade part of her body to stay alive, then surely breasts were the best offering. Without them she could still function well in every necessary way.

  Immediately following the end of chemotherapy, which had been surprisingly tolerable, she had felt euphoric because it was over. But after a few weeks the euphoria had given way to a sense of loss that had deepened steadily through rainy win
ter and into spring. Not only was her familiar body gone, but other important losses in her life came sweeping back to haunt her: Carlo’s drowning when their son was just about to start kindergarten, her father’s fatal stroke, and her mother’s death just two years ago. Losing her breasts had opened these old wounds as though they were new, bringing pervasive sorrow that touched everything.

  Nothing mattered as it had before. Everything turned gray—her work, books, friends, garden, even the regular telephone calls from Ethan, who was working so hard at Berkeley. Her sense that the world offered endless possibilities had disappeared. All her life she had been a morning person, but now getting out of bed was hard work. Instead of springing up ready for the new day, she had to talk herself out of the warm comfort of her quilt, pretending not to dread the weary hours ahead. And her body, she had to admit at last, had become alien. This was not really her, this unfit, weary, sexless thing.

  That she was depressed took a long time to accept, but when she finally faced the truth she went dutifully through the usual steps for treatment and self-care. She joined a support group, found a counselor, made herself available to help other women diagnosed with breast cancer, and invited friends to dinner more often. She took leisurely baths despite having preferred showers all her life, and wrapped herself in a new plush robe. She had her gold-brown hair cut from shoulder length to a chic unisex trim.

  Every day she reminded herself that she was lucky to live in a beautiful Oregon town and to have a stimulating job as a newspaper columnist, a job that put her in the middle of whatever interesting was going on in Willamette…but pep-talks were useless. Counting her blessings came to seem a symptom in itself. As the relentless rain of a Willamette Valley winter pounded down, she had begun to dream about the desert. She imagined hot rocks, and ridges standing against a cloudless sky. She could smell sagebrush and warm dust. And then one night as she lay sleepless in bed an image of a cabin had floated into her fantasies. It sat on a sunny hillside among twinkling aspens, encircled by quartz-lined paths. She saw a girl sitting on a white rock by the door while two men talked on the nearby porch—she was the girl, the cabin was at her uncle’s mine that she had visited so many years ago, and that was her uncle in the black vest leaning forward to listen to her father.

  This image, so long forgotten, began to haunt her thoughts day and night. One morning she woke up knowing she would go to the mine. She had got out the old, yellowed map of Oregon that had been on the dining room wall when she was young, on which her father had marked every personal landmark in the state he considered the most favored in the nation. The mine was noted as “M.Burt/Gold M” in fine black ink, with a small “x” on a hand-drawn dotted line representing Billie Creek Road. The prospect of a summer at the mine had not given her sudden energy, had not cured the lethargy and sadness, but it had provided her with enough purpose to make the necessary arrangements. She requested a three-month leave from work, found a summer renter for her house, and assembled gear and groceries. The most wearying part of the preparations had been assuring friends that she was not insane and did not need—did not want—anyone to visit or check up on her. Ethan fussed at first but then became her staunchest supporter. “Go for it, Mom,” he urged. “And don’t spend all your time writing me letters.”

  Despite her yearning for a clear sky and hot rocks, the first walk was a shock. Struggling up the trail, she felt like a convict in leg irons. Every step was hard labor, sweat drenched her shirt, and she soon retired to the cabin. That evening she made herself go out again, and again first thing in the morning, and on each occasion she went a little farther, a little faster, her step a little more buoyant. The extra weight disappeared as though melted by the sun.

  Now, striding up the rocky slope, she found it difficult to remember that sad and weary woman who had arrived at the mine so short a time ago. She had set out walking fast, but slowed down when the ground grew steeper, pacing herself as she had learned to do, saving her strength for the heat of afternoon. She had just calculated that she was about halfway to the ridge top when she came suddenly upon a road, a surprisingly good road of sandy clay that sparkled with quartz fragments. It had to be Billie Creek Road, which looped around the top of the drainage and headed back down the canyon on the east side, but it was nothing like the pitted, rocky track that continued past the cabin cutoff on the other side. She had often crossed the road at the head of the canyon, and though it was somewhat better there than lower down, it still was deeply rutted and littered with rocks. According to the Forest Service map she had bought in Sisters, this end should be worse.

  Faint tire marks showed in the sand. Thinking of the night truck, Neva squatted and touched the shallow tracks. They were crusted hard, and clearly old. Whatever its business, the truck had not come this far. Standing again, she unhooked the water bottle from her belt and sipped, savoring each cool mouthful to make it last while she considered what to do next. The road curved attractively away in both directions, with a rocky bank on the uphill side and low pines and shrubs on the downhill side. She was tempted to follow it, either to the left and all the way around to the cabin turnoff, or to the right down the canyon to the point where, at least on the map, it crossed over the ridge into Jump Creek Canyon. It might be an easier way to get onto the ridge, though the crossover point wasn’t likely to be very high, and might even be far down the canyon toward the foothills. She could not remember that part of the map very well.

  As she stood wondering which way to go and whether sticking to the road would be a cowardly ploy to get out of the difficult climb to the top, she heard the ring of metal on stone. A horse came into sight around the bend from the downstream direction.

  The rider wore a wide-brimmed hat tipped low over his face. He gave no sign of seeing Neva until he was so close she could smell the horse. The horse snorted and stepped sideways. Looking up, the rider reined sharply, swung to the ground and pulled off his hat in a single gesture. Although he had appeared large on the horse, he was only a bit taller than Neva’s own five-foot-six—and he was a woman.

  “Darla Steadman,” she said, offering a firm hand.

  With a bag over her head, Darla Steadman could have passed for a man, her legs long and straight in Levis that fit easily rather than snugging around hips, her button-up shirt tucked in and nearly as flat in front as Neva’s own. Even the shaggy hair would have been unremarkable on a young man. Her face, however, was riveting, the sort that no amount of sunburn, dusty sweat, or indifferent grooming can make other than beautiful. Such a woman would not be convincing if placed by Hollywood on a horse in Billie Creek Canyon, and yet—Neva looked at the scarred cowboy boots, the strong hand holding the reins, the lean figure planted before her with equal weight in both feet—and yet, Darla Steadman belonged here in a way that she herself did not. The thought brought a flicker of envy that had nothing to do with glamour.

  “I’m Neva, Jeneva Leopold,” she said. “I’m staying down at the mine, Billie Creek Mine. It belonged to my uncle.”

  “You’re not mining?” The tone was polite, and nothing more.

  “No, no. I’m just getting away from town for a while. My uncle was Matthew Burt. Did you know him?”

  “I knew him.”

  “We’ve always wondered what happened. The disappearance, I mean. Some people think he died.”

  “That’s right.”

  Neva waited but Darla offered nothing more, as though all that could be said had been said. She must have ridden up from one of the ranches along the Dry River, where the narrowness of the valley left little room for cultivation or grazing between the river and the hills on either side. Thinking back to the evening when she had driven into the mine, Neva realized that she had seen no cows as she followed the empty two-lane highway up the valley. In summer, the cows must be in the high country grazing on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management property, which included just about everything out here other than the bottomlands.

  “Are you looking fo
r cows?” she ventured. “I think there may be some up the creek.”

  “How many did you see?”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t see them, I only smelled them when I was walking yesterday, or at least thought I did. I’ve got an unusually good nose.”

  “They’re not supposed to be in here until August. They have to rotate, first to Jump Creek, then Coyote, then Billie last. They can’t stay here.”

  Again there was silence, although Darla made no move to leave. She must have ridden a long way from the valley and would have many hours more to go before reaching home, yet she carried no water, lunch, or anything else that Neva could see. Her jeans and work shirt couldn’t have harbored even a chocolate bar. Nothing was tied to the saddle. Since dismounting, she hadn’t smiled once, although there was nothing especially serious in her manner. She was simply neutral, flat, uninflected, like an exquisite mannequin that had been left out carelessly to weather.

  At that moment, Darla stepped to the edge of the road, put a finger against one nostril, and blew a sharp blast through the other, clearing it explosively. She did the second nostril, then wiped with a wadded bandanna from her back pocket.

  Well, not so very much like a mannequin. Neva smiled and said in a conversational tone, “I heard a truck on the creek road late last night. I wondered if someone had driven their cows up.”

  “That’s how we drive cows.” Darla nodded toward the horse, which had begun grazing at the side of the road with a leisurely air as though simply passing time. “You sure it was a truck?”

  “It sounded like it. I suppose it could have been kids from one of the ranches.”

  “You’re out here on your own?”

  “That’s right. I needed a stretch of quiet all to myself.”

  “Plenty of that around here.”

  Had the rancher smiled, Neva would have laughed and the encounter would have looked different later as she thought it over, but Darla gave no sign of amusement. She drew her horse in by the lead that had remained loose in her hand, and swung lightly into the saddle. Looking down at Neva, her face again shadowed by the gray hat, she said, “Just a small piece of advice. It’s not always what it looks like out here, the ground, that is. You have old tunnels just about anywhere and I advise you to keep away from them.”