This Is Why We Can't Let You Go Alone

This is a take-off on something that actually did happen to me; up until the end, this is an experience I had as a field technician for the US Geological Survey. Thanks for any comments you might have

This Is Why We Can’t Let You Go Alone

 

            That summer, the West was burning. There was a wildfire up in Idaho, and one in California, maybe a couple in Colorado - no one could keep track anymore. It seemed as if the whole world were burning down, blazes lighting and exploding anywhere a scrap of tinder lay exposed. Out here in the desert, the giant sky had the hazy yellow color of a bruise in an ominous, sunburned kind of way and the August air felt thick and heavy. Faded RVs and Airstream campers dotted the roadside and cooked in the flat sun.

            At about noon on a Tuesday, an 8g horsepower Ford Expedition with towing rig and government license plates rumbled down the corrugated roads with a sense of authority. It passed one sign that read “Lizard Gulch Trailhead and Campsite,” then another pointing back the other way that said, “Carvers, NV: 40 miles,” both shot through with bullets and riddled with shotgun pellets, and came to rest in a dirt parking lot.

            Two young geologists jumped out and broke the silence with their voices. The girl rubbed sunscreen on her nose and made a joke about studying the water in such a godforsaken desert as this; the man, four years older and three levels higher on the pay scale, chuckled and rolled his eyes as he locked the truck and hid the keys in one of its giant front wheel wells. “Tell me about it. You ready?”            

            “I’ve been waiting for your slow a*s all day, old man. Are you ready?” With a brief grunt or two, they hoisted their packs and moseyed across the dirt lot to the trailhead, joking in the casual, understated way they’d perfected over a long summer of working together.

            Suddenly - “Hey! You folks with the gov’ment?” A bearded and broad-shouldered man in head-to-toe camo strode toward them.

            “Yes, we’re with the US Geological Survey. Can we help you?”

            “Well, this new camping fee here really pisses us all off -” here he gestured toward the scattered trailers behind. “Lots of us done grew up here almost, and now we got to pay for it?”

            “I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t actually have anything to do with that.  You’ll have to get in touch with-”

            “The way I see it, ‘s just not constitutional to make a man pay for the land he grew up on. Back when this used to be a free country, I’d drive clear in to Seven Lakes �" and sampling for what now? Seems we should know about it, y’all gov’ment’re nosin around back there.”

            “We’re collecting water samples,” said the girl. “Just a couple of data points for a a larger set about water quality around the country -”

            “Huh �" not the kind of thing I want my taxpayer money goin’ to, for sure -”

            “Well, feel free to send a letter to your Congressman. Thanks for your time, but we’ve got a long day ahead of us so we need to get going. Have a nice afternoon!” Her coworker cut the conversation short and hussled them down the trail, past the eyesight of the bearded man.

            The steepness of the trail and the enervating heat led gradually to a silence of mutual suffering. The smoke became denser: it tainted the sunlight orange and made the still air viscous; it stuck in their lungs and irritated their noses with its smell. The girl watched sweat bead on the back of the man’s neck and behind his knees, felt it pool under her backpack and collect in the creases of her wrists, but she pushed the pace anyway: the only girl in their unit, she was constantly trying to prove herself.  In silence they finished their sampling, and a few hours later they emerged at the car, shadows long and fuzzy, in the beginnings of a blessedly cool evening.

            They dropped their packs heavily at the truck, and the girl shifted from one sore foot to another while the man dropped down to grab the keys from the wheel.

            “What the f**k - No. Not possible. You have to be f*****g kidding me right now.”

            “Jeez, man, what’s up?”

            “The keys. The f*****g keys! They’re not there. Oh we’re fucked. We are so fucked.”

            She dropped to the ground to help search, but with both of them on their backs crunched upside-down under the truck, dirt clinging to the sweat on their backs, breathing hard from a frenzy of searching, they had to admit it. The keys were gone. The truck’s doors were open, though, and the lockdown button on the dash was blinking: someone had broken in and set off the car alarm. In a growing panic, they ransacked the car, took everything out and inventoried all the equipment, but nothing had been taken �" not the expensive computerized sensors, nor the calibrated thermometers, nor their tents or camping equipment �" nothing but their cooler of beer for that night, and, of course, the car keys. They shivered slightly in the growing chill and planned their next move.

            The only way out, it seemed, was for one person to hitchhike out to Carvers for help. The other person would stay with the car �" they couldn’t lock it now, with all the expensive equipment inside, and besides, what if the key thief was still around and just waiting for them to leave so they could steal the car? The air felt saturated with awful possibilities, but they both batted away their growing worries with tough words. It seemed the only way out. Behind them, unnoticed in the midst of their discussion, the last car in the parking lot coughed to life. It was an old and dented white sedan with peeling paint and plaid blankets over the seats, and it idled for a minute while the driver, a chubby man with puffy eyes, thick glasses, and days-old stubble, watched them intently. Then it quietly rolled out of sight. 

            “I’ll go out, then �" I know the area better.”

            In agreement, the girl nodded. “That’s fine; I’ll hang out. I’m burly - I scare off car thieves like it’s my job.”

            The man gravely looked at her a moment too long, but said only, “There’s bear spray under the front seat. I’ll be back as fast as I can.”

            “You better! I can’t exactly leave here, so if you forget me I’m screwed.”

            They both saw a camper van start up down the road and turn on its headlights in the growing dark. He grabbed his pack and took a few steps toward it, then turned around and met her eyes with more intention than she’d seen all summer. “You sure you’re good?”

            “Yeah, yeah �" hurry up and go!”

            She waved him off as he ran to catch it before it pulled away. She watched him exchange a few quick sentences with the driver, then jump in. It turned the corner and she felt herself shrinking slightly as night settled on her: she was alone now, and precariously perched just this side of all right. Smoke obscured the desert stars. She could hear snippets of conversation from nearby campsites, and the occasional rev of an engine on the dirt road beyond, but she felt only her own solitude, and suspicion and resentment from the campers around her. Like a physical presence they pressed in on her, abstract fears building on themselves until she stood right up in one big motion and shook it off, opening all the car doors and turning on the lights with bravado. She pulled out a tent and set it up right next to the car, the familiar motions comforting, furiously humming “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow.” She laid out her sleeping bag, pillow, books, and headlamp, one at a time and each precisely in its own spot. She found the bear spray, hesitated, put it back under the seat �" then pulled it out again and set it in one corner of the tent. Finally, she pulled on some extra layers for the night and ate a few snacks. Then, there was nothing left to do. The foreboding silence grew again. She curled up in her tent with a book, but every skittering chipmunk sent her bolt upright and she couldn’t see out the fabric walls, so she sat in one of the truck’s front seats and locked herself in and turned on the light to read. Around 11, the words began blurring together on the page in front of her. Her head fell back on the seat in the car and she slept fitfully.

            In her dream: a man, tall and sinewy, joints and veins popping out of taut skin, came toward her with a labored and painful gait. White, with patchy hair, a toothless grin ruled the lower half of his face below hollowed cheeks and empty glinting eyes. His muscles stood out, clenching, from pale skin with no flesh between to moderate their brutality. And he sang, through his grin: “bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow...there’ll be sun!...” He was not human; he was a specter contrived from horror stories and Wyoming billboards and rural American despondency and the fears indoctrinated in her from girlhood, but in this dream was the certainty that he, with his chemically induced meth-head super-human strength, would overpower her - rape her - then tear her limb from limb. She struggled to wake, to calm herself, but when she sank back down into sleep he was there again, over and over, following her through her dreams, haunting every one of them. She couldn’t get away. Over and over, she woke fuzzy-minded and terrified, only to return to his image once again.

            Late the next morning she woke for real with sore eyes and a vague ache throughout her head. The light outside was flat and yellow under the smoke and the air was already hot and close. She glanced �" and started: had she really slept all night long with the door open? Outside, she paced in silence, already sweating and a bit dizzy. She filled her water at the campground tap, then brushed her teeth and doused her head under the faucet to clear her head. The water was cold and bracing and she heard herself gasp at the cold. As she finished, she turned and the sudden presence of someone else made her jump. It was a slightly overweight, balding man with stubble on his face, shifting from foot to foot and watching her dolefully. Behind his thick glasses, his eyes didn’t quite meet hers as she smiled, water dripping from her face. His gaze on her back as she walked away made her stiffen and brace her shoulders, think brave thoughts. 

            About noon, after pacing and reading and pacing all morning, she began to check every bush and rock nearby for the keys. What if they were just lying nearby? She found nothing, though, and crawled under the car once more just in case they’d missed the keys in the evening light. With her head under the front bumper, she heard the faint click of all the car doors locking and then the ear-splitting noise of the alarm. Every muscle in her body contracted;  she cracked her head on the undercarriage and shimmied out and stumbled away like a panicked animal. She bent, choking for breath, hands on her knees �" and then just as suddenly, the alarm went silent and she saw all the locks click up again.

            “What the f**k,” she muttered. She crumpled to the dirt and cried, big loud desperate sobs.  “What the f**k, what the f**k!”

            She hit the hard-packed dirt with her hand. Quickly, though, she stilled - got up - paced, muttering to herself. “Get yourself together, girl. Just a coincidence, totally random. You’re tough, girl, you’re tough. Pull yourself together.” The car’s alarm must have been triggered by someone else’s keys in the campground �" right? Or maybe there was a noise just loud enough to set it off? Maybe a squirrel had the keys?

            Nonchalantly, she climbed back into the car for its shade in the mid-day sun, with all the doors wide open in hopes of a breeze and cracked her book again. But it was hard to breathe in the heat, and she couldn’t shake the feeling of eyes behind every rock, watching her movements. Crickets wheezed in the brush. Their noise was magnified in the still air and pulsed in her ears. The dust on the dashboard, the one long horizontal crack in the windshield, the road atlas with dog-eared pages, the paper coffee cups all sickened her with their familiarity.  Through the afternoon a few families drove up to the trailhead and started down the trail, and she could see faint movements in the campers down the road. Part of her longed to jump out, explain to them her situation, but another couldn’t leave the car.

            “Besides, what would you even say, girl? I’m scared because of nightmares and a faulty car alarm? Pull yourself the f**k together!” So she sat motionless, trying not to breathe, as sweat stuck her tights to the seat. She was desperately thirsty but unwilling to leave the car again for more water.

            Somewhere in the afternoon she was catapulted from a doze by the car alarm once more, reverberating in her head, adrenaline running in every single muscle. Her fingers, as if a separate creature, scrambled for the door handle but it wouldn’t open; her eyes focused slowly on the lock, fully down in the locked position. She yanked it up, but it clicked down again - she pulled it up again - it clicked back down. All the while the honking never ceased, insistent, maddening, clawing at the inside of her dehydrated skull. When the alarm finally shut off, with a sudden delicious ringing silence, she found herself curled up on the floor of the backseat, hands over her ears, moaning and jamming her head as far under the seat as it would go.

            She lay crumpled on the floor until the click of the driver’s side door latch made her freeze. She felt the weight of the car shift as someone lifted himself into the seat. He closed the door again and she heard all the locks click down once more. Every cell in her was on fire as he cleared his throat, shifted his weight, started the car. Her bear spray - where was her bear spray? In the corner of her tent, of course, outside and utterly useless.

            “Hey there sweet thing, why don’t you come sit up next to papa?” Weak with dread, she watched her own disembodied self shiver on the floor.

            “You might as well, girlie, ain’t nothing else you can do now.” She heard herself whimper; her shoulders twitched but nothing else moved.

            With a bit of a growl: “You can make this hard now, or you can make this easy,” and he lifted the catch and slammed the driver’s seat back, crushing her head between the seats with a searing pain.

            Dizzy and nauseous, she climbed into the passenger’s seat and glanced at him once, quickly. His puffy eyes were red-rimmed behind his thick glasses but shining with a maniacal glint, and a confident smile played around the corners of his mouth and squeezed the edges of one eye in a tic. Sweat had collected in the creases of his T-shirt around his small potbelly, and she saw the tendons in his hands stand out as they clenched compulsively.

            He leaned over and looked her deep in the eyes with one hand gently massaging her thigh. “That’s my sweet thing. You’re comin home now, you’ll never leave. The campers never liked you, and now, you’re all mine. You’ll be my sweet girlie.” Her hands were clenched into fists at her sides and her eyes fixated dementedly on those goddamn coffee cups. He stroked one hand slowly down the side of her face, lingering at her jaw, and pulled out of the parking lot, humming, in fragments:

 

The sun will come out tomorrow

Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow,

There’ll be sun...