The Maze Page 7

  “Actually,” Rick admitted, “I had a flying dream last night.”

  Lon’s eyes lit up. “As in…flying like a bird? Tell me about it.”

  Rick shrugged. “I was flying with one of your condors. Over the Maze.”

  Lon clapped him on the shoulder. “A man after my own heart.”

  “Do you ever have flying dreams?”

  “All the time, but now they’re hang gliding dreams. When I was a kid I would kind of hover with my arms out wide. All the wings I needed were my outstretched arms.”

  “Were people always motioning for you to come down?”

  “All the time. They thought I was going to crash. They couldn’t believe I could really fly.”

  “What do those flying dreams mean? Is it an escape fantasy? Is it dying, and leaving everybody behind?”

  “Heard both of those. I’ve also heard it’s about how we puny humans keep searching for the meaning of life. I’ve heard just about everything. But I have my own theory: flying dreams signify the desire to fly! Since people have had imaginations, they’ve envied birds. In their dreams they do something about it! Say, would you put the glove back on and bring Sky?”

  Lon darted around to the back of the pickup, fished a duffel bag and a helmet from the camper shell. A minute later he was stepping through the leg straps of a full-body harness and passing his arms through the shoulder straps. The harness was a synthetic cocoon that ran from his shoulders to his feet.

  “What’s in the big pouch over your chest?” Rick asked.

  “Parachute,” Lon replied with a grin.

  Delicately the man positioned the eagle inside an intricate harness of her own. Obviously handmade, the harness left the eagle’s head, wings, tail, and feet free. Lon proceeded to wrap each of the eagle’s talons with adhesive foam strips. “For my protection—she’ll kind of be on my back.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Rick said. He was trying to hold the eagle up by the harness strap. Sky was flapping her enormous wing, ready and anxious to fly. She was too heavy for Rick to hold her up for long. He lowered her gently to the ground until her feet found the slickrock.

  Lon slipped on his sunglasses, pulled his helmet over his head. It had wraparound jaw protection that momentarily pushed his beard in the wrong direction.

  “Hook in,” Rick heard the man remind himself. Lon reached over his shoulder and attached his harness, with a carabiner, to the keel of the hang glider above.

  “Hook Sky,” Lon said. Rick reached in with the bird under the leading edge of the wing. Lon had a carabiner waiting and hooked her in. He screwed the carabiner’s locking mechanism down tight.

  The man studied the green tape waving in the wind at the edge of the cliff. He took a deep breath, pulled on gloves, then lifted the glider by the two shiny aluminum tubes descending from a common point above him where they were attached to the keel. A thinner bar connected them horizontally, forming a triangle. A small instrument box was attached to the horizontal bar.

  There was so much Rick wanted to ask, but this wasn’t the time. “Have a good one,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  Rick thought Lon was set to go, but then the man set the glider down on the tiny wheels at the ends of its horizontal bar. “I left the two-way radio in the truck tuned to the frequency of the receiver built into my helmet. All you have to do is push the talk button on the side of the mike when you want to talk.”

  “Where’s yours?”

  “On my glove finger here. I can hit it with my thumb. See this wire running up my neck? See where it’s jacked into the helmet? I’ll let you know if I change my mind about my LZ. You let me know if there’s any breaking news back on earth. Stand back, Rick, nice and clear.”

  Rick walked halfway to the edge of the cliff and stepped away from the runway. He wanted a good look at this.

  Lon lifted the glider once again. “Clear!” he yelled, and began to jog behind the aluminum triangle.

  Rick saw the exact moment of liftoff. Lon’s churning legs suddenly left the ground, and he quickly dropped his hands from the near-vertical members of the triangle to the horizontal bar connecting them below. Almost simultaneously he kicked his feet into the bottom of the harness bag and assumed a perfectly prone position. The eagle was perched on his back with her one wing held out and carving the wind.

  Lon flew out from the cliff and then up, up, in great spiraling circles. Rick could see him controlling the glider by shifting his weight from side to side or forward and back.

  Rick heard the eagle scream. “Unbelievable,” he said under his breath, and then he cheered, and cheered again at the top of his lungs.

  He’d never seen anything so beautiful in his life as this man-kite soaring untethered above the canyonlands. He realized there were tears streaming down his face.

  A few minutes later he was back in the truck. Through the windshield, he still had the glider in sight. Several ravens were performing acrobatic maneuvers very close to the glider.

  Rick switched on the two-way, picked up the mike, and hit the talk button. “Lon and Sky,” he said, “do you read me? Over…”

  He let his thumb off the button.

  “Ten-four. Read you loud and clear. What’s up? Over…”

  “You are. What’s the deal with the ravens off your starboard wing? Over…”

  “Those guys? Just a couple of local pilots.”

  11

  Lon was stuffing the hang glider back in its tube as a white pickup appeared at the edge of the landing zone. The round emblem on its door set Rick’s heart pounding. Panicky, he looked to Lon for reassurance.

  “Maze ranger,” Lon explained. “Park Service. Don’t worry. Just don’t talk. Don’t say anything unless you have to.”

  The truck pulled to a stop. A man with neatly combed gray hair and a trim gray mustache got out from behind the wheel.

  Rick couldn’t see the man’s eyes behind his sunglasses, but he felt them scrutinizing him. The park ranger looked from Rick to the eagle perched on the carrying bracket at the front of Lon’s truck, then back to Rick. Rick tried to quiet his heart.

  The nameplate over the man’s chest pocket said JOE PHIPPS. The ranger and the condor biologist shook hands. Rick sidled away and stood by the eagle.

  The ranger asked if Lon had taken the eagle flying that morning; Lon said he had. The ranger shook his head, marveling. He glanced at Rick once more, but he didn’t say anything.

  The ranger started to talk about the weather. He said that the monsoon rains were long overdue. Lon said he expected they were still coming. The ranger asked about the condors. Lon reported that they were doing well.

  With another glance in Rick’s direction, the ranger said, “Good, I’m really happy to hear that.”

  “You got my message?” Lon asked.

  “Sure did…haven’t wanted to radio you back on it. As we both know, there’s a lot of people listening in on the airwaves. Your message—at least the way it was relayed to me—was mighty cryptic, Lon. I wasn’t able to cover the situation myself, but the sheriff covered it for me. The only Humvee that came off the Maze road was driven by Nuke Carlile, and it turns out he’s an old friend of the sheriff’s.”

  Lon flinched. “Great, just great. I suppose the sheriff didn’t happen to see any artifacts sticking out of the Humvee.”

  “I don’t expect he nosed around much. What did you have to go on, Lon? You see something yourself?”

  Lon shook his head. He looked disgusted. “Just a hunch,” he said. “A very strong hunch.”

  At this the ranger’s questioning eyes left the biologist and fastened on Rick. Rick was sure the man was guessing that Lon wasn’t telling the full story on account of him.

  The ranger glanced back at Lon. “I was about to come see you anyway. I wanted to tell you in person that I’ve been transferred. All the way up to Oregon.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Came up quick. A man in a crucial job at Crater
Lake took sick. The position of Maze ranger is sort of in limbo until they build a new station or bring in a portable. It’s true I can’t patrol the Maze very well from the Island in the Sky. It might be fifteen air miles—”

  Lon laughed. “And two hundred some in your truck.”

  “My kidneys won’t miss this excuse for a road. Over the last eleven years I’ve had my internal organs rearranged for life. I should donate my body to science.”

  “I’ll miss you, Joe. You were a big supporter for the Condor Project coming in here.”

  The park ranger looked wistfully toward the Doll House. “I’m gonna miss this country. And to tell you the truth, I’m a little concerned about leaving you out here without anyone to check in on you besides your own people.”

  “How’s that, Joe?”

  “If the sheriff mentioned your name to Carlile…”

  “How could that have happened? Why would he do a thing like that?”

  “I’m not saying he did, Lon. I just wish I’d known beforehand that they were friends. I could see he wasn’t going to do a thing unless he had a name to attach to the accusation.”

  “My fault. I should’ve seen this coming.”

  “You’ve met Nuke, I take it?”

  “He already wasn’t very happy to see me in here.”

  “To my mind—don’t quote me on this—he’s a classic government hater, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he associates you with the government. You know, I tried once to reason with him about Canyonlands National Park belonging to all the people of the United States. About people agreeing that a few places should be left natural, and that’s what the national parks are all about.”

  “I don’t suppose that went over too big.”

  “Nuke said to me, ‘It’s not the people we’re talking about here, it’s the government.’ What can you say to a guy who’s consumed by hatred for the government?”

  Lon just shrugged.

  “After a certain point, hate becomes a brain disease. It distorts a person’s perception of reality.”

  “What’s his beef?”

  The ranger grinned. “You just said the word. Decades ago Nuke was the rancher who had the grazing permit on this whole district. He’s the one who scratched the road in here, for cattle. It was always worse than marginal grazing, but he had a permit on a hundred square miles in here, including the Maze. Of course it was public land even back then, administered by the federal government, but once it became part of the national park, his grazing permit was revoked.”

  “Amazing to think anyone could’ve grazed cattle in the Maze.”

  “There were just enough pockets of grass, especially on the canyon bottoms. Nuke drove cattle into nearly every canyon in the Maze.”

  “I’ve seen a few stone staircases…knew they were overbuilt for foot traffic.”

  “Nuke built those stone by stone. Jasper Canyon was the only one he could never manage to drive his cattle into, which is partly why we closed it a few years ago.”

  “I hadn’t heard about that. You mean Jasper is closed to hikers even?”

  Jasper, Rick thought. Did Carlile name his pit bull after that canyon?

  “That’s right. We posted a sign at the trailhead—there’s only one path to the bottom, so it was easy to post. We want to have one canyon—for study—that has never been grazed and won’t get the hiking traffic in the future that the rest will. Jasper’s the closest thing we have to a pristine canyon ecosystem. The idea is to be able to compare all those other canyons with Jasper in order to monitor their recovery from the old grazing damage and the impacts of the new recreational use. If you need to go into Jasper on account of your birds, though, don’t worry about it. I’ll put a memo to that effect in the file before I leave. Anyway, now you know the story on Carlile.”

  Lon shook his head. “Still nursing his wounds over that revoked permit, sounds like.”

  “You and I know that cattle are awfully hard on these arid lands out here, but this didn’t make a bit of sense to Carlile. You could tell he’d started thinking of all this country out here as his own property rather than the public’s. I’m sure he felt like he was being robbed of what was rightfully his.”

  “Somehow I can picture him harboring a grudge for a quarter of a century.”

  “He was offered a permit on higher-quality grazing land of greater acreage, but he wouldn’t take it. National Park people bent over backward trying to accommodate him, but for Nuke it was the Maze district or nothing, so it turned out to be nothing. He moved into Moab after that, went to work at the uranium mill. Then just a few years ago he moved back to Hanksville, bought the gas station, and you know the rest.”

  “It sure would all fit together, him pothunting in here, if I’m right about that. He probably thinks he’s just evening up the score, making money on the Maze without working a single cow.”

  “Just between you and me and the fencepost, I’m standing here rethinking that fire that burned down the ranger station last spring. They never found what caused it. In addition to despising the federal government, Nuke would’ve had an immediate motive for arson: nobody on the road to take note of his pothunting trips. If that’s what happened, it worked. Got me out of his way. All of this is wild conjecture, though, unless you’ve actually got something on him.”

  “No, I don’t. Just some suspicious behavior. At any rate, I have reason to believe he’ll lay off this area now. He was in here night before last, and I’m assuming he pulled out everything he had hidden away. He’s too exposed now with me so close. I don’t think he’ll be back.”

  “All the same, keep a watchful eye out—” Suddenly the park ranger nodded in Rick’s direction. “So who’s your shy friend over here?”

  “My nephew. My nephew Rick.”

  “Happy to meet you, Rick. Where you from?”

  “California,” he answered slowly.

  “Oh, whereabouts?”

  “Fort Bragg.”

  “Sure, on the Mendocino coast. My, that’s beautiful country. So what do you think of this out here? Couldn’t be more different, eh?”

  “That’s for sure.” Rick breathed easier. He was going to get through this. He was surprised that Lon had lied for him.

  A minute later the park ranger’s 4×4 was disappearing up the road. Lon said, “So now we get a bit of autobiography. You’re from Fort Bragg?”

  “I’m from a lot of places.”

  For a moment it looked as if Lon would ask him to tell more. Rick might have been willing, but the moment passed. “I’m hungry,” Lon said. “How about you?”

  It was midmorning when they got back to camp. Rick ate cold cereal with strawberries, a cup of yogurt, two bagels with cream cheese. Lon nibbled his three cold hot dogs as he made observations through the spotting scope and jotted down notes. Rick said, “Have you ever tried cooking those?”

  “More trouble than it’s worth,” came the gruff response.

  Sometimes Lon could look so tough. It wasn’t just the scar, it was his entire body language. He wasn’t someone you’d want to have for an enemy. “Aren’t those tube steaks supposed to be bad for you? I mean, all those preservatives?”

  “I figure I’ll be so well preserved I’ll live forever.”

  “Condiments? Ever try condiments? You know, like mustard?”

  “No point in gilding the lily. Less is more.”

  Lon’s philosophy, Rick thought. He wondered if Lon had ever owned a house, or how long it had been since he’d even lived in one.

  Lon never looked away from his scope while he was talking, which made it easier to ask him questions. “What would you think if I took a hike in the Maze sometime?”

  The biologist turned from the scope, speared him with those penetrating blue eyes. “What am I all of a sudden, your parent? Your guardian or something?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Hey, I’m just a guy out here doing his job. If you want to hang out here awhile, that’s okay. I thought you ha
d that figured out.”

  “Got it,” Rick said, squaring his shoulders.

  He nursed his wounds in his tent. Lon just wanted to be left alone with his condors.

  Rick couldn’t help it, he’d started to care about the condors himself. Maybe because they were outcasts and the odds were all against them.

  Rick couldn’t help that he’d started to care about the man too, whatever his real name was—even if he was damaged somehow and more than a little strange. The man and the birds and Rick Walker, they were all damaged goods.

  And why had he asked Lon’s permission to hike in the Maze?

  Rick nodded off and slept until the tent canvas, whipping with the wind, woke him up. He went back outside, not knowing what to expect.

  Lon was still seated on his lawn chair facing the cliffs. The clouds had grown tall and dark, and the wind was starting to blow hard. Rick wondered what rain would look like in these canyonlands of solid rock.

  Two of the condors were hanging in the sky a hundred feet or so above the rim, like kites. Lon reached for his binoculars.

  A third condor took to the air, joined them, then shot away from the red cliffs in the direction of the camp. The condor was passing directly overhead. Rick noticed the flat, stable plane of its wings. Unlike the turkey vultures he remembered from California, the condor flew without rocking or tilting. A supreme flier, that’s what it was. He could see the long individual feathers extending from the wing tips like fingers. As the huge bird soared by, a musical whistling sound took Rick completely by surprise.

  “M4,” Lon muttered. “Turn back, you goof, turn back.”

  The condor flapped its wings once and kept soaring over the open country in the direction of Lizard Rock.

  “Come down, come down!”

  The condor soared high over the squatting monumental butte. It kept on flying past the spire of Chimney Rock, where it disappeared from view.

  “What’s the deal?” Rick asked.

  There was a mix of admiration and disappointment on Lon’s face. “Maverick’s just made it tough on himself.”