Chapter 9: The Wash

On the night before the rodeo, I drove out to Sotol Wash alone.

My father thought I was at the clinic.

The moon was up, half full, and it laid a pale light over the creosote and the sleeping saguaros.

The air was still ninety-eight degrees at ten o'clock.

I parked at the old ranch gate and walked the last quarter mile, because the sand would have swallowed the truck.

The wash ran dry between two cut banks.

On the far side, beside the third marker, a pile of stones stood waist high.

A man was sitting on the cairn in the dark, with a canteen in his hands.

Ramiro had driven down from the Rim after the rodeo grounds closed.

He had told me in April that he checked the cache every second week.

I knew why he did it.

He stood when he saw me.

I stopped at the edge of the wash, where the sand began, and I looked at the dry channel between us.

It was twenty feet across.

In my other life, I had crossed it with my tongue swollen and my knees going.

I had never once crossed it toward something.

"You should not be here," he said.

His voice came flat across the sand.

"It is hot, and it is late, and there are rattlers in the cutbank."

"Then tell me to go home."

He did not.

I stepped down into the wash.

The sand was still warm from the day, and it gave under my boots with a soft whisper.

I walked the twenty feet slowly, with my eyes on his, and he did not move, and he did not look away.

I reached the cairn and stopped one pace from him.

His chest was rising and falling fast.

"Tell me about the horn," I said.

"Not tonight."

"Then tell me why you've never touched me, except to hand me a canteen."

He closed his eyes.

"I told you."

"You told me the pack has put hands on me without asking," I said.

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