~ Black Snow Rising ~

by

S. E. Schenkel

“Acey...”

“Megan?”

She turned, looked me in the eyes. “We’re not going to find them, are we?”

“We won’t find your friends or the next town if our vehicle keeps overheating.” I wiped sweat from her nose. We were seated in the shade of a dead tree, my legs hugging her in the manner of kids on a toboggan enjoying a Michigan winter. Only our backsides pressed hot sand, and we were as far from childhood as we were from home.

Damn Sahara... I drew a line in the sand and wished this hellish desert was just a place on a map, not our present reality. I said, “Would have helped if Peter or Christie had told us why they wanted the pouch checked out. Offered a little more info.”

“Do you think they knew what it was made of?” asked Megan.

“They knew enough to decide they’d better send it to you.”

“That’s true.”

“By the way, how do you spell Peter and Christie’s last name?”

“D-D-A. Rhymes with Ma; first D is silent.”

“Then why the two D’s?” I asked.

“This from the man whose last name, Tapp, is spelled with two Ps?” said Megan.

“Okay...” I smiled, shifted my weight. Something rubbed my butt; I shot up and stepped back.

“What’s wrong?” Megan asked, joining me in the full heat of the brutal sun.

“I don’t know, just felt something under me. Probably a stone.” Trying to ignore the sweat trickling down every inch of my anatomy, I tore a piece of bark from the tree and stirred the sand. A cracked skull appeared. We cleared more sand and watched a black beetle crawl out of the nose cavity and wobble off. The skull was the size of a small melon. A child’s. It had a tiny set of teeth and huge eye sockets. “How long do you think it’s been here?” I asked.

“Could be a few years or maybe a thousand.”

“Not buried very deep.”

“Things get buried and unburied quickly in a desert.”

We uncovered a rib cage, one arm, half a leg and a pelvic bone with the mummified remains of a rodent in its saddle. We continued digging, expecting to find a mother or father. Some adult. We didn’t. I thought of a kid alone out here, in the middle of nowhere. I wondered if the tree had been alive when the child took to its shelter, and if the rodent had come as friend or for feasting.

“Poor kid must have been naked,” I said, “since clothes don’t rot in a desert.”

“Always the clue gatherer,” Megan replied. A reference to my profession back in that other world where I was Acey Albert Tapp, PI, and where relief from the heat and a cold beer were only a hiccup away.

I poked at a piece of rag clutched in the skeletal fingers. Megan worked it free. The rag was wrapped around a pair of sticks that formed a small cross. The knobby end of the vertical stick had eyes, nose and a mouth burned into the wood and a whittled-down neck sporting a necklace of twine and a tiny piece of tin. Someone’s idea of a handmade doll.

“What do you think we should do?” I asked.

“Bury it deeper. Say a prayer.”

“That’s it?”

“You mean why don’t we report it to the police? Get an investigation going?”

“Sounds good to me.”

“You keep forgetting where we are.”

“Fat chance.” I glanced up at the big white ball raining down heat.

Megan began the reburial. Afraid she might designate me preacher for the occasion, I excused myself and headed back to check on our vehicle. It was parked on a shoulder of packed sand beside a track of asphalt, its hood up. The old pickup looked as miserable as I felt. In fact, all six foot, two hundred and thirty pounds of me was right now feeling as self-assured as an ant staring at the underside of a boot.

I grabbed a rag off the fender, and busily wiped at a bit of baked-on pulpy substance on the radiator. I wondered how much further this antiquity on wheels would take us, with its balding tires and derelict cooling system. I released the hood catch and let it slam shut. The noise echoed like the blast of a cannon.

I glanced toward Megan. She was still at the grave, still giving proper closure to what had to be a desert horror story. She looked almost translucent in the flood of hot sunlight. Watching her, I thought back to the day we first met.

She had been seated behind the counter at her brother’s motel, crocheting and listening to music. I was a late-blooming PI chasing down a clue. She’d glanced up, smiled and right there and then, I had this feeling of soul charge. As if, up until that moment, my life had not been properly plugged in. I wished us back in that world, away from this land of heat, sand and listlessness, away from the impossible task of finding two people gone missing in the world’s largest desert.

I got some water out of an iceless cooler in the truck’s bed, uncapped the bottle and took a sip as I stared out at the endless dunes, wind-whipped and colorless, if you didn’t count beige. The sky was just as bleached, just as barren. A one color-fits-all kind of place with sky melting into the earth. Probably God’s first attempt at creating hell.

Wish I knew what we were going to do. We had already driven a thousand miles and been on the road almost a week looking for Megan’s friends.

A rumbling sound grabbed my attention. Way off in the distance a dust cloud swirled and grew. In the middle of it and moving fast was a dark object with a glistening tail.

A sweaty hand pulled the bottle of water from my grip.

“Service over already?” I asked.

Megan wet her fingers and flicked them at me. She turned toward the road. “That looks like the semi we saw last night in Paazo, outside the adobe bar.”

“I think you’re right. Maybe we should flag him down. Ask if he could follow us. At least until we get to the next town.”

We moved to the middle of the road and executed a four-handed wave in full sun. God, it was hot. I’ve known heat waves and sweltering summers, but this place was like hell exhaling. The big rig honked and slowed. We moved onto the shoulder, staying upwind. Road dust on sweaty bodies made for an uncomfortable alliance.

“That guy’s got his windows up,” I said.

“So?”

“So he’s either crazy or he’s air-conditioned.”

The huge tires slid to a halt. On the spring-green door was the word TENGVAR painted in white, with the T drawn like the trunk and crown of a lush tree. It was a huge tractor with a sleeper-cab and was hauling a tanker car. We approached and stood in the giant patch of new shade. A window rolled down and the driver stuck his head out. He had broad features, a high forehead, close cropped black curls gone slightly gray, and a cinnamon brown complexion that showed no sign of fatigue.