After the attack, the goat’s demeanor softened, as if she’d been taken down a peg. When she had milk she was generous with it. She quit butting the fence posts. She was still fed as well as a human, and now when the teacher arrived with her supper she ambled right over and nestled her head into his palm. Of course the goat had a limp now, her hind legs chewed up as they were. Of course she wouldn’t be allowed to stay in the backyard anymore, grazing all night on elk grass, nothing but a short fence separating her from the wild desert.
SOREN’S FATHER
He had a cot in the room. The clinic called it a bed but it was a cot. He didn’t use it. He sometimes roughed up the bedding before morning so nobody would know he stayed in the chair all night watching the red tail-lights disappear into the Southern flatlands. He wondered how many of the cars were the same ones night after night, and how many of them had started their journeys somewhere other than the desert and would wind up somewhere other than the desert.
It was at night that he thought of Soren’s death, and he could never think a minute past it, like thinking of the end of the world. Soren’s father wondered if his son’s face would pinch or broaden the moment before he passed away, if his eyes would pull open briefly or if any light he saw would emanate from a place no one could see until they were going there. He wondered if the room would grow perfectly silent, Soren’s breath gone, before the machines began sounding off. To not be in the room when Soren came to, when he blinked himself conscious and tried to jerk away from his monitors and probably cried out with confusion, to not be waiting for him when he returned, would be terrible, but to not be in the clinic when his son expired, the thought of that locked up Soren’s father’s chest.
He looked out the window at the straight road that led into the greater dark. It was the time of night — too late even for the night owls and not yet early enough for anyone else — where several minutes could pass without a car and the cars that did appear were probably on the road because of bad news.
DANNIE
She was going to try. She was going to make a grand effort with Arn. She packed water and a piece of fruit and a stick of lip balm, then she put on a bikini and over that a big sweatshirt and sweatpants, gathered a warm hat and gloves and good sneakers. She positioned the telescope. She located the big rock shaped like a totem pole, the one with the scrappy, twisted pine growing from the top of it, and to the left of that was a wide spot in the trail where Dannie had often seen hikers take rest breaks. Dannie focused the telescope and secured it against the banister and kept it in place with a couple heavy bookends plundered from the trucker’s stuff in the extra bedroom. She tightened the wheel that held steady the height of the tripod.
Arn was napping. Dannie had less than an hour to get out there. She wrote a note, telling Arn what time to look and stressing that he not bump or jostle the telescope. She taped the note to the top of his alarm so he’d hit it with his hand when he reached to stop the buzzing.
She got in her car and sped away from town, checking the clock in her dashboard and watching for signs, and eventually she found a spot where she could access the trail, a small parking area with a single exposed picnic table. She got out of the car and felt cold, and that’s how she wanted to feel. When she took off her sweats, she wanted her skin alive with goose bumps. When she removed the bikini, she wanted her flesh to sting.
She hiked steadily and without thinking, slightly uphill, losing her breath. Prickly pear stands lined the trail, their fruit still hard and green. Tiny birds flitted this way and that. Dannie was getting there. Though her feet were starting to hurt, she was making good time. The trail was full of stones that looked like they belonged on the bottom of a river.
Dannie drank some water. She adjusted her bikini bottom. She was rounding a bend in the trail that she recognized from the telescope. She had to cruise downhill about a quarter-mile and she’d be there. She’d be to the totem pole rock. She’d paced herself correctly. She had ten minutes, plenty of time.
When Dannie turned the last corner, the big totem rock was right where it was supposed to be. The sun was where it was supposed to be, striking its last pose before it sank away. Dannie’s resolve was right there in her chest, where it belonged. The old man wearing a windbreaker and white Velcro sneakers was not where he was supposed to be. Dannie didn’t know where he belonged, but he didn’t belong on her bench-like outcropping in the middle of her wide spot in the trail. Dannie stopped a few yards from him and put down her satchel, thinking he might take the hint and move on, that he might understand it was someone else’s turn to have the bench. He didn’t, though. He sat there. Dannie sighed, like she was so glad to have found a place to rest, and the old man kept looking blankly out toward the sun, which was all color now and no brightness. His hair was of a different generation, that parted, water-combed style. Now that it was the real gusting winter, Dannie saw about one hiker a week on this trail, but here was this guy. She didn’t know what to do. She had a few minutes, but they were melting fast. Arn was going to wonder why such pains had been taken to allow him to watch Dannie stand next to an old man on a trail.
“Where’d you come from?” Dannie asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why are you here?”
“Just resting.”
Dannie made an exasperated motion toward the basin with her arm, indicating they were in the middle of nowhere.
“My group deserted me,” the old man said.
“What group is that?”
“Or I deserted them. I guess that’s probably the way it happened.”
Dannie glanced back across the expanse of desert. Her condo complex was a raised, brownish stain. “You really should start heading back,” she said. “It’ll be pitch dark out here.”
The old man folded his arms.
“The temperature’s already dropping.”
“Let it drop.”
“You’re just going to sit there till you freeze?”
“If I feel like it.”
Dannie looked at the old man’s pressed slacks. His eyes were not cloudy or watery. She looked at her watch, knowing what it was going to say. It was almost time. It was time. It was too late to panic. The moment was now and it was wrecked. The sweat suit would remain on. The bikini would remain hidden. Dannie’s irritation was drying easily into defeat. In a couple more minutes, there wouldn’t be enough light for Arn to see anything out here. She leaned against a boulder. What was she even doing out here? What was this? She knew the answer. This was desperation. Out here away from everything, she could see. Whatever she and Arn had, it was running on fumes. When you had to make grand efforts, it was already too late. Dannie was trying to kick-start the relationship with the only thing they’d ever really had, which was sex. Dannie wasn’t getting what she wanted, and Arn wanted nothing. They’d lost momentum. Dannie wasn’t young. She didn’t need to be pulling stunts like this.
She stepped close to the old man and he made room for her on the flat seat of the rock.
“What kind of group?” she said. “I want to know.”
“Watching birds of prey.”
Dannie looked out through the failing light. She couldn’t remember seeing any hawks or eagles. Only buzzards and crows and gulls.