“I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting for this…brother.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
I swung my light toward the source of the sound and held perfectly still, keeping Antone’s body between me and the bend just past him. A faint red glow, hardly discernible, from around the corner. I waited in vain for Ban to step out of hiding and into range. No sign of movement. I crept to the opposite side of Antone’s body, under his left arm, and peered around his back toward the lone remaining turn.
Only darkness and shadows.
I eased all the way around the chief and approached the bend slowly, silently, placing each foot softly and carefully so as not to make a sound. I opened my mouth to further quiet my breathing, although I was pretty certain I’d ceased breathing altogether. I didn’t so much as blink as I stared straight down my sightline and through the heart of the flashlight beam.
Another step.
Another.
The corridor was only three feet long and terminated in a left-hand turn.
The final turn.
Another step.
“Are you ashamed of your native blood? Is that why you never even bothered to look for your roots? Or were you ashamed of your people, living on this patch of uninhabitable desert and subsisting on the scraps your government cast aside after stealing everything else from us?”
Another step.
I entered the short passage and watched the circle of my beam shrink on the wall as I closed the distance. The light betrayed my location. I paused long enough to untie the charger cord with my left hand and let it fall to the ground. I held the light in my left hand, away from my body, directed as far as I could angle it around the corner. If he had a firearm, he would get my hand, but the shot would pass well in front of my chest.
Coyote is the master of deception.
“It only seems fitting that our fates should be joined here, in this most sacred of places, where our people were first led from the darkness and into the light, where our blood bubbled up from the heart of the land. Here, in the home of our creator. Where your blood can return to that very same heart.”
Another step.
My pulse was a non-stop thunderclap in my ears. I had to concentrate to keep my hands from shaking. Considering the way the light jiggled against the wall, I wasn’t doing an especially impressive job.
“It’s said that the maze is a metaphor for one’s life journey. That we are birthed into hardship and only by navigating the various perils will we reach our ultimate destination. Here, at the center of the maze, where the sun god blesses us and ushers us into the afterlife. This is how things were always supposed to be. We were always meant to take this journey together…brother.”
I held my light sideways and directed to my left, then threw it forward. It landed on the dirt in front of me and shined back into the center of the maze. No shots rang out. I listened for movement, but heard none. I was hoping he would immediately extinguish my light in an effort to seize the advantage, and, by doing so, reveal his exact location. Keeping the light was fine by me, too. I took a double-handed grip on my pistol and inched closer. I figured speed and the element of surprise would afford me one shot, and I needed to make it count. I knew he was back there. He wasn’t making any kind of effort to hide that fact. In his mind, this was our shared destiny.
“There is one incontrovertible truth about journeys. They all must come to an end. Metaphorically and literally. No life journey would be complete otherwise. And you know what that end is, don’t you…brother?”
Coyote is the master of deception.
The muscles in my legs tensed with potential as I lowered myself closer to the ground, into something resembling a compact sprinter’s stance. Hopefully, he hadn’t seen through my ruse and he’d be spotlighted in my beam when I dove around the corner and started firing.
“The legend says there’s only one way to ensure your safe return from the maze. Do you know what that is?”
Coyote is the master of deception.
I glanced down at my flashlight, at the stretch of ground illuminated by the golden beam, at the very edge where the red glow turned it a subtle shade of orange. At the footprints heading inward.
And at the other set that crossed right over the top of them in the opposite direction, back toward me. Behind me.
“You need to bring a gift for I’itoi.”
Coyote is the master of deception.
The red light.
The shoes.
Jesus.
I dove forward, flipped over in midair, and aimed my pistol between my feet, back toward the direction from which I’d come. I was firing before I hit the ground on my back and still firing as I slid up against the makeshift wall. The strobe of the discharge silhouetted the large form sneaking up on me from behind. I watched it buck in reverse, watched its coyote head snap backward, watched a mist of blood freeze in time behind it, watched the reflection of the knife as it fell from its hand. The report was painful and lanced right through my eardrums.
I grabbed the flashlight from the ground beside me and scurried to my feet. I shined it down at the body sprawled before me. Bloody cotton stuffing bloomed from above the collar of Antone’s uniform shirt and the entrance wounds on his gut. A black puddle expanded beneath his head. The coyote mask had flopped back from his face.
“Did you bring a gift for Elder Brother to ensure your safe return?”
“Yeah.” I turned away from the dead man’s face and the entry wound between a pair of eyes that were nearly identical to mine. “I brought him exactly what he deserved.”
I walked around the corner and stomped on the digital recorder before I was forced to endure another word uttered in the voice of my dead elder brother.
DAYS 5 - 9
tash hetasp - humukt
mahch
Albert Camus said that man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.
I only wish that were true.
Man is a creature that embraces its animal roots and never misses an opportunity to demonstrate evolution’s predilection for violence and depravity.
THIRTY-NINE
Sells District
Tohono O’odham Nation
Arizona
September 13th-17th
Everything kind of passed in a blur from there. I remember finding the remote trigger Ban had used to activate the voice recording on the ground beneath where he had been suspended by his arms. Or at least where he had been pretending to be suspended. The dowel had really only been two pieces, each of which had barely been two feet long. I remember seeing the knife, the way my flashlight glinted from the serrated edge, and having to look away before I envisioned what he had intended to do to me with it. I remember stumbling blindly through the maze, well after my light finally gave up the ghost, until I emerged from the tunnel and drew a deep breath of fresh air for what felt like the first time in my life. There were already flashing lights streaking over the eastern horizon when I sat down on the ledge in the lee of the cactus and drank my final bottle of water to the accompaniment of the coyote skull squeaking on the pike as it nodded its approval. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything as wonderful as that water tasted at that moment.