“Are you sure about the truck? I know how crazy you are about your baby.”
“You’re my baby. Now go, see something good, but be back by two for a late lunch.” He gave her a quick kiss before walking off.
With a casual wave back to him, she heaved her camera and a bottled water into her arms and literally skipped to the truck.
It took a little doing to get comfortable so high up from the pavement in his Ford F150. Her rental car was so small it was almost ground level. Her car at home was the same way. Behind his truck, she felt like the queen of the world.
Traveling down Route 66 with the air conditioning and CD player blasting songs by Jay Z and Nina Sky, she felt free, free to do and explore whatever she wanted. What came to mind were the ruins at El Morro, but if Darrius had an inkling about her going there, he’d blast her but good! Besides, she wouldn’t dare break her word to him. Wouldn’t dare!
On the way into town, she had to pass the cliffs of Red Rock. She hadn’t seen the place in two days, and had thought of the dangerous side only briefly last night. She slowed the truck as she got closer to the main entrance. Her mind was telling her to keep going, forget about the place beyond the jagged hilltop, but she told herself that she had to at least see what was up there. She didn’t have to go as far as the sacred lands and rugged terrain. Nothing would happen. Besides, didn’t she have the right vehicle to do it now? You bet!
Before she realized exactly what she was doing, she had already turned onto the road that led directly to Red Rock’s parking lot. Just beyond it was the road, the infamous road she thought was her demon. She stopped midway up, staring at the hilly, reddish-white road dotted with patches of grass. She put the truck in park and pressed the accelerator, revving the engine as if to tear up that hill and show it who was boss. Yet, she stayed in place. Her mind raced; her palms began to itch and sweat! Words trembled as she spoke. “This is crazy! What am I doing here? Why do I want this so much? Darrius told me to stay away, so why am I going against his word?”
Her other side came into play. You said you won’t go to the sacred place, so what’s the problem? Just trek up the damn hill and get ‘er done. Easy as pie. Do it! The thought made her laugh a bit, as if she would stake a victory flag at the top. In a way, she agreed with that terrible, troublemaking idea—she wouldn’t go to the part Darrius warned her of.
With that in mind, she took the turtle totem from her purse, held it tightly in her hand and placed the gear in drive. She closed her eyes for a second, as if in contemplation, and then moved further up the mountain, hoping the totem would do what it was supposed to do—give her courage to take things slowly and cautiously.
She was okay, smooth sailing thus far. She moved on. The truck was in the process of climbing, tilting a little. She pressed the brake and looked up. By now, her forehead was beading with sweat. The front of her pink tank dress showed sweat stains, and her eyes darted from side to side of each mountaintop.
She was determined to reach the top with totem in hand! But in the back of her mind, she wondered if Darrius had some inkling of what she was doing. She had deliberately not spoken of Red Rock to him to take his mind away from it. Sure, he knew the place excited her, but hadn’t exactly known why. Again, the voice. Just see the top and come back down.
Sweat dripped into her eyes, and she felt as if she were crying. Gripping the wheel a little harder now, she pressed on. With hardly any nerve left, she advanced until she got to the fork in the road, the same one she had reached the other day. Now, which way to go? She looked at both roads and chose the one on the left. For some reason, it looked less foreboding. On the other side of it was Red Rock’s amphitheatre, only it was near two hundred or more feet down. That’s a heck of a drop, Justine.
She slowly moved higher. Within seconds, she reached a sort of plateau. The flat surface was a welcome sight. She smiled and wiped sweat from her face. She had passed her previous mark and was at the top of one cliff. After putting the gear in park, she slowly opened the door. Her feet and legs felt like lead as she stepped down from the truck.
The top of the mountain was surprisingly picturesque. She thought she would see nothing but arid clumps of earth, barren land. It was lovely. Desert flowers dotted the ground, and there were cacti and trees—some cottonwood. The air was fresh up there, and she could see above most of the state. All around her were the reddish-brown hills and mountains of Gallup and surrounding cities. She put the camera belt around her neck and took a few photographs. Her nerve had returned, and she was eager to see everything. She lowered the camera and looked harder, forced her eyes to see beyond what the normal eye could. She squinted, stepped closer to the drop-off. Everything was the same from cliff to cliff—rows and rows of red hills.
She aimed the camera again, wanting the best angle for more shots. Though she remembered Darrius telling her the terrain was rugged, she didn’t see anything dangerous. She took a few more shots, and to the right on the next overhang, she thought she saw what could be the ruins of some ancient Navajo dwellings. Was it possible to see the ruins from another city? Was it the dangerous part Darrius spoke of? Whatever the case, she was in too deep now to stop.
With a careful step, Justine reached the next small cliff, stood atop and stared. She thought by now she would be a bunch of rattling bones as she stood near the overhang, but she wasn’t. The scenery was beautiful, and that was what had captured her thoughts. There had been two incidents while taking photos for the Arizona powwow where she had fallen down a small hill trying to take shots of distant mountain ranges that she couldn’t get to from any other spot. Yet her curiosity was what fueled her, that natural curiosity to see what was beyond. She had definitely been in worse situations—like rescuing one of her brothers from a gang. She had handled herself very well that day with those thugs, and she was going to again today. No dangerous land was going to stop her.
The turtle totem was still clutched tightly in her hand, and it made her think. Maybe there is something to these totems after all. Maybe this has helped me see that I was scared of nothing. It wasn’t a sudden revelation, more like something she had allowed to manifest in her mind without cause.
She took a few more steps and stopped almost at the edge of the cliff and looked down. Again, it was quite a drop, but there were plateaus below her.
Her weight caused the plate of granite below her feet to crumble, and before she could move, it gave way and she slid onto the next plateau. Fear returned though she hadn’t slid but a foot. It made her think about the tumbles she had taken in Arizona. But this was different, not nearly as steep as those hills had been, but still, she knew Darrius was right. The terrain was rocky and it was time to leave. Darrius would be expecting her and she didn’t want to give him anything to worry about. As she stepped onto the next plateau to head back, it, too, was unable to hold her slight weight and she could feel it crumbling beneath her feet. Panic returned as the slab gave completely—only this time, there wasn’t another one close enough to reach for.
21
MIXED MESSAGES
By 2:25, there was no sign of Justine, and Darrius was pissed off. “I told her to be back by two,” he told his golf partner, who had offered him a ride back to the store. No way was he going to leave the area without knowing where she was. He thanked his partner, anyway. “No, she’ll be here. She just gets so carried away with her photography. I’m sure time simply got away from her.”
Darrius watched everyone leaving the course. Now completely alone, he sat on the pavement of the parking lot, waiting…and waiting. Twenty minutes later, his cell phone buzzed. “About damn time she called.” The phone had no number listed, but he heard crackling. He called her name into the receiver, but nothing came across, just more crackling. That had never happened on his phone before. He figured it to be mixed messages. The phone rang again and the same crackling noise came across. He practically screamed her name into the phone.
He dialed her cell, hoping to reach her. At that point, he didn’t care whether she was late getting back to him or not; he just wanted to know if she was safe. Her cell rang and then cut directly off. He looked at the display in disbelief, mumbling, “Out of calling range! What the hell is going on here?” Justine, where are you? In his mind’s eye, everything was going wrong. He could see her somewhere injured, unable to reach him. Then again, he knew his imagination was in overdrive, causing him to imagine the worst-case scenario. His intuitions were always right, however, and that’s what bothered him.
He looked to the sky in desperation, not knowing what to do. He was stranded there, lost in the middle of a golf course with nowhere to turn. What if she was in trouble? How would he get to her? He looked at the phone in his hand and almost threw it. Then he thought about Derrick. It was a long shot because Derrick was on his way to Roswell to collect more store items. But it was worth a shot.
Within an hour, Derrick drove onto the greens so fast he could hardly stop. He swung open the passenger door and Darrius swept in like a quick flame. “Thank God I got you before leaving for Roswell. Thanks, man.”
“What the hell could I do? My brother sends me a 911 call. How many twin brothers do you think I have? Anyway, have you thought about the places she may have gone?”
A distant look crossed Darrius’s face. “I can think of a few places, and heaven forbid if she went to one of them.”
Derrick stared at his brother’s stone-cold face. His voice turned cautious, quiet. “Where?”
“El Morro. I took her there yesterday for a picnic and took her near the ruins.”
“You did tell her not to go there, didn’t you?” he asked, pulling the truck off the grounds and onto the interstate.
“Yes, Derrick. She knows they’re sacred grounds, but she was just so fascinated by the idea of them. I know her, though, and I know that pesky inquisitive side she can’t help but give in to sometimes. She’s a photojournalist, for Christ’s sakes! There’s something in her that’s always hungry for more. I don’t fault her, but I don’t put looking danger in the face past her, either.”
“Come on, man! Give her some credit for having a little sense. I just don’t think she’d go against you.”
“It’s not that she would deliberately go against me, Derrick. Searching and investigating is a part of her.”
“I think you’re in her blood.”
“Yeah, and I hope that’s all.” Darrius stared through the windshield, hoping, praying his intuition was wrong.
* * *
Darrius’s phone buzzed again as Derrick turned onto the main road leading to El Morro. He quickly flipped it open. “It’s another 911, but I can’t make out the location. Justine? Is that you, hon? Come on, talk to me if you can.” The crackling noise returned and another message flashed across: out of calling range. “Damn it! Where the hell is she?”
“Calm down, dude! Maybe it’s not even her.”
“Who the hell else would send me an emergency call? Mom and Dad are both in Grants shopping for more tea items. How much danger can they be in doing that? Asinka is in summer school, and Jemez is working at some desk designing Mr. Torrez’s summer home. Yeah, that’s real dangerous work! No, I know it’s her. Come on, keep driving.”
