Jed the Dead

Alan Dean Foster

FOR MUDDBONE …

Brock Lacock

Whit Mercer

Billy Edmonds

Thanks for the friendship, the music, and for bringing back the girl I married.

ONE

It’s a toss-up as to whether the dullest stretch of interstate highway in the United States is the section of I-10 in Texas between Van Horn and El Paso or Van Horn and Midland-Odessa. Either one makes the badlands of the Dakotas look positively verdant.

Ross Hager had opted off the interstate long before, so that he wouldn’t have to drive the mind-numbing monotony of either segment. Highway eight-two shot straight through Hobbs, New Mexico, and on to Artesia before crossing the Sacramento Mountains and dropping down into Alamogordo. He’d have to hook back up with I-10 eventually, but not until it entered the more scenic country to be found around Las Cruces.

Meanwhile he delighted in the green foothills which gave rise to the eastern slopes of the Sacramentos, lush with spring snowmelt. Old gray barns listing on their sides stood lazy sentry over orchards spotted with spring color. Cattle cropped new grass amid mesquite-posted fields. Food hadn’t been a problem, not with each little town boasting its own kindred Dairy Queen. He’d been told that once he reached Arizona, Dairy Queens would become scarce, a notion difficult for any son of the Lone Star State to grasp. Texas health food such as fries and gravy and steak fingers would be hard to find.

Well, he’d get by somehow. Where food was concerned, Ross Ed Hager’s concern wasn’t quality so much as it was quantity. At six-foot-six and two hundred fifty pounds, he needed a fair amount of fuel. He was used to hunting down his own food. The only kind of gun his family wasn’t familiar with was a salad shooter. Mention bok choy to Mama Hager and she likely would have reached for a map instead of a cookbook.

For someone who’d been raised in the country tradition of fried cholesterol, Ross Ed had turned out just fine. His mom and dad were still cruising on a lifelong diet of fried chicken, fried steak, fried crappie and catfish, fried corn bread, fried okra, fried potatoes, fried com-on-the-cob, and fried cheesesticks. Just about the only food in the Hager family that wasn’t regularly deep-fat-fried was dessert, whose signature dish was his mother’s hog-lard coconut-cream cake.

Yessir, he told himself, you couldn’t beat down-home Texas country cooking for good health. Everything else, his daddy insisted, was rabbit food. In consequence. Ross Ed had grown big enough to terrorize more than a few opponents both on the football field and on the basketball court, making honorable mention all-state in the former.

Too easygoing to play college ball, he’d gone straight to work in the oil fields, where his good nature, size, and strength had served him well and assured steady work in an industry noted for the capriciousness of its employment practices.

The heavily laden pickup that appeared in front of him was making slow work of the steady grade. Biding his time until they reached a straightaway, he depressed the accelerator and leaned left on the wheel. The massive V-8 block under the capacious hood of the ’72 Fleetwood growled softly as he passed the pickup with a friendly wave. The driver’s return wave was visible in the rearview mirror.

“Atta girl.” He gave the steering wheel an affectionate pat. He’d bought the big white Caddy years ago from an old rancher on the lookout for a new one. A few bucks here, a little tuning there, and he had a car that not only ran splendidly but that almost fit him.

It was cooling off nicely outside and he lowered the window, letting his arm rest in the opening. The peaks ahead loomed loftier than any he’d ever seen, much higher than the buttes down in the Hill Country around Austin. A few teased ten thousand feet. On the other side of the range would be White Sands National Monument, another local highlight he’d been advised not to miss.

Except for the pickup he’d had the road pretty much to himself all the way from Artesia. Late spring preceded the summer tourist season and schools were still in session. It was a good time to be traveling.

One Saturday morning it had just up and hit him that he was about to turn thirty without ever having been outside Texas and Louisiana. He’d been sprawled in his easy chair in front of the TV. Some dumb artificial sports show was on between games. It had been shot in Southern California, which seemed to be populated entirely by people under the age of twenty-four. All had perfect bodies and sprayed-on complexions and hair that was never out of place. From what he could see there was no natural dirt in Southern California; only asphalt, sand, and landscaping. It wasn’t the people who caught his attention, however. Not even the pretty girls, of whom Texas had more than its fair share.

It was the ocean. He’d worked oil rigs out in the Gulf, but this different. Dark green and slightly dangerous, far more wild and undisciplined, it touched something deep inside him.

Going to be thirty and I still ain’t seen the Pacific Ocean, he’d thought to himself. Whereupon he’d called in to his current place of employment and given notice.

That had been … let’s see now four days ago. So far he’d had no reason to regret his decision. He’d bade farewell to a few close friends, listened politely to their suggestions and admonitions, checked out the Caddy, tossed his few belongings in the trunk, and set out from Abilene.

Now, for the first time in his life, he found himself in real mountains, climbing a road flanked on both sides by trees taller than the more familiar oak or mesquite. He considered the loaded boom box on the passenger seat, decided to leave it be and listen to the air for a while longer yet.

Though he’d never been farther west than Sweetwater, he wasn’t worried about getting lost. Pick any highway heading west, keep going that direction, and sooner or later you’d hit the Pacific. The longer he could avoid the frantic, monotonous interstates, the more of the country he’d be able to see. Like these beautiful, uncrowded mountains, he told himself.

Twenty-nine and traveling, he thought. Just because you came from a poor family didn’t mean you couldn’t see the country. You just ate cheap, slept simple, and got a job when your money ran out.

He accelerated to pass another vehicle. The car was new, streamlined, and just a little too big to fit in his trunk. Ponderosa pines and the occasional fir hugged the paved shoulder. It wasn’t Maine or Montana, but it was the closest he’d ever been to a northern forest.

Slowing, he passed through the quaint mountain community of Cloudcroft. Ten minutes past the last building he pulled off the highway into a well-marked picnic area. Ignoring the blackened, industrial-strength public steel grills and soot-stained barbecue pits which marked assorted pullouts like so many fossilized robots, he drove to the farthest parking space and killed the engine. Birdsong replaced the a cappela rush of moving air.

From the trunk he extracted a gurgling plastic ice chest and a cardboard bucket filled with deceased fowl (fried, of course). Except for a couple of battered, transient trailers whose semi-permanent occupants regularly tried the tolerance of the Park Service, the picnic pullout was deserted.

He was considering the most isolated of the concrete picnic tables and its accompanying oil-drum trash cans when a brand-new minivan pulled up and parked not twenty yards from him. Via multiple doors it explosively disgorged two brightly dressed adults and three hyperkinetic children.

He could tell from their footwear as well as their demeanor that they were from the city. Not a normal city, either, like Fort Worth or Austin or Lubbock, but some overly urbanized coast city. Instead of work boots, the father wore imitation Tevas probably purchased from Kmart or Wal-Mart or some other discount mart. The kids boasted designer sneakers. Mother wore combat boots.

Then there was the slick tablecloth, carefully spread out to separate sustenance from Nature. Expensive plastic picnic utensils followed, laid out as neatly as scalpels in a surgery. Meanwhile the children raced after each other, threw whatever they could pick up and kicked what they couldn’t, and squealed nonstop.

Ross quite liked rugrats, but in their place. These quiet mountains weren’t it. With his size he could easily have intimidated the family into leaving, but it was a public picnic area and besides, that wasn’t Ross Ed Hager’s nature. Grimacing in resignation, he turned and started up a gentle slope that led deeper into the woods.

Before long the sounds of children contesting inconsequentialities faded, sponged up by stone and tree and distance. He kept moving, searching for just the right place to park himself, wanting to ensure that he was far enough away so that his prospective midday idyll would not be disturbed.

Finding himself facing a steep granite outcropping, he scrutinized the gradient before starting up. With his long legs the slope was not an obstacle for him, but it would be sufficient to discourage any inquisitive children who happened to come bounding in his direction.

An overhang near the top kept part of the mound in perpetual shade, allowing winter snow to linger. He considered climbing farther, but the slight chill didn’t bother him and there was a natural seat formed by the junction of two slabs of stone where he could dine in comfort. Set into the flank of the modest cliff, it offered a pleasant prospect across the gently undulating treetops.

Might as well soak up some cool before heading down into the desert, he told himself as he laid down his burden.

Just past his chosen bower a narrow cleft in the rocks beckoned inward. It wasn’t a very big cave, but he decided he’d better check it out. He’d never seen a bear outside a zoo and didn’t want his first wild encounter to occur while he was seated on a bare hillside above a fifty-foot drop.

Bending, he peered cautiously into the opening and sniffed. No animal smell emanated from within. Would a bear still be hibernating this late in the spring, with most of the snow hereabouts already melted? He doubted it.

Satisfied that he was safe from marauding bruins and screeching kids (or screeching bruins and marauding kids), he settled back to enjoy his lunch. Cracking the cooler, he popped the cap on a Lone Star and excavated an unidentifiable section of chicken from the cardboard bucket. Having cooled to the consistency of a used tire, the drumstick was just right. Blissfully attuned to his surroundings and at peace with the world, he washed down huge bites of greasy fowl with long drafts of ice-cold suds.

A second beer soon followed the first, with a third for dessert. Sitting the empty bucket aside, he snugged down between the rocks and let the brooding sun warm his legs. Three beers wouldn’t affect his driving, Ross Ed’s capacity for Lone Star being proportionate to the rest of him.

Always something of a loner, he luxuriated in the solitude. It was a characteristic which had driven more than one lady friend to distraction … or to other men. Not that he was in any hurry to get married. In fact, Ross Ed had never been in much of a hurry to do anything, unless it was watch a Cowboys’ game. There was no sign of the invading suburbanites and the only sound was the occasional querulous squawk of a scrub jay.

After an hour or so of enthusiastically doing nothing he thought it might be fun to have a last look at the little cave. The sun now illuminated part of the interior, but to see all the way in he’d need the flashlight from the car. The possibility of encountering a bear no longer concerned him, but rattlers did. Still, it was mighty cold for rattlesnakes, and early in the season. If there were any slumbering inside, they’d like as not be pretty torpid.

Taking out his car keys, he switched on the mini Maglite he kept on the steel loop and directed the tiny beam inward. It revealed a broken, stony floor and little else. Smooth-sided walls of gray granite, coyote droppings, and a few old, gnawed bones. No beer cans, a few abandoned cobwebs, and no sign of snakes, musical or otherwise. Turning to leave, his light glinted off something in the far depths of the recess.

He frowned. Could some fool have dumped bottles or cans all the way in the back? He’d fancied himself the first traveler to picnic on the isolated ledge and didn’t like the idea of having been preceded by some indifferent, littering slob.