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pot on it, a rope-spring bed and several rolled-up pallets. The walls were
covered with newspapers, carefully cut and pasted up so that the pictures were
whole, the stories complete. From outside there was the sound of children's
whispers, a faint giggle. The woman scowled at the window on the opposite side
of the cabin, and the sounds stopped.
Sam had seen many such cabins, many worse than this one. He pulled the
second chair around to face the man, introduced himself, sat down, and drew
out his report form. "I've been to the mine," he said. "What I need now is a
statement from you so the company can process your claim."
The Indian did not move, continued to gaze at the desert. "Sir..." Sam
looked at the woman. "He was rambling when he was found. Did he suffer head
injuries? Can he hear?"
"He hears."
Sam glanced at the preliminary report. There had been an explosion at
the potash mine; an avalanche apparently had carried this man down a ravine
where he stayed for two days before he was found. Two days on the desert, in
the sun, no water, bleeding from an arm injury, possibly head injuries. "You
haven't filed a claim yet," he said. He explained the company's disability
pension, the social security regulations, the medical settlement. He explained
the need for the claimant's signature before processing could begin. The
Indian never stirred.
Sam looked from him to the woman. "He won't sign," she said.
"I don't understand. Why won't he file a claim?"
"He says he should pay the company," she said, and although her face
remained impassive, she spoke bitterly. "He says a man should be happy to give
up an arm to see the face of God."
"He's crazy!" Sam looked at the Indian for the first time. He had been
looking at a claimant, a statistic, one like many others he had seen before
and recognized instantly. Now he studied him.
"You have a right..." he started, then fell silent.
The Indian shifted to regard him and Sam thought, he has seen the face
of God. Harshly he demanded, "Who's going to take care of your family? Hunt
for them, earn money? Who will go up to the mountain to get firewood? You have
only one arm!"
"It is enough," the Indian man said, and turned his gaze back to the
desert.
Sam filled out the claim and the Indian woman signed it. He drove away
as fast as the company truck could take him. That was the last case he
handled; two months later he quit his job.
For seven years, he thought, he had searched for something that would
give him what that son of a bitch had. They called him an artist now, and he
knew that was a lie. He was a good craftsman, not an artist. He understood the
difference. He was using the rocks he found, making something, anything that
would permit him to survive, that would give him an excuse to spend days,
weeks, months out on the desert. It amused him when others called him an
artist, because he knew he was using a skill to achieve something else; he
felt only contempt for those he fooled -- the critics, the connoisseurs, the
buyers.
He would have it, he knew, if he had to risk an arm, both arms,
Victoria, Farley, anything else in the world to get it. He would have it.
III
Farley watched Victoria. She rode reasonably well, held her back straight and
trusted her horse to know where to put his feet, but she would have to do a
hell of a lot of riding before it looked natural on her. He planned to watch
her and if she started to slump, or her hand got heavy on the reins, he would
call a halt, walk her up a ridge or down a valley, anything to rest her
without suggesting that that was his intention.
Watching Victoria, he thought of Fran, riding like a wild thing, so in
tune with her horse, it seemed the impulses from her brain sped through its
muscles, in a feedback system that linked them to create a new single
creature. The last time she had come back, they had ridden all day.
When they stopped to water the horses at one of the wells on her
father's land, he asked. "You aren't happy in Portland, are you?"
"I get so I can't stand it. Begin to feel I'm suffocating, there's no
air to breathe, and a million bodies ready to smother me. So I come back and
can't stand this either. Too much wind, too much sand, too much sun and sky
and cold and heat. Too much loneliness. When I start wanting to scream I know
it's time to go back to the big city. Heads I lose, tails I lose."
Fran was beautiful, more so now at thirty than she had been at
fourteen, or eighteen, any of the lost years. He had loved her, and had left
her when he went to school. A year later she had married a doctor from
Portland. She had two children, and Farley no longer tried to sort out his
feelings about her. When she came home they spent days together out on the
desert. When she was gone they never corresponded.
"You should have told me you'd leave here with me," Fran said that day.
She tossed rocks down a hole in the ground where an earthquake had opened a
fissure ten thousand years before. "We could have made it work, half the time
in town, half out here."
He shook his head. "Then we'd both be miserable, not just one of us."
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