Search -2- His father had picked up an old manzanita root on that trip, too. It was in a gully. How many dozens of years had it washed down the arroyo? It was lumpy and waterworn. To Tony it was a grungy old stick. Until his Dad carried it home, washed it off, oiled it and set it up over the fireplace. Hung it by a fishline. "That's my objet d'art!" he exclaimed one evening. Tony stared at it, not knowing what the phrase meant. The root did not look like any kind of "dart." But he stared at it, and all at once he saw it as colors and shapes. It became more than a stick. He became able to see things as shapes and colors. But Tony is not thinking about art now. He is scared. Words start in his gut and push up his throat. He starts singing, "It's just another day in Paradise." He wills his father to have made it to the top, down the far side and around to camp. He hopes George is building a fire now, chuckling. He's like some of Tony's friends. People who disappear. Tony has been chasing after people like that for years. And he feels nasty. Why had his father stopped talking when Tony was a kid? He does not know. And he doesn't know how to find out. "It's just another day," he sings. He has to keep moving. He is the rescuer, and he's crying. He wipes tears across his cheeks and they dry instantly in the wind. Hard wind blows across the escarpment and still there are no footprints. Tony yells at the top of his lungs, "Yo, Dad! Where are you? Make a noise!" He continues up the slope, and when he can no longer see the spot where he last yelled from, Tony shouts again. "Hey, Dad! Tape yourself!" His father has the marking tape. Why is there no fifty-foot streamer, fluorescent pink, streaming in the wind? He must be out of sight and out cold. Unconscious. Tony feels crazy. He booms his voice, prolongs the name, "Hey, Dad!" hits the "oo" sound in "Where are you?" and then trounces the last word, "Make a noise!" The sun is sinking. Three-forty-five, three-fifty, closing on four o'clock. And Tony is near the top. He stops, takes great gulps of water and pulls his down vest out of the pack. He's been sweating right through his clothes and wind turns the moisture icy. He's freezing. On with the vest and he starts again, pushing off a rock and his ankle begins to turn. Tony falls quickly. Deliberately. He goes down before the ligament can stretch and clunk! he hugs a boulder. With his chest. He is shaken but not bruised. And the ankle is not hurt. Back up, he starts for the summit again. This had better be worth it. Wherever you are, Dad, did you see that? I am your competent son. Reflexes, body-awareness, the rescuer survives. He chants under his breath, "The rescuer survives!" He is on top. Abruptly. The cacti shrink down to small sizes, in a few yards the boulders give way to soft red earth and the ground is flat. Flat for a half mile. Tony scans the horizon. No George. And no bootprints nearby. What now, look for him over the mesa's edge? To the left and right, among the tumbled boulders? Yes, a dangerous possibility. First, mark the spot where Tony came up. He finds a dried agave flower spike, six feet long, and leans it into a diminutive cardon. It's as obvious as a flag. But wind blows the stick right down. Tony crams it between the trunk of the cardon and its fat, upthrust arm, and now it stays. The father of the eight-year-old would approve. Tony sets off to the north, rushing, watching for bootprints. The boulders are scary, huge, and he has to climb down until the lower slope is in view. Then yell. The rocks are steady and they do not tip. Good. The rescuer survives. But it is dicey, scrambling over the boulders, yelling, then back up the escarpment. Across another hundred feet and over the cliff again. Cannonball the words. Then back up and down again. Tony has no time. Wind in his face, bright sun at a slant and panic closing on his heart. Camp is an hour from the prospect. From here maybe an hour and a half. Down the mountain and cross-country, through a torturous route of boulders and gullies and cacti. He has to leave in a few minutes, at five. With or without his father. Dark at six-thirty and he can do the last fifteen minutes in twilight. Leave at five, that's the limit. And if there is no George by then, big trouble. Tony hikes back to the agave marker. A hundred feet past it he starts on the southerly cliffs. The sun is two-fingers' width above the horizon and he needs to get out alive. He is singing again, "It's just another day in Paradise" and he's disgusted. Some present for his father. Bring him back and he gets lost in the desert. But Tony keeps going. Wind pushes wet tears around his face. He clambers over the mesa's edge and booms out the words. "Yo Dad! Where are you? Make a noise!" And there is an answer. An answer! From the camp? His father's down in the valley! Tony scrambles over the next hump in the escarpment, his heart racing. He perches on a boulder the size of a small truck. His eyes jump around. "Hey Dad!" More boulders, cacti and mesquite but no blue jacket and no pink tape. Nothing visible. "I hear you but I don't see you!" A murmur floats up. Louder. "Yo Dad! Where are you?" Louder yet. "Make a noise!" Tony turns his head sideways, fixing from an angle. Some other sounds drift up. Three distinct syllables, were they "Yo! Yo! Yo!”? "Oh my god, my god," Tony whispers and he is swimming in a thin, warm breeze. "He's okay. Maybe he's okay. Maybe he thought I gave a sign and he went on." But Tony hadn't given a sign. He had held his arms rigidly down. He hadn't even twitched at that two-thirty contact, when he scanned the mesa with his eyes from far away. Tony feels tricked. He twists his face into a mean scowl. What a wretch. Then relief floods back. Everything is changed, it's all right! George is okay. George is safe. Maybe. He starts down, straight for the main wash hazy in the distance. The shallow ravine turns through low ridges that angle past the camp. But a rock twists underfoot and he goes down again. Sideways. It happens too quickly for him to avoid being hurt. He grabs a prickly bush. "God damn fucker!" He feels pain stab at his ankle. He would damn well smash a rock into his father's skull. Blood and gray matter would pulse out.  But Tony is all right. In a few moments the funny-bone jangling in his foot subsides. He flexes it and the ankle seems okay. He negotiates the next boulders slowly, carefully. The rescuer survives. But if he doesn't pay attention, especially now, he may not make it back to camp. A broken leg here and he would have to drag himself out with his elbows. George would have no clue where to find him. You are right, Dad, wherever you are. Even when the emergency is over, you still have to think. Tony imagines the lecture on survival, his father to the little boy.  Or is this a real memory? The leathery skin on his father's balding head and a demanding glint in his eye. Think! George would have said, think! And Tony has risen to the task. But his father may not comprehend how hard it's been. This rugged mesa and a missed signal. Tony is worn out, and the light is fading. Down the wash, across a talus slope and then pick up the trail from camp. It looks easy, but the top slopes of the badlands are all he can see. When you get into that country it gets complicated. The steep, pretzel-like ups and downs and sideways are hidden. Still, all Tony has to do is keep his balance. And keep breathing. A steady stride. No surprises. Tony tries to guess what his father will say. He might think nothing has happened, at least nothing that was a problem. Or he will make Tony the problem. But Tony will say how difficult the afternoon has been. Close to disastrous. And if Tony sticks to his guns, his father may walk away without talking. And in the morning his father might apologize. For being cranky. But cranky is to that silence what an ant is to a molehill. Or to the mesa where Tony was scrambling his heart out. Or to this steep, screwy wash. He has to be careful. He keeps grabbing the mesquite for balance, and it is prickly. The main branches are nearly smooth, but the thin ends have thorns sticking out at angles. They snag his skin right through the gloves. He and George are two people in the desert and they must take care of each other. But has George ever taken care of him, since he was nine? No. Not once. Then Tony does remember one time, much later. He had dropped out of school. He did not want to be a student. He hung around the house for a while. His father wasn't talking to him then, either. Not to his teenage son. But one afternoon he took him out for a ride. "Get in," and that was all he said. He had a sporty car, a Ford coupe, old but still fast, and he headed for the mountains and turned onto a side road. Dirt. It twisted and turned, going up steeply. His father took the corners fast, sliding and recovering. Controlled skids, or semi-controlled. He would go with the changing angle of the slide, aiming the wheels at the next corner. Clouds of dust billowed behind them. The whole while his father had said nothing. At the time Tony could make nothing of it, but now it looks sort of caring. His father was paying attention to him. Maybe he valued Tony's company after all. And Tony felt okay. He feels okay now, too. He is off the mesa, the wash has flattened out and he's making good time across the talus slope. He finds the trail to camp, no problem. An easy mile and the tent should be in sight. But when Tony spots the camp's marker, thirty-feet of pink tape draped on a cardon, he gets anxious. As if decades, not hours, have passed since losing sight of his father. And whatever George says may be a surprise. Any sort of prickly stuff could be scraping around his mind. That could be him by the trail, too, that gray area more solid than the feathery bushes. Tony strides up and it's George all right. Standing in the twilight, bare-headed, erect and feisty. "Oh man!" Tony takes off his hat and gloves, and slaps them on his thigh. A cloud of fine mesquite leaves, pollen, and dust rises in the dim light. "Am I glad you're here!" Tony has made his supreme effort and there'll be no desperate measures. No hauling an injured man out through the forest. "And you're all right, aren't you?" The old man has a small fire burning in the clearing behind him. His faces scrunches up. He turns a long stick around and around in his hands. "I heard you calling and calling," he accuses, "way off somewhere." The stick is laced with diamond-shaped holes. A cardon rib, twisted and battered by the elements. "What did you think you were doing?" He bangs the stick into the ground. Nice try, thinks Tony. Is that his plan, a good defense is a strong offense? Tony glowers down at his father's wrinkled pate and waves at the ragged skyline. "I was looking for you. All over those cliffs." His sleeve drags through the air like a tattered flag. The fabric is punched and ripped by thorns. He looks like a veteran of the desert war. "No!" George bangs the cardon rib into the ground again. His eyes are popping and he looks away. "I went right where I said I was going." Sure, says Tony, and how was he to know? But his father stands there banging the stick and glaring at the ground. Tony sighs. His old man is angry, and why? Tony tries slipping off the daypack, but it's stuck to his back with sweat and dirt. He sits down on a low boulder by the fire and pulls at the straps. He bends forward, tugging and twisting. If he pulls any harder his body will split down the middle. Goddamn pack. Finally one strap slides off, then the other. He groans. His father is still banging the stick. Like a defiant kid, thinks Tony, for Christ's sake. The old man is as guilty as sin, and he's not even looking at Tony. This guy has been practicing for twenty years how not to talk. Better shove at him, thinks Tony. Even if he's a solid wall. Otherwise he is going to ask me what's for dinner. "I didn't see you signal." His father flexes the cardon rib with his hands. "Didn't see me signal?" "No," Tony fixes him with his eye. "I spent the last three hours scrambling over those cliffs. Looking for you." The stick breaks and his father throws it on the fire. Tony flinches. "I thought you had busted an ankle." "That's ridiculous." His father angles another stick between a rock and the ground. He lifts his leg, jams the stick with his boot and it snaps. "What was I supposed to think? I didn't see you."  "You must have seen me." George throws the two pieces on the fire. Bang. Sparks slither up into the air and go out. "I waved up there. Big sweeps of my jacket." "When?"  "Two-thirty." He glares at Tony and then turns back to the fire. He speaks distinctly, "You could not have missed it." "Did you see me wave back?"  Whap. Another stick broken. "You went back to digging." "You didn't see me wave back!"  "I didn't have to!" Another stick goes on the fire. Bang. More sparks slither up and go out. "The deal was, if I didn't wave, I didn't see you." Why the hell doesn't the old man get it? "So I thought you had gotten hurt." Did Tony put himself at risk, up and down the mesa, just because his father thought he didn't need a return signal? But George's voice rumbles, "That's not true." The words are barely distinct and he moves to the other side of the fire. Tony can no longer see him. Whap and more sparks. "That's all you're going to say?" Pause. "It's not true?" Silence. "Talk to me, you asshole." No answer. Tony groans. If the old man doesn't want to talk, what more can Tony do? Murder him? He leans his arms on his knees. His legs feel like lead. He feels like lead all over. And he still has to eat. He will not sleep on an empty stomach. Not with this sour, aching feeling. His father is a faint outline the other side of the fire. Tony asks the darkness, "I suppose you're hungry?" I suppose, he thinks, you'll answer that question. No, the gravelly voice answers back, he ate sandwiches. The fire roars. Tony lifts his hand to his head. He watches it come up slow-motion. That's it, he thinks. No more talk. I get to zombie-walk through the evening by myself, cook up some noodles and chicken-oregano sauce. Push the spoon into my mouth. Chew and swallow. Again and again, and then clean the pot. Take off my boots and pull myself into the sleeping bag. Forget everything. In the morning his father will reappear and say something conciliatory. He might ask if Tony found any good beryl crystals. Or maybe, "Too bad you made that long hike." At most. As if it would make up for his wild scramble up the mesa and all that yelling. As if it would change those years of silence. Or George might say nothing. Tony pushes himself into his mummy bag, shivering. His belly is warm though, he'll be comfortable in a minute. And the stars are beginning to brighten overhead. Maybe there'll be some meteors tonight. There's the Dog Star, surrounded by filaments of almost black space, and the Archer is coming up over the mesa. Yeah, yeah, his father taught him about the stars, too. Tony's young mind had marveled how they seem to work together, vast, complicated, responsive. And distant, Tony thinks, fucking distant. Next time, he thinks, if there is a next time, I won't even try to talk. So forget about why he won't deal with me. I'll drop a boulder on the old man.