when I begin to slow, speeding up to pull me along. I think about Nikko, reduced to a set of bleached bones somewhere out in the desert. The bullet-catching glove he invented rusting away in his pack. Or maybe that’s all gone now, his bones carried away by grateful coyotes, his pack stolen away by salvagers. Because now that I’ve nearly done what he only attempted, I know that if he had lived, if he had found the bullet catchers, he would have come back for me. He would never have left me alone.
What will I say to the bullet catcher when I finally catch up to him? If I could only figure out what Nikko would have said, I almost feel I could keep him alive, in some small way. I’d pick up where he left off, and I’d feel close to him all over again, like I did last night, when I was close to death.
2.
Near evening, I follow the bullet catcher into the huge, crooked shadow of the mountain. The shade cuts a dark, jagged scar in the desert and freezes my sunburned skin. At the foot of the mountain, tired-looking shrubs with dull flowers and spiny petals peek out through the shale. Midway up, where the earth turns from sand to stone, pine trees make a dense, green ring around the steep mountainside. Higher up, the trees turn sparse. The sight of snow, whitening the mountain peaks, makes my teeth chatter. If I close my eyes I can hear the wings of small birds fluttering from brush to brush, the sound of a weak stream running through the crags that form paths and switchbacks up the mountain. It’s into one of those switchbacks that the bullet catcher disappears: one moment there, then gone. He’s the disappearing old man and I’m the unnoticeable girl.
The memory of last night, when I drank the blood of the desert fox, fills me with strength, reminds me I can do anything. I grind my teeth to keep them from chattering, and begin my climb up the mountain.
The bullet catcher leaves no footprints. He doesn’t break a single branch. He doesn’t make a sound. There’s no hope in tracking him, so when the path comes to a fork I take my best guess and just keep heading up. Every now and then I come to a dead end of fallen trees or unscalable boulders and I have to double back to the last turning.
Night is falling when the ground flattens out and the trees open into a small clearing. At one end of the clearing stands a tent made from canvas and animal hide, nestled in the shadow of a low cliff face. The canvas walls are propped up with wood poles tall enough so you don’t have to duck through the flap. Away from the tent, a line stretches between two trees, bowed with drying clothes. Iron cookware sits in a neat stack on a washcloth. And there’s the bullet catcher, sitting in an old rocking chair, feeding dry grass and twigs into brightening embers. The fire catches and the bullet catcher sits back in his chair and rocks slowly. He lights a pipe with a hot coal and takes a couple quick puffs.
From where I crouch, behind a wide, stout pine tree at the edge of the clearing, I suddenly think that maybe he isn’t what I thought he was, that maybe he isn’t a bullet catcher, because from here he looks like any other wizened old man, made small and bent by time. His gaze is far-off, that look old people get when they’re gazing into the past.
He gives his pipe a puff and says, “Come out from behind that tree, young lady.”
My heart seizes, but there’s nothing else to do but what he says. I want to appear confident, strong, but I’m so tired. I’m covered in sand, blood, and pine needles. I smell only a little better than the corpse of the desert fox. The bullet catcher studies me as I step into the clearing and approach the fire.
“So you lived,” he says. His voice is soft and slow. It puts me at ease, but when he looks at me with those piercing blue-white eyes, those dead man’s eyes, my spine goes rigid.
I nod my head, and eke out, “I did.”
“I’ll have my knife back, then,” he grunts, reaching out his hand. I take the knife from my belt and hand it to him. He studies it in the light of the fire. It’s dirty, stained with blood. Pouring clear water over it from a skin, he cleans the knife meticulously, wicking away the water and blood with long steady swipes of a cloth.
“You can stay here by the fire till morning,” he says, not looking at me. “Then you’ll leave. There’s another town down the other side of the mountain. It’s closer than Sand, if you prefer.”
I edge toward the fire. As soon as I feel the warmth on my skin, I realize how cold I am, how thin the air is high above the desert. The fire is hungry for the air and there seems precious little left for me. My starved legs buckle. But it’s warm near the fire and I don’t care that my lungs huff and puff and won’t take in the air. I could die right here. I made it.
I want to tell the bullet catcher why I followed him. I want to tell him that it wasn’t just to get away from Sand—although that would have been reason enough. I want to tell him about Nikko, and I want to ask if he knew him. I want to ask if he knows what happened to him. I found a bullet catcher. I made it through the desert. Suddenly it doesn’t seem so crazy to think that, all those years ago, Nikko might have made it, too.
I want to demand he train me, to make me a bullet catcher, like Nikko would have. I want him to tell me the secret to walking forever in the desert. I want to know how to catch bullets. But the fire is so warm, and I’m afraid that if I say anything he’ll chase me away and make me sleep in the woods, with the coyotes and wolves. So I don’t say anything. Lying by the fire, in the dirt, the heat envelops me, and I drift into a dark, dreamless sleep.
• • •
The next morning, the bullet catcher nudges me awake with the toe of his boot.
“Up,” he says, already walking away, a towel over one shoulder and a tin mug with a toothbrush sticking out the top in his hand.
I grumble a few curses as I shrug off a blanket. I didn’t have a blanket when I fell asleep. I watch the bullet catcher disappear down the path. Folding the blanket, I place it on the bullet catcher’s rocking chair and follow him out of the clearing.
The path weaves through the sparse trees, down a small bluff that ends at the edge of a lake. A lake! It’s like discovering that Nikko and my parents are still alive and they’ve just been waiting until I was old enough to tell me. I imagine Nikko and my parents emerging from the water, their smiles so bright they reflect off the surface. I imagine them taking me in their arms and inviting me down below with them. Under the surface is where life really starts. Everything to this point was just to prepare me, to toughen my skin, to make me waterproof. But then I snap out of it and look for the bullet catcher.
He’s sitting in the water, on a rock just below the surface. His back is to me, tanned brown and zigzagged with scars. His skin is a map: scars like roads and rivers that lead to his pelvis and shoulders. Taking a rock covered in little dimples, he rubs his skin in tight circles, scratching away the dirt and sweat.
His thinness is amazing. Under all his clothes, with his broad, scarecrow shoulders, he seemed so much larger, so much stronger. He could be a hundred years old or a thousand. He’s the ageless man.
Then I backtrack through the trees. I want to be waiting, like a good student on the first day of class. When he returns he’s fully clothed, his coat slung over those wide shoulders, making him look broad and strong again. His shadow goes on forever, and all the courage I built up down on the lake’s edge, when he looked so skinny and vulnerable, disappears.
He doesn’t look surprised to see me. Without a word, he drops his bathing gear by his tent, strides across the camp, grabs me by my shirt collar, turns me around, and marches me to the edge of the clearing. With a push, he banishes me to the wilderness. He throws my pack after me. I don’t protest or struggle because there’s no time. It’s over in seconds. One moment
