Chapter 2
Thursday, December 19, 9:00 a.m.
Carefully putting one foot in front of the other, Stevie negotiated the narrow ridge of the desert path leading up to the wind caves. He had left the rest of his family far behind. His mother, Vega, knew he wanted to make sure she was out of sight before he started skipping over the small boulders on the trail. It was the only way to avoid her shouting anxious warnings each time his sneakers caused a cascade of loose pebbles to descend into the adjoining canyon. Nine-year-old Stevie as well as his fourteen-year-old brother, Daniel, could handle this trail. They were getting used to being out in the open desert, where they could see for miles without a man-made structure obstructing their view. No power lines, no roads, just layers of rock in hues from rose to ocher to chalk white.
“Look at me, Dad,” Stevie called back to his father, “I’m Frodo, the hobbit, following Gandalf on the way to Mordor!”
“You are about the right size, too,” his father, Greg, called back.
“I just hope you don’t bring the night riders down on us!” shouted Vega.
“Mom, death and evil are everywhere; you can’t escape them.”
“We can try. At least watch out for rattlesnakes and tarantulas.”
“Mom, don’t worry so much. We are fine.”
A quarter mile ahead, Daniel had already reached the wind caves. He sat in one of them, waving. Oval caverns carved out by wind and weather in the soft sandstone, the wind caves were stacked like apartments on top of each other. They provided views over miles of desert to the mountains in the far distance. The boys loved to climb in them. Vega loved to sit in them and look out into the distance, letting her thoughts go as far as they wanted, without any distractions or walls to limit them. There was no movement except for the faint rustling in an ocotillo bush, some birds circling overhead. She could hear the whistling of the wind in the cavities of the caves, and the shouts of the boys as they discovered yet another crevice to explore. Otherwise the desert was completely silent. So silent, it almost hurt her ears. The absence of all the customary background noise like cars in the distance, a telephone ringing, a radio, a plane flying over, a neighbor’s TV set, or the humming of a refrigerator was almost unsettling.
As Vega sat contemplating the emptiness of the desert and the silence around her, it was shattered by a piercing scream.
Vega and Greg scrambled to their feet and rushed to the spot where Stevie stood screaming at the edge of a steep canyon. He pointed down to the bottom of the valley, thirty meters below.
“What is it, Stevie?” Vega tried to calm him.
“The leg and the birds . . .” he gasped.
Below them, in the northern reaches of the Canyon Sin Nombre, a flock of turkey vultures had descended into a tight cluster. They fought for space on their prey, from which only a bloody leg emerged.
Greg clapped his hands and shouted as he ran down into the arroyo, chasing the vultures away. They reluctantly revealed the body of a man, or what was left of him. Splayed at an impossible angle, his eyes picked out by the vultures.
Vega took Stevie into her arms and covered his eyes to keep him from seeing more than he already had. Greg tried to call 911 from his cell phone.
“I can’t get any reception!” he called to Vega.
“We are too remote!” she called back.
Daniel gazed at the canyon in shock, his hands covering his mouth, trying to stifle a scream. Vega walked over and put an arm around him.
“What are we going to do, Dad?” he asked with a shaky voice. “We can’t just leave him here.”
“We’ll have to. He is beyond help,” said Greg, and he took a picture of the corpse. He climbed out of the canyon to the top of the caves, trying to make his call, but without success.
“We’ll drive out and report the body,” declared Greg calmly, and he began to walk toward their car. The boys scrambled after their father. Nobody spoke a word on their hike back. Their Toyota 4Runner was the only car at the sand-covered parking place for the wind caves. Its tires kicked up small dust devils as they made a hurried exit.
“What happened to that man?” Stevie finally asked.
“He probably fell down the canyon,” said Greg.
“Dad, he did not just hurt himself, he was dead! I saw the birds pecking at his eyes,” insisted Stevie.
“If you know everything, why do you ask?” said Daniel angrily.
They had reached Split Mountain, where the rough dirt road ran along the side of a steep cliff face, stretching up four hundred feet into the sky. Layers of rock sediment displayed the geological history of the Anza-Borrego Desert’s last two million years. Pink, white, yellow, and beige stripes of stone formations piled on top of each other. The pitted “road” was actually a dry riverbed. As Greg navigated the deep ruts, Vega and the boys bumped up and down on their seats.
Coming out of the shadow of the cliff after a bend in the road, they encountered a group of five men walking along the path. They wore tattered jeans, thin-soled tennis shoes, and faded baseball caps, and each carried a small backpack.
“Mexican migrants,” said Vega.
“What are they doing here, Mom? It’s so far from everything!” Stevie demanded to know.
“Yes, they are very far from home,” Vega admitted.
“Actually, we’re not that far from the Mexican border,” said Daniel. “It runs just a few miles south of here.”
“But where are they going? And where did they stay overnight? It will take them too long to get to the Casa,” Stevie wondered.
“I don’t think they’re going to the Casa, Stevie,” said Greg.
La Casa Del Zorro was the luxurious but struggling desert resort where the Stern family stayed during their excursion into the Anza-Borrego Desert.
“Are you stupid, Stevie?” Daniel accused his brother. “Don’t you see they’re illegal Mexicans? They have no money, and they don’t even have a sleeping bag.”
“That’s what I’m worried about,” said Vega as they passed the group slowly. The men stopped and looked at the family inside the car with dark, fearful, and suspicious eyes.
“Are we just going to leave them here?” asked Stevie, incredulous.
“Yes, Stevie, we have a dead body to report,” Greg said firmly.
