Chapter 3
Grilled onions, burnt coffee, mineral swamp-cooler air—the canteen hit Yuji the moment he pulled the screen door open.
It slapped shut on a spring hinge, sound ricocheting off cinder block and drop ceiling.
Half the fluorescents buzzed; the other half were dark.
A dozen park staff sat at mismatched tables with trays and paper plates.
He took a tray from the stack, butterfly bandage snagging on the metal edge.
A woman in a Dodgers cap spooned rice and beans onto his plate without looking up.
He added a roll and filled a paper cup at the dispenser—blue spigot, ice melted to chips.
The water tasted like the plastic jug it lived in.
He found a table near the wall. The first bite of rice sat in his mouth longer than it should have—his stomach took it, hunger and nausea still negotiating.
He chewed the next bite carefully and chased it with water.
The headache had settled into a band across his temples, dull and constant.
He drained the cup, refilled it, drank half.
The door slapped. A ranger came through—mid-twenties, freckles dense across his nose and cheeks, red-brown hair standing where a hat had pressed it flat. He moved through the room greeting everyone, touching chair backs, calling across tables.
He loaded his tray—double portion of everything—and scanned the room. His eyes found Yuji.
“You’re the hydrologist.” He set his tray down across from Yuji. “Levi Bowen.” The handshake was firm and brief, palm rough. “Stroud said you’re doing a resurvey.”
“Yuji Takeda.” He set his fork on the tray. “Eleven desert springs, checking what’s still flowing.”
Bowen tore his roll in half. “And?”
“Two down. Both absent.” Yuji took another bite. The beans were lukewarm.
Bowen stopped chewing. “Absent like dried up?”
“Absent like gone. No surface expression, no moisture at all. Fifty years of continuous flow, and the site is bone dry.”
Bowen leaned back, chair creaking.
“We see it in the backcountry. Springs that were reliable ten years ago just stopped flowing. Mesquite dying in Wildrose because the water table dropped out from under it.”
“You’re from somewhere wet.”
“Olympia, Washington. Rains nine months out of twelve.” He tore off another piece of roll. “Came for the geology program at UNLV and never went home.”
The door again. Stroud.
The canteen’s rhythm shifted—forks slowing, a conversation at the far table trailing off mid-sentence. Two rangers glanced up and back down.
Stroud came through the serving line—tray, plate, coffee—and pulled a chair to the end of their table. He sat the way he’d stood in the wash: weight settled, easy.
“Bowen.”
“Evening.” Bowen’s shoulders squared a fraction.
Stroud ate, coffee steaming beside his plate. He held the mug with both hands between bites.
“Yuji was telling me about the salt-pan seeps,” Bowen said. “Both sites dry.”
Stroud nodded. He’d heard this.
“You ever seen those seeps? The sulfur one by the gravel ridge?”
“Fifteen years ago, maybe. It was a trickle then.” Stroud broke his roll. “Your grandfather had it flowing steady?”
Yuji set his fork down.
“Year-round. Smelled like sulfur.”
“There’s a tinaja up the narrows above Echo Canyon that used to hold through September. Last three years it’s been dry by July.”
“High ground dries first.” Yuji turned his water cup on the table. “Less storage up there. Once those go, the lower springs follow.”
Bowen looked between them. “You two should take this show on the road.”
A shift at the corner of Stroud’s mouth. “Eat your dinner, Bowen.”
“I’m eating.” Bowen held up his fork as evidence.
Bowen talked. The bighorn survey in the Grapevines, a rattlesnake den under a decommissioned outhouse at Wildrose.
A tourist from Zurich who’d tried to drive a rental Nissan across the Racetrack Road.
“Two miles in, the axle just—” He mimed a snapping motion.
“Had to hike back to Ubehebe in sandals. The sandals were the best part. Birkenstocks.”
Stroud shook his head, jaw tight against a laugh.
Yuji ate half his plate—he couldn’t manage more. The rice sat heavy and the headache had deepened, thick at the base of his skull. He refilled his water cup—fifth or sixth, he’d lost track—and pressed it against his forehead.
Stroud was watching him. Yuji reached for the bread, his stomach turning, then set it back.
“You’re not driving to Beatty tonight.” Stroud set down his mug. Bowen’s fork paused.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” He drank his coffee. “Heat exhaustion turns while you sleep. I’ve got a couch.”
Yuji straightened. “I’ve made that drive before.”
“Not like this you haven’t.”
“I can manage forty miles.”
Stroud didn’t argue. He set the mug down and looked at Yuji’s hands. A tremor there, fine but visible, the water in his cup rippling with it. The headache throbbed at the base of his skull, part of a bone-deep fatigue he’d been outrunning since the wash.
A chair scraped back at the far table. Laughter carried from the kitchen.
Yuji thought about the motel in Beatty—the window unit that rattled all night, the parking lot lights bleeding through the curtains.
The appeal of it had drained somewhere between his third glass of water and realizing he couldn’t finish a plate of rice.
Stroud waited.
“Fine.” Yuji folded his napkin. “One night.”
Stroud stood and gathered all three of their trays. He carried them to the return window and pushed through the screen door without looking back.
Bowen waited until the door stopped swinging.
“He’s not usually like that.” Bowen tilted his chair back. “The talking, I mean. Normally you’d get ten words out of him.”
Yuji looked at the empty doorway.
“How many did I get?”
Bowen grinned. “Lost count.”