Page 50 of Phoenix Fire

After Jenny had convinced Sgt. Denny of the possible location of Jason, Denny had contacted the Rural Metro Fire Department in Carefree and told them of the campground site. He asked that they meet us there.

Then, she was driving east on Carefree Highway, Gordon Lightfoot's song and lyrics playing in her mind while so many other thoughts were crazily running amok. Grandma Myrena had said something about a dream. A 'dream' had told her where Jason was? It seemed on the one hand incredible and, strangely, on the other, perfectly natural that Grandma Myrena would know where Jason was.

Other than the excitement and anticipation running through her Jenny was more calm than she was in days, probably weeks. Her own lightning experience had opened her mind to a whole new world of psychic possibilities. She believed in the power of the mind and the soul. She believed that there were limitless possibilities and opportunities for psychic phenomena that many people would perceive as 'black magic.' It did not really matter to Jenny what others might perceive. She had lived through a mind and soul altering event. She could never again discount the relevance of something which might stretch the rational mind to its outer limits.

Jenny somehow knew that they would find Jason. Grandma Myrena's strong and excited voice played back to her: “I know where Jason is … you must trust me … he will need some medical assistance ...”

What had brought Jason back to a spot he had known in his childhood? So far from his car? Had he wandered too far in the wrong direction? Gotten lost? Was he searching for a piece of himself, his soul? A reason to live? What? Why?

“Oh, just be all right, Jason! Just be all right!” she spoke to her silent space. “I love you so much. We will make everything all right.”

Chapter Thirty-four

Supine on the hot pebbly earth, Jason looked into an indifferent and unforgiving sky.

A great stupor consumed him, the sun now nothing more than a hot constant cloak upon his body. Flies, gnats, other flying insects buzzed in and around his ears, landed on his cracked and bleeding lips, but he was numbly desensitized to their raspy sounds and nibbles. He had adapted to their environment. He was now a part of their world. He could feel their tiny stinging jabs, but they no longer registered in his brain as pain. They were lost in his great soporific detachment.

A periodic passing shadow fell across his closed eyelids, and his mind would record an image of vultures flying overhead.

He felt slithering, sliding movement across his hands and arms, and vaguely wondered about lizards, snakes, other denizens of this parched land. But there was no sense of caring, an odd lacking of concern, dread, and fear. It seemed not so important anymore that these emotions had taken leave, temporarily or forever. He could not say, or even be bothered with the thought. It was as though he had indeed become a part of the vast desert landscape.

Just when it seemed that he would simply drowse into nothingness, flashing and graphic pictures, like filmstrips, came across his cognitive screen. Sharp and dimensional, Jenny's face came to him, beautiful, haunting, pinched with hurt. Then, Grandma Myrena's face came to him, sad, wrinkled, loving. Carlton's face came, too, confused and sorrowful. They passed in the darkness behind his eyes, trying to tell him something, beseeching him to stand and go on. Persistently, poignantly, the flashing images came. So real the faces seemed to him there in the searing heat of the desert. When he opened his eyes, the flashing stopped.

With his eyes open, some reality returned. Thirst returned like a gnawing relentless itch, back from a dark hiding place to plague him, to curse him.

At one point he saw two coyotes coming cautiously toward him, from over a rise, stopping, staring at him, jerking, quickly running back the way they had come, only to return and stand within twenty feet of him. They would finally leave again and disappear beyond the reach of his eyes.

With the coyotes had come an indefinite, subliminal memory. It had something to do with the desert rise over which the coyotes had come, a distant yesterday, shimmering in the narcotic darkness of his mind. It was fuzzy but coming more into focus.

Then, it was there!

He knew this place! This space before him had something to do with his childhood, with Carlton, with his mother and father, with his Grandma Myrena and Grandpa John. He had played here with Carlton, war games, Cowboys and Indians. He and Carlton was so close then, sharing make believe worlds and future dreams.

What had happened to that happy world he had known? His memory was vague with abstractions, little bits and pieces of perception. Here in this hot land, which was now claiming him as its own, there once was a family and there was love. There was peace. His mind was still capable of seeing an irony here in this primal place.

The recognition of the dip and rise brought a new stirring within him. He made a tentative move, first with his feet, drawing them up to him, bending the knees, feeling the sharp pain deep in his joints. He welcomed the pain because it meant he was still alive. Then he moved his head, his arms, his upper body, all slowly and with great effort.

He willed his body to roll onto its side, then to its knees where he lingered on all fours for an interminable patch of time, his head lolling, fighting to lift itself to the level of his shoulders.

After long agonizing moments Jason made it to his feet, staggered, and fell again to his knees, silently cursed, and, in some tortured sanctum of resolve, willed himself to stand once more. With a strained battle cry, he raised himself. This time he did not stagger so much, but his legs were wobbly as he stepped off toward the distant rise. He lurched but kept his feet, a new found determination dominating his brain.

He willed the flashing images to return … Jenny, Grandma Myrena, Carlton. With each painful step their images sustained him, pushed him onward through the intense, throbbing ache of muscle and joint. They were the faces of those he loved.

The awful thirst was there, always there, a heavy magnetic shroud pulling at every cell in Jason's body. He fought it and prayed that he would soon find water.

Jason stopped, breathed deeply and raggedly, his throat and chest wracking him with painful spasms. He moved on with his new resolve, felt like a runner who must get through an invisible wall after miles of running.

Despite his depression of the past days, his aimless wandering in this desert wasteland, his near submission to the demons within him, he now walked with a stumbling stride of certainty that, just beyond that distant rise, there awaited peace and a reaffirmation to life … and water.

Thirst, damnable thirst, unremitting and pitiless!

The sun beat upon his head, and he could feel the stinging heat burning his scalp. He had used his blazer as a draping head cover for a while yesterday and today. Now, his brow wrinkled in trying to remember where he had left the coat. It was okay. He did not need the blazer … Thirst, cursed thirst!

He unbuttoned his shirt, removed it, and placed it over his sunburned scalp, tying the sleeves together under his chin to keep it there, his fingers shaking and uncooperative. It was not long before he felt the sun's heat pricks upon his shoulders. It was okay. The rise ahead was losing some of its slope. Soon he would find relief from the persistent, fiery sphere.

Thirst … the devil's love child.

He willed again the flashing images.

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