The Maze (9 page)

It wasn't so easy to talk, to know where to begin. They ate, and then they sat on their lawn chairs and watched clouds boil enormously tall in the turquoise sky. “Can you fly in a cloud like that?” Rick asked.

“Oh, no,” Lon replied. “Too much lift, too much turbulence, and of course you can't tell up from down. You get sucked up into one of those clouds, you'd probably tuck and tumble.”

“What's that?”

“The nose would suddenly tuck under and you'd fall on the sail. The wing would be
underneath
you and spinning out of control. Even if you didn't tuck and tumble, the winds inside that cloud could tear your glider to shreds. Fortunately there's plenty of milder thermals that aren't associated with clouds; they're totally invisible. Those are the up elevators that we're always searching for.”

“What exactly is a thermal?”

“A column of rising warm air. Warm air rises, cool air sinks. You spiral up on the thermal—a thousand feet per minute sometimes—then fly out of the thermal once you're as high as you want to go. As you leave the thermal, at first you'll descend fast on the cool air spilling down around the thermal's edge. Hang glider pilots call it going over the falls. Great sensation.”

“Then what?”

“Then you glide into much more stable air. You're losing altitude, about a foot for every ten or twelve feet you're moving forward, at a rate of maybe two hundred feet per minute. As you glide, you're searching for another thermal. When you find the next one you climb up, up, up—”

“How high can you get?”

“Sixteen thousand feet is my ceiling. If you don't have oxygen, it's time to get off the up elevator. You repeat the same process over and over again. If it's a great flying day, and you're really catching thermals, you can fly distances. My personal best was 175 miles, from Owens Valley, California way into Nevada. What a workout that was.”

Lon quit talking. Rick had a lot to think about, to imagine, as they watched the clouds turn dark.

“We're in for a show,” Lon said. “Tents are battened—let her rip!”

“When do we release Maverick?”

“In the morning. He knows he's back at home base. No point in keeping him incarcerated. It's going to be up to him.”

“How did you first get into birds?”

Memory kindled a fond smile in the man's weathered features. “Actually it was in one of my foster homes, when I was about your age. My foster dad was a vet.”

Rick was jolted by surprise. “
You
were a foster kid?”

“More than once. How about you? Did you have a lot of different families?”

“Five,” Rick answered. “The year before they sent me to the group home, I had three in one year. Nothing was working out. How many did you have?”

“You got me beat—four. Like I said, one of my foster fathers was a vet, dogs and cats mostly, but he started rehabilitating raptors on the side. Hawks and eagles. His name was Ernie, Ernie Wilson. You know, I haven't talked about this stuff in a zillion years. Nobody I felt like talking to about it, I guess.”

Rick nodded.

“I used to make up stories a lot,” Lon continued. “Like for people sitting next to you on buses who expect conversation. Whenever anybody would start asking about my life story I'd make up a different name for myself, invent childhood homes, parents…. I'd always make it different just to keep it interesting. You ever do that?”

Rick smiled. “Sure, all the time, but more with other
kids—like when I'd be first starting at a new school. I used to say my father was a ref for the NBA, or a race car mechanic. I think my favorite one was telling people he was the lead singer in a band. Now
that
can get you respect.”

Both of them were laughing, but Rick noticed that they were both looking away at the darkening clouds, not into each other's eyes.

Lightning snapped to the south, above the cliffs, and thunder came rumbling.

“Lon Peregrino isn't my original name,” Lon said. “My first one was McDermott, Kenny McDermott. I was born in Atlanta, Georgia. Don't know a single thing about my mother except that she was a teenager and she skipped out of the hospital without taking me along. My father's a blank. McDermott is the name of the couple from Atlanta who adopted me.”

The sky was almost black now above the cliffs, and lightning was cracking more and more frequently. “Coming our way,” Lon said. “Let's move under the tarp. What about you, Rick? Start from the beginning. We got time.”

Lon really did want to know, Rick realized. Once he began talking he was surprised to find that the words came easily. “I was born in San Jose, California. My mother was only fifteen when I was born, just a year older than I am now. She wasn't married or anything—just a clueless kid, I guess. A year or two later she ran
off on me, and on her mother too—my grandmother. Went to L.A. with a different guy—not my father, whoever he was. My grandmother's the one who raised me, up until I was ten. My mother never called, never wrote, ever. My grandmother used to cry about it a lot when I was little.”

“Could have been a lot worse,” Lon said. “At least you had your grandma. It sounds like she was a nice lady, and I'll bet you were the apple of her eye.”

Rick had to smile. He was picturing how proud his grandmother always was of him. “Sure, she used to brag about me to anyone who would listen. How about you? Did those McDermotts who adopted you have other kids?”

“No, it was just me, and I was always in the middle of their big fights. It was a pretty bad scene. They both drank, he kept losing jobs, things kept going from bad to worse. Then we up and moved to Boise, Idaho, when I was nine. They thought they'd start over in a new place; you know the dream. Well, it just got worse, the fighting and all. My mother moved back to Atlanta, left me with my dad. That's when he started beating up on me.”

Rick was thinking about the kids in Blue Canyon, about Killian in particular.

“A teacher at school eventually figured out how bad it was,” Lon continued. “The courts took me away from him, put me in foster care.”

“With the vet and his family?”

“Actually, there were three different families before that. I guess I was really hard for them, a real angry kid. Then the vet and his family took me. Great people, really great people. That was my lucky day, the day I hooked up with Ernie.”

It was starting to rain. Huge drops splattered the slickrock around them and the tarp drummed with liquid bullets. A lightning bolt lit up the camp like a photo flash, and thunder boomed like an explosion.

“Are we okay out here?” Rick asked, motioning toward the last big lightning bolt. The rain was turning to hail, rattling the tarp above them and pelting the wall tents.

“You got another location in mind?” Lon kidded him. “We're fine here, really. I love wild weather—don't you? Makes you feel alive!”

Rick was amazed at how easy it was talking to Lon. It didn't feel strange at all, and yet he'd never talked like this with anyone. He didn't want it to be over. “So you've been interested in birds ever since? Ever since the vet?”

The hail had turned to rain again. It was raining harder than Rick had ever seen. It was pouring off the tarp almost in a solid curtain. Lon had to raise his voice to be heard over the din.

“Let me tell you exactly how it happened,” he said, moving closer so he didn't have to shout. “Not long
after I moved in with Ernie's family, I found a bald eagle in a trap. I was hiking around, exploring behind their place—they lived a few miles out of McCall, Idaho—and I came across an eagle with its leg caught in one of those steel traps people set out for bobcats. We got it out of the trap, but it was hurt pretty bad. Ernie treated the eagle for blood poisoning. I took care of it every day, and we were able to release it forty-three days later. That was the happiest day of my life—seeing that bird fly away. Ernie could see I was fascinated, got me into learning more about eagles. His wife, my foster mom, was a librarian. She'd bring home books on birds, all different kinds. Well, you know how it all turned out….”

They heard a rushing sound, the sound of cascading water. They jumped up to see if it might be a threat. The sound was coming from waterfalls, half a dozen of them, pouring brick red over the edge of the cliffs high above.

“Think what it's like down in the Maze right now,” Rick said.

“Carving it all deeper. Now let's get back to you. I'm trying to picture you at the age of ten, when you lost your grandmother. What happened to her?”

“She got sick. It started when I was in about second grade, up in Fort Bragg, and just kept getting worse. For a long time I didn't know how serious it was. She'd go to the hospital for treatments, but she'd tell me not
to worry. A lot of times there was nobody at home. I even started thinking it was kind of a good deal for me—I could just run around, do what I wanted. But then some neighbors turned me in, said I had no supervision at home, and the court put me in a foster home. My grandmother died a few months later.”

The rain quit as abruptly as it had begun. The pouring of the waterfalls and the sound of the water rushing in the arroyos nearby continued. “I can sure remember what that's like,” Lon said, “getting sent to those foster homes, shuffled around all the time. You hear stories about kids getting lucky, finding a good home right away and getting to stay there. I remember thinking it must be my fault.”

Rick's head was nodding. “I know, I know.”

“Just this last year I read an article about it. It said that after the age of ten, a kid's chances of getting adopted take a huge nosedive.”

“A social worker told me that once. Sorta helped, but not really.”

They stepped outside. The storm cell that had hammered them was attacking the Island in the Sky across the Green River with lightning bolt after lightning bolt. “Let's walk to the edge of the Maze,” Rick suggested. “See what it looks like with water running in it.”

They ran so they wouldn't miss the spectacle. When they got there, every pour-off along the rim was spilling
torrents into the canyon. “Look at all those waterfalls!” Rick shouted.

The bottom of the canyon, normally bone dry, was flooded with surging red waters. They found perches on a boulder next to a gnarled juniper where they could see below. Rick was eager to renew their conversation, not let it die out under the roar from the depths.

“When I first got here,” he spoke up, “you asked if I had a stepfather who did this.” He put a fingertip to the new scar over his cheekbone. “Is that how you got yours?”

“Yep,” Lon replied.

“I'll bet you still hate him for that,” Rick said with conviction.

Lon looked down into the canyon at the floodwaters. It was a long time before he spoke. “I used to have a chip on my shoulder about forty miles wide,” he said finally. “I thought everyone had it in for me, and that the world was nothing but closed doors.”

“It is.”

“Those doors are in your outlook.”

“What—Blue Canyon isn't real?”

“Sure it's real. But you have to play the hand you're dealt, Rick. You aren't the first kid who's ever been wronged, you know. Take a number, get in line.”

Rick felt like he'd been stung. Why was Lon doing this when they'd been getting along so well? “Some things shouldn't be forgiven and forgotten,” he insisted.

“Sounds like you're big on that. Nuke Carlile would agree with you, I'd bet. You have to move forward, wherever you are. Even if you wind up back at Blue Canyon—you have to move forward.”

“What are you saying?”

“I'm saying it's time to move on, find your way into the clear, where you can shape your own life. I think you're getting mired down in your own personal tar pits. You need to focus on where you want to go and how you're going to get there.”

Lon was starting to look uncomfortable, almost embarrassed. “Look, I'm not one for giving advice, Rick, but you're a special case. You're so much like who I was, it's scary.”

It felt good hearing that, hearing there was a tie between them. “Find my way into the clear,” Rick repeated wistfully. “That would be nice.”

“Too much anger will eat you up from the inside—you'll spend your life looking backward. Keep just enough anger to stay honest, to keep your edge. Keep it for ballast. The rest, dump it.”

“And fly out of a tar pit. Easier said than done.”

“Well, I didn't say it would be easy, but I do know you have to do it.”

“How? How do I do that?”

“You already know. You said the word just a few minutes ago. You gotta be willing to
forgive
. Can't move on until you do. I've learned that the hard way.”

Rick was recalling something Mr. B. had said. Something about his break coming along one day and being ready to recognize it for what it was. Maybe meeting Lon was his break. “I'll think about it,” he said.

“You got more kindness in you than I had, by a mile. Your grandmother taught you kindness. I was a little short on that score.”

“So, how'd you get the name Lon Peregrino?” Rick asked. “You didn't tell me that part.”

“Gave it to myself, after I got out of high school. I didn't go to college right away. I wanted to take some time and just explore the country, see some new places. I spent a couple years working ski patrol in the winters, doing a little construction in the summers, mostly grabbing every minute I could find to explore all these canyons in the Southwest.”

Suddenly Rick was seeing handholds on the unclimbable mountain. “I can picture doing that.”

“On one of my hikes I ran into some people working out in a camp like ours here, only they were working with falcons. Before that I'd never been able to picture a way that birds could be my life, like I'd dreamed. All of a sudden I could see something I really wanted to do. Of course I had to go to college…got a degree in bird biology so people would hire me.”