The tripod was set. Hatchet maneuvered the lens against the early evening agony of the unruly Chisos penetrating the western horizon. He waited for sunset and stepped back to admire the scope of the banded sky and the mystic silver swimming past the sun and he felt as if he were staring at some surface phenomenon from the bottom of the sea. His eyes wandered back to the desert floor and he moved one of the flat stones with his foot, invoking the sound of old tombs, the sound Jesus’ stone allegedly made on his first day back at the office. The truck sat days unmoved below him in the shelter of the green and overgrown earthen tank and the old corral that stood against it.
Poole rang the sat phone.
Yo, he answered, you got the picture? Yeah. And you sent it to your guys? I did and they wanna see it. And you trust these cats? With my life, Hatchet, that’s why I’m trusting them with yours. I’ll owe you forever when this works out. It better fucking work out.
Hatchet and Ricky Buckney agreed on a meeting place by phone. The sat phone glitched a few times but he could hear a hint of bravado in Ricky Buckney’s voice and he could imagine the reasons for Poole’s appreciation. He pulled up the pic that had sealed the meeting. He had set it against the mud brick section of the tank alongside an unsharpened pencil for scale. Hatchet had browsed sites that listed the descriptions and, if possible, photographs of each of the Russian eggs but he couldn’t find a match. There were other eggs but none of them described this piece. The only description that came close was one quoted from records of the Assistant Manager to the Cabinet and the List of Confiscated Treasures which read, Gold egg with clock with diamond pushpiece on gold pedestal with three sapphires and rose-cut diamond roses. This passage described one of the several Russian eggs that had gone missing during the revolution.
No way is this thing real, he said aloud.
An NPR report on the progress of the Calvary Fellowship robbery stated in clichéd brilliance, The investigation has ground to a halt.
Running Glen Springs Road proved uncomfortable, full of smooth stones to stress his ankle, the tire crushed residue of the rock that stung the crevices of his bare feet. So the raw desert welcomed him, every step hinting attack from thorns and blades and plenty of razor quick injury. He would wake in the morning with the propane burning blue, the coffee percolating. He would shoot stages of sunrise as the toe-cracking cold dissolved in the immediacy of the desert sun. He would eat chili from a can and bolt like some primeval inhabitant across miles and miles of a land forever aslant into another dimension beyond the filthy river threading through the box canyons to the south. There were times, in the bottomless silence of the desert night, he mistook some audible process in his belly as a creature in the scrub. He wondered about silence and the birds. He wondered if silence too was a part of their communication. The absence of something is just as important as the presence of it, he reminded himself.
Poole rang the sat phone.
Yo, he answered, you got the picture? Yeah. And you sent it to your guys? I did and they wanna see it. And you trust these cats? With my life, Hatchet, that’s why I’m trusting them with yours. I’ll owe you forever when this works out. It better fucking work out.
Hatchet and Ricky Buckney agreed on a meeting place by phone. The sat phone glitched a few times but he could hear a hint of bravado in Ricky Buckney’s voice and he could imagine the reasons for Poole’s appreciation. He pulled up the pic that had sealed the meeting. He had set it against the mud brick section of the tank alongside an unsharpened pencil for scale. Hatchet had browsed sites that listed the descriptions and, if possible, photographs of each of the Russian eggs but he couldn’t find a match. There were other eggs but none of them described this piece. The only description that came close was one quoted from records of the Assistant Manager to the Cabinet and the List of Confiscated Treasures which read, Gold egg with clock with diamond pushpiece on gold pedestal with three sapphires and rose-cut diamond roses. This passage described one of the several Russian eggs that had gone missing during the revolution.
No way is this thing real, he said aloud.
An NPR report on the progress of the Calvary Fellowship robbery stated in clichéd brilliance, The investigation has ground to a halt.
Running Glen Springs Road proved uncomfortable, full of smooth stones to stress his ankle, the tire crushed residue of the rock that stung the crevices of his bare feet. So the raw desert welcomed him, every step hinting attack from thorns and blades and plenty of razor quick injury. He would wake in the morning with the propane burning blue, the coffee percolating. He would shoot stages of sunrise as the toe-cracking cold dissolved in the immediacy of the desert sun. He would eat chili from a can and bolt like some primeval inhabitant across miles and miles of a land forever aslant into another dimension beyond the filthy river threading through the box canyons to the south. There were times, in the bottomless silence of the desert night, he mistook some audible process in his belly as a creature in the scrub. He wondered about silence and the birds. He wondered if silence too was a part of their communication. The absence of something is just as important as the presence of it, he reminded himself.
Edit 11.23.2018