The midmorning sun was a merciless white hole, already baking the side yard where Jynx squatted on a milk crate. She held the knobby rear tire of Austin’s little enduro motorcycle steady as he settled a spark plug into place. She peered through the slats in the fence at Mr. Englehorn’s latest backyard aviation experiment. “What do you think he’s building back there?” she asked.
The ratcheting of the torque wrench slowed as Austin finished tightening the spark plug. He pushed the terminal back onto the exposed contact, wiggling it to make sure that it was seated properly. “I dunno. A patio of some sort.” He was already sweating through his t-shirt and wiped his upper lip on the back of his wrist.
“Out of old pallets?” Jynx swirled her lemonade with the straw exactly five times before taking a sip, still peering through the fence. They were either pallets or one of those folding futon bed frames that only looked like pallets. “What kind of patio has eyebolts in every corner?”
Austin shrugged without looking. “The kind that needs to be tied down.”
He was right. Each corner of the platform was solidly tied down to steel stakes hammered down into the lawn. It was as if the old guy expected a particularly heavy gust of wind to carry the strange patio off into the canyon at the end of the cul-de-sac.
Jynx stood on her toes to look over the fence. “Do you think he’s going senile?”
Austin tightened the clamp that bolted the milk crate bracket to the rear fender of the motorcycle. “He’s not that old yet.” He stood up and dusted off his coveralls. “Maybe it’s a platform for one of his rocket experiments.”
Jynx shook her head and scowled at the platform. “He hasn’t tried anything like that for a while.”
“Because we quit chasing them,” Austin muttered.
A few summers earlier they were getting paid five dollars a parachute to collect the third stage payloads and return them to Mr. Englehorn. During the day they chased them on bicycles, watching the fluorescent canopies descend into the sparse shrubs at the edge of the desert. They raced each other through the canyon, under the highway, and out across the edge of the salt flats. It was more fun at night, following the blinking red beacons as they drifted out of the sky.
She shrugged. “Five bucks just isn’t what it used to be.”
Austin hoisted the jump box into the milk crate and bungeed it down. “Alright,” he kicked the stand up.
She pulled a scuffed purple off-road helmet from a shelf just inside the garage door, slurped down the last of her lemonade, and left the glass of melting ice in the helmet’s place. Austin backed the bike out onto the sunburnt front lawn and pulled his own red ping pong ball helmet on. She buckled her helmet and tucked her index fingers under the edge to plug her ears.
The bike didn’t kick over on the first shot but sputtered to life on the second kick and idled a little unsteadily. Austin twisted the throttle a couple of times, letting it ring out. The pipe billowed white smoke, clearing the cylinders of the oil he had just drizzled in. Jynx held her breath. He took his hand from the throttle. It leveled off and idled steadily. He shrugged at Jynx. She shrugged, stepped onto the back peg, and swung herself up behind him. She balled her fists into the denim of his coveralls, anticipating the heavy hop when he let the clutch go.
The Pony was loud and Jynx didn’t like that, but once they got up to speed the sound of the wind through her helmet dulled the high-pitched rattling of the little 250 two-stroke. She clung to Austin’s back as they wove through the neighborhood. The battery jump box added extra weight; the front wheel hopped a little at each gear. But once they were up to speed, she let go of Austin and leaned back against the milkcrate, letting the hot wind hit her in the chest. Austin sat taller and held up an “OK?” sign over his shoulder. She patted his helmet. He rolled on a little extra throttle.
Austin bought the bike right after he got his learner’s permit and during the time that Jynx was going through her My Little Pony phase. The tough guy sticker collection had ten full pages which were nearly entirely devoted to a complete collection of the little pastel ponies. Duplicates of stickers in the collection inevitably found their way to the backs of fence posts, garage walls, a few street signs, and inevitably, the gas tank and plastic front cowl of Austin’s dirt bike. He fought against the ‘ponyfication' of his bike, peeling them off just after she had placed them. Discovering that they were nearly impossible to remove after they had baked in the sun for a few hours, she took to sneaking back to the student parking lot and planting them on the bike while Austin was in class. Jeremiah named it the Pony, and the name stuck even after the sun had faded back the pastels, and the sand had blasted off most of the images.
Austin practically traded out his training wheels for rear foot pegs when he got his first bicycle. When he bought the Pony, he brought it home with a nice dirt biking helmet, but he always made Jynx wear it. Only recently had he decided that she should get her own damn bike because it was dangerous, and he didn’t like taking responsibility for her safety. She knew that this was something that he’d heard Jeremiah say and he was just repeating it because it made him feel like a badass.
The interstate was empty and straightened out past the wash. Austin put on a little more speed, gently swaying back and forth across the lane. Jynx watched the arroyos, hoping to see that rainbow glimmer in the hills. She reached under his arm and waved to get him to slow down. He shook his head. She pinched his side. He swerved slightly and eased off the throttle. He dropped a gear, and she stood up on her foot pegs, clinging to the shoulder epaulets of his coveralls like reins. He stared off into the wash, not entirely sure what she was looking for; the opalescent sheen she had seen glimmering in the alluvial wash just the day before. Austin may not have seen it, but she was sure that she had. When she thought she recognized a familiar collection of boulders up the hill, she hopped and pointed off into the arroyo ahead. He reached back to pat her leg to get her to sit down. Veering off the highway into the next turn out they cut across to an old dirt road that ran up into the wash.
The road was old but hadn’t seen much use. It wasn’t the washboard gravel of a regularly maintained county road but riddled with potholes full of superfine sand which only appeared passable. With the added weight on the back, the Pony landed hard and dug deeper to escape the alkaline dust so fine that it was fluid. Jynx rode well, keeping over his shoulder as he carved along the twists and meandering along the stream beds up towards the hills. She kept a solid grip on Austin’s shoulders as they fishtailed up the ravine, shimmying around occasional boulders in the wash. He slowed as the road worsened, thin tracks of dry streambed cutting across their path.
The Pony reared up and hopped at every clutch pop as the wash got steep. Jynx leaned into Austin, making herself small against his back. The Pony hit a spot of sand, kicking up a dusty rooster tail of grit behind them. The little two-stroke fought, loud and high-pitched. Jynx reached up and knocked on his helmet. He nodded, kicked the bike to neutral, and hit the kill switch. She jumped off the back, leaning against a boulder as she tugged at the helmet straps. Austin leaned the bike against the boulder and pulled off his own helmet.
“We’re close enough,” she said.
He nodded, glancing up the ravine towards a few impassable spots further up.
She hung her helmet off the taillight and shook her short auburn hair out, passing the back of her hand across her forehead to wipe away the helmet sweat. “We can walk from here.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Austin glanced up the ravine again. “How do you know where it is?”
Jynx pulled her little pink backpack out of the milk crate. She pointed at the top of the hills as if that were an explanation and started up the shallow ravine. She hopped from boulder to boulder, moving with years of practice on the rain-rounded rocks. Besides being an easier way to travel, she also avoided the possibility of snakes which might be tucked under the stones below, and right at ankle-biting level. She had a good fifty-yard head start on Austin, navigating toward the source of the glimmer.
The sun smothered the western hills in a bright, dry heat, but a light late morning breeze dried the sweat on her shoulders. She squinted up the wash and licked her upper lip, tasting salt. The dry breeze seemed to pull away the sound. Glancing back over her shoulder she spotted Austin further down, clambering over a rock. He had the top of his coveralls down, long sleeves tied around his waist, a canteen tucked into the folds that hung like a fanny pack at the small of his back. He paused, watching her. In the faded blue denim and sweat-stained white V-neck, he was a tiny, thin wisp of humanity in the ubiquitous dust and rock. At least he was easy to spot. From this height, the sound of sparse tourist traffic on the state highway faded away. All they heard was the occasional growl of an eighteen-wheeler hitting the compression brakes to drop their speed for the slow crawl through town.
Her pink backpack bounced ahead of him, miniaturized by the sheer geologic mass of stone that they continued to climb. Austin clambered over the last few boulders to find a smooth concave scar sliding up the hill a dozen yards to where she knelt, digging at something that jutted out of the hillside. He pulled his canteen from his hip, took a few quick gulps, and wiped the sweat away from his eyebrows again.
Whatever it was, it had been there long enough that there were a couple of feet of sand, gravel, and dust on it. To gather that much hardpan, it had spent a few years buried. There hadn’t been rain in months, so the last big winter storm must have uncovered it. Jutting out of the erosion, it was unlike anything that Austin had ever seen. It was curved metal, not twisted or bent, but just gently curved like the tip of a bloated airplane wing. It might be the hood of a car, but it had no trim, and most of the old car hoods he’d seen in the wash rusted out pretty quickly in the alkaline dust. It would have been hard to get a car that far up the hill, anyway.
Austin poured a little water over the metal and used the sleeve of his coverall to wipe it clean. The metal gleamed. Even aluminum should show heavy oxidation, a sort of white chalky coat that should take the sheen off, but the metal polished clean with a quick wipe. He didn’t understand it, but there was a good chance that Jeremiah would.
Jynx wasn’t really worried about what kind of metal it was, so long as it wasn’t another refrigerator. She scrambled around it, kicking at the dust on top, crumbling off chunks of the weather-packed dirt, crawling underneath with a hunk of rock, chiseling away the compacted mud in a futile search for the edge. She wanted to know how big it was, if it could be pulled out of the hillside. She collected a thin patina of dust all over her hands and arms, clawing to free her find. She was right. It was definitely something.
Austin poured a little water over it again, giving it another wipe with the dangling sleeve of his coveralls, to reveal another swath of smooth, clean metal. It didn’t make any sense. Zinc might withstand corrosion for a while, but zinc should be shinier, more like chrome. This thing, whatever it was, had a sort of opalescent sheen to it. It was a metal that looked slightly more like the inside of a seashell. He took a step back, staring at the clean spots. Jeremiah would know.
He paced back a little way, climbing up a boulder to get a look at the hillside. From where the thing rested, he could see a sort of gouge, an old scar from when it hit the hill, washed and smoothed out by the weather. The thing had been there for a while. The scar was old, and probably decent proof that the thing had come out of the sky. Arroyo Grande was surrounded by military bases and airfields. They used parts of 29 palms for missile practice, and Edwards Air Force base was just a few ridges over to the east. It could be part of a wreck or a discarded external fuel tank. Almost everyone in Arroyo Grande had gotten used to seeing some strange airplanes flying over the valley.
Just over a few low boulders, Austin found a smooth stretch of wash that seemed to run most of the way down the hill. He might be able to back his truck up fairly close, but he would probably need a winch of some sort to get it over the boulders. Looking at the smooth surface of the thing, there wouldn’t be much to tie down to. He was still going to have to finish digging it out before he could get a strap around it, and it was anybody’s guess how much it weighed. Austin crouched on a rock, eyeing the smooth track all the way down to where it split off from a side road. He was fairly certain he could make it.
“Austin!” Jynx hollered from somewhere under her discovery, “check this out!” She popped up from underneath the thing, now entirely coated in a layer of superfine alkaline dust. Her features were monochromatic off-white except for the raccoon mask around her eyes as she pushed her sunglasses up onto her forehead.
“Dude, you’re filthy.”
“Whatever. Get over here.” She ducked down under the thing again. He heard the rhythmic crunch of rock against the compacted dirt as she continued to chisel away under the hunk of metal. She burrowed far enough into the dirt beneath that she was nothing but a scrawny, dusty butt in cutoff denim shorts and a pair of dusty high-top sneakers wriggling under the smooth curve of metal.
“What is it?” he asked.
“There’s a hole in this thing,” she called. Her voice reverberated, echoing empty and tinny. It was hollow, at least, so maybe it wasn’t too heavy. There were a few more crunches and then he watched her rear end wiggle and disappear. “It’s a big hole!” her voice rang from inside the hunk of metal.
“Jynx, stay out of there.” He crouched down and stood behind her, not sure if he should grab her ankles and yank her out. She was definitely the only one small enough to get into the tunnel that she had burrowed. He watched her wriggle out of her backpack, and struggle to get her phone out of her back pocket. Just watching her, her dusty, popsicle stick legs sticking out of the little tunnel, he felt claustrophobic and remembered a couple of kids years ago who had gotten trapped in an abandoned opal mine collapse somewhere out in the Mojave. “Get out of there.”
“It’s huge!” Her voice rang through again.
“Jynx!” He reached for an ankle. If she got trapped, it would be hard to get anyone up the hill to rescue her.
“Hold on,” she called. “I think I found something.” The something clunked, ringing through the metal. Jynx grunted as she rolled onto her back. Echoing back from inside the thing Austin heard a strange echoing, guttural sound, her high tops kicking as she skootched out on her butt. He heard the clunking again. Whatever she found she was dragging it with her.
She grunted and wriggled out of the tunnel. When her face finally appeared, dry and dusty as she was, she was grinning. “Check it out!” she wriggled further to free her arms and passed him an old, antique flashlight and a loose plate of the same strange metal. It was about the size of a terra cotta roofing tile but smooth, rounded, curved, and all soft edges. It was surprisingly light. Austin set the flashlight and the metal scrap on a boulder beside him, and reached for Jynx, still making her way out. She sat up, inspecting the back of her arm where a smear of blood trickled down towards her elbow, “Dammit.”
“Your mom is going to kill me,” he said.
“It’s just a scratch.” She wiped her palms on her shorts, glancing over her dusty forearms. The blood turned dark, mixing with the dust.
“That’s more than a scratch.” He glanced around, looking for something to put on it. “What did you cut yourself on?”
Jynx looked at the cut, somehow entirely dissociated from the gash or the blood. She shrugged. “The inside of the hole is all jagged.” She pulled her phone from the gravel beside her, and still sitting in the dirt, swiped through a few photos.
Austin imagined infections, tetanus, flesh-eating bacteria that would kill her before they made it down the hill. He pulled the cap from his canteen and took her arm, pouring a little water over it. “Come on, Jynx. We gotta get that cleaned up.”
She tried to yank her arm back. “Knock it off, man.” She kept flicking through photos with her thumb. “Look at this.”
He picked up her backpack, digging through it for Kleenex or napkins. Finding nothing, he stuffed his canteen in there, threw it over his shoulder, and reached down to pick up Jynx, ready to carry her down the hill if he had to. She wouldn’t look up from her phone as he lifted her to her feet; she was mesmerized. “Austin, check this out.”
He urged her over the low boulders to the wash that ran down the side of the hill, glad that they wouldn’t have to climb all the way down. Without even glancing up, she grabbed the old flashlight and metal scrap from the rock and tucked them into her backpack. A few hops down the hill, she stopped. “Wait, we can’t just leave it there.”
Austin shook his head. “Fine, Jynx. You carry it home, then.” He kept walking.
Jynx glanced back up the hill. Resting in the gouge like it was, there weren’t a lot of people willing to wander up into the washes. She figured it would be safe for now. She pulled the metal tile from her pack and ran her fingers over its face. It seemed to shimmer in the late morning sun. Austin was a good fifty yards down the hill already. She tucked it back into her backpack and started into a run, chasing behind Austin’s slow and steady stride.