The desert radio

The lid blew off my pot just as I got the chickpeas boiling. I caught it against my shin, and a spoonful of grit skated across the tin. Beyond the cooking fly, the last of the survey stakes vanished into a brown wall of dust.

“Dinner’s getting seasoned,” Wren called from under the truck.

“Come say that over your plate.”

She stayed where she was. She had a rear wheel off the ground and distrusted any meal I could serve while she was holding an axle steady.

Pella came through the dust with her map case tucked inside her shirt. She put a hand over the pot, felt the heat, and looked toward the ridge. “How long?”

“Ten minutes if the wind develops manners.”

“I meant the storm.”

I held up the lid. She took one look at it and helped me clip down the fly.

We were four people in Harrow Basin, three days from the survey depot by the marked road. Hadi ran the party. Wren drove and kept the truck alive. Pella made sense of the maps. I cooked, kept the water count, and, when someone needed supplies fetched, drove well enough to make Wren nervous.

Dry lightning flickered above the western ridge. The air smelled of ozone, sharp enough to cut through boiled chickpeas. Hadi shouted for us to get inside the truck. I killed the burner and carried the pot under my coat.

Rain fell somewhere in the hills that night. In the basin we got dust, then a few hard drops that left clean circles on the windshield. Near midnight a flash showed every stone outside the truck as plainly as noon. The radio gave a loud click. Its little green light went out.

Hadi tried it once, then stopped. “We’ll look in daylight.”

Nobody asked for seconds. I counted the water cans before bed, though I already knew the number. I did not count the fuel cans.

At first light, Wren took us to where the marked road should have left the basin. A fresh wash crossed it. On the far side, the white stakes stood in a shelf of earth that no longer had anything beneath it. Downstream, one stake lay among branches and a section of roadbed the flood had carried away.

Wren threw a pebble over the edge. It took longer than she liked to hit bottom.

“The radio?” Hadi asked.

“Set’s dead,” she said. “I checked what I can check here. The small handsets still talk to each other, but the ridge keeps them from reaching the depot.”

Hadi looked at the torn road, then at our truck. “We stay put until we can call.”

Pella had her paper map spread on the hood before he finished. It was older than the road stakes. A blue line followed the new road straight out of the basin, across ground the flood had rearranged overnight. Her pencil marks wandered elsewhere.

“The old relay station is here,” she said, touching a square on the northern ridge. “Its emergency set was still listed in the depot inventory this spring. We can reach it on foot.”

“How old is the map?” Wren asked.

“Nine years.”

“And the pencil?”

“Mine. I went through the route books before we came out. The station and the old tracks were useful enough to copy.”

Pella showed us two ways. East, a raised gravel causeway crossed the salt pan and climbed to the relay’s service road. It was the shorter route, about ten miles. North, an abandoned spoil track climbed through a saddle and approached the station from behind. It added several miles but stayed on stone.

“The causeway might still be there,” Hadi said.

“It might,” Pella agreed. “The old crew used it in dry weather. After rain in the hills, they went north.”

I looked across the basin. Sunlight made the pan appear smooth and hard. The northern saddle already held heat in its dark rock.

North meant leaving Wren beside the cans for most of the day. She might start checking them while Hadi waited for our call. I had pictured reaching the relay early, catching a depot driver before he spoke to Hadi, and asking him to bring fuel. I could have filled the reserve can before anyone reached for it. Every mile Pella added made that picture harder to keep.

“Ten miles sounds attractive,” I said.

“So does a full water can,” Wren said. “Until you pick it up and find out it’s empty.”

I busied myself with the food sack.

Hadi chose Pella and me for the walk. She knew where the relay stood; I could carry the heavier share. Wren gave us a small handset and a canvas pouch containing a factory-made lead for the camp mast. Pella had noticed that the relay inventory named the same connectors.

“You brought that because you expected damage?” I asked.

“I brought it because it weighs less than your chickpeas.”

Hadi set a time for us to call from the ridge if the handsets could reach. If the relay worked, we were to ask the depot for a vehicle. He and Wren would shelter at the truck and watch the water. We had enough for two days, provided nobody tried to wash dishes.

I used the dented measuring cup from my cooking box to divide what Pella and I could carry. Wren watched the water go in. I watched her glance at the fuel cans lashed behind the cab.

“Leave the truck alone,” Hadi told her. “Even if you find a way around that wash.”

“I’m attached to the truck,” she said. “I plan to.”

We set off while our footprints still showed in the damp dust. By the time we reached the first rise, the basin had flattened behind us. The truck was a pale fleck beside a dark patch of scrub.

The northern track came and went under stones washed from the slopes. Pella followed her annotations: a bent fence post, a fork-shaped boulder, a line of rusted drums half buried in gravel. She never called anything obvious until I had walked past it.

At the saddle we could see the eastern causeway. It made a pale, clean stroke across the pan. The station mast stood beyond it, thin against the sky.

“There,” I said. “We could have been halfway across.”

Pella crouched beside a broken chunk of salt at the edge of a shallow runoff channel. Its underside was dark and soft. She pushed the chunk away with the toe of her boot.

“Perhaps,” she said.

“That’s your favorite word today.”

“It’s doing a lot of work.”

We climbed on. An hour later the spoil track ended at a new gully. The storm water had cut through its narrowest part and left two blunt ends facing each other. Across the gap, the track continued toward the station. On our side, a rough line of stone rose to the crest.

Pella studied the map. “The old foot route goes over.”

“How far over?”

“Enough that we’ll arrive late.”

We had a choice again. We could turn back and take the causeway, still visible below, or keep climbing. The pack straps had rubbed two sore places on my shoulders.

“The pan is shorter,” I said.

“And we’ve seen what the storm did to a road built above a wash.” Pella folded the map but did not put it away. “I’m going up.”

She started before I answered. I could have let her go and taken the causeway alone. With the station in sight and the sun pressing against my back, I stood looking down at the causeway. Then a gust swept dust across the pan. The bright causeway disappeared, returned in three broken pieces, and disappeared again.

I followed Pella.

The climb took us above the warm wind. We ate some bread at a patch of shade no wider than the truck’s hood. I opened a tin of chickpeas and held the lid down while Pella took some with her fingers. Grit collected along its rim.

“Your dinner escaped,” she said.

“Only the ambitious part.”

From the crest, the relay station looked close. Its navy mast rose from a low concrete hut, with pale dunes gathered against the fence. One of the small panels by the hut hung crooked. The service road beyond it curled east toward the pan.

Pella tapped that road on her map. “If the depot sends a truck from the east, Hadi and Wren could drive out to this junction. They’d save us a recovery trip.”

The words made the food settle hard in my stomach.

“Samir?”

“The truck can’t do that.”

“It has the reserve can.”

“It has an empty reserve can.”

Pella waited. She had a way of making silence feel measured.

The day before, while the others worked a line west of camp, I had taken the truck to a supply shed for water and food. On the return I chose a dry creek marked as a shortcut on an old board at the shed. It was shorter on paper. Its deep sand kept the engine working while the wheels went almost nowhere. I used the sealed reserve can to get back before dark, then put the empty can behind the water cans.

“I meant to tell Hadi,” I said. “Then we got supper on, and I thought I’d tell him this morning.”

“You had all morning.”

“Yes.”

“How much fuel is left in the tank?”

“Wren said a little under a quarter when we parked.”

Pella wrapped the rest of the bread without eating it. “Wren said that before the storm. She thinks there’s more behind the cab.”

“I know.”

“We discussed a route for that truck in front of you.”

“I know that too.”

She stood and looked down toward the station. “We’ll tell them as soon as we have a signal.”

I picked up the food sack. “I should be the one.”

“Yes,” she said. “You should.”

---

The fence gate at the relay had blown inward and stuck against a drift of sand. We squeezed through sideways. The hut smelled of dust and hot metal. Pella lifted the cover from the emergency set and found a dim amber light on its panel. The radio inside answered when she switched it on, but only with a hiss.

Outside, something knocked against the wall in the wind. A cable from the mast had torn free near the hut and lay across the concrete step. Its plug was cracked. The socket beside the door appeared whole.

Pella opened Wren’s pouch. For once she looked pleased with a list.

“The spare fits,” she said.

I held the loose cover out of her way. The insulation on the old wire was warm from lying in the sun. Pella removed the damaged lead and put Wren’s ready-made one in its place. We had no way to mend the mast or the set if either had failed.

Inside, the hiss changed. A voice spoke through it, too faint to catch. Pella called the depot and gave our party name and station location. She repeated both until the reply came clear.

“Received, Harrow party. State your position and needs.”

I sat on the floor beside the radio, suddenly hungry enough to eat the gritty lid.

Pella described the wash, the sheltering crew, the water count. The dispatcher said a depot truck could reach the eastern junction by midnight if our survey truck drove out across the causeway. Otherwise it could take the northern service road to Kestrel Shelf by morning. The crew would have to walk four miles from the basin and leave the survey truck behind for later recovery.

“Which rendezvous?” the dispatcher asked.

I reached toward the handset. I had driven the truck; Hadi had put me on this walk partly for that reason. Pella held it where it was.

“Tell me what you can see from the station,” she said to the dispatcher.

He described the north road from his route sheet. Pella checked each turn against her annotations, then told him where the service road met the shelf. She chose Kestrel Shelf, at sunrise. She asked him to repeat it back, including the approach, and listened until he did.

Then she handed me the small handset.

From the station the basin lay open beneath us. I called Hadi. Static scraped my ear, followed by his voice.

“We hear you. Did you reach the relay?”

“Yes. The depot answered. They’ll meet us at Kestrel Shelf at sunrise. You and Wren will have to walk there.”

“What about the truck?”

“We’re leaving it for recovery.”

There was a pause. “Why?”

I could see the pale fleck where we had left them. “I used the reserve fuel yesterday. I took the creek shortcut back from the supply shed, got caught in sand, and emptied the can. I put it back without telling anyone.”

The handset hissed. Behind Hadi, I heard Wren ask him to say it again. He did, almost word for word.

When he came back, his voice was level. “Does the depot know we need fuel to recover the truck?”

“Pella’s telling them now.”

“Good. We’ll bring the records and what we can carry. Wren wants the keys.”

“She can have them.”

“She already has them,” Hadi said.

Pella took the handset and confirmed the walk to the shelf with him. She knew a line of old stone markers that would bring them up from the basin without going near the ruined road. Hadi repeated the route. Wren took the handset long enough to say, “If that can rattles on the way home, I’m putting it in your bed.”

Then the station radio called for Pella again. The dispatcher had a truck ready. He gave its call sign and said the driver would stop at the relay first to collect us. Pella wrote the sign on the back of her map and made him read it back. We waited inside the hut as the sun dropped behind the dunes.

The truck arrived well after dark. Its driver, Orin, called the agreed sign through the open window before he opened the door. Pella checked it against her handwriting by the light over the radio panel. Orin had brought water and the fuel the recovery crew would need later. He had also brought a paper sack of flat rolls, which made him the first person all day to improve my opinion of the depot.

We rode toward Kestrel Shelf before dawn. Orin kept to the northern service road, slowing where stones had fallen across it. At the shelf, he parked with his headlights pointed toward the old markers. The basin below was still dark.

At sunrise, three shapes moved out of the wash. I counted again. Hadi, Wren, and the long shadow of the survey tripod Wren carried over her shoulder. They saw the truck and came straight toward it. Wren touched its hood as if to confirm it was solid, then handed me the tripod.

“The survey truck is where we left it,” she said. “So are your pots. I considered an exchange.”

Hadi gave Orin the crew count and our location in the basin. Orin called the depot from his truck. A voice confirmed the rendezvous, all four names, and the plan to recover the survey vehicle after the washed road had been checked.

Only then did Hadi take out his field book. He opened to the fuel page and passed it to me. Wren stood beside him while I wrote what I had done. Hadi read the entry and signed beneath it.

“We’ve lost the next survey day,” he said. “You’re off driving until Wren says otherwise. Put the recovery charge against this entry when it comes.”

Wren took her keys from her pocket and turned away to help Orin stow the tripod. She had carried them all the way up from the basin.

I opened my food sack. The chickpea tin was half full, its lid still gritty, and I set it back. Orin’s rolls were the only breakfast I could put into their hands. My pots were in the truck below us. So were the burner and the cooking box I had carried farther than any of the survey instruments.

Wren took a roll and put it inside her jacket. I held out another, waiting for the complaint about chickpeas.

“One,” she said. “I counted four people.”

I handed the others to Hadi and Pella, then climbed in beside the tripod.

---

At the depot I went to the kitchen stores before I found a bed. The storekeeper would lend me one large pot. Its handles were too wide for the little burner on the mess porch, and it had no lid. I spent the first part of the afternoon waiting for a place at the kitchen stove. The depot cook put me between a tray of peeled onions and a sink full of pans that were hers.

Pella came to ask when we could eat. I showed her the pot, still empty.

“Half an hour after I get the stove,” I said.

She wrote that on the back of her map. “Tell Hadi if it changes. He hasn’t eaten since the roll.”

Wren brought our dented water measure from her bag. She had carried it up from camp with the survey tripod. I held out my hand, but she set it on the counter and stayed beside it while I fetched what the storekeeper had issued.

“Will you check the list?” I asked.

“That’s why I’m here.”

She counted the bags against the stores slip. When she was done, she put the measure beside the borrowed pot, where I could reach it, and took the slip to Hadi. I had the onions ready when the depot cook finally moved her pan aside. She left me a square of stove no bigger than the pot’s base.