Canyons (9 page)

John Homesley was a biology teacher in Cardiff School. Brennan had taken biology from him the year before and an almost-friendship had developed.

Well, Brennan thought, jogging down the street that led to Homesley’s house, cooling from his run—it hadn’t started that way.

Brennan had nearly flunked, had trouble in school, and Homesley had stopped him in front of the school one day as he was heading home at the end of the day.

He was an enormous man, tall and very heavy, bordering on fat but in a controlled way. Like a bear. He had rounded shoulders that somehow looked massively strong, with a heavy head of dark curly hair that always seemed a little long and a neatly trimmed beard filled with gray streaks.

“Did you know,” he had said to Brennan, standing in the sun and grass in front of the school, “that the beetles are the most numerous species on earth?”

“What?” Brennan had been in a hurry and was slightly annoyed at the delay.

“Beetles. They’re the most numerous species of life on earth. Do you suppose that means God made the earth for beetles?”

“I beg your pardon?” Brennan was confused. He had taken biology but Homesley hadn’t said four words to him. As in most of his classes Brennan had taken a desk in the back of the room and spent much of his time trying to be ignored.

And now this teacher had stopped him on the school lawn and was talking to him.

“I said, beetles are the most numerous species on earth—so do you suppose that means God made the earth just for beetles? That beetles are God’s favorite thing?” He stared down at Brennan, his eyes serious, but a faint smile at the corners of his mouth.

“I don’t know,” Brennan said, and thought, God, I sound dumb. Maybe I
am
dumb. “I guess so.”

“Aren’t you curious about them?”

“Beetles?”

“Yes. Don’t you want to know about something that is the most numerous thing on earth?”

“Well … I don’t know. I guess so. Yes. I guess I am curious about beetles.” The sun was on him and he had to squint to look up at Homesley.

“Good. Let’s find one.”

“What?”

“Help me find a beetle. There’s probably one within five feet of where we’re standing.”

And he put a pair of reading glasses on, which made his face look round and almost clownlike, dropped to his hands and knees and started looking through the grass, moving blades of grass sideways with his fingers.

Brennan stared at him. There were other kids going past and they stopped to watch.

“Come on.” Homesley looked up. “Give me a hand. It’s easier with two looking.”

And still Brennan hesitated. Then he thought, oh, well, maybe it will help my grade and he dropped to his knees and started looking through the grass with Homesley.

“What are you looking for?” A tall kid in the eleventh grade stopped.

“Beetles,” Brennan said.

“Beetles? You mean like bugs?”

“Yes,” Brennan said, without looking up, wishing he could drop into a hole in the ground.

“They’re the most numerous species on earth.”

“Oh.”

“Mr. Homesley wanted to find one and I’m helping him.”

“Oh.”

The boy had walked away shaking his head and Brennan kept his eyes down into the grass.

And he saw one.

A black bug, almost an inch long, a shiny black beetle. “I found one.”

“What does it look like?”

“It’s black and shiny and about an inch long.” Brennan put his finger down and poked the beetle. It raised its hind end. He poked it again.

“It’s probably a blister beetle. Don’t touch it.”

But it was too late. The beetle emitted a squirt of some kind of fluid from beneath its rear end, squirted it on Brennan’s finger. Instantly there was a sharp burning sensation, a quick sting.

“Ow …”

“Exactly. They have a defense mechanism that’s pretty effective. You’ll hurt there for a while and might get a blister, but you’ll be all right. Did you know that some beetles have a small turret gun down there and they can aim all around their body and hit with incredible accuracy?”

Brennan shook his hand. The spot on his finger hurt like a sting. “No. I didn’t.”

“Oh, yes, beetles are fascinating. A person could spend his whole life just studying them. Just beetles.” He sat up, looking straight into Brennan’s eyes, his face serious. “I can’t believe you don’t want to know things.”

“But … well, I do.”

“You don’t seem to want to know biology.”

“That’s different … I’m just not good at it.”

“Nonsense. You found the beetle, didn’t you?”

“But that’s not the same.…”

“But it is. Exactly. That’s what studying biology—or anything else for that matter—is all about. Just finding things. Do me a favor, will you?”

By now there was a circle of kids watching and Brennan had never been so embarrassed in his life. He had spent most of his childhood being very shy and trying to not be noticed. And now Homesley had put him right in the middle of things.

“Every day bring me a different kind of beetle.”

“What?”

“Bring me a new beetle each day and we’ll learn about them together.…”

And a sort of friendship had developed. Brennan had done as Homesley had asked and brought a beetle, a different kind of beetle, each day and they would look it up, study the characteristics, talk about them.

And Brennan passed biology—Homesley had been as good as his word. But a strange thing had happened. Somehow working with Homesley had bled over into other parts of school. It wasn’t that he enjoyed school—he wouldn’t go that far.

But he studied. His habits changed and he studied almost by instinct; almost naturally.

Which just as naturally brought his grades up.

Which made his mother happy.

Which made him happy.

Which made it still easier to live, to study, to learn—all because of Homesley and his beetles.

But perhaps more important, Homesley had shown him other things as well—other than biology.

He had invited Brennan to his home one weekend, where he lived with a wife named Tricia who was almost as small as he was large.

He had taken Brennan into the basement, where Brennan had expected to find jars of bugs, or plants, or fetal pigs floating in preservatives.

Instead it looked like the interior of a space vehicle. Every corner, every wall was filled with electronic equipment.

“What …” Brennan stopped just inside the room.

“Music.”

“Music?”

Homesley had nodded. “Trish and I love to listen to music. We can’t watch television—it’s too … slow for us—so we listen to music.”

“You mean like rock?” Somehow he couldn’t feature Homesley listening to wild music.

And Homesley had shaken his head.

“Mostly classical. I like Mahler, and Bach and Beethoven. Trish gets into opera.”

There was an overstuffed couch in the middle of the room and at each end a floor lamp stood.

“You mean you just come down here and sit and listen to music?” he asked.

Homesley had nodded. “Sometimes we read—but usually we just listen.”

“And all of this is just for music?”

Another nod. “Of course a lot of it is speakers. Would you like to try it?”

“I sure would.…”

“Sit on the couch, in the middle, and lean back. I’ll play Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony for you.”

Brennan thought of asking for some Pink Floyd or Creedence Clearwater but decided Homesley probably didn’t have them.

He sat.

And listened.

And it was more than just hearing the music. At first the strains of Mahler sounded soft to him, and he thought he would be bored—which was what usually happened when he listened to classical music.

But the sys
tem
, the speakers made the sound so … so pure somehow, so rich and pure that the music went past just hearing, past listening—the music went into him.

He sat in stunned silence while the whole of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony, the whole of Mahler’s music, the whole of Mahler’s thinking went into his mind.

It was incredible.

When the music was finished he looked around the room expecting something, the whole world, to have changed. Homesley had left as the symphony began and he came in holding a can of soda.

“Like it?”

Brennan felt like whispering. “I didn’t know, you know, didn’t have any idea music could be that way.…”

And so Brennan learned about beetles and about music that year. Through the spring he went several times to the Homesleys’ house and listened to music, talked about music, about biology, about nothing and everything and learned most about himself.

When summer arrived he went to work for Stoney and had not spent much time with Homesley. He had been working too hard.

But the friendship was still there and the feeling that Homesley was perhaps the only person who could help him with this skull business.

That’s how he thought of it now.

This skull business.

No sleep, dreams he couldn’t begin to understand, thoughts, voices through his brain that made no sense, his whole life upside down …

This skull business.

He jogged now to cool a bit coming off the run as he neared Homesley’s house.

Homesley could help.

He hoped.

“A skull.”

Homesley’s voice was flat. He stared at Brennan.

Brennan nodded.

“With a bullet hole in it.”

Another nod. “In the forehead.”

“And you have it in your closet.”

“Yes.” Brennan sighed. “It seems pretty stupid, doesn’t it?”

“Well.” Homesley had been trimming a small green plant and he plucked a leaf from it, thinking. “Well, I don’t know. Let me get all this straight. You found the skull in a canyon and brought it home without telling anybody?”

“Right.”

“And you still have not called the police?”

“I can’t.”

“Brennan …”

“I mean it. I can’t. I’ve started to several times, many times, but something stops me and I can’t. I just can’t. And I’m having all these weird dreams that I don’t understand and things are happening to me.…”

He told Homesley all of it, from the camping trip to the dreams, and when he was finished Homesley leaned back and put his hands on the table that held the plants.

“My,” he said. “My, my, my …”

Brennan felt drained, tired. “And so I thought I would come to you.”

Homesley looked out the window, thinking. A fighter from Biggs Air Force Base roared over the house making a low-level run into the desert. Homesley’s house was in a development not far from the runway and the fighters were frequent visitors. Strangely he didn’t seem to mind the noise—although it was also true that it couldn’t be heard in the soundproofed basement music room.

“I haven’t seen the skull, of course,” he said, thinking out loud. “So I can’t say much about it. But from what you say it looks old.”

Brennan nodded. “Very old.”

Homesley smiled. “Well, not
very
old. Not prehistoric or even much over a hundred years old. It had to be after guns were here—there is, after all, the bullet hole, isn’t there?”

Again Brennan nodded. “Yes. I’m sure that’s what it is. It’s neat and round in the front.…”

“And a large chunk carried away in the back.”

“How did you know?”

Homesley smiled, a small sad smile. “I was a medic in Vietnam. I know something of bullet wounds.”

“Oh.”

“So—there wasn’t any hair or tissue on the skull or around it, right?”

“Right. It was … clean.”

“That means, I think, that we can assume the skull wasn’t part of a recent murder and may not constitute evidence.”

“You sound like a lawyer,” Brennan said.

Homesley looked at Brennan, his eyes serious. “It may very well come to that—lawyers. If the skull
does
constitute evidence—you realize that, don’t you?”

Brennan tried not to think of it but he had realized it.

“And that doesn’t change your mind about contacting the authorities?”

Brennan hesitated. “It’s not … my … mind. Sometimes I don’t want to keep the skull but a thing takes over my thinking and I can’t do it. Can’t contact the police.”

Homesley nodded. “I see. Or maybe I don’t. But I think I know what you mean.” He pushed the plant away and stood, walked back and forth in the kitchen, thinking and talking as he moved. Brennan almost smiled. Homesley looked exactly as he did when he was teaching—striding excitedly left and right in front of the class.

“Facts are almost nonexistent,” he said, “so it’s really difficult to come at this with logic.”

Brennan nodded, but said nothing.

“So we take a few shots at probabilities here. Not very scientific but I think helpful. Jump in or correct me as we go, all right?”

Brennan nodded again.

“The skull was found in the canyons up by Orogrande.” He named the small settlement on the highway—little more than a gas station—north of El Paso.

“Near Dog Canyon,” Brennan added.

“So, Dog Canyon, if memory serves, is one of the last places where the Apaches and the soldiers fought.”

“Bill said there were several battles there,” Brennan said.