Wednesday, 9:00 p.m.

On Wednesday, at 8:10 p.m., I cut the Corolla's engine at the bottom of a wash two miles east of Peniel, and the silence came down on me like a blanket thrown over a fire.

I hadn't come in by the turnoff road. There's another way into Peniel that outside people don't know about: the old cliff road, which leaves the highway a dozen miles farther east and runs along the foot of the Vermilion Cliffs, busted up, gullied, with stretches where you have to crawl over bare rock. I'd walked it at fifteen, one summer night, to see if it could be done. I came away with scraped knees and a map in my head.

The wash was a dry riverbed, wide and sandy, with banks of red dirt higher than the car. You'd only see the Corolla if you stumbled right onto it. I left the key on top of the right front tire, up under the fender, the way my father used to with his work trucks. So I could leave without fumbling for it, if I came back running. Or so somebody else could leave, if I didn't come back.