Slickrock Paradox by Stephen Legault

he added, pointing down the dusty road that led to the trailhead where he had left his Outback two days before. Ken steered his Lincoln Navigator down the dirt track. “Looks to be all in one piece,” said Silas.
    â€œYou call that all in one piece?” asked Ken. “That car looks like it’s never seen the inside of a car wash. Why don’t you let me buy you a new one?”
    â€œSo I could trash it too? Thanks, Ken. Keep your money. I don’t need anything fancy.”
    Ken stopped next to it and they both got out. Stepping from the air-conditioned, cooled-seat luxury of the Navigator to the glaring furnace of the mid-afternoon desert was jarring.
    â€œNobody should be out on a day like this.” Ken put a wide brimmed hat on his head. Silas looked at his Outback.
    â€œMight be a little hot in there.”
    â€œWitch’s oven,” said Ken. “I’ll follow you to the turnoff. Then you’re on your own.”
    â€œYou don’t need to do that, Ken,” said Silas.
    â€œIt’s not an option,” said Ken.
    IT WAS LATE in the afternoon when Silas turned off the road and into his driveway. He had driven back from the trailhead with the air conditioner blowing full blast. He turned the car off and retrieved a shopping bag from the back of the car. The half a dozen cans of beer were hot to the touch.
    He reached his front door and limped into the empty house. The light through the vaulted front windows in the living room lit up the kitchen. He pushed the door shut with his shoulder, and dropped his gear on the floor. He opened the fridge door to exchange the hot cans with a cold one. He popped the tab and drank the whole can, then reached into the fridge for another.
    Can in hand, Silas confronted the maps lining his living room walls. As he stood in front of the map showing Arches National Park, he took a long pull of beer. He reached out and traced with a split fingertip the line of his march down Courthouse Wash. The canyon had been the subject of two previous searches. It was also a busy part of Arches National Park. That her body had gone unseen for more than three years was surprising.
    Silas stepped back from the map. He drank the rest of his beer staring at the dizzying scale of his work over the last few years. On the small dining room table, the worn copy of Desert Solitaire lay open to the chapter called “Cowboys and Indians.” He sat down on one of the wooden chairs and held the book gently in his hands: “ There is water in Sleepy Hollow, a big pool under a seep in the canyon wall, fenced off from the cows. We paused for a few minutes to drink and refill canteens, then moved on. No time for a swim today  . . .”
    Silas read the passage three more times and nothing new emerged from the page, except that he, of course, had taken a swim on the previous day, though it wasn’t the sort that Edward Abbey alluded to. He then read the entire chapter again.
    There was nothing new there. Silas put the book down and remembered why he didn’t like Edward Abbey: the tendency toward hyperbole. He and Penelope had fought about it often enough. She had loved Edward Abbey, had loved every word he had written. Silas had dismissed her argument as a schoolgirl crush. She had chided him for being jealous of her passion for the man’s writing, citing Silas’s failure to write anything more than academic texts condemned to mediocre journals.
    In the end she had won the argument, taking the last word with her, it seemed, to the grave. It was fitting that the burial place was Courthouse Wash. He threw the book down on the table in despair. Taking his cane, he pushed himself up and went to the kitchen to get another beer—one last cold can behind a jug of pickles and a bottle of ketchup. While he heated a frozen dinner, he clomped down the hall to the utility room where he gingerly stripped naked. Hanging his cane on the bathroom door,