The Promise of Rain (fiction excerpt)

They drive in silence up the mountain. They rise out of the valley and onto the slopes, through saguaro forests, where ocotillo branches etch the sky like upside down spiders, spindly legs reaching for something solid in the air. The road etches a rising angle onto the naked fingers that spread out at the base of the range. It cleaves the contours of the front slope before turning into the watershed of Molino Canyon.

As the lights of city fade behind the shadow of the ridge, the road tilts up, now between sheer granite walls. Cacti surrender to dwellers of higher country. Scrub oaks replace the saguaro along the murmuring stream down in the defile. They pass a sign saying they have climbed a thousand feet. Water plunges over a ledge of banded gneiss into a pool where tiny frogs have gathered to mate and feed on the abundant bloom of fireflies.

Still the road climbs. It is the fruit of  blood, the labor of prisoners who wielded hand tools to carve this arterial lifeline between the heat of the valley and the heights of the mountains; it is the gateway to alpine forests, islands of shade and cool air surrounded by the ocean of desert below.

Thoughts fail to find words as they pass through Molino Basin. The road and the towering slopes speak instead. A fire scoured this valley and left scars of ash, bony skeletons of Manzanita. The moon lights a bleak and haunted landscape, harsh reminders of the decade-long drought. She clutches his arm as the little car surges up the slope, straining against the grade. They cross a saddle and enter Bear Canyon, the first taste of the high mountain. The road levels briefly as they pass through a portal of towering granite spires and enter the sheer walls of the narrow canyon. The stream whispers as it cascades over boulders and down spillways. Water runs onto the roads off the walls of the canyon and showers the pavement. A curtain of mist chills them, rinsing the heat of the low desert off their foreheads. They enter the tall Ponderosa pines. They drive now through a tunnel of them, deep in the defile.

He is tempted to stop, but proceeds upward. His pulse rises as he takes the tight hairpin that leads up again, out of the canyon onto the contour up to Windy Point. Hoodoos stand like sentinels against the sky. They block the light of moon and stars and silhouette profiles of stone standing on either side of the highway.

His head surges with his pulse and he is flush with a desire that is almost more than he can stand. Best to warm his hands at the fire than to quell the stirring urge. She sits quietly beside him, following his lead, expectant, silent, full herself with a hunger to receive him.

They round the curve at Windy Point and pull up to a parking spot. They grab a small pack that contains sleeping pads, some water, and a blanket. They head away from the road under the moon down a path he knows to an overlook. Her eyes widen in wonder at the sight below; the city shines a million tiny lights beneath them like a bed of diamonds. There is a stream beneath them and a pool. It catches the moonlight and is completely still, a perfect mirror. He lays down the pads while she admires the light. She joins him. He touches her arm and she lies down. He reaches for her as distant lightning illuminates a thunderhead a hundred miles away, in Mexico.