For the third time, in two long years, a road ravaged Ford Rambler wagon grinds it’s way along highway 89, outside Prescott Arizona. It will turn right, off the highway, onto an unmarked track, before reaching the branch to Oak Creek Canyon.
Just after sunset the Ford rolls to a halt.
A lanky shadow-figure removes its’ straw hat and separates itself from the car.
Save for the hunched, blasted shed, built by the shadows own two hands, near a large boulder, there is nothing but sand, stone and tortured scrub for five miles in every direction.
Still… Abram Barlow will wait until the deep night to move the device.
It is May 8th, 1967 and in the morning Abram will vanish again beneath the smooth surface of polite society and the anonymity of the masses.
But for the moment he is unique.
He is redeemed.
He is turning his back on wealth, on fame and on bookish immortality.
He is placing a heavy metal crate in a shallow grave.
He caresses a valve, on the side of the dark rectangle, and there’s the sound of air, like a tired sigh.
From deep within the box comes a muffled click and the desert silence resettles its’ head beneath its’ black wing.
Enshrouded and buried, the box will sleep.
Abram places a carefully rusted padlock on the door.
He cleans black-rimmed glasses on a crisp, white shirt; knocks sand from the tops of black leather shoes.
The first rumor of daylight appears above the bluffs.
Abram replaces the straw cowboy hat over his close-cropped hair.
He steps into the Rambler and into null history.
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