The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Fifth Annual Collection

After the second break, the ropes were shortened to five feet. With fewer people attached to the camper, I was able to pick out the dark woman. She hadn’t used either opportunity to relieve herself, which was as I’d expected. Her breakfast of fish didn’t need any water to swim in, and I saw that she hadn’t touched her jug of water.

The third break freed a handful of entrants, but the woman stood her ground, only moving when Duke shortened her tether to the camper.

I couldn’t believe the woman’s perseverance. Nine hours without a break; hell, she didn’t even sit on the ground. No water, no food come evening (Duke offered cold-cut sandwiches, or fried chicken wings), and once it got cold, she didn’t so much as draw her worn jacket tighter across her shoulders.

When the moon came up, shone down cold on the camper and the ring of people around it, Duke whispered, “I thought they’d give up come night, no?”

It had finally dawned on Duke that he had made no provisions for watching his entrants come night time; he had no one to spell him in the diner come morning after a sleepless night. The hordes of radio, newspaper and television reporters hadn’t shown, yet he was honorbound to at least make a show of fair play . . . until his buddy the trucker was the only person standing by the camper.

“That article, how many days it say the contest was running?” Moonlight turned the deep furrow between his eyes into a mooncrater, all high pale ridges and black shadow.

“Five and a half days,” I said as evenly as I could. It was hard not to smile.

"Five and a . . . sheesh. I thought the sun ... or the cold—”

Before me, the woman in denim was a piece of umber sculpture, softened only by the dark fall of her hair and the white-worn clothes she wore. I thought again of O’Keeffe, the earth-nun in black and white, posed before a bare wall and a hanging cow skull. Spare, but lush at once. Shadows pooled in her eye sockets as the woman stood there, bound to the camper with faintly luminous rope, and all the scene needed was a white rose, suspended in space.

Around her, the other entrants settled down for the easy part. Many, including the trucker from Santa Fe, slept, curled like dark shells on the sand. Duke offered me a ten spot if I sat out there and stayed awake while the entrants slept. I took it, not telling him I would have watched the woman for free.

I swear that I didn’t sleep at all that night; I had to have been awake to call out the break times twice that night. I know that I was awake; I docked the stragglers and untied their ropes. I had to be alert, awake; I told the people that once the ropes were a foot away (come morning) Duke would take them off and everyone would have to keep at least one hand on the camper, for starters.

I did, I did stay awake through it all, but yet. . . the woman didn’t move, save for a sideways shuffle of her worn cowboy boots when I drew her rope in. Oh, yeah, she blinked, and she breathed, she wasn’t dead, but. . . God, she was still. And she hadn’t peed, I mean nobody can hold it like that. Can they?

She didn’t eat, she didn’t drink. Her water jug rested obscenely full, sloshing when Duke or I kicked it along after her with each foot-long pulling-in of the rope. I’ve heard about how starving people get to a point where they can’t eat; the body forgets or something. But not to take water? Lizards, some desert mice pull that shtick, not people.

Come sun-up, she was still standing there, conserving strength, I supposed. Her camper-mates numbered around twenty or so. I was too rattled to count.

Duke spelled me, watching through the back window he kept track of his people while fixing food, while I napped. But my dreams were full of stark white and oily black hair above denim, and I went back out come ten, ten-thirty. Before I stepped outside, Duke said, "That woman, she don’t take breaks, no?”

"No.”

The reporters were there, and so were the crowds. And the woman was still standing, one hand pressed against the hot skin of the camper. Yes, she stood on the hot side, even though she was now free to move to the cooler side of the camper.

“Hey, you work here?” The moist-faced man in the madras plaid shirt held a notebook and pen in his hand. Second-string flunky from the local news, I supposed.

"No, I wash the dishes for my health—sorry, didn’t sleep—”

"That’s okay. You been here from the start, right? See that woman, in the jeans jacket? She some kind of nutcase?”

I marveled at the fellow’s lack of verbal skills. I scraped my hand against my cheek; the beard stubble was faintly audible as I replied, "Just determined, I guess. Maybe she likes the heat,” I added defensively. The reporter probably wouldn’t think she was beautiful, either.