Dark Rising

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Chapter One

The ground was white with frost. Patches of snow, more than a month old now, lay like pieces of tissue paper strewn across the field. The ground undulated slightly, frozen waves of earth in the freezing January morning rising to meet a sky that was a miser of water, a meager provider. She looked in either direction and could see nothing but the frozen winter grass and an azure sky that went on forever. She sat on a well worn saddle, first owned by her grandmother and passed on to her when she had turned twelve. The leather was cracked and carefully worn, lovingly oiled and tended for sixty years on the same property. Horses changed, but the mount was always the same for the Anderson women. Seventeen hands high, with a proud neck and an arrogant carriage, the thoroughbred acted as though she knew her father had nearly won the Kentucky Derby twenty years earlier. She was stunning. Her ebony coat broken only by a spot of white on her left hind quarter. She stamped the frozen ground, ready to go again, ready for her mistress to give the command, to let her run. “Easy Tondra.” The woman’s voice was deep. Like her horse, the woman’s hair was a shiny, jet-black that reflected the light and belied a thousand new colors when a

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person took long enough time to look. Her fiery green eyes, set in a symmetrical, tan face and reminiscent of a Sioux woman, scanned the horizon. The woman looked at her hands, clad in well worn, deerskin gloves. She could feel the cold in her cheeks, a pleasant stinging sensation, and she smiled to revive the numbing skin. The horse stamped again and steam flew from its nostrils. The woman patted the horse firmly on the neck and kept scanning the horizon. The woman was a striking figure - her long frame an easy match for the tall racer she rode. She wore a long, taupe duster, its tails dropping easily to either side of the saddle. Her hair flowed from under a crisp, black cowboy hat adorned with a simple silver hatband. She loved this time of the morning best, when the sun was just above the horizon and the day was still clear. She had run the horse to the middle of the field and stopped here to just sit and listen as the world came alive. This morning she was looking for a hawk she called Mr. Hopper after a children’s book she had read twenty years ago in the third grade. She knew he would come. He always came when she was out there. Like so many things, it was just a matter of being patient. She played this game two or three times a week. She rode Tondra to the middle of the field and then stopped and waited. She didn’t remember how it had all started, whether she had found Mr. Hopper or he had found her, or why she even did it. As she waited until she heard the other birds rustle and squawk in the grass. Tondra stamped her foot again and blew in frustration as the woman toyed with the reins. The woman saw her own breath, and the cold was working through her thin deerskin gloves. She looked down at the reigns in her hand. If she let go, Tondra would

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wander. She and the horse had been together for eight years now, bought with the winnings from a small talent contest; Tondra had been a six-year-old retiree of the racetrack, unsuited for breeding. And that’s how the woman felt. Unsuited for breeding, finished with the fast lane, but content to come out into the field and wait for the world to send what it would. She felt his presence over her shoulder before she saw him. She looked up and saw him high above her. She smiled for the second time that morning. You almost got the slip on me, she thought, you took off and I didn’t see you. She watched as the hawk circled over her in a lazy circle. Did he see something near her he might like to eat? Was he hungry when he woke as she always was? She waved to him, and then clicked at Tondra. The horse, impatient to move, started a brisk walk. “HA!” the woman yelled to the world around her, and the world swallowed her call as Tondra responded to the gentle kick from the woman’s black boots. The woman settled her hat down hard on her head with one hand and together she and the horse raced over the familiar field. They had done this a thousand times, over this same field, and every day was different, every time was new. But they were always one, together in a fluid dance of motion and speed. They raced through a grove of alders, planted generations before the woman had been born, and sped over a little knoll. As they came down the backside a long and low ranch house came into view. It was rambler, simple and boxy, elegant in an austere kind of way. Behind it sat the barn, a functional gray building with a shiny tin metal roof. The fields came almost right up to the house, cordoned off in some areas to make stalls and corrals for the horses, left wild in other places for rides like this. Up the middle of it

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all was a packed dirt road leading to the back door of the house. A well-kept lawn and careful flowerbeds, empty now of all save the hardiest shrubs, surrounded the house like a manicured moat. She rounded the back of the house and came up to the barn door. She easily dismounted Tondra and threw her shoulder into the two-story barn door. It rolled easily on its metal tracks and she walked to the first stall and slipped the reins over a loop on the post by the horse’s door. “Thank you, missy,” the woman whispered in the horse’s ear. Tondra knew this routine too. Her job was over, her time outside was finished for the morning, and she expected payment. She nudged the woman. There was a carrot or an apple somewhere for her. “What are you after?” the woman laughed. “Huh, girl? You think you know what I have for you?” she asked softly. She peeled off her gloves and with practiced care unbuckled the saddle and slid it onto the mount her father had crafted years before for her mother. She slid the saddle blanket off and neatly folded it in four and laid it carefully on the shelf next to the saddle then reached in her pocket and pulled out a small carrot. “Here ya go girl,” she said as she offered it to the horse. Tondra plucked it expertly from her hand and noisily chewed it. The woman stood next to Tondra’s left shoulder, looking back down the side of the big horse, and tapped the giant’s leg. The horse obediently lifted its leg and bent its knee. With a pick the woman quickly pulled what little soil had been picked up in the

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morning’s ride. She repeated the practiced motion for the other three hooves and put the pick back in the basket next to the stall. Next she reached for a shovel and walked toward the stall door. “C’mon girl, move over,” she said. Tondra sidestepped with amazing grace for such a large animal. The woman kicked gently through the straw and went to the familiar corner where Tondra was kind enough to do her business on a regular basis. She looked quickly through the green-brown droppings, noted nothing but hay, and tossed them easily with the shovel into the trash bin by the door. “Okay girl, back in you go,” she whispered as she lifted the bridle off the horse’s head and slipped the tiny bit out of Tondra’s mouth. The horse snorted and shook her mane, then walked into her stall and went straight for the oats in a feed sack near the window that looked out at the south fields. The woman closed the door behind her. “All right, Tondra, you be good and don’t get into trouble, ya hear girl?” Tondra snorted in reply. The woman picked up her gloves and turned to walk down the barn. It was a simple building; a perfect rectangle of wood beams and cement, one hundred and forty feet long and forty feet across. There were ten stalls on either side, and all but two of them had horses in them now. The ranch hands would be along soon to feed and clean them, but the woman liked to walk through and make sure that everything was in order. She reached the end of the barn and turned around to walk down the other side. She stopped at a stall in the middle. There was an older horse there, with a bowed back and eyes that weren’t so clear anymore. He had been looking out of his window when she walked up to his stall, but heard her behind him and turned around.

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“Good morning, Mr. Greenjeans,” she said to the ancient gray paint. Nobody knew how old Mr. Greenjeans actually was, he been bought more than twenty-five years ago from some folks driving through town. But just about every one of the woman’s friend’s had learned to ride on him when they were younger, including the woman herself. He was a gentle soul, happy to take life at a slow pace and impossible to anger. He seemed to smile at her as he came up to the door. “Yeah, I thought you might need a little something,” she said as he pulled the last carrot out of her pocket. He took it gingerly from her hand and nodded. She scratched his ears, gave him a gentle kiss between his nostrils, and a kind stroke on his cheek. She wondered how much longer she would have with her old friend. “I’ve got to go now. You keep an eye on Tondra. I think she’s going to be a problem today.” She walked out of the barn with a slow, purposeful step, her boots clicking and echoing on the immaculate cement floor. She walked across the frozen ground to the single-pane sliding glass door of the rambler and stepped inside to a blast of warmth and the smell of coffee. “Mom, what are you up to now?” she asked the older lady sitting on a kitchen chair at the little desk built into the counter. Like her daughter, the older woman was tall and thin. Her silver hair was full and cut short around her neck. Without taking her eyes off the flat panel computer monitor she was staring at, she replied, “Checking my stocks.”

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The woman walked over and draped her arm over her mother’s shoulder, twisting her head slightly so that her longer hair would not interfere with her mother’s view, “So, how are we doing?” she asked with a smile. The older woman continued to peer down her half moon reading glasses at the information on the screen. “Well, it looks like we’re doing okay today. I sure wish I had some more cash to buy a little Microsoft. I think they’re about the only ones around here that are going to come out of this technology slump.” She moved the mouse deftly across the screen and brought up an astrological page. “Now,” she murmured, “Let’s see what kind of day we’re going to have.” The younger woman chuckled, “Mom, I love you.” She kissed the older woman on the cheek and stood up. “Then Shannon, my dear, would you please get married, have children, and stop giving me heart failure?” “Sure Mom, just as soon as you get rich day trading.” “I fear that will happen long before you ever find a good man to settle down with.” The younger woman laughed, “Mom,” she said, shaking her head as she sliced a bagel and dropped it in the older silver toaster, “Why don’t you go and find a nice man, get married, and settle down?” “I’ve already had one, my dear,” the older woman said as she sailed across the kitchen in her old fashioned brown housecoat, empty coffee cup in hand. She slid the worn Mr. Coffee carafe from its electric base and poured herself another cup. She pulled

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a two-quart container of vanilla creamer from the avocado fridge door and poured a healthy helping into her cup. “Mom, I love you, but even Dad looking down from heaven must be getting tired of seeing you alone on a Saturday night.” It was a conversation they had regularly, sometimes once a week, sometimes twice a day. Like the pasture it was familiar ground - rich in tradition. Shannon’s mother laughed again and wandered back to the computer that had now downloaded her daily horoscope. “Ah ha!” she said quietly, “Here it is. ‘Romance is in the air tonight. Take a chance and see what comes about.’ “Well, there you go, dear. Something romantic will happen tonight.” “Mom, Frasier getting a new girlfriend on T.V. doesn’t count.” “It won’t be Frasier, dear.” The older woman’s glasses were back on and she was sitting in front of the screen again, “It’s Friday. I have my movie of the week.” “Oh, Mom. At least come dancing with us tonight,” Shannon pleaded without conviction. In the eight years since her father’s death, her mother had not once been dancing. And that would not have been such a terrible thing, if it weren’t for the fact that in the thirty-two years they’d been married before he died, her mother and father had danced every Saturday night, and often on Wednesdays, too. “Here’s your day, dear,” her mother continued without paying attention to the invitation. She slurped her coffee loudly, a habit Shannon had found mortifying as a teenager, and now found comforting in their day-to-day life together. “You’re going to have unexpected news from afar today.”

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“Really?” Shannon asked sarcastically, “I wonder what it could be?” She paused. “Oh! I know, Martians will come and abduct me and I won’t have to work all next week. Of course, the anal probe will hurt like hell, but it can’t be any worse than sitting behind that counter for another forty hours.” Her bagel popped up, slightly blackened from the worn toaster’s less than perfect thermostat. She slipped a knife into the exposed half and lifted it expertly from the toaster to the cutting board. She repeated this maneuver with the second half and spread the strawberry cream cheese she’d opened a moment before thinly over the warm bread. “Don’t mock the stars, Shannon,” her mother’s voice was serious and Shannon knew she was only half joking, “They hold the key to your future.” “Well, maybe I’ll get lucky,” she replied as she walked out of the kitchen with her bagels on a paper towel, “And they’ll also hold the keys to a new Ford pickup.” She ate her bagel and then showered quickly. It was seven forty-five now and she had a half hour drive into town. She was almost certainly late, but she was willing to forgive herself this time. It was, after all, Friday. “Bye, Mom,” she said, dressed now in black slacks and a white blouse, her makeup showing off her green eyes, her straight, dark hair, brushed to a silky sheen with her bangs thrown carefully to the side. She pecked her mother on the cheek, a ritual of living together for so long. Her mother was now in jeans, an old pink sweatshirt, and an oversized men’s quilted-flannel shirt. She stood in the middle of the neat living room as if looking for something. She cocked her head to receive the kiss. “Goodbye dear.”

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Shannon was pulling the metal front door closed when her mother called after her, “Shannon! Wait.” Shannon opened the door again and looked expectantly at her mother. “Eric called, says he’s going to try and call tomorrow morning. But if he doesn’t get a hold of you, you should call him.” Shannon smiled, “Okay.” “Good bye, dear. Drive carefully.” “Yes mother,” Shannon replied as she closed the door with a padded thump. She could see her breath as the old machine rumbled to life, a plume of steam issuing from its tailpipe. She revved the engine twice, then sat for a moment as it got used to itself again in the freezing morning. She turned on the radio and dialed in a local morning show where her friend Alice was the weather and traffic girl. She dropped the transmission into reverse with a clunk and eased the truck down the gravel drive, waving at her Mom who was off to start some self-assigned task in the barn. She craned to see if Miguel and Harry, her mother’s ranch hands, had shown up yet. Just beyond the barn, parked at a jaunty angle to the stables, she saw Miguel’s wellused Nissan pickup. Satisfied her Mom probably wouldn’t do anything stupid while there was someone looking over her; she eased onto Horse Creek road and toward east bound interstate eighty. “Well folks, it’s another day in paradise,” came Alice’s sweet voice over the radio after Mark Kimball had announced her. “Today’s high is going to be right around 40 degrees and the winds will pick up from the north-north west this afternoon and get

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themselves up to about thirty miles an hour, so make sure your hats are pulled down tight. Tonight’s lows will be right around eighteen degrees. “Traffic is running smoothly all around Cheyenne today,” she went on, “our only problem is northbound eighty-five at East Demming. A semi-tractor trailer collided with a pickup and while that’s been pulled to the side of the road, there’s still some slowing. “Your next update is in twenty minutes. I’m Alice Manning with your KPMS traffic and weather.” Shannon hit the on-ramp for east bound eighty and settled back for the ride. She turned off the radio, preferring silence over the chatter of Alice’s boss, and let the twenty miles into town slip by quietly. After her ride on Tondra, this was the best the part of her day. She thought of Alice, the consummate cheerleader in high school. They had known each other since the third grade when Alice’s father had moved them here to work for Cauterworks mining just outside of town. Even in school Alice had never stopped talking, never stopped being perky. Now she was getting paid for it. She managed the truck off the freeway and into downtown Cheyenne. She’d been to other cities and seen how they managed to get themselves in knots about this time of day. But Cheyenne was a sleepy town that never woke all the way up from whatever dream it was living. There were few cars on the road at eight-thirty and plenty of places to park. Nobody honked, and if you wanted to cross the street you had a better than fair chance that there wasn’t anyone about to gun you down. She parked the truck and stepped into the chilly morning. She wore just a sweater, and now she wondered at the wisdom of that as she made her way to the

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employee’s entrance of the bank. She punched in her access code and heard an electric snap as the door released its lock. She pulled on the handle and let herself inside. “Morning, Jeanie,” she called to the portly, middle-aged woman at the first teller’s booth. “…Forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty,” Jeanie continued to count. “Good morning, Shannon,” she replied without looking up. “You ready for the weekend?” Shannon asked as she set her jacket on the back of her teller’s chair and walked toward the open vault. “As I’ll ever be. Ralph wants to head out to Laramie on Saturday and look at some tack.” Jeanie and her husband, Ralph, lived on the east side of town. Laramie, sixty miles away from them, would be an adventure for the couple that thought of a night out as picking up a movie at the video store and a frozen pizza before heading home. Jeanie rapidly entered some numbers on the keypad in front her. “You should stop by for lunch and see Mom and me.” Shannon was back out of the vault now and had started counting her own cash drawer, entering the information on the terminal in front of her and automatically getting ready for the next eight hours in her little prison. “That would be nice. We’ll do that if we actually make it out. You know how Ralph is - by the time I get home tonight, he’ll have started some other big project and we’ll be stuck around the house doing that instead,” Jeanie got up from her chair and walked over to the little coffee pot in the middle of the small customer waiting area and filled it at the drinking fountain.

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“You could always come by yourself,” Shannon replied without looking up from her counting. The hold Ralph exuded over the Jeanie irritated Shannon. She wondered how different Jeanie would be without the old ball and chain. It was just before eleven o’clock when Martha showed up in the line. Shannon saw the little old white haired lady standing behind a much younger, skinny man in a straw Stetson. Shannon caught Jeanie’s eye and raised her eyebrows in Martha’s direction. Jeanie shook her head, ‘Not today’ the gesture said. Shannon raced through the transaction in front of her, trying to get the young man and force old Martha on Jeanie. “Thirty, forty, fifty,” she counted the ten-dollar bills and laid them on the counter. “Thank you, ma’am,” the customer replied. “Now, I’m also going to need to make a deposit for my son here. He gave me his birthday checks and I’ve got the deposit slip somewhere.” The man rummaged through his pockets. Shannon held in a groan as she watched Jeanie finish with her customer and call the skinny man to the counter. Martha was next. “I’m gonna need a cashier’s check for five hundred dollars,” the young man said. “Certainly, sir,” Jeanie said. She smiled at Shannon as the young man got his account information. Shannon’s customer was still rummaging around in his pockets for the missing deposit slip. Jeanie could make a cashier’s check last all afternoon if she wanted. “Here it is,” the man in front of her said as he pushed the white deposit slip and the well-worn check across to her. Shannon slid the check and the deposit through the

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reader, quickly tapped in a few entries on her keypad, and smiled as she dismissed the man from her window. Martha approached, hobbling on her cane, her old socks loose around her generous ankles, her blue knit cap kitty-wonkers on her head, wisps of white hair peeking out from underneath. She slammed her cane on Shannon’s counter with a huff and leaned forward for support, her huge blue eyes twinkling. “You know, young lady, when I was your age a woman stayed home and had a family.” Her breath was a blast of rotten milk and she pursed her lips as she stared hard at Shannon. Shannon held back a laugh. She pulled her hair behind her shoulder and put her elbows on the counter, her face resting in her fists. She was settling in for what was looking like one of Martha’s more memorable visits. “Martha, dear,” Shannon asked, attempting to divert the conversation, “Where did you get that cap?” The older lady jumped slightly as she was reminded that she had a hat on her head. Her gnarled hand reached up and her twisted fingers felt the thing. She smacked her lips a couple of times, worked her tongue around, and then said, “I made it.” Shannon’s smile never faltered. “It’s beautiful,” Shannon lied. God, she hoped she didn’t end up like Martha, old and alone and cranky as hell, with nothing better to do with her days than harass captive younger people.

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“No it’s not!” Martha barked. “It’s awful and I know it. I can’t get good yarn anymore. That damn Wal-Mart doesn’t carry anything but this Chinese stuff. It’s horrible.” “Then why are you wearing it?” Shannon asked. “Because it’s warm. Girl, you could do with some home making skills. Then maybe you’d get a man. Look at me. I could sew and knit and cook and I got me a great man. My Derek was a good father. Six boys and two girls that man sired. Damn fine man he was.” It was common knowledge among people in Cheyenne that Derek, had been an abusive drunk who had beaten at least one of his son’s nearly to death. The other five had run as far from him as they could. Shannon’s Mom had dated one of the sons briefly and she didn’t speak kindly of Martha’s long departed husband. Martha rapped on the counter with her tree-stump knuckles. “That’s what you need. A good man. A good looking girl like you ought to be married.” Shannon heard Jeanie snicker at the other counter. “What about you, Martha?” Shannon asked. “When are you going to get remarried?” Martha looked from side to side, checking to see if anyone was listening. Then she leaned farther forward and whispered, “I think Ed Granton is going to propose any day now.” Ed Granton, it was rumored, had been Martha’s first love and hadn’t been seen in Cheyenne for fifteen years, ever since his daughter had moved him to a managed care facility closer to Denver where she lived.

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Shannon smiled and winked at her co-conspirator. “Well then,” she said, raising an eyebrow and whispering, “We’d better get you some of your money so you can buy that new dress.” Martha handed the check to Shannon that all the cashiers had come to know so well. This was a Friday morning ritual. Old Martha would show up, allergic to and terrified of, anything with a microprocessor. Martha never touched an ATM and harassing the tellers was a pastime, a diversion from her empty life. And while Martha could suck time like a whirlpool could devour flotsam and jetsam, the tellers liked her, as long as she wasn’t at their counter. Shannon slipped the check through the reader. It automatically approved it, but she always liked to check Martha’s balance, just to make sure nothing funny was going on. She pressed the F10 key and the screen showed the last two weeks of transactions on Martha’s account. All she saw was a deduction from the electric company and Martha’s standard two hundred and fifty dollar check. The balance on the account was still over two million dollars. Martha refused the manager’s repeated attempts to have her cash put into more productive securities. The old woman cited everything from the internet bubble to FDR’s crooked dealings with congress during the depression. Shannon counted out the bills and slipped them into a self-sealing envelope as she handed them over to the fat old lady. Martha did not count them again, just slid the envelope into her cheap vinyl purse, snorted twice, and pulled her cane off the counter. “Well,” Martha said, “This has been one helluva winter, hasn’t it? No wind. No snow. Almost like fall never left.”

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“Yes, ma’am,” Shannon replied. Just then Shannon saw one of the customers in the line gesture toward her. It was Alice and she was letting other customers go ahead of her so that Shannon could serve her. Alice saw she’d caught Shannon’s eye and waved. Shannon smiled and raised her index finger; it would just be a minute. “You know, Derek always said, there’s two seasons in Wyoming. Winter and road construction.” Shannon laughed. Everyone said that, but Derek had more reason than most. Until his death twenty years earlier he’d been the number one road contractor for the state, and the most crooked. Another open secret in a small city full of them. “I need to get going,” Martha finished, “I’ve got my Valentine’s cards to send.” Shannon raised her eyebrows in amazement. She could not picture old Martha sitting down at a table writing out something as frivolous as Valentine’s Day cards. “You have a good week, Martha.” “You too, girlie. You’re pretty,” she barked again, “Get yourself a man and get out of this place. Doesn’t suit a woman to work.” And she trundled off on her cane, bashing through the door held open by an unsuspecting mother with a stroller. Alice stepped up to the counter. Shannon locked her drawer and turned toward her friend. “Hey stranger,” Shannon said. “Oh, it hasn’t been that long,” replied the short, pretty blonde girl across from her. Alice had on heavy makeup and some kind of designer dress, neither of which Shannon would be caught dead in. But that was the beauty of her friendship with Alice; things that

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she wouldn’t do Alice might, and it always reminded Shannon that there was another side of life. “What’s up?” Shannon asked. “Oh, nothing much. Can you get take a break?” Alice’s tone was casual, but her eyes were urgent, compelling. Shannon looked around the lobby. There was a customer in line and Jeanie was almost done with the skinny kid in the Stetson. It had been a busy morning, they were short a teller and someone to work the new accounts desk. “I’d better not. I just went for coffee half an hour ago.” Alice looked frustrated, almost panicked. What the hell was going on? “You got time for lunch?” Shannon asked. Alice nodded. “Yeah, that’ll work. How about the Brewhaus? “What time?” “When can you take off?” Shannon looked at her watch. “Twelve thirty?” “Sure.” Alice looked relieved. “I can only take my hour, though. We’re short today. Is everything okay?” Shannon asked. Normally Alice was more like her radio persona, bubbly and a tornado of energy, but today Alice seemed edgy and furtive. “Oh yes,” Alice replied with a false smile, “Just wanted to make sure we could get together for lunch. It’s been so long.” Shannon wasn’t convinced as her friend left the counter and walked out of the lobby.

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*

*

*

She stepped out of the bank and into the bright, early afternoon. The air was still crisp and dry, but she wasn’t cold now as she walked the four empty blocks to the restaurant. The Brewhaus was one of those generic restorations. Someone with more money than sense had bought an old, run-down, brick store in the middle of the old shopping block. They had gutted the building, ripped out the floor of the second story and restored the old wood floors on the first as much as was fashionable. Scars of the building’s history were proudly displayed between tables as deep groves and ruts in the old floor. The right quarter of the old building was partitioned off by a floor-to-ceiling plate glass wall. Behind the glass a row of three massive copper kettles sat, their indigestion creating the brew served at the bar on the left side of the building, a massive oak thing salvaged from somewhere in Oklahoma and inserted here. Skylights high above the patron’s heads saved eating lunch in the cavernous building from being dark and dreary. The lunch crowd echoed sharply against the exposed brick and lumber. Alice was seated at a table toward the back of the building and waved to Shannon as she came in. “God, I’m starving,” Alice said as Shannon settled down into the oak spindle chair across from her. “I could use a beer.” A middle-aged waiter with a handlebar moustache appeared at their table. “Afternoon, ladies,” he said, his voice deep and booming. “My name is Ron and I’ll be your server. Today we’ve got jambalaya for the special and our soup is cream of chicken. Can I get you anything from the bar?”

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“Yes,” Alice said before Shannon had a chance. “We’ll take two of your lightest beers.” “That would be our India Pale this month,” he said. “Great.” “Uh,” Shannon started to object, but Ron was already gone. She turned to Alice, “You know I can’t drink at lunch.” Alice waved her hand, but her eyes darted away from Shannon’s, “Oh, c’mon. It’s Friday. Here,” she reached into her purse and pulled out a box of Altoid mints, “These’ll cover you from the boss man making a problem about it.” Normally Shannon would have objected and cancelled the beer. Alice could be pushy and Shannon had learned early on in their friendship that it didn’t pay to let her get the upper hand. But everything about this lunch was weird, from Alice coming into the bank instead of calling, to her taking charge like this. She decided to sit back and just take it as Alice wanted it. Shannon had known her friend long enough to be sure that whatever was bugging her, whatever secret was screaming to be told, Shannon wouldn’t have to wait long. “So, how’s old Helen doing?” Alice asked referring to Shannon’s mother. They always referred to their parents by first name as a kind of inside joke. So this is how it’s going to be, Shannon thought. Okay, I’ll play along. “I caught her day trading again this morning.” Helen had lost almost a third of the money Shannon’s father had left her after his death while day trading stocks a few years before. “Oh lord,” Alice said.

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Shannon smiled and shook her head, “You’d think she’d learn. But that’s Mom, ever the optimist. Other than that things are going fine. The stables are almost full right now, so that’s bringing in a little extra cash she can use. And Miguel found a new guy, Harry, to help out so they’re starting to knock out some of the stuff that’s been hanging around for a while, like getting the wiring updated in the barn and they’ll probably put some new fence this out summer.” Alice nodded, but Shannon wondered if she was really paying attention. “Who was that old nut in front of me in the bank today?” she asked. “Martha,” she laughed. “Here you go ladies,” Ron barged in with the two beers. He slopped them down in front of the women and they sloshed over slightly. Shannon pulled her napkin out of harm’s way to avoid it getting wet. “Have you had a chance to decide on lunch?” he asked. “Uh no, not yet, Ron,” Shannon turned on her most powerful smile. “Can you give us a couple of minutes?” “Sure thing,” and he marched back to the bar and whatever conversation he and the tender had been in the middle of before the lunch crowd got going. Shannon looked around. It was getting noisy. “So who is Martha?” Alice asked. What was she dancing around, Shannon wondered. “Do you know the Ashton’s at all?” “You mean the road crew company?”

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“She’s the old man’s widow. You’ve heard all the stories. Well, she’s most of them. She comes into the bank once a week to cash a check, won’t touch cash machines or use credit cards, and harasses us.” “I heard her reaming you for not having a good man,” Alice laughed, her high, bubbly laugh. No matter what was going on, if something struck her as funny the whole room was going to know about it. “God, if one more person tells me I need a man I’m going to run them over with my truck. Helen started in on me this morning about not dating enough and then Martha. I’m surprised you haven’t got two cents in.” Shannon stopped and there was a long pause. “That’s it, isn’t it?” Shannon smiled as she said it. Alice was caught off guard. “That’s what?” she asked, confused. “Alice, we’ve known each other for twenty-one years. You’re dancing around something and I’ll bet real money it’s that you want to set me up on a date, isn’t it?” Alice looked even more shocked, now coupled with confusion. “No.” She looked away. “We’d better decide what we want to eat.” Shannon picked up her menu, gave Alice a stern look she hardly meant, and started looking for her lunch. “Ladies?” Ron asked as he stumped up to the table, his little pot belly sticking out over his white waiter’s apron. Shannon didn’t even really notice him. “I’ll have the club sandwich,” Shannon told him. “Excellent choice.”

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Yeah, right, Shannon thought. “Fries, not salad,” she told him before he could ask. He nodded acknowledgement. “And for you ma’am?” he asked Alice. “Cobb salad.” She handed the menu to him without another word and he stomped away. “So, what is it?” Shannon asked, grinning. Alice sighed, deeply troubled. “Kurt’s coming back to town,” she said flatly. Shannon was instantly starved of oxygen. She gasped and looked away at the glass wall as the floor dropped from under her. Her beer dropped to the table with a thud. Kurt. The name was a sledgehammer. And that’s how he’d been to her, wasn’t it? Like a sledgehammer, beating her into the emergency room. Shannon’s hands trembled. She and that evil piece of shit had dated for sixteen months. They had met just after Shannon’s twenty-first birthday in a hot August at the Laramie Pioneer Days. God, he’d been gorgeous. Taller than her, which most men weren’t, with blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes, a model perfect face and broad shoulders. The first time she’d seen him he had been slightly sweaty, walking along with his friends with his t-shirt off and tucked into the waistband of his pants in a beer garden. They’d started drinking together that afternoon, and by sundown Shannon had decided she wanted him, wanted to be wanted by him, and after three weeks of serious pursuit, she’d let him do what she wanted. And things had been fine for the rest of the summer. Hell, they’d been great until Christmas. Then one night at his parent’s place in Laramie he’d had too much to drink. When she said something about it, he grabbed her

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roughly by the upper arm, his immense strength funneled entirely into her small bicep, the pain searing through her arm, and forced her outside. He slapped her, hard on the cheek. “Don’t you ever talk to me like that in front of my family,” he snarled. Her face stung as his calloused palm let go of her arm. She lifted her right hand to sooth her left arm, and then her cheek. Tears burned down her face. “You bastard,” she spat and started to walk away. He grabbed her again, spun her around and forced her to the ground. His eyes were bleary and she could smell the beer on his breath and dirt under her hair. “What did you say to me you bitch?” he whispered in her face. She felt spittle on her nose and forehead, and the heat of his body against hers. She stared at him, afraid to make him more angry, afraid of what he could do to her. And at the same time was more furious than she’d ever been in her life, filled with an anger that overpowered her. She shoved him with everything she was and watched with wonder at how easily she threw him off, the anger and fear giving her strength. Her head hurt now, but she reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out her truck keys as he lay stunned in the heather under his mother’s living room window. “Fuck you, Kurt,” she half spat, half trembled as she ran to the truck, opened the door, and drove away. That had been the first time, and she sworn to herself he wouldn’t have the chance for a second. But by New Year’s his daily calls and pleadings had worn her down and she’d agreed to meet him. He had shown up with flowers and a bottle of wine, and by the end of the first week of January she’d agreed to give him another chance.

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It was a cycle that would repeat itself three more times, each one more violent than the last. And until the last, each time she would take him back, because she saw the little boy in him, she saw the good he could be, and she wanted to hold him and make that good come out and be there all the time. And in her youthful foolishness she had been sure that she could save him from himself. But in between the violence there were other things that should have tipped her off. There was the time at the Outlaw he’d caught another guy looking at her and she had looked back. He had taken that guy out back, and by the time she managed to figure out what was going on he had broken six of the man’s ribs and his nose, and the poor hulk of a guy was laying unconscious in the alley - his face a pulpy mess. Kurt hadn’t touched her that night, but it would lead to the final moment. They had been in her barn together, and this time, unlike the others, he hadn’t been drinking. He started accusing her of looking for other men, he slapped her, and forced her down on the cement floor. Nobody had been around. Nobody had heard her scream as he pulled off her clothes in his rage and raped her, then beaten his own shame out of her, leaving her for dead on the floor. She still didn’t remember how long she’d been in the intensive care unit. She still couldn’t remember waking up at any specific time and being cognizant of the hospital, or her mother standing over her, or the police. And now the details she probably had been conscious of were buried, locked away. There had been a trial, and he’d been put in jail for a while. But he was a good prisoner and his family was respected around Laramie. After two years he’d been given a restraining order and his walking papers. Then he’d

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left Wyoming to head for California. Rumor had it that he was making money modeling and had a few bit parts in movies. Shannon tried to steer clear of even the rumors. She touched the knee where he had somehow managed to chip the kneecap that last time. It still hurt when she thought about it. And sometimes she thought how lucky she was that what he’d done to her face had left no scars. Well, nothing that was visible. Alice saw the memories on Shannon’s face. “Are you going to be okay?” she asked. Shannon swallowed. She swallowed her fear and her doubt, she swallowed her memories and her pain. “Of course I’m okay,” she said. “He’s not going to do anything to me.” Alice looked at her friend seriously. “Shannon?” “I’m fine, Alice,” Shannon replied forcefully. “How did you hear about it?” “Erin heard from Sybille.” Erin was Alice’s younger sister, Sybille was Kurt’s. They had gone to school together. It was a small corner of the world. “Is he coming in for a visit or to stay?” “Erin made it sound like he was going to be here a while,” Alice sounded apologetic, like it was her fault. “God help him if breaks that restraining order,” Shannon said. But they were both thinking that Kurt wouldn’t be the one God needed to help if that happened. *

*

*

It was almost closing time. The sun was streaming in through the big windows in the lobby, overwhelming the creaky old air conditioner. Shannon was pulling down the sun blinds to cool things off. She was feeling hungry, and sick. She hadn’t touched her

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club sandwich when it arrived and now it was in a Styrofoam container in the employee fridge. She had managed to drink some water through the day, but any time she thought of food it just made her more nauseous. If she stopped for a moment and thought about him being back, her hands started to sweat and tremble. Two men came into the lobby. They were both in their late twenties or early thirties. One was dark haired and just a little taller than Shannon. The other was slightly balding and blonde. Neither had wedding bands on and her automatic defenses went into overdrive as they approached her. “Hi there,” said the dark haired one, trying to be friendly. Shannon didn’t even manage a smile. “What can I do for you?” she asked almost politely. The dark haired one smiled, a row of perfect white teeth shining through an unseasonal tan. They looked like Kurt’s teeth, and her stomach rolled. “We’re new to town and we’d like to open some checking accounts,” he said. God, was he trying to charm her? She set down the blind wand and walked them over to the new accounts desk. She didn’t even explain their options, just opened a basic checking account for each of them, ignoring the information as she automatically entered it into the computer for each. Every time she looked at these men she wanted to vomit. She handed them their temporary account information with an automatic speech thanking them for joining the bank and that their preprinted materials should reach them within a week and walked them to the door. It was after five o’clock now that she was

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finished and they were the last customers of the day. She locked the doors and turned to count out her drawer. He was back.

Chapter Two

Brian Abbey sat hunched over the steering wheel while the diesel engine rumbled through the truck. The gray clouds covered the valley, a floppy cap sitting atop the green head of the hills. He sighed heavily, leaning most of his two hundred pounds on the leather-wrapped wheel as he exhaled. What confounded him was not the cloudy morning, but the water that sat black and unfathomable on the road he needed. Four or five times a year Baker's road, the only road across the valley for miles in either direction, got washed out by heavy rain. An engineering oversight had set the ribbon of blacktop below the flood plain in the middle of the valley. The little town of Duvall' s five thousand or so people went from being residents to prisoners for several days at a time. It left the residents with two ugly choices -battle the long, slow traffic through town or stay at home and wait for things to clear up. He watched as three ducks landed, their short wings flapping madly as they executed a nearly vertical landing in the flooded fields and started preening. They were oblivious to the complications around them. Brian watched them in their ignorance and wondered why he was even trying to cross the road at all. As he watched, they went from

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preening to swimming, endless circles in the gray morning. The ducks called to each other and more ducks landed in twos and threes, like jet fighters returning to a carrier . He leaned back in the driver's seat and looked out in either direction of the normally busy highway. The road closure signs, set far down in either direction, had diverted almost all of the normal traffic. He pushed the gear lever up into reverse and backed the big Ford into the northbound lane and turned the truck across the highway and back to his house. Work would have to wait. The truck bounced and jostled up the rutted driveway toward the ramshackle, two-story farmhouse. It was February now and they had at least another three months of rain ahead of them. The wet, western Washington winters played merry hell with the dirt driveway and the first sign of early summer was when he felt enough of the rain had stopped that grading the drive was worth the effort. The grader, sitting silent and ready in the back of the old barn behind the house, would have to wait. The property on which Brian now lived had been homesteaded by his great, great, grandparents on his mother's side in 1887. His English ancestors had made their way to New York (not the city, his grandfather had always pointed out to Brian) and then out to Washington by covered wagon. They had been dairy farmers in England and New York, selling milk to the ever-thirsty city. When they finally made it to Washington, Brian's Great-Great Grandfather William stopped just one valley short of the growing cities of Seattle and Tacoma, his breath taken away by the view of the Snoqualmie Valley, and there firmly planted his family's roots. First there was logging. They cleared the hills and sold the timber, dragging it to the mills of the tiny towns on the shores of Lake Washington in the next valley. Then

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came the black gold rush - mining for coal. The family had managed to make a little money until the veins they'd revealed ran out in the late twenties. But through it all there had been cattle and dairy. And as the family matured and populated more and more of the valley and surrounding towns, the dairy farm grew too. By the nineteen fifties it was the second largest milk producer in the state. But progress and prosperity come at a price. At the same time the number of customers for their milk was growing and so too were the pressures of keeping the land. First came the taxes, increasing exponentially through the seventies and eighties. As the taxes rose, word got out to produce dairy cattle and the big corporations moved in, pressuring down the price of milk until the profit lines were so thin the Abbey's could barely make it. Finally the environmental movement, growing since the late sixties, developed real muscle in the nineties and the regulations forced the dairymen out of their valley and east of the mountains. It simply became cheaper to work the cattle a hundred miles farther out and truck the milk over the three-and-a-half thousand foot mountain pass than it was to keep the operation close to the consumer. Taxed, pressured, and regulated right off the very land they had tamed, Brian was the last of the family to live on the homestead that had brought so much prosperity to his family. The lineage was long and complicated, the transfer of the property convoluted and entangled like a child's wet and muddy shoelace. But through more than one hundred years of fate, Brian now came to be the sole owner of the house, barn, and the remaining forty acres he was loathe to develop. The original holdings had been parceled out through death and sold off in desperation until all that was left was a mere patch of what had once been a vital, productive farm.

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Brian now stood in a rare reflective moment, his work boots wet and muddy from the short trip between his pickup and the covered porch. He stomped his feet to clear the mud, the old deck boards flexing underneath him, and rolled his lips in toward his teeth, feeling the tickle of his thin mustache and beard. He stretched his arms in front of him, then laid his big, stubborn hands on the railing and leaned forward, glaring at the river. He breathed deeply, smelling the wet of the mud and trees. He felt the moisture of the riverbank a quarter mile away and twenty feet below him - just far enough that its malice could not reach the foundation of the farmhouse. There were few men whose malevolence could rival the river's as it flooded and swept things away, but Brian Abbey was one of them. A man walking by now would have taken one look at that face, one nod at the heavy shoulders hunched like a cougar about to spring, and judiciously walked the other way. The darkness of his face betrayed little of the thoughts behind the narrowed eyes and fixed jaw. Brian's thoughts were on the river, on the way it had flowed, ebbed, and shaped his life. As the rain poured down harder, turning to a wet fog and washing away what little was left of the intersection and the road, his mood darkened. There was no more farming -he'd been forced out of it before he'd graduated from high school. There was no more small town - the encroaching suburban sprawl had taken care of that. There weren't a lot of things anymore. *

*

*

Eighteen years ago had been a hot, hard-working summer. Brian and his best friend Chris had finally saved enough money for a six-man rubber raft. They'd done odd jobs around the farm with Brian’s father paying them three dollars an hour. They'd also

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helped out at the Gas-n-Feed in town - sweeping and cleaning up behind the old cinder block building that edged onto the river. Everywhere they went they had their Sony Walkmen, the prized Christmas gift that year, both of them rocking out to Rush songs like Tom Sawyer and Spirit of Radio. Chris had a Rubik's cube on a key chain which puzzled and frustrated him, while Brian solved it with a few twists time and time again"Hey ," Brian shouted to his friend. They had just finished wiping down the pumps. Chris, two months older but fifteen pounds lighter didn't respond. He kept tapping in time to the tinny music coming from his headphones. Brian gave him a gentle shove to get his attention. "I think we've got enough after tonight. Big 5's having a sale, and my Dad thought he saw the raft for $198.00." "How much you got?" Chris asked. His broad face was pocked with acne. They had been friends for a hundred years, maybe a thousand. "I got $125.00 with my Christmas money, plus what we get today." Brian dropped his wet and filthy rag into the dirty water. "You still got your $102.00?" "$112.00," Chris replied with a smile. "I got allowance last week." They smiled at each other and high-fived. For two years they had been asking for a rubber raft. Not some cheap, vinyl thing, but a real, honest-to-God, self-bailing rubber raft like the ones the whitewater guys used. They had visions of a cooler in the middle and each of them at an end floating down the Snoqualmie to the river's mouth. In the hot sun they would dangle their feet and listen to tunes on Chris's big ghetto blaster. But mostly it would be their ticket to freedom. They would be Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn – just letting the mighty water take them where it would.

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The next day the new raft, fresh out of its plastic bag, sat in the middle of the Abbey's work lot - a hard-packed space between the house and the 'upper shop' where they did light repair work on the farm equipment. The boys dragged an air compressor hose out from the shop and with the hiss of a mad snake, they blew up the great gray beast. It was going to be a hot day, you could smell it in the trees, feel it in the lack of moisture in the air, and the hard-packed dirt lot had an acrid smell to it from a month without rain. Perfect weather for a long, slow float to nowhere. Brian's mother came out of the house, letting the porch screen slam shut with the help of its old and creaking spring. She shook her head as she watched the two of them struggling to fill the raft. "You two be careful." Brian looked at Chris, they both smiled and rolled their eyes. A thousand word conversation passed between them about how much they loved his Mom, what a pain in the ass it was to have such a worrywart looking over them, and how good it was going to feel to get away from all of these people trying to tell them what to do. Brian's Mom sensed the conversation even if she couldn't hear it and shook her head. "Don't you two give me that," she said, squaring her shoulders and squinting her eyes. "That river can be dangerous and it's my job as a mother to worry about you two." Chris couldn't help it anymore and laughed out loud. "Okay, Mom," he said. He'd called her Mom since he'd spent his afternoons at the Abbey's house when he was six while his own mother worked at the Town Center Grocery . "Okay, son, " replied Mrs. Abbey, putting emphasis on the 'son'. She shook her head, a little more serious, "My family has lived next to that river for almost a hundred

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years. It's not something to be toyed with, even in the summer when it looks all calm like that. It's dangerous." Brian sighed. They'd been over this at least once for every one of the years that his mother's family had lived near the river. He loved and respected his mother. But … "Goddamnit, Mom, we're just going for a float!" His mother's gaze hardened and Brian knew instantly that he'd made a mistake. He watched as her eyes showed the punishment she waited to meet out for the heresy, for taking the Lord God's name in vain, but she breathed and her glower softened just a touch. "You watch your mouth, young man, " she said quietly, "or the only thing you'll be going for is more chores with your father ." "Sorry," Brian replied, genuinely contrite and trying to avoid getting grounded all at the same time. They'd worked so hard for today, and though he knew his mom was aware of it, he also knew he'd better not push her. She was reasonable - but only to a point. "Chris, I've got some canning jars for your mother. When you go home tonight, make sure you take them with you," Mrs. Abbey said, changing the subject and tone. She didn't want to go down the punishment path any more than Brian. She loved that they had a big day in front of them and was proud of them for saving the money for the raft. It took forever to load the cooler with sandwiches and Cokes, to find Brian ' s swimming trunks and towel, to run to the barn and ask his dad for the keys to the old pickup they used for chores around the farm. And it took even longer to load up the big raft, realize that it took up all the room in the bed of the pickup and then unload it, load the cooler and their bag of clothes and sun tan lotion, and reload the raft on top of it all,

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careful all the time not to scratch or puncture their new treasure. Finally, Brian crawled into the clean but well-worn red and white cab, pulled the choke and fired up the old workhorse. There was a choking plume of blue smoke from the tail pipe as the ancient motor came to life, ready to rumble down the driveway, down the highway a mile or two, and down even further to the river bank where Brian, though only thirteen and distinctly lacking a driver's license, expertly backed the truck up to the river bank and shut it down, never having warmed the engine enough to push the choke back in. With only the smack, smack, smack of their new-flip-flops for conversation, they slid the raft into the river and tied it to a tree. They paused for a moment, admiring how it sat proud on the water, the gentle upward grin of its bow and stern, the roll of its sides. What a majestic goliath, they thought. Impenetrable. Invincible. Utterly and completely theirs for the taking. They loaded their things, their feet getting alternately wet and freezing in the river, then dry and muddy on the shore. First the ghetto blaster to keep them company, then the cooler strapped in the middle of the great barge, and finally Brian's faded red duffel filled with towels and shirts -things they would not need, things they would not wear. The moment came and nine months of waiting was over. They reached behind the seat of the truck and pulled out the oars. The doors mad arthritic groans as the boys slammed them shut. Brian breathed deeply. "You ready?" he asked. "Yeah!" Chris smiled, his broad face cracking from ear to ear. When Chris smiled every part of his face, even his forehead, got involved. It was like he wanted give

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his happiness to everyone around him. Brian wasn't like that. When he smiled it could be just his lips, his cheeks barely involved, and his eyes often stayed cold and unreadable dangerous with dark fire. But around Chris even Brian let go and his eyes would light up as he visibly relaxed. "Okay, you hop in first. Get in the back and I'll untie us and jump in,” Brian said. Chris waded into the stinging water with a gasp. He threw in his paddle, then turned away from the side of the raft, facing Brian on the shore with his butt against the sidewall. Chris reached behind him like a gymnast on a horse and lifted himself out of the water, swishing his feet to get rid of the mud, then slipped in backwards with his feet splayed in the air. "You look like a plucked chicken," Brian laughed. Chris laughed too, "That water shrunk my nuts smaller than a goddamn chicken's!" The sun was just off its zenith as they started their float. They peeled off their shirts, slipped in some music, and lay with their backs against the bow and stem. Every now and again one or the other of them dropped a paddle in the water to straighten The boat. They floated by an eagle's nest, and high above them, riding the thermals, the raptor watched as they floated by. Even so far up the bird looked big. "Where's it's mate?” Chris wondered idly. His oar dripped in the water. The eagles were rare and wild - still listed as endangered. Most of them had left the valley long time ago. This one, a mile or two down the river from the barn, had become a friend to them, one they looked for when they road their bikes down the long-since abandoned and tom up old railroad.

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Brian stared at the bird circling endlessly above them. He watched as the bird heeled to the left, starting a gracious dive toward the rolling green grass of the Barkin pasture, coming down faster and faster in a great wheel, then, with an imperceptible twist, flared off, up, and out of sight over the hill. "Man, we are lucky," Brian-said quietly as he let his paddle play in the water. He watched as the circles of water spread ever outward from the droplet like the rings of a tiny planet. "Whatdayamean?' Chris asked as he slid farther down into the raft with the squeaky, whining sound of something that doesn't easily give against rubber. "Think of all the kids our age in New York City right now - right this minute who have never been out to a place like this. They've never seen the trees, they've never played in a river, or caught a frog, or fallen asleep under a tree." "Or had their Dad chew their ass for lettin' the tractor run dry," Chris laughed, referring to an incident the previous week where he had been loading manure into some suburbanite's pickup when the tractor had started to cough, then shudder and finally came to a jerking halt. The tough little Deere had done its best, but without oil to lubricate the tiny hell in its cylinders it couldn't go on. Brian laughed. He'd been there, waiting for Chris. The suburbanite had been pretty cool about it, saying that he had enough to do the job and drove off, leaving the boys to face the wrath of Chris' Dad alone. . It hadn't been pretty. Brian laughed. "Nothing like getting hell for fuckin' up some itty-bitty piece-ocrap, three-hundred year old tractor."

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"Hey! That Deere ain't a day older than the civil war," Chris said as he halfheartedly swatted his oar at Brian, causing a small wall of droplets to hit the side of the boat like the drums of a dozen ants. Brian scanned the sky for the eagle, thinking of the kids in New York playing in the fire hydrants and missing the fresh smell, the deep blue sky, the icy cool of the water, the heat of the sun, and the breeze of the trees. He breathed deeply and let the air run through him - making him as big as the sky, the valley, and the mountains beyond. All their work, everything they'd done to get the raft was for this moment. They floated past the little town of Duvall. It wasn't much more than a grocery store, some ancient shop fronts, and a feed store. From the raft all they could see were the rooftops of the main street buildings that lined the river. The buildings were ramshackle and worn, the high grass of the riverbank ran nearly halfway up the first floors. The second floors were littered with decks that were cock-eyed and rickety. Most of the buildings were sixty to eighty years old and nothing much had been done to the back of them since they were built. Every now and then an air-conditioning unit was humming, interrupting the whisper of the grass and the splash of the water. In the clear sky a jet on approach to Sea-Tac throttled down its mighty engines. It was a stark contrast to the peeling, fading working man's town just over the shore. Brian watched as the plane passed out of sight over the hill and horizon. "Where would you go if you could g9 anywhere?" Brian asked. Chris did not respond. Brian lifted his head, then crunched his abs just enough so that his head was high enough to see his friend. Chris was squinting over the riverbank at the town, the

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pace of the river having slowed such that they could walk as fast as their little boat was moving. "I'd like to go to Egypt," Chris said finally. Brian satisfied, that he'd been heard, relaxed his stomach and slid up against the side of the boat again. He should have known. "Digger," Brian chided. Social studies in the sixth grade had been a turning point for Chris. He'd discovered archeology and civilizations that started thousands of years ago. As unfathomable as it was to Brian, Chris wanted to go digging around in the sand looking for bits and pieces of pottery . "It's what I want to do, man," Chris came back. "Think of it. You could hold something in your hand that hasn't seen the light of day in five thousand years!" "Like Kelly Harnott's bra Brian joked - referring to a beautiful ice-queen who had moved into town halfway through last school year. Brian closed his eyes and thought of the slight peach fuzz on the back of her neck and her silky thighs that had made the last few weeks of math bearable. He smiled as he let his mind wander, thinking about how she walked into a room, how the curve of her chest changed when she went to move her long hair out of her eyes, how her glossed lips looked when she tapped her pencil against them as she was thinking. "I've got a better chance of finding another Rosetta stone than you do of getting into her bra," Chris threw back. Brian laughed, pushed the heel of his hand hard against his crotch, and settled back into his dream. The sun beat down on them, the town slipped away, and all that was left was the riverbank and the sky. At some point they took off their Timex watches and threw them

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into the duffel bag, guessing the time by the growling in their stomachs and the position of the sun on the horizon. This was as perfect as perfect got. Brian rolled his head back until he was staring at the sky, upside down, over the tube of the raft. He tapped his fingers against the raft and they made a hollow, echoing sound. The river tugged gently on his hair as the raft made its lazy way past the town baseball field. "Why do they call it 'Upper Duvall Field'?,' Chris asked. Brian lifted his head and squinted against the sun in Chris' general direction. "It's south of town, as low as you can get in the valley. What the hell is 'upper' about it?" "Fuck if know," Brian replied. The word came easy, without any chance of recrimination. Here, even speech had a sense of freedom about it. A few more infinite moments passed in golden silence. "You think you'll take over the farm?" Chris asked. This was a question they explored about every six months. At first, when they were younger, it had really been a way of asking what the other wanted to do when they grew up (being a dairy farmer didn't have much appeal). But now, as they were entering high school and were going to be asked to make choices, the question had started to mean something else - was the other one going to stick around? But this question was never asked directly, and so they talked about themselves by talking about cattle. Brian breathed deeply. "I dunno. Dad runs it pretty much with hired help now. He's not old or anything. It's not like he needs me around here to make things happen." "But you're the only son."

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"Yeah. Dad and I have been talkin' about it. If things keep going the way they are, with more people moving into Redmond, it won't be long before they all spill into our little shit-box town. When that happens it'll all be over. It'll get too expensive to keep cattle here." "Who the hell would want this land?" Chris asked"Developers. They'll want neighborhoods and strip malls and shit." "In Duvall, dude? We are twenty miles from anything, flood in the winter and smell like cow shit in the summer." Brian looked out at the riverbank. "It don't really matter now anyhow," he continued. "I want to get into something with a future. Maybe computers. I'd like to be a programmer or something like that." "You've always been good at math." "Yeah." "I think I'm really going to be an archeologist. There's stuff out there they haven't figured out. Like where did all these civilizations come from?" "Caves," Brian said flatly. "No way,” Chris replied earnestly. “It's weird, but all around Asia, and the Arabian Peninsula, and even in South America, civilization just sprung up at about the same time. City building, mythology, money, writing - you name it. It all started about six-thousand years ago for everyone. I want to find out what happened. There's big discoveries being made now that we have the technology to look at stuff more closely." "Okay, digger,” Brian sighed.

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Chris turned up the music. Styx’s Renegade blasted from the boom box, shattering the calm of the afternoon. Soon the two of them were standing in the middle of the raft, wildly wailing on air guitars and basses until Brian fell into the cold water with a splash and Chris had to paddle the boat to shore so he could climb back in. It was the best day they ever had. They were sunburned and happy. They were free and all the world was theirs.

***

Brian sighed deeply again, like he had that day so long ago. It was wet and cold. He clenched his hand, the powerful muscles like steel cables. They were bigger, stronger, and more scarred than he remembered them being that day. He looked at the river, brown and muddy as it had been then. He turned and kicked his boots against the step to rid himself of the memories and the mud and stepped inside the well-worn house he'd grown up in and returned to. He would call in sick today. By sunset the rain had stopped, leaving a muddy, overflowing mess everywhere. The highway outside the house was closed and it was a good thing that Brian had stayed home or he wouldn't have made it back that night. There was a cold in the air, not a chill that would merely make a person shake, but a wet, damp, cold that landed on a man and pulled the life-giving heat from him. It was all that Brian knew, all that he had known his entire life, and for him the cold was an old friend whose heavy hand laid itself upon his shoulder and reminded him

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that he was not alone, that not everything he had known was gone across the mountains with the farm and his past. In the cold, against the damp, and under the influence of his familiar friend, Jack Daniels, Brian laid a fire of dry two-by-eights. He poured a healthy dose of chainsaw oil over the boards followed by a layer of gasoline. With a practiced hand he struck a kitchen match against a rock and threw the little flame onto the pile where the gasoline exploded into a glorious fireball - consuming and gnawing at all it could find. It grew until it subsumed the entire pile in an orange, red, and white ball of glory, then settled down to the business of eating through chainsaw oil and wood. The fire pushed back the cold and slowly Brian began to feel as warm on the outside as his friend Jack had made him feel inside. "Hey," came the familiar voice over his shoulder. Brian kept staring into the fire. Like sleep when exhausted, the voice brought a sense of relief and comfort. Chris had an odd way of just knowing when Brian needed him. "Hey," Brian replied kicking at the fire. "Where've you been?" "Here and there," Chris said quietly. They both laughed, it was a familiar greeting. Brian bit his lip. "I sketched out on work today." He took another deep drink from the Jack-and-Coke and looked up. Chris was hunched near the fire. God, how could anyone look so healthy, Brian wondered. His skin was the perfect balance of color, not too white, not too tan. His movements were lithe and graceful. You could stare at Chris and there were no blemishes, no physical defects. Brian looked at his own hands, scarred and worn from the years helping his father run the farm, torn by the work he did now to

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keep the place from falling apart. He thought of his own haggard, worn face he saw in the mirror each morning. Chris smiled, radiant and wild, "I know." Brian huffed, "Yeah, I figured you would." There was a long silence. Brian let the crackle of the fire be the only noise. Calm descended on him - not a morose, reflective thing as he had been absorbed in before Chris had arrived - but a warm and comfortable feeling, the warmth of companionship and lifelong friendship. Chris' smiled faded, a serious look on his face now. "She's coming," he said, in a whisper . "Who?" Brian asked, playing dumb. But he knew who Chris was referring to. For the last six months Chris had been harping about a premonition he'd had that Brian was about to meet a woman who would change his life. Chris had even gone out on a limb and described her as tall, with long, silky black hair and brown eyes. But every girl Brian had fallen for looked something like that. "You know who," Chris said. There was no sense of humor as there had been in the past when this subject had come up. "She's coming, and there's trouble coming with her. You'd better be careful, man. You're going to need help." Brian stared at him, wrinkled his brow, and shook his head. "You're full of shit." In reply, Chris shook his head. "Three, two, one..." Inside the house the phone rang. Sometimes Chris really gave him the willies.

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"Excuse me," Brian said as he got up from the lawn chair he'd occupied for the last hour. He walked slowly, emphasizing the heel-toe motion of his boots to show his determination and confidence. He stomped up the steps into the kitchen where he pulled the cordless phone from its mount on the wall. "Yeah?" he asked. “Brian?” came a hoarse, familiar voice. "Eric?" Brian asked incredulously. Eric Anderson had been his roommate in college. In the summers Eric had 'helped out on the odd weekends during school as Brian's Dad got the farm ready to move east. He hadn't heard from Eric in a long time, not since Eric had moved down to San Diego to take up surfing and mooching off others as a career. "Can you believe it's been two-and-a-half years?" Eric always sounded as if he were in the stands at a football game, screaming for the home team. "Well, how the hell are you?" Brian liked Eric so he wasn't put out at the fact Eric had neither called, nor returned Brian’s calls, in over two years. "Good, good - still knocking around here in San Diego. You gotta come down again, man. We'll hit a few pubs, maybe cruise the peninsula." "Uh huh." Brian was waiting for the ask. If Eric was calling, there was always an ask. "Say, Brian, look, I'm on a break from work and I don't have a lot of time. I need a favor from ya." "Shoot."

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"My sister Shannon needs a place to hang for a while. I don't' want to get into the particulars, but she just needs to get away and figure some stuff out. I thought that, since you've got that big old place to yourself now, you might not mind some womanly company. " "Well..." Brian started. "Hell," Eric interrupted. "You haven't gone off and gotten yourself attached or something, have you?" Brian looked out at the fire where Chris sat staring at the molten embers of the fire with a worried look. Brian's blood ran cold. Chris never looked worried. He shook his head. "Nah, I'm not attached. Tell her to c'mon over. Door's open." "Oh, thanks, man. Thanks a lot." An inordinate amount of relief was evident in Eric's voice and Brian wondered what he'd gotten himself into. What dark demons was Eric’s sister running from, and what kind of an emotional black hole would she turn out to be? "Look, I gotta run. Let's hook up soon, okay?" Eric’s voice was instantly its surfer-self again. "Yeah," Brian said absently. Eric was many things - reliable wasn't one of them. 'Let's hook up' really meant that Eric had to bail even though he knew he owed you more time. "Maybe you can come up and visit your sister while she's here?" There was a pause, "Yeah," Eric answered, deep and serious, "That would be a good thing to do." "Tell her to give me a call when she's on her way." "Will do, man. Thanks."

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Brian clicked the worn button on the. cordless phone and gently dropped it into its cradle. He swirled his cup around a few times, the remaining Jack & Coke now warm and flat. He turned to the fridge and pushed the ice cube dispenser then pulled a new can of Coke from the fridge, cracked the top, and poured it slowly into the oversized 7-11 cup ("Win$10,000,000"' it declared in worn, gold letters). He wandered back out toward the porch. Chris was gone. "You creep me out, dude!" Brian yelled into the night.

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