Last Summer in the Mountains

            James moved into an upstairs apartment in the old part of Chico, in the northern Sacramento Valley.

            Birds sang from ancient trees shading the walks and houses.

            James started up the outside stairs. Cindy walked out of the house next door and let the screen door slam shut behind her.

            James stopped three steps up, turned, and looked at Cindy.

            Cindy looked up at James standing in hot summer sunshine.

            A huge maple tree, brown, black, and green, interrupted the pale blue summer sky above him.

            Cindy asked, "Do you live up there?"

            "Yes."

            "I never saw you before."

            "I moved in yesterday."

            She turned and walked away. Her high heels tapped the concrete sidewalk.

            James sat in the open window of his apartment and studied for a test. The maple tree spread densely-leaved branches above the roof and above James in the white wall of the second story. Heat soaked through his shoes. He pulled his feet up onto the window sill, into the maple tree's shade.

            Thirty pages later, he heard Cindy's high heels tapping on concrete. He looked up and watched motion through spaces between branches, between green leaves of the black oak tree shading the sidewalk.

            Heat washed the side of the house and flooded over him.

            Cindy walked into sunlight, tapped up her concrete walk, pulled open the screen door, and looked up at James.

            Black hair, highlighted red by sunlight, framed her pale, high cheek-boned face.

            She said, "You'll fall out of there."

            "No such luck."

            "What are you reading?"

            "Biology."

            She said, "We're having a cast party here tonight at nine. You're invited."

            "Thank you. I'll be there."

            Dark settled into the valley. Street lamps shone into the city night.

            James walked down the stairs, crossed a small lawn, and knocked.

            Cindy opened her screen door and said, "Come in. We're just getting started. About half the people are here so far."

            Guitar music from the record player filled the house, with its high ceilings, ornate chandeliers, and tall, narrow windows. People danced or stood on the faded red, tan, and black rug and talked in pairs and in groups.

            Cindy guided James around the living room and introduced him to people. He wouldn't remember most of their names. Most of them wouldn't remember his name. Everyone drank.

            James followed Cindy into the kitchen, at the back of the house. Bottles of liquor lined the kitchen counter. Beer filled the refrigerator. He said, "I didn't bring anything to drink. I'll go downtown and get something."

            "You're my guest. I'll supply your drinks if you'll drink cognac and coke." She got ice from the refrigerator, mixed a drink, and handed it to him. He sipped it, a strong drink, but he decided he liked the taste of cognac.

            Cindy said, "All the people here worked on the play at the college. Actresses, actors, make-up people. This is Art. He took care of lighting. This is Andrea. She does makeup and helps with costumes and the script during rehearsal. A Jacqueline of all trades. A very essential woman.

            "Hey, you guys, get whatever ice you want from the freezer on the back porch when we run out in the refrigerator. I bought fifty pounds. That should be enough, but if it isn't, somebody go buy some more."

            Heat filled the Sacramento Valley night. All the windows and doors stood open.

            "Did you see the play?"

            "No, I didn't know about it."

            "The Crucible. Henry Miller wrote it. I'm Ann Putnam. Do you know the play?"

            "No. I don't know anything about theater."

            "You're missing out. You should make it part of your education. What's your major?"

            "I started in math. I switched to sociology. I think I'm going to switch to psychology."

            "Psychologists make more money than sociologists. Mathematicians probably make a lot of money, but math would be boring enough to grow mold on your brain."

            Cindy circulated among the people, but she returned to James. "How's the drink? Gee, you're slow. What's that, your second drink? Oh well, I guess everybody doesn't have to get falling down drunk."

            Everyone talked about theater. The conversations didn't interest James much. He danced with Cindy. The song ended, and she walked away. He watched her as she moved among the people, interested in all the conversations, lithe and animated.

            After midnight, people left, mostly by twos. A few stayed; some of them were quite drunk.

            Guitar music and a deep voice filled the room. "There is a house in New Orleans, they call the rising sun..."

            Cindy sat down on the floor and leaned against the wall in the living room. She looked up at James and patted the rug beside her.

            He sat down. Then he lay down, put his head in her lap, and looked up at her.

            She said, "Your eyes are amazing. They're green and yellow and brown, all different colors mixed together."

            He said, "We call that hazel."

            She traced the contours of his face with her fingertips. He watched her blue eyes. She leaned down. Her soft, shining black hair circled his face.

            She touched her lips to his lips. She moved her tongue across his lips. He touched her tongue with his tongue. Her breasts pressed against his face. She said, "Let's go in my room."

            A dresser of old, dark wood stood against the white wall in her room, opposite the tall window, and supported a big, bevel-edged mirror in an oval frame. A double bed with a white bedspread took up the center of the room.

            Cindy pulled the curtain closed over the doorway, turned to James, and they held each other and kissed.

            "Let the Midnight Special shine her everlovin light on me..." From the living room record player, rich guitar tones and a deep, resonant voice filled the hot Sacramento Valley night like a dream caressing James and Cindy, closely entwined.

            The man finished singing. Full guitar tones echoed into the hot night.

            Cindy drew away from James, pulled the covers back on the bed, and undressed. James undressed.

            She was immediately ready for him. He entered her, lifted her buttocks with his hands, and thrust deeply and steadily into her.

            Grey daylight intruded into the dark sky before they slept.

            James woke at noon. The night's strenuous exercise had burned the alcohol out of him. He felt good, with no hangover.

            He got out of bed and dressed quietly. Cindy turned in bed and looked up at him. "Do you need a full-time mistress?"

            "Yes, I do."

            She said, "You're incredible. You came seven times last night."

            He had been drunk enough, he didn't remember details of the night clearly. He thought, "I don't think so. Maybe three times and collapsed in temporary exhaustion the rest of the times," but he didn't say it.

            They walked downtown together, looking for a meal. She said, "Let's keep this on a strictly physical basis."

            Midday heat poured from the sun above them. Heat rose from the concrete sidewalk and the asphalt street. Newer, smaller trees grew downtown. James and Cindy walked through more intense heat.

            James said, "Okay."

            He went back to the upstairs apartment to get what he needed, as he needed it.

            Cindy said, "You don't own much, do you? Why pay rent on two places? You can move the rest of your stuff in here and let that place go, if you want to. Why rent two places?"

            Leaves turned myriad shades of autumn yellow, red, and brown and drifted to the ground. Geese flew from north and landed on farmland near town. Some geese took to wing again and flew farther south, calling as they flew. The sound of their voices carried a long way in cold, clear, early mornings.

            James heard the geese and woke. Cindy woke, turned and looked at him, curled against him, and slept again.

             Autumn smells, of leaves dying, of grass bleaching yellow, of cold wind blowing from the mountains, drifted across the valley.

            James stirred with autumn restlessness, but he settled down. He was where he wanted to be.

            Lightning and thunder blew down the valley. Wind tore the last leaves from trees and blew them into gutters. Rain blew in hard wind.

            Machines, stinking of burning diesel fuel, vacuumed up leaves, mixed them with metal, glass, and plastic garbage in the city dump, and buried them irretrievably.

            James asked Cindy to marry him. She said no. He thought she meant, not yet. She said, "You love me too much. I don't want to be owned."

            Wind howled through town. Deciduous trees, bereft of all leaves, stood naked against winter. Wind roared around the small house. Lightning's brilliant flashes poured sudden light in through the windows. Thunder shook the house.

            James and Cindy clung to each other in the night. Rain hammered the house.

            They lay together, sleepy after love. She said, "I'm pregnant."

            "Are you sure?"

            "Yes. I'm sure."

            He looked at her face in light from the street lamp penetrating the curtains into their room. "Now will you marry me?"

            "I can have an abortion."

            She watched his eyes. "I don't have to be married to have a baby."

2

            Two o'clock in the morning, fog engulfed the town. Cindy woke James. "It's time," she said, "I'm having contractions about three minutes apart."

            He drove deserted streets into fog, rolled slowly from corner to corner. Street lights and signs emerged from cold fog. Cindy sat beside James and rested her hand on his leg. She breathed deeply and gripped his thigh hard when her uterus contracted in preparation for birth.

            She said, "Whoo. That one was really hard. This baby might not care if it's foggy or not."

            Fog rose from the cold earth. James said, "I can run in and have them come out and get you."

            "I'm not staying out here alone in this foggy, dark night. If he comes on the way in, you can catch him and keep him from cracking his head on the asphalt. I'll hold tight to you. We'll make it."

            Fog thickened around James and Cindy as they walked from the parking lot into the hospital. Cindy stopped, leaned into her contraction, and then walked again.

            James waited in the stark, white room. Day began to light up fog settled heavily on the hospital. A nurse walked into the room and asked him, "Are you Mr. Riley?"

            He turned from the window and faced her. "Yes. I am."

            "You have a son. If you'll follow me." He followed the white-clothed nurse down the white-floored hall and looked through thick glass at his son, tiny, sleeping.

            Fog rose into winter sunshine and dissipated into the pale sky.

            James walked into Cindy's room. Puffy-eyed and groggy from the drugs they had given her, Cindy smiled at James, reached, and held his hands. She asked him, "How long do we have to wait before we can have sex again?"

            "I don't know. I'll ask the doctor."

            Two days later, he took Cindy and Ian home. Cindy lay against him in bed. James was erect and ready, but it was too soon to enter her. He said, "Come on, Cindy."

            "No."

            He touched her, kissed her, and caressed her. She responded with her hands, caressed and stroked, and then with her mouth.

            Almost always, before the birth, Cindy had been eager for sex. Often, after the birth, she resisted.

            James caressed her and tried to persuade her, "Come on, Cindy."

            "No. I'm going to sleep. Leave me alone."

            He persisted, gently but insistently. His persistence exalted her resistance. Sometimes, exultant in accumulated power, she yielded.

            He never attempted to overpower her resistance. He knew using force would destroy the delicate game that built fire and power in both of them.

            Often enough to keep their relationship from becoming rigidly defined, Cindy didn't resist James. Just as often, no amount of careful persistence brought her to yield.

            Sometimes, James felt wildly frustrated that Cindy held the total power of yes or no.

            Cindy said, "Men and women have equal power. I don't have any more power than you do."

            James's excitement and satisfaction when she did yield defused the frustration and powerlessness he felt when she would not yield.

            He created himself according to the demands around him. He held an atheistic view of the world, a skeptical, cynical approach to everything around him, because he thought atheism, skepticism, and cynicism formed a stylish foundation for existence.

            He didn't know that much of what he tried to be didn't fit him. He had had little guidance. He didn't know myriad directions lay before him, and he could choose where he would go.

            Cindy chose directions and patterns of existence truer to herself, though James didn't see that. He wasn't blind. He suffered an illness common in the culture. He revised what he learned to fit what he already understood rather than expanding his perspective to include new information.

            Cindy and James both worked, and they both went to school, part time each or alternating full time, whatever worked at that moment. For a while, they stopped going to school. They both worked full time at a die-casting factory on the edge of town.

            Weekends, they partied or drank and danced in bars.

            Two years after Ian was born, Cindy said, "I'm pregnant."

            James said, "Seems like having two children together says we're committed to each other. Let's get your mother to take care of Ian, and let's drive to Reno and get married."

            She measured him from deep in her blue eyes. Then she said, "Okay. Let's do that."

            A week before they planned to go, she said, "Why get married?" She said, "It's been going fine the way it is. Why chance messing it up?"

            James didn't say what came first into his mind. He said, "Okay. We'll go on the way we've been going. Why chance messing things up? People die from becoming too conventional."

            Two days later, Cindy said, "We arranged everything. Let's go ahead and do it."

            They drove to Reno and married. They came back, made a down payment on a house and moved in, out on the east edge of town, where a housing development grew toward the freeway.

            Early in summer, the sun rose above the mountains on a cool morning. James helped Cindy into the car and drove her to the hospital, supported her across the asphalt parking lot into the hospital, and she gave birth to Heather.

            Two days later, James took Heather and Cindy home. They settled into a quiet routine.

            Friday morning of the third week at home, Cindy said, "If I don't get out of here and see some people and find some activity, I'm going to go crazy." She called friends and found out about a party.

            Saturday evening, James and Cindy drove across town to the party and parked their car at the curb. The day's light washed out of the sky. Cindy's high heels tapped a strong rhythm on the concrete sidewalk as they walked from the car to the house. They danced and drank and talked to all the people.

            Lela took care of both their children as willingly as she had taken care of Ian, so Cindy and James again partied or drank and danced in bars every weekend.

            Late autumn, James laced his belt through the loops and buckled it. Cindy walked out of the bathroom into the bedroom. She dropped her towel on the floor and stood naked in front of the mirror. "Does it look to you like I could be pregnant?"

            James dropped the shoe he had started to put on and looked up at her from where he sat on the edge of the bed. "Have you missed any pills?"

            "No."

            "Are you late for your period?"

            "No."

            "Then what made you think about it?"

            "I don't know. I guess I just thought, what if I'm pregnant? I think I look a little bulgy, don't you?"

            "You aren't pregnant. You couldn't be."

            "I guess not." She started dressing. She said, "It's time to go get the baby sitter."

            "I know it is. I'm on my way."

            Cindy and James tucked the children into their beds, kissed them goodnight, gave the babysitter a phone number and instructions, and walked out the front door into rain. James opened the car door for Cindy and closed it after she got in. He walked around and got in under the steering wheel, started the motor, and backed out into the street, then drove down the street toward town.

            Rain poured down harder. Water ran down gutters beside sidewalks and down drains.

            They turned into an older subdivision, parked and walked a block in hard rain. James opened a black umbrella and held it over both of them. To protect Cindy from the rain, he had to allow his left shoulder and arm to get wet. That didn't bother him.

            Cindy's high heels tapped a sharp rhythm on the concrete sidewalk. The sound of running water rose from beneath the concrete. Under the sidewalk, a pipe carried rainwater seaward. The rapid sound of water rumbled up through concrete.

            Behind the house sitting back among big black oaks, a stream ran. The streets and sidewalks received bright electric light from lamps high above them on metal poles. The stream behind the house ran dark. Rain fell into the rushing stream and ran oceanward with waters that flowed down from mountains rising east above the valley.

            Except for Stan, James and Cindy were the only caucasians at the party. It wasn't a source of discomfort to them, nor to the people there, because they knew everyone there. They had been to parties like this before, some of them at this house.

            Winky said, "We was thinkin you floated away down to the ocean in a flood."

            Barbara said, "If it don't quit raining, everybody gonna have to start swimming. I never seen so much rain."

            "Me, I'm so tired of this rain, I'm gettin out of here and movin to the desert."

            "If this rain don't quit, you gonna need a boat to leave here."

            "You gonna have to hire you a dove to fly out and find the desert for you."

            The sound of rain drumming on the roof drowned in loud music from the record player. People danced in the living room and congregated in the kitchen, drank and talked.

            James danced, talked, walked into the kitchen for another drink. He started the night determined not to get too drunk. Someone had to drive home, and he knew Cindy wouldn't be in shape to drive. He didn't want to have a hangover in the morning. He danced and talked.

            He crossed through the living room, crowded with dancers, went into the bathroom, shut the door, locked it, and urinated. On the other side of the bathroom, there was another door, but he didn't do anything about it, because he thought all the people were on the other side of the door he locked.

            The door opened, and Winky looked in at him.

            He turned his back to her. Winky laughed and said, "You got nothing I ain't seen before, only better."

            He was drunker than he meant to be. His nose felt numb. His pale image in the mirror blurred. He tucked back in, zipped his pants, and flushed the toilet. Winky stood in the doorway and watched him.

            She said, "You sick, white man?"

            "No."

            "You look sick." She walked through the bathroom into the living room and shut the door behind her.

            James opened the door and walked into the living room, turned and pulled the door shut behind him. People danced in the living room.

            Cindy sat on the swivel stool, with her back to the piano, and turned the stool rapidly side-to-side. She laughed at Ace, who danced in front of her. The untucked left side of his shirt hung almost to his knee. He laughed and spun in a circle.

            People danced in the living room. Stan stood in the kitchen doorway. He saw James and walked toward him. Barbara walked close behind him. James didn't want to be the object of Stan's conversation, but he didn't see any way to avoid it.

            Stan said, "James, you was in that parking lot. Did I say Barb'ra was my maid? Would I say that? I love black people. You know that. If I said that, I didn't mean it how ever'body thinks I meant it. James, listen to me. I have to explain what I meant."

            James said, "Stan, you've been talking about that every time you get drunk for more than a year. That was more than a year ago you acted like a jerk at the bowling alley. You try to explain it every time you get drunk since then, and that's a lot of times.

            "It embarrasses me when you talk this I Love Black People stuff. I wish you'd cut it out. Your brain gets loose when you're drunk."

            Barbara said, "Come on, Stan. You're drowning out the music."

            James followed them into the kitchen, not because he wanted to talk to them, but because someone turned up the music in the living room, and it began to drown his thoughts. He couldn't have another drink, because he had to drive home and then drive the babysitter home. He didn't want to be drunk when he drove the babysitter home.

            He found instant coffee on the counter, ran water into a pan, and put it on a burner to heat. He watched the water in the pan. It started to boil just as Stan started over. "I told Ron Barb'ra was my maid when he asked me who was that sittin' in my pickup. I didn't really say that, Barb'ra, cause I wouldn't, cause you're just as good as I am, maybe better."

            James thought there was no way to shut Stan up, short of knocking him down, which no one wanted to do, because Stan had been knocked down many times, and he never did understand why. James took his coffee, walked out onto the back porch, and shut the door behind him.

            Rain hammered on the metal porch roof above his head. It poured off the roof and ran down the path toward the stream behind the house. Running water had eroded a small gully there, where the water had run to the creek, taking soil with it, even from the hard-packed clay of the yard.

            Light shone from the back window to the yard, but rain and the dark night soaked up the light. The stream under black oak trees ran in darkness. James heard water murmuring toward the sea.

            Winky came out onto the porch and shut the door behind her. "What the hell you doing out here?"

            "Watching the rain. Listening to the rain."

            "You some kind of nut. You should watch inside, and you come out and watch rain. You some kind of nut." She grabbed his head, pulled him down to her, and kissed him. He pulled back. Winky buried her hands in his hair and pulled his face to hers. He dropped his cup, and it rolled off the porch into the dark rain.

            He put his arms around her and drew her close, excited by the smooth, soft feel of her clothing slipping around over her skin. She pushed him away, stepped back, and kicked him in the shin. She said, "You're not nuts. You just stupid, you stupid white man." She yanked the door open, walked into the lighted kitchen, and slammed the door.

            He held his shin with both hands, trying to ease the pain. When the pain eased enough that he could move, he stepped off the porch and tried to find the cup, but it was too dark. He couldn't find it, and rain soaked him. He went back into the house and leaned on the counter in the kitchen.

            Several bottles stood on the counter. One was cognac, the bottle he and Cindy brought. He picked it up to drain it, but behind the bottle, a white electric clock with an illuminated face swept away the night as the second-hand spun rapidly around and around the face. 1:45. The night was gone. He put the bottle down without drinking.

            He walked into the dining room. Four men played cards. Thomas looked up at him and said, "James, you going to sit down and let us teach you how to play this game?"

            "We'll have to wait for another night. I have to take our babysitter home."

            "If a man got to get the sitter home, then that's what he got to do."

            James looked for Cindy, but he didn't find her. He asked Barbara, "Do you know where Cindy is?"

            "Some of them got up a collection and went to buy more booze before the liquor store closes."

            James asked Barbara, "Who did she go with?"

            "They went in Ace's car."

            Winky came out of the next room and told James, "Phone for you, White Boy."

            On the phone, Cindy said, "The car won't start."

            "I'll come and get you."

            "You'd better go take the babysitter home, or we won't be able to get her again. A mechanic's working on the car. He says he'll get it running, and they'll give me a ride home. I don't think I'll be very long."

            In Cindy's voice was a reflection of James he hadn't heard before. It may have been there before, but if it was, he didn't hear it. He wanted to say something about it, but he remembered arguments when she said, "You talk. You always talk. That's all you do about anything is talk about it. You can't solve it by talking about it."

            He didn't know what to do. If he couldn't talk about it, what could he do? Psychic messages? He was going to say, "I'll come and get you. Where are you?" but Cindy said, "See you at home after a while," and she hung up.

            He walked to the car. He forgot to take the umbrella. His clothes soaked through. He unlocked the driver's door, but then he just stood there, looking up into the rain.

            Nobody, nothing but the storm, knows he stands in the hard rain getting soaked, mixing tears with falling rain.

            He opened the door and got in. He started the car and u-turned in the street. He would be late getting the babysitter home, but not late enough to cause problems. He wanted to tell her something, the seventeen year old blonde girl, about being careful with her life. He knew some of the words, but he didn't get it said.

            He left his children while he took the babysitter home. He needed to get back, and he didn't try to tell her. He waited until she closed her front door and shut off the porch light. He turned the car around, drove home, unlocked the door, and checked his daughter and his son.

            He hung his wet clothes, and he took a hot shower. He was closer to sober by then. It was harder to sleep or to wait, if he was sober or sobering up, but that was his direction, and he had no desire to change his direction.

3

            Thursday morning, James said, "I don't want to leave the kids with your mother every weekend. I'd like to have more time with them. I work all week, and then we spend our energy and our earnings in bars and parties. Let's stay home some weekends."

            "You stay home if you want to. I'm here all day every day. You can take care of the kids. I'm going out if you go or if you don't go."

            Not long after James met Cindy, she told him Warren and Lela adopted her when she was a baby. When he met Lela, he could have thought Cindy lied about being adopted. Cindy and Lela looked a lot alike, except Lela was tiny, five feet, under 100 pounds, and Cindy was five seven and big-boned, heavy if she didn't watch her diet.

            Cindy and Lela both had straight black hair with suggestions of red and small, straight noses, very light skin, high cheekbones, blue eyes, square shoulders, straight spines, definite, forceful carriage.

            Cindy said, "When I turned sixteen, Jane, Lela's sister, told me I was adopted. She thought somebody had to tell me. She knew Lela wouldn't, so she did. Lela never forgave her. She hasn't spoken to her since."

            Cindy didn't say finding out she was adopted had anything to do with her rebellion against her parents, but James thought it did. She didn't run away. She found more meaning by staying there and bringing hell into their lives.

            She told him about some of those times. "I was going out, and Warren tried to stop me. There was school the next morning, and they were trying to have a rule I couldn't go out on a school night. I kicked him in the shin and said, 'You aren't my father. You can't tell me what to do,' and I went anyway.

            "Lela tried to get me to follow their rules, and I told her, 'You aren't my mother. You have no say about what I do.'

            "They didn't know how to stop me. What could they do? They wouldn't call the police. It would have looked really bad for them and for me.

            "They were afraid of making me so mad I'd leave them completely. They had no control over me.

            "I was pretty rough on them. They did the best they knew how, but they just couldn't handle me anymore. After I moved out on my own, we started making peace again. They still don't approve of a lot of what I do, but I've made it clear they accept me as I am or they don't see me at all."

            James woke up one Saturday morning with a hell of a hangover. He moved slowly all day. He didn't try to do anything but live through the day.

            Dusk settled into the edge of town. James made a pot of coffee, carried it out, and sat on the front step, sipping strong coffee. He watched stars appear above him, dimmed almost out of visibility by rising lights of the small city behind their house.

            He felt better than he had felt all day. Pain that had throbbed inside his skull faded into the night.

            He looked back at the evening before and the night and the day just gone by. He had been so drunk he couldn't remember anything about the late evening. Late in the night, he passed out.

            He woke up after sunrise with such a vicious hangover, he almost couldn't get out of bed. All day, he barely existed. He just waited to feel better. Most of the time since he started drinking the evening before seemed like time totally lost.

            He didn't like losing almost twenty-four hours. Too much of his time passed when he was drunk or recovering from being drunk. He wanted something more than the mixture of stasis and oblivion his existence seemed to have become.

            He never got drunk again.

            His and Cindy's social lives revolved around alcohol and people who drank it. For a few weeks, he drank one or two drinks at a bar or at a party to feel connected with all the drinking people, but then he stopped that, too. It didn't take any discipline; he didn't like alcohol or its effects anymore.

            The people around him who drank and showed the effects of alcohol began to seem alien to him. Cindy, drunk, began to seem alien to him.

            Cindy planned a party at their place. James would have skipped it. He said, "What if we deemphasize drinking then, and do something else?"

            Cindy said, "James quits drinking; therefore everybody should quit drinking. Quit trying to make everybody over in your image. Let people be what they're going to be. A party wouldn't be a party without alcohol."

            Before the people at the party began to show the effects of alcohol, James enjoyed the music. He danced with Cindy, and he danced with guests.

            Heather and Ian stayed up late, excited by all the people in their home, by the dancing and the loud music. They danced among the people, laughed, and sang. When they ran out of energy, James put them to bed and stayed in their room with them until they settled out of their excitement and slept.

            He left their room and shut the door behind him. He looked for Cindy and didn't find her. He walked out the front door.

             Cindy and Ace walked toward Ace's car. James said, "Where are you going?"

            Cindy turned around and looked at him. "We're going to the liquor store."

            "Send Ace. I haven't had much chance to be with you this evening."

            "You won't have a chance, either. I'm not going to stay here with you. You think I'm crazy? Get away from me. Get away from me."

            "You're really drunk. I don't think you should go anywhere. If you're going to the liquor store, why don't you just go by yourself, Ace?"

            "Don't leave me alone with James. He'll beat me." James tried to say he had never beaten her. He had slapped her once, after she kicked him.

            But he didn't get anything said. He stepped toward Cindy. She leaned forward and shouted, "Stay away from me. Stay away from me."

            Ace caught him from behind and locked his arm around James's neck. James tried to peel his arm away, but Ace tightened his grip. James dropped to his knees. He couldn't breathe. Cindy ran to Ace's car and got in. James's vision blurred and faded.

            Ace let go. James fell to the cool, rough grass. He struggled to breathe. He drew deep, ragged breaths, smoothed his breathing, and stood up.

            Ace's black, low car roared away from him, down the long street and out of sight onto Second Avenue.

            James walked across the front yard and back in the night. He crossed the street and walked into the almond orchard, beyond the light from street lamps.

            Soon, this orchard would be gone. People with machines cut almond trees into firewood and uprooted the stumps. People built houses where they had cleared away the trees. Houses with lights, concrete driveways, and neatly trimmed lawns would replace these trees, the wild grasses and soft soil under his feet.

            He crossed the street again and walked into the house. People drank, talked, laughed, and danced. He paced through the house. Cindy didn't come back, and he didn't know what to do.

            He asked Barbara. "Where the hell did they go? What if they had a wreck? They're really drunk. Maybe I should call the police and ask if there's been any wrecks."

            Barbara didn't say anything, but when he turned and started to pick up the phone, she said, "Maybe you better check that place Ace owns out on ninth street."

            James said, "What place?"

            "I think it's the fourteen hundred block. You turn left off Almond. There's only two houses on that block. Ace's house don't have no lights, cause nobody lives there. The other house is lit up. Ace's house sits back under big old trees. Be dark under those trees, but you can find it."

            Tightness closed his chest, his stomach. Barbara knew more than she said. She wouldn't have said anything if he hadn't started to call the police.

            He said, "If I don't get back for a while, would you make sure the kids aren't left here alone?"

            He wondered how drunk she was. He thought she was sober enough to remember and to stay until he got back. He wasn't sure of that. He wasn't sure she wouldn't get drunker after he left. He left anyway.

            He drove across town to the west edge. His hands shook on the steering wheel. When he put the clutch in to shift gears, his leg bounced from tension, from shaking.

            Old trees spread their limbs over the sidewalks and streets. Walnut orchards stretched from the edge of town west toward the Sacramento River.

            The house sat dark under dark trees. James's headlights reflected from Ace's car, parked far back under dark trees.

            James drove into darkness under the trees, shut the car lights and motor off, and got out. He shook so severely, he had to stop and pull himself together after he shut the car door. He walked into the house through the back door, stood in darkness, and said, "Cindy."

            Ace spoke from the dark interior. "She ain't here, man."

            Cindy said, "What's the use of that?"

            James said, "Get out of here, Ace."

            Ace passed James in the dark, walked out the back door, got into his car, and drove away.

            Cindy said, "Thanks a lot, Ace," but he was gone.

            James picked up one end of the couch and slammed it into the wall. The arm of the couch punched a hole in the sheetrock. The couch fell, bounced, and landed upside down on the floor. He picked up an upholstered chair and threw it against the wall. It punched a hole and bounced down onto the upside-down couch.

            Light shone through windows from the street light on the corner, strained through oak tree leaves and branches. Cindy sat on a chair in the shadowed part of the room and watched James.

            He saw her clearly in the dark room, but he couldn't see the features of her face. He knew he would not touch her in anger. He wondered if she knew that.

            He picked up a chair and looked at the expanse of glass in the big front window. He put the chair down. Quiet filled the dark house out on the edge of town. No cars moved on the nighttime streets.

            James looked out into the night. He didn't shake anymore. He felt calm. He said, "Let's go home." Cindy finished dressing, and they went home.

            That night, James began to realize he had been trying to act out the script Cindy had written for him. "This is my violently jealous husband, whose potential violence makes my life so much more exciting, and yours, if you want a part with entrances and exits, and on stage, violence and threats of violence and violent emotions."

            He had found it easy to act out her script when he was drunk or half drunk and caught up in a party, in dancing, in the sounds, activities, and roles of people around him. He had found it easy to accept a scripted role in Cindy's drama.

            Acting out her script satisfied Cindy's need. At first, James thought it was funny that he wasn't always what he appeared to be, that he played a role no one knew was a role, but he began to accept as definitive the role she created for him, without realizing it headed him in directions that created problems for him.

            The threat of violence, the reputation for violent jealousy, injected enough drama and fear into every situation, he never had to carry through with violence.

            Some day, the threat wouldn't be enough. He would have to carry through with violence, or he would stand revealed.

            James thought Cindy was through with Ace. She said she had no further interest in him. James thought their lives had settled into a steady course.

            Cindy said she was going to go see Barbara, and she'd be home by 9 or 9:30. By 10, James began to pace the house. He would have looked for her, but he wouldn't leave Ian and Heather there, asleep. He didn't know where to look if he did go.

            Cindy parked the car in the driveway at 12:30. She walked in the front door and looked defiantly at James. James knew the answer to his question, but he asked it anyway. "You've been with Ace, haven't you?"

            "Yes."

            He started toward her, but the ironing board stood between them. He kicked it, and it flew up and crashed against the wall. It gave him less resistance than he expected. His kicking foot continued up, high into the air, yanked his other foot from under him, and he fell flat on his back on the floor. The impact drove the air from his lungs. He struggled to begin breathing again.

            Cindy ran. James sucked air into his lungs and got up from the floor. The front door stood open into the night. Cindy hadn't stopped for the car keys on the table.

            He wouldn't leave the children to look for her.

            Days later, when they were calm together, Cindy said, "If you had caught up with me that night, you would have killed me."

            Maybe he would have. He could have said, "That's the way you look at the world. It might not have anything to do with me," but he didn't say it. He didn't know what he would have done.

            Lela brought her home two hours after she ran out the front door into the night. Lela said, "Cindy said she was afraid to be alone with you."

            "Did she tell you why?"

            "No, and I don't want to know. You have to calm down. No matter what happened, violence won't help." He leaned back against the kitchen counter. Lela stood beside him, put her arm around his waist, and held him, tiny beside him.

            He could easily pull away from her or push her away. He could refuse to be comforted. He could refuse to communicate.

            He stood still. What the tiny woman beside him communicated soaked into him from her warm presence against him. He breathed deeply and found calmness.

            In the early hours of the morning, James entered Cindy and gently fucked her until daylight washed the night's sky with light. During that time of intense closeness, everything before that moment, everything outside of their steady, slow, intense motion together disappeared, as if it had never happened. If they could be intensely enough together, if he could understand her needs and fulfill them, everything would return to the way it had been for them during their best times together.

            James left the house in the morning, but he didn't go to work. After several fruitless attempts to figure out where Ace would be, he found him eating lunch in the cafe on the south edge of town. James sat down across the table from him and shook his head when the waitress came to see what he wanted to eat. "Nothing," he said.

            She walked away. James spoke to Ace, "If you come around Cindy again while I'm married to her, I'll kill you."

            "I didn't go looking for her. She come after me."

            "It doesn't matter. If she comes after you again, tell her to get a divorce first, because I'll pick up that 30-30 you gave me two years ago, and I'll find you, and I'll kill you. Do you believe me, friend?"

            Ace put down the sandwich he'd been holding halfway between the plate and his mouth. "Yeah. I do. I've known you for a long time, and I believe you."

            James and Cindy sat on the step in front of their house late that afternoon. The sun set in glowing shades of red and orange behind almond trees across from James's and Cindy's house. James told Cindy, "I talked to Ace today. I said if he has anything further to do with you, I'll kill him."

            She said, "I'm relieved you did that. I wanted it over with, but I didn't know how to end it."

            "It's ended. If you go near him again, I'll kill him. I realized when I talked to him I really mean it. I will kill him. You'll have the rest of your life to think about how you could have prevented murder and didn't. If you think of going near him again, take that into consideration."

            Orange rays from the sun radiated across the sky above them like spokes in a huge wheel. Cindy touched his arm, then drew him close to her. "You won't have to kill him. It’s done with.”

4

            Martin, James's older brother, wrote from Oregon. "I came home, opened my mail, and got some good news after feeling like my life was turning to all bad news. I got 600 acres of blister rust control contracts, work enough for half the summer for two workers.

            "You said you're sick of working in factories. Factories kill spirit. You could work in the mountains with me. We can go partners. Could be good money, or we could lose our shirts. Some do, but I think I bid these about right, and we'd do okay.

            "Summer in the mountains, all that sunshine, doesn't much matter if we do lose our shirts. Eat venison, don't go anywhere, it won't cost much to live.

            "Danielle left, took the kids with her, so I'm on my own, storing everything at Bud's place until I get back. One more year, I'm through with college. I'm going to try to make enough money this summer to get me through the last year."

            James gave the letter to Cindy. She read it and said, "Sounds pretty uncertain. Work in the mountains, maybe make money. Maybe lose your shirt."

            James said, "I never had a job I liked. This way, we're our own bosses. I want to try it."

            They walked through National Forest and uprooted ribes, currant and gooseberry bushes, intermediate hosts for blister-rust disease, which kills pine trees. They divided the work area into lanes ten to thirty feet wide with lightweight cotton string, to keep track of where they'd worked. They hooked rabbit-eared picks under the crowns of ribes bushes, pried them out of the ground, and left them roots-up to die in the sun.

            They camped in the mountains, as close to their work as they found good water.

            Everything that existed as they grew up, sibling rivalry, different paces into maturity, the intensity of different perspectives, had finished. Martin and James had become two adults with shared background, shared family, many shared perspectives. They explored thoughts, ideas, attitudes, sometimes amazed by their similarities, argued about differences in views and then let most of their differences stand.

            Sitting by the fire, James studied Martin in dying firelight. James thought he understood some of the tough times when they were growing up.

            Two or three years ago, their mother told James, "When your dad went to Alaska to work, he told Martin he had to be the man of the family and take care of everyone. Martin took that really seriously. He pushed everyone around, including me.

            "He was only nine years old. I had to write and tell your dad to write and tell Martin he wasn't really in charge. That helped, but it didn't solve things completely. Martin never really got over that."

            The last light died from the fire. Stars shone above them. The moon, worn thin by the long day, hung just above the western mountains.

            Martin said, "I drink beer, but I don't know anything about mixed drinks, hard liquor, all that stuff. I'm single again. I might need to know something about that stuff. A beer drinker might look crude to a fancy woman. That's more the kind of drinking you've done. Educate me."

            "I quit drinking, Martin. Alcohol really helped fuck things up with Cindy and me."

            They sat for a while on the mountain. The stream ran past their camp and sang soft songs of water moving over and around rocks. Evergreen forest grew around them, and stars shone from clear sky above the mountain. James said, "Maybe it would be different, you and me drinking together. We'll give it a shot."

            The next day, they hit all the bars close to Lake Almanor. They drank liqueurs and mixed drinks. Their progress from bar to bar became unsteady and dangerous. By the time they drank their way through the list of most of what James had ever used during his drinking days, they were too drunk to try to get back to camp. James said, "We goin to nearest beach on this sunny beach lake, lie down, sleep if we get there without killing ourselves or jail."

            They made it to the beach, slept shirtless in late afternoon sunshine, sunburned, woke up sick and cold after dark. It wasn't any better for James at all, worse, because he wasn't used to it, desolate with not knowing enough to continue avoiding, "Come on Martin, my dear brother. I sick as any dead dog, but I can get us to camp, colder than shit here, going to die on this beach. Come on."

            Wrestled Martin into James's carryall, stretched him out in back, drove still drunk but stayed on the logging road through dense forest, across open meadows twenty-six miles to camp, surprised afterward that he made it, covered Martin with his sleeping bag in the back of the carryall, crawled into his own sleeping bag under the stars, woke up sober in sunlight but sicker than hell, said "Okay. Every once in a while, I have to learn something twice. Wastes time and wears me out totally, but now I do know the answer."

            Martin went a week or two sometimes without drinking but usually sat by the fireplace and drank several beers after work, after dinner, while they talked.

            Autumn, Martin drove back to Oregon to finish his last year in college. James went back to Chico State, with enough money to make it through most of the winter, with unfinished lots to start as soon as he could the next year.

            Martin graduated from college and started teaching. Summer sessions offered more pay than he could make doing blister rust control work.

            James worked by himself the next season, as soon as the leaves began to open. He arranged to finish his classes the next winter, and he jumped the start-work date by two weeks, because he needed to earn money. They were down to nothing; creditors threatened; and he didn't want to work in town again.

             Patches of snow lingered in the Sierras at 6,000 feet on northeast slopes. Bushes in cold areas hadn't leafed out yet, but he recognized the distinctive shape and color of bare ribes bushes, and he dug them out before they leafed.

            Mountain nights left ice on his water containers. Cold wind blew across the mountain. He started work early and kept moving to stay warm.

            James finished his first contract. He moved camp and started his second contract. Days and nights warmed up. Late May, he drove down the mountain into heat of the valley, traffic, people and machines in noisy motion, to catch up on groceries, fuel, laundry, rest, family, civilization.

            His third day in the valley, the house seemed smaller and smaller, with thinning walls. Mechanical noises filled the valley and his consciousness.

            Phil and Alice came to the house and brought Don with them.

            Phil asked, "How's the work going?"

            "Good. Going good."

            "Are you making a decent wage?"

            "So far."

            Don said, "Put me to work. I haven't found any work down here that pays anything above minimum wage. I want to go back to school this fall, but I'm not going to be able to unless I can earn a chunk of cash."

            Phil said, "Hey, I was going to ask first. You jumped the gun on me. There's zilch for good jobs around here. Make me a partner, and I'll bring Alice and the kids up. Alice'll be camp cook and pot washer. Two for the price of one. She said she'd do it."

            Don said, "I don't have a helper to offer, but I'm working on it."

            James said, "I don't know. I'd have to get a big contract to keep all of us working. There's nothing dependable about blister-rust control. I could finish these lots and not get another contract all summer."

            Don said, "A gamble between a little or a lot beats a gamble between nothing and nothing."

            Cindy said, "Put 'em to work. They both play guitars. We could have a party all summer long."

            James bid a big group of lots and got enough so they could all work. Where Rattlesnake Creek flowed rapidly down the mountain, James found a flat area of rock and dirt above the stream. Widely-spaced evergreen trees grew on the flat area. A ridge rose steeply behind the spot he chose for a camp.

            Phil and Alice drove up the mountain and helped set up camp.

            Don came up, and they started work.

            They all got along well and shared common ground in college classes and at winter parties, but that's a different story from everyone working together, with James supervising and trying to teach everyone to do the work well enough to pass inspections.

            It takes time to learn to see the ribes among all the other bushes in the forest. Phil did all right, but Don got thorny. James walked between tall pine and fir trees, through whitethorn and manzanita brush, over quiet pine duff and caught up with Don on the side of the mountain. James said, "Don, you'll have to rework this lane. Why don't you finish it and work it going the other way?"

            "How come you're checking my work so much? Why don't you spend more of your time checking Phil's work?"

            "Because you're missing a lot of bushes, and he isn't. You choose. I let you go on missing bushes, and we flunk inspections and rework lots for no pay, or you try to learn what I'm trying to teach you, and we pass inspections and spend our time working on new lots, where we earn some money."

            Don struggled with it. Then he said, "Okay. Show me what I'm doing wrong."

            Friday morning, before they left camp to go to work, Don said, "You're letting your kids run wild. Why don't you discipline them?"

            James thought about sending Don down the road. He knew Cindy stayed in the mountains because she had more fun when there were people with them, and Don definitely played some good guitar.

            James walked over to the pickup and loaded tools and water jugs.

            Monday, James drove to town to the Forest Service office and picked up bid invitations. Everybody went, just for a chance to go to town.

            On the way back, Don said, "You're driving too fast." James didn't think he was driving too fast, but he slowed down a little. Don said, "You're still driving too fast. It's okay if you endanger your own life, but it isn't okay if you risk the lives of the people riding with you. You're reckless even with the lives of your own children."

            "Don, what the hell is with you? You're trying to take over as manager of the business and of my life, and you can't even find all the ribes bushes yet. Quit being an old woman about everything or pack up and pull out of here and find work someplace else."

            After dinner, the sun hung just above western peaks, and the day cooled. Heather and Ian played together near the fireplace, whose ashes gave up the day's fire and settled toward evening. James sat on a log uphill from camp and looked down on the camp and the stream running vigorously down the mountain.

            Across the stream from him, black rock of the mountain, exposed by water's actions, rose barren from the stream. The rock curved toward level; soil clung to the rock; and green grasses of meadow grew from the soil. A few tall trees stretched toward the sky from the close side of the meadow.

            Then the meadow rose gradually away from the stream. At the far edge of the greenly growing meadow, aspen trees grew around springs flowing from the base of the ridge. Fir trees and pine trees grew from the mountain's side. Behind James, the ridge showed soil, bare rock, grass, brush, and green trees and rose jaggedly toward the late day sky.

            Cindy walked up from camp and sat down beside James.

            James said, "You find a lot of time to sit and talk with Don out at the edge of things, where no one else can hear you. I'm a little surprised you can take time away to come and sit with me."

            She looked down the hill, looked west at sky turning orange as sun slipped behind mountain peaks. She said, "Try not to be too rough on Don. He's going through some hard times."

            "I'm sure your sympathetic ear helps ease his way through."

            "He needs someone to talk to. He's up here pretty much by himself. At least you have your family with you."

            "My wife on a part time basis, when she isn't busy playing counselor for the suffering Don. What seems to be his problem, other than working for me, which isn't going to last much longer if he doesn't back out of trying to manage my business and my life?"

            "He has girlfriend problems. He wants things to be stable, but they aren't. He's in love, but the woman he's in love with is fucking somebody else, and it drives him crazy."

            "So why doesn't he get down off this mountain and get close enough to do something about it?"

            "Everything for him depends on having enough money to keep going to school."

            "Screwed up priorities. He could get out of here and go where he could do something about stabilizing things with this girl he's supposed to be in love with."

            "That's easy for you to say. You have a family. You aren't going to be drafted. If he doesn't keep going to school and keep his grades up, he could be drafted. Then he'd really be away from everything, and he wouldn't be able to do anything about it at all."

            Wednesday, everyone else went to town for groceries, gas, and laundry. James was tired of the strain being with everyone else had become. He said, "You don't need me. I'm gonna stay here and see if I can finish about four acres down the steep slope below the road."

            He worked a quiet day, back and forth across steep south slope, with few ribes bushes to dig out. Tall evergreen trees grew into the sky above him. He climbed steep, jagged bluffs rising abruptly from the slope and checked soil they harbored for ribes bushes. He let white cotton string play out behind him, hung it high in whitethorn bushes, ceonothus bushes, low-hanging tree branches, and marked the area he had worked as he crossed the slope.

            He worked down steep slope, uprooting an occasional ribes bush, until he reached the rapid, clean stream in the bottom of the canyon. He lay down, drank deeply of cold water, took off his shirt, washed his face, hands and arms, and splashed water over his chest and shoulders.

            Halfway through the afternoon, he worked up out of the canyon, then walked down the ridge to camp.

            Sun shone down through the trees on the small fire. Don sat close to the fire with his hands jammed into his jacket pockets. James said, "I thought you were going to town."

            "I changed my mind."

            Phil, Don, and James had a shooting contest the day before, with paper targets on the supports under the bridge downstream from camp. James's pistol, out of the holster, lay on the bench in front of the supply tent. James thought that was strange. He knew he'd put it away when they finished punching holes in paper targets. He never left it out.

            He had already dipped a bucket of water and carried it up from the stream, so he turned and poured the water into the big container on the grate over the fire.

            "Maybe you'll excuse me, Don, and scoot back a ways so I don't have to walk around you every time. You can have your spot back as soon as I get my water hot."

            Don looked like he would say something instead of moving. He picked up the coffee pot, got up, and started for the creek. He said, "I'll make coffee while you're doing that."

            James watched Don walk fifty feet to the stream. He stepped down close to the rapid current and bent to dip water into the coffee pot. A rock rolled under his foot, and he fell into the rapidly running stream, stood up, armpit deep in cold, rushing water that tried to wash him downstream. He grabbed at the bank, lost his footing, went down over his head, stood up again, and grabbed solid rock of the sheer rock bank. "Get me out of here."

            James was already reaching for him. He grabbed him by the shoulders and yanked him out.

            Don staggered to the fire and stripped off his wet clothes. "Jesus Christ, that water's cold." He grabbed a towel from the drying rack and dried off. He dug dry clothes from his duffel bag, leaning against a tree upstream from the fireplace, dressed, and spread out his wet clothes to dry.

            He took everything out of his pockets, including a twenty-five caliber automatic from his jacket pocket. He disassembled the pistol, spread the parts out on the bench by the fire, and wiped them dry with a cloth.

            James picked up his pistol, unloaded it, and put it away. He thought he'd have to get a box with a lock, to keep anyone from messing with it.

            James dumped hot water into the five gallon bucket with holes in the bottom, hoisted it by rope and pulley, and showered. He dried off, dressed, and stood by the fire. Don finished putting the automatic together. He hadn't said anything since his comment about cold water.

            "Don, you might be the strangest son-of-a-bitch I ever did meet. Maybe I didn't save your life, but I did get you out of some mighty cold water, and you're still nothing but totally surly."

            Don slapped the clip in but left the chamber empty and put the pistol in his jacket pocket. "Yeah. You did help me out. Thanks."

            Summer warmed up. They killed every rattlesnake they saw. Self-defense, James thought. They walked all over out there. The snake they see this time might feel cornered another time and strike. Sometimes they rattle; sometimes they don't.

            They ate eleven rattlesnakes. Rattlesnake number twelve, James said, "Let it go, Phil. Don't kill it."

            "What do you mean, let it go? Aren't you afraid it'll get you tomorrow?"

            "I don't think so. Aren't you tired of eating rattlesnake?"

            "Well, I would like to be really hungry before I find snake on my plate again."

            "Let it go."

            "We don't have to eat it if we kill it."

            "Yes we do. If you kill it and don't eat it, you're down the road."

            James walked away, along the steep side of the mountain, and uprooted ribes bushes. Phil left the snake and followed James.

            When the Forest Service inspector came up, he asked, "What's your snake count now?"

            James said, "Same as last time we saw you. Eleven."

            "What happened? Did you run out of snakes?"

            "No. We see snakes. We just quit killing snakes. We saw seven on the forty acre lot, but we didn't kill any. After the meat bees last summer, snakes don't seem so bad. A rattlesnake isn't aggressive like a wasp is. Give it room, and it'll crawl out of your way and leave you alone."

            "Thanks a lot. I have to walk that lot."

            "I know. It keeps everybody on their toes. When you're fighting your way through brush, walking on branches and crowns two feet above the ground, you get so you can see through the soles of your feet, right through your boots, a clear view of the ground, and it's snakes, snakes, rattlesnakes everywhere."

            For James, that became the venison summer. Nobody had any cash, because it took the Forest Service a long time to get all the paperwork processed and send a check, so they were short of groceries. They ate eight deer that summer, and James killed all of them.

            Several mornings, two yearling siblings walked down the trail along the stream. James hadn't seen deer on their night hunts, when it was usually easy to catch one in the pickup headlights and shoot it, but he didn't want to shoot one so close to camp. "You shoot one, Don. You've been eating your share, and you brought up the best deer rifle. You shoot one."

            "If it depends on me, we'll go hungry. I'm not saying I won't do it. I'm saying I can't do it. If the meat's there, sure, I'll eat it if you say I can, but I can't shoot a deer."

            "You're an asshole, Don. You kill ground squirrels for the fun of it and leave them to rot, but you can't kill a deer to feed yourself."

            "I didn't say I was right. I just said I can't do it. Maybe someday I'll be able to, but I can't do it now."

            James said, "I'm going to kill another deer. I need to feed my family. The meat won't keep, and my family can't eat it all, so I'll share. But this isn't working as a three-way partnership. I make all the decisions and take care of all the bids. I provide all the groceries, so we're going to come up with something other than a three-way split."

            Before daylight, James rolled out of bed, dressed, and took his .22 pistol about fifty yards above camp. The yearlings walked down, graceful as a slow dance just at dawn. James sat down, rested his arms on his knees, lined up, and shot the doe through the forehead.

            The buck bounced up the trail a hundred yards, stood under tall fir trees for a minute and then started back. James bled the doe, opened her up, and spilled her intestines onto the ground. He stood up and ran the buck off. He hated looking at him.

            Cindy brought the kids over to watch as James skinned and quartered the carcass.

            When they ate the last of the meat from that doe, Phil drove up the mountain through evergreen forest. Don and James rode in the back of Phil's pickup.

            Two miles above camp, a Forest Service pickup came down the dusty, graveled road toward them. James reached down and covered Don's rifle with a canvas tarp. The pickup pulled up beside them. The driver asked, "What are you guys up to?"

            James said, "We're blister-rust control contractors."

            "You got contracts up here?"

            "Right over the edge. All the way to the bottom of the canyon and up the other side to the road again. Then most of the tree plantation at the top of the ridge."

            "You probably see people who come through here. If you see anybody poaching, let me know. I hate it. Just give me a call, and I'll get a game warden out here."

            He drove away. James climbed the bluff above the road and watched until he saw the Forest Service pickup cross the meadow and disappear into the lower forest, leaving a slowly settling cloud of dust behind.

            They drove on up the graveled logging road. Two miles up, three deer stood on the steep hillside, a four-point buck, a forked-horn, and a spike, a hundred and fifty feet up the mountain from them.

            Phil stopped the pickup. James said, "Drop one, Don."

            "Can't do it."

            "Give me the rifle, then."

            He aimed forehead high on the four-point. Kaboom. The 30-30 echoed across the mountain like some kind of cannon. All three deer jumped. Then they stood still and watched the men in the pickup.

            "What the hell? Is this thing sighted high?"

            "Yeah, I forgot. About six inches high."

            "Great Don. Thanks for everything. Well, this must be a shooting gallery, and I get as many shots as I need. That four-point is too big anyway." He aimed a little more than six inches low and blew the top off the forked-horn's head. The other two bucks fled up the mountain. James scrambled up the hill, bled the forked horn, and dropped his guts out of sight in the brush.

            "Come on. Help me get him down there and load him, and let's get to where we can watch the road. I didn't like the way the shots echoed."

            Three miles up the road, they stopped.

            Don and James carried the carcass through dense brush below the road and into an open spot in the brush, where they had room to work. Phil drove back down the road to look for anyone coming up. Don and James skinned and quartered the buck. Insects buzzed in the heat. The strong smell of blood rose in summer air.

            Phil drove back up the road, and they loaded the meat and covered it with a tarp. Back in camp, Cindy and Alice cut the meat into smaller pieces. James put containers of meat down in the cold creek. He kept an upper hindquarter out and cut meat from it into thick steaks, hammered, seasoned, floured and egged the steaks and floured them again. He cooked chicken-fried steaks.

            James, Don, and Phil told about the man from the Forest Service pulling up in his pickup and talking about how much he hated poachers. Phil said, "So there's James, sittin' on the side of the pickup, with his foot on the 30-30, talking about blister rust control and looking as innocent as if he never heard of killing deer out of season."

            Cindy put plates on the table they'd set up from boards they brought up the mountain in the pickup. She laughed and told James, "You and Don should have come busting out of the brush, shoving each other around, and you should have said, 'Stay away from my wife, or you won't live much longer.' That would really take his mind off poaching, give him something to keep his mind occupied."

            Alice put the potatoes and the vegetables she and Cindy had driven twenty miles to buy that afternoon on the table. Everyone sat down and ate and laughed about the man from the Forest Service.

            The deer after that was the last deer James killed that summer. He left camp late afternoon, carrying the 30-30. He hiked to the top of the ridge, then slow-footed, watching openings in timber down both slopes. No deer.

            He walked down through brush growing between widely spaced pine trees and up to the top of the next ridge. The sun set. The air against the mountain cooled rapidly.

            James walked down to the road and down the road toward camp. A three-point buck ran from the forest onto the road, on its way across. James swept the carbine up, into the line of flight, pulled the trigger, and knocked the buck down.

            The buck dragged himself up the hill, using only his front legs. James ran. The buck hooked his antlers toward James, and James shot him in the forehead.

            He took a minute to get his breathing steady. Then he cut the big artery in the deer's neck and turned him hindquarters-uphill to bleed.

            They heard the shots in camp, and Don and Phil brought the pickup.

            The first government check came before they ate all of that deer, and they ate store-bought groceries the rest of the summer.

5

            Early that spring, soon after James started working in the mountains, Lela felt sick. She said she knew immediately something serious was happening to her. Doctors diagnosed lung cancer.

              Part of the time James worked and camped in the mountains, Lela's rapidly progressing illness weighed heavily on his mind. Part of the time, he became absorbed in the mountain, the forest, the work he did, the quiet around him. Everything far below him in the valley stayed at the edge of his consciousness.

            Cindy stayed in the valley a few days at a time and kept Ian and Heather with her. Toward the end, she didn't come up to the mountain to be with the crew as much.

            James drove down to the valley when it was most necessary for him to be there.

            Lela wasted away. At the hospital, Cindy told Lela, "I love you." She lay down on the bed beside Lela and hugged her. James stood near the door and thought, when Lela was healthy, she would have given anything, even her life, for that affection, for the end of conflict and the beginning of love.

            That was before anyone understood the effects of secondhand cigarette smoke. Warren said, "I smoked cigarettes all my life, and she died of lung cancer."

            James, Cindy, and Warren talked to the mortician who had taken Lela from the hospital. James said, "We don't want her embalmed." He had read the laws. He was prepared to refute the claim that embalming her was required by law.

            "She already is."

            The moment when they could change to another mortician slipped away. It wasn't something James could argue for. He spoke to the mortician, "We want a closed casket funeral. She was very wasted away."

            "Certainly. Certainly."

            During the funeral, the mortician looked at James and smiled broadly, stepped forward and threw the top of the casket open. James started to walk forward. He thought it would be good for the mortician to swallow his own gleaming, white teeth in shattered, bloody fragments

            Cindy caught his arm and stopped him. He could have pulled away, but he knew she was right. He would gain brief satisfaction, followed by a lot of trouble. Cindy held onto his arm.

            Had he thought clearly, he might have pulled away and refused to follow the slow-moving line past the casket. Cindy's father walked on the other side of her, awkward with grief.

     They had rouged, colored, lipsticked, and powdered Lela, but she still lay cadaverous, emaciated, dead. Her bones showed clearly through her skin.

            Awareness of anything but Lela's face faded from James's consciousness. He saw what everything became. Her skin stretched transparent over her bones; her bones showed clearly through her skin.

            Anything untrue in Lela's life would have glared in the painful illumination of flesh burning away in illness until death. Her luminous skin would have cast the light of truth on everything around her.

     His heart hammered. As a last service to what Lela really was, James wanted to wash away everything they had plastered on her face. Cindy gripped his arm again. She knew something ran wild inside him. Her tightly gripping fingers told him, "Keep a cap on it."

            They buried Lela in the hard clay ground of the northern Sacramento Valley. Heat waves rose from the meticulously trimmed, carefully designed cemetery into the hot blue sky.

            Farmland, orchards, and wild, huge, ancient, disorderly black oak trees surrounded the cemetery, beyond asphalt driveways, parking lots, concrete curbs, beyond carefully controlled grass and exactly trimmed rosebushes.

            Bluebirds flew from rosebush to rosebush. Beyond the cemetery, a meadowlark sang. Its bell-like tones cut through the heavy, hot air like crystals and interrupted the oppressive heat of the day. It repeated its song three times.

            Cindy and James stood close together as workers turned cranks and lowered the coffin into the ground. James put his arm around Cindy, but she pulled away. He dropped his arm to his side again, almost succumbing to a need to put his hands into and then out of his pockets.

            He quelled his nervousness. He stood motionless. Hot sunshine soaked into him.

            Thoughts he had let fade nearly out of existence because their lives settled into a peaceful course began to come back to him. Although Cindy enjoyed the idea of James's violent jealousy, he knew he wasn't violent.

            He had never been in a fight. On the simplest level, he was afraid of hurting someone or of getting hurt. Beneath that simple level lay complex history and values he had only begun to explore.

            He wondered if he would be what Cindy wanted him to be, if he would be what anyone defined him as, or if he would begin to be what he actually was. He wondered what he actually was.

            They helped her father home.

            Cindy grieved.

            James hated her grief. She gave Lela defiance and rebellion. She severely limited her expression of affection. Now, when Lela is buried in the deep clay ground, Cindy invests her emotion.

            "Leave me alone," she said, when he approached her, but he didn't. For the first time, when her answer was "No," he carried through as if it had been yes.

            Her bones shone through her skin. His bones shone through his skin. He wanted her juices of life on him. He wanted his force of life, his sperm, his thrust of life force in her. He was careful not to hurt her, but he wouldn't let her go.

            He forced her backward, down onto the bed, mounted above her, and entered her. He pushed deep into her, held her tight against the bed, and waited.

            She loosened, enfolded him in her arms, spread her legs wide above him, and drew him close against her, thrust her pelvis up and met him as he drove deep into her.

            A long time after that, Cindy spoke of the first moments, when he ignored her first answer, "No," forced her down onto the bed, held her down, and entered her. She said that was the beginning of the end of their time together.

            The last day of August, Don left the mountain to get ready to go back to school. Phil and Alice left.

            Summer stayed hot in the mountains, but James felt suggestions of autumn. Quiet on the mountain, late afternoon, in their camp close to the seldom used logging road, close to Muggins Creek, Cindy said, "I'm not going to stay up here. It's too boring when everybody's gone. You'll be working all day. There's nothing to do in camp."

            James said, "Okay. You told me that yesterday." He said, "I don't want to work in factories again. Blister rust control has worked out really well. So far, I haven't fallen into the stupid mistakes some contractors seem to make when they bid.

            "If we hang onto the money I've made this summer, we could probably get through the winter. I'll work until snow runs me out of the mountains, then go to school the second semester. Meanwhile, if you stay out of bars and cut spending on alcohol, the money we have and what I make before the snow comes, could last us a while."

            "You can't tell me what to do. You're not my father."

            "I wasn't trying to tell you what to do. I was trying to work out a reasonable way to live. Some way that might work for both of us."

            Cindy walked away and packed the car. She called Heather and Ian down from the side of the ridge, where they had taken the shovel and worked together to dig a hole. She said, "Come on. We're going to go."

            James walked down to the car, and Cindy said, "I'm so tired of hearing you talk. Why don't you go to work and leave me alone?"

            James watched them drive down the gravel road and disappear from view into the evergreen forest growing to the edge of the road.

            It was hard to keep working. Wild emotions surged through him. Uncertainty followed him closely. Halfway across a lot, he dropped his ball of string and his pick. He felt so intensely alone, panic tore at his intestines. His heart pounded, and tears poured from him. It took him a quarter of an hour to get through his emotions enough to begin work again, and then he went through it again halfway through the afternoon.

            "Reassure me. Reassure me," he wanted to tell Cindy. If he told her, she wouldn't respond. If she did try to reassure him, he wouldn't believe her. She would have to come up with the idea herself, and they had moved beyond that.

            Six days after Cindy left, James drove to the small town twenty miles from where the logging road connected to the paved highway. He called Cindy from a pay phone. He said, "I'm coming down. I'll be there late afternoon."

            "Are you finished?"

            "No. A long way from finished, but I'm really unsettled about the way things are with us. I need to see if we can come up with a better understanding of what we're doing, where we're going."

            "Okay. See you later."

            When he got there, Don was there, and Phil, and David, hovering. Cindy said, "You're moving out."

            "This wasn't exactly what I expected."

            "I don't care what you expected. You're leaving. I'm staying. Heather and Ian are staying."

            James looked at Don, Phil, and David, waiting, and he laughed.

            He looked at Don. As if a window opened and let in light, he understood the way Don looked at him. He understood the way Don looked at Cindy, the way Don looked at James when James approached Cindy, imploring her to listen to him for a minute.

            Awareness blossomed in James's mind like a complex flower opening larger and larger.

            He felt despicably stupid, that he hadn't seen what had been so obvious all summer, what was glaringly obvious to him now.

            He knew Cindy had told David, Phil, and Don she expected violence from him. They were there to protect her, to protect the children against James's violence. He felt violent, internal realignment of almost everything he thought he had understood.

            Profound change came to him in that moment. Though he would retain some innocence, he lost all naivete. He would never again look at reality and miss clues because he wanted reality to be different from what it actually was.

            He didn't know powerful, completely involving change came to him. Caught up in turmoil, he couldn't analyze what was happening to him, around him.

            Underlying the turmoil of emotions and thoughts, a beginning calmness and acceptance that this moment had been decided for him surprised him. He sorted through his possessions.

            He said, "I can't deal with all of it now. I don't have anywhere to store stuff. I can't take all of it back to the mountains with me."

            Don said, "Take it all now. Clear all of your stuff out of this house before you leave."

            James stepped closer to Don. Don flinched. James imagined how he could start from the ground with an uppercut to Don's chin, the hardest blow he had delivered to anything ever. Cindy stepped over and stood close to Don. Her eyes burned with excitement. James looked away from her, at Don again.

            Even as he imagined hitting Don, the knowledge that he wouldn't turn his thoughts into action and slam his fist into Don's face underlay and threaded through his thoughts. Tenuous as it might be in its beginning, his own script, of non-violence, of a peaceful existence, upstaged what Cindy had written for him.

            James said, "Tell you what, Don, you think I have no power in this whole situation, and mostly, you're right. I don't have much power. But this power I do have. I owe you about twelve hundred dollars from the lots we just finished.

            "You think you can do anything you want, and it's okay. You've convinced yourself I'm evil and you're good, but if you want to see the money I owe you, you respect what I own here. Give me time to finish my work in the mountains, then get someplace arranged for my stuff and come and get it. Don't push too hard, and don't believe too strongly that good has triumphed. What you're doing is slimy stuff, and you know it is."

            James drove back up the mountain after dark and into his camp about three in the morning. The hurrying stream ran black and noisy in darkness. Shadows behind the trees from his headlights threatened dense, unknown blackness.

            He shut off the lights and the engine and let starlight and light from the sliver of moon bring blackness to greyness. Threatening shadows resolved to his familiar camp, simply there, neutral.

            He got ready for bed in starlight and moonlight, slid down into his sleeping bag and pulled it tight around his shoulders.

            He slept late and woke to sunshine. He didn't work that day, but he did start back to work the next morning. Emotions ran rampant through him, but he knew he was going to need money. Finishing the contracts was the best way to get it.

            Sometimes, James felt nearly as crazy and moved to violence as Cindy said he was. He daydreamed he lined Don up in the crosshairs of a scope on a high-powered rifle and squeezed the trigger back into the palm of his hand.

            Martin drove down from Oregon and worked with James four days. They sat around the fire late. Martin didn't drink, that visit. James talked about Don and Cindy, experimenting. Without trying it out, he wasn't sure if talking clarified his thoughts and directions or just held him where he was and slowed his progress forward out of this time.

            Martin said, "Why don't we take Don down to the river and castrate him and roast his testicles? A fool and his testicles are soon parted. Mountain oysters make some good eating."

            James laughed. He saw it in vivid detail, Don tied up and bleeding in the light from the fire he and Martin squatted by, roasting small pieces of meat on sharpened willow skewers.

            James hadn't yet pulled all his thoughts into harmony with what he had begun to understand; he willingly made his last exit. With violence, without violence, no matter what he did, it was over; his role in Cindy's life was finished, played to the end. He had no power in her life, in Don's life, in the plans they made together. James turned and walked away from Don and Cindy.

            Cindy said the end of being together began that night after Lela's funeral, when he overpowered her no with yes.

            James knew the beginning of the end came earlier, when they walked downtown under trees that sprouted from the fertile valley soil before any European touched this continent, and she said, "Let's keep this strictly physical."

            He let what she said evaporate in the heat of the day because he wanted her, and he was willing to try to be what he wasn't to have her.

            Martin said, "I don't want to leave the mountains. I have reservations about teaching, especially about teaching art. I'm not sure anybody can teach art. I'm not sure I know enough about it to try." But he packed his belongings and drove north again.

            James walked into the autumn of owls. He saw more owls in three months alone on the mountain than he'd seen in 27 years. Big owls. Little owls. Some of them quite close. He saw owls he could identify from books, and he saw some he never could identify.

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