West Of Here Part 24

"I have to go," said Hoko.

Ethan stole a quick glance over his shoulder, and lowered his voice. "What do you mean 'go'?"

"I have to leave now," Hoko said flatly. She pa.s.sed him the child, and he opened his arms tentatively to receive her, clutching the bundled girl in front of him like a vase. He stole another look over his shoulder. "For heaven's sake, can this wait twenty minutes?"

Hoko shook her head. The color began to drain from Ethan's face. Minerva began to wriggle, and issued a plaintive whimper. He bounced the child gently in his arms a few times for good measure, and she reached up to tug upon his wilting mustache. "And when can I expect you back?"

"There's no saying."

"Come again?" he said, liberating his seahorse from Minerva's clutches.

"I don't know if I'll come back."

Ethan felt himself go cold. It was happening again. Had he not built the nursery? Had he not rocked the child to sleep for thirty nights or more? Had he not sat Minerva on his knee, cradled her in his flannel embrace through meeting upon meeting with engineers and contractors and shareholders? He had, in fact, run himself to the ragged edges of exhaustion, walking her to sleep at dusk each day, circling and recircling the entire perimeter of the compound until his very being begged for rest, with still more candlelit hours of labor left in front of him. Was it too much to ask for a little help? "But you've been contracted," he said lamely. "You can't simply leave and not come back."

"It's my son. He's ill. I must go to him."

"But you can't just ... What on earth am I supposed to do about ... ?"

"Good-bye," said Hoko, turning on her heels.

Watching Hoko go, Ethan nearly gave in to pessimism but turned instead to greet the future.

Even as Minerva slumped in his arms, alternately giggling, whining, and fouling herself, Ethan tried to quell the mutinous whispers of his stockholders.

"Don't misunderstand me. It's not that I'm questioning the fiscal wisdom of Chicago - though I'd be lying if said I didn't have a few misgivings. My primary concern is local. I put my faith right here in Port Bonita, where it belongs."

Ultimately, Ethan found his a.s.sociates disagreeable and was forced to concede to Chicago, because Chicago had the grease that kept the wheels spinning, Chicago had money - and only money, Ethan came to realize, offered total control.

"I don't like this one bit," he said upon his concession. "The whole idea was to invigorate our own economy, put our own contractors to work, not bring in outside help. This dam was supposed to be for Port Bonita by by Port Bonita." Port Bonita."

After the meeting had adjourned, and the men had filed out of the office, heading for town by carriage, then onward by water and rail to their great cities, Ethan slumped in his chair at the head of the table and sat Minerva on the tabletop before him as the empty room cooled down and the pale blue smoke began to dissipate. The girl dangled her feet over the edge of the table, sitting upright by her own strength, though Ethan's hands were there to guide her. A smile played at the corners of his mouth. The child smiled back at him.

"What are we to do, you and I? What is written in our future, child?"

Minerva reached out for one of his seahorses and gave it a playful tug. Looking at the girl, her wonder-eyed, expectant face, Ethan tried to see her future written there. He ran a coa.r.s.e thumb down Minerva's face, and she batted her eyelids and kicked her legs.

"We shall see," he said with a sigh. "We shall see."

After the blasting had ceased for the day, Ethan walked Minerva about the little valley as the dust settled, and the afternoon air surrendered its warmth. He walked until the child fell asleep in his arms. Circling back in the direction of the office, Ethan took a detour and cut through the camp that had sprung up along the western fringe of the compound. The workforce had outgrown the bunkhouses, erecting shacks and lean-tos w.i.l.l.y-nilly beyond the mess hall. All of it would be thirty feet under water one day. Workers were milling about in doorways and in the road as Ethan walked with Minerva through their midst. Evenin', Mr. Thornburgh. Howdy, Mr. Thornburgh. Comin' right along, Mr. Thornburgh. Evenin', Mr. Thornburgh. Howdy, Mr. Thornburgh. Comin' right along, Mr. Thornburgh. The smell of cooking hung everywhere in the air. A single staccato laugh cut through the evening. And even with his daughter in his arms, Ethan felt a pang of loneliness. The smell of cooking hung everywhere in the air. A single staccato laugh cut through the evening. And even with his daughter in his arms, Ethan felt a pang of loneliness.

He came upon Indian George squatting on his haunches in front of the bunkhouse. He was packing a bag.

"What's this?"

George rose to his feet and dusted off his backside. "I'm leaving."

Ethan was less shocked than disappointed by the news. "Leaving? You, too?" Indeed, it was an exodus: first his woman, then his helper, now his loyal companion.

Indian George tied off his bag and heaved it on his shoulder. "The boy is back among the Siwash," he explained. "And the people are saying he's changed."

s.h.i.t happens AUGUST 2006 2006.

With summer winding down, Hillary lowered her shoulder and charged at her work with renewed diligence. She spent long afternoons on the river mapping fish holes and riffles, kneeling along the banks in her baggy pants to measure flow and velocity, scurrying up and down embankments, collecting silt and gravel and detritus. But she knew in her bones that her labors were futile. A dozen flow hydro-graphs, a gazillion velocity plots - none of it would save the salmon, who would continue to suffocate with mucus-coated gills in the light flows and tepid waters of the lower Elwha until the day they shunted the headwaters and started building the dam in reverse, draining Lake Thornburgh, liberating countless tons of silt, creating dozens, perhaps hundreds of jobs directly and indirectly. The day was coming. Hillary was certain that the politicos would quit stalling, face the music, and finally succ.u.mb to pressure, pushing the restoration through. Once again, the dam would be the engine of Port Bonita, only this time in reverse. And what would be left to power? What was Port Bonita without the Thornburgh Dam?

Some afternoons, Hillary took her lunch up to the dam and lingered in the rainbow-colored mist near the foot of the spillway, while the great turbines rumbled up through her bones. Eating her lunch, Hillary watched the futile plight of the fish, leaping time and again at the dam to be rebuffed at each pa.s.s. She admired and despised their determination. She figured that after a hundred years they'd get it. After generation upon generation of beating their heads against the same concrete wall, the fish would figure it out at some point, the people of Port Bonita would figure it out. For five generations, Port Bonita was an orgy of consumption that seemed like it would never end. Every day was Dam Day. But now it was time to clean up the mess.

Hillary had put all thoughts of Franklin Bell behind her, until one morning in late August, collecting silt samples up near the rubble diversion at river mile 3.4, a numbness washed over her as she forced herself to consider the distinct possibility that she was pregnant. It wasn't enough that at thirty-eight years old she was s.e.xually conflicted and willfully single, that she had no equity, and was essentially working herself out of a job in a dying town. No, she had to go and get pregnant by the only black guy in three counties. Her numbness broke suddenly like a fever, and Hillary began to cry for the first time in ages, and it felt good. The tears gushed for the better part of an hour, and when she was all cried out, she squatted on the bank of the river, where the fast eddies swirled, and contemplated various futures.

On her way home, she stopped at Fred Meyer for a chocolate cake and an EPT. She never ate the cake.

black MARCH 1890 1890.

Having left the Elwha behind nearly two weeks prior, Mather had unwittingly led the expedition into the most rugged and precipitous terrain they had yet to encounter. Ascending far past the timberline, out of the wooded valleys and canyon country they trudged, starving and beleaguered, straight into the jaws of the alpine wilderness. They soon found themselves besieged by a jumble of jagged peaks, their steep faces scarred by slides and avalanches. Down the hulking shoulders of the mountains ran great yawning creva.s.ses cut through with veins of glacial ice. The thin air burned icy hot in their lungs. The absence of anything as small as a frost-stunted tree or a shrub or even a bare patch of earth in this vast white world, distorted all sense of scale. Carving wide switchbacks up snowfields in their ragged single file, the men seemed even to themselves insignificant. Their progress - so hard won - seemed infinitesimal. For days on end, they marched silently but for their own labored breaths and the plodding progress of their snowshoes, toward the broad face of Olympus. The brittle wind chapped their faces, burned their eyes, whistled past their ears with a ghostly howl. Hunger would not be ignored, nor was it content to simply gnaw at their bellies; by the middle of March, it began to work upon their minds. Trudging forward, they were as five strangers - together yet alone - imprisoned by their thoughts.

n.o.body's determination was less dogged, or progress more mechanical, than Cunningham, who plowed forward listlessly, pulling up the rear. The thoughts that crowded in upon the doctor were not welcome thoughts, or even sensible thoughts, but stray flashes of memory - crisp and vivid - the significance of which he could not comprehend: concrete steps, the hem of a coat sleeve, a leather-upholstered ottoman. An ink blotter, a flagpole, the pale flame of a streetlamp. These benign images more than anything else were the source of the tears freezing upon Cunningham's wind-stung face, not because they stirred his sensual appet.i.tes, or filled him with longing, but precisely because of what the images didn't didn't evoke, the meaning they didn't possess. evoke, the meaning they didn't possess.

Reese, owing not to his own depleted vitality, but to Dolly's, was never far in front of the doctor. He coaxed Dolly forward on a short lead, encouraging her vocally on occasion with a pat on the rump. The beast was in poor shape, her ribs protruding, her breathing shallow and tattered.

Perhaps the heartiest member of the expedition by this time, Runnells remained right on Haywood's heels throughout the ascent, pushing his compatriot forward. Runnells alone was not bothered by his thoughts or troubled by the future. His mind was fixed only on his next step.

13 March 1890 This afternoon, having traversed a saddleback and struggled up the face of a mountain we might well have named Exhaustion, the altimeter read 2,850 meters. I do not know if this number is accurate; I'm highly suspicious of it. Surely, we are at a higher elevation. I must confess that as I set my pen to paper, shivering in the dusky light of our fireless camp, with a sickening hunger gnawing at my insides and a chill in my limbs which cannot be thawed, I fear that other eyes may never look upon any of us again. It is now readily apparent to me that leaving the Elwha was a grave miscalculation and that I should have spoken my piece. For this, I cannot blame James Mather. That in some strange way he seems to be enjoying the catastrophe, that he continues to exude confidence in the face of disaster, nay, even a certain mocking good humor, is reckless and unforgivable. My patience has been exhausted, and I feel my wick burning low. I've half a mind to turn around, with or without them. But I haven't the vigor. I am also of the mind that the remaining mule should be dressed while it still has something besides sinew on its bones.

On a morning in mid-March, as the men snowshoed up a thick bank toward the crest of another rise, Dolly finally gave out - tottering once, with a ragged wheeze, she toppled onto her side beneath her load. After numerous attempts, she could not be persuaded to rise again. For several minutes the party gathered wordlessly around Dolly and watched her languish, dull-eyed and senseless, in the snow. Reese squatted on his haunches and stroked the mule's head. Looking up into the hungry faces of the men, he felt an unfamiliar shame and appealed to Mather with uncertain eyes.

Recognizing the naked hunger in Haywood's eyes, along with an unsettling glimmer akin to madness, Mather spoke gravely. "No. Let's move on."

Reese stayed behind, kneeling in the snow. He watched as the other men crested the snow-covered rise. He stroked the beast one final time, and spoke her name softly, before setting the muzzle of his rifle between her eyes.

WITH ONE EYE, Dolly watched the sky, dully, contentedly. It was a mottled shifting sky, many shades of gray. She breathed easily once more, as the clouds tumbled lazily on their way past. She could no longer feel the sting of the ice or the burning in her belly. She felt only a throbbing from the center of the earth. There was warmth still in the hand atop her head, comfort in the soft voice which uttered her name. When the hand was lifted, she felt a slight pressure between her eyes, heard a deafening ring in her ears. Then she saw black.

Now forced to bear their own burdens, the men dragged as never before beneath the weight of their loads. Throughout the morning, Mather could feel the piercing eyes of Haywood between his shoulder blades. Something was at work on Haywood, gnawing away at his good sense. Mather had never known this sort of weakness in his companion. If only Mather could give Haywood some of his own strength.

As afternoon approached, the terrain leveled out in a narrow whitewashed valley running east to west. Perhaps a mile ahead - though such short distances had become nearly impossible to gauge - the valley doglegged to the south, beyond which point the lay of the land was invisible. It was the dogleg that spurred Mather on through the deep snow. The gentle curve amid a landscape otherwise sudden and brutal suggested to Mather that something forgiving lay ahead, a wide river valley descending into the tree line, perhaps. So tight did Mather cling to this hope that his pace quickened as he plowed through the waist-deep snow toward the bend. Shortly before sunset, they reached the wide arc of the valley, and Mather pushed harder than ever through the snow until he had almost managed a trot. By the time he reached the far end of the bend, he'd put a distance of a hundred yards between himself and Haywood. And when at last Mather rounded the bend, he stopped dead in his tracks and fell to his knees.

28 March 1890 When I saw Mather drop to his knees, all that was not broken in my spirit rose in a flash of warmth. I ran toward the bend with a heart full of contrition, an apology taking shape upon my wasted lips.

betwixt green hills AUGUST 2006 2006.

Having renounced Mather's upland route and rejoined the upper Elwha at the foot of the Press Valley, Timmon Tillman came upon a small creek a half mile southwest of river mile 19. It was shortly before noon, and already his feet were itching when he decided to stop and catch his breath. The clouds had burned off and the thrushes were sounding their otherworldly whistle. Timmon stood on the edge of the burbling stream, which ran a meandering downhill course for a half mile, where it fed into the Elwha at the head of a wide channel. Not only was the spot idyllic with its nearby gra.s.sy glade and its dramatic vistas of the rugged interior, but surely, Timmon reasoned, there were plenty of fish in the upper Elwha to sustain a hundred men through fall. By winter he'd have a grasp on bow hunting - h.e.l.l, if Ted Nugent could do it, an Irish setter could probably do it. Everything he would ever need was right there. The fast little creek would provide fresh water, the dense canopy would shelter him from the elements, and the isolation of the place - twenty-odd unihabited miles from Port Bonita and fifty or more from anywhere else - would ensure Timmon a life of unmolested solitude.

What had really distinguished this little creek from two dozen other lovely little creeks was the fact that Timmon was tired - tired of plodding ever onward, tired of packing and unpacking his fancy backpack, tired of sweat pooling in his socks and the insatiable itch of athlete's foot. He was tired of starting all over again every morning with the unzipping and zipping of zippers and the clicking and unclicking of carabiners, tired of the mult.i.tude of tedious ch.o.r.es - wrestling his tent into its sheath, folding his damp clothes, shaking the needles off his tarp - tired of the endless details. In spite of what he'd told the parole board, Timmon came to realize that he really didn't want to live his life one day at a time after all - he wanted to live it like one long day, without all the packing and unpacking. The more still you sat, the fewer problems you seemed to attract. The less you moved, the fewer obstacles you were bound to encounter. Hadn't he adapted quite easily to prison life for these very reasons?

He christened the place Whiskey Creek but soon decided that it sounded too much like a steakhouse and redubbed it Lost Creek, Clear Creek, Fish Creek, and Little River, before settling finally on the frank and unpretentious the Creek. In the warmth of early afternoon, he scrupulously cleared and graded a flat expanse between three giant cedars. He dug a circular fire pit and ringed it with rocks he hauled from the creek. He shed layer upon layer of clothing as the hours unfolded, until he was shirtless, pale and skinny and tattooed, limbing fir trees with his Felco in the afternoon sunlight. He sawed limbs in six foot lengths, two to three inches in diameter, until it seemed he'd amputated every reachable limb of that description for a half acre in all directions. He dragged them two by two through the forest and staged them in a clearing at the edge of the glade. Late in the afternoon, he began to construct a shelter between the three cedars - part lean-to, part cabin, part teepee. And as the structure took shape, Timmon was fully engaged in his task and outside of time. Now and again, he stepped back to clear the sweat from his forehead and scratch his beard, and to admire his work in all its confused glory. Sure, it wasn't Hearst Castle - it looked more like an upside-down bird's nest than anything else. But it was a h.e.l.l of a lot homier than a tent, and h.e.l.l of a lot roomier. Though the doorway might have served a hobbit quite comfortably, Timmon was forced to bend his lanky frame almost in half to gain entry. Once inside, the structure had all the charm of a fox den.

In the waning hours of day, as Timmon was shoring up his patchwork roof, he was alerted by a nearby trilling and looked up to find a chipmunk watching him from a high crook in a cedar. Cute little guy. Huge cheeks. Funny little buck teeth.

"Hey, there, little buddy. You live around here?"

The chipmunk trilled.

"Guess I'm you're new neighbor then. Make yourself at home."

Locking in on the chipmunk, Timmon slowly backpedaled toward his equipment, crouching as he went, groping blindly behind his back for the bow. Running his hand down the riser, he found the grip and began to pat around for his quiver with the other hand.

The chipmunk trilled.

"That's right, little buddy. Just stay right there and make yourself comfortable."

Timmon fitted the arrow into place and lifted the bow. Steadying himself, he angled the bow up and steadied his aim at the chipmunk, who trilled once more with a playful singsong. Slowly Timmon drew the bow string back tauter and tauter until he hit the wall. Holding his breath, he let the arrow fly. The bow kicked back unexpectedly hard, and Timmon faltered backward a step as the arrow disappeared with a whiz into the canopy. The chipmunk never moved a muscle. The arrow never came down.

Timmon dined not on chipmunk that evening but on a small handful of pumpkin seeds and the last of the shriveled huckleberries he'd collected two days prior. He did his best to quiet his grumbling stomach with water as he hunched over the fire. Tomorrow he would fish. He'd catch an even dozen and cure them in a salt brine and smoke them just like he'd read online at the library. He'd pan-fry a couple, too. In the afternoon, he'd practice with the bow. He'd find that arrow that never came down. He'd make a few improvements on his shelter.

Late in the evening it began to drizzle. Abandoning the fire, Timmon gathered his things and took cover beneath his shelter. As he lay in his sleeping bag, he listened to the hiss of the rain and stared up at the thatch ceiling. He had a mind to talk out loud but resisted the temptation. Outside he thought he heard something scratching around by the fire pit but decided it was only the rain playing tricks on his ears. For no apparent reason, with his mind set free to wander, Timmon recalled his elementary school gym teacher, Mr. Black, and his knee-high tube socks and his hairy arms and his whistle. He recalled playing crab-soccer with that huge canvas ball. He'd actually been decent at the game. He could move fast like a crab. He remembered stealing Fudgsicles from the walk-in freezer in the kitchen adjacent to the gym. He remembered those big b.u.t.tery rolls they served on the yellow plastic trays next to the already cut-up spaghetti. He remembered Sloppy Joe Thursdays. Corn Dog Fridays. A green lunch ticket. Glowing ca.s.seroles crisp around the edges and cheesy in the center. The abundance of school lunch. Often, those lunches held him over until the next day. Once in a while, his father's heavy footsteps clomping up the wooden steps would wake him in the middle of the night, and he knew what was coming, and was powerless to stop it. His father would clomp right to Timmon's bedside and turn on the light. Smelling of whiskey, arms loaded with white boxes of cold Chinese takeout, he would rouse the boy out of bed. This was the closest his father ever came to being gregarious.

"Up! Get up!" he'd say.

He'd tear the covers off the boy and march him to the sickly light of the kitchen and set him down at the table and foist the boxes on him.

"Eat! Go on, eat!"

And when the boy continued rubbing his eyes in sleepy bewilderment, his father's temper would rise.

"I said eat! What are you waiting for? I got c.h.i.n.k food!"

He'd clomp to the bedroom and rouse Timmon's mother, too, and march her to the kitchen, and the two of them would silently eat cold Chinese food under the watchful gaze of his father, standing magnanimously over them with his arms folded.

Timmon thought he heard the scratching again, and when he thought he heard something large disturbing the brush, he bolted upright and listened intently. But all he could hear was rain. Rain, and the beating of his own heart. He lay back down and resumed staring at the thatch roof and tried to empty his head. But one recollection crowded in on him: eight years old and the disappointment of a rainy afternoon at old Comiskey Park as the tarp was rolled out even before the first pitch. If anything, his old man had seemed pleased about the rainout.

"We would've lost anyway."

Even as they filed out of the stadium - his old man hurrying him along with two fingers pressed to his shoulder - the rain began to subside. It was hardly raining at all as they emerged on West Thirty-fourth and cut through the dispersing crowd toward the old Dart. They could've played that game, Timmon was sure of it.

"Quit your sulking," his old man said. "It ain't the end of the world."

"But it's hardly raining."

"It's always raining. Get used to it."

They didn't even need the windshield wipers, a fact that Timmon was quick to note but afraid to mention. Neither did they get on the expressway toward home, another fact Timmon was afraid to mention. Instead, his father piloted the Dart south down Wentworth, producing a pint-sized paper bag from under the seat, and uncapping it at the first stoplight, where he hunkered down slightly and snuck a few quick draws before restashing the bottle under the seat. He fiddled with the radio reception until he found the Cubs game. The Cubbies were in St. Louis, down 60.

"There. There's your ball game, okay, you satisfied?"

Timmon pressed his face to the window. The afternoon sun was trying to peek out from behind the clouds.

"I thought I told you to quit sulking," his father said.

"I don't care about the stupid Cubs."

His old man's arm shot across the seat in a flash and grabbed him by the coat collar. "Snap out of it, G.o.d d.a.m.n it! Quit sniveling."

Timmon felt all the blood drain out of him as his father released his grip. He stared straight ahead with his jaw trembling, pretending to listen to the Cubbies as his father guided them still farther south through the fifties and into sixties streets, where he began to circle unfamiliar blocks. Finally, they parked in front of a crumbling brick apartment building. His father fished out the bottle and took a few more quick hits before stuffing the pint in his coat pocket.

"Keep the doors locked," he said. "And don't drain the battery listening to the radio."

Timmon watched him walk away down the sidewalk, bobbing between people as he went, past a drugstore, past a liquor store, and around the corner. The terror was still palpable all these years later. How long had his father been gone? How long had Timmon sat locked in that car as the strange dark faces pa.s.sed by? And worse, the group of young men gathered on the stoop, looking right in at him. He could feel their eyes on him. He knew they were talking about him. He knew they had guns and knives. He knew they were not to be trusted. The city was full of them. Everything was going to h.e.l.l.

Timmon took comfort in the old black man who emerged from the apartment across the street and seated himself on a piece of cardboard on the top step, where he leaned slightly forward on his cane, looking out over the street through a rain so light that Timmon could barely hear it tapping on the roof of the Dart. The man was graying at the temples. He wore orange plaid pants and an old-fashioned porkpie hat and brownish red shoes so shiny he could see them shining all the way across the street. A young woman in pink hair barrettes walked by and said something to the old man and smiled, and the old man smiled and said something in return, then went back to leaning on his cane. Timmon began to feel that he was safe as long as the old man remained. With the old man watching, he could almost forget the men on the stoop. He scooted over into the driver's seat to be closer to the old man. Once, he went so far as to wave, and the old man nodded his head and raised a finger without letting go of his cane, and Timmon could've sworn that he'd winked. That's when he felt certain that the old man was watching out for him. This certainty was short-lived, for at the first clap of thunder, the old man took up his cardboard and his cane and went inside, and Timmon was once more alone with the men on the stoop. The men on the stoop didn't seem to care that it was raining. They made no effort to huddle in the broad entryway at the top of the steps. They weren't afraid of getting wet. They were laughing. And smoking. And talking too loud. They weren't afraid of anything. Like animals, they could smell fear. Timmon tried to will his father back to the car. He thought about turning on the radio, just for a minute, just to check the score, but was afraid of wearing down the battery. After a few minutes, he curled up on the floor in the foot well of the backseat and closed his eyes.

Two months later, his mother took her own life. Two months after that, on yet another rainy day, his old man dropped him off at his grandmother's house with a flower-spotted canvas suitcase and never came back. It'd been raining ever since.

A cold stream of water slithering down his neck awoke Timmon suddenly. He sat up in the darkness, and groped for his headlamp. Outside it was pouring. Rainwater streamed in through the boughs of the ceiling directly above his head. From all corners came the sound of dripping water.

"f.u.c.k me," said Timmon.

Strapping on his headlamp, he wiggled out of his bag, wrestled his wet boots and jacket on, and procured his tent from beneath the tarp. For fifteen cursing minutes in the downpour, Timmon struggled with the tent by the light of his head lamp. By the time he commenced draping the rain tarp, the fabric was already wet through. He fetched his sleeping bag from the abandoned shelter and slipped inside the tent. The bag was damp when he wiggled inside of it. The rain was rat-tat-tatting on the tent with machine-gun rapidity, but even as the tarp began to sag beneath the weight of it, Timmon remained reasonably dry inside his sleeping bag. Mercifully, sleep was quick to claim him once more.

crazy f.u.c.king indian AUGUST 2006 2006.

"Another specialist? I thought he was was the f.u.c.kin' specialist," said Randy, firing up a Salem and kicking his bare feet up on the kitchen table. "What the f.u.c.k kind of specialist are they talking about? And how you gonna pay for it? Crazy f.u.c.kin' kid." the f.u.c.kin' specialist," said Randy, firing up a Salem and kicking his bare feet up on the kitchen table. "What the f.u.c.k kind of specialist are they talking about? And how you gonna pay for it? Crazy f.u.c.kin' kid."

For weeks Rita had been teetering on the edge of Randy as though she were teetering on the edge of a cliff. Now she could feel her narrow purchase giving way. Gripping the skillet tighter, she did her best to ignore him.

"State ought to pay for this s.h.i.t," he pursued. "I sure as s.h.i.t ain't payin' for it, I'll tell you that much. The h.e.l.l if I'm gonna bust my a.s.s so that kid can sleep in a better bed than me."

Rita dropped the skillet on the burner and whipped around to face Randy. She couldn't believe she was actually going to say it. But now that the words were on her lips, she was fearless of the consequences. "Get out," she said, calmly.

Randy smiled stupidly. "What the f.u.c.k?"

"Out."

His smile wilted. "Whaddaya mean, out out? Is this some kind of joke?"

Rita dropped her spatula in the sink. Seizing his boots off of the kitchen floor, she swung the back door open and winged them out onto the dead lawn.

"No joke," she said. The surface of her calm threatened to shatter.

Randy's face was a prairie of blankness. "What the h.e.l.l crawled up your a.s.s? I'm just sitting here minding my s.h.i.t. Is this about your kid? Because that ain't got nothin' to do with me. I've put up with a lot of s.h.i.t around here. I didn't sign on to be no daddy to your screwy kid. You should be thankin' me."