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"You're wrong," he said. "Kresinski." And suddenly the thought came out more
forcefully.
"He thinks all that glues us to the world is this, this much." He held up the
fingertips on one hand. He reached around so that Liz could see them even
though it was dark.
"But he doesn't know. It's this." And he set his hand over her heart. "This."
After a minute, John felt her chest heaving. She was crying. Even so, she kept
her back to him. Then they heard Kresinski whistling off in the distance.
"I have to go," said John. He found his clothes and quickly pulled them on.
His hand touched the Clorox bottle and he took a drink of water, then groped
for his tennis shoes. "Tomorrow. Maybe the day after. I'll be back." He leaned
back and touched her leg. "It's almost over."
She stayed curled under the sleeping bag, inert and silent. If she was still
crying, he couldn't hear it.
"I'm coming back for you, Liz."
John muffled a groan as he straightened up outside the van. Fucking knees, he
thought. His back was stiff. His hands ached. He was starved and sore and
weary from too much laboring and too little sleep. But soon it would be over.
A brisk hike
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Jeff Long - Angels of Light halfway to the lake, then they could lay their
ambush and wait. John had no idea how to lay an ambush or if that was even the
best thing to do. All he could say with certainty was that the Merced River
was muddy with runoff, and that meant the back-
country snows were melting. That meant the avalanche hazard up Bullseye's
Valley of
Death would probably be minimal now. The sun would have triggered most of the
slides. The pillar of ice that Bullseye had climbed would be gone. The lake
might even be melted. He couldn't imagine what was drawing Kresinski up there,
or why the smuggler should follow them all the way in.
Again he wondered why he was going in with Kresinski, and again he accepted
that there was simply a momentum. A day in. Maybe a night spent waiting. By
tomorrow night he could be back in the Valley. And then his obligation to the
dead would be done as far as he could personally do it. Either the smuggler
would follow or he wouldn't. If not, then John would pay a visit to park
headquarters and share his findings with the rangers. He would show them the
boot prints at the Amphitheater and here in the clearing. He'd show them
Tucker's bloody T-shirt and explain its significance. Somehow he would get
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that photo Kresinski was hoarding. And, of course, if Bullseye recovered
enough to speak, they could all hear the story from a victim firsthand. If he
and Kresinski came up empty on this "snipe hunt," then John would surrender
vengeance to the state. But if along the trail John turned around and the
ghost was actually there, then what? Feeling like he did hung over from too
much wilderness he couldn't summon up the rage of yesterday. Not at this hour
on this stomach in this dark. As gently as he could, John slid the metal door
shut and closed Liz safely away. Kresinski quit whistling. John could feel him
smiling in the dark.
They'd come close, Liz thought curled beneath the sleeping bag. She listened
to
John's and Matthew's footsteps recede and kept her eyes shut. No one had
traveled quite so far with her, and together she and John had almost reached
the house. The house was both an image and a ruins, one of her greatest
secrets. When she closed her eyes like this, she could sometimes draw it from
the well in the backyard, a perfect oval in which the house stood reflected.
It was her grandfather's place on the original homestead in Oregon, a squat,
beetle-browed cabin with a chimney made of stone and stacked, rust-eaten flour
tins for flues. Though it had fallen into disrepair and the roof would have
caved in if not for the intertwined roots of grass growing on top, still the
river mud packed between its peeled logs was hard as cement. The
Oregon desert wind had cured the logs, and the house was close to ageless. The
waxed-paper windows had torn, naturally, and the front door was off its steel
hinges so that horses and cattle had learned to huddle in it during storms.
Coyote and rabbit and mice and birds lived in burrows or nests built into the
rafters or under the walls.
It was a hundred miles from anywhere, and Liz knew of it only because her
brothers
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Jeff Long - Angels of Light would bring her there for picnics. They'd set up
cans and bottles and practice with
Ken's lever-action 30-ought. It became a faraway rendezvous for the sons and
daughters of the sons and daughters of homesteaders whose names they all
carried.
Sometimes you'd drive up and find a condom outside one of the windows or
someone would have forgotten a piece of their clothing. Because she'd always
associated the cabin with love, and also because her grandpa had deeded it to
her, Liz had decided this house was going to be her house. She was going to
fill it with light and inhabit it with children. One day she would bring her
husband out onto the sweet, musky desert, and they would unpiece the massive
log beams. Onto each timber they would nail a metal plate stamped with a
consecutive number, and then they'd truck the whole kit up off the desert onto
a mountain slope. Montana, California, Colorado. It didn't matter so long as
there was a thick stand of aspens outside the bedroom window so that the
leaves would rattle like gold coins in the autumn. They'd build a new roof for
it and trim the gables with copper flashing. The copper would slowly go to
verdigris. They would be happy.
John had come close. She'd almost invited him to drive north the afternoon
after her
Wild Horse interview, but Tucker had been waiting in Reno for them. And then
yesterday as they departed from John's secret hole in the wall, she'd almost
said on a whim to hell with the Valley, I have this dream to show you. Half
the proposition still stood anyway. Precisely half. To hell with the Valley.
In a way she resented him more than any other man in her life. At least
Kresinski had been treacherous up front.
John. John got your trust and faith. Even when he was a son of a bitch, you
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wanted to believe in him because he wanted you to. It felt safe and proper in
his arms, but in the end all he was was another wild man full of visions and
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