August brings the big heat to the northern high plains where Lucas lived.
Oh sure, you hang up your jean jacket in June. And July’s sun can zap your energy. But the big heat, the thick baking heat, that comes in August.
Nobody wants rain. Not in August when the big heat needs to ripen fields of wheat tall and golden for red harvest machines with spinning blades. Farmers drive those combines. Guillotine acres of wheat. Trucks haul the grain to skyscraper gray elevators for storage before trains carry the crops off to feed the world.
From the day school let out until after July’s fair, Lucas heard people say: “Hot enough for you?” or “Wish it would rain.”
But come August, what folks around Vernon ask is: “Think it’ll rain?”
The answer is a prayer: “Hope not!”
Rain stops wheat from ripening. Turns fields into bogs. Mildews crops. Delays harvest until something worse than rain comes along, like a lightning fire. Or swarms of grasshoppers who chew waving fields down to stubble.
Or the Dream Killer.
The Dream Killer stalks on hot August days.
Wispy gray threads swirl overhead. Then come thunderhead clouds that billow a mile high. The air goes from baking dry to steamy hot. Goes still.
Too still.
“Watch the sky!” warned Lucas’s favorite horror movie The Thing.
Clouds warn of a coming Dream Killer.
Indigo monsters full of rain and rumbles and jagged lightning are bad enough. But when those clouds turn black on top of gray, murder is in the air.
Out of the stillness blasts the Dream Killer’s wind.
Dust whirls on the streets. Trees sway. Traffic lights on Main Street herky-jerky on their cables. The corner stop sign shakes, rattles, and rolls.
Wham! Crashing down come a billion ice pellets the size of peas. The size of marbles. Ice chunks the size of golf balls!
Hailstorms are crazy. One farmer’s fields are untouched. His neighbor’s crop is wiped out. Gone, a whole year’s mortgaged work. A whole crop. A whole dream murdered in the time it takes to hard-boil an egg.
Lucas rode in the backseat of Neal’s green car on that August Tuesday.
Stuck his head out the car window and looked up.
Nothing but blue sky.
“Careful your glasses don’t fall off,” said Jordan Smith from the front seat.
She was right—of course she was right. His glasses flew off as he jerked his head back inside the car, but Lucas caught them.
He looked out the rear window with his bare eyes. Saw the endlessly receding highway. The farther back Lucas focused, the blurrier his vision became. But he knew the dark dot behind their car was not a hailstorm on the horizon.
He put his glasses on. Looked to the front seat where Neal Dylan drove. Where Jordan Smith sat in the passenger’s seat. Where the windshield filled with the highway leading out of town under a clear blue sky of the big heat.
Hal rode in the backseat beside Lucas. Click! went the baby-shit-yellow pen Hal held, over and over again. Lucas ached to throw it out the car window like you did with hamburger wrappers and Coke cups to watch them bounce across the prairie because there’s endless land where the trash just fades way.
Lucas hated that damn clicking baby-shit-yellow pen.
Wish I’d never gotten it in the first place!
Last night.
Dad came home from work.
Mom said: “It’s too hot to cook.”
So the family went out to dinner at the newly air-conditioned Dixie Inn.
White-uniformed waitress Mrs. Fisher padded menus to their table.
Laura sighed while Mom was explaining to Lucas how a slab of beef could be a “chicken fried steak” when a man’s voice called out:
“Well, looky here! It’s the whole Ross clan!”
Walking into the dining room came Dad’s boss Alec and his wife.
And their daughter! Fran’s blouse stretched over her basketball belly.
“Hey, Laura!” said Fran. “How you doing?”
“Ah… OK. How are—”
“Me? Pregnant!” Fran led everyone in laughter. “But not for much longer!”
Alec Marshall’s hands jiggled coins in his pockets. “We figured we better get these kids out for dinner while they still got the chance.”
Dad said: “So I see.”
But his eyes were only on the leer of the man behind Alec. On Ben Owens.
Who held a shiny Big City black briefcase.
“Evening, Don,” Ben told the man who was his boss, who worked for his father-in-law. “Hey, Lucas. Haven’t seen you around much.”
“I got other jobs. Painting. Door-to-door handbills for the Roxy.”
Coins jiggled in Alec’s pocket. “Good for you, Lucas. Good for you. That’s just what a young man’s gotta be, isn’t it, Don? Ambitious.”
“That’s part of it.” Dad stared at Briefcase Ben: “Thought you were on dispatch phone.”
Alec said: “See, Ben? A good man always has his eye on the ball.”
“Or on me.” Ben chuckled like he meant some kind of a joke.
No one laughed.
“Don’t worry, Don,” said Alec. “When the missus came up with taking the kids out, I called Adele. She’s on the phone. So relax. Everything’s jim-dandy.”
“Glad to hear that.”
Alec told his wife: “Hey, hon, take Fran over to that table, get the load off her feet.”
His women folk mumbled ‘See you!’ to the Rosses. Walked to that faraway table. Left Alec and Briefcase Ben standing beside Dad.
“You gotta see this, Don,” said Alec. “You too, Cora, kids. Show ’em, Ben.”
The son-in-law put the briefcase on the table.
That Important Work Papers bag gaped open like an alligator mouth.
Ben lifted a wall calendar for two years ago out of the briefcase.
“Different pictures for each month,” he said.
The calendar showed January. Above the sheet for the days and dates hung a picture of two dogs romping in a green field. Above that were huge black words: YOUR BUSINESS NAME HERE!
“You got your choice of themes,” said Ben. “Regular animals. Or lions, tigers, other African stuff. Mountains. The ocean. I like the one that has monkeys dressed up like people playing poker.”
I know the perfect picture for a calendar! thought Lucas.
Alec chimed in: “Ordered a bunch of those chimp ones for us to send out to our customers. ‘Marshall Trucking’ with our phone number. Next year, they’ll hang ’em on the walls of the gas stations, the refineries, think of us first.”
“Nobody else to think of for petro hauling around here,” said Dad.
“But a man’s gotta be prepared for competition.” Ben grinned. “You never know about the future.”
“No,” said Dad. “You never do.”
“That’s not all.” Ben handed Dad a baby-shit-yellow ballpoint pen that was lettered in red. “Check this out.”
Dad read the pen’s words out loud: “Montana Madison Avenue Adverts.”
“And see?” said Ben. “Got my name, phone number, and address. Not only a sample of pens we can make for customers, it’s my remember-me calling card.”
“Are you quitting us to—”
Alec jiggled coins: “Oh no! Can’t let the guy do that with a little one about to pop out. Plus, we gotta have somebody on board to help you, Don.
“No,” said the man who owned Marshall Trucking. “Way Ben here figures it, and sounds solid to me, this advertising gig is his outside line. Works out great with what you got him doing. Days, he’s not handlin’ much anyway. That wouldn’t be fair, working full days plus being the nights and weekends dispatch guy.”
“I’ve worked running things all day and the nights plus weekend stuff all these years,” said Dad.
“There you go,” said Alec. “Then you know how much it is for one guy. Plus, he doesn’t have your experience at juggling things.”
“Seems to be juggling real well.”
Lucas saw Ben’s smile slip. Saw it curl back.
“Anyway,” said Alec, “now that you’re freed up with him on board, you got more time to do the big stuff. He can take his advertising orders from home. When he goes on the road—day trips only, he won’t be leaving Fran and the little one alone, plus there’s our dispatch phone—when he goes out to make deliveries, scout sales prospects in towns around here, he’ll check in on our customers.”
“He’s going to show up at our customers? Wearing two hats? Will he try to sell them this… his… promotional stuff?”
“Oh yeah,” said Alec. “He’s smart enough to work that, too.”
“Guess he is,” said Dad.
“We’re lucky there,” said Alec. “Like Falk explained, him doing that traveling to see our customers squares us with the tax boys for his car and such.”
“When you look at it,” said Ben, “you see the smart moves.”
“Is that what you see.” Dad’s voice was flat.
Ben nodded. “That’s a good pen. Let me know how you like it.”
“No thanks,” said Dad, handing it back. “I already got one.”
Ben yelled: “Lucas!”
Tossed the pen into the air in front of the boy.
Caught it! thought Lucas. I actually caught it!
The smart moves man said: “A guy can always use a good clicker.”
“Thanks!” said Lucas. Because saying that was The Right Thing To Do.
“Come on, Ben,” said Alec as he led the young man away. “Let’s get fed.”
The waitress lumbered over to the Rosses. “You guys know what you want?”
Dad whispered: “Order something now! Right now!”
Jukebox music from the bar drifted into the dining room. A new guy named Johnny Cash sang: “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town.”
A diner called over to Alec: “Think it’ll rain?”
The waitress brought the Rosses’ dinners.
Dad shoveled food into him before she’d finished passing out the plates. Mom snatched her fork to spear a bite twice the size she normally took. Laura shot her eyes at Lucas, and it was like he could hear her scream: “Go! Eat fast!”
The waitress sashayed over when Dad beckoned.
Frowned at their plates. “That was quick. Y’all must have been starved.”
Dad said: “Yes, well, we gotta hit the road now, so if you’ve got the check…”
“It’s your lucky night.” The waitress grinned. “Alec already picked it up. Tip, too, so don’t go leavin’ nothing on the table, you hear?”
She leaned over the table. Winked. Whispered: “Wish I had a boss like that.”
Padded away.
Dad didn’t watch her go. Didn’t look over to the table from which came murmurs of a story Fran was telling about her college sorority. Didn’t look at Mom. At Laura. At Lucas. At anything Lucas could see.
Whoosh as Dad stood. Chairs scraped as Mom, Laura, and Lucas rocketed to their feet with him. He stared to the table in the back corner.
Called out: “Thank you, Alec.”
Mom and Laura and Lucas chorused: “Thank you!”
Alec had a mouth full of steak, waved his hand. “Don’t mention it.”
“Well,” said Dad, “thank you again.”
They drove away from that diner in the company’s black station wagon.
“Lucas!” said Dad. “Get rid of that damn pen.”
But he couldn’t just throw it out the car window as they drove home. That would be a waste. And like Mom said, with babies starving in China, wasting is wrong. So the next morning when Neal called him with the work surprise, Lucas took the baby-shit-yellow pen and gave it to Hal.
Who took it with them in the green car.
Who sat beside him in the backseat.
Who wouldn’t stop clicking.
Driver Neal pointed across the road. “Look over there.”
The pyramid skeleton of an oil drilling rig rose toward the arching sky from farmland dirt. Lucas spotted a blue pickup parked next to a stack of pipes.
And just knew.
“Think they’ll hit oil?” said Neal as the rig receded behind them.
Lucas grinned. “Naw.”
“Hal,” said Jordan, “let’s listen to the radio instead of you clicking.”
She turned the radio knob.
Hammered her fist on the dashboard.
In the rearview mirror, Lucas saw Neal’s reflection wink at him.
The radio blared on with the disk jockey from KRIP radio.
“… just got a call from Dan Moldea, who says the weather is still looking good east of town. Looking good all around our four-county listening area.
“And that reminds me. I’m wondering if you folks saw the picture in the newspaper yesterday. The first picture of earth taken from outer space. Man, that’s something! And if they can do it again in a few weeks, that picture will show that we got a new state for America. After Alaska joined up with us back in January of this year, Hawaii about to join in gives us fifty—Five Oh—states. We’re going places, folks, and it’s looking good.
“All of which kinda leads me up to a song I’m gonna play for you. That singer Billie Holiday died a couple weeks ago back in New York, but all the good news we got going on today reminds me of my favorite song by her, a classic tune that you gotta admit she does a fine job with for a colored gal.”
The radio scratched as a needle dropped into a groove on a black record spinning on a turntable in Vernon, Montana, America, with soon-to-be fifty states.
Then came that voice:
“Summer-time, and the livin’ is e-asy…”
Lucas, Hal, and two teachers peered out their car windows.
“Hey,” said Lucas. “Do you guys know that Miss—I mean Jordan—did you know that she for real got to see that Billie Holiday?”
“No!” said the driver, but the sly look he shot to the woman sitting near him made Lucas wonder. “I didn’t know that. You two been keeping secrets from me?”
“If we tell you,” said Jordan, “they won’t be secrets.”
Neal’s eyes in the rearview mirror watched Lucas. “What do you think about Jordan getting to see somebody famous and important like Billie Holiday?”
“Cool.” Lucas frowned. “Miss—Jordan: I didn’t get it when they said it, but… the radio said she was colored. What color was she?”
Car wheels hummed over the highway.
Jordan said: “Blue. A woman, the songs she sang, she’s blue.”
Car wheels hummed on a two-lane black highway in August 1959.
“Lucas,” said Neal. “Do you think it matters what color somebody is?”
The youngest boy in the backseat shrugged. “Only if they’re sick.”
“That’s right,” said the driver. “That’s right.”
Polka music played on the radio as they drove toward the river hills.
Neal waved to a man driving a tractor along the barbwire fence beside the highway. The tractor pulled a duck-foot plow scraping dark furrows in the tan field near neighboring fields where ripening wheat waved in the breeze.
The tractor jockey lifted his cap off his bald head to return Neal’s wave.
Jordan smiled at Neal. “You know everybody around here, Hometown?”
Lucas blurted: “I know him, too! I’m just as hometown!”
“Lou Herbst is a good man, isn’t he, Lucas?” said Neal.
“Sure,” said Lucas.
“Is he related to you like the rest of the town?” asked Jordan.
“No, he goes to the same church as we do. When we got to go. He, with Mrs. Sweeny, Mr. Herbst rescued me on Easter Sunday.”
Car seat springs creaked beside Lucas.
Horror shook Lucas. Easter Sunday, Mrs. Sweeny, who had the car ’fore it got gas tank sugared, Hal and Earl… and I had to go and say EASTER SUNDAY!
The car crawled over the big heat highway.
The radio broadcast hog reports.
Jordan finally said: “Think it’ll rain?”
As their car reached the crest of the river hill, Neal said: “I hope not.”
The highway sloped down the river breaks toward a bridge. Chessboard farm fields gave way to uncultivated slopes and a wide valley floor. Unlike the prairie, the river valley grew thick with trees. Cottonwoods. Ash. Weeping willows drooping over flowing water called the Grady River.
Neal put on the left turn blinker. Steered off the highway to a gravel road. When Lucas looked back, all he saw was their dust cloud.
They drove past the sign reading: MUNICIPAL PICNIC GROUNDS.
Neal hadn’t told Lucas exactly where they were all going when he phoned him that morning with the change of plans.
“Hal’s mom is worried. Doc and Sheriff Wood, too. And us, Jordan. After that… dustup at the fair, Hal hasn’t stepped foot out of his house.
“One thing we agree on is he’s gotta go back down to the river. It’s always going to be there. And it will get harder to face the longer he takes to see it again. And we could use your help.”
Now all four of them drove a graveled road between the valley hills and the wall of trees bordering the river.
No one else is out here, thought Lucas. Not on a big heat workday.
The tire track trail led into a grove of trees. Shaded river air cooled the big heat. The car engine shut off. The four of them climbed out. Neal opened the trunk. Lifted out an ice chest. Jordan grabbed the picnic basket and blankets. Hal put the library books, his notebook, and that damn baby-shit-yellow pen in a cardboard box. Lucas slammed the trunk.
Neal led them through the trees. The car vanished behind them. Sounds of the gurgling river grew louder. The light of the day flickered greens and browns and dappled blue sky. They walked through perfumes of tree bark and leaves. Reached the open glade center of a U bend in the river. Where the river came from and where it was going curved around them.
Jordan spread blankets on shaded ground where rainbowed gravel bordered the forty-foot-wide silver river.
Tuna fish sandwiches from Lucas’s mother. Jordan brought a flat of fresh cherries. Neal handed out green Coke bottles. Hal passed around the tin of homemade chocolate chip cookies from his mom.
“Here’s the deal, Hal,” Neal told him. “Mr. Dart says you can make up the classes you missed if you do projects for both biology and earth science. You need to get them done before school starts, or you won’t be caught up with the others in your class who will all be seniors.”
“I don’t do good in science,” said Hal.
“Me, either,” said Jordan. “But learning it helps us figure out other stuff.”
Neal said: “Mr. Dart’s plan. You’ve got to do the work. Today. Now. Science is a two-parter,” he said. “From right here, collect thirty rocks. Take that white tape. Number each rock. Sketch out the land. Note on the sketch where you found the rock. We’ll take the rocks back in that box. Hammer a few open so the library book on geology will help you figure out what kind they are.”
“Bustin’ up rocks,” said Hal. “Kind of like those chain gang movies.”
“Choosing these rocks is about you getting free,” said Neal.
Hal sent his eyes to the river flowing behind the teachers.
“Jordan came up with the biology project,” said Neal.
“It’s not just biology,” she said. “Nothing in life ever is. And it’s not so original.” Jordan gave the boys a half smile. “Nothing in life ever is. Everything in every moment is new and unique but still the same as.”
“That doesn’t make much sense,” said Hal.
“Don’t worry: you don’t need to figure out the universe to make it through high school. I got the idea for your project from Thoreau. You know who he was?”
“Some weird guy who went out and lived alone.”
“Close enough for now,” said Jordan. “We’re adapting his method. Instead of a pond called Walden, we’ve got this bend in the Grady River, and instead of two years, we’ve got a slice of today.
“Pick a spot to be. After you do the rocks, choose a certain amount of time.”
“Say a full hour,” said Neal. “It’s what we’ve got.”
Jordan focused on Hal.
“Make a journal of all the life you see from your spot. Bugs. Ants that come for picnic crumbs. Fish jumping in the river. Don’t just use your eyes. If you hear a frog, that counts. Count the birds. List the plants and trees. That book on trees has pictures. Even if you don’t know what to call something, write it down. Maybe you won’t figure out its real name, but you can’t ignore what’s there.”
“Lucas,” said Neal, “you’ve got a watch. You’ll be Hal’s timer.”
“Can I help him spot stuff?”
“No, but you can help him collect the rocks.”
“What about when I’m timing him just sitting there? For a whole hour!”
Jordan said: “Did you bring that new book I got you from the library?”
“Yeah.” Lucas wouldn’t say Dandelion Wine, a title about drinking, in front of Hal. I’m not going to screw up like that again. “By that berry-something guy.”
Jordan laughed.
“Nobody remembers authors, but that’s OK. It’s the story that matters.”
Lucas said: “What about you guys?”
“We’ll take a walk by the river,” said Neal. “You guys will be fine here. Stay right here, Hal. That’ll take care of Mr. Dart’s worry that we’d do too much of the work for you. Can’t do it if we’re not here.”
“See you later,” said Jordan as the teachers left the boys standing on the river shore, Lucas by the cardboard box, Hal with pen and notebook in hand.
“Yell if you need us,” said Neal as they walked away into the trees.
When they were gone, Lucas told Hal: “Point to a rock and I’ll get it.”
As Lucas taped the fourth rock, Hal said: “Do you think I’ll pass the test?”
“What test?” Lucas dropped rock #4 into the cardboard box.
“You think coming out here is about rocks and birds and trees?” Hal shook his head. “This is a test to see if I’ll run off or go crazy or wild or bad.”
“Will you?”
“Who knows.” Hal shook his head. “Nobody knows nothing about nothing.”
“That’s why Jordan and Neal are teaching you.”
“Is teaching what’s going on around here? With them?” Hal stared at the ten-year-old boy standing by the river. “You really are just a kid. A good kid.
“Look at all this ‘out here’ I’m supposed to write down in my notebook,” said Hal. “It all looks like… like a blurry dream.”
“Looks like that when I don’t wear my glasses,” said Lucas. “Maybe you need to go see Dr. Bond on Main Street.”
“They got no doctor for me.”
Lucas pointed to a blue rock in the shallow water. Hal said nothing. Lucas fetched the blue rock. Rubbed it dry on his white T-shirt. Stuck a piece of white tape on it. Took the baby-shit-yellow pen from Hal to write #5 on the tape. Put the rock in the cardboard box. Showed Hal where to write #5 on the sketch and gave him that damn pen.
Just get it done, thought Lucas. Help him get through doing it.
Lucas picked out rock #6. Rock #7. Stone #8.
When Lucas brought him rock #9, a slab of quartz crystal, Hal said:
“I miss Earl. Do you remember how he always laughed?”
“Yes,” said Lucas.
The river gurgled over stones.
What Lucas said about remembering Earl’s laugh was a lie. Lies are wrong. The lie filled Lucas’s mouth and stomach and heart with acid. But Lucas didn’t know how else to get Hal on to the next rock. And the next. And the next.
“Enough,” said Hal.
“We’ve only got six to go!”
“You think one stone more or less makes any difference?”
“Yes!”
“Like I said, just a kid.”
“So are you! Sure, you’re older and can toss me in the river, but you’re no grown-up! You don’t know.”
“School doesn’t help anything.”
“Come on,” said Lucas after he’d picked, labeled, sketched, and stored thirty rocks. “Sit on the blanket. I’ll start timing and you look for life. You gotta.”
“Why? Because that will change the world? Because it’ll fix what happened?”
“I don’t know why. I’m a kid! But I know it’s true and—
“And you got to do it for me!” yelled Lucas. “Because working with you, making it all work, that’s my job and that’s what should be. I promised to help you and I want to and can’t let bad happen ’cause I promised. Took the job. I can’t not do my job. That’s not right. That’s wrong. Don’t make me do wrong!”
The river tumbled over a billion trillion rocks they’d left out of the box.
Hal stared at the just-a-kid in the scuffed sneakers, blue jeans, dirt-streaked white T-shirt. Stared into those eyes behind thick-lensed glasses.
Said: “I don’t have the stomach for making somebody do wrong.”
“So then you’ll do it. Do it all.”
“Guess that’s our new deal. The real deal. Guess I gotta do this for you. But one thing,” said Hal. “Do I gotta do it with you sitting there staring at me? We’re friends and got a deal, but to have even your eyes on me like… like a cop waiting to catch me, lock me up, and no way is that our deal.”
“All I’m gonna do is say ‘ready, set, go.’ And tell you when to stop, but by then Jordan and Neal will be back. I got a book. I won’t be watching you.”
“Feels like it. If it feels like it, then it is. Or might as well be.”
“OK, I’ll go off and poke around. It’s cool down here.”
Hal let his eyes scan the green walls surrounding them.
“Go the way they did, downstream. Be careful. If you mess up, find the river. Follow it upstream. If they show up and you’re not here—”
“I’ll tell them I had to go pee. Heck, it’s true.”
“Yeah,” said Hal. “True really matters.”
Lucas waited until Hal sat on the blanket, notebook on his lap, that baby-shit-yellow pen in his hand, his eyes on the gurgling silver river.
Lucas checked his watch: 2:09 on a big heat day.
Announced: “Ready… Set… Go!”
Walked into the stand of trees along the river.
Above Lucas hung a patchwork of dark leaves and blue sky. He climbed over a log. Walked around twisted deadfall. The river was maybe twenty yards through the thick growth off to his right. He could hear it, so he wasn’t lost.
A sudden sense of joy swept him up.
This is a cool place! Wish I was down here with Marin and Kurt and Wayne. Running around screaming. Leaping over logs. We could play soldier! War!
Lucas sighted an imaginary rifle. Swept his aims across the ranks of white-barked aspens. Thought: Here could be the place in Dad’s newspaper where Bad Guys killed our soldiers in a movie theater! The place in our school report.
This is Viet Nam and we’re the good guys!
Lucas hurdled a log. Ran zigzag. Jumped behind a big tree. Shapes flitted in shadows. Bullets zipped past Lucas’s tree. He ripped a blast from his machine gun.
Crept forward. Parted branches. Eased saplings aside. Stayed silent as he moved through the green veil between him and the shimmering river.
Voices. Somewhere beyond the leaves.
Real voices, Lucas told himself as he strained to hear them.
Slowly, oh so slowly, Lucas pushed his face into a web of branches between him and the river where the voices flowed. Leaves brushed his cheeks, tickled his nose. He refused to sneeze. A twig pressed a line on his forehead.
The lenses of his glasses emerged from the underbrush and let him see:
Jordan Smith and Neal Dylan stood on a swirl of gravel at the river’s edge.
Stood close together. Face to face.
Neal held her hands by their sides.
Light shimmered off the rippling river.
Lucas heard their murmurs, not their words.
Jordan’s black hair had grown over the summer. She needed to brush it off her face. Yet when her hand floated up from Neal’s grasp, it went not to brush her own cheeks, but to caress his.
Lava roared through Lucas.
Neal leaned forward.
And Jordan, oh Jordan, she tilted her perfect face up for that kiss.
A mute howl tore through the trees along the Grady River.
A stubble-cheeked enemy soldier charged Lucas. Speared his bayonet into Lucas’s chest. Pinned the limp boy on his rifle bayonet. The evil soldier squeezed the rifle’s trigger. BLAM! Point blank. The bullet knocked Lucas off the bayonet. Slammed him flat on his back on the jungle floor. Heaven laughed.
Blink and they were still there.
Jordan and Neal by the river. Pressed together. Her hands held his face to their kiss. His hands cupped her ebony-tressed skull.
I’m so small, thought Lucas. A dopey kid hiding in the bushes. With glasses. Seeing what I wouldn’t see before. The closed back door on a brown house. A green car hidden in the alley. This look and that laugh. A pissed-off, coffee-drinking wife. Everybody knows. Everybody knew. But me.
Back, Lucas eased back. The veil of leaves covered his glasses. He tiptoed back the way he’d come. Quietly moved under the sound of the tumbling river.
Sexing. They’re sexing each other here by the river and how could she! Neal, of course, any guy who could get so lucky to… How could she? Didn’t she know? Neal’s married! Rita. Baby Rachel. The Thou Shalt Not. He’s going to hell. But Jordan. Not her fault. Must not be her fault.
My fault.
Lucas walked out of the underbrush to the garden of trees.
My fault. If I wasn’t so me. Just a dopey little kid. If I was somebody bigger. Better. Older. Smarter. Cooler. Tougher. For her. Then, oh, only if-then!
But there is no if-then.
Not a kid anymore, he thought:
Walk on. Through the trees. Be a soldier. You’re a soldier.
Lucas lifted his glasses off his face. Wiped away his dopey tears. Jammed those damn glasses back on tight. Focused on the dusty trail in front of him.
Saw the earth move.
First it looked like a rope flicking in the dust of the trail.
And close, real close.
But not a rope. Thicker than a rope. Sinewy like a whip curling into an S that spiraled closer, spinning into a coil of circles. A mound rose out of the dust right in front of him with one tip swaying shin-high off the ground and the other tip vibrating that bone-certain buzzing sound like sand shaking in a can.
Rattlesnake.
Lucas’s mouth went dry as the dust where the rattlesnake coiled.
Don’t move.
Everyone who grew up in Montana knew Do Not Move.
What Lucas saw was worse than what he’d expected.
On those high plains, what slid through the yellow scrub grass, what ambushed mice and gophers and even rabbits, what ate beetles and fed hawks, what dropped into deep badger holes for the winter and curled into balls with a hundred of its own kind to hibernate until robins sang, what Lucas had expected to see if-and-when he heard that sand-in-a-can rattle was the prairie rattlesnake, a dusky serpent not much thicker than a broomstick and seldom longer than a yardstick. With venom sacs that could drop a cow or buy a man’s coffin, sure, but especially in these modern times of hospitals stocked with anti-venoms, even a bad snake bite left you with a good chance of getting up and going on.
If it was a common prairie rattlesnake.
DO NOT MOVE.
Bzzzzztt!
Because nothing was common about this snake.
Instead of a yardstick long, he was longer than most men. Coil upon coil of muscle and bone that was thicker than Lucas’s calf in his thin jeans no more than one Mother-May-I step from that serpent swaying off the ground. Forget about dusky. Call the serpent reddish-brown, scaled skin patterned with interlocked point-to-point shapes that gave this snake its name.
Diamondback.
Maps in library books shaded the Western Diamondback’s original domain from Mexico to Canada, west to the Rockies and east to the Mississippi where gamblers floated on paddle-wheeled steamboats.
But, said those books, since government investigators Lewis and Clark tramped that earth for the Louisiana Purchase, since the slaughter of the buffalos and the reservationing of the Indians, since cars and towns took over that territory, since atom bomb tests blasted the deserts of Nevada, the turf ruled by Diamondbacks had shrunk, dwindled, pulled away from even remote outposts of civilization like Vernon, Montana, and the Grady River valley.
That probably pissed off this snake, thought Lucas.
DON’T MOVE!
Because a Diamondback is big-time death. Poison sacs behind that wedge-shaped head carry a toxin stronger than the Diamondback’s prairie cousin and squirt more of it through inch-long fangs. A Diamondback strikes like a boxer’s jab, forty pounds of coiled snake ramming into you, injecting a double dose of nerve-frying juice that burns through your blood to your heart, to your brain.
If he bites my leg, I’ve got a chance, thought Lucas. Scream. Hal/Neal/Jordan will charge to the rescue. Scoop him up and rush him to the hospital in Vernon. They’d yell at him to KEEP CALM. Carry him to keep his heart from pumping faster, from pumping the poison deeper in him.
But if the snake struck high, if it bit him in the chest, the neck, his face, slammed into his groin and hung there like… If the snake did that, struck him two, three times or more, nailing him with multiple big doses…
I’ll die. Today. Now.
Though it was a dumb thing to think of then and there, Lucas wondered if Jordan would lean over his dying body and cry, knowing she’d been wrong.
Click!
Don’t flinch! Don’t move. Don’t look to those trees, that sound, that click.
Bzzztt!
Do snakes hear? No: vibrations, they pick up vibrations. Did that click vibrate enough to get the snake’s attention? Is that why it rattled? Or was it me?
The snake’s head swayed. Black marble-sized eyes. Flicking red tongue.
Branches crunched off to Lucas’s left.
The Diamondback swung its flicking-tongue head to that crunching.
When the snake looked, so did Lucas. But only with his eyes.
There! Through a stand of trees, a dark shape in the forest shade:
A person crouched in those trees. That shape became a woman. She stepped over a log. Raised something, pointed it toward where Hal would be. Pointed it away from where Lucas stood frozen in front of a killer.
Here! Lucas ached to scream. Look over here!
But he made no sound. Sounds are vibrations. And snakes…
Click!
The snake’s head swayed between Lucas and the distant rustling shape.
Mrs. Klise! That’s Mrs. Klise! She’s taking pictures with a camera!
Click!
Look over here! willed Lucas. Not toward those trees and Hal.
But Mrs. Klise raised the camera to her face. Clicked off another picture. Crept through the woods toward the river bend beach where Hal would be recording signs of life. Four creeping steps and she vanished in the trees.
The Diamondback rattlesnake thought about it. Curled away from Lucas. Uncoiled like a fluid S flowing through the dust. Going, going, gone.
Lucas charged through the brush. Branches scraped his arms. Crashing through trees. Out of the woods. Onto the packed beach. Staggering five steps to where Hal sat on the blanket, notebook in his lap.
“Lucas! You see a damn ghost or—”
Laughing, they heard people laughing.
Around the bend in the river came Jordan and Neal wading in the water. They held their shoes in their hands.
Neal frowned at Lucas’s frantic face. “What’s going on?”
“Snake! And Mrs. Klise! Hiding in the trees. Taking pictures.”
Jordan whispered: “Taking pictures of what?”
Of you breaking my heart! Lucas wanted to scream.
But he told the truth: “Of Hal.”
Five minutes to pack up the car. They raced through the gravel wasteland in a ball of dust, teachers in the front seat, younger souls in the back.
Neal steered his bucking auto over the rough road. “What do you see?”
“Nothing!” Jordan told him. “Nobody’s there. She’s not there.”
They roared past the MUNICIPAL PICNIC GROUNDS sign. Rolled onto the oiled highway and raced north toward home.
Halfway up the river hill, Jordan looked behind them.
“There! She was on the other side of the bridge. That rusted station wagon. It’s hers. Following us.”
“Me,” whispered Hal. “Not us. She’s following me.”
“Don’t worry.” Neal’s rearview mirror captured the trembling teenager. “Don’t look at her. Don’t pay any attention to her. You’re OK. Nobody look.”
But as they roared home through the big heat afternoon not looking, all that their minds’ eyes could see was a rusted station wagon rolling after them.
As their green car hummed over the highway, they didn’t see the workers on the oil derrick.
Nor did they notice the empty tractor parked in a field that whizzed past.
Even if they had noticed that chugging red machine, they couldn’t have seen behind it to the figure sprawled on the ground. The figure of bald farmer Lou Herbst as he lay there, face up to the clear blue sky, stone dead.