What do I remember? I’ll tell ya what I remember, snowflakes big as woodchips falling so thick they nearly chocked the daylight. It was New Year’s Eve six years ago, a Monday if I recall, the very day our misery began.
Crazy’s what that day was. The local paper covering the mess riled up everybody ‘round the North Cascades, especially out here in the Suiattle River valley, my family’s valley.
I was twelve and Sis was nineteen. Towing me behind without a lick of sense down that primitive road, she was dead-set on her ‘mission of mercy’ to the Tollmans’ homestead. I didn’t know at the time it was her could use the mercy. Now you gonna hear some folks ‘round these parts say if the Renshaws didn’t con the Tollmans out a their place, things might not a turned out so bad. Anyone says that, it ain’t so. Renshaws is good people. I’d even call ’em friends if they wasn’t from down-below. They’s a mess better’n Luke and his folks, for sure.
I can still see them tall cedar trees creeping up on either side of the road. But it was them fresh tire tracks through the deep snow that Sis was stuck on like a bloodhound. She still had hope back then. After all, it was gonna be her first New Year’s Eve with the jerk.
Yeah, six years ago was a day you can’t imagine. It was a day much like today….
Except today, I became a man.