Day Six

A rain delay : A hero twice in one day : Growth mind-set : The destination is on your right : They always run : Additional variables

A clap of thunder woke Sophia. She sat up straight in her sleeping bag and listened as the boom echoed through the canyons and decayed to a hollow rumble. It was dawn, but Swallow Valley was still mostly in shadow. Wind rattled the cottonwood and willow leaves, and the air was much colder than she would have expected.

She climbed out of her sleeping bag and slipped her boots on. Paul’s gear was packed, and his bag leaned against a rock. He wasn’t anywhere in the amphitheater. She walked around, checked the kiva from yesterday, and went up to Paul’s backpack, where she found a note stuck into one of the inch clips like a tiny flag:

Checking the trail.

Filtered water from the pool in those bags →

PT

She followed the arrow with her eyes and saw a dual-bag filtering system hanging in the branches of a tree, the lower bag bulging. Beyond that tree lay the amphitheater, the overhang, and the silent dwellings. It was no less amazing on the second day, though today’s light was more subdued, cooler, filtered through the clouds, and the cliff faces seemed more rounded and smooth. Sophia thought about what it would have been like to have inhabited this place, to have emerged every morning of your life into this.

The lightning came first—a white etching in the grayness. She counted out the interval of twenty-three seconds, then the thunder followed. She couldn’t remember how that translated to miles. Longer was safer. She knew that, but she didn’t know how to interpret thunderclaps coming so close together.

She turned again and beheld the ruins until the urge to pee was overwhelming. She imagined that Paul would return the moment her pants were down, so she sought some privacy in a semicircle of scrub oak.

When she finished, she returned to her pack and pulled out two granola bars, then she went to the water bags and filled her bottle. After that, she pulled out her notebook and a pen, and saw her camera partially wrapped in a sweatshirt. She remembered Paul’s plea not to take pictures, then thought about how scandalized he looked when she caught him in the kiva. Screw him and the horse he rode in on, she thought. It was her father’s pet phrase, and it delighted her to use it now. She pulled out the camera and turned it on, then located an extra memory card and stood. Somebody’s got to do this, she said to herself. She wasn’t going to leave empty-handed. If this trip was off the books, then he’d never bust her. She could leverage that.

The notebook went into a cargo pocket in her pants, the camera around her neck. She began taking wide-angle photos of the area, one of them using the panorama function that stitched together slices of the Swallow Valley into a wide ribbon of landscape. She worked quickly, systematically cataloging the midden area, the pit houses, showing details of the collapsed roofs. She captured each of the rooms in the main structure, moving from east to west, noting the shot numbers in her notebook and writing small notations to go with them. Each time she captured an image she thought about how she would want to return to see what it was like in different seasons.

It was one thing to explore a site that was already on the books, but to be the first, maybe that was no longer even possible. You’d just be the most recent to discover something. And that was the problem: the race of archeology, the carving out of one’s career, setting that priority over the site, the artifacts coming in ahead of the people who had lived and died there. The best solution was to get out of the way, but the building of a career had so much mass, so much gravitational pull. She tried to make sure her motivation was people over things, but she could wrestle with that after she got the photos.

Once she’d documented the room block, she returned to the kiva she was in yesterday and photographed the interior, including the bowl Paul replaced. She looked for voids that would suggest the activity of other thieves, and found nothing, even when she shot with the flash. There were no other footsteps beyond her own. She considered removing the bowl and carrying it out in her pack, but decided, in the end, that she’d likely destroy the pot in the process.

Instead, she climbed out of the kiva and, following Bruce Cluff’s lead, wrote down details of the replacement using Paul’s initials instead of his name. When she closed her notebook, she noticed the clamor of the cliff swallows, and switched her camera to video mode. She shot over a minute of the birds swooping into and out of their nests. When that was done, she took a breath and considered her choices. She knew where this place was. Paul was in way over his head. This was a bona fide opportunity.

Another flash filled the sky, and the wind picked up, bringing a rich resinous essence to Sophia’s nose. She scanned the area, looking for Paul, and finding him still gone, she closed her eyes and tried to identify each of the olfactory notes: desert earth, juniper, pine, and a hint of her mother’s perfume, something of the Persian part of her. A splintering crack of thunder startled her and sent her eyes racing around the amphitheater.

She had been taking photos for nearly an hour. She returned to the cliff to check on the storm and saw it moving across the far end of the valley floor. Twenty miles, maybe more. She felt one or two drops of rain on her forearm and decided to pack her gear away.

As she finished the second granola bar, Paul came through the sage, saw her, and waved like nothing at all had happened. “Did you find the water okay?” he asked. She pointed to the bottle at her feet. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I kind of wanted to sleep, so that’s what I did. Slept. It felt great.”

“That’s good.” Paul looked around and gave her a crooked smile. “So, how about this place?”

“It’s good,” she said, wondering how long this fake conversation would carry on.

“This is one of those sites people don’t like to talk about. They figure it’ll turn into a circus like Moon House or the Citadel. I’d heard about it for years, but nobody would give me a location. People don’t trust the government much around here,” Paul said.

“Can’t blame them,” Sophia said. She wondered why he was pretending like yesterday hadn’t happened, but she knew.

“About that . . .” he said.

“Yeah, about that,” she said, taking her opportunity. “You know what you’ve done to this site? It’s not just me talking. There’s laws.”

“Thoreau said sometimes you’ve got to let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine,” Paul said.

“You are the machine, Paul.”

“Cluff got the bowl when this land was private. The law lets him do that.”

“Everyone’s an archeologist, I guess,” Sophia said.

“Everyone’s a ranger, too, apparently,” Paul countered.

“Democracy sucks sometimes.”

“Speaking of democracy, let’s talk about what we should do next. Our circumstances have changed a little.” Paul walked over to the cliff edge and motioned for Sophia to follow. It was an abrupt, graceless transition. “That storm is going to cross over to here, then bump up against the mesa we’re on right now. It’ll drop a lot of water so it can climb over, and that water needs to go somewhere,” he said, tracing the path down the talus slope and into the maze of rock they had come through yesterday.

Sophia nodded. She could see how it would gather.

“I think we should stay here another night.”

Sophia’s face twisted into a shape of disapproval.

“I’ve hauled bodies out of those canyons. When they go in, it’s dry. Hot. Blue sky. Then all hell breaks loose.”

Sophia’s shoulders slumped, and Paul sat cross-legged and picked up small stones one at a time, collecting them in his palm. Sophia sat as well, unscrewed the cap of her water bottle, and drank.

“I shouldn’t have kept my reasons for coming here from you,” he said. “I can see that now.”

“None of my business,” she said.

“No, it is a lot of your business. My secrets aren’t fair to you. You’re out here to measure impact on this place. I’m one of those impacts.”

“We all are.” She folded her arms.

Paul nodded, looked at her, and said, “The threads we don’t see are the strongest.”

“Come on,” she said. “You don’t have to turn this into a nature meme.”

“I’m not being literal. We’re part of a whole system,” he said.

Sophia nodded in a way that didn’t mean she agreed. The wind picked up and a raven coasted by them at eye level, its wings curled and its wiry black feet extended underneath. From the horizon came another flash, deep inside one of the clouds.

“Can I show you something?” he asked. “I found it this morning.” Paul stood and offered his hand. Sophia capped her bottle and got up on her own.

“Is it something else you returned?” she said.

Paul ignored the comment and started down the path they’d come up but drifted to the left into a thicket of scrub oak. Sophia followed. The rumble of thunder filled in around them, the echo decaying over the vastness of the monument.

“Sounds like it’s moving away,” she said, pushing a branch aside. Paul kept going.

In front of them was a continuation of the back side of the cliff wall that held the amphitheater. It went up almost vertically for a hundred feet, long striations of desert varnish painting the surface. The cliff had weathered in the center, leaving a nautilus-shaped void in the surface of the rock, which had been invisible on the hike in because of the direction of the light. Paul scrambled up a boulder and motioned for Sophia to join him.

“What are we looking at?” she asked.

“You see that spiral shape in the rock? Let your eyes drop just beneath it.”

Sophia saw a thin ledge, perhaps thirty feet long, with a small masonry wall above it. She gasped involuntarily. “A granary?”

“It’s got to be. I scouted it this morning, and there’s a good nontechnical approach. Shall we?” he asked.

It came across as a peace offering, but she didn’t care.

They found their way through the brush to the talus slope and scrambled up. They were able to zigzag their way farther up until they were on a wide shelf just below the granary ledge. The next level up was eight or nine feet away, the height of a regular ceiling. Paul studied the space and found a thin vertical crack. Right above it were a number of good, obvious handholds.

“Go up my back and stand on my shoulders.” He crouched down and tapped his thigh.

Sophia grabbed Paul’s neck and shoulder and climbed him like a ladder. She balanced herself against the rock and repositioned her feet so she was standing with one foot on each shoulder.

“I kind of want to step on your face,” she said.

“That would be fine. I deserve it.” Paul extended himself and stood taller, and Sophia rose another six inches, high enough to pull herself onto the ledge.

“I don’t know how we’re going to get down,” she said.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Sophia was about to ask Paul how he was going to get up, when he reached over the ledge and pulled himself over like he was climbing out of a swimming pool.

The granary wall was made of shaped stone bricks that had been mortared into place. The structure stood proud of the cliff wall about one foot, and there was enough space that they could cross to the other side without concern. Sophia looked back and realized they were now fifty feet or more above their starting point. They were above the tops of the cottonwoods, and they could see across the expanse to the storm clouds in the distance. It was a complete view of her research area.

“It’s such an interesting question why they put their corn all the way up here,” she said.

“Aesthetically, it’s the most gorgeous pantry in the world. Some theories say it was a theft deterrent, but it could be to protect the contents from flooding. Practically though, it’s bananas how hard it is to get up here.”

“Maybe they wanted to make sure people only broke into the stash if they were really hungry, like hiding the Oreos. Sorry,” she said, “Oreos are a sugary snack some people are obsessed with.”

“I know what Oreos are,” Paul said.

On the far side of the granary, there was a square half door with a Douglas fir doorframe. Paul stepped aside and let Sophia have the first look. She peered in. The interior was empty, but the floor was a latticework of sticks.

“There’s a ventilation system in here,” she said, “for humidity control.” She looked up and confirmed that this granary had been built using an alcove in the cliff for the main structure. In the dim light, she could not see how the adobe was connected to the sandstone of the cliff. She stepped back and gave Paul a look.

“Wow,” he said. “Just wow.”

Sophia sat down on the ledge and wrapped her knees with her arms and watched the clouds part enough to show patches of blue sky.

Paul stepped around and sat next to her. “As far as I can tell,” he said, “nobody has recorded this structure. Cluff didn’t. I’ve read what I could about this site, and they talk about an amphitheater and the dwellings, but not in this kind of detail. That makes us the first.”

“On record.”

“Well, right. On record,” he repeated, making air quotes around the last two words. “It’s pretty amazing, though. This whole plateau is full of sites like this. It seems empty, but it’s not.”

“My heart is racing,” Sophia said, looking around. “I want to shout, but that seems stupid.”

“It’s not,” he said. “I get it.”

“What you just said about this place being empty. I feel like I’ve seen all kinds of empty since I left Princeton.”

Paul nodded. He fell into thought and after a time nodded again. “If I tell you something, do you promise not to tell anyone? I mean it doesn’t really matter anymore, but out of respect would you keep it to yourself?”

Sophia did not like this arrangement or any of the other times he asked for her secrecy, but she was beginning to see that furtiveness was the lingua franca of the times. She traced an X across her chest but she wasn’t sure she meant it.

“Before this place became public land, Cluff knew people would come. He knew they had come before and cleaned it out. He’d done his share of damage, and he admitted it. Before it all changed hands, he came up here on horseback with some dynamite. He told me he meant to make this one of the hardest places to get into, because most pot hunters would be too lazy to climb.” Paul stretched each of his legs and brought them back into the same position as Sophia’s. She looked at him as he stared out across the monument. “It is pretty hard to get here, but who knows how long that will last. Most days, I think we’re doing this work all wrong,” he said, lowering his head onto his knees, “but I’m not sure if there’s any better way to get it done.”

___

Reinhardt Kupfer awoke in his motel room from a dream in which he had been fitted with a pair of giant wings fashioned from buffalo skin and a frame of bent willow branches. They had been laced to his body on something like a corset. As he stared at the barren ceiling, with white glare pouring in around the curtains, he recalled that he could control the crude flapping of his rough and halting flight with two knobs of gnarled juniper that protruded from each side. He had been using these wings to view the desert from above.

Without moving Reinhardt thought about how he was not yet halfway through his Ranches, Relics, and Ruins adventure. In the last five days he’d seen collections of baskets, pots, kachinas, masks, flutes, real arrowheads under glass, fake arrowheads on the trail, atlatls in the hands of one-quarter-size hunters, theatrical lights in museum dioramas, re-creations of kivas cut away to reveal the inside architecture, scale models of geological features, video presentations about the changing seasons, push-button lectures about ethnobotany, voices reading pioneer journals, wheels children could turn to depict the water cycle, signage, quotations, wall-sized facsimiles of historical documents, enlarged photographs, and kiosks. But there had been neither ranches, nor relics, nor ruins.

He rose and folded his clothes, thinking again about the cost of cutting it all short and flying home. The logistics weren’t a problem, but he didn’t know how to tell Wolf that this country was just a cheap illusion. As a boy, Reinhardt was enraptured by the Indian novels of Sigmund F. Krause. They fueled his dreams of the American Southwest. But this was nothing like the books.

He left his packing and stood in the bathroom under the blue-tinged fluorescent light. As he lathered his face, he considered his red-and-black dreamcatcher tattoo with a saying written underneath. It had been a North Star for him since before medical school. The first time someone read the tattoo and asked him, “What does ‘your land is where your dead lie buried’ mean?” Reinhardt told him it was his plan for fighting the modern world. Not much of a plan, he thought, then shaved, rinsed his face, and finished dressing.

He brought his packed bag to the motel lobby, which was full of polished rocks and rubber tomahawks. The rest of his group were eating their pasteboard breakfasts and checking their schedules, their luggage herded together next to the bus outside. He added his bag to the mass and decided he would skip the paltry meal. Next to him, two of the tour organizers began a hushed conversation.

“The Korean guy bought the farm last night.”

“Kwon?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought he was fine.”

“So did everybody.”

“I think they want us to re-route through Cedar City to deliver their luggage to Mrs. Kwon. She thought they were going to come back to the tour once he was given a clean bill of health.”

“Re-routing will throw everything off.”

“Right?”

“We’ll never hear the end of it.”

Reinhardt tapped one of them on the shoulder.

“Yes?” he said, turning around.

“That man was an entire life, not just something on your checklist,” Reinhardt said. He didn’t wait for an answer but sped past the buses, crossed the parking lot, and walked down the sidewalk until he came upon a campground made of teepees set on concrete pads. A small boy emerged from a teepee wearing Spider-Man pajamas and a green Incredible Hulk mask. In his right hand, he held a stick that was taller than he was. He pounded it against the cement, then hurled his bludgeon into the road.

Someone said, “This is the wrong place for teepees.”

Reinhardt turned to find Kenji wearing the same clothes from before, leather jacket and everything. “This is all wrong for many reasons. We have enthusiasts in Germany, and we camp in teepees that we have made and decorated ourselves. Seeing something like this is hard on the heart.”

“I spent the night in a similar false teepee once, in Nikko, Japan. It was in a place called Western Village.”

“Did you enjoy it? What did you say the other night at the dinner? Was it corny?” Reinhardt asked.

“Western Village is abandoned. Now it is—what’s the phrase—a ghost city?”

“On the tour they call it a ghost town. We haven’t been to one but we have talked about them.”

Kenji lit a cigarette. “Nikko has people in it. I’m just talking about Western Village. Listen, I heard you’re the hero who saved a man’s life in the lodge. Nice work. I saw you walking, and I thought I would say something about it.”

“He died last night.”

Kenji exhaled and flicked his ash. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I wish I could tell his wife that I did what I could.”

“You should.”

“She is alone now in another town with none of her things.”

“You should deliver them to her.”

“How? I have to get on that bus going to Faketown, U.S.A. And I don’t want to say anything in front of these people.”

“I can drive you,” Kenji said, stubbing out his cigarette on the sole of his boot.

“But I’ve paid for everything,” Reinhardt said.

“Eat a bad meal and you suffer twice. Let’s do it.”

Kenji stared at Reinhardt until Reinhardt nodded, then he nodded back.

They returned and saw the buses loading. Reinhardt pulled his duffel bag from the pile just before someone grabbed it for loading. Kenji reached out for Reinhardt’s bag and sent him for the Kwons’ luggage. As he approached a small group of tour organizers, one of them spoke through a tiny megaphone: “I HAVE GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS. THE BAD NEWS IS THAT MR. KWON HAD A SECOND HEART ATTACK IN THE HOSPITAL IN CEDAR CITY LAST NIGHT AND HE DID NOT SURVIVE IT.” The crowd interpreted the message to themselves, and a few seconds later, an audible sound of lamentation moved throughout the group. “THE GOOD NEWS IS WE’RE NOT GOING TO THE GRAND CANYON TODAY, BUT INSTEAD WE’RE GOING TO RE-ROUTE TO CEDAR CITY, HOME OF THE UTAH SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL. THIS WAY WE CAN DELIVER THE KWONS’ LUGGAGE TO MRS. KWON.” This time the crowd was silent.

“Is there a Target in Cedar City?” someone asked.

The tour organizers looked around at each other, and before they could answer, Reinhardt said, “I will take the luggage.”

“Really?” the woman with the tiny megaphone said, but not through the megaphone.

“I will go.”

“DR. KUPFER IS A HERO TWICE IN ONE DAY,” she said, and the crowd cheered.

“Well it was actually once on Tuesday, and then now,” he said, but nobody heard.

While people shook his hand and clapped Reinhardt on the back, another tour organizer wheeled a great black suitcase across the parking lot and set it in front of him.

“You really saved our bacon,” she said.

“Where do I take this?” Reinhardt asked.

“DOES ANYBODY KNOW WHERE HE SHOULD TAKE—” the woman asked through the megaphone.

“To the hospital,” someone else on the tour staff interrupted. “There’s only one.”

As Reinhardt hauled the roller bag, Kenji pulled up behind him in a red Mustang convertible. “Put that in the back seat,” he said. “Our things are in the trunk.”

Kenji pulled out of the parking lot so fast Reinhardt’s body flattened against the seat. The rest of the traffic was keeping to the speed limit, so the car’s engine growled and purred a dozen times in the half-mile drive to the state highway. Some kind of Japanese heavy metal was playing, which disappeared into the wind once Kenji got the car going.

The small municipal airstrip and ramshackle trailers and billboards and small independent motels appeared in the distance, grew to full size, and pulsed by in rapid succession. Once they passed these vestiges of civilization, Reinhardt let his gaze lift to the horizon, something he could never really do in Germany because one was always surrounded by forest. Here you were out on the surface. Over the eons, the skin of everything had gone thin, and the earth’s orange bones jutted like they’d worn through the dry olive-green garments of the high desert. In the blue distance, clouds piled on themselves with an orderliness that kept him from comprehending the distances. Reinhardt took out his phone, trying and failing to take pictures of the vast landscape.

“It never works,” Kenji shouted.

“I know, but you have to try,” Reinhardt said, and posted a shot of the clouds and a small gas station to Instagram. He geotagged it with BRYCE CANYON, UTAH, and added the caption SKYSCRAPER CLOUDS.

They drove on, the hills dropping to the road on the west and the valley spreading for a dozen miles to the plateaus to the east. Orange hulking cliffs faded into the distance. There was a turn and the highway ran for a while parallel to a sinuous river. They drove for some time with the racket of the music radiating into the dry mountain air before Kenji reached up to switch off the stereo. “As a doctor, you must be well acquainted with death,” he said.

“Did you say death?”

“The mortal coil.”

“I am a dermatologist.”

“For the skin?” Kenji asked.

“Yes.”

“Like rashes and pimples?”

“And cancer,” Reinhardt said. “Skin cancer is no small thing.”

Kenji nodded. “Not so common in Japan. We have other ways to die.”

Reinhardt looked out the window at the green valley and the sparse habitations. He thought of Mr. Kwon and the crowd of people surrounding him as he performed the chest compressions. Reinhardt’s patients often died under another doctor’s care, leaving him to consider death at a distance. He referred the problems away.

“Death creates sorrow for the living, not for those who are gone,” Kenji said, then after a pause, he broke his attention and pointed to a gas station ahead. “Shall we refresh ourselves?” He downshifted, and the car’s engine roared. The deceleration flung a book forward from the back seat, which Reinhardt picked up. It was called The Hero’s Journey for Screenwriters. When Kenji noticed Reinhardt had rescued the book, he asked him to return it to the back seat, then signaled and pulled off the road, stopping next to a gas pump. Reinhardt spotted three more books just like the first in the space next to the Kwons’ gigantic suitcase: The Monomyth on Screen, Mythstructures for Blockbusters, and There and Back Again: The Hero’s Journey Case Studies Vol. 4. He set the book on top and got out to help wash the window.

“So, you’re a screenwriter?” Reinhardt asked.

Kenji squinted at him. “Sort of. I make video games.”

“Oh, like Doom and Grand Theft Auto?”

Kenji laughed and shook his head as he inserted his credit card. “I made River Horse.”

Reinhardt’s face lit up. “With the hippopotamus? I have that on my phone.”

“You and fifty million other people.”

“You must be rich, then.”

Kenji shrugged.

“I’m not very good at the game. It’s harder than it seems. I haven’t ever won.”

“You should play to play, not to be finished playing. What is the longest you’ve floated your River Horse?”

“Twelve, maybe thirteen minutes.”

“Not bad,” Kenji said. “Top twenty percent.”

“Well, that’s incredible. What are you doing with all these screenwriting books, then?”

“A studio wants to make the game into a film. Animated. For children.”

“Interesting. You must be excited.”

“The first round of meetings did not go very well. They gave me these books, and I rented this car. I told them I needed a week.”

The gas nozzle clicked off and Kenji hung it back up, tore off the receipt, and folded it carefully. Reinhardt finished cleaning the window and returned the squeegee to its bucket. They went inside, used the restroom, and chose snacks. At the register Kenji motioned for Reinhardt to add his Coke and cashews to his gummy worms and cigarettes.

“Thank you, but I can take care of my own snacks.”

“I know you can, but I am the programmer who brought River Horse to the world, and you are making the sacrifice today. I am just your helper, so let me help.”

When Kenji looked up at the cashier, he was snapping a picture of them with his phone. “River Horse is cool.” He smiled at them. “I love your game.” Kenji reached into his jacket pocket and tossed an enamel pin of a purple hippopotamus to the boy. “Hey, thanks, mister,” he said.

“That is one hundred percent authentic, man,” Kenji said. “Keep on floating.”

“You keep on floating, too.”

They returned to the car, and as they buckled their seat belts, Kenji looked at Reinhardt and squinted. “You are on a quest. I could see that earlier at the teepees.”

“It’s just a vacation.”

“I think this is more than a vacation. On this drive, I have been thinking about these books I am reading, and perhaps I am your first threshold gatekeeper, or a mentor. I don’t yet know the difference.” He reached into the back and brought forth Mythstructures for Blockbusters and handed it to Reinhardt. “You’ll see it in there.”

Kenji drove back onto the highway, then, checking the maps application on his phone, turned right and headed west. Reinhardt leafed through the pages. Chapter One was called “Ordinary World.” Chapter Two, “The Call to Adventure.” Reinhardt stopped and read about the mentor. The book explained that after the rejection of the call to adventure the hero desperately needs guidance. The mentor is of great importance and provides wisdom or practical training. Often sustenance. Reinhardt looked down at his Coke and sleeve of nuts.

Reinhardt closed the book. “I am the hero?” he asked.

“I think there can be many heroes, maybe everyone is a hero. I might be a hero for my own story, just like every player is their own hippo. My job is to get you from the ordinary world into the new one. I think I am beginning to see how it works. You met me to be transported. I met you to be the transporter.”

Reinhardt opened the Coke and took a sip. “But transported where?”

“Who knows. To there, so you have someplace to come back from. There and back again. A hero will encounter obstacles. You will be thwarted. You will be tested. There will be some time in the underworld. The innermost cave. You will emerge with wisdom.”

“Are all the books helping you make a movie about hippos floating in a river?”

“Perhaps that is my quest, and I will find a mentor for that. But these books all quote a man who said to follow your bliss. What is your bliss, Reinhardt?”

“To go swimming in the desert.”

“Why that?”

“It’s something I read about once in a book when I was a child.”

“Okay, start small and build,” Kenji said, tearing open the gummy worms with his teeth.

___

Byron’s attention was split between the road and the cars passing in the other lane. Lonnie held the grab handle and rested his head against his forearm. “How do you know Scissors isn’t going to find our camp while we’re out here and sit there waiting for us to come back?” he asked.

“Because if he was gonna find it, he already would have,” Byron said.

“I’m not trying to argue with you—”

“Then don’t.”

“But this guy seems like the kind of person to just keep, you know . . . trying.”

“Let me say something to you, and I’m going to try using the crazy talk that seems to make sense to you. In the joint they had a book group. I did it a couple of times before it got too stupid. There was this one book called Mindset—”

“You read a book?”

“Not all of it. Didn’t have to. It said some people think they come as is and some people think they can make improvements. Fixed versus growth. The prison shrink thought all of us were fixed.”

Lonnie laughed. “Like puppies.”

“Not that kind of fixed. Dammit. Listen to me. I’m trying to be serious.”

Byron pulled off the highway and drove under a ponderosa-pine-log entryway with a sign at the top that read ASHDOWN’S cut into a ten-foot ripsaw blade. They drove through the huge circular turnaround in front of the house, came past the garage with the RV slot at the end, and stopped at a fenced equipment yard back at the bottom of the hill. A vinyl banner on the fence read ASHDOWN CONSTRUCTION & EXCAVATION.

“Every criminal I know believes two things. One, the world is trying to screw him over personally. And two, he’s got a plan to get himself ahead. Even guys who are locked up think that. So, that makes them what? Fixed or growth?”

“Growth?” Lonnie said.

Byron slapped the steering wheel. “Damn right. Growth mind-set. That shrink was dead wrong. This bastard Scissors has got a growth mind-set. Whoever he’s working for has got it. I sure as hell got it.”

“Maybe we both got it,” Lonnie said.

Byron put the truck in park. “This is what I’m trying to say, little brother. The way you’re acting right now, I’m afraid that’s the fixed mind-set.” Lonnie’s face fell. “You don’t want nothing to change. I’m trying to show you how to fix that.”

“Okay,” Lonnie said, getting out.

“You gotta call your own shots, man.” Byron shut off the truck, fetched a pair of rusty bolt cutters from the back, and walked straight to the chain link gate.

“I thought you said you had a key,” Lonnie said.

“I said I had a way in,” Byron said, struggling to open the bolt cutter jaws.

“Uncle Pete is going to flip his wig.”

“Uncle Pete ain’t gonna know. It’s June twenty-first. That means he’s in Carvertown with Aunt Linda for the Freedom Jamboree. They won’t be back until Monday.”

“I mean the lock. He’s gonna see that it’s been cut.”

“Look. We put the backhoe right where it came from, take the lock with us, and he’ll blame it on one of the dumbasses that works for him and—boom!” Byron made an explosion with his right hand and let it drop slowly down to his side. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Yeah, boom.” Lonnie mimicked the pantomime. “So, why are we doing this in the middle of the day?”

“So we don’t look like we’re stealing it.”

“But we are stealing it.”

“Borrowing. When you’re planning to bring something back, it ain’t stealing.”

Lonnie looked around and could not see another house in any direction. Byron placed the padlock between the blades of the bolt cutters, and he struggled to move the handles. Lonnie watched his brother strain, and stamp his feet, and curse the tool. He tried moving the jaws into a couple of different positions. Lonnie made a mental note that this is what a growth mind-set looked like.

“That lock is probably made out of stainless. It’s pretty hard stuff,” Lonnie said.

“You should probably quit talking to me,” Byron said through clenched teeth. He strained and re-grabbed the tool, then strained again.

“Okay. I’m just saying.”

“Just saying what?” Byron grunted.

“I’m just saying you probably need a longer tool.” After a second Lonnie smiled and snorted twice.

Byron stopped what he was doing and looked up. He let the lock slip out of the blades, and it smacked against the fence. Lonnie tried not to smile. “I’m really sorry,” he said. “It’s just funny, that’s all.”

“You know that sumbitch Scissors is out there looking for us, right? That’s what he’s choosing to do with his day. We are his entire focus.”

Lonnie covered his mouth and tried to stop laughing, but he couldn’t. “You know I do weird stuff when I’m nervous. I can’t help it.”

“Since you’re full of suggestions, why don’t you do it?” He threw the bolt cutters at his feet.

Lonnie picked them up and tested out their rusty pivot point. He took them to the truck and fished out a blue can of WD-40 and sprayed it into the jaw joint and handle bolts, then he worked the action until it was smooth. He stepped past his brother, pinched the blades down on the shackle, and clipped the lock in a single quick movement. The lock clattered to the ground, and each side of the chain fell away.

Lonnie handed the cutters back to Byron and said, “Don’t feel bad, B. I’ve just got longer arms.”

“I don’t give a shit about your arms.” He picked up the bolt cutters. “Just open the gate.” Byron threw the bolt cutters in the back of the truck and got in. He backed the truck up to a trailered CASE backhoe. Byron dropped it onto the hitch and chained it up. Lonnie attached the brake harness.

As they got into the cab, they both watched the weather system southward at the horizon. The stratus clouds were thick and dark out there, but the sky above was white with high cirrus.

Lonnie said, “You sure we want to go out there with weather like that coming in?”

“That don’t mean nothing. Probably won’t even get to us.”

“We could still just leave that map somewhere for him. We’ve got his number. We could leave it and lay low. We could camp, and I can get another job. It’s no big deal.”

“You remember that old Sunday school lesson about the ten talents?” Byron said.

Lonnie thought about it for a bit. “No. It’s been a long time since I went to church.”

“Well, it pretty much says go big or stay home.”

“That doesn’t sound like any kind of Sunday idea to me.”

“It is, and that’s one hundred percent growth mind-set, baby. Lemme put it this way. If you and I would have stayed home, we’d be burned to a crisp. This way, we’re about to strike it rich.”

___

Reinhardt asked for Mrs. Kwon at the information desk of the hospital in Cedar City. “I am the physician who administered CPR Tuesday, and I have some personal items for her.” The volunteer lifted the glasses from the chain around her neck, put them on, picked up the phone, and called around.

Kenji dismissed himself to smoke, and Reinhardt said, “Don’t leave yet.”

Kenji gave him the thumbs-up and went outside.

A few moments later, the volunteer told them that she is not supposed to give out any personal information. Reinhardt gripped his temples with a thumb and finger and closed his eyes. When he’d gathered himself, he looked at the volunteer, who stood up while his eyes were closed. “I changed my vacation plans to bring this woman her suitcase. The other day, my mouth was on Mr. Kwon’s mouth, I was breathing my air into his lungs, and my chest compressions broke a number of ribs. That man is now dead. His family are all in Korea, so none of them are likely to arrive here in this town. So, are you telling me you are planning to deliver this suitcase to Mrs. Kwon and relieve me of my obligation?”

“I, actually, well . . .” the volunteer said, removing her glasses and letting them dangle from their beaded chain. She was visibly upset. “She is probably at the funeral home at this point.”

“Thank you. Could you give me directions?”

“I better not.”

“But it says ‘information,’” Reinhardt said, pointing to the sign.

The woman looked at him. “Swindlehurst,” she sighed. “I’d try Swindlehurst Funeral Home.”

Reinhardt left, typing that name into his phone. He gathered up Kenji, who squinted when he learned they had another stop. They drove a short distance to the address, which was a log cabin on Main Street. Reinhardt dinged the small service bell at the front desk, which summoned a young, heavyset man in a black suit to the front. He was wearing a dingy white apron over his clothes. His red hair was cut short, and his hands looked large enough to span a dinner plate. “Can I help you?”

“I have a delivery for Mrs. Kwon. Her husband died last night.”

“I cremated him this morning,” the young mortician said. “But we’re out of urns. I’m waiting for UPS.”

“Cremating him?” Reinhardt asked.

“Yeah, for the trip home. That way he’ll fit under the seat.” The young mortician smiled, and when he saw that Reinhardt did not return the smile, he lowered his eyes. “Sorry, this is a really tough job, you know, emotionally, so I try to keep it light,” he said.

“We are just trying to deliver a suitcase to Mrs. Kwon. We’re from the tour company,” Reinhardt said.

“No, we are not,” Kenji said, putting his hand on Reinhardt’s neck. “He is liberated from the tour.”

“Normally at Swindlehurst we try to maintain the confidentiality of our clients, but you two seem like Good Samaritans. And I am trying to reconstruct a nose and cheek for a viewing this afternoon, so if you could take the suitcase to Mrs. Kwon and this paperwork and that bag,” he said, removing a manila envelope and a Ziploc bag from a drawer and setting it on the desk, “it would help me out. I’m by myself today.”

Inside the Ziploc bag was a metallic hip joint and a number of small screws. “Okay?” Reinhardt said, looking at Kenji. Kenji nodded.

“It was a really strange nose to begin with,” the young mortician said. “And when the putty softens, it’s hard to work with.” Kenji nodded. “This is commercial putty though,” he said. Reinhardt waited to see if the young mortician was going to keep talking. When he didn’t, Reinhardt asked for an address, and the young mortician said, “It’s on the envelope.”

Reinhardt looked down. “Very good. Thank you.”

Back at the car, Reinhardt said, “One more stop on our quest.” Kenji shrugged, and Reinhardt typed the address into his phone, and they drove through town to a motel called the El Rey. The voice on the phone said, “You have arrived. The destination is on your right.”

“Enchanted helpers,” Kenji said, gesturing to the phone. “You see, this is a quest, complete with magic.” When Reinhardt narrowed his eyes, Kenji said, “The best technology is simply magic by another name.” As they pulled into the motel, they passed through the covered entry, and Kenji said, “This is the gateway. The first threshold. Don’t you see?”

Reinhardt said, “It says she’s in room two thirty-seven, so keep going.” They drove past ordinary cars, dust and dirt-speckled, some with plastic shells mounted on the roof, some with bike racks on the back, some with telltale bar codes revealing them as rentals. As they drove past the swimming pool, they saw an older woman sitting alone in a chair with a Ranches, Relics, and Ruins T-shirt on. Her head was down. Her arms crossed. A half dozen children screamed and jumped into the water, swam back to the edge, climbed out, and jumped again.

“Is that her?” Kenji asked.

Reinhardt nodded.

“The time has come, then.” Kenji put the car in park but left it running. “This is where we part ways. I must return to Hollywood. You must follow your bliss.” He handed Reinhardt his copy of Mythstructures for Blockbusters. “This is the owner’s manual.”

Reinhardt refused the offer. “I couldn’t,” he said, but he took the gift when Kenji insisted.

Kenji popped the trunk and got out of the car. He set Reinhardt’s duffel bag on the ground and hauled the Kwons’ suitcase out of the back and wheeled it around to him. Then, without warning, Kenji threw his arms around Reinhardt and hugged him, lifting him slightly from the ground. Kenji clapped him on the shoulders and said, “Go. Be a hero.”

Kenji drove through the turnaround and came back the other way. He lifted his fist into the air and left it there as he drove to the street and turned south.

Reinhardt came to the swimming pool gate and waited for a line of children to waddle through. When the gate clanked shut behind him, he thought that Kenji had been wrong. Perhaps this was the real gate, a small and nearly unnoticed thing. Then he looked at the book in his arms, put it in his bag, and shook off the thought.

He rolled the suitcase along the pool deck and stopped in front of Mrs. Kwon, who had moved to the edge of the pool now that the children were gone. She sat with her pant legs rolled up and her feet on the first step.

“Mrs. Kwon?”

She looked up and didn’t recognize Reinhardt, but her face changed when she saw the suitcase. She put a hand over her heart to ask, Is this mine? Reinhardt nodded yes and offered her the envelope and bag of hip parts. “All of this belongs to you,” he said.

Mrs. Kwon stood but remained on the swimming pool step. Reinhardt still held out the bag of medical remnants and the envelope, but Mrs. Kwon gestured to a side table with an elegant slow sweep of her open hand. She said something to him in a few sentences of Korean, and Reinhardt said, “Es tut mir leid für deinen Verlust.” He stepped aside and set the items on the designated table. Mrs. Kwon reached out with both of her hands. Reinhardt understood that he was to grasp them, which he did. She squeezed his hands softly, with almost no pressure at all.

Reinhardt did not wait for anything else to happen. He took himself back out the gate and let it close behind him. Was this returning to the ordinary world? Did the owner’s manual in his bag talk about a path that returned to itself like a Möbius strip? He wondered if he now had a role in Mrs. Kwon’s journey as Kenji had a role in his.

He slung his duffel across his shoulder and walked through the motel driveway entry. When he reached the street, he looked up at the mountains and the thunderheads rising behind them, their tops shearing off. He typed RENTAL CAR into his phone and waited for the results.

___

Dalton and Tanner walked in from the road. When they got to the place, they ducked under the yellow police tape that was held up with bamboo poles and took stock of how little was left of the single-wide. The smell of smoke hung heavy in the air, and what remained looked like it had been bled of its color. Dalton kicked through the ashes and the toe of his boot tinkled against a blackened knife and fork, then he found the springs of an easy chair. As his eyes adjusted, he found an upright refrigerator and an oven. There were some twisted lengths of conduit, too. Everything else had burned or fused itself to something.

Tanner followed the concentric rings of destruction outward past the carport and the gnarled cottonwoods until he came to the edge of the property itself. None of the neighboring land looked damaged, though it was a close call. The burn became a crosshatch in the tan grass at about thirty feet. The nearest structure was a green-and-white travel trailer on blocks with the windows bashed out. A sign on it said FOR SALE 50 BUCKS.

“It’s a shame the fire didn’t clear out some of this other crap,” Tanner called out.

“Careful what you wish for,” Dalton called back.

Dalton and Tanner questioned the neighbors, who said two brothers lived here, but they’d been scarce lately. They kept to themselves, so there wasn’t much to say. One of them had been away for a while. The tall one had been around more. On the phone, the Mohave County sheriff told them the utilities were all in the name of Lonnie Ashdown.

To the south and west, clouds gathered into a massive gray shadow, the force of the rain evident in the acute angle of the squall line. Rain, if it got this far, would turn everything into a slick black mess, washing away any evidence that might be left. Dalton kicked the sooty ground again and shook his head.

Tanner circled back and joined up with Dalton. “What do you think the fire marshal’s going to say about this?”

Dalton took off his hat and dusted his thigh with it. “He’ll say it’s no accident.”

“I mean, it could be. Doesn’t take much work to start a fire out here,” Tanner said.

“These Ashdown fellas don’t come across as the kind of folks partial to working.”

“They aren’t.”

“I haven’t heard much about them since they moved over to Cane Beds. I pulled them over a couple days ago for out-of-date tags. They’re out of my county now and out of Utah. Not my circus, not supposed to be my monkeys,” Dalton said.

“What did the Arizona report say?”

“Byron’s the older one, been all through the system. Petty theft, possession of meth with the intent to sell. Recently it’s been cars. Seems like he took the fall for an operation out of Reno. It doesn’t look like they honored his sacrifice. The other day he was worried I was going to violate his parole.”

“Still no honor among thieves?”

“I was a couple years ahead of Byron in school. He wasn’t much of anything back then. We weren’t friends. His file says the Army wouldn’t take him, and that’s when the trouble started,” Dalton said.

Tanner lifted his eyebrows. “I mean, if the Army won’t take you,” he said.

“Apparently he couldn’t pass the vocational aptitude test. Didn’t finish high school.”

“What about the brother? People say he’s kind of slow, or something,” Tanner said.

“He’s clean. And he’s a known quantity, I guess. Doesn’t cause much trouble. Apparently, he spends a lotta time at the library.”

“Libraries keep a file?”

“No. LaRae says she sees him there, in the back. Reading.”

“Reading?”

“That’s what she says.” Dalton walked past the black outline of the trailer and went far enough toward the mailbox to get to where the burned marks ended. He stooped, pulled off his sunglasses, and squinted at the tire tracks. After a minute, he stood and put the glasses back on.

“After I got out of the service,” Dalton said, “I started working here. Had the same job as you. A situation came up with this guy named Wes Carnaby. He was a little bit off like these two. Lived with his sister. She was a lunch lady for the middle school. One day, about a week after Thanksgiving, we get this call from the library. They said Carnaby was asking for information on where you can and can’t bury human remains.”

“He was asking for a friend, right?”

“Yeah, right. Librarian told him he might have some luck checking the county code. It was Raylene Cluff told him that, just for the small world of it all. Apparently, Carnaby didn’t like the idea of looking something up for himself. He threw a fit, and she suggested he ask a funeral home.”

“You gotta love a librarian.”

“He stormed off to a table and started scribbling in a notebook, holding on to the side of his head, talking to himself. Swearing. She asked us to come down, but by the time we got there, he was gone.”

“I can see where this is headed.”

“Maybe not,” Dalton said. “We paid him a visit, and he was right in the middle of the driveway, loading the sister’s body into the back of his pickup, pulling her up a ramp he’d made out of a plywood Dr Pepper sign. She was rolled inside a piece of carpet he’d tied up with twine.”

“Dammit.” Tanner’s mouth shrank.

“When he saw us, he stopped and asked if we were going to just stand there or if we could lend a hand. We asked him what was in the carpet. He told us it was just carpet all the way through. We asked him if he wanted to amend his answer, and he told us it was none of our business. We told him we thought it was maybe just a little bit of our business, then he up and ran off, straight through the backyard. Threw himself over the fence, or he tried anyway. He popped up on the other side and limped through the vacant lot. Came out on Ninth East, then we picked him up.”

“They always run.”

“Well, he was just walking. Told us later that he found her like that.”

“In the carpet?”

“No, dead. We asked him why he didn’t call us, and he said he didn’t want us thinking he did it. We asked him if he was worried about it because he did kill her, and he said he didn’t but he wanted to.”

“This is not the way I thought it was going.”

“We kept him in jail until the autopsy came back. She died of a stroke. So, we opened the door, told him he was off the hook, and we let him go. On the way out, he stopped and stared at a plate of cookies somebody brought in for something, a birthday maybe. We told him to help himself. He took the whole plate, just dumped it into his coat pocket. Then he walked out. Didn’t say anything. And he left the plate.”

“He left the plate?”

“Set it right back where it was.” Dalton kicked the dirt and spat. “Maybe what we’re looking at here is an accident or a mix-up. Maybe it’s sinister. Maybe worse. Did these guys kill Bruce and steal his pots? I don’t know. Thinking about what people are capable of can really mess up your week.”

Dalton walked back toward the ruins of the carport, where more things remained intact. He sized up a collapsed fifty-five-gallon drum and a metal tool chest. “Part of me hopes all of this is connected, then it’s only one villain at a time.” Dalton lowered himself down and took an interest in the ground.

“I see what you’re saying, but how would that work? These guys break in, planning to steal pots from Bruce. He’s there. They kill him and just take the pots. Nothing else. Then they make it look like suicide, come back and burn down their own house to cover their tracks? It doesn’t make sense. The criminal element around here didn’t grow up playing chess.”

“Yep. They’re barely thinking about their last move.”

“Sometimes there’s no thinking at all.”

“That’s right.” Dalton pulled a Leatherman from his belt and opened it up and used it to flip over a board that had been pressed down into the mud, revealing a two-foot strip of unburned ground underneath.

“You find something?”

“Nope.”

Tanner took off his hat and reshaped the crown. “Maybe there’s something to what Stan Forsythe is saying, you know, about Feds moving in, confiscating people’s collections. Maybe they were onto Bruce, and the event you’re investigating was a preemptive strike.”

“That sound like Bruce to you?”

“White males have pretty much cornered the suicide market around here.”

“Doesn’t explain these Ashdowns.”

“Maybe this place was full of pots.”

“Pots have been fired before. We’d see something left in the ashes if they were here.” Dalton inched closer to the ground that hadn’t been scorched. “If Cluff’s house had been the one to burn, I’d think you were on the right track. Can’t figure out why here.”

“Maybe they pissed off the neighbors.”

Dalton stood and turned slowly in a semicircle. “One of these pissed-off neighbors called it in.”

“I need a nap,” Tanner said.

“Come here,” Dalton said, taking Tanner with him down toward the mailbox end of the driveway, where they both squatted down. “These tire tracks. It’s a truck with a trailer. They come out from where the carport was, head through the burn, then go out to the road.”

“Okay.”

“These other tracks . . . they’re coming back in and sit right on top of the others. See how the front wheels turn? And one of these front tires is a spare. The passenger side up front is skinnier.”

“Somebody came in after the Ashdowns left?” Tanner said.

“That’s the story I’m telling myself,” Dalton said.

“So, looking for cars driving on a spare?”

“It’s a start.” Dalton stood and stamped his boots and looked toward the southern horizon. The cluster of clouds in that wedge of sky had grown darker, turning deep purple, and the angle of the rain had sharpened. The rest of the sky was belted in gray nimbostratus, and the temperature had dropped. They could both feel it.

“Afghanistan taught me there’s no winners.” He started toward the vehicle. “Let’s take some pictures before that storm gets here.”

___

Scissors dropped eight quarters into the car wash control box and dialed the toggle switch to PRE-WASH. The machinery engaged and the nozzle hissed. He unsheathed it and began to rinse the Sebring systematically from top to bottom. He spent extra time on the wheels, stopping to check the condition of the spare he’d been driving on for the last day and a half. It seemed to be holding up. After the pre-wash, he applied the suds, rinsed, and sprayed on a finish he knew wouldn’t do anything, but there were forty-five seconds left that he couldn’t let himself throw away.

When he was done, he drove the rest of the way into Kanab and stopped at the China House restaurant. There were a few other customers spread throughout the place. When the waiter brought him a menu, he held up his hand and said, “A bowl of hot-and-sour soup, kung pao beef, and iced tea. No rice, please.”

“Really? No rice?” the waiter asked.

“I’m trying to watch my figure.”

“We all should,” the waiter said, then dismissed himself.

When the man was gone, Scissors took out his phone and dialed.

“It’s been two days,” Frangos said.

“Yes, ma’am. It has.”

“When were you planning to fill me in on this carnival of errors?”

Scissors looked around and straightened the two bottles of soy sauce in front of him. “I was hoping to wait for good news, but that’s been in short supply,” he said, then he began reorganizing the sugar packets by color. “I’ve had bad weather, a flat tire, some cat and mouse with local law enforcement. Somebody was in that house before I got to it. Not the cops.”

“Not the simpletons?”

“I don’t think so. It wasn’t a pro, but he was more careful than these yahoos. He moved all kinds of things. Maps were out of place, an upstairs window was jimmied, footprints on the siding. I still think the Swallow Valley map is with Dumb and Dumber, though.”

“Tell me more about this other thief,” she said.

“I didn’t see him or anything.”

The waiter brought Scissors his soup and iced tea. He nodded a thank-you.

“I can’t say I like the addition of this variable.”

“The whole thing has turned into a goat rodeo as far as I’m concerned.”

“Then we have some common ground. People on my end don’t want to move until I can assure them that Swallow Valley should be part of the rollback. That can’t happen without the map. Bruce Cluff was one of the last people who even knew how to get there, and he wouldn’t have anything to do with me.”

Scissors blew on the soup, then tasted it.

“Do you think these mooncalves have the resources to get themselves to Swallow Valley?”

“No,” Scissors said. “Did you say ‘mooncalf’?”

Frangos ignored the question. “I want them out of the picture before they get caught.”

“I’m looking for them, but there’s a lot of places they could have gone. We’re talking about a million acres.”

“A million is not a large number for everyone, Nicholas.”

“This place barely has roads.”

“Get a horse,” she said.

The waiter slid the kung pao in front of Scissors, and he pantomimed a request for chopsticks.

“All of this matters a great deal,” Frangos said. “You have done good work for me in the past. I’d like to keep you around.”

“That’s a kind sentiment,” Scissors said.

“Everything we are doing is time sensitive. Critically so.”

“Since when does government move fast? I mean, they’re not known for it. I’ve had an inside look.”

“As have I,” she said. “Do you think our stooges were stupid enough to have destroyed the map, perhaps to spite you?”

“It’s hard to say. I don’t think either of them did too well in school.”

“Were you a savant of some kind, Nicholas?”

“No, ma’am, but it was for different reasons.”

“Don’t tell me you were a restless spirit.”

“Independent is more like it.”

“An autodidact, then?” she said.

“That’s right. One of those.”

The waiter set the chopsticks next to Scissors, who picked them up, slid off the paper, and split them apart with one hand.

“So, what is your assessment of the situation?” she asked.

“I think they’re just trying to double-cross us,” he said, taking a bite. “Me, really. I don’t think they even know you’re part of this.”

“And it needs to stay that way. The window of opportunity will close on us without notice,” she said.

“Can you buy us some time?”

“I’m already doing that, but at some point, my people in Washington, D.C., will have to stop looking the other way. When that happens, you cannot be out there. If you’re not gone, you’ll be on your own.”

“Like Mission Impossible?”

“I’ll do more than disavow my knowledge of your activities. You’ll go under the bus. Isn’t that how one says it?”

“I’ve always come through,” Scissors said, taking another spoonful of soup. “It’ll be the same this time.”

“I expect as much. This isn’t meant to be a pep talk.”

“Didn’t sound like one.” Scissors waited for her to say something else, and after a moment he looked at the phone and saw that the call had ended. He pocketed his phone and took another spoonful of the soup, then looked outside at the Main Street of this tiny town. By tomorrow, he figured he will have tried all of the restaurants, and he wanted to be done before he had to start doubling back.