Sabre City

By James Paddock

After 8 years Zechariah Price assumes it is all behind him. Nightmares filled with huge sabre-toothed cats and women screaming still leave him in cold sweats, though less often. He had lost an eye the first time around; Tanya had fractured her back; their marriage had petered on the brink. There was no way he or any of his family was going to set foot in that Montana wilderness again. His 16-year-old daughter, however, decides otherwise and, in hopes of finding out what all the fuss was about when she was just a child, runs off to visit a Montana woman she found in a chat room. She discovers a lot more than she could have imagined, including who her father really was and how much she had inherited from him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Paddock
• Release date: Jul 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452460826

James Paddock

James Paddock, Indie Author and avid reader, was born and raised in the Big Sky Country of Montana. The forty-plus years following high school include a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Idaho, service with the U.S. Navy, owner/operator of a small business in South Carolina, a career as a Graphic Designer and a marriage that produced 3 fine children, who then have provided bragging rights for many very fine grandchildren. James began writing short stories in 1993, graduating to novels at the turn of the century. Since then he has produced numerous full-length novels, an inspirational novella and an anthology of 13 of his best short stories, all of which can be found at JamesPaddockNovels.com. He is now living in Florida with his wife, Penny, enjoying the sun and working on his next novel.

Book preview

Prologue

I don’t know which is worse, the ruts and ice of the road we’re on, or the bushes and small trees we now deal with, hidden under the snow that has suddenly gotten worse, if that’s possible. I’m thinking that the fence is close, like right in front of me. I peer intently at the black wall, looking for the shape of chain link to appear, when suddenly a sabre-toothed cat looms at me, mouth open, hissing. His head is covered with snow. I can barely see his ears, but his eyes–his eyes–are huge, the size of my hand. His sabre teeth are the size of my arm–maybe I exaggerate a little but maybe not. I freeze for a second in awe and fear and then open my mouth as far as I can and make my biggest ugly face. I’m afraid I may be showing him my fear instead. He disappears.

"Eeeeee!" Tanya is pushing against us.

"Give him your ugly face, I calmly try to say, but I don’t think it’s coming out that way. Don’t show him your fear."

Suddenly Aileen is pushing and grunting, and there is another cat, a different one, lunging toward me. This is it, I stammer. They’re challenging us from all sides, trying to break us apart.

"Oh, God," Aileen cries.

"Make the face. Keep it going. Shifting the muscles in my face actually feels good against the frigid air. I can feel the women wiggling and pushing against me while trying to suppress their frightful muttering and make their faces. It’s working!"

The cats keep lunging in, hissing and making their own faces and then backing out.

Tanya screams and shoves against me, driving me into a mound of snow which turns into a low bush. My feet tangle. I start to fall. Tanya shoves again, even harder. Stop! I yell, but she keeps screaming and pushing. I’m going down face-first and my instincts are to catch myself with my hands, but I must not allow us to break apart. Even as I think that, my arms are trying to get free in response to my forward, falling momentum. They are trapped, and Tanya keeps pushing and screaming.

"Tanya! Stop!" Aileen screams.

It’s slow motion in my mind although I am sure it’s happening in a matter of a second or two. I slowly lay on top of the bush, first my legs and then my body and then my head. My face penetrates the layer of snow and then Tanya’s weight is on my back, pressing me down harder. I hear a mixture of both of their voices screaming and hollering, but I cannot make out words as bush sticks and stems thrust their stiff, frozen ends into me. Despite the numbness of my face, I feel the pain and then I see red and hear a lot more screaming, one scream that sounds very much like me. And then there is black and then nothing.

Chapter 1

A seven hundred pound, nine-foot animal which can appear out of the snow, grass, low-lying bush, or even thin air, kills a man with one bite and carries him off, into the forest, like nothing more than a rabbit.

—from the journals of Zechariah Price

Zack! Zack!

The blackness is turning to fuzz as I try to figure out which one is calling me. Tanya, stop! I remember those words from Aileen as I fell forward, and I can still feel Tanya on top of me, pressing me down . . . down . . . down, until I cannot breathe, until I scream myself, not at Tanya to stop, but at the explosions in the pain centers of my brain.

Zack! Wakeup!

She is shaking me now, and pulling on me. No! My eyes! My eyes! I try to yell. Nothing comes out but muffled screams as she turns me over anyway and shakes me even more. I try to fight her as part of me is certain that my eyeballs are now still hanging on sticks and the resulting craters in my face are filling with blood and maybe pieces of my brain. Another part of me is slowly emerging, pushing the first part out of the way in the growing awareness that I’m rising from sleep, and a violent, three-dimensional nightmare is the reason for Tanya’s screaming.

Okay! I say. Her manhandling of me stops.

Mom!

It’s okay. Your dad just had a nightmare.

Wow!

Go back to bed, both of you.

He hasn’t had one like that in a long time.

I know. Go back to bed, please.

I listen to the resulting silence for a time, expecting that they have both turned around and headed back to their rooms. It must have been loud to have awakened them. Suddenly I realize they are still there. I lift my head so that I can see them, and so that they can see me. I’m okay. I lay my head back down. Good night.

Good night, Daddy, Christi says.

C’mon, Christi, Becky orders.

Close the door, please, Tanya says.

I hear the click. Sorry.

It’s okay. I thought you were over these things.

Me too.

Maybe it was something you ate.

I get heartburn or gas from things that I eat, not nightmares.

You shouldn’t have had those extra jalapenos.

Hot peppers don’t cause nightmares.

Humph! She turns off the light and snuggles close to me. There isn’t something else, is there? she says into my chest.

Like what?

You aren’t having any feelings, are you?

That something terrible is going to happen? No. Nothing like that. Haven’t had one of those since the ball game last summer, when the pitcher got hit and almost died.

She is silent for a time and then suddenly sits up. That’s it!

What? The ballgame?

No. Don’t you know what yesterday was?

I digest that thought for a few seconds and then say, April thirteenth. But I haven’t thought about it at all.

You know better than me how complicated the brain is, especially yours. It’s probably been in your subconscious all day.

"It’s been eight years.

So?

What did I say in my nightmare? I ask because it seems to me I was yelling someone’s name. I don’t know why it would have been Aileen, but if it was, it’s best to face it immediately.

Nothing in particular except ‘stop.’ That and, ‘my eyes.’

Ah.

You didn’t say her name, if that’s what you’re worrying about.

I glance at her face. She’s not angry, I don’t think. I’m sorry.

She gets up and goes into the bathroom. I hear the flush and then pass her at the door as she comes out. I pause briefly, expecting a standup hug. She continues on and I go in and do my business. When I return I turn off her light before walking around to my side of the bed. I slide under the covers and lie wide awake, worried that I might roll and fall into the canyon lying between us. After a time I begin getting irritated for being in the dog house for something I have absolutely no control over. Eight years. She said back then that she forgave me, but still, every now and then, it surfaces. And besides, Aileen is dead. Tanya, herself, watched the cats carry her off. And even if she were still alive today there’s no way I’d do something so stupid as to jeopardize my marriage. I love Tanya and have no desire for anyone else.

Eight years ago I let my hormones bring out the worst in me, and I got caught. I have more than paid my price. Instead of an eye for an eye, I’ve given an eye for cheating, and nearly got Tanya killed in the process. Oh, yes! I’ve definitely paid my price. I no longer deserve to be on Tanya’s angry side for that.

I roll to my back and Tanya rolls toward me, directs my arm around her, and rests her head on my shoulder.

I’m sorry, she says. I know you can’t help your dreams.

It’s okay.

I’m not trying to start anything—really. I’m just curious.

Curious about what?

Was she in your dream?

Chapter 2

Nightmare, I correct.

Nightmare then. Was she in it?

Yes, along with the sabre-toothed cats, the snow and cold, and the stick in my eye.

You didn’t mention me.

Yes, you were in it too.

Why didn’t you include me in the list with the cats, snow, cold, stick, and Aileen?

I was listing off the aspects of the dream that made it a nightmare. You don’t make dreams into nightmares.

I was the one who poked your eye out.

You didn’t poke my eye out. The stick I fell on did that. You were panicking. You didn’t push me down on purpose.

When I first found out about you and Aileen, and if I’d had a stick in my hand, I might have.

The clock downstairs goes through its extensive rendition of the Westminster Chimes. It’s followed with one gong. It’s been eight years. Can we not hash through it another time?

You brought it up. Not me.

What do you mean, I brought it up? My voice is growing an edge. Because I had a nightmare about it?

You don’t have to yell. She rolls away, onto her back. The girls probably already have their ears tuned for our argument.

I’m not yelling.

Then you’re trying to have a conversation with the neighbors.

I grind my teeth and count to ten, then count to ten again. Okay. What do you want me to say?

"I don’t want you to say anything! I just asked a simple question because I was curious. You’re the one who got all heated up."

This time I manage to check my anger and focus it toward the dark ceiling. After several minutes I roll away, punch up my pillow and attempt to return my brain to neutral. She drops into a soft snore. I should wake her and tell her to change position. She’s okay lying on her back while reading or talking, but it’s not good for her to stay there for a long time, such as all night sleeping. She should be on her side, gently curled. If not she will hurt in the morning, sometimes be totally unable to move. Ever since she broke her back—the same night a sharp, frozen stick pulled my eyeball from its socket—her day to day struggle has been difficult, even with its improvement over the years. She needs a firm bed, often wears a body brace at work for support when she has to bend forward over patients. She has an entire regime of daily exercises; will for the rest of her life.

I listen to the snore for a little longer. Knowing she will not wake and change position on her own, I reach back and put my hand on her arm. Sweetheart. There’s no response. Sweetheart! I shake her arm.

What?

Don’t sleep on your back.

Thanks. She rolls to her side facing away and then quickly falls back asleep.

She’s right. I brought it up, and until I fall asleep again it’ll be all I can think about. The problem with the wide awake dreams—unable to sleep at night dreams that play back from the archive of factual, very graphic memories—is that they can be even more hellish, even more nightmarish than what my sleeping brain can produce.

I lie on my side facing Tanya’s back—a dark shape in the dark bedroom—and see the frigid mountain peaks of Montana’s Flathead National Forest where twice I thought I was going to freeze to death, where twice I thought I was going to become food for the newly-removed-from-extinction sabre-toothed cats, where twice I thought I would be dead at the hands of men with guns. Then I think of Aileen. There’s no way I can think about that time at Sans Sanssabre, a company full of secrets, without thinking about Aileen’s white nightgown dropping to the floor, and her sleek, scantily clad body slipping under my covers. How can a man forget that after eight years, or even eighty years?

And then I remember sitting back to back with Tanya, not yet knowing that there was only a hole where my eye used to be, and that something was pinning my tongue to the roof of my mouth; not knowing these things because I was numbed by the intense cold accompanying an early springtime Arctic blast. I remember her telling me what happened that got us to that point, and how she watched the huge sabre-toothed cat, the Smilodon, carry Aileen off like she was a rag doll.

There is no need for a nightmare when I can look into the dark bedroom and see sabre after sabre flashing before me through the swirling snow, and hear Tanya screaming.

I repeatedly force my mind into neutral until, eventually, I sleep.

The Thursday morning routine is normal, or as normal as a family with two teenage girls can be. Fortunately we can afford a house with two bathrooms. Tanya gets hers, the girls get theirs, and after they all leave, I get my quiet. I’m a freelance writer so while they’re doing their morning routine, I paddle around in my slippers and bathrobe making coffee, pouring cereal and toasting bagels. Sometimes this is the best quality time I get with Becky and Christi—at sixteen quality time with Becky has vanished—so even though I could sleep in and stay out of the way, I don’t. Instead, I prepare breakfasts and lunches and stay out of the way of the bathrooms.

All three of my ladies are morning people, although I think Christi could easily sleep until the last minute. She is up because her mother and sister are up, and she doesn’t want to miss anything, especially since Becky unofficially declared herself queen of the house. Christi doesn’t spend quite as much time working on herself—actually at fourteen years old, she spends nearly no time, not yet having figured out why she should—so as a result, she and I get ten to twenty minutes of private time together in the kitchen.

What was your nightmare about, Dad? It has been only in the last year or so that she has switched from Daddy to Dad. Sometimes she slips, like during the night when my nightmare awoke them. Becky seldom calls me anything, unless she wants something.

The sabre-toothed cats.

She dips out a spoonful of whatever sugar-covered cereal she’s eating. I may have poured it but I seldom actually look at the box. Does that make me a bad parent? Kids at school think I’m being stupid when I say the sabre-toothed cat really exists now, that it ain’t extinct anymore.

You shouldn’t use ain’t.

She gives me the get real look.

Ain’t ain’t a word.

She hardens the look. She thinks she’s too old for stupid jokes.

Do they pick on you and give you a hard time?

No. Not exactly, I guess. They laugh and walk away and then whisper about me.

How do you know it’s about you they’re whispering?

I just know.

Hmm. I don’t like the idea that she’s being ostracized because of me. Maybe it’d be better if you didn’t bring the subject up.

I only did once, at the beginning of school when Mister Gray was doing a lesson on prehistoric animals. They’re the ones that brought it up this time. Sue Chadwell said that her dad said that you’re loony.

Oh boy! I don’t mind being called loony to my face, but to my daughter, who by nature of being my daughter, must defend me against a bunch of other fourteen year old razor tongues . . . that sends my blood to boiling. I don’t show that to her though. I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?

She shakes her head. No.

Do you think I’m loony?

No, she says seriously.

I remove my spoon from my coffee and lick it clean. Even if I walk around with a spoon on my nose? I hang it on my nose and stick my tongue out the corner of my mouth.

She laughs and milk goes squirting out her nose and then I laugh and the spoon rattles to the floor. When Tanya comes in we are both laughing uncontrollably.

What’s going on? she says.

We both suddenly stop. Christi’s eyes are huge, big question marks for eyeballs. I retrieve the spoon. I was trying to prove to Christi that I’m not loony. I put the spoon back on my nose and add the tongue.

Oh! She turns and pokes her head into the refrigerator, but not before I see the corners of her mouth turn up. She is trying, unsuccessfully, to remain serious.

By the time Becky comes in with her toe nails in neon green, we’ve all settled down. Christi is trying to make her spoon stick onto her nose.

Grow up! Becky says, and plops her backpack onto the chair.

Why? So I can be like you?

Becky displays her usual dirty look.

Besides, Dad started it. Show her, Dad.

I know that my demonstration would not have had the same affect on Becky even when she was fourteen. Now, two months from seventeen—she makes the point of reminding everyone—there is definitely no room for such foolishness. I do it anyway, including the tongue. She rolls her eyes and pours juice from a carton in the refrigerator. Christi sticks out her tongue at her back. Tanya gives her the look, and she returns her spoon to her cereal.

Tanya’s look is still effective on Christi. It takes a lot more than a look to steer Becky toward or away from an action or deed she should or should not be doing. As a matter-of-fact, I don’t know if a Mac truck would be more effective.

I need a new backpack, Becky says.

You graduate in a month and a half. Can’t you make that one last?

Becky looks at her mom. I’ll need a new one for college anyway.

This one doesn’t seem to have any wear, I point out. Didn’t we get you this at Christmas? I reach over to pluck it from her chair. Not realizing its weight, it immediately clunks to the floor. What in the hell do you have in this thing? I drag it toward me, half expecting her to try to grab it back and say it’s none of my business. She doesn’t. There’s something up.

My books, she says. Same things I’ve been hauling around with me since I was a child like Christi.

I am not . . . The look stops Christi’s attempt at defense.

I stand and heft the bag to my shoulder. My God! This must weigh fifty pounds. What’s this doing to your spine?

That’s my point, she says. "A lot of the kids are starting to carry the Ergo. It’s actually called the Ergo Student Pack. It’s designed to distribute the stress of the weight over the entire body. And it has a special padded and waterproof pocket for my computer."

I struggle into the backpack until it feels like it’s sitting on my back correctly. This actually doesn’t feel too bad once you get it on.

Try carrying it for five miles, she says.

You don’t ever carry this five miles.

You obviously haven’t been in my school much, have you, Dad? My title, Dad, comes out like it’s a bad word. It’s the size of a city block and sometimes I have to get from the third floor in one corner to the first floor in the opposite corner in five minutes. Why don’t you take it outside and try jogging with it.

I pull the pack off and set it on my chair.

In a day, I’d guess that I walk a good five miles, she says.

I lean on the chair. Let’s do a little math. How many classes do you have?

There’s a flash across her face. She obviously didn’t expect the math. Six and lunch.

Okay. Let’s figure the worst case. Top corner to bottom opposite corner, or back for every class change. We’re going to do the extremes here, figuring two blocks if you always take the longest way, and I’ll give you a half block for two floors up. That would be two and a half blocks between each class for a total of fifteen blocks. I’ll give you two blocks to and from your car. We’re up to nineteen blocks. Just for the heck of it I’ll add a half block each, in and out of the house. The total is twenty blocks. If we were to average ten blocks per mile, we would get two miles, a long reach from five miles, and since I exaggerated everywhere, it’s probably no more than a mile . . . in small pieces at that.

It feels like five miles while I’m carrying that.

Zach, Tanya says. You’re complicating the issue with facts.

Oh! I didn’t realize. Sorry. By this time I have the backpack open and am pulling out books.

What are you doing? Becky demands.

Seeing what you’re studying. When’s the last time you slipped something past me?

Her jaws tighten. Never, she says quietly.

I look at the first book. Pre-cal. Wow! This is a heavy one. Advanced algebra. Asian history. Economics. A three ring binder. I open it. Wow! This is at least a half ream of blank paper. American history. Another binder of paper. Look at that. Some of it has notes written on it. Physics. Chemistry. Becky’s look could easily rival her mother’s. I ignore it because I fall under the power of only one look in this house. There are three more books in here, and two notebooks, and I’ve already counted seven subjects. Do you generally take two maths, two histories, and two sciences at the same time?

Christi has stopped eating and is intently watching. Becky doesn’t answer. Instead she pushes herself between me and her backpack. Her aura normally hovers about the blue range. When she walked into the kitchen and announced she needed a new backpack, her emotional color was tight against her body as though she was trying to pull it in, out of my sight. She has a long way to go to be able to do that, even if she did know about my aura reading ability. Her personality has her wearing her emotions on her sleeve, being unable to hide it from anyone, let alone me. Now, caught, reds are pulsing from her like flares from the sun. She angrily shoves everything back into the bag and then carries it out of the kitchen. Christi snickers.

Why doesn’t she just stop at saying she wants a new backpack? I ask Tanya.

Because you would have said that there was nothing wrong with the old one.

Which I said anyway.

She knew you would so she hit it from a different angle. I don’t think she expected you’d look inside of it.

She just lied to me, to both of us.

True.

You don’t think we should do something about it?

What’s there to do? She was caught. She lost. She’s embarrassed, and she’s stuck with the old backpack for the remainder of her time in high school.

That old backpack is but four months old. It still looks like it did when it came off the store shelf.

A bit of an exaggeration.

No more than five miles and fifty pounds of books.

She’s out of style.

Oh! I will lose. The man-of-the-house has no defense against the female gender when the words, out of style come bubbling from their mouths. How much?

$199.00.

I make a gag sound—not all that much a fake—and blink my human eye and my acrylic eye back at her. I look down at Christi. Did you know about this?

She shrugs.

I just told her to ask you, Tanya said. I didn’t know she’d overload her pack.

Humph! How about we give it to her for graduation?

In her words, ‘get existential!’ That’s not an appropriate graduation gift.

Appropriate to her would be a Ferrari.

She laughs, then stands and says to Christi, You ready to go?

Yep. Christi moves her bowl to the sink and then picks up her backpack, which I’m sure weighs no more than ten pounds.

I’ve got an early appointment so I’m going to drop her at school. She kisses me. Write well, and good luck with your appointment.

Christi kisses me on the cheek and says, Love ya, Dad.

Did you see those toenails? I say to Tanya.

Kind of cute. I give her my look. Just ignore it. It’ll go away eventually.

Then they are gone and I’m standing in the kitchen alone. About a minute later Becky comes banging down the stairs and slams out the front door. I look out the window to see her backpack hanging off her shoulder as though all that’s in it is a pencil and her nail polish. She’s a short-timer. Why get serious about school work now? Just worry about staying in style. She throws the pack into her car ahead of her and is gone.

Now I’m alone in the house, staring down at Becky’s half-consumed orange juice and bagel. Get existential? I suddenly feel old.

Chapter 3

The appointment that Tanya referred to on her way out the door is with my ocularist. Eliza Parker-Plumb, BCO, is carved as a curved arch into a slab of Western Red Cedar. I asked her once what BCO stood for. Board Certified Ocularist, she told me. Below the arch is an etching of the human eye. I stop and analyze the carving for a few seconds, having never paid much attention to it in the past eight years. Below the eye, and carved in fine script is, Since 1996.

I go in.

The wait isn’t long.

Very good, Eliza says during the exam. This one continues to be a perfect fit. How has it been feeling?

Like it’s my real eye. I virtually forget about it until someone brings it up.

As it should be. The eye socket has remained amazingly stable. I don’t think you’ll have any problems along that line for many years. In two years we’ll start looking at you for a new prosthetic. Maybe we should be considering an ocular motility implant.

You mention that at least once a year. I’m not so sure.

Why is that, Zach?

It’s one thing to have something custom made to pop in and stay on its own. It’s quite another to start doing surgical things to my face just so that my eyes can move together. I had quite enough of that for a lifetime already. It’s not very patient-friendly from what I’ve read, and it is not all that perfect either. There isn’t necessarily a one-to-one track.

You’ve probably been reading old information. Europe’s made some amazing advances in ocular motility, and it’s starting to take hold in the United States. It’s been slated as being very, ‘patient-friendly,’ as you say, and quite a bit less expensive.

I only nod my head.

I’ll round up some information and get it to you so you can do your own research.

Thanks, Eliza. I guess I could do that.

Remember, it’s for your benefit, not mine. The research is for you.

Right.

Sit tight while I polish your prosthesis.

Prosthesis! I don’t like the word. It makes me feel like a cripple. Even fake eye would be better. Artificial eye would be all right. How do people with one leg feel about it? Do they call it their prosthesis or artificial leg, or just leg? I’d prefer when someone is asking about my ocular prosthesis, that they simply say, How is your eye doing? Like, How is your leg doing? or How is your knee, or hip, or heart for that matter? You don’t say to someone about their artificial heart, How is your cardio prosthesis? I smile at the thought and then slowly leaf through the latest copy of People while Eliza polishes my eye in the other room.

When I leave I have an appointment card in my hand for my next annual polishing, on the back of which is a web-site address where I can read about ocular motility.

Maybe I will.

Maybe I won’t.

I don’t like the idea of someone sewing my acrylic eye to the muscle in my eye socket. Does that mean that in order for Eliza to polish it, it would have to be removed and then sewed back in once a year?

Maybe I won’t.

Chapter 4

As Becky’s graduation looms closer, things get crazier and the demands on the budget become ridiculous. Now it’s the class trip. When it was first being planned by the senior class, Becky wasn’t going to go, much to my relief. Then at the last minute, the day the deposit was due, she changed her mind.

Now it’s the only thing she talks about, and Tanya and I are trying to figure out how to budget it in. It’s only fifteen-hundred dollars, Becky had said, as if the word only would make it more palatable, and more affordable. The deposit went on the credit card.

Let’s make it her graduation gift, I say, "instead of the new computer for college. Her old laptop is probably sufficient anyway. We could throw $500 cash in and it’d come up to the price of the computer.

Tanya hardly considers my idea. That wouldn’t be fair.

I’ll bet the other parents are giving the trip as the graduation gift. When I graduated I think I got a fifty dollar bill, and I was happy with it.

She ignores my comment. Tom and Beth are giving Sarah a car for graduation, and they’re paying for the trip. Sarah is Becky’s best friend. Her parents are close friends of ours only by nature of sitting together at swim meets.

They’re rich. We’re not.

So? We’re not talking the difference between a trip and a car.

For them, the trip is small potatoes. For us $500 is a stretch. Becky has some savings. How about we make a deal with her that she pay half, and we’ll give the other half as a graduation present, plus seven fifty toward the computer.

No. she shakes her head. It wouldn’t be right. I’d feel like we’re being stingy. We can afford both.

It’d have to come out of her college fund.

No it wouldn’t. We could liquidate some stock.

That’s our retirement.

That’s nearly thirty years away. Fifteen-hundred dollars isn’t going to make a hill of beans. That’s like fifty dollars a year.

I blink at her logic, of which I’m sure there is none, but I don’t challenge it. It makes little difference because I know I’m going to lose in any case. I might as well call the broker and place the stock sell order. Tanya also knows she’s won. She stands and carries her tea cup into the kitchen, effectively ending the debate.

Becky goes off to Cancun, and for most of the second week in June we enjoy the quiet in the house. Christi’s Girl Scout camp overlaps Becky’s graduation trip by five days. Tanya and I make love once in the kitchen and twice in the living room. One of the nights we spend the entire evening in front of the sofa with pillows and a comforter, naked, watching old movies. We feel like kids again, doing things we shouldn’t just because we know we can get away with it.

If you put this in your next novel, I’ll deny even knowing you.

I wouldn’t, and even if I did, I’d change the names to protect the innocent.

We aren’t innocent. What names are you going to change? The kids?

And the dog.

The dog isn’t innocent. He watched everything.

Okay. I’ll use his real name.

What about the neighbors?

Have they been watching?

I hope the hell not.

Then they’re innocent; I’ll change their names.

We sit in serious contemplation for a time. She asks, What’s the next one going to be about?

I think for a moment. Consider a desolate family in Oklahoma during the dust bowl of the thirties. While drilling for water, the fifth such attempt on their dry, sagebrush-covered eighty acres, they strike a steel container. They dig it out with pick and shovel and then open it to discover two-hundred thousand dollars in gold and currency.

Why two-hundred thousand? Tanya asks.

It’s arbitrary. It could change. The amount isn’t important. There’s been a legend in the nearby town of Shadow Gulch that a group of three men, who called themselves the Billy Bison Gang, ran down a stage coach and killed all the occupants, taking a company payroll. The occupants were three women, two children and two drivers.

That’s a little excessive, isn’t it? Why would they kill them all?

So that there were no witnesses. Not a half mile away, the horse they used to pack the payroll steps into a gopher hole and breaks its leg. They have to shoot the horse. Nearby there is an abandoned farm. They bury the loot and hang low, until a few days later when they go into town for some whiskey, and to steal a horse. The one woman who had been left alive . . .

Wait a minute. You said they were all killed.

It just looked that way. One was playing possum. Anyway, she saw them and started screaming her head off. Before you know it there’s a gun battle as a dozen of the town’s men come running with their guns. In under a minute, all three of the Billy Bison gang lay dead in the street, along with the town barber and the woman. The sheriff was at the barber’s place on the edge of town, poking the barber’s wife.

That’s terrible.

They never find the strong box. Even the legend starts to die until fifty years later when Grandpa and his son-in-law, Jeremiah, run into it with their drilling rig. They think at first it is a coffin, but then Jeremiah reminds Grandpa that most of the old coffins are made from wood. So they dig it out of the ground and drag it into the house. With the family standing around it, Jeremiah unlatches the box and opens it. They are astonished; the men are excited. ‘No!’ yells the mother, daughter of Grandpa. ‘This is the devil’s work!’ She slams the lid and throws the latches. Between the excitement and then the sudden declaration by his daughter, Grandpa has a heart attack and keels over, taking two of the nearby candles with him. To make a long story short. . .

Thank you. I’m becoming sorry I asked.

. . .the house burns to the ground, taking all the occupants with it. The strong box is so heavy that it only takes a little bit of fire around it to weaken the floor enough that it falls into the cellar. It is there that it remains, undamaged, for nearly fifty more years, until 1980.

I stop. No particular reason—something about not giving up a story until it is written.

And then what?

That’s where I stop because that’s where the story really begins.

Oh! You make me sit through all that and then, nothing more?

I guess I could add that in 1980, gold topped $800 an ounce. Figure maybe fifty pounds of gold in the box, plus whatever else—do the math.

I’d rather not.

Six hundred and forty thousand dollars.

Not all that much.

It’s a hell of a lot when the people who find it are not only willing to kill but have a reason to kill to keep it.

Aha! She thinks for a moment. Why are we sitting around naked?

I don’t know. That was your idea.

She kicks my ankle. I fain being hurt and then we wrestle until the constant proximity of our naked bodies leads to hard, sweaty love making. When it is over we snuggle in the dark with the television off and the comforter thrown aside, enjoying the heat and odor of our sex.

So, how far are you into this story so far?

I drag my arm out from under us and look at my watch. Oh, I’d guess about forty-five minutes.

What? You just made it up?

Yep.

She sits up. Seriously?

Yes. I just made it up.

So, what are you actually working on?

You know I don’t talk about it until it’s finished.

She lies back down. You don’t trust me.

We’ve been over this a dozen times. Artists don’t reveal their work-in-progress. It’s full of ugly boils, wet paint, and black holes.

Humph! She snuggles close and I pull the comforter back over us before the chill sets in. It is only a few minutes before I sense her drift off. I think about the fact that the house will be full again tomorrow with the return of both girls. Christi I miss. I look forward to seeing her smiling face again. Becky is another story. I miss who she used to be, but who she is now, I don’t know. She’s changed so much in the last six months. It’s been a relief having her gone.

She’s a good kid, Zach, my neighbor said the other day. My theory is, and it’s been proven to me over and over, including my own three, that if they’re a good kid when they go into that ugly time at the end of their youth, they’ll be good adults when they come out. In the meanwhile, close your eyes, pray, and try to sleep.

I pray all right. I pray that he’s right. How many years before she comes out of it?

I worry about that for a time and then wake Tanya before we end up spending the night on the floor. She may like a hard surface to sleep on, but even with that I’m certain she would not be feeling good in the morning. I know I wouldn’t. She complains and then heads up stairs.

Chapter 5

The plan is to pick up Christi at the Lutheran church when her bus comes in and then rush to the airport to meet Becky’s plane from Cancun. Just as we start out the door, we get a call that the buses are running about an hour late. After verbally drawing straws as to who will meet who, I lose and head for the airport.

I expect that Becky will be in a good mood after her vacation, so I don’t spend too much time preparing myself for her abrasiveness. While I wait I chat with Sarah’s mother, Beth.

I talked to Sarah yesterday, Beth says. She said Becky didn’t have a very good time.

Tanya and I hadn’t talked to Becky at all in the week except for the first day when she made a short, clipped call to say she arrived. We weren’t exactly sitting around waiting for the phone to ring. Did Sarah say what happened?

No. I think the two of them had a fight.

There are other parents standing around. One of them waves at something and then I see bits and pieces of overloaded backpacks through the deplaning crowd. I don’t see Becky.

Did Sarah have a good time? I ask Beth.

I couldn’t tell. It was the only time I talked to her all week.

I feel less guilty. Then I see Becky. She’s with Sarah. Maybe the fight’s over and they’ve made up.

I certainly hope so, Beth says. She’s hard enough to live with as it is.

The week without Becky has been bliss.

You’re telling me. We’re ready for Sarah to go away to college.

I smile at that. Okay, we do have something in common with the wealthy.

Becky approaches. Hi, Sweetie, I say.

Hi.

I can take that if you like.

She adjusts the lay of the strap over her shoulder and says, I’ve got it.

Okay. We silently follow the signs to baggage claim, then stand around looking bored for fifteen minutes. I study my toes until I notice that her toes are normal, not fluorescent. Odd. Several of the kids are gathered together talking expressively with a couple of parents. Before, Becky would have been a part of them. Now she stands like an outcast . . . alone, abandoned.

Just before the baggage starts dropping into the rotating bin, she says, What color am I?

I don’t understand the question. White with a reasonably nice tan.

No . . . I mean . . . what color is my aura? I’ve heard you and Mom talking. I know you can see auras.

Eavesdropping.

I’m a kid. I can’t help it.

I laugh, relieved. It’s a secret we thought we were keeping from the girls. Why do you ask?

If you can see aura, then you can see mine. I never knew it came in different colors.

Tired navy.

She pulls a small paperback book from her pack. Luggage starts sliding down the chute. She pages through the book until she finds what she’s looking for. Navy is not a color.

I’ll have to beg to differ with you.

It’s not an aura color. This has red, green, orange, yellow, indigo, violet, magenta, lavender, crystal, blue, and a bunch of tans. No navy.

I’ve never studied the science of aura. I call it as I see it. Normally you’re blue.

Oh! She studies the book again, flips a page.

I point. Is that your luggage?

She looks. Yes. And that one over there.

I grab the one, wait until the second one comes to me and then manhandle them both out of the crowd. You ready?

She’s still reading. It says that I’m creative.

Especially when you’re looking for reasons to go places with your friends.

She studies me seriously. Yeah. I guess so?

I feel a father/daughter bonding talk bubbling up. Don’t blow it, I say to myself. Maybe if she knows more about me, she’ll have a little respect for me. Or maybe she’ll be embarrassed to be the daughter of a weirdo.

It says I’m physical and sexual.

How about we skip that part, I suggest.

Why? We’ve made it only a short distance. Tired travelers are dragging themselves around us. Businessmen are bustling by. Sarah goes past without saying a word, glancing at the book in Becky’s hand. Weird! I feel the word tumble off her aura.

What do you mean, why? I ask Becky.

Why do you and Mom freak out whenever the word sex comes up around me and Christi?

Christi and me, I correct.

She rolls her eyes. She did that to Tanya one time and Tanya told her that if she ever did it again she’d slap her eyes right out of her head. They had both suddenly looked at me as though Tanya had just treaded on the sacred ground of my acrylic eye. I laughed and then soon we were all laughing, and the argument disappeared. And if you don’t freak, you conveniently change the subject.

I start laughing. I don’t know why. It just pops out.

What’s funny about it? she demands.

I’m sorry. I remembered when your mother told you she’d slap the eyes out of your head.

Oh. Did I roll my eyes at you?

Yes.

I’m sorry.

Is this my daughter? It’s okay. It bothers your mom a lot more than it does me. It’s just that anytime I see you do it, I remember that statement and I want to laugh.

And change the subject.

I stop laughing. I guess I did. You want to talk about sex.

No.

No?

Why would I want to talk about sex with my dad?

Now I’m confused.

We were talking about my color. It says I’m physical and sexual. She looks at the book again and then flips back a page. Oops! I’m sorry. Two pages stuck together. That was red. I’m not physical and sexual.

Thank God!

She laughs. It says that different shades of blue mean different things. Dark, muddy blues can mean worrying or over sensitivity. Deep blues are loneliness. Sky blue is good intuition and imagination, a survivor. That’s where the creativity is. She looks up. Which blue am I?

If I had to put a name on it, I’d say sky blue, though now you lean toward a muddy sky.

She smiles. I like sky blue.

We’re now sitting outside on a bench. The book is lying on her lap. According to this we could all see auras as babies and very young children. It’s a wider range of our visual world that very young eyes can see. For most of us, the range narrows as we grow up. It also says we can train ourselves to see it again.

We can?

How come you can see it?

I’ve no idea. It’s been there as long as I can remember. I thought it was something that everyone could see, until I was in high school. I mentioned it and my friends thought I was weird. Then, when I started talking about my psychic capabilities, I was ostracized.

Becky is suddenly looking at me as though I’m wearing an extra ear on my nose. What psychic capability?

Ah. . . We’d never told the girls that either; figured it’d confuse them, maybe ostracize them as well if they were to open their mouths about it at school. I lean back on the bench. That was a slip. I guess, though, you’re old enough to know. After all, you’ll be seventeen in a week.

She waits, blessing me with her beautiful eyes, a pass down from her mother. I have her attention without angry words. Maybe it was time for her to know everything about her father. Did I have any choice in any case? I’d already cracked the door. There was no closing it.

This is not to be shared with your sister. Give her a few more years.

Okay, she says softly. Is it crazier than the aura thing?

That all depends on what you consider crazy.

Chapter 6

There was a time when I could have been burned at the stake for my abilities, I say. There are still people today who might be so inclined, figuratively anyway.

What do you mean?

Someone could ruin me as a serious writer by attempting to expose me and thus getting me labeled as a nut case, a weirdo at best. People might not want my wife to clean their teeth. Your social structure would turn upside down. Those who you thought were your best friends, would disappear, and those who you might otherwise never talk to would gravitate toward you, the daughter of the man who is psychic. I suddenly realize how vulnerable and impressionable my oldest daughter is. Could she take this wrong, or am I making too big a deal about it? What happened in Cancun?

We are sitting at angles, facing each other, looking directly at each other, the best for me to read her aura. It looks healthy and strong, as much as I know what healthy and strong auras are. I’ve read a little about seeing diseases in one’s aura, but I’ve never pursued it any further. Although I’ve seen unhealthy aura, I have no idea how to interpret it. She looks away at my question. Nothing! Her eyes come back to me. Why?

I talked to Sarah’s mom. She said you and Sarah had a fight.

Oh.

You’re different. It’s as though you went from sixteen to twenty-five in a week. Something took place down there, there’s no doubt in my mind. I’m using everything I have to read her, but nothing is coming. Often I get impressions from people; bits and pieces of entire histories; family; relationships, snatches of thoughts. I get nothing from Becky but a soft blue glow with flashes of orange; no thoughts. But her eyes harden and her jaw tightens.

I’ll make a deal with you, Dad. You tell me about your psychic thing, and I’ll tell you what happened.

I’m trying too hard. Normally visions come to me without my permission, like snapshots or vignettes. I relax my mind and maintain the eye contact. Still nothing. I used to be able to read my daughter. Are you hungry?

Starving.

Sunday afternoon traffic around Dallas/Ft Worth International doesn’t seem all that much different from a weekday. I navigate my way around to I-635 then head east. I get off at the Northwest Highway exit and then pull into Grandy’s. I figure it would either be quiet enough or noisy enough that we could hold a private conversation.

It is the former. There are a couple of lone truckers, an older couple, and two families of four. We take the most isolated table and order ice tea. We barely have the menus open when the waitress is back with the drinks and standing over us with a poised pencil. Are you guys ready?

I start to say, Give us a second, but I’m anxious to get on with the father/daughter chat. A cheeseburger with everything and a side of onion rings.

Same with me but with fries, Becky says.

The waitress goes away.

I push the menus aside. I have several abilities.

She picks up the menus and puts them in their holder behind the sugar rack. Psychic abilities?

Psychic is what I’ve always called it. I don’t know if the term is proper. I guess it is. First of all, I can’t see aura in everyone.

She points to the book she carried in with her. According to this everyone has an aura.

Maybe. But I can’t always see it. Some people are more guarded; others are like an open book. I had one person, a CEO of a company, who had absolutely no aura. As we began to talk one day, it started showing up. When our conversation went south, his aura glow virtually disappeared. I also lost any other read I had on him.

Other read?

I lean forward. "It seems that when I can see aura, I sometimes get impressions of that person. It’s like I can reach into their memories and pull out pictures. It was during that very short time, with the CEO, that I learned