Back to the Bighorn

By Walt Tomsic

A historically based “what if” thriller, "Back to the Bighorn" revolves around Jim Sullivan, a graduate student working toward his doctorate in history at the University of Colorado/Boulder. While there, he meets and becomes close friends with Scott Adler, a brilliant young astrophysicist who has developed a device that allows access to “coexisting states of being”—alternate dimensions—to use the popular term. The two collaborate and use the device to reverse the outcome of the Custer massacre at the Little Bighorn. After several trial tests, one of which involves a "trip" to 60s era Las Vegas, the plan is put into motion. Jim, disguised as an army scout and dispatch rider, appears at key times and locations to choreograph events of the battle. At one point, he is attacked by a young Sioux brave who has left his reservation to join Sitting Bull. The work contains a great deal of factual information surrounding the battle and, without getting too technical, weaves in elements of particle physics, chaos theory, the "butterfly effect" and the operation of the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. It contains only the occasional mild expletive and no graphic sexual content.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Walt Tomsic
• Release date: Aug 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310560293

Walt Tomsic

Son of a career Air Force office, grew up in the desert southwest. Graduated with advanced degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder. University professor recently retired. Currently the managing editor of an automotive museum publication.

Book preview

Chapter 1:

5:17 am—July in Kansas and it was going to be another hot one, hot and humid. In the wheat fields and tree lines that stretched flat to the horizon, countless cicadas began their ratcheting song—like an infinite number of oscillating sprinkler heads watering an endless expanse of newly mown lawn. It was the soundtrack of every Midwestern and southern summer. In the tiny room at the southeastern corner of the Kansas Centennial Soldiers Home the old man’s parchment thin eyelids rippled in rapid side-to-side movement as the last hazy images of dream memory dimmed into nothingness–like an old daguerreotype dipped in bleach.

As the old man slowly drifted toward consciousness his hand rose to his right temple where a deep, scar encrusted fissure transected the temple and continued past the hairline to just above and behind the ear. A slight peripheral movement drew his gaze. His eyes slowly focused on the sun faded curtains covering the one small window in the room. The barest breath of a breeze had caused it to furl outward from where the two halves of cloth met. Though the movement had caught his attention, something else held it— a fleeting disconnected memory—Libbie’s dress, the one he bought her when they had visited New York in the spring of 1876. It was a floral pattern not unlike these scraps of cloth. A hint of confusion momentarily clouded his expression. Libbie?

The dress, the visit to New York, Libbie, all vanished as soon as the door thrust open and Iris lumbered into the room. Good mornin Genrul! How’s my favorite little fightin man this fine Kansas mornin? Are you ready for your pick me up?" Head nurse Iris Crenshaw was a force of nature, two hundred and thirty two pounds of irrepressible energy encasing a will of tempered steel. When Iris Crenshaw shoved a glass of apple juice laced with codeine elixir at you, you took it—and you drank it.

All right Genrul, you get yourself up and about now. A new day has dawned and we can thank the Good Lord Jesus we’re alive to greet it… yes indeed. The yes indeed was repeated several times as Iris strode out into the hall and off to the next recipient of the unwavering enthusiasm she felt for her chosen place in life. The click of the door latch signaled the return of calm but by then, the veiled visions of life before the Kansas Centennial Soldiers Home had vanished—so much mist evaporated by the rippling heat of the Kansas summer.

The old man ran his hands over his thinning hair, once strawberry, now gray tinged with a few strands of a milky salmon. His hands continued down over his eyes, across the prickly stubble of his cheeks to the wisp of beard that did little to conceal the weakness of his cleft chin.

The eyes that slowly fluttered open never failed to surprise. The term sky blue is often applied in a cavalier fashion but in this case, it was the perfect description. The old man was now eighty-two years old and time had robbed him of much of his once formidable height and lanky musculature. But the eyes had remained that same penetrating hue, the color of a western sky before the gaseous discharge of an industrial age began to rob it of its vibrancy.

With no small effort the Genrul rolled to his left and pushed himself into a slightly slump-shouldered sitting position. His back ached. His knees throbbed. He placed his feet on the cool, tan linoleum floor and rose with a grunt. It was the first sound he had uttered since awakening. After a shuffling trip to the tiny attached bathroom, he donned his robe and slid his feet into the maroon vinyl slippers the staff had given him two Christmases ago. He made his way to a somewhat battered wooden dresser and opened the top left-hand drawer and removed a strip of frayed cloth. What had once been a bright scarlet bandana was now little more than a threadbare rag—pink from sun, sweat and decades of laundry detergent.

He tied the cloth around his neck, careful to position the knot slightly to the right of center. It was a ritual that had played out each morning for the last forty-five years. His blue Hussar’s tunic with the wide collar and red piping had made it for the fist twenty-seven of those years before being thrown away by an overzealous orderly. A glance at the mirror hanging above the dresser completed the ceremony. General George, as he was known to the other battered relics of the Home, was now ready to meet the day.

The serpentine route to the mess hall, or dining center as the staff insisted on calling it, was made on autopilot. It was a journey George had made twice a day for four and a half decades. Upon entering the room, he paused to observe and verify. Everything was as it should be. The same mint green walls passed in review. The same four framed landscapes printed on simulated-brushstroke embossed tag board hung one to a wall. The fleck patterned linoleum tile that covered all three floors gleamed mirror-like from its nightly buffing. All eleven chrome and plastic laminate dinette sets, none of which matched, were in their usual places as were the various figures scattered about the room.

The old man shuffled to his table, withdrew his chair and slowly ate the neatly placed and precisely portioned breakfast of oatmeal, one slice of dry toast, two wedges of mealy orange and a cup of warm tea. He neither looked up nor spoke a word. When finished, he went directly to the west facing, screened-in veranda that surrounded the building, located his wicker chair with the tan cushion and eased down. It was July 5th, 1921 and Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer Ret. was thus prepared to endure another day.

Chapter 2:

Jim Sullivan slipped yet again on the loose scree that littered the increasingly steep slope. At one point, both feet slid back in unison causing him to throw out his hands to break the fall. The USGS topo map he was carrying rolled several yards down the hill before wedging against a pitted boulder. After gingerly dislodging the small but sharp stones now imbedded in each palm, Jim retrieved the map. Next time, wear gloves… moron! Sullivan tended to think out loud—a quirk that often drew nervous stares in public.

It was unusually warm for March in southeastern Montana—well into the sixties. The snows of earlier that month were all but gone, what little remained, was now puddled on the northern slopes of hills and in the deeper ravines. Sullivan shifted his fanny pack to his side and withdrew a bottled water. The liquid was tepid but quenching. He replaced the bottle, unrolled the map and studied it for a moment before continuing up the slope. The ground became more solid as he climbed. Upon reaching the crest, Sullivan was met with a flat table of loose soil about thirty yards wide and dotted with tufts of scrub sage. He tested the dirt with the tip of his boot and found it to be loose and granular—easy prey for a trenching tool. To the west and about fifty yards away, the bench of land ended in a sharp rocky drop-off. East of where he stood, the terrain sloped gently down for a distance of about a quarter of a mile. Looking north from his vantage point, Sullivan surveyed what appeared to be a virtually identical landform. The shallow canyon floor separating the two ridgelines was fairly flat and gradually compressed as it neared the point where the two ridges came together. There, the north fork of Reno Creek—now dry save for a few patches of crusty snow—had cut a notch about twenty yards wide. Steep rock walls flanked the narrow gap on either side.

Jim Sullivan smiled to himself, Just like a funnel.

He spent a few more minutes studying the spot where the creek entered the breach between the two buttes. The next time I see you, you’ll have running water and you won’t be called Reno Creek." Jim whispered aloud.

Sullivan walked west to the edge of the bluff, shaded his eyes from the sun and focused on a point about three miles distant. He could just make out the glare of sun on oily asphalt that marked the parking lot at Reno Hill. From there, the ribbon of Battlefield Road snaked west to the cluster of structures and memorials that formed the heart of the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Squinting, Jim could make out cars scattered about the parking area by the Visitor Center. Just to the right, stood Last Stand Hill and the 7th Cavalry Memorial. Down the slope to the left, Sullivan could see dozens of small, bone-colored objects—sunlight glinting off white marble headstones. He shuddered imperceptibly as the flesh on his arms dimpled with goose bumps. Whew, It’s like I’m twelve all over again. He whispered.

Turning away, Sullivan scanned the area for a spot that was less exposed. A nearby gully looked promising. It was shallow but cut behind a rock outcrop. A clump of scrub sage added some additional concealment. This should do, Jim said as he eased down behind the shelf of rock. He unsnapped the nylon fanny pack, removed a black marking pen and crouched to one knee while unfurling the topographical map. He circled his location on the map, wrote #3 within the circle and replaced the pen. He next withdrew a small metal carrying case. Inside, packed neatly in foam slots, were four USB flash drives and a device fashioned from satin finished metal. It was about the size of a deck of cards. One end featured a hinged cover similar in appearance to those found on Zippo cigarette lighters. The other end was perfectly flat. At its center, a USB port was set into a circular rotating plug. Sullivan removed the four 8GB Flash Drives and examined them before placing three back in the case. Keeping the one with a #3 written on it, he inserted the drive into the USB port and rotated it ninety-degrees clockwise until he heard a soft click. He then flipped the lid open revealing a single, black rectangular button. He pushed it, shut the lid, rotated the flash drive counterclockwise and pulled it free. Jim slipped the small drive back into its slot in the carrying case and placed everything back in the pack. Sullivan stood, folded the map and refastened the pack around his waist. He glanced at his watch, 3:20 in the afternoon.

Before descending the hill and starting the two and a half mile walk back to the rented SUV, Sullivan took one more look at the funnel shaped valley below. Nodding to himself he muttered, Good, I think this is exactly what I’m looking for. With that, he hurried back to the side road where the SUV was parked. A few minutes later, Jim Sullivan was heading north on Interstate 90 on his way to Billings and the flight back to Boulder. Within minutes, the four-lane ribbon of Interstate highway crossed the Little Bighorn River and cut through the very spot where the Sioux and Cheyenne village had stood that long departed summer day. To Jim, the capping of this ghostly ground with a layer of concrete felt like desecration. It was, after all, ground consecrated with both the blood of men and the lifeblood of a dying culture and way of life. Jim’s gaze flitted back and forth between the road ahead and the rearview mirror. The solitary dark spire that marked the spot where George Custer and fifty of his men had died slowly disappeared from view.

As Sullivan approach Hardin, he saw a sign that read State Route 47, Custer, Bighorn 29. He checked the digital clock on the SUV’s dash, ten minutes to five. If he hurried, he would have just enough time to get to where the Bighorn River joined the Yellowstone and still make his flight. He wasn’t certain he’d even need a fourth entry point but decided as long as he was here, it wouldn’t hurt to have it. Jim swung the Explorer off the Interstate and onto the arrow straight but rippled surface of the two-lane state road. Jim punched the accelerator and headed north toward the Yellowstone.

Chapter 3: Ten months earlier

Jim Sullivan was good at packing books. He knew the secret lay in selecting the right size of cardboard box—just big enough to take about ten volumes. That made the boxes light and easier to carry. He was also careful to load them in the same order they occupied on the shelf. It would make restacking a breeze. Jim came by this technique honestly. He had had a lot of experience of late.

It was late May and the spring term had just ended. What’s it been, five moves in seven or eight years? He mumbled while continuing to pack, And that’s not counting two different dorms and the apartment during my first four years at CU.

The past year in Prescott had been especially tough. Due to a budget crunch at the community college, his sabbatical replacement job was not going to turn into the tenure track position he had hoped for—and expected. As if that weren’t enough, while taking a leisurely ride off road in the nearby Chino Valley, he had managed to plow his vintage Honda XL250 dirt bike into a partially buried tree stump and catapult himself into a rock strewn culvert. The resulting fractured collarbone had put him in a cast for three months and James Patrick Sullivan did not do rest and rehab well. In fact, he could be a grouchy pain-in-the-butt. Needless to say, between working part time at the community college registrar’s office, taking a few classes and being saddled with extra work around the house due to Jim’s injury, Cassie Brewster-Sullivan’s life—and her outlook thereon—had gradually darkened.

It was late April when he and Cassie had finally acknowledged their three and a half year long marriage was not going to work. Looking back on it with the luxury of emotional distance, he knew the signs of impending trouble had already begun to surface in their second year as man and wife. Almost immediately after leaving Boulder to take a high school teaching job in Wichita Falls, Texas, the dynamic of their relationship had changed. They just seemed to have less and less to say to one another, less common ground.

Upon reflection, Jim realized it was college life that had formed the link between them—a constant stream of diversion, distraction, stimulation and amusement. The content of their conversations invariably revolved around school and the classes they were taking. Even their social circles seemed to mesh nicely. Jim actually liked many of the art majors he met through Cassie and likewise, she seemed to enjoy his friends from the history department. The icing on the cake had been Cassie’s enthusiasm for and knowledge of college football and in particular her love for the Buffs. It was how they had met during his junior year. Cassie was a sophomore at the time and the term meeting cute described the scene perfectly.

As an ardent football fan, Jim never missed a home game. The Buffs weren’t a top-tier team but they usually gave a good account of themselves and occasionally pulled off a surprise upset. The week before his fateful encounter with Cassie, the team had managed to squeak out a last-minute victory over a much superior Texas Tech team. From the moment the school’s beloved two year-old bison mascot Ralphie thundered on to the field dragging her squad of cowboy attired handlers, Jim had become aware of a throaty female voice hooting and cheering lustily from the row behind him.

By the end of the first quarter, Jim had begun to pay more and more attention to what the owner of that voice had to say. She discussed the moves on the field with a depth of understanding that Jim found astounding—shifts in the pass coverage from zone to man-to-man, the relative merits of the 4-3 versus the 3-4 defensive alignment, it went on and on. My God, he thought, I don’t know who this woman is, but she sure knows her football.

As the game wound down, the Buffs found themselves behind by four points with fewer than two minutes to go on the clock. Beginning their final drive on their own fourteen-yard line, the team moved down the field with the help of a few questionable pass interference penalties and one egregiously bad roughing-the-passer call. Oh baby! That was a gift, the voice intoned. Three plays later, with the ball on the opponent’s seventeen-yard line and six seconds left to play, the Buffalos called their last time out. The voice, lower now, almost a whisper, drifted down to Jim’s row, Okay guys, time to get it done. You’ve spread them wide with all those out patterns. The center is yours for the taking… tight end seam route, down the middle… let’s go!

What happened next was one for the books. A delay pattern to the tight end running free down the middle of the field not only won the game but also pushed CU’s season record to seven and five and secured a trip to a post-season bowl. As the cheering finally began to subside, Jim couldn’t contain his curiosity any longer—he turned to have a look. She was nothing like what he had envisioned. Given the volume levels the voice was capable of, Sullivan had pictured some sort of Wagnerian biker chick or buzz-cut coiffed catcher for the school’s women’s softball team. What he saw was nothing like either of those preconceptions.

She stood about five-feet-four and was wearing Nike running shoes, white cargo style shorts and a yellow t-shirt with Buffalo Nation printed across the chest in bold black letters. A white baseball cap with CU embroidered on the front and a pair of wrap-around blue tinted sunglasses completed the ensemble. She was slim of build but fit, a runner’s frame. She removed her glasses and with a slightly quizzical look, fixed her greenish gold eyes on Jim. Her short, reddish blond hair framed a face festooned with freckles. She was cute in a perky kind of way and Jim was instantly smitten. Hi! I’m Jim Sullivan, will you marry me? Without missing a beat or changing her expression she replied, Hi Jim Sullivan, I’m Cassie Brewster and no, I won’t marry you—but I’ll let you buy me a beer.

Dissecting the game as they went, Jim and Cassie had strolled up the hill from Folsom Field, through the campus and across Broadway Avenue. 13th Street had already begun to fill with raucous fans celebrating the come-from-behind victory. The two made their way down to the corner of 13th and Pennsylvania and one of the last and most revered historic landmarks of beer and burger consumption in all of Colorado—the Sink. The place had been around in one form or another since 1923. It’s walls and ceiling were covered with the carved and printed names of generations of students who had called it home during their days at CU. Jim and Cassie had grabbed one of the few remaining tables and preceded to get acquainted over a pitcher of amber ale and a plate heaped high with greasy fries. From that point on, they had become a couple.

After just three months of steady dating, they had moved in together. At the time, Jim was mid-way through his junior year and had abandoned dormitory life for a daylight basement apartment just off-campus. Cassie was a sophomore. Over the winter, their relationship deepened in intensity and by spring they had begun to talk about getting married. As summer approached, talking about had become planning for and in late August, they were married. Jim’s father was in ill health and had been unable to attend the ceremony but his mother made the trip out from Northern California. Cassie’s parents flew in from their home in Tustin, California. A few close college friends completed the wedding party. The simple ceremony, a relaxed and pleasantly unpretentious affair, was held in Chautauqua Park beneath the slanted rock slabs of the Flatirons.

Jim had been well aware that Cassie’s folks weren’t completely comfortable with the idea of their only daughter getting married so young—and before completing college. He knew they had tried their best to dissuade her but in the end, they had accepted the inevitable and conducted themselves with a certain affable yet reserved grace.

Jim’s senior year had flown by. Football season came and went—another so-so year for the team—but no less exciting for fans like the Brewster-Sullivans. In addition to her course work, Cassie had landed a work-study job at the university art gallery. That, along with the occasional check from her parents and the G.I. Bill Jim had earned for his military service after high school, meant the couple was just able to scrape by. Their pooled resources even allowed for an occasional movie and one or two weekly visits to the Sink.

During that December, Cassie’s parents flew them out to Orange County for the Holidays. Again, Jim was aware of a subtle yet discernible sadness in the way they looked at Cassie during lapses in conversation. It was nothing overt, Phil and Doris Brewster were nice people and in spite of their reservations about the wisdom of the marriage, they were good parents and charming hosts. The visit had been generally pleasant, lots of TV watching—it was after all, college football bowl season. The four of them spent a day at Disneyland but the holiday crowd made movement around the park difficult and access to the best attractions impossible. There were several of those seemingly obligatory sightseeing drives that always accompany family visits. They would pile into the Brewster’s Acura SUV—men in front, ladies in the rear—and spend most of the time mired down in horrendous traffic while Phil kept up a running dialog about where orange groves once stood. One evening, after a day spent cocooned in the car with the air conditioner blasting and Phil describing yet more former citrus groves, Doris revealed the history behind her daughter’s love of football.

Cassie’s brother Randy, now in his fifth year of law school, had been the starting quarterback on the high school team. Cassie, three years younger and quite the little athlete herself, idolized her older sibling. She attended all his games and most of the team practices and would listen for hours as Randy memorized plays and formations while she diagrammed them on a chalkboard in the family den. Cassie would then attend the games, take copious notes and critique Randy’s performance with a surgical precision worthy of an NFL coach. After hearing the story, Jim winked at Cassie and said, I better send this Randy guy a thank you note. It was your game analysis that won my heart. Again, Jim had noticed the hint of sadness behind Phil Brewster’s faint smile.

Had he been more perceptive, perhaps older and less naïve, Jim might have seen things in a more realistic light. He might then have realized that football games and college courses didn’t necessarily constitute a solid foundation for a successful marriage. But, in the end, he hadn’t peered beyond the moment and so it was that Jim found himself, once again, packing books into cardboard boxes for transport back to CU and another round of graduate school. This time, he would pursue a PhD in History and put life as a student in his rear view mirror—for good.

In many ways, the failure of his marriage had prompted Jim’s decision to get his doctorate and go after a four-year college teaching post. He would write books, flirt with the occasional cute coed and grow old and distinguished—adorned in corduroy sport coats with leather elbow patches. At least the divorce had gone about as well as could be expected. Cassie’s energy and ambition had been stifled and unfulfilled in the small town of Prescott. She missed Southern California. She missed her parents. She missed the contemporary art scene. She was sick of western landscapes and oil paintings of elk. Unbeknownst to Jim, Cassie had begun a clandestine, web-based job search within weeks of their arrival in Arizona. When the offer to join the educational staff at the L.A. County Museum of Art arrived via email, Cassie hadn’t hesitated. It meant escape from the isolation of Prescott and an opportunity to complete her degree at any number of colleges in the L.A. basin. It also made the end of their marriage a foregone conclusion. She accepted the job, took the dog and the Jeep and headed west. The particulars of the marriage dissolution would be handled via phone conference and registered mail and without contest from either party.

When Cassie left, the weather in northern Arizona was beginning to turn warmer and Jim was able to commute to his classes on his slightly battered but still serviceable motorcycle. Before leaving town, he would offer it at a good price to a student who had been bugging him to sell it for the past six months. He could look for a car when he got back to Boulder. A small U-haul van would suffice for the trip. If he applied himself, he could complete the two additional years of study in two summer terms and one regular school year. With that thought in mind, Jim Sullivan continued his packing.

Chapter 4

Scott Adler was a certified genius, one of those rare individuals who are naturally able to grasp tediously complex and convoluted concepts with the ease an average person expends tying a shoelace. He didn’t have to work at it. The necessary insight and understanding were in place, hard wired, waiting to be summoned forth. It had always been that way with Scott. Present him with a problem, some mathematical equation to be solved or formula to be deciphered and the path to resolution might as well have had a set of landing lights. Scott was simply able to isolate the solution with an instantaneous clarity that would shock, delight and occasionally irritate those who knew him.

Adler wasn’t particularly attractive but his brilliance and effusive personality made him seem so. He had managed to be popular in school in spite of his brainiac status and the fact that, having skipped two grades, he was two to three years younger than his classmates. It would have been three grades but he had demanded to remain in third grade for the entire year so he could play clarinet in the school orchestra. Music, like anything that mated the technical with the creative came easy to Scott. The jocks and bullies regarded him with a certain wary respect. Teachers idolized him. His parents adored him. Scott's older brother Cory exploited his unique mental gifts whenever possible. A practice that ultimately led to Scott’s leaving high school at age fourteen.

Scott was a legend in the world of the school science fair—be it local, regional or national. Even the other scholarly science nerds regarded Scott with awe leaning toward fear bordering on terror. While other kids labored over paper Mache lumps that spouted fake baking soda lava or demonstrated aerodynamic lift with a fan and a model airplane wing, Scott sprouted gardens of crystal and built robots and biospheres… and that was when he was in the grade school division. A group of disgruntled parents had once attempted to get him banned from future participation claiming he was damaging the self-esteem of their children. By the time Scott got to junior high, fair organizers had to call in university professors to explain the nature of his projects to the judges.

It all came crashing down when Cory talked his brother into designing a science fair project that he would then enter as his own. Cory was a somewhat mischievous but likable kid, a class clown and average student who played on the baseball team and managed to avoid serious trouble both in and out of school. Rather than resenting his brilliant sibling, Cory genuinely liked Scott and the two brothers got along as well as could be expected from boys their age. Cory simply saw the use of Scott’s remarkable abilities as a reasonable utilization of available resources. In other words, no big deal. The school principal and science teacher saw things differently. When quizzed on the underlying principals operative in his demonstration of unstable aperiodic behavior in deterministic nonlinear dynamical systems, Cory flushed beet-red and lapsed into a semi-vegetative state. The jig was up, the ruse revealed.

Cory was summarily dismissed from science class and given an F for the semester. Scott, though sternly reprimanded, saw his legend grow exponentially to near heroic status. Budding science nerds all over the Midwest whispered is name and recounted his exploits with fawning reverence. It was while surfing the newly developing science nerd blogosphere that Scott’s name and reputation came to the attention of the Director of Project Planning at NCAR, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

Director Arnold Mayfield didn’t recognize the existence of conceptual boundaries. The term thinking outside the box described him to a tee. If the nerd nation was all agog over some mystical Jedi, ubergeek named Scott Adler, Mayfield felt compelled to learn more about this mythic figure, this Samurai of Science as one of his more florid sycophants had anointed him.

A web-search soon yielded the saga of Scott Adler, Michigan wunderkind busted for cheating at the state science fair. More details emerged—details of his other legitimate science fair projects—things a Cal Tech grad student would be hard pressed to pull off. At age thirteen he had designed, built and programmed a robot to cruise the aisles of a local building supply store. It told jokes and moon walked between announcements of in-store specials. The thing became a local celebrity and was featured on TV. There was more, much more.

Mayfield had Scott’s parents on the phone that very afternoon. Because of his age, fifteen at the time, he couldn’t actually hire Scott but he could offer him an all expenses paid internship at the Center and a place to stay in the Mayfield home. Before agreeing, the Adlers flew out to Denver and were whisked out to the futuristic NCAR complex in a chartered limo. As they neared the Center, the limo driver began a well rehearsed commentary, What you see before you is the so-called Mesa Lab, NCAR’s flagship building. It was designed in the 1960s by the world famous architect I.M. Pei and sits on this mesa which is 600 feet higher than the city of Boulder below there to the right. He droned on, If you’re a fan of early Woody Allen movies, you might recognize the lab from his 1973 film Sleeper. Judging from the way their heads swiveled and bobbed and the number of Ooos’ and Ahhhs, it was obvious the Adler family was enjoying every minute of their guided tour.

When they arrived at the entrance to the main administration building, the Adlers were met by Arnold Mayfield and given the V.I.P. tour. Mayfield knew Scott was the real deal from the first question that popped from the young man’s lips. The experience convinced the Adlers that their son would flourish at NCAR, an environment where his prodigious talents would be understood, appreciated and properly stimulated. A meeting later with Mayfield’s wife Sarah and a tour of their beautiful home in the foothills above Boulder sealed the deal. George and Helen Adler flew back to Michigan secure in the knowledge their son was in good hands and Scott began what would become an exciting and meteoric rise in the scientific community.

Chapter 5

Sullivan eased the rented Ford Econoline van out of the covered parking stall marked G-4 and drove slowly down the asphalt drive leading to the street. Flanking him as he drove stood ranks of identical barracks like buildings each housing four two-bedroom units. The buildings were painted the same gray color one would expect to find on a naval transport ship. Save for the large amber Plexiglas letter affixed to each, there was nothing unique about them. As he approached the entrance to the Aspen Grove apartment complex, Jim saw the all too familiar wooden sign with two stunted aspen saplings planted to one side. Over the previous nine months, he had often pondered whether two trees of any one species constituted a grove. Jim nosed the van into the stream of morning traffic on Yavapai Street and headed east. He felt no particular emotion, no anger, remorse, nostalgia… nothing. It was as if the events of the past year existed only as so many lines of text in a book written by someone else—about someone else. As he had when he and Cassie left Texas, Sullivan didn’t bother looking back.

When he reached the sign indicating the junction with Highway 89, Jim joked aloud, Well hello 89. Haven’t we met someplace before? The attempt at humor held little genuine mirth. A left-turn pointed him north toward the edge of town and the high desert beyond. Before leaving Prescott proper, Jim made one more stop at the recently completed outdoor retail village—terms like mall and plaza now being passe. Chino Rim Village was one of those newer developments, trendy in design and built on speculation and leveraged capital. Half the retail spaces stood empty. Fortunately for Jim, one did not and it housed a Starbucks. Jim was, if nothing else, a creature of habit. In contrast to Cassie’s more spontaneous nature, Sullivan embraced repetitive patterns and reveled in order. They gave him a sense of security. His mother often remarked that it stemmed from his upbringing as an Air Force brat and the rigid routines and constraints that came with living on military bases. The Bucks had been part of his weekday morning ritual since opening six months earlier. Jim liked getting to his cramped office at the college no later than 7:00 am so he could prepare his lecture notes and load his slide trays. He was forced to use a slide projector in class because the college A.V. budget didn’t allow for the more high-tech, computer-based methods of lecture enhancement. The Starbucks was right on the way and fit comfortably into Sullivan’s morning routine.

Upon entering, Jim was greeted by a perky Barista named Toni. Good morning Professor Sullivan! Your usual? Jim appreciated the implied respect inherent in the term professor. It was refreshingly old school in contrast to the presumptuous first-name familiarity favored by so many students. Technically speaking Jim Sullivan was not a professor. As a non-tenure track teacher with a one-year contract, he was an Instructor. No matter, he smiled and nodded in response.

With her typical efficiency, Toni called out, Grande, extra shot Americano with room. The order was repeated by the other barista manning the espresso machine, Grande, extra shot Americano with room. While the drink was being made, Jim scanned the pastry case. He wasn’t particularly hungry but figured he could use something to get his blood sugar up. Oh, and a blueberry muffin please. Jim took the muffin and handed Toni his Starbucks card. She had taken his Roots of Modern Society course winter quarter and had earned a solid A. The other barista was also a Havasupai CC student but had not enrolled in any of Jim’s classes. When the drink came, Jim completed his ritual by adding eight shakes of vanilla powder, one Splenda packet and a healthy dose of Half & Half.

As he was leaving, Toni called out to him, Professor Sullivan. Jim paused and turned to face her. I know you’re leaving and I just wanted to say I think you are a wonderful teacher. You taught me so much and I’ll miss you. Thank you Professor. The words stunned Jim. A wave of emotion swept over him. He felt his chest heave and his eyes grow moist. He managed to stammer a reply, Thanks for saying that Toni. I’ll miss you too. With that, he hurried out the door.

Back in the van, Jim needed a moment to collect himself. When he finally reached to insert the key in the ignition, he noticed his hand was still slightly trembling. His emotional reaction to Toni’s comment was so immediate and so unexpected that it made him momentarily unable to concentrate. He began to realize that what he had just experienced indicated a much greater depth of feeling about what had happened during his time in Prescott than he cared to admit. After taking a few sips of coffee and another moment to calm down, Jim pulled out of the parking lot and pointed the nose of the van north. It