the cook’s broad back down a path to the river. He paused when Norton did, watched the cook straighten from his bearlike slump, tap a cigarette loose from a crumpled pack, hold it to his mouth. Norton leisurely cupped his hands to light the cigarette and drew a noisy, satisfied lungful of smoke.
Len strained to see past the brush that blocked his view. Wrecker stood on a boulder not ten paces away, throwing smaller rocks into the swiftly flowing stream. He had a powerful overhand and imperfect aim.
Norton ignored the kid and smoked with gusto. Then he snubbed out the cigarette on the sole of his shoe, tossed the butt into the bushes, and roared, “All right, Champ. Come on with me.”
Len watched Wrecker lift his chin and glance at the fat man in the apron. His gaze swept around to gather Len as well. He kept throwing his rocks into the water.
Norton tapped his foot. “You want a cheeseburger?” he bribed. “I can make you a cheeseburger.” The boy didn’t stir, and Norton yawned, his mouth opening wide as a walrus’s. “Fine,” he said, unperturbed. “Hide out down here and eat these weeds. It’s all the same to me.” He started back up the trail. “Hold your nose when you chew on them,” Norton shouted helpfully. “Helps cover the fish shit.”
Wrecker held on to the rest of his pebbles. “Fish don’t shit.”
Len lifted an eyebrow. He hadn’t been raised to use language like that. Hadn’t been raised to wander off, either.
Norton snorted. “Don’t kid yourself.” He spit out of the corner of his mouth. “Everybody shits. You get hungry, come on up,” and lumbered past Len back up the trail to the diner.
Wrecker threw the rest of his rocks, one by one, into the flow. Then he turned and followed the heavyset cook back to the diner.
Len couldn’t eat. He watched the boy tuck into his burger, kneeling on the booth seat to be tall enough to reach the table, and thought, Oh. What in the world have I done.
It was half past ten when Len made his careful way at last down to the Mattole. He felt happiness swell a lump into his throat. Every part of him ached and his mind was frozen with fatigue, but he’d made it home.
The Mattole Valley lay nestled in the rain-soaked western reaches of Humboldt County. It was a bump high on the California coast that jutted into the Pacific and sheltered bear and mountain lion in a kind of sleepy, soggy paradise of the ages. Sure, Len thought. Until the nineteenth century roared in. He’d read his history. That was a new age, a freight train fueled with the promise of fortune, and lumber barons and oil drillers and commercial fishermen and cattle ranchers caught wind of a fine opportunity and came to gather what they could of the rewards. By the time Len and Meg arrived in ’55, the biggest trees had been felled and the oil played out and what was left was just enough range to run a few hundred head of cows. The river rose in ’56, wiped whole towns off the map. Nobody was getting rich anymore.
That suited Len fine. He came looking for remote and he found it, a sweet little forty-acre spread at the end of a dirt road the county quit fixing after the first ranch and behind four gates he had to get out and open, move the truck through, then climb back out and shut to keep the cattle from wandering off their range. He didn’t keep cows, himself. Couldn’t abide them. He had a hunting rifle his father gave him when he left Tennessee twenty-odd years before, and he rarely had to go farther than his own wood lot to bring down a deer. One animal would keep them through the winter, and one more let him trade with the fishermen up in Eureka. Every summer Meg kept a garden, and Len had his cordwood business and the little lumber mill to bring in some cash. Of course, that was when Meg had been well. Len felt the worry squeeze the box of his ribs. This was the first time he’d been out past dark since her accident.
The third gate was Bow Farm, and Len eased down to push the rickety thing aside. He peered down the rutted track that led to the farmhouse. There’d been stories of trespassers chased off the land by women bearing shotguns. In the