There was a baseball bat she kept on a shelf below her, and she reached and stood it beside her with the handle leaning on the bar. The brake lights went out now and there was the sound of a door opening then the clap of it closing once again. She continued to clean the glasses and watched the thin figure move past in the shaded tint of the glass then come to the door and push it open.
“Hey there,” she said.
“You open?” the young sheepherder asked. She could see he was bruised badly about one cheek, but the bruise was fading and it didn’t stop him from smiling at her when he spoke.
“In thirty minutes.”
The young herder stood looking around at the place, then he stepped up and took a stool as if he had been in her bar a thousand times before. “I guess you found your brother,” he said.
“I found him.”
“And he was the same as you remembered?”
“He was my brother but he was not the same.”
“I hate to hear that.” He looked around the bar now, at the chairs that sat atop the tables, and then he looked back at her. “Let me help you,” he said.
“Help me?”
“Yeah, I can take down the chairs. How old were you when you started working here?”
“How old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
“I wasn’t much older than you. My parents used to own this place.” She watched him move away and take one chair down after another.
“So it’s in the blood?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And you won’t leave it?”
“No,” she said. She was watching him now. He had taken the third chair down off the table and she told him to sit in it. She poured him a water and set it down on the table before him. “I grew up here, right in this bar.” She smiled at him now. “I had my first kiss out back with some dumb cowboy. I wasn’t much older than you then. Almost got caught by my dad. Fuck, he loved this place. He loved it so much he couldn’t see that it was staying the same and the world around it was changing. I see that now. I see that clearer than he ever did.”
“Then they haven’t scared you off yet?” the boy asked.
“No,” she said. “They haven’t scared me. They took my mom, my brother. Daddy did what he could but it wasn’t enough.”
“You’re the only one left now, aren’t you?”
“I’m not the only one,” she said. “There are others like me who see the world changing and want to do something about it.”
“And you’re going to do that here?”
“No better place,” she said.
She watched him look her over. He stood now from the chair and she knew he would leave. “I’ll tell them about this place when we get there. I’ll tell them about you.”
“Where is there?”
“There is wherever this place isn’t,” the boy said. “It doesn’t matter to us. My father is driving me and a couple others out of here. I’ll find someone that cares and I’ll tell them about this place.”
“And you think that will make a difference?”
The boy shook his head. “I don’t know. All the things we’ve seen up there on that mountain, it certainly made a difference with me.” He looked away, out to where the truck was waiting for him. “That’s what you’re doing back here,” he said. “Trying? I guess all of us have to try in some way, don’t we?”
“Yes,” she said. “We do.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This novel wouldn’t exist without the fans who have made all the Far Cry games such a success. Thank you for your faith in these worlds, and these stories, and the characters that lend them humanity.
For me video games have always been an escape from the real world, but as video games began to reach new heights, that escape seemed to matter less and less, and the real world and the world of the video game began to merge. In this way video games became something else, not an escape, but something even more powerful and valuable to me. Something that required not just the willingness of the player to be involved and engaged within these worlds, but also the knowledge and understanding of what it is to be human, to see that human condition from many different perspectives and to sympathize with and understand them all. In short, the world of the video game has in many ways become like that of another world I have long found my own salvation within—the world of the novel.
I want to thank Ubisoft for creating some of the best video games this world has ever seen, and for pushing that world ever further with each new iteration and release. I want to thank my team at Ubisoft, Caroline Lamache, Anthony Marcantonio, and Victoria Linel, for reading my past novels and bringing this opportunity to me. This has long been a dream of mine. Thank you for bringing it ever closer with each new draft.
For the people of Ubisoft Montreal who are innovators and leaders in this industry, I want to give a specific thank you to Dan Hay, David Bédard, Jean-Sébastien Décant, Nelly Kong, Manuel Fleurant, and Andrew Holmes for answering my many questions and bringing me behind the curtain. I am continually impressed by just how much work and effort goes into building not just the game of Far Cry, but the universe that surrounds it from the ground up.
I like to think I’m older and wiser now that I’ve made a living at this for the past eight years, but the truth is I’m still learning. And though this is my fourth novel, each time it is different, and each path to publication takes new turns and new directions and I would not have made it if it was not for the people who supported me and who gave me the space to write this novel.
Nat, you’ve been there through all of this. Even from the first story you read of mine in a small literary journal. Thanks for always giving me your best.
To the Mineral School Artist Residency and to the founder, Jane Hodges, thank you for the classroom space where much of this novel was written. To Debra DiDomenico, who is a constant in every acknowledgment I have written, thank you for your support and for introducing me to the Darrington boys and the property there. Tom Heye, your cabin was instrumental in the first iterations of this novel. Jim Haney, Rick Knight, and David Gronbeck, thank you for making the property in Darrington the beautiful place it is today and for opening that place up to me and making me feel welcome there. Thank you.
To Mary Perkins and Ernie Seevers, you two gave me a wonderful studio where I could disappear day after day, and amid all the chaos of everyday life that place became my constant. Thank you.
And speaking of everyday chaos, I would have none of this if it wasn’t for my wife, Karen, who somehow puts up with all my mental and physical absence while writing. You have always been there for me and there isn’t a thank you I can say or give that will ever be big enough, but I’ll keep trying. To you, and to my parents and yours, thank you for helping to raise our children. TiTi and Poppy, Gong Gong and Poh Poh, you guys make this all possible and, most important of all, you kept us all sane. Thank you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Urban Waite is a good guy who writes evil things. His debut novel, The Terror of Living, was named a Best Book of the Year by Esquire, The Boston Globe, and Booklist. His second novel, The Carrion Birds, was a finalist for the New Mexico and Arizona Book Award, and called “a candidate for best crime book of 2013” by the New York Journal of Books. His third novel, Sometimes the Wolf, was The Sun Sentinel’s pick for Best Book of the Year. His short fiction has appeared in the Best of the West anthology, the Southern Review, and many other journals. His work has been translated into nine languages and is available in more than twenty countries worldwide.