'Richard,' said Dave, 'do you ever wonder how much of your life you've spent trying to please the dead?' Baedecker sipped his beer and thought about this as Dave sat on a rock and stripped a long strand of grass for chewing.
'I think we underestimate how much of our own lives we devote to trying to meet the expectations of the dead,' continued Dave. 'We don't even think about it, we just do.' He pointed to a cluster of weeds and bushes twenty yards across the low meadow. 'That's where we had our old raft tied. Sort of a float. The water was only about seven or eight feet deep there, but I wasn't allowed to swim on the south side of it because it was filled with reeds and water plants so your feet'd get all tangled up. Pop'd rip ‘em out every year and they'd be back every summer. He lost one of his old hunting dogs out there before I was born. Then one summer — it must've been during my third summer out here, I was about nine, I think — my dog Blackie got all tangled up in the stuff when he was swimming out to join me on the raft.' Dave paused and chewed on his stalk of grass. The sun was almost setting, and the shadows from the cottonwoods stretched far out over the dead pond. 'Blackie was mostly a Lab,' he said. 'Pop gave him to me when I was born, and for some reason that was very important to me. Maybe that's why he stayed my dog even though I only saw him summers after I was six and Ma and I moved away. We didn't have room for him in Tulsa. Still, it's like he waited all year for those ten weeks each summer. I don't know why it was so important that he and I were the same age, that he'd been born almost the same time I was, but it was.
'So this one day I'd finished my morning chores and was lying on the raft on my stomach, almost asleep, when I hear Blackie swimming out to the raft, then suddenly the noise is gone and I look up and there's no sign of him, just ripples. I knew right away what must've happened, the reeds, and I dove off after him without even thinking. I heard Pop shout at me from near the barn when I came up, but I dove down again, three, maybe four times, pushing through the weeds, getting stuck down there, kicking loose and trying again. You couldn't see anything, and the mud alone would grab you up to ankle and try to keep you down there. The last time I came up I had the stinking water up my nose and I was covered with mud and I could see Pop yelling at me from the shore over there, but I went down again and just when I was out of air and the weeds were all wrapped around me and I was sure there wasn't any use of trying more, I felt Blackie, right on the bottom, not even struggling any more, and I didn't even go back up for air, I just kept pulling at weeds and kicking at the mud, still holding on to him because I knew I wouldn't find him again if I let go for a second. I ran out of air. I remember swallowing some of that stinking water, but goddamn it, I wasn't going back up without my dog. And then somehow I got both of us free and was pulling him into the shallow end there and Pop was dragging us both on shore and fussing over me and yelling at me at the same time, and I was coughing water and crying and trying to get Blackie to breathe. I was sure he was drowned, he was so limp and heavy he felt full of water. He felt dead. But I kept pushing at his ribs while I was throwing up water myself and I'll be damned if that dog didn't all of a sudden cough up about a gallon or so of pond water and start whimpering and breathing again.' Dave took the stalk of his grass out of his mouth and tossed it away. 'I guess that's about as happy as I've ever been,' said Dave. 'Pop said he was mad at me for jumping in — he threatened to wallop me if I ever went swimming there again — but I knew that he was proud. Once when we went into Condon I was sitting in the truck and I heard him telling a couple of his friends about it, and I knew he was proud of me. But I don't think that was why I felt so happy about it. You know, Richard, I used to think about it when I was flying medevac in ‘Nam and knew it was something more than just pleasing Pop. I hated being there in Vietnam. I was scared shitless almost all of the time and I knew it was going to kick the hell out of my career when they found out what I was doing. I hated the weather, the war, the bugs, everything. And I was happy. I thought about it then and I realized that it just made me damn happy to be saving things, saving people. It's like everything in the universe was conspiring to drag those poor sons of bitches down, drag them under, and I'd come along in that fucking chopper and grab on and we'd just refuse to let them go under.' They walked back past the house, set up the grill next to the jeep, and cooked their dinner. The evening chill struck the instant the direct sunlight was gone. Baedecker could see two volcanic peaks catching the last light far to the north and east. They waited until the charcoal glowed white, singed the outside of their hamburger patties, added thick slices of onion, and ate ravenously, each opening a fresh beer with dinner.
'Did you ever consider buying the ranch and rebuilding it?' asked Baedecker. Dave shook his head. 'Too many ghosts.'
'Still, you came back to live nearby.'
'Yeah.'
'I have a friend,' said Baedecker, 'who said that there might be places of power. She thinks we could do worse than to spend our lives searching for them. What do you think?'
'Places of power,' said Dave. 'Like Miz Callahan's magnetic lines of force, huh?' Baedecker nodded. The idea did sound absurd.
'I think your friend is right,' said Dave. He pulled another beer from the cooler and shook the ice off it. 'But I bet it's more complicated than that. There're places of power — yeah — no doubt about that. But it's like we were talking about last night. You have to help make them. You have to be in the right place at the right time and know it.'
'How do you know it?' asked Baedecker.
'By dreaming about it but not thinking about it,' Dave said.
Baedecker pulled the tab on another beer and put his feet up on the dash. The house was only a silhouette against a fading sky now. He zipped up his coat. 'By dreaming about it but not thinking about it,' he said.
'Right. Have you ever practiced any Zen meditation?'
'No,' said Baedecker.
'I did for a few years,' said Dave. 'The idea is to get rid of all the thinking so there's nothing between you and the thing. By not looking you're supposed to see clearly.'
'Did it work?'
'Nope,' said Dave, 'not for me. I'd sit there chanting my mantra or whatever and think about every damned thing in the universe. Half the time I'd have a hard-on from erotic daydreams. But I did find something that worked.'
'What's that?'
'Our training for the mission,' said Dave. 'The endless simulations worked pretty much the way meditation was supposed to and didn't.' Baedecker shook his head. 'I don't agree. That was just the opposite. The whole goddamn thing, when it finally happened, was just like the simulations. I didn't experience any of it because of all the preprogramming the simulations had stuck in me.'