"Yeah," Buck was saying, "my son's working on that project."
"How's it coming?"
Buck shrugged. "Don't seem too happy."
"Why not?"
Buck took a sip of his coffee. "Don't rightly know. But it seems like a hard job. You know how some jobs just go smoothly? Everything kinda flows together? Well, this ain't like that."
"I heard there's been a lot of accidents," Vernon said. "My brother-in-law knows the blaster on that job. He's a powder monkey from way back, worked on Boulder and Glen Canyon, and he said the same thing. Said they've had more accidents on this job, which should've been a cakewalk, than they had on that stretch of highway they blasted through Pine Ridge. Said this is the toughest blast since the canyon."
"You heard about Greg Hargrove, didn't you?"
"Yeah," Vernon said. "The cliff road." He shook his head. "Guy was an asshole, but he didn't deserve to die that way."
"That's why I'm not real happy with my son there. Like you said, a lot of accidents."
_Accidents_.
Bill felt cold.
"Earth to Bill, Earth to Bill."
He turned to see both Ben and Street staring at him.
"Are you back on this plane?" the editor asked.
He laughed. "Sorry. I was thinking about something else."
"Everything all right?"
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah."
But he still felt cold.
3
Ginny stopped by the farmer's market after work.
She did most of her shopping at Buy-and-Save, but the store's produce was consistently poor and she preferred to purchase her vegetables from the local growers who sold at the farmer's market. The prices were a little higher, but the quality was a hundred times better and she would rather her money go to local farmers than to some anonymous produce supplier.
She bought tomatoes and tomatillos, lettuce and onions, then drove home, where Shannon and Samantha were both lounging around the living room, watching TV. "Where's your father?" she asked as she dumped the sack of vegetables on the kitchen counter.
"Music store," Samantha said. "He told us to tell you he was bored and restless and needed some new tunes."
Ginny sighed. "He must be in the middle stretch. He always gets antsy when he's halfway through a manual. Did he say when he'd be back?"
"No."
"Well, we're having tacos for dinner. If he's not back by the time I finish chopping the vegetables and cooking the hamburger, he's on his own." She started unloading the produce sack.
Samantha sat up, then stood, walking over to the kitchen. "Need any help?"
"No. But change the channel. I want to hear the news. If you guys want to watch something else, do it in your rooms."
"Mom!" Shannon said, but she switched the station.
Samantha pulled out a stool, sitting down at the counter, watching her mother fold the sack and put it in the cupboard under the sink. "I think I'm going to go to ASU next year," she said.
"I thought you wanted to go to UC Brea or New Mexico State."
"Well, unless you or Dad win the lottery, chances of that look pretty slim."
Ginny laughed. "Glad you finally see it our way."
"The thing is, I'm going to need money. Even if I get a scholarship -- and I probably will -- my counselor said that'll only cover tuition. After that, there's books, room and board. I'll need transportation, too." She glanced out the window. "I figure if I start saving up now I'll be able to afford to afford a used car by the end of next summer."
Ginny nodded. "Your father goes to that car auction in Holbrook during the summer. Maybe you could find something there."
Samantha nodded. "It's worth a try." She paused. "The thing is, I want to work at The Store --"
In the living room, Shannon laughed. "Dad'll love that."
Samantha looked at her mother. "That's why I was hoping you could sort of smooth the way for me. Maybe if you brought it up . . ."
Ginny held up her hands. "No. This is between you and your father."
"Come on, Mom. Please? You know his brain snaps on that subject. And if I bring it up he'll automatically say no and that'll be that. You can pave the way for me, get him used to the idea."
Ginny opened the top drawer, took out her chopping knife.
"Mom?"
"He's not going to want you to work at The Store."
"But you could hint around about it, soften him up."
"Why can't you work someplace else? George's? Or Buy-and-Save? Or KFC?"
"There aren't a lot of jobs in this town, in case you haven't noticed.
Besides, I heard The Store pays better. Five bucks an hour, part-time."
"Wow," Shannon said. "That is pretty good." She walked up to the counter.
"Maybe I can work there, too."
"If your grades don't improve, you're not working anywhere."
Shannon leaned across the counter, grabbed a piece of lettuce.
Ginny blinked, feigned shock. "Are you actually eating voluntarily?"
"Of course."
"Shannon Davis? This can't be true. Are your eating disorder days actually over?"
"They were never here. Except in your mind." Shannon stole another piece of lettuce and retreated back into the living room.
"So what do you say?"
Ginny looked at Samantha, sighed. "All right," she said. "I'll give it a shot. But I'm not promising anything."
"You're the most wonderful mom in the world."
Ginny laughed. "Just remember that when your father turns you down."
FIVE
1
There was a light layer of frost on the ground, but Bill awoke early as usual, put on his sweat suit, put on his gloves, put on an extra pair of socks, put on the knit ski cap Ginny called his "homeless hat," and went out for his morning jog just like he always did. He knew he was being a bit of a fanatic, but he'd made a promise to himself when he'd started exercising that, rain or shine, sleet or snow, he would jog at least three miles every day.
It was a promise he had kept.
He quickly sped through his stretching exercises, then ran down to the edge of the drive. He jogged up the dirt road, through the trees, down the hill, but when he reached the paved road and Godwin's meadow, he continued straight rather than turning into Main.
He had stopped jogging on the highway.
He ran past the trailer park into Juniper's residential area, careful not to slip on the frosty asphalt. He had not varied his jogging route in the ten years that they'd lived in Juniper -- partly out of habit, partly out of intent.
He was not the type of person to arbitrarily change his routine. Once he found something he liked, he stuck with it.
But he had changed his routine now.
He thought about the site of The store, the stretch of land that had been his favorite but was now the area he specifically avoided. There was something about the razed trees and flattened ground that did not sit well with him. It reminded him of Orange County, the place where he'd been born and raised, where he'd seen orange groves and strawberry patches give way to peach-colored condos and cookie-cutter shopping centers, and it depressed him to see the cleared earth, the demolished hillside, the chain-link fencing surrounding the heavy machinery. It upset him, angered him, and it ruined the mood of his morning jog.
But it wasn't just that, was it?
No, he had to admit. It wasn't.
It had been disconcerting at first to realixe that he was not the calm, levelheaded rationalist he'd always believed himself to be, but he had made the adjustment to the new instinctual Bill Davis much more easily than he would have thought possible. It had been a basically painless transition, and he now found himself, without apology, looking for unseen and nonlinear connections between unrelated events in the same way he had previously searched for the logical reason behind every occurrence. It was strangely liberating, this reliance on gut feeling rather than hard fact, and in a way it required more intellectual acumen, more comparative analysis, more of the mental disciplines usually associated with the scientific method than did a strict adherence to a preconceived mind-set.