

### FATHER'S DAY ON HOLY GHOST CREEK

by Carl J. Weaver

Copyright © 2018 Carl J. Weaver

All rights reserved.

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### for Linda

...he came to a solitary broom tree and sat beneath it. He prayed for death: "Enough, Lord! Take my life, for I am no better than my ancestors." He lay down and fell asleep under the solitary broom tree, but suddenly a messenger touched him and said, "Get up and eat!" He looked and there at his head was a hearth cake and a jug of water. After he ate and drank, he lay down again.

1 Kings 19: 5-6

The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone born of the Spirit.

John 3: 8

From the brightness of his presence coals were kindled to flame.

2 Samuel 22: 13

### FATHER'S DAY ON HOLY GHOST CREEK

The screams startled Connie, waking him from his nap. His hands jerked up from where they'd been resting on his lawn chair, and his feet kicked out. Disoriented, he wondered why he wasn't at home in his recliner or at the library reading room, and during this moment of confusion, something dropped, but he didn't know what. One hand returned to the chair while the other went to his mouth to check for drool. His feet returned to earth. Looking around, muttering, "What, what?", seeing pine trees and his pickup and the orange tent where the girls were screaming, feeling the chilly air, it came to him that he was in the campground, the one that he and Jane had been coming to for years. He stood up, steadying himself, unstable on the uneven ground and the slope of his campsite, but the screaming intensified as one or the other or both of the girls got a second wind.

"Okay, okay, that's enough," Connie said as he started toward them.

They stopped their wailing and turned toward his voice.

Connie paused at the border between the two campsites due to old school, campground etiquette which said that you just don't go walking into someone's campsite without an invitation as if the screams were not an invitation of sorts. The pause wasn't even a second long, but it was long enough for Connie to look for the father because Connie was still foggy enough that he didn't connect the screams and the father's disappearance. And it was long enough for the older of the girls to give Connie a look which questioned his ability to come to her aid. She looked beyond him toward the rest of campground as if hoping for a better hero.

Connie heard his wife's voice from behind him.

"Connie," she said, barely above a whisper.

That was enough. Just, "Connie."

A word, sure, but mostly it was the tone that Connie heard, a sound that you and I won't ever understand, but something that Connie understood after forty-eight years of marriage. It meant, _Connie, don't stop there. Go._

"Yeah, yeah," he said without turning to acknowledge her although he did lift a hand in a little wave as he continued down the little slope toward the tent.

"What?" he asked as he approached the girls, aware that his voice carried more irritation than concern.

Connie was approaching the tent from an angle, and he couldn't see inside.

"What?"

The younger girl pointed into the tent and stepped aside. After one more step, Connie saw their father's head. The sight caused him to stop short.

"What?" he asked again, looking at the girls as if this were some sort of joke, but he knew that it wasn't.

_He's sleeping,_ Connie told himself, and he stepped back, his first move in beating a retreat to his chair, to his own campsite, to his nap. He had no business being here. But something compelled him to take a closer look. Probably, it was the awareness that Jane was watching and judging. Or maybe it was natural curiosity. Whatever it was, it brought him to a knee which pressed into the wet ground, wet from the rain of the night before, wet that soaked through his khakis which would normally have bothered him were it not for the sight that had caused the girls to scream: The man lay there in an orange glow, on his back, in his underwear, on top of his sleeping bag, with a fishing knife stuck in his chest.

"Oh, shit!" Connie said, and he stood up and backed away, a good five steps toward his own campsite.

He didn't think he had cursed that loudly. In fact, he wasn't aware that he had cursed at all, but it was enough to elicit a scold from his wife.

"Connie!" she yelled.

He ignored the scolding. If ever there were an acceptable time to swear, this was it, and he turned and was about to say as much, but she was moving toward the scene, looking at him, then looking at the tent, sure that this—this, this, whatever it was—was all his fault.

"No, Jane. Don't," he said, and he put himself in her way.

"Don't what?"

"Don't look in there," he said.

She had gathered some momentum coming down the slope that was common to most of the campsites on this side of the road, and she easily moved him aside. He could have stopped her if he had really wanted to. He had had some strength in other days, and she wasn't that much bigger than he was. If he had had time to think it through, he might have taken a stronger stand for her sake, but no, he let her push him aside.

She gave him a look as she passed as if to ask what would cause him to swear. She went to a knee just as he had, and she took her look.

And she gasped.

She rose, spun around and glared at him.

Or maybe it wasn't a glare. Normally, he could read her expressions, but lately, things had been touchy between them, and he wasn't as sure as he once had been. And then, too, her expression changed several times in a few seconds, and he couldn't keep up. Her lips moved as she struggled to find something to say.

But other campers were arriving then, and Connie turned his attention to them. First to arrive were the scouts from across the road, and they crowded in, trying to see, but Connie stepped up to the tent and said, "No!" and he closed the outer tent flap and tied it quickly. He turned to the scouts and said, "Back up!"

But adult campers had come up behind the scouts, so they couldn't back up as ordered.

Connie looked at the crowd. The old school portion of his brain registered the fact that some of them were in his campsite and some were here in the dead man's camp and none of them had been invited in, but he let all that go because some of them were asking, "What?" or "What happened?" or "What's going on?" and he had to deal with the questions before he dealt with his etiquette issues.

But first, Connie looked at the girls and then at Jane and then at the crowd and then at Jane again.

"Could you take them?" he asked.

"Where?"

He thought, _What the—?_

He said, "I don't know, Jane. Over there maybe." He pointed to their picnic table. It was hardly far enough, and he wondered why he'd bothered. The girls already knew. And when Jane didn't move—and neither did the girls—Connie gave up on that and turned to the crowd and said, "Their father's in there. He's dead."

"Dead?"

"Yes."

" _Dead_ dead?"

"What?"

"Not sleeping?"

The question struck Connie as stupid, and he was about to respond in kind. But before he spoke, he inhaled to ensure that he had enough air for what he intended to say, but the inhalation, like so many—so, so many—failed to inflate his lungs, and he tried again, audibly drawing in air through his nose, then again through his mouth, then again through his nose, panicking when he couldn't get enough as if he were drowning, feeling the eyes of the crowd on him, noting that they did nothing to aid an old man struggling for breath. He resisted the urge to bend over and put his hands on his knees because how weak would that look? And then, on the fifth try, the panic subsided, he assessed his breathing and decided he would survive, but before he answered the question, he thought about the bout for a second or two.

It was no wonder that he'd had the bout what with the exertion of jumping out of his chair and rushing to the tent. And dropping to a knee and then jumping back up again. What was a wonder was that the bout had not happened earlier. Or, then again, maybe there was nothing to wonder about. His breathing troubles, something that he'd been coping with for a while now, since long before he had gotten an official diagnosis, were a new normal that he was learning to live with, but they were also something that he had not fully learned. They were unpredictable. Here in this campground, at 8,100 feet, any little activity like jumping from his chair could set off a bout. Or not. Preparing to answer a question could set off a bout, too.

He thought, too, about how he looked. Probably, he looked liked an old man struggling for air, but he hadn't done a lot of gasping and he hadn't gone to his knees, so, hopefully, he looked like a wise man, pausing to consider a sensible question. Which led him to think that the question _was_ sensible. The guy hadn't seen the body or the knife, and so it made sense to wonder if maybe the father was simply a deep sleeper.

Connie said, "No. He's definitely not sleeping."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure."

Connie considered mentioning the knife, but even though the girls had already seen it, he didn't want to talk about it while they were so close. And then, too, Connie thought that he shouldn't be giving out many details. Maybe he'd seen too many cop shows, and maybe he thought that if he withheld something, it might help solve the crime, but when this particular thought flashed through his mind, he realized how ridiculous it sounded, and once one thing seemed ridiculous, others did, too. For instance, how had he become guardian of the orange tent? Who was he to be withholding information?

His confidence sagged, and he felt another bout coming on, so he took a moment and breathed as deeply as he could.

"He's got a knife in his chest," he said. "He's _dead_ dead."

Several of the guys went open-mouthed and turned to look at each other.

He instantly regretted the last comment, and he turned to look at the girls and then at Jane, and he wanted to ask her again to remove them from the scene or to ask her why she hadn't done it in the first place, but he'd been losing a lot of arguments lately, so he didn't say anything.

She had moved behind the girls, and when Connie looked at her, she put her hands on the girls's shoulders as if to protect them although he didn't know what she was protecting them from. She leaned down and whispered to them, and then she led them over to her picnic table.

While he was distracted, one of the scouts went inching up to the tent, reaching out to the flap.

"Hey!" Connie said. Suddenly, his guardian instincts took over, and he went to grab the kid's arm, but the kid was quicker and snatched it away. He moved back to his spot in the crowd of scouts.

"Stay outta there," Connie said, and he was aware that he'd raised his voice, and aware, too, that he was moving toward the kid, somehow inflated enough to take action.

The leader of the scouts yelled, "Hey!" and pushed his way through the bunch of boys until he stood in front of the boy. He puffed his chest out at Connie.

"Take it easy," he said.

Connie looked the guy over—the puffy chest, the beer gut, the red face—up close, where comfort zones become uncomfortable with BO and hot breath and a guy looks bigger than he did the day before when he was across the road at his campsite.

When Connie was in his twenties, he'd been described as wiry, and he could have dropped this guy with a quick punch to the throat, size be damned. The cockiness of that decade had sustained him through the decades that followed, and he often behaved as though he were still the wiry kid, a Chihuahua yapping at a Great Dane. But now?

He drew in some air, trying to puff up his own chest, but the thin air left him wanting, deflated, and whatever confidence he had left went poof.

He heard, "Connie."

Jane's voice was barely a whisper, but the tone was there and the message received.

Back down.

The eyes of the campers, who all stood behind the scout leader, were on him.

Connie was about to surrender, to break eye contact and back away, to slink away, but just then he heard a voice that he would hear again and again throughout the coming day.

"Your name's Connie? Isn't that a girl's name?"

The voice was nasal and high-pitched and wasn't the right voice to be mocking another man's name. The voice came from behind the crowd, and everyone turned toward it. Connie's view was blocked, mostly by the scout leader, but also by the crowd, and he had to move left and right to see who had spoken and finally found him at the back of the crowd, still out on the road that ran through the camp. The guy was about Connie's size although Connie had spent the past couple days thinking of him as a runt. He wore a trucker's cap that sported a picture of the mud flap girl and a sleeveless T-shirt. He was carrying a fishing rod and two trout, and his body was turned in the direction of his own campsite, two down from Connie's as if he wasn't planning to stop to witness whatever was happening here.

While the crowd was turned, Connie backed away from the scout leader, backing toward the orange tent. And it seemed to Connie that when the crowd turned its attention back to him, some of them noticed that he had moved.

Connie said, "Yes. Unless it's a nickname for Conroy."

Some in the crowd nodded at the good response to an odd question, and then they turned and waited for the fisherman to respond, but he didn't say any more. He turned toward the crowd. His eyes were shaded under the bill of his cap, dirty with a salty sweat line.

Connie was grateful that the fisherman had saved him the embarrassment of backing down from the scout leader, and he considered asking the fisherman what his name was, just to be friendly, but then he remembered that the guy had just made fun of his name, so he returned to the main issue, "I just think we ought not be looking in the tent."

Some in the crowd nodded at that, and there were murmurs of assent which boosted Connie's confidence.

But one of the scouts said, "You looked."

Connie looked at the scouts to find who had spoken, but when he couldn't identify the speaker, he looked at the scout leader as if hoping that the guy would silence his unhelpful kids, but the scout leader seemed to think the kid had made a valid point and was waiting, along with the crowd, for a response.

Connie looked at the crowd. It was comprised of men except for one young lady who was camping in the site next to Connie and Jane. She had been in the campground for a couple days with a young guy who, Connie assumed, was her husband or boyfriend. They were both young and fit, and Connie envied that. He made eye contact with them now, but when they didn't nod, Connie moved on to the other guys. He was looking for support. Only moments ago he had had support and was confident. One minute he had wondered how he'd become the guardian of the tent, and the next he had felt confident in his duties. Everything seemed so fickle, like the wind in this valley.

He wondered now why he cared if the crowd was with him or not. Part of him wanted to concede that the kid had a good point. He _had_ looked in the tent. So why shouldn't everybody? And what did he care? He and Jane, mostly Jane, were packing to leave, so it wasn't as if he were going to stay here all day and keep kids out of the tent.

But still. It just didn't seem right to be letting everyone have a peek. Connie took a breath as if preparing to stand his ground, but the air was thin and so was his will.

But just then some guy said, "I agree. It's not a sideshow."

This guy was another fisherman from down the road, close to the outhouse at the bottom of the campground, someone Connie had only nodded to on the rare occasions when they crossed paths. Connie was about to say, _Thank you_ , but all he managed was a nod before a new voice said, "It's a crime scene, really."

This got everyone's attention. They all looked first at the speaker—a hiker, based on the boots and trendy clothing—and then they turned to look at the orange tent with a new understanding.

Connie, too, took the moment to look at the tent as if for the first time. A crime scene. Only moments ago he had thought of it as such, but hearing it spoken aloud by someone else made it more sinister. He looked over the entire campsite. It looked no different than any campsite except for the extra tent for the girls. There was a small SUV parked in the space provided. There was a clothesline strung up where the girls were drying their swimsuits. The sun had not yet risen above the walls of the valley, and so the campsite was still in shade. In fact, the entire campground was in shade. Connie looked up at the sky again and calculated how long it would be before the sun was high enough to get past the tops of the trees. Another hour, maybe. By then, he and Jane would be on the road heading for home where his daughters were planning a Father's Day party.

And then it hit him.

"Shit," he mumbled.

Killed on Father's Day.

He looked back at the dead man's camp, at the camp stove on the picnic table, where there was the stack of pancakes that the girls had made for their father.

He turned and looked up at Jane and the girls, the three of them sitting on one bench of the table, the girls huddled together in their oversized sweatshirts.

He said, "We oughta—" as he turned to face the crowd, but he had no idea what they ought to do or why he'd even opened his mouth. Maybe he thought that by the time he actually faced them, some wisdom would come to him and fill the void. But no. Nothing.

He took in a deep breath, hoping for inspiration, hoping that a mountain breeze would fill his lungs and his soul and provide him with whatever was needed at the moment. He thought of the prayer that Jane said so often— _Come, Holy Spirit, come_ —and he hoped that maybe that might work for him, but this only reminded him that before he had dozed off he had been trying to pray with his bible and his rosary, the things he had dropped when he was startled awake, and he saw that they were now lying on the wet ground by his chair which was flat on the ground. For an instant, he wondered how the chair had come to be on the ground, and he groaned about the bible and rosary, and he wanted to rush over and pick them up, to show them the reverence they deserved. But he didn't.

Instead, he said, "I don't know," holding up his hands in surrender. He didn't care that it came out whiny.

Someone said, "We should go get the cops."

And others in the crowd thought so, too, nodding to show their support for this idea.

But the nasal voice shot it down: "No one's going anywhere."

Everyone turned to look at him, and the sudden turning may have seemed like an attack of sorts because he stepped back slightly, and his eyes darted around.

He said, "The bridge is out," and when no one said anything to challenge this, he said, "I seen it. I seen it before. A storm like last night, it washes out pretty easily."

The entire group nodded at the mention of the storm, and they all took a moment to recall their own memories. Surely, all of them recalled the cracking thunder that sounded like artillery and the biblical rain, and after they'd had a moment to think about that, they looked off in the direction of the bridge. Connie did, trying to imagine what it would take to wash out the bridge, trying to picture the amount of water that would be needed. Then some of them turned and looked past Connie to the orange tent, and they imagined a scenario in which a killer makes his way through the stormy night to do his deed. And those that did this caught themselves and looked around, embarrassed, or suspicious as if they had just then realized that the killer was still among them. And those who had only thought of the storm were at a point where they said, "Whew!" or "Yeah," or "That _was_ a helluva storm."

And there were more nods until one guy, the young boyfriend, said, "Wow!"

His was a different tone from the others, matched by a big grin. The rest of the group, still thinking of the epic storm, turned to him.

Someone said, "'Wow?'" and Connie, too, thought that the comment was inappropriate.

"Yeah," the guy said. "Isn't it weird? A dark and stormy night? We wake to screams? Find a body? And now the bridge is out? You gotta admit."

"Admit what?"

"It's weird."

He looked around for agreement with a big grin on his face, nodding to encourage others to nod, but no one else agreed. They all just stared at him. His girlfriend tugged at his sleeve.

"Justin, stop it," she said.

And Connie took note that here was another wife or girlfriend who had a tone, and he shot a glance Jane's way, but when he saw her at the picnic table with the girls, he was reminded of priorities and resumed his duties.

He said, "Okay, then," and he turned to the guy with the fish. "The bridge— Is it fixable?"

"No. The county guys'll come with a crane and put it back in place."

"How does it come off? It's not bolted or something?"

"It's bolted. But they don't waste no money on big bolts."

Connie tried to picture the bridge and the bolts that held it. He and Jane had been coming to this camp for years and had driven over the thing many times, but he couldn't bring it to mind now because driving over it and stopping to look at it are two different things. He was trying to picture the bridge as well as the same bridge off of its base, and he could no more do this than he could picture any other spot along the road.

"You're talking about the bridge just down the road?" he asked.

The crowd turned to look at the guy, and he, as if attacked again, backed up a step, but then he stepped forward again as if he didn't want to concede any ground.

"Yeah. That bridge. Go see for yourselfs."

He was directing his speech mainly at Connie, and so he spoke first in the singular with the _f_ sound, and then added the _s_ to include the rest of them, but it came out badly, and he was embarrassed, his eyes flicking around at the men.

Connie was tempted to come to his defense, but the guy had made fun of his name, so he wasn't strongly on the guy's side. Besides, the bridge was the bigger issue, and Connie still couldn't picture it, and although the guy seemed sure of himself, he didn't look like an engineer and his voice sounded—well, it just wasn't the voice you'd expect from a bridge engineer—so Connie said, "Yeah, maybe we'll do that. That's a good idea."

Some of the crowd turned back to Connie as if awaiting instructions, as if here, finally, was something they could actually do. Connie thought for a moment. He wanted to go down there himself, but the positive swing made him feel better about his role as guardian of the tent, even though the instant he realized that he regretted it because now he'd be stuck watching the tent for as long as—Well, who knew? He could be here for hours. And while he was thinking about this and performing his duties by checking where all of the scouts were, someone said, "We'll go." This guy and his friend, standing beside him, nodded, and then some other guy said that he'd go, too, and in a matter of seconds a party of six was heading off to check on the bridge, and their activity spurred others to action. The scouts went back over to their camp, others returned to their campsites, and soon everyone was gone from the area near the orange tent except for Connie and the guy with the truckers cap.

"They're gonna see," he said.

"Yeah," Connie said. "That's the plan."

"They'll see I'm right."

"Well, let's hope not," Connie said, and he immediately thought that that didn't come out well, but then he decided that it was exactly what he'd meant, so he didn't bother correcting himself. And then he heard Jane call his name. Again.

He ignored her because he was worried that the fisherman might slip past him when he turned his head to answer. That, and he just didn't want to answer her. So he stood there waiting for the fisherman to respond to whatever he'd said last. The fisherman, though, turned to look in Jane's direction and waited as if giving Connie a chance to answer her. When Connie said and did nothing, the guy turned and walked away. He said something over his shoulder, but Connie couldn't hear it because, at the same time, Jane called his name again.

He continued to ignore her as he watched the fisherman walking away, down to his own campsite which was on the other side of the young couple's. When he was satisfied that the guy was far enough away, he turned to look toward the scouts to make sure they weren't sneaking back, and then he gave the orange tent another look, satisfied all was well, or as well as could be. Only then did he go back to his camp, to his chair specifically. He wondered again how the chair had fallen, thinking back over the events since he had heard the screams. He couldn't clearly remember the moment when he had come up out of his chair, and he stood there looking at the chair as if _that_ were the big mystery. And then he remembered his bible and rosary, but they were no longer on the ground. Jane must have picked them up in the last minute or so, and Connie looked around for them.

"Connie," she said again.

He turned to her and took in what could have been a portrait or, at the least, a candid camp photo. _Jane with Her New Friends_. The girls sat side by side on the bench, leaning into each other while Jane sat beside the older one, and it appeared that the older one was leaning away from Jane more than she was leaning into her sister, but that may have been how Connie saw it and nothing more.

He said, "Yes?"

Because his thoughts had wandered, he hadn't picked up which tone she'd used, and he wasn't sure what _Connie_ meant this time.

"What should we do?" she said.

There was a time when she'd asked his opinion frequently, but that was years ago—or seemed like it. In the more recent past, his opinion wasn't respected much, and so the question took him by surprise. He analyzed the tone of it, trying to deduce the real meaning.

But Jane was having nothing of this.

"It's a simple question, Connie. What are we gonna do?"

"I don't know," he said, and as soon as he said it, he realized that he'd said it at least once this morning. It had sounded weak then, and it sounded weak now, and he'd been saying it a lot lately, and it was no wonder Jane wasn't seeking his opinions.

But it was honest. He didn't know. Not about what to do at least. He knew he should sit. He knew that he was tired, worn out from the past ten or twenty minutes or however long it had been since the girls started screaming. And this thought made him look up at them, still sitting on the bench, still waiting for his response.

He said, "Well..." hoping that something magical would come to him, but no. He looked around as if the next step were a thing lying around somewhere.

His eyes scanned the ground first and then they rose up and took in his and Jane's table, and then he looked over at the table where the girls had been cooking.

"The girls have their breakfast over there," he said.

"Oh, Connie," Jane said, and she got to her feet, and this time her tone was clear.

"What?" he asked.

He knew what Jane was thinking, which was that Connie was hungry for the egg burrito that he had planned to get in Pecos on their way out of here, a big greasy thing with sausage and fried potatoes, and now that he wasn't going to get that, the first thing he laid eyes on was the stack of pancakes that the girls had made for their father.

But no, he had not mentioned the pancakes as a way of getting some of them for himself. He really had thought that the girls should eat something.

He turned to them for support.

"Do you want to eat? Do you _need_ to eat?"

They pulled away from each other, one looking at the other without speaking, and some unspoken communication happened between them after which the younger one shrugged an _okay_ and stood up. So Connie gave Jane a look.

See?

She made a face in return and said, "Well, not over there. I'll bring them over here. And warm them up. They're probably cold."

But before she'd crossed the line into the girls' camp, they heard a voice from the road.

"Do they want to join us?"

Connie turned to see one of the scouts standing there, and at first he was bothered that the kid had managed to sneak up without being seen, so he shot a look over at the orange tent. The kid stood in the road while waiting for an answer. Connie appreciated that.

Across the road, the scouts were busy getting their breakfast ready. Connie saw a pan of bacon and gave the air a sniff, but a breeze was blowing through the campground from left to right, uphill to down, and it carried any whiff of bacon away from him. There were eggs, too, and pancakes. All this food in the area, food that he'd never touch. It made him feel inadequate. Normally, he lived up to the scout motto. He had been prepared yesterday.

"Yes, sure," Jane said to the scout, and she led the girls over to the scout camp, keeping them close and looking for traffic.

At the camp, she talked to the scout leader. Connie couldn't hear what was being said. The scout leader looked over at Connie, and then Jane shook her head, lifted her hands in a little wave, and said something else before she returned.

"Did you just turn down an invite?" Connie asked.

"We can't take their food," she said.

"I'd've put that to a vote," he said, but Jane ignored him and went about cleaning up their camp even though there wasn't much to clean up.

"What do we have left?" Connie asked.

"Some of your nasty meat. Some bread, maybe."

"We're gonna be here a while," he said, and he turned to watch the feast across the road.

Then he turned to look at the pancakes at the girls' camp.

_Waste not, want not_ came to mind from somewhere way back in his school days. He wondered if it were a proverb or maybe something scouts say. The proverb possibility reminded him of his bible, and he turned to look for it. It was on the table where Jane had been sitting. He thumbed through it, noting that some pages were wet and his bookmarks—Holy cards, actually—were out of place and were wet, too. He laid the book on the table, open, so the breeze, slight as it was, would blow across it. He stuck the holy cards partially under the book, sticking out so they, too, were exposed to the wind, and after pocketing the rosary, he turned and looked over at the scout camp.

The girls were eating, each of them holding a piece of bacon.

Connie shook his head and, finally, picked up his chair and sat down, inhaling once and then again because the first breath was ineffectual. The second one was no better than the first, but he wasn't sure which bothered him more, that there was little air in the breaths or there was no smell of bacon.

Jane knew she'd been mean. As she looked at the meager amount of food in their cooler—a few slices of bread, enough liverwurst for one sandwich and some packets of mayo and mustard—she felt guilty about turning down the scout leaders offer of breakfast. She'd eaten her last cup of yogurt and a banana earlier before all the hubbub had started, so she was fine, but she knew Connie was probably starving. But, God! He'd pissed her off.

And then, as she looked at him from behind, knowing he was struggling for breath, seeing the sunburn on his neck, she wondered what had gotten into her, what had been getting into her all weekend, what had been building for months now, and she couldn't quite put a finger on what he'd done wrong. Or what, specifically, he'd done today that made her mad. Sure, he'd cussed, but then she'd almost cussed, too, when she had seen the dead man. Sure, he hadn't tried hard enough to stop her from looking in the tent, but still, he had warned her. He shouldn't have yelled at the scout, but the scout shouldn't have been trying to sneak a peak. Connie was right to keep people out of the tent. She could see that. And he shouldn't have gotten chesty with the scout leader, but the scout leader kinda started that little showdown. Besides, what was he doing up here with all those boys by himself? That needed looking into.

She put the liverwurst between the bread slices and then paused her actions, staring off, thinking, before she squeezed some mustard out onto the meat, spreading it around with the edge of the packet. She put the sandwich on a paper towel and went about tidying up before bringing the sandwich to Connie. But what was there to clean? The empty mustard packet, the packaging from the liverwurst, the heel from the loaf of bread. Nothing more.

Still, she didn't bring the sandwich to him. Instead, she sat down on the bench of the picnic table, taking in a deep, cleansing breath and watching him. _That sunburn needs some aloe vera_ , she thought, but it was idle thinking that led to no action. The skinny neck was not what needed her attention.

She reached out and thumbed the corners of the pages of his bible to check for wetness. They were drying. But she thought the book would end up thicker as a result of it having been on the damp ground. It would look more—what?

Used? Studied? Weathered?

She couldn't put her finger on it.

Connie's finger's, meanwhile, went up to his neck to feel for a pulse, an instinctive move, something he'd started doing whenever he overexerted himself, but before he could even find a pulse, he admitted that he hadn't done much in the past couple minutes, and so, sure, there was hardly any pulse at all, so he dropped his hand to rest on the chair.

Next, he looked around the campground, thinking about recent events. He didn't go in chronological order. Instead, his thoughts matched up to whatever caught his eye as he looked around the camp. When he looked at the orange tent, he thought about the screaming and the dead body. When he looked down toward the bridge, he thought about the fisherman and his claim that the bridge was out. He thought over these and other things, but eventually, his eyes settled on the scout camp, on one particular kid. Not the one he'd yelled at this morning. No. This time, he looked at the one with the stick.

The kid had been an annoyance for two days now. When Connie and Jane had pulled into the camp on Friday morning, Connie groaned when he'd seen that his favorite campsite had been taken by a bunch of scouts. He said some unholy things to start off his prayer weekend, and then a few more when he saw that his second favorite site had been taken by some guy with a couple girls.

He and Jane had set up their camp, Jane went off for a hike or something, and Connie settled into his chair, hoping to get some reading done, some bible study that might improve his spiritual well-being. He had declined Jane's offer to go with her, having already gotten enough exercise in setting up the tent.

Mostly, Connie had watched the kid from this distance and didn't hear that much although he did see the the kid's mouth constantly moving. When Connie went over to the creek behind the scout camp for water, Connie had heard the kid carrying on as if narrating a story. _Warrior mode! Magic sword! Hope is lost!_ _Bang! Bang!_ Connie stopped to look at the kid, thinking there was a problem, and he'd looked at the scout leader, wondering why he wasn't doing something about it. That was his first encounter with the scout leader, but nothing much had happened at the time. They just looked at each other as Connie stood outside their camp with his water bottle. The leader hadn't puffed his chest out then, but it seemed to Connie that the scout leader had kept an eye on Connie from then on. Connie had gotten his water and returned to his chair, and his bible and his rosary, but instead of reading, he spent the next little while watching the kid tap his stick.

What's wrong with that boy?

Kids didn't behave like that when he was growing up or when he was raising his own children, and whenever Connie wasn't grousing about why a group of scouts were up here with only one leader, he was wondering what he ought to do about the kid as if it were his problem.

Sitting in his chair now, looking at the scouts and thinking of the morning's incident, Connie was reminded of another incident that had happened a while back in Albuquerque. He'd been on his way home from somewhere. It was after dark and there was snow on the ground. As he drove along, two kids came out of hiding along the side of the road and threw snowballs at his car. Connie had done the same thing when he was a kid and had found the experience exciting and scary, part of which came from the thrill of the chase when the driver had gotten out and chased Connie for blocks. And so when these kids had hit his car, he stopped to chase them. This was before the diagnosis and all of his breathing issues, and he didn't think twice about chasing a couple kids. He thought, _Game on!_ and he expected the kids to take off. But no. They'd just stood there. A couple of idiots. Somehow, in a way that Connie could never fathom, things went from the thrill of the chase to a crazy, old man yelling. Connie lectured them about the possibility of scaring someone into a heart attack. Where had that come from? Connie had no heart attack concerns of his own, and he didn't really care about anyone else's heart problems. It was just something he'd said. Before he knew it, he had one of them by the coat and was shaking the kid hard enough that the kid's head was snapping around. The kids were blubbering sorries and promising not to do it again. Afterwards, Connie had sat in his car, badly shaken, his heart pounding, wondering why the kids hadn't run. For some reason, at the time, that bothered him more than the fact that he'd shaken the boy.

He sat in his lawn chair now, looking over at the scout with the stick, remembering how he'd been tempted to cross the road the day before to take the stick out of the kid's hand and throw it into the woods behind the scout camp. And he thought about this morning when he'd reached out to grab the other boy.

He made a mental note to go to confession when he got home, and he tried to recall if he had gone to confession about the shaking he had given that other kid. He didn't think so.

The scout leader moved into Connie's field of view, and for an instant, they made eye contact, but because of the distance, Connie couldn't read any meaning into it, and he broke off the contact and looked down at nothing in particular.

Thinking about the earlier incidents, with the scout and then with the leader, Connie saw himself as Jane saw him, as the crowd had probably seen him, and he was far from proud. Connie frowned and took a breath, reminded once again of the thinness of the air around here. Weak air that did not inspire him to act on the urge to get up, cross the road and offer an apology. The line from a John Wayne movie came to mind, the one about how apologizing is a sign of weakness. Connie didn't want to display any more weakness. And so, he just sat, looking into the ashes of last night's fire, no longer ashes really because of last night's rain. Beside the fire pit lay his own stick, used to poke a fire and nothing else.

Behind him, he sensed Jane, and he wondered about his sandwich, but he didn't turn to look for it, and he didn't turn to ask her about it. His feeling was that anything he said would open him up to a conversation that he didn't want, and for just a flash, the scene from the John Wayne movie came to mind again, but he couldn't remember it exactly. There was an actress in the scene, and maybe she was the moral compass. Maybe. Maybe not. His recall of movie or TV details was not that good. He mumbled the dialogue as if by doing so he could recreate the scene. Or maybe he was trying to reinforce the decision not to apologize. His voice became the John Wayne character and Jane was the actress, but he couldn't remember her lines.

While he was doing this, the sun moved over the trees on the east side of the campground and the rays shone down on him causing him to look up, squinting into the light and holding up his hand as a shield against it.

Out of habit, he stood up with the intention of relocating his chair further up the slope of his campsite, under the trees, because it was his usual inclination to seek shade. But upon standing, he looked again at the scout camp and the leader, and instead of going uphill with his chair, he started downhill toward the road and the scout camp. Perhaps it was because downhill was easier. Whatever guided his steps, it took him toward the apology, but just then the guys who had gone down to check on the bridge came back into camp, and Connie turned his attention to them.

The trucks stopped at other camps, but the drivers and passengers got out and came up the road to Connie's camp, and other campers joined them. Connie put himself between the crowd and the orange tent, then turned and faced the crowd.

One of the guys said, "It's definitely out."

Another guy said, "It's lifted up and moved downstream." He used his hands to demonstrate although the gestures meant nothing to Connie. "It's kinda turned a bit, too."

The first guy said, "Yeah, it's only a couple feet, but it's not stable. There's no driving over it."

"I told you," said the fisherman.

He was standing behind the crowd, and when he spoke, only a couple people looked at him.

Connie nodded at the guys who had reported, and he nodded at the fisherman, too, but he didn't maintain eye contact for long, moving on to others until he made eye contact with the scout leader. The scout leader was not puffing out his chest now. Connie wished that he hadn't been interrupted, that he'd gotten the apology done and off his mind, and he even considered for the briefest moment that he could apologize here and now, but no. He'd get to it later.

He picked one of the guys at random and asked, "Is it fixable?"

"You can't fix that," said the fisherman. "Unless you got a crane."

This time several people looked at the fisherman, but no one rolled their eyes or made judgmental expressions, and Connie wondered how that could be. He took a breath and started to count to ten, but at three, he said, "I'm sorry. I didn't get your name."

The fisherman's eyes darted around to the people who were looking at him, but then they went back to Connie.

"Why you ask my name? It ain't no mystery."

Connie thought, _What?_

The remark struck him as odd, but it was also familiar, something he'd heard or read, and he turned his head slightly toward the last book he'd been reading, his bible, but nothing from it came to mind, so he turned back to the fisherman.

The bill of the trucker's cap was pulled down, and Connie couldn't see his eyes and couldn't read the guy's expression.

"I'm just trying to be civil," Connie said.

"You ain't asked no one else's names."

Connie looked at the others in the crowd, wondering if anyone else found this guy annoying, but for the most part, the faces were blank, and he could tell nothing. They looked back at him because it was his turn as if this were a tennis match with the conversation ball going back and forth. He cast a glance toward Jane, but at the moment she was looking across the road at something as if she were not interested in this conversation.

Connie looked at the tree tops, checking for movement that would serve as proof of wind which might explain why he was suddenly short of breath. The tree tops were still. He felt another bout coming on, and he took a few short breaths through his nose, nodding all the while, pretending to be the wise old man of the camp, taking his time.

"True, but I can only handle so many at once. I wouldn't remember them," Connie said, and he gave a little laugh and looked around, but no one laughed with him, not even Justin who had tried to make a joke earlier. Connie singled him out now.

"You're Justin, right? I remember that."

Justin nodded and said, "Yeah. And this is Jenny." He indicated the young lady at his side. "My wife."

She nodded to a few of the guys in response to their nods, but only a few. She glanced at the fisherman, then looked over her shoulder toward her tent.

"Wow," Connie said. "Two J names. My wife is Jane," he said, and he pointed her out as if introducing her.

She gave one nod to the crowd and then stared at Connie, not as comfortable with the attention as Connie was.

"So there's three," Connie said, and he looked back at the fisherman.

His eyes darted around again, as if still suspicious about giving up his name, but he finally said, "I'm John Lee. So there's four."

There were smiles and nods from what Connie now saw as an audience, as if he were performing magic.

"Wow," he said again, reveling in the attention and good humor, smiling and nodding and planning his next trick when the older of the girls said, "I'm Joni. And my father's name is Jack."

This brought a cloud down over the campground, a cloud which darkened even more when she added, " _Was_ Jack."

Connie hadn't been aware that the girls or the scouts had come across the road, so it caught him by surprise that they were right there, among the crowd, and he turned to check on the orange tent. Seeing that it was unchanged, he turned back and found some of the crowd looking at him as if the sudden pall were his fault. He looked toward Jane to see if she agreed, but just then, Joni started to cry. For a second or two, she stood up strong against the onlookers and their onlooking, but when she felt a tug from her sister, she turned, and instantly the two were in an embrace no number of men could undo.

The scouts around them were uncomfortable with this display of emotions. They backed away enough to leave space between themselves and the girls. Even their leader was helpless with this development. He looked around for help. He looked to Jane first, and he gave her a pleading look. His hands came away from his sides and began to rise as if of their own accord, as if they were going to rise to a begging level, but before that could happen, Jenny moved out of Justin's orbit and went down to provide comfort. She passed through the space around the girls and reached out, putting her hands on their shoulders, one apiece, but she didn't fully engage, didn't wrap them in a motherly way, clearly uncomfortable in her actions. So Jane got involved, starting with a tiny clicking noise that maybe only Connie heard and maybe only Connie could interpret as her way of saying that no one was doing this correctly. If anyone else had heard it, they might've thought it was a sound of pity. She rushed to the trio and reached in, one arm wrapping around the two girls from one side while the other was shoved between the girls and Jenny to wrap the girls from the other side, pulling them into a grandmotherly hug. Jenny stepped back and away until she was again outside of the ring of space around the girls. She started to look back toward Justin, but stopped herself and instead looked down into the space itself.

Jane made cooing and shushing noises, and the younger girl put an arm around Jane, and the threesome remained like this while the men and the boys and Jenny looked on. Finally, one of the scouts earned a badge by stepping forward to put an arm into the mix although it was hard to tell on what his hand was resting because it was all a tangle of sweatshirts and messy hair. One by one, the other scouts did the same, and the men began to fidget as the moment grew awkward. A couple of them coughed and joined Jenny in looking into the space although the space was filling up with scouts, so the men backed away to keep their distance.

But Jane's knees, one real and one not, could only take her position for so long, and she suddenly let out a groan that scared several of the boys and moved them away as she struggled to a standing position, using the girls as crutches. By the time she was fully upright, the emotions that had united all of the campers, went blowing off toward the bridge and on out of the valley.

Connie stood slightly apart from this whole thing, observing. And wondering. Wondering how it was that things had changed so quickly, how one minute he was the center of attention and the next, he was an observer, on the outside. He mumbled, _Hmm._

Then Connie noticed that John Lee, too, was standing off to the side, and it bothered Connie that he was connected to John Lee in this similarity, that he and John Lee were alike, but even more than that, it bothered Connie that John Lee was turned squarely to face Connie, watching Connie's every move, his beady eyes focused on Connie with an intensity that rattled Connie more than he had known for some time.

After the girls had wiped away their tears, Jane took them back over to the scout camp even though there was no one over there at the time. The other campers watched them go, and while their backs were turned, Connie went to his chair and sat because, for one thing, his energy had drained away like a power outage, and for another, he forgot for a moment what had been going on before all of the crying, and it seemed to him that the exit of the girls was an ending to the activities. He closed his eyes and began to mumble about how tired he was, and this is what the rest of the campers saw when they turned back to him. It was what they'd seen so many times over the past few days: The old man of the camp, sitting in his chair with his eyes closed, his lips moving, and the fact that he didn't have his bible and rosary in hand didn't change their impressions of him. Neither did his earlier behavior. He was still the prayerful old man, and they likely assumed that he was praying for guidance, so they gave him a moment because wisdom and/or a plan is what they needed just then.

Connie ended his mumblings, inhaled through his nose and, when that breath proved to be worthless and he felt as though he were underwater, he stood up quickly because it helped to be upright as he struggled to breathe. Sometimes in his struggles, he cursed, and so now, as he rose up out of his chair, he mumbled, "Shit." And it was just as he said it that he realized the campers were all watching him. He wondered how loudly he had cursed. Jane probably heard it, what with her special hearing abilities, but no one else seemed to react to it.

So he said, "Someone needs to go to town," as if making a pronouncement.

A few of them looked at each other as if to ask, _That's it? That's the plan?_ and John Lee put words to their thinking.

"How you think someone's gonna do that?" he said.

Some of the guys were puzzled and nodded at John Lee's question.

But Connie said, "They can walk."

"It's sixteen miles," John Lee said.

Connie nodded in agreement, along with several other guys. But he was only stalling to get some air, and he resisted the urge to feel the pulse in his neck. Finally, he said, "It's sixteen miles to _town._ "

John Lee interrupted. He said, "You _said_ town."

"Yeah, well. I should've said _toward_ town. There are cabins along the way. And it's only five or six miles to the highway. And it's downhill. Maybe you don't need to go all the way..."

"Me?" John Lee said.

"Whoever," Connie said. He paused long enough for someone to volunteer, but no one did, so he said, "I'll go. If no one else will. It's mostly downhill."

He paused, partly for effect, partly to get some more air and partly to give someone else the chance to volunteer. Earlier, he had wanted to go check out the bridge, but he only wanted to sit right now. When no one said anything, he repeated, "Mostly," in a mumble, and he looked in the direction of the bridge and the road out of the campground, and he took another breath as if preparing to start off, but one of the guys stepped up and said, "We'll go."

This guy pointed to himself with his thumb and swung it to his left to include the guy next to him. The friend had a _What, me?_ look, but after a moment of thought, he shrugged and said, "Yeah, okay. I'm tired of fishing."

Connie smiled down on them.

"That's the spirit," he said, and he came down the little slope from his chair toward them. "Thank you."

He reached out to shake hands which seemed appropriate until they were actually shaking when it seemed forced and phony, a show for the others to see.

"I'd offer some granola bars or something," Connie said, and this, too, was phony, but he continued anyway because he really wanted to get this point across: "But we're pretty much out of everything."

"No problem," one of the volunteers said. "We're good."

"Yeah," said the other. "We've got plenty."

_So share a little bit!_ Connie thought, and he nodded several times, and when that awkwardness was done with, the guys headed off to their camp to get ready. As they were walking away, Connie called after them: "Bring water!"

They stopped and looked back at him, and maybe they considered a Captain Obvious joke, but all they said was, "Okay. We will."

The group watched them go. After a few moments, the sun, as if a dial had been turned up, burned hotter on Connie's head, and he turned to look up at it. He was just about to move back to his chair which was in the shade when one of the scouts said, "That body's gonna start stinking."

Everyone looked at the boy who'd spoken. It was the kid with the stick. He said what he said, then went back to tapping his stick, unconcerned with the adults who were waiting for him to continue or offer some advice.

Connie, too, watched the kid, wondering if he was going say some of the things that Connie had heard him say a day or two ago— _Warrior mode! Magic sword! Hope is lost!_ _Bang! Bang!—_ but it came as something of a disappointment to Connie when all the kid did was tap tap tap his stick, fully concentrating on the tip, oblivious now to any concerns about the body.

Someone said, "The kid's got a point," and someone else said, "Yeah."

Connie nodded, but he couldn't think of anything to say. Anticipating what was coming next, he moved closer to the orange tent and away from the crowd.

A guy said, "Should we— Move it? Or something?"

"No," Connie said. "I think that's the last thing we should do."

There was more thinking after which a guy said, "You know, we only have your word there's a body in there."

"You think I'd make up a story like that? Why would I do that?"

"I don't know."

"Jane saw it," Connie said, and he looked across the road to where Jane was sitting with the girls, her back to him.

"And the girls! Why would they be screaming like that?"

"How you know he's _dead_?" John Lee asked.

What?

The ignorance of the question was almost shocking, and Connie looked around at the others, hoping that they, too, would agree. But before he made eye contact with even one of them, he realized that he didn't know for sure that the man was dead. How could he? He was just a guy who watched a lot of crime shows and read a lot of murder mysteries, and suddenly he remembered several where the dead body was suddenly not dead. He turned and looked at the tent for several seconds.

"God," he muttered, and then he turned back to the crowd.

"Is anyone a doctor? Or nurse?"

Jenny said, "I am. A nurse."

Connie stepped toward her and said, "Could you check? I just looked. That's all. Just looked. Maybe—"

Jenny looked up at Justin and then at the orange tent and then at Connie, and then she pushed up the sleeves of a flannel shirt that probably belonged to Justin. She nodded to Connie and then went to the tent.

She knelt on one knee just as Connie and Jane had done, and she untied the knot. The guys moved around to get a better view as she pulled back the tent flap, moving closer, but not too close. Connie retreated to his chair, but only to be close to it in case he needed to collapse into it.

Jane crossed over from the scout camp, moving around behind the group of men as they vied for position. She eyed them as she approached Connie.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Jenny's gonna check. I never checked."

"Check what?"

"His pulse. What if he's not dead?"

Jane looked at Connie with an open mouth, then looked over at the girls.

"Are you crazy? The girls are right there!"

Connie turned to her. He held up his hands in supplication.

"What, Jane? What? What if he's not dead? What difference does it make if they're right there? What do you want?"

She closed her mouth and shook her head and went back across the road.

By now, Jenny was on two knees and leaning into the tent, her rump sticking out at the men. Her upper body moved around inside the tent for a moment or two as she did things that no one could see, and then she backed out. She turned around to find the men staring at her, knowing what they had been looking at and knowing what they now wanted to see. She held the tent flap back as far as it could go for all the men to see, dead man, knife and all.

"There," she said to the crowd, and Connie thought that her tone captured his own mood well, but then she turned to him directly and said, "He's dead," with the same tone, and he felt accused, but he couldn't say what he was accused of. He was still dealing with Jane's attitude, and now there was this.

Jenny walked away from the tent, leaving the flap open, and she returned to Justin's side. He put his arm around her and pulled her to him, but after only a moment, she pulled away and went to sit on the bench seat of the picnic table in their site. And then, after only a few moments of that, she went back to Justin and said she was going for a walk—she called it a walk, not a hike—and she left the campground heading north where there were several trails.

Before she was out of sight, Connie went to the orange tent and retied the strings on the flap, dropping to his knee as he'd done before. His knee went into the same little cup that he'd created before, or maybe it was into the cup that Jane had made. Or maybe one that Jenny had made. She had put two knees down, and Connie saw another beside the one where his knee was now. He stuck his finger into the cup to see if it was wet, but he immediately felt stupid. What was he expecting to find? And why was he pretending to be a detective? Why was he bothering with the strings? If anything, he was screwing things up for the real detectives who would be coming.

He stood up and turned away from the tent, intending to return to his campsite, to move away from his guard post between the crowd and the tent.

He shrugged, weakly, and said, "I guess now you know," and he went to his chair where he stood waiting for the men to leave, no longer caring to protect the orange tent, and one by one, the men wandered away without speaking, but not before Connie took the opportunity to note that several of the men—most of them, in fact—had some sort of staining on the knees of their pants.

Most of the time when Jane hiked, she had somewhere to go. A fishing spot, for example, or maybe the lake that she loved. Sometimes, she wanted to get some exercise, and so she hiked with no end place in mind. This happened when she needed time away from Connie, but she might get in a hike on the morning they were leaving camp. There was usually a purpose in her hiking. But this time, she couldn't explain why she suddenly said, "Girls, let's go for a hike."

She'd seen Jenny take off and maybe Jane was copying her, but she didn't think it through. She didn't think through how long she'd be gone, and she didn't return to her camp for a water bottle. She had no granola bars left, and she didn't bother asking the girls if they wanted to pack some along. She just said _Let's go,_ and just like that, the three of them on their way.

They went at Jane's pace which would seem to anyone watching as if she were trying to leave the girls behind. She was watching for rocks or whatever else that might trip her, but this was out of habit. She'd been up and down these trails so many times her feet knew where to land, and she barely registered that on this morning there was the added concern of puddles and slick mud from last night's rain. She walked head down, and it was not long before she'd forgotten the girls and had fallen into another of her habits which was muttering to herself.

This muttering prompted one of the girls to ask, "What are you saying?"

The pace prompted the other girl to ask, "Could you slow down?"

Jane stopped as if awakened from a trance. She looked around as if she'd heard an odd chirp, but then, when she realized where she was, she faced the girls. She didn't know which girl had asked which question, so before she answered, she asked the younger one, "What's your name?"

"Ricki."

"Ricki. Okay. Ricki and Joni."

She was about to explain the muttering, but before she could do that, Ricki said, "My mom liked Joni Mitchell. So she named Joni after her. Then my dad"—she paused and swallowed—"named me after Ricky Nelson. My mom said it was Rickie Lee Jones. But Dad said it was Ricky Nelson."

Jane noticed the past tense when Ricki referred to her mother. And the disagreement about the name. Neither of which meant anything, maybe. And Jane wondered who Rickie Lee Jones was.

"Oh," Jane said. And she nodded and thought and wondered what to say or do next.

"So," Joni asked. "What were you saying?"

"Huh?"

"Just now. You were talking to yourself quite a bit. You were doing some angry hiking, too."

"'Angry hiking'?"

"That's what Dad calls it. Mom used to do it. When _they_ fought."

When they fought. Hmm.

Jane tried to remember if she and Connie had had any fights that Joni might have witnessed, but she moved on from that because there was something else that she'd picked up on which was the attitude with which Joni had asked her question, an attitude that brought back memories of her own girls, and Jane gave Joni a once over, trying to guess her age, comparing Joni to her own girls when they were at their full snottiness. Kids grew up faster these days, but yeah, Joni might be at that age. Jane had looked away while she did her mental math, and when she looked back, she locked eyes with Joni, and she almost shuddered at the look she was getting. She broke off the eye contact, and looked off into the woods, and concentrated on her breathing for a moment before she answered the question.

She considered denying that she was angry or that there'd been a fight. Ricki might believe that, she thought, but she didn't think Joni would buy it. So she said, "Okay. I _am_ upset. And I guess I was 'angry hiking'. I've never heard that term before, but it fits."

She looked at the girls, and just as she thought, Ricki seemed okay with her, but Joni's look said otherwise.

"I'm sorry," Jane said. "I'll slow down. And quit muttering."

She turned and started up the trail again and thought everything was fine until one of them asked, "Where are we going?"

She stopped and looked at the two, again not knowing which one had spoken. She hadn't yet learned their voices well enough, and she had been having hearing problems lately, problems which she'd been denying.

"Huh?" she asked and looked at them to see who would respond.

Joni said. "Where are you taking us?"

Taking us?

"'Taking you'?"

"Is this how it's going to be?"

"What?"

"No parents now, so we get dragged off by every old lady who wants to take charge?"

"Joni!" Ricki said. "Stop it!"

"I don't want to stop it. And I don't want to hike."

"No parents?" Jane asked.

It was a long, painful silence that followed. Finally Ricki said, "Mom's dead, too."

"Oh," Jane said.

And there followed another long silence during which Jane resisted the urge to ask nosy questions. _Go on. Go on, tell me more._ She swallowed as if she were swallowing unasked questions. She was about to say something, but Ricki beat her to it.

"Cancer. Two years ago."

"Oh," Jane said again. "I'm so sorry."

She was, too, sincerely, but then Joni let out a pouty sigh and said, "So, okay. We're orphans. Does that mean we have to hike?"

Why you little shit!

Jane gasped at her own reaction. Her mouth opened, and she wondered if she'd spoken the words. Or if her expression revealed her feelings. Ricki recoiled slightly, and Joni put her arm around Ricki as if to protect her. Thoughts raced through Jane's mind, and it was as if she were preparing for confession on a kneeler in church except that here, with the girls watching her, two completely different girls, her examination of conscience was hurried and panicky. Where had those words come from? Had she been carrying anger against her daughters all these years? Why would she direct them at this child who had just lost her father, who had already lost a mother?

But then came a shift in the wind and with it the realization that, no, she hadn't said the words. There were times that her daughters still talked about—half-joked about—the times when Jane _had_ said those words or something similar, but those times were years ago. Now, she'd managed to bite her tongue, and she felt a bit superior as a result.

She said, "I just thought it might be good to get away. For a while. There's a lake up ahead. Not far. It's cold, but we could swim. Or wade. Hmm?"

Ricki gave a slight nod, and Joni made a _whatever_ -face.

Jane turned and led them up the trail. It took some effort to go slow and even more to keep from muttering.

John Lee remained at Connie's camp after the rest of the men had gone back to their own camps, and he stood there on the road, just outside of Connie's camp, staring at Connie with unfinished business.

"What?" Connie asked.

He looked into John Lee's eyes, but they bothered Connie, so he looked at other things such as the girl on the trucker's cap and the sleeveless tee shirt— _Who cuts the sleeves off a perfectly good shirt? Buy a tank top!_ —but he couldn't keep from looking at the eyes. They reminded him of when Jenny had stared at him after she had thrown back the tent flap.

"What?" Connie asked again.

"What you pray about so much?"

"Huh?"

John Lee looked toward the table where Connie's bible was sunning and nodded at the book. He noticed that his sandwich was sunning there, too, and he felt his body start to move of its own accord toward the food, but he stopped himself and turned back to the beady eyes and the odd question.

He was slow in responding as he struggled to think it through. In some other place and some other time, he might have had a quicker answer, but all he had now was, "That's kinda personal, John."

"It's John Lee."

"Oh. Well, it's personal, John Lee."

Connie thought that should be enough to send John Lee on his way, that John Lee would return to his own camp as all the others had done, but no. John Lee stood there near the bumper of Connie's truck parked in the space available, the same kind of space that was available at every campsite. John Lee's closeness to the truck bothered Connie as much as John Lee's question. In years past, Connie had had some things stolen from his truck while camping in this campground, and suddenly, now, he was worried about that even though there'd been several people around the truck only minutes ago, and he had not been worried then.

John Lee said, "You really need a bible _and_ them beads?"

The truth was, Connie didn't really need either one. On this trip, he'd brought them along hoping to make some progress on his "spiritual journey". That's what he had been calling it, with air quotes and all, trying to avoid other terms he'd been hearing lately, terms that he considered protestant.

It had started a while back when he'd come under attack by some of his fellow parishioners who were concerned that he was not a true disciple. Actually, the term they'd used was _intentional disciple,_ which he didn't get. Well, they could all kiss his ass, he thought, and he'd gone to his ally to discuss the matter, but Jane—after he'd made a few rude comments about them—said, "Well..." and left him hanging, and Connie knew right then how she felt. He was doomed to hell in her mind. She never put it in those terms, but she'd go to the little shrine that had appeared miraculously one day in Abby's room—Abby being the eldest daughter—because Abby wasn't going to boomerang home, and Jane would kneel and pray. Connie assumed she was praying for him, and he'd want to interrupt her to let her know that he didn't need her prayers, but the truth was that he had been feeling—

What?

He didn't know how to put it. Jane was so strong in her faith, and, once upon a time, he'd been strong in his. Or, at least it could be said that he had had strong moments. But after grumbling about those disciples for a while, he began to wonder if maybe they were right, mainly because Jane was one of them. If it had been just them, he could have maintained his grouchy attitude. But after some reflection, he did feel in need of some renewal. He felt lost spiritually. Or far from God. Or stained. That's how he felt when he remembered things like shaking kids for throwing snowballs at his car or wanting to shake a kid for tapping a stick.

And being doomed to hell was one thing when you have plenty of time to fix things, but when your doctor says your time isn't long, a kind of panic sets in.

So, he'd started reading the bible again. The cliche is that Catholics don't know much about the bible, but there'd been a time when Connie had belonged to a bible study group. This had lasted for two or three years during which time he'd felt a growth in his spirituality, a maturation, something that didn't need air quotes at the time. And he couldn't remember why the group had disbanded. Or if he'd quit. It had been a rewarding experience, and he missed it. Now, his self-study was just reading, maybe not even that. Normally, he enjoyed reading. At one time, he enjoyed literary books, and was a bit snobby about what he read, but lately, as his TV-watching increased, his reading was spy novels and murder mysteries. Short was important. And when it came to reading the bible, he'd read a chapter here and there, but he would lose interest quickly with none of the fulfillment that he'd gotten in the bible study group.

So he'd started praying the rosary. In seventy-two years of being Catholic, he'd never gotten much out of the rosary, but he thought he'd match Jane bead for bead until something happened.

So when he and Jane packed for this trip, he brought the bible and rosary along thinking that using them while communing with nature would be a good idea. He thought that the combination of prayer tools in God's green acres had to be a sure thing. But no. He'd sit in his chair and read a passage or two, but then the kid with the stick would distract him. Or those two girls in the next camp would start arguing about something. Or someone would start their truck and gun the engine— _Why? Why gun it?_ _It's started, asshole!_ He might read an entire chapter and not get a word out of it. It might as well have been in Greek. Other times he couldn't get past a single line. Bouncing around from Psalms to Acts to Paul to Moses did no good, so he'd switch to the rosary, but after a while he'd just be fingering beads and yawning and looking off at trees or listening to the creek, thinking about something else entirely. And then, of course, there were the times when he'd doze off, the times when he couldn't stay awake for one hour.

Maybe Jane was right. Maybe he _was_ doomed to hell.

He didn't want to admit his failure to John Lee, though, so he said, "You wouldn't understand." He knew right away how condescending that sounded, and he wished he could take the words back.

John Lee said, "I get that a lot. Could be my voice. Or the hat."

He stared at Connie, cocksure, and Connie stared back. John Lee reached out and touched Connie's truck for one Mississippi, then turned and headed down the road to his campsite.

Connie watched him go.

And then he began to feel uneasy about his bible. Maybe it was guilt that he felt. He hadn't explained things well, and he wanted another chance, but not just now because he didn't know what he'd say.

He felt for the rosary in his pocket and resisted the urge to pull it out. He knew he wouldn't be pulling it out to pray, and he wondered why he bothered carrying it around. He went to the table where he retrieved the bible and the sandwich. The bread was crusty now, and he had to wave a fly off of it, but he picked it up anyway. Waste not, want not after all. He put the bible and the rosary in the glovebox of his truck, then went to his chair. As he munched on the sandwich, he shot a look toward John Lee's camp, expecting to find John Lee watching him, but no. John Lee was nowhere to be seen.

Connie mumbled the conversation over several times, word for word the first few times and then with added cleverness. He looked again for John Lee as if he were going to go to him and say the clever things.

Where'd he go?

He looked at his truck, at the general spot where glove box would be if he could see through the door. He looked up toward the trails where Jane had gone, and then he looked in the other direction toward John Lee's campsite. He looked over at the scout camp. They were getting ready to leave for a hike, and Connie noticed that the site had been cleaned up. No leftovers anywhere. He continued to watch for as long as it took for them to march toward the trails, orderly, like little soldiers, in a way Connie admired. The kid with the stick trailed behind, a little too far back, but oh well.

The sandwich didn't do much for him, and he considered looking around for food, but he knew that would be a waste of time. He'd already checked, before the screaming. Maybe a heel of bread in the cooler, but otherwise, nothing. No granola bars in the glove box or Jane's fanny pack.

In the dead man's camp, the table had been cleaned up, the pancakes put away, and Connie wondered when that had happened. Jane must've done it, but when?

And since he was looking in that direction, he looked at the orange tent and started thinking. He tried to recall things that might give him a clue about the murder. He imagined that there'd be police coming here soon, and he shook his head when he realized how unhelpful he was going to be. Here he'd sat for the better part of three days, looking out over the camp, and he couldn't recall much about the man.

The day before had been a good day, weather-wise. Sunny and breezy, much like today, the kind of day that Connie used to enjoy up here in the piney forests of New Mexico. For most of the day, he had had the camp to himself because everyone else had gone off hiking or fishing. Some of them had gotten into their vehicles and gone off somewhere or other. Jane had gone off with her fishing rod. The scouts went for hikes. The father had taken his daughters for a hike in the morning and then had taken them somewhere in their SUV in the afternoon and hadn't come back until late when many of the other campers were already cooking dinner and starting fires. When they got out of their car, the younger girl had stared at Connie, perhaps wondering if he had moved at all during the time that they'd been gone. Connie had laughed at this and wanted to let her know that he had, in fact, moved. He had gone down into the woods to pee a few times, and he had made a nasty meat sandwich for lunch, and he had taken a nap in the tent. But he didn't get a chance to explain himself because the father had pulled her away and had given Connie a little wave as if to apologize for her staring. Connie waved back.

Jane had come back around this time with a couple of good-sized trout which she prepared for dinner. Connie had gone to the outhouse while she cooked, moseying, taking his sweet time, and by the time he got back, she was about ready. By this time, everybody was back in camp, and the campground was more alive than at any time during the day. Darkness was falling, but fires and lanterns were lit, conversations were drifting up to him, and the wind was doing funky things, portending the coming storm. As he'd waited for his dinner, he sat as always on the picnic bench. He couldn't recall now what the father and the girls had done for dinner. Maybe they'd had their dinner in town or wherever they'd gone. After his own dinner, he made a fire, picked his teeth and went to bed, although he couldn't say exactly when that had been, and he had no idea when the father and the girls called it a night.

They seemed to be good kids. There'd been no problems, no backtalk or tantrums. Sure, they had bothered him a bit, but who didn't? Sitting here now, thinking about them, he could only think good things about them, but the fact that they were now without a father made it easier to do that.

He tried to recall the knife, but nothing came to mind. Most of the fishermen cleaned their catches in the creek or lake where they'd caught the fish, although some of them saved the actual filleting for the camp. Jane did it that way. Sometimes she didn't even fillet them. Connie wasn't sure if the man had even gone fishing yesterday. Maybe in the early morning. Maybe on Friday. Was the knife even his? Did the girls have access to it? Was it left out so the killer could come and grab it in the middle of storm?

All this thinking tired Connie, so he dozed off.

Jane gave up.

She turned to look at the girls who were trailing twenty yards behind her.

Good God. My kids would be swimming by now.

_Patience, Jane,_ she told herself, and she took in a deep, deep breath, trying to keep in the forefront of her mind the fact that these two had lost their father, but trying and doing were two different things, just as these two girls were so different.

Joni stopped when she realized Jane had stopped, and she tilted her head to the side and stuck out her chin with a _What now?_ attitude. Ricki came up beside her and stopped, looking first at Joni and then at Jane. Ricki was red in the face. She took her sister's hand, giving it a squeeze, and Jane wondered what that meant. Or if it meant anything at all. She also wondered if she'd made a mistake, bringing these girls up here. She tried to remember what she'd been thinking at the moment when she'd decided to take them on a hike, but she couldn't remember.

Good god. It was only twenty minutes ago.

Or thirty.

She wished she were alone so she could think it through, although what she really wanted, she knew, was some confirmation that she'd done the right thing, but the look she was getting from Joni dissuaded her from that notion.

"Why don't we sit," Jane said, but when she looked around and saw no lawn chairs or park benches, she added, "Well, maybe not here."

"No kidding," Joni said.

Ricki said, "Over there," and she pointed to where the creek ran by the trail. There were some big rocks that would do.

"Okay," Jane said.

Ricki led the way, followed by Joni and then Jane which was okay with Jane until she saw that there were only two suitable rocks, and the girls had grabbed one each.

Jane found a spot on the ground which was soft, but the softness only seemed like a good thing until the wetness from last night's storm started soaking through her pants. She got up, with a groan, and stood for a while until Ricki caught on and scooted over enough for Jane to share the rock. The rock that Joni sat on was actually better for two people, but Jane was content to sit where a spot was offered.

"Do you hurt?" Ricki asked.

"Huh?"

"You make noises when you get up. Like our Grammy."

Not being a grammy, Jane didn't care for the comparison. She knew she was old enough for grandparenthood, but still. She didn't think of herself as old, and she prided herself in her fitness even if the phrase _for your age_ was often attached to it. She was tempted to point out that they were stopping here because the girls couldn't keep up or maybe Grammy made noises because she didn't get out and walk enough, but before she had time to decide, Ricki added, "Grammy walks with a walker."

Again, a desire for patience overcame her, and she muttered something she'd been saying a lot lately: _Come, Holy Spirit, come._

She breathed in deeply just as a breeze blew down from the lake where she would rather be, and she closed her eyes as she waited for a feeling of peace, but it didn't come.

She tried another inhale, and waited, but still nothing.

When she opened her eyes, she saw Joni watching her as if she were watching someone pick their nose, and Jane was tempted to close her eyes again. Then, too, she was tempted to lock eyes on the girl and stare her down.

But the hardness of the rock forced those thoughts from her mind. It was hurting her butt, and it forced her to adjust her position, and in doing so, she grunted.

Ricki smiled up at her as if to say, _See?_ which irritated Jane, but she preferred that to Joni's stare.

Jane said, "Okay. So I make a little noise. Now and then. I'm tired."

She regretted saying that because she disliked when Connie used tiredness as an excuse, and tiredness had nothing to do with any of this. She wondered why she'd added that, but before she had a chance to think it through or correct herself, Joni asked, "If you're tired, why'd you drag us up here?"

The _you little shit_ thing popped into her mind again, but weakly, more of a memory. Jane didn't feel the intense anger that she'd felt earlier, and so the thought came and went, a temptation that failed. Jane enjoyed feeling superior for a moment, then she felt guilty about that, and so she closed her eyes again and took another breath, but didn't ask anything of the Holy Spirit and didn't count to ten. When she opened her eyes, she again found Joni with the same look as before with a touch of triumph added.

"I don't know, Joni. It just seemed like a good idea."

She looked away, at the water, before Joni could say anything or make a face. Then Jane said, "You want to go back?" It came out as a dare, and Jane smugly noted that, for a moment, Joni had lost some of her attitude.

Joni shrugged and looked at Ricki, and Ricki shook her head, but Jane couldn't tell what that meant.

Jane looked away, into the waters of the creek, intending to give the girls a moment to make up their mind, and suddenly a _presque vu_ thought popped into her mind, and then was gone like a trout in rippling waters, lost in a splash or a ripple or a reflection of light. It had to do with Connie, of that she was certain, so she forgot about Joni and Ricki, trying to recapture the thought before it got away for good.

She tried to picture Connie and what he was doing now. She imagined him down there in the campground, watching the tent. Then the image of him keeping the scout from looking into the tent popped into her mind. It made sense, keeping the boy away, but no, her thought had not been about the boy. And then the rock that she was on became even more uncomfortable, and she was forced to turn her attention to her physical comfort, and while she was shifting her weight around, her hand slipped on the rock, scraping her palm. The physical concerns dominated her thinking for a moment, as she looked at the scratches on her palm, worried that they might bleed. Suddenly, another thought popped into her mind. Or maybe it was the same one, returned. It was the idea that Connie was the killer, and she shook her head as if to fling the idea away.

No, no.

Jane was sure there'd be people who'd think he was capable. He could be a cranky, old goat, and they'd seen him lose his temper with that scout, and he had had the stare-down with the scout leader. They hadn't heard it, but _she_ had heard him call the girls annoying yesterday.

Even so, Jane couldn't imagine him getting out of bed in the middle of the night and putting a knife in some guy's chest. He just didn't have the strength anymore. He could barely carry a gallon of water back from the pump. He had gone out in the night to pee, but she couldn't see him doing anything more than zipping up his fly and returning to their tent. And she'd been wakened every time that he'd gotten up to pee during the night, so she knew he wasn't out there long enough to do anything like murder.

So then, why had the thought occurred to her? she wondered. She looked again into the creek.

And like any good detective on any of the shows that she and Connie watched, she went looking for the real killer. Her eyes darted around as she considered the people in the campground, moving from creek to tree to rock to pinecone to Joni. She kept coming back to Joni. She _could_ imagine that scenario, seeing it as clearly as if it were HDTV, narrated by Miss Marple or Angela Lansbury. She couldn't help herself. And most times, as her eyes landed on the real, live girl sitting only feet away, she'd catch herself and look away quickly enough, but several times, Joni caught her.

"Stop looking at me," Joni finally said.

"I'm sorry. I'm just thinking."

"You're not 'just thinking'. You're looking at me cuz you think I did it."

Joni was shouting which stunned Jane although she'd never know if she was stunned because she'd been caught or by Joni's elevated anger.

And, suddenly, Ricki was crying.

Jane lifted her arm, intending to put it around Ricki, to protect Ricki from Joni, but Ricki moved away, sliding off the rock, going to her sister. She hugged Joni and buried her face in Joni's shirt. Once, she peeked out at Jane, then reburied her face in the shirt.

The move reminded her of when her own kids had rejected her, and she felt the same sting that she'd felt all those years ago. The sting was not as crippling as it had been then, but it was definitely there, and it was strong enough to force her thoughts away from whatever had popped into her mind.

She sighed and turned her attention back to the girls.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I was wrong."

Joni was puzzled, and Ricki pulled her head out to get a better listen.

"I thought I was Jane Marple there for a minute. I tried to solve the—"

She stopped herself.

She turned and looked at the creek, flowing by as it had been doing since long before she and Connie ever came to this valley, unconcerned about them and their little problems. She considered rallying the girls and resuming their hike, but she knew the idea would be rejected as stupid and rightly so, so she gave up on it.

"Joni didn't do it," Ricki said, defiance and innocence mixed together.

"I know," Jane said, nodding in agreement.

She stood up, pushing off the rock with a groan. When she was upright, she looked around as if making sure that she hadn't left anything laying there, as if that thought that had popped into and out of her mind were a thing that she could find on the ground.

But no, there was nothing.

The girls remained seated on their rock until Jane said, "Let's go back."

They approached a place where their trail and another trail formed a big letter Y, and Jane could see the scouts on the other trail which was on the wall of the valley. That trail led to a summit that overlooked the valley. It would take them a while to get there, maybe most of the day.

She stopped to watch them. The scouts were sticking together and were moving at a good pace. The leader, despite his shape, was moving along quickly. She turned to look back at the girls who had stopped when she had, far behind her as if they didn't want to catch up. Jane gave a little snort and shook her head, then turned and resumed her hike, not bothering to look back to see if the girls had done the same.

Screams and other things might wake Connie, but most of the time, he simply woke. No sound, no breeze, no heat on his face when the sun moved across the campground. He was sleeping and then he was awake. He blinked a few times, took a breath, checked for drool, muttered, "Damn," and shook his head at his sleepiness as if it were a character flaw. Jane thought it was. "What do you expect?" she had asked him more than once. "No one ever fell asleep hiking." He never bothered with a retort because Jane would be long gone by the time he came up with anything clever, maybe off on a hike or, if they were at home, on her knees in her shrine, praying for his lazy soul.

Connie stood and stretched, reaching into the air, then bending for his toes, but getting only to just below his knees, which he checked for signs that he had knelt in the wet ground recently. Then, responding to an unspoken and unthought of command, he headed into the woods to pee.

When he returned, he double-checked the cooler, hoping Jane had missed something, but he found only the heel from the loaf of bread and a packet of mustard and one of mayo. Nothing else. He emptied the packets onto the bread, smeared it around with his finger which he licked, then ate the bread as he carried the empty packets to the trash bag tied to a tree at the edge of their camp.

He checked the jar of instant coffee and found barely enough for a cup, not enough to bother with lighting the stove and boiling water. He thought back to Thursday, when they were packing. Jane had asked if they had enough coffee, and Connie had said, yes, because the jar was almost full. He was right, of course, because who would have thought that they'd still be here? If they'd left when they had planned to leave, this amount of coffee would have been a sign of proper planning. She would see it differently, though. She'd say that here they were, and there wasn't enough coffee for a cup as if he had failed to bring enough supplies.

Connie looked on the table for his cup, but it was nowhere to be seen. Jane had probably packed it up earlier when they still thought they'd be leaving. He quickly thought of two or three places it might be, all two or three seconds away, but instead of looking for the cup, he poured the last of the water from the gallon jug into the jar and swirled it around, watching the crystals dissolve. He drank the coffee standing, pretending that it was fine.

He took the gallon jug and started across the road, stopping when he remembered that he was guardian of the orange tent. He turned and looked at the tent, wondering if he'd be shirking his duties by going to get some water, but then, when he looked down the length of the campsite and saw no one, he thought, _What's the use?_ So he resumed his trip to the creek, skirting the north edge of the scouts' camp, careful not to cross the border into their campsite, obeying the rule that each site was the territory of whoever had claimed it until the tent was taken down. It was no different than the property he owned back in Albuquerque. Not everyone followed the rule. In fact, this morning, there had been people aplenty in his camp site, and he'd not said anything given the circumstances. But now, he made sure to go around the scouts' site even though the scouts were gone and no one would notice if he cut through.

The scouts' site was actually his favorite site in the campground because it was close to the northern end of the camp. It was as close to the creek as you could get and far from the smells of the outhouse.

Jane didn't like Connie's thinking about water, and as he made his way to the creek, he could hear her arguments. She wanted water from the pump, knowing that she and most of the others cleaned their fish in the creek upstream. Connie swore it tasted better than the pump water and was perfectly safe since they usually boiled it before they used it anyway, but the fact of the matter was that he didn't want to carry the jug back uphill. It might not be much to a younger, fitter guy, but it was a lot to an old man with breathing problems.

To which Jane would argue, "It's only eight pounds, and you're going down there ten times a day anyway." She knew this wasn't true, and he knew she knew this wasn't true, and it might lead to an argument about peeing in the woods, but just now, since Jane wasn't actually there and Connie was only carrying on this argument in his head, he didn't respond.

Filling the jug was often a mindless, mechanical activity, but today, as the chilly water flowed over his hand, tugging at the jug, thoughts tumbled around in his mind as if they were bubbles in the creek itself, thoughts that formed and popped and were gone. He remembered a time when he and one of the girls had gotten into the creek, looking for cans of soda that had escaped the mesh bag that they'd used to hold the cans while the soda cooled down. He thought of other times when he was still able to hike up the creek trail and skinny dip in the creek. He chuckled at Jane's reaction to that. He thought of how this water, which tugged at the jug, had supposedly moved the bridge downstream, and he shook his head at the thought. He muttered, "No way."

"No way," he repeated, but the jug was full so the thought popped and was gone as he got to his feet with a grunt and with eight pounds of cold water. He looked back at the water as it flowed by, water he loved, which he had enjoyed for years, ever since his daughters were tiny, since Jane was his bride, and it hit him that this might well be the last jug of water he'd ever fill. It was more emotional than he would've thought, and a full minute went by before he turned away. It might've been longer had the water been lighter.

He set the jug on the picnic table and turned, out of habit, towards his chair. The effort he'd expended called for a rest. He needed to sit, but the tumbly thinking he'd done at the creek continued and led him to reconsider. He looked down towards the bridge and up towards the trails, stopping for a glance at the orange tent, and he decided that he'd go down and see the bridge for himself. There was no one around just then to bother the tent, he thought, so he was good to go. Go instead of sit.

Connie had never stopped at the bridge in all the years that he and Jane had been coming up here, had never paid it any attention, had never considered the possibility that it could be lifted from its foundation and moved aside like a toy. It was hard to imagine how that could've happened, and as he drove down to the bridge, he expected to see what he'd always seen.

But there sat the bridge, just as John Lee had said.

All around, the scene was what Connie had expected. Full sun, a creek flowing under a bridge like any other mountain stream, maybe a bit more vigorously, sure, but the very same creek he'd seen in other years when he hiked the trails that followed it to its source, the very same creek from which he fetched his drinking water. It flowed now within its banks, under the bridge, alive and lively, oblivious to Connie and his musings, unconcerned about inconsequential things such as the bridge, flowing down from a lake miles away, down to the Pecos, miles away.

And the bridge. Dry in the full sun, a metal framework covered with wooden planks. It usually rested on concrete bases which sat on opposite sides of the creek. Embedded in the concrete were metal brackets with holes for bolts, but there were no bolts to be seen, and the brackets were bent over, almost flat against the top of the base. The bolts had most likely been sheered off and dropped into the creek where they had settled into the crevices between the rocks over which the creek flowed.

The far end of the bridge had been lifted from its base and moved downstream to Connie's left leaving only the right-hand corner sitting on the concrete. One corner of the near side remained on the concrete, so that the bridge rested on opposite corners.

Connie struggled again with how this could have happened. He'd heard the thunder and rain the night before. He knew in theory the power of water, mostly from watching news reports about storm surges and hurricanes, and he had felt the tug of this very creek on his water jug, and he'd been in the creek to feel its force, but it simply didn't make sense that there'd be enough water to move the bridge. All these years and the creek had never exhibited that kind of power for Connie to witness. How was it that John Lee was familiar with it as if it were a regular occurrence?

He thought about what John Lee had said, that a crane would be needed to move it back, but that seemed like overkill. It was only fifteen, sixteen feet across.

He decided to test the bridge.

He put one foot on the bridge with little weight on it, then slowly moved more of his weight onto the bridge, bringing his other foot along. Once that seemed safe, he made a little hopping motion to test the bridge's stability. He knew he had little body weight. Even at his heaviest, he'd been a scrawny guy, but he thought of himself as substantial and so, when nothing moved, he nodded his head as if the bridge had passed inspection, and he walked to the far end, to the opposite corner where the bridge rested on the concrete.

As a foot bridge, it was fine. They could all walk out of here if necessary, the guys who'd gone to town had done it. They could all grab a water bottle and make it down to the nearest cabin or to the highway or all the way to town. He wondered why they hadn't yet, and then he remembered the body back there.

Oh, yeah. That.

He wondered how far the guys had gone by now, the guys who had gone to town, and he imagined them returning with cheeseburgers and fries. That would be a triumphant return, and he envied them their glory. He salivated a while, thinking of burgers, but when he couldn't recall any burger joints in Pecos, he thought about the Owl Cafe in Albuquerque and their green chili cheeseburger. _Mmm._

Then he thought, _They'll probably bring back protein bars._

The other guys who'd come down to take a look at the bridge earlier had reported back that nothing could be done, that John Lee had been right, and that appeared to be true at first glance, but Connie studied the thing, and his wheels started turning. He looked at the bridge itself and then at nearby trees, up into their branches, and then back at the bridge. And he wondered and calculated and came up with a plan which involved tow ropes and trucks, and as he thought it through a few times, he nodded and mumbled and looked up into the trees again.

But then a voice— _the_ voice—startled him: "What you thinking?"

Connie yelled, "Shit!" and turned around to see John Lee standing there, standing on the bank as if he had more sense than to be on the bridge, as if he'd appeared out of nowhere or had snuck down here from the camp, and Connie looked over his shoulder to see if John Lee's car were there. It wasn't, but Connie returned to the here and now and said, "Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Sneak up on me!" Connie said, loudly, and he immediately regretted it because it came out sounding whiny and childish. John Lee evidently thought so, too, because he smirked, which irritated Connie and almost provoked him to say something about the smirk, but he managed to control his temper, mainly by not saying anything. Not counting to ten, but simply waiting until his heart rate had gone down a few beats and his breath felt somewhat normal.

"I have a plan," he said, and he immediately regretted saying it. His confidence in it gone, as if it had blown off on the breeze.

"Does it involve waiting for a crane?"

"No."

"Then it won't work."

"How do you know? You haven't even heard it."

"Don't need to. It won't work."

Connie looked John Lee over, wondering whether or not it would be wise to smack him a time or two. John Lee was small, but he was also wiry with stringy muscles on his arms. Connie had seen him walking all over this place, and he figured that John Lee was in good shape and could take Connie if Connie missed with a sucker punch, so he resisted the urge, and if not a sucker punch, then what was left? Reason? John Lee was so confident, and Connie had not been sure of much in quite a while. He was jealous, in fact, of John Lee's cockiness, and suddenly his plan seemed stupid and doomed to fail.

He had felt so good about it just moments ago.

But he couldn't stop himself.

"It could work," he said. He didn't put enough emphasis on _could_ , and it came out sounding weak. "We _could_ move it. If we had more tow ropes."

" _More_ tow ropes?"

"Yeah. I have one, but I doubt it's long enough."

"You gonna tow the bridge?"

"Yeah. I'm gonna try. I'm gonna."

Connie rushed off of the bridge and around John Lee and went to his truck, tired of arguing with a guy who wears a trucker's cap. He had stopped the truck right in the middle of the road, and now he decided against trying to turn the truck around because he'd have to make a three or four or five-point turn which would look as though he couldn't drive well, so he backed the truck up the road, fighting the urge to speed, an urge that would be a statement of some kind to John Lee, but might result in loss of control. This maneuvering went well as long as the road was straight, but when he got to the bend where the road turned left into camp and then turned right near the outhouse, Connie got mixed up going backwards and almost took out the outhouse, but he finally made it back to his campsite without any further embarrassment, although it took a couple of tries to back into the parking place correctly.

Jane was watching the trail, selecting footfalls, a rock maybe, or a space between rocks, avoiding slick spots, concentrating because going downhill can be harder than uphill, her weight landing hard, especially on big steps.

Then Ricki said, "I have to go to the bathroom."

It was a shout from twenty yards back, and it came when Jane had one foot in the air, heading for a small rock, and the sound startled her. Jane nearly lost her balance. When she recovered, she turned to look at the girl, wanting to scold her, but instead she said, "We're almost there."

Ricki covered the distance between them in hurry, and Jane worried that she might fall as a result.

"How far is it?" Ricki asked, dancing, looking as though she were ready to cry.

Coming up quickly, Joni said, "She has to go now."

It sounded to Jane like an order, as if Joni were demanding some action on Jane's part, and Jane, of course, didn't appreciate the attitude. She felt herself leaning toward Joni, ready to get in her face. Even though she was downhill from the girl, she would have towered over her. But something—perhaps a memory from the time when she had done a similar thing with one of her own girls—stopped her. Instead of saying anything, she began a staring contest, but then remembered Connie's encounter with the scout leader earlier, and she didn't want to look like that.

"You okay behind a tree?" she asked Ricki.

"But, the scouts."

Jane looked over at the other trail, but the scouts were gone, and she was about to say as much, but Joni said, "She has to go _now_."

"So go," Jane said. And she gave a shrug that was meant to mock Joni. When Joni and Ricki went over to a tree, Jane shook her head at her behavior, and she thought about calling out that she was going to continue on to the campground. They didn't need her, and she had no need for them. Whatever motherliness she'd felt was gone. But she pouted, shook her head and muttered her prayer.

When Ricki was done, the girls came back to the trail, but before they all set off, Ricki asked, "Where are they going?"

"That's Lake Peak Trail."

"Is it the lake we were going to?"

"No. It looks down on some lakes, but not the one we were going to."

"Is it far?"

"Yeah. Quite a ways. Maybe they aren't going all the way. Or maybe they will."

She wondered at Ricki's questions, and she looked down at the girl to see if she could determine some motive. And when it dawned on her that Ricki was wanting to join the scouts, she felt a pang of jealousy which she thought was odd given that she'd just wanted to leave the girls behind. She was tempted to ask Ricki if she wanted to catch up to the scouts, but her mind's ear heard the question in all its snarkiness, so she turned away and headed down the trail.

They were close to the campground now, and no one said anymore the rest of the way, and once they arrived, they split up. Jane went straight to the outhouse without looking to see where the girls went.

As she passed her campsite, she looked for Connie, but he wasn't there, and as she continued toward the end of the campground, she muttered about where he had gone, not caring anymore if someone heard her muttering. She thought that he'd probably gone to the bridge, and she considered going there herself once she finished her business in the outhouse. She wanted to see for herself what the bridge looked like now, and she was thinking about whether Connie would want her showing up there as if she were checking on him, and she muttered, "What's so wrong—" but this was at the moment when she was stepping into the outhouse where she was gassed by putrid air which stung her throat and lungs and made her gag, and any thoughts of Connie and the bridge were vaporized.

"Holy—"

She stepped back and reconsidered, looking at the nearby trees and at the empty campground. She considered propping the door open in some way. But Jane was not Connie and could not pee in the woods, so after taking a couple of deep breaths that might hold her for as long as it took, she went inside.

She tried to pee without actually sitting on the seat, holding onto the bar that was installed for the handicapped people who came in here, but whatever muscles she needed wouldn't work that way, so she sat on the wet seat, cringing, cursing every male in the campground, Connie included even though he rarely used the place, but the cursing required breathing, forcing her to inhale the putrid air which caused her to tense up which made the peeing difficult, and so, finally, with a shudder, she gave in to it all, relaxing her muscles enough to pee. When she was done, she pulled up her shorts and burst out into the fresh air and moved far from the building in a hurry. Then she turned and looked back as if a crime had been committed.

"God," she said, but she wasn't praying. She shook as if she were a dog shaking off water, trying to rid herself of the foulness of the outhouse.

She glanced in the direction of the bridge, wondering again if that's where Connie had gone, and then back toward the tent, wondering why he'd abandoned his post. But her thoughts were shoved aside when she saw that the tent was open. She tried to focus, hoping her eyes would take on super powers of some sort. The tent was blurry from this distance because of her refusal to wear the glasses which were in her tent or the glovebox or maybe back home on her dresser. When her eyes didn't assume any powers, she started moving closer to the tent, inching at first, squinting and leaning, then taking off as fast as her legs would take her. Mostly, she kept a straight line, but sometimes she swerved to the left or right as she tried to the girls into her sights. There were tents and vehicles in her way, and she couldn't see all of the girls's campsite. It was not until she got to her own site that she saw them sitting calmly at their table as if waiting for her.

She slowed as she made her final approach, wanting to catch her breath and to calm down before she asked about the tent, but before she had done either, Ricki said, "We want to go to the lake."

She looked from one girl to the other, looking for a sign that this was a joke, but if it were, they played it well, and the idea of them playing the joke made her forget the issue with the open tent.

"The lake? Why?"

"We just do."

"We—" She looked off in the direction of the trail. "What a waste of time. We could've been there by now."

She was breathing hard, and for a second, she thought of Connie and his problems, and she was reminded that she'd been thinking of going downhill to the bridge to look for him, not uphill to the lake.

Again she looked from one girl to the other, wanting to expand on her last point, wanting to make sure they understood perfectly well just how stupid it would be to re-start the hike. Joni's face reinforced this desire, and Ricki's innocent look didn't sway Jane either.

As her breathing returned to normal, she looked away from the girls toward the more important matter.

"Who opened the tent?"

"I did," Ricki said.

"Why?"

"I needed the keys. The car got locked."

Jane looked at the car and wondered how and when the car had gotten locked, recalling the morning's events. Before she came to anything meaningful, Ricki said, "I needed my compass."

"Compass? What for?"

"For the hike," Joni said, and her tone dripped with the unspoken _duh._

"It's a trail," Jane said, looking directly at Joni, focusing her temper there. "It's marked. You don't need a compass."

Joni didn't flinch and didn't seem to be bothered by Jane's anger.

"Our dad gave it to her. He was going to teach her how to use it. Today."

"Oh," Jane said, but it come out weakly, more like an exhale when you're punched in the gut. Images of the father showing Ricki how to use the compass and images of Connie doing the same with their girls came to Jane's mind, and she had to break eye contact with Joni.

"I, uh. Yeah, okay," she said. "Let me get a water bottle. Maybe we should bring along something to eat. Pancakes or something."

"We're ready," Joni said. "We packed some food."

"Okay, then," Jane said. "Let me just close this up," and she went over to close the flaps on the tent. Before she did, though, she noticed that the man was still uncovered which seemed inappropriate. There was a towel in the tent, close to his waist, and she said, "I, uh, think we ought to cover him up. Hmm?"

She looked at the girls, but neither of them said anything or shrugged or indicated in any way that she was right. She gave it another thought and convinced herself it was the right thing to do, so she crawled in as far as she needed, which was too far, in her opinion. She hovered over the dead man, trying not to touch him, and she would later think that this was to avoid contaminating the crime scene, but was really more of an attempt to not contaminate herself. She finally intruded far enough to reach the towel which she draped over his face before she backed away. She turned her back to the girls as she tied the flaps so they wouldn't see her face because she was just as repulsed by what she'd done as she had been at the outhouse, and she didn't want them to see her expression.

Then she went up to the table at her campsite where she filled her water bottle, trying to look as calm as she could manage.

When she was ready, she nodded for the girls to take the lead, saying, "Why don't you lead the way. So I don't go too fast."

Ricki took the lead, heading up the trail with her compass in her hand, held out in front of her as if she trusted the device to point the way, as if it were some magical thing. Jane brought up the rear. She wanted to go to Ricki and explain that that's not how a compass works _._ But what did she know? The compass was Connie's thing. Sure, she had bought his compass years ago before an early camping trip when she'd been selecting items from a list of camping essentials, but she had never used it. Not once. Connie had studied the instructions and took the lessons to heart. He had learned how to use the compass, along with a topo map, and he had taught their girls how to use them. He had tried to teach Jane, saying he worried that she might get lost. She had responded that all she had to do was stay on the trail. She had felt smug then, and she felt smug now until she remembered that another of the items on the camping essentials list was extra food. Emergency rations. Ramen noodles or instant oatmeal. A packet of tuna.

Now and then, as they climbed the trail, Jane would come out of her thoughts, and the slow pace would prompt her to look ahead in the same way that you and I might look ahead to see if there were a wreck on a highway when traffic slowed. She'd see the orphans in front of her, and she'd think, _Oh yeah_ , and then she'd force herself to concentrate on the trail for footfalls, ignoring the girls, and she would quickly get lost in her thoughts again.

Many of her thoughts concerned Joni. Not Joni as the sole subject of her thoughts, but Joni in comparison to her own girls. She thought of the years when her children looked to her for everything, and vague memories flashed through her mind. Most of the memories were of her girls coming to her for her wisdom, and some of the memories were of times when they hiked this very trail. She remembered one or the other of them asking a question. She'd mutter an answer to the question, and then, remembering where she was, Jane would glance up at Joni, irritated that Joni wouldn't throw her a bone and ask even the simplest of questions.

Then Jane wondered if she were remembering things clearly. Did her girls really need Jane so much? She stopped so she could think without having to concentrate on the trail, so she could put some separation between herself and the girls. She brought her memories into focus, and in all of them, her girls were behind her, trailing like ducklings. She looked at these girls as they climbed the trail ahead of her and knew there was a difference between the two sets of girls. She recalled the day before, when these girls were being loud. This was when Connie had called them annoying. The father had been calm with them and had gotten them to settle down without all of the yelling and threatening that Connie would have employed, or the needling that Jane would have employed. The girls had gone off to play somewhere and, at the time, Jane had admired the ease with which the father had gotten them to settle down even as she questioned the decision to let them go off on their own. She had stood there thinking about it then, just as she was standing on this trail now, but this time, many yards behind the girls, Jane found herself crying. She wasn't heaving and sobbing or making a big scene, just crying.

She was fairly sure that the girls wouldn't come back to see her, but even so, she turned her back on them, looking into her thoughts, staring into space, thinking about her girls and these girls, wondering about the tears and her emotions, and wondering what kind of parent she'd been, and then, from behind her, she heard someone ask, "Are you all right?"

She spun around to find Jenny standing on the trail.

Jane looked over Jenny's shoulder, trying to figure out how Jenny'd gotten there. She looked off the trail toward the creek thinking that maybe Jenny had been there. She wondered how long she had had her back turned.

She wiped the tears away with her sleeve.

"Yes," Jane said. "I was just thinking."

Jenny nodded, but didn't ask what it was that Jane had been thinking. She looked past Jane, down the trail, as if eager to get by and away from this awkward spot.

Jane felt compelled to explain and said, "I was thinking about my girls."

Jenny turned and looked back at the girls who had stopped further up the trail, who were now looking back at Jane and Jenny. Jenny didn't look at them for long.

"Yeah," she said quietly. "I can imagine."

Later, after Jenny had said a goodbye and headed down the trail, Jane thought, _Imagine what?_ But she never came up with an answer. When the three hikers arrived at the lake, the question was forgotten.

"This is gross," Joni said.

Jane closed her eyes and bit her tongue.

What is she whining about now?

Jane had been looking at the lake, and it was anything but gross. It was something from a postcard with the blue sky, the green pines around the shore, the sunlight rippling on the water. Maybe in the close proximity, there might be some algae. Maybe the dampness of the soil felt gross.

She opened her eyes and looked at Joni who was holding up a piece of dried, shriveled fruit as if it were something from her nose or a piece of animal waste. Joni popped into her mouth and said, "Mmm," and she and Ricki giggled. Jane shook her head and looked back at her lake.

It had been a place of beauty for her. For Connie, too. They'd hiked up here often, had picnicked here, and had done other things. And when she became a more prayerful person, she liked to come up here to pray. Until then, she'd been a rosary in church before the Blessed Sacrament kind of pray-er, but this was the place where she had first uttered, _Come, Holy Spirit, Come_ , and it was the first time the prayer had been answered. She had left this place a changed person, full of the Spirit, feeling a way that you and I may never know. The fact that this lake fed the stream for which the valley and creek were named only made the place more special. To Jane, the lake was sacred.

After that first time, she'd gone down to the campground, found Connie tidying up their campsite, and she'd told him all about it. She'd been put off by his reaction— _Well, good for you, Jane—_ but she was too high on the Spirit to let it get her down. At least, not that first time. But later, after more refusals to come up here, she had been more than put off. She worried about Connie's attitude toward the church and his unwillingness to share her spirituality. When he was diagnosed, and the wind went out of his sails, she began to push harder, sure that it would do him good, but he refused. The more he refused, the less holy and more lonely the place became for Jane.

Joni made a noise, not of disgust, some noise of struggle perhaps. She was pulling a raisin out of her nose.

"Eww," said Ricki. "Stop it."

Joni laughed and repeated her joke, popping the raisin into her mouth and saying, "Mmm."

Then she looked into the backpack that she had used to carry their food.

"What other yummies did you pack?"

She pulled out half of a summer sausage and some cheese. And some tortillas.

She sniffed them as if she expected them to smell like a diaper, but she said, "Nope. Not spoiled yet."

She reached into the pack again and pulled out a paring knife.

Jane gasped.

The girls looked at her, both of them wondering why Jane had reacted in that particular way, but it was Joni who figured it out first, and all she did then was shake her head, as if disappointed, and she laid the sausage on a paper towel as she prepared to cut a slice. But then she changed her mind and started wrapping things up.

"You know what? I don't need this shit. I'm going back to camp."

She didn't bother looking at Jane, but turned the knife around in her hand and held it out to Ricki.

"You want to stay?"

Ricki looked from Joni to Jane and then back to Joni who said, "Don't look at her. I'm asking you. Do you wanna stay?"

Jane waited a moment for Ricki's reply, but she could care less what the answer would be. She was staring at the knife, not worried about murder, but terrified of the danger in handing the knife to a girl of Ricki's age. Some other time, she might remember how old her girls were when they first wielded knives, but now, all she could think about was grabbing Joni's wrist in order to take the deadly thing from her.

Ricki looked at the knife, but she didn't reach for it, so Joni put it back in the pack.

"You should—" Jane started, but she stopped herself.

Ricki was tearing up.

"I want to stay, but—" she said to Joni. Then she turned to Jane and said, "You wanted to come."

Jane was moved to pity, but couldn't summon the energy to do anything about it just then. Joni looked at Ricki, and she rolled her own eyes.

"This is all shit."

"Yeah," Jane said. "It is." But she wasn't sure they were thinking of the same thing.

She took a deep breath that was meant to be final in some way, and she intended to say, _Let's go, then._

A small bit of tortilla had fallen off as Joni repacked the food, and when she noticed it, she picked it up and tossed it in the lake.

Jane watched it as it sank out of sight.

"Thanks," she said.

Joni gave her a _what now?_ look.

"That'll fatten up some fish. Next time I'm here, maybe I'll catch it."

The girls looked at each other, but neither said anything for a while.

Then, Joni asked, "How old are you?"

Jane looked at each of them. Ricki was looking at Joni, too, her mouth open at the rude question. Joni was ignoring Ricki and looking defiantly at Jane.

"Sixty-eight," Jane said.

Joni said, "Do you have kids?"

"Yeah. Two girls."

She wanted to add, _Just like you,_ but somehow that didn't seem appropriate.

"Actually, two ladies now," she said, and she pictured them, and she thought about how they'd be worried when she and Connie didn't make it back in time for a Father's Day celebration.

Joni asked, "Are they married?"

"One is. The other has a boyfriend."

"Do they have kids?"

"No."

"Do you want grandchildren?"

Jane looked Joni in the eye, the beginning of a stare-down. Certainly the girl didn't care about whether or not Jane had grandchildren. Maybe it had to do with what had happened to her father, but Jane couldn't get it to make any sense. She felt herself tempted to respond rudely. She looked away, at the serene lake where she'd once felt holy.

"Let's head back," she said, and she stood up, stifling the groans, even though she didn't care what the girls thought. It took all of her effort, and when she was upright, she needed a breath, a breath that she would have needed after anything strenuous, but a breath that was, in this case, the deep, final breath before leaving this place behind.

Jane was in front as they came down the hill, but Jane let gravity take the lead, letting it pull her along, step by step. She was not quite falling, but not walking either, swinging one boot out and dropping to footfalls. She muttered some, unconcerned with what anyone would think, especially the two girls behind her, and she was just as unconcerned about the distance that was growing between them. It was a trail on which they couldn't possibly get lost, and if they went off the trail, well, that's on them. Ricki had a compass. Let that be their guide. Mostly, though, she didn't mutter, but dropped step by step, and then, suddenly, she was at the trailhead, about to cross the small field between the trailhead and the campground, and there she stopped, breathing hard.

Part of her was disappointed that the hike was over. The mindlessness of it had been good. She considered going back up, at least part of the way, and descending again. It was not as fun as skiing, but still.

Then something odd caught her eye and thoughts of the trail vanished: Connie was standing in the middle of the road in the campground, his back to her.

The girls came up beside her, saw what she was looking at, and they, too, must've thought the scene was odd, because the three of them stood there watching. Finally, Ricki asked the obvious: "What's he doing?"

"Good question," Jane said.

Several possibilities went through her head. One of them was that he was doing something related to the crime. Maybe investigating or maybe something else. Another, more likely, possibility was that he was doing something related to stealing food even though it made no sense that he'd be in the middle of the road for that. Maybe he was checking to see if anyone was around to see him. But she didn't have much time to think things through because Joni said another obvious thing: "Let's go ask him. Duh." Jane closed her eyes and clenched her fists and resisted the urge to say anything.

When she opened her eyes, Joni and Ricki were twenty yards ahead, walking toward where Connie was standing.

What Connie was doing had started while Jane was still coming down the trail.

He'd returned to the campground, excited about his plan, but what he saw was deflating. There was no one to be seen. It was common for the camp to be empty at this time of day, and the camp had been empty when he left, but he had convinced himself that there'd be a crowd waiting for him and his plan. His thinking was that due to the circumstances, what with the dead guy and all, people wouldn't stay away for long, they wouldn't be doing the things they came here to do such as hiking or fishing. They'd all be back in camp, and they'd gather at his campsite just as they had in the morning when the body was discovered.

But no.

So he turned his thoughts to rope.

Because he'd backed into camp, he hadn't been able to look into the backs of the trucks along the road, and so now, if he wanted to find rope, he'd have to go down the road again, and it would best be done on foot, but going down the road on foot would mean that he'd have to come back up the road, on foot, and he didn't want that. The urge to sit was close to winning out. To avoid the temptation, he moved himself away from his campsite, away from the chair, out into the middle of the road and the open sun where he was standing when Jane and the girls returned.

He heard her voice from some distance.

"Connie?"

But since he hadn't seen her when he'd arrived, and since the sound of the creek was louder the closer he got to it, he wondered if he was hearing things. He tilted his head and then turned it with birdlike movements as he tried to pick up the sound. He turned his body, too, as if he were adjusting antennas.

"What are you doing?" he heard.

He turned toward the sound and, as he did so, his gaze swung past the orange tent, lingering there for the smallest amount of time and then on to see the girls approaching from the trailhead, followed by Jane, looking at him as if he were crazy. All three had furrowed eyes, questioning his physical health or his sanity.

"Nothing," he said, and he added, "I'm fine," even though no one had asked.

But then, something clicked in his brain, something he'd seen while taking his brief glance at the tent, something which turned his idiotic bird motions into that of a bird of prey. He focused keenly on the tent because he saw that the tent flies were now untied.

His first urge was to rush to the tent and look for a clue such as a new knee cup. Or maybe inside the tent there'd be some change like a missing knife. Or a missing body.

But really, what would he find? Anyone untying the tent flaps was likely doing so to sneak a peek and nothing more. It was probably one of those scouts. So he made no move, other than to stand there staring at the tent flap.

He assured himself that he had tied the ties. He thought back over the morning, trying to work backwards, and he remembered driving the truck backwards and the reason for that, and he remembered that John Lee had still been in the camp when he had abandoned his post as guardian of the orange tent. Connie pictured John Lee sneaking up to the tent for a peek, but Jane interrupted him, coming right up beside him.

"Connie? What's wrong with you?"

"I'm fine. I said I'm fine."

"You're in the middle of the road."

"It's a campground, Jane. It's not like I'm on I-25."

He thought about explaining. He turned and looked into her eyes and was about to tell her how he had gone to the bridge, had come up with a plan, had come back—the whole story. But Jane had not changed her _are-you-crazy_ look, and he didn't think she'd be a big supporter of his plan, so he said nothing. Besides, just then Jenny appeared on the scene, coming down from the trailhead. Connie looked past her, hoping to see all of the other campers returning, and Jane looked at Jenny and then the trail, but Connie didn't notice Jane's look of confusion.

"What's up?" Jenny asked.

She looked at Jane, then Connie, then back to Jane when neither of them answered.

"I don't know," Jane said. "We just got back."

"Back?"

"We went to the lake."

Jenny nodded and looked at Connie as if it were his turn.

He said, "I went down to the bridge. To have a look for myself." He nodded as if to put a period on his claim, but then he added, "I just got back myself."

"Where's everybody else?"

"Good question. John Lee's at the bridge. Other than that, I don't know."

"We saw the scouts," Jane said. "A while ago."

Jenny looked at her tent, and Connie noted the look of worry. He followed her gaze. He was about to say that he'd just driven back into camp and didn't see anyone, but just then the outhouse door opened up at the far end of camp and out stepped Justin. He started back up the road and got about halfway before he realized that the small group was watching him. He smiled and waved and gave them all a quizzical look.

"What's going on?" he asked as he approached them.

Jenny moved toward him. Actually, it was more as if she were separating herself from the others, but she ended by his side, and she was uncomfortable for a moment as if she couldn't decide whether to hug him or not.

"Nothing," she said. "I just wondered where you were."

Justin pointed with his thumb over his shoulder.

"I went to see a man about a horse."

He flashed them all the same grin that he had flashed earlier when he had made his dark and stormy night comments, but this grin didn't fare any better, so he said, "No, really. I just went down to the outhouse."

It seemed to Connie that Justin had been gone a long time, and before he knew it, Connie was checking out Justin's knees. Justin was wearing shorts, though, and there was nothing remarkable about his knees. Connie turned to look at the orange tent, and he thought again about checking the area in front of it for knee cups, but something—a small change in the breeze, a noise from the creek, Jenny beginning a movement intended to pull Justin away from this scene—something reminded him of his plan.

"Hey, Justin," Connie said. "You got a minute?"

Justin stopped.

"I've got all day."

"I had an idea. At the bridge. Do you have any tow ropes?"

Connie looked off in that direction and saw John Lee coming around the bend near the outhouse, so he hurried.

"I was at the bridge a while ago. I'm thinking we might be able to pull it back in place. But I only have one rope and it's not long enough."

Connie, in his hurry, moved closer to Justin and started nodding quickly, trying to get Justin to agree to work with him before John Lee arrived on the scene. But Justin and Jenny didn't respond. In fact, because Connie was getting right in their faces, they backed off a bit and looked at him as if he were odd.

"Do you?" Connie asked. "Have any rope?"

"No," Justin said, and at the same time Jenny said, "What's a tow rope?"

"It's a long rope," Connie said. "Or strap. They're used for towing cars or whatever. Some guys keep them in their trucks. For emergencies."

Connie realized he was mansplaining or that it may have sounded as if he were questioning Justin's manhood, and he heard Jane make a noise behind him.

"Emergencies like washed-out bridges?" Justin asked.

"Yeah."

By now, John Lee was only yards away, so Connie backed away from Justin and Jenny, giving up. He nodded towards John Lee and said, "He doesn't think it'll work."

John Lee said, "You coulda give me a lift."

"Huh?"

"From the bridge."

"I didn't know you were coming back."

"Where'd you think I was going?"

Justin interrupted. "Do you have any rope?"

"I told him that won't work."

"So, that's a _no_?"

"I got rope. Some."

"Can we borrow it?"

"I told you that won't work."

"So, that's a _no_?"

Jenny reached out and touched John Lee's arm, and John Lee looked down at the hand as if a bird had dumped on him.

She said, "C'mon, John Lee. We're just trying. Maybe it won't work. But it wouldn't hurt, could it?"
John Lee's eye darted around, and when he spoke, his voice was quieter, less nasal. He said, "You could bust my rope."

Justin said, "So...?"

"That's an _I 'spose_."

Jenny looked at Justin, but not at Connie as John Lee went to get his rope.

Connie said, "I wish we had more. I wonder if the other guys have any."

"We could ask them," Justin said.

"I don't know where they are."

"A couple of them are fishing the creek. Right over there."

Connie squinted into the shadow of the woods and, sure enough, saw a couple guys.

"What?" he said. "I didn't see them." He muttered this last part, embarrassed at his poor observational skills.

Jane, meanwhile, was thinking that the guys were wasting their time fishing the creek here, and then she thought that they'd soon be wasting their time on whatever plan Connie had in mind. She looked at John Lee and found herself siding with him on this. She hadn't seen the bridge yet, and she didn't know what Connie was planning, but the word _cockamamie_ came to mind.

_Let it go, Connie,_ she thought.

She looked at Connie from behind, and then at Justin and then at John Lee, and she sighed.

Justin, looking at the fishermen and thinking about what Connie had said, shook his head and shrugged as if to say, _You could hardly miss them._

Connie and Justin went over to the guys who were fishing and asked about tow ropes while Jenny and John Lee went to get his ropes. Before long, the group had collected several lengths of rope. They just loaded into Justin's and Connie's trucks and headed to the bridge. It was John Lee who had the sense to send the newer, bigger truck down first so it would be in front when they got to the bridge, and Connie didn't dwell long on this slight to his old beater. In fact, he made a point of asking John Lee if he wanted to ride along with him. John Lee just nodded and hopped into the back instead of sitting up front with Connie for the ride down.

Meanwhile, Jane, as she watched them go, muttered "Thanks for the invite."

When they got to the bridge, Connie explained his plan. He took a cue from Jenny and worded it so that it sounded like an attempt, something to try while they were waiting. He tried to speak without pausing so that John Lee couldn't interrupt, but this exacerbated his breathing problems, and he was forced to pause a few times to catch his breath, but John Lee said nothing during these pauses.

Connie's plan was to tie a rope to the bridge, run the rope up and over a branch of a tree on the far bank, and then run it across the creek to a truck. The truck would then pull away, and the bridge would be lifted and pulled back in place.

When he was done explaining, he looked at them, nodding as much as possible in hopes that he'd get them nodding, too, and it worked. Maybe they weren't as enthusiastic as he had hoped, but they were nodding which was good, and some of them started to move into action which was better.

Connie got his rope and walked out across the bridge with it. He tried to find a place to tie the rope to the bridge, but the planks of the bridge were too close together for the rope to go through. As he struggled with it, he sensed the men coming onto the bridge to look over his shoulder, and the bridge rocked under their combined weight. The movement gave Connie the willies.

"Whoa," he said, and he raised his arms at his sides for balance, an over-exaggerated display, but none of the other men noticed, or none of them felt the movement, or none of them cared, because they came up behind Connie to check on his progress.

"Lemme try," John Lee said, and he pushed his way in and took over for Connie, repeating what Connie had already done, but doing it for show, making noises which sounded negative.

After a few failures, John Lee stood up and announced, "See? Won't work."

Then he picked up his tow strap and stepped off the bridge on the far side of the creek and stood there looking at the men, defiantly, one against the rest, one guy with some sense against a bunch of idiots.

But one of the idiots said, "I've got some smaller rope," and he went to get it, but it, too, was too thick to go through the planks. John Lee nodded at another score for his side while the men stared down at the same spot on the bridge, the small area that became their focal point.

But finally one guy said, "That rope'll float."

The rest of them looked at him, and although no one said anything, there was a collective _huh?_ to the guy's statement.

He said, "We can float the rope under the bridge, grab it when it appears on the far side, then tie it off in a big loop."

_Oh,_ the men nodded. They saw.

But John Lee said, "That'll use a lot of rope. That bridge is eight feet wide. That's sixteen feet, wasted."

The group ignored him and went about feeding the smaller nylon rope under the bridge from the upstream side. When a couple of them went over to the downstream side to wait for the rope to appear, the bridge shifted, and all of the men and Jenny said, "Whoa!" and a couple of them looked at Connie and nodded as if they now understood why he had _Whoaed_ earlier.

"Maybe just Jenny," Justin said.

"What?" she said. "You'll let me go in first?"

But she was smiling, and she went to the side of the bridge where she lay down and waited for the rope to come to her.

The water rushing over rocks there, where Jenny waited for the rope, splashed and sent up spray and several times she backed away when water hit her in the face. And there was an undertow that prevented the rope from easily floating into her grasp. But after a few moments, it appeared, and she grabbed it.

While this was going on, Connie stepped back a few steps. He was nervous about the number of people on the bridge, but his action was more about something he wanted to observe from a small remove. He backed up to the end of the bridge, and he took it all in—the water, the sunlight, a cool breeze, these people, working together—mostly—on a project that had no hope of success, a project he had initiated. All this, and more. He looked up at the sky, so high and cloudless. His heart fluttered, something that had happened before, when he was helping out at church, or when he was in his bible study, something Jane insisted was a feeling you get when the Holy Spirit is moving through you.

His head turned toward the camp, the last place that he'd seen her, as if he were going to call her here to witness. He wanted to call her. She would appreciate this. But she was too far away to call, so he turned back to the action on the bridge, back to the place on earth where the Spirit was at work.

He stepped forward to re-engage in the project, his observations done. But just then the bridge rocked, not because of his movements—he was too slight—but from the movement of the men who were pulling the rope into a loop, and he stopped until the bridge settled and the willies subsided. Then he moved up beside the men who were tying a knot in the nylon rope. Good feelings surrounded him like the warm sunshine and a pleasant breeze. Things were getting done. This just might work. There was nothing for him to do at the moment, so he picked a guy at random, put his hand on his shoulder and said, "Good job."

Then he went to John Lee and said, "We can run your strap through it now," and he reached out his hand, intending to take John Lee's strap from him.

"What?" John Lee said, and he gave Connie and his hand a look as if Connie were a beggar.

What? What do you mean what?

And just like that, it was a chilly breeze without enough sunshine to counter the chill. It was a bad plan. People could get hurt. Connie's lungs were empty, and he struggled through several weak inhales.

As quickly as a balloon pops, Connie was deflated.

He let his hand fall. He closed his mouth. He turned to walk off the bridge, but there were guys in his way, bigger guys, younger and stronger, too big to move aside. Connie went around them without stopping.

Jane and the girls were at the dead man's site when Connie pulled into the parking spot at his campsite. Normally, he would've responded to the urge to sit in his chair, but that would involve talking to Jane which would involve talking about the bridge and his plan and how it was going, and Connie had no appetite for that, so instead, after shutting the truck's door, he walked around behind it and headed for the trailhead, hoping that maybe just maybe he could get past the orange tent without a word from Jane.

And, luckily, Jane said nothing. Maybe she was surprised that he was going for a hike. Maybe she thought he was being rude, ignoring her. But, whatever, she said nothing, and Connie kept walking.

He avoided eye contact with her, too, looking straight ahead, a man on a mission, focused on the road and the trails that lay beyond the end of the road. But his sense of duty as guardian of the tent made him cast a glance at the orange tent, especially at the tie straps which were now tied.

Hmm.

He resisted an urge to stop and ask why, but kept on walking instead.

Jane watched Connie walking away, headed for trails that he had avoided for years, trails that she had encouraged him to hike, thinking that exercise and fresh air could work a miracle.

When he was first diagnosed, he complained that this campground was hard on his breathing, but she had ignored him, and she continued to ignore him because she just couldn't accept that the cocky little billy goat she'd married so many years ago was now just a chair-sitting wheezer. _For crying out loud!_ He was only seventy-two. And she'd hiked up those trails twice today.

What's this all about?

Her eyes cast about for an answer. The scout leader was out of consideration because the scouts were up on the trails now. Obviously, it had to be something that had happened down at the bridge, and so she looked off in that direction as if she could see through the trees and the distance, and since she was looking south anyway, she cast a glance at John Lee's camp, knowing that he and Connie were not buddies. She didn't know what Connie's plan was, but thinking about it now caused her to frown.

But if Connie had had an argument or something, he'd come back to camp and sit. Not hike.

Not hike.

There was something else.

She looked toward the trails, worried and wondering if she should go after him, and while she was looking after her husband of forty-eight years, whispering her prayer without conviction, thinking of how this weekend had taken such a sad turn, she glanced at the orange tent and frowned again, more a look of distaste, and she shook her head at the inconvenience of it all. And when she became aware that Ricki was watching her, she looked down at the girl, but Jane didn't care whether Ricki had noticed the expression. She looked at the trails, and she tried to refocus her thoughts on Connie.

"Is he mad?" Ricki asked.

"Hmm," Jane said. "Yeah."

"What about?"

"Who knows?" she said, but she didn't like how that sounded.

"He's—" Jane said. "He's just mad."

She didn't like how that sounded either, and she looked down at Ricki, irritated that she was having to explain her husband to this child. She exhaled heavily, like a snort.

And then Jodi said, "Can we go to the bridge?"

"Huh?"

"Can we go to the bridge?"

Jane's instinct was to say _no_ , _of course not_ , because that's what she would have done with her own girls, but before she could do that, Joni said, "It's just down the road." With some attitude.

"I guess," Jane said, and she mumbled something about staying on the road and coming right back, but the girls were off in a hurry and probably didn't hear the advice.

At first and for a while, the girls held hands, and at one point Ricki started skipping, but Joni didn't join in, so Ricki stopped. Jane felt a pang at the thought that the girls seemed happier the further they got from her. Or maybe, she told herself, it was that they were getting further away from the orange tent.

Left alone now, Jane could turn her thoughts away from the girls and think about things. She looked again at the tent and then in the direction of the trails and then back at the tent, and again, the idea that Connie might be involved in the murder popped into her mind. She shook off the idea, not wanting to go there, but her shaking was less than vigorous and did not stop her from picturing him going to the orange tent during the night, seeing him bare footing through the rain, acquiring a knife, kneeling down and untying the straps.

She had seen him show his temper. Many times and in many ways over the years.

But he had mellowed lately.

But he'd gotten face to face with the scout leader.

But he'd backed down.

And Jane tried to remember if backing down was how that scene had ended.

No, no, no.

He just wasn't capable. He was often tired and not as strong as he once was.

And yet he'd gone off hiking. Which was strange.

And Jane looked back up towards the trail.

What was he thinking?

Connie hadn't been on these trails in years. He'd been telling Jane that he couldn't do it—hike with her as they'd done so often in his better years. There were times when he'd tried, either because he himself didn't want to give up on spry Connie or because Jane had nagged him into it, but after a while he'd give up and go back to his chair. Once or twice, he had pushed himself, and his stubborn mind would tell his legs to keep going, but not far beyond the place where the trail steepened, his heart would start slamming, and his lungs would deflate. And sometimes, his legs would quit without being told to do so, mutinous, leaving him standing on the trail, gasping.

So what was he doing here now, standing at the spot where the trail began to climb? Did he really want to avoid talking to Jane this badly?

There were places, he remembered, not that far ahead, where the trail ran close to the creek, where he could get off the trail and soak his feet. He ought to be able to manage that, he thought, and he was just about to do that when along came two guys from the other direction. He remembered his trail etiquette and stepped off the trail to allow them room to pass. One of them nodded at him and said, "Hey, Connie."

Connie nodded, but he didn't know the guy's name, so he just said, "Hey," in return. The campground, where these guys were surely neighbors of sorts, was only a few hundred yards away, but on this trail, in a setting where he had never seen them, they were total strangers. They had likely stood in his campsite this morning when the entire population of the campground had gathered there, yet he didn't recognize them. Sometimes, back in Albuquerque, he ran into people in the grocery store, people from church maybe, or people from his neighborhood, and he'd walk right by them, clueless as to who they were.

The guys stopped. He had expected them to continue past him, but no. They stopped right in front of him, forcing him to stand in the brush beside the trail. But he gave no thought to the brush. He was dwelling on the fact that he didn't know them, yet they'd called him by name. And then there was the fact that they had escaped his notice when they'd left for their hike and that he hadn't noticed they were missing from the group who'd gone to the bridge. Which made him think that they'd soon hear all about what had happened at the bridge, and he was tempted to tell his version first.

"What's going on?" one of them said.

"Oh, I'm just going for a walk. A hike."

Connie looked up the trail to indicate where he was heading.

"Did you see the scouts?" he asked.

"No. Why?"

Why indeed? He had no idea why he'd asked.

He wondered if the altitude was affecting his thinking.

He shrugged.

"I was just wondering which trail they took. I wanted to get away for a while."

"Need a little me-time?"

Huh? What's me-time?

"No. I just want to get off by myself for a bit."

The two guys looked at each other, made faces and stifled smiles, and then one of them said, "Well, we haven't seen them. We were on the trail that follows the creek."

"Sounds good."

The three of them stood there for a moment until one of them asked, "Anything new in camp?"

Connie looked toward camp. Here was his opening to tell his side, but he just shrugged and said, "No, most of the guys are down at the bridge, trying to move it back into place."

"You're not helping?"

Connie looked at the guy, trying to read him and read something into the question, but the guy had no expression, and Connie's pause grew awkward, so he shrugged again and said, "No. I did, but I was in the way."

Connie made a slight move as if he were going to resume walking, but the other guy said, "Is John Lee helping?"

The guy smirked, and Connie began to feel uncomfortable. A recent sermon came to mind. A visiting priest was talking about gossiping, and his advice was that if you feel compelled to say something, ask yourself if it's true, if it's necessary, and one other thing that Connie couldn't recall now. He wasn't sure the first two were correct either, for the matter, but all that mattered was that even though it was John Lee they were talking about, this conversation didn't pass the priest's test, so Connie said, "Yeah, he's there," and he looked up the trail and moved again as if he were eager to resume his hike.

They didn't say any more, so he gave them a weak wave and headed up the trail, but not before he had looked down at the knees of the pants of one the guys which, Connie noticed, were stained.

Connie thought about that for a while as he climbed the trail, until he had to stop and catch his breath. And when he resumed, he forgot about the knee-stains and started looking for a spot to soak his feet.

Connie found his spot.

It was another thirty yards up the trail where the trail and the creek came close to each other. Between the trail and the creek there was a smaller trail where brush had been trampled down by other men looking for easy access to the creek. He would have preferred something more secluded, but he figured that seclusion would not be found so early on the trail, and he was not willing or able to hike further up. Besides, a more secluded spot would only be necessary if he were going to get fully into the creek, and it didn't take much for him to realize that that wasn't going to happen. No, today, all he wanted was to dip his feet in the water. He had no real explanation for why he wanted this, but somewhere between leaving the bridge and arriving back at camp he had decided that that's what he wanted to do. Maybe it was just an excuse to leave camp for a while.

So he walked off the trail to the creek where he sat by the bank and took off his shoes and socks. He set them aside and swung his feet into the water. At first, he ignored the wet ground on which he sat, ground that was still in shade, not yet dried out from last night's storm, but it wasn't long before it began to bother him.

There was a good-sized rock out in the middle of the creek, in the full sun, high and dry, and it was more appealing to Connie. He got himself up with a little effort and started to make his way for the rock, but the going was tough because the rocky bottom of the creek made it difficult for him to keep his balance. And after only a couple steps, the water went from chilly to painfully cold.

He remembered the time he'd gone looking for the cans of soda. He and his daughter had been in the water for quite a while. Thinking back, it seemed like an hour or more, but maybe not. Maybe it was half an hour. Or only fifteen minutes. But whatever, it was certainly more than this, and now his feet were in pain, and he thought his circulation and blood problems were the problem. He began to worry about tissue damage. Was that a possibility? In Connie's mind it was, so he turned around and stepped back the short distance to the bank and crawled out of the water.

He looked toward the trail, worried that other hikers would come by just then and see this pathetic sight.

He imagined Jane standing there.

Old fool.

He rolled up the legs of his pants, squeezing out as much water as he could. He started to put his socks back on, but decided against them since he didn't want to put socks on his wet feet, and reached instead for his shoes.

He held them in his hands before putting them on, studying them as if they were a metaphor of some kind. Jane had gotten him a pair of hiking shoes recently, but he'd never worn them outside the house. They were her way of saying he needed to hike more. But they were not that comfortable. They were stiff and dug into his ankles. Jane said they needed some breaking in. Connie said they needed some throwing out. These ratty sneakers were about all Connie ever wore. To Jane's horror, he had worn them to church a few weeks ago, and when he thought about that, he chuckled, but that lasted only a second because a breeze blew across him just then, and he shivered, and he put the shoes on in a hurry.

He grabbed his socks and considered them, just as he had considered his shoes. On Friday, when he'd put them on, they had been TV commercial white. Now, a bum would reject them, but he knew that Jane, if they ever got out of here, would transform them.

When he got back to camp, Jane was at their site and the girls were nowhere to be seen. Connie gave Jane a wave with his dirty socks which he tossed onto the picnic table before he collapsed in his chair.

Jane made a face at the socks and shook her head, but she said nothing.

He looked the campground over as if to bring himself up to speed. The hikers he'd met on the trail were at their table. Otherwise there was no one to be seen.

Then he looked at the orange tent and the ties and wondered if questions were worth whatever answers he might get. Did he really care anymore? He gave that a thought for a moment or so, and his answer was that he didn't, so he let it go.

For a moment or so.

"Did you go in the tent?" he asked.

She paused, but only for a second.

"Yeah."

Hmm.

After a long pause, Jane said, "Well, Ricki did. First. To get the car keys. One of them locked the car by mistake. And Ricki needed her compass. Then I went to close the flaps, and I took a moment to cover him. It seemed, proper."

As she talked, Connie glanced at the dead guy's car and then at the tent, and he thought through the scenario. It all made sense, and he went back to no longer caring, although he did think _Compass?_ before he started to drift off, but then Jane came from behind him and stood just inches away as she said, "I had to! I didn't like it."

"Whoa!" he said, leaning away from her as if she might strike him. "Okay. Okay." He chuckled.

"I had to," she repeated, as she backed away a few inches.

"I was just asking."

She looked at Connie and then at the orange tent and then went back behind him.

She'd been tidying the inside of their tent when he'd come back from his hike and flopped in his chair without a _hi_ or _hey_ nor any explanation of why he'd gone and done something he swore he couldn't do. She wondered again about why he'd gone off on a hike as she watched him unrolling his pant legs which were wet for some reason. He removed his shoes, too, and then just sat there with his bare feet exposed for all the world to see. She wondered about the shoes and socks. He never went sockless, and he wasn't the kind of guy to sit around camp or anywhere for that matter in his bare feet. Then she glanced at the orange tent and then up toward the trails and then at his socks and his pant legs again, and she glanced down the road to where the two guys that Connie had seen on the trail were sitting. They'd mentioned seeing him in a way that seemed odd as if they shared a private joke. She looked in the direction of the bridge, trying to tie all these things together and that was when he asked her if she'd gone in the tent. As if he were in charge of the thing. As if he could question her.

And now, behind him again, with nothing more to do in the tent, she stood and stared at the back of his head, his uncombed hair, his thin shoulders that rose and fell as he struggled for air. She looked down, thinking about how she'd reacted to his question, wondering why she'd snapped, but she couldn't straighten it all out as neatly as she'd done with the things in their tent.

Meanwhile, he was looking toward the bridge, thinking about what had happened there. He wanted to talk to her about it, the feeling he had had and what had happened with John Lee, but he wasn't up to it at the moment, so all he did was stare off in that direction. As he did, he imagined what had happened since he left. He saw ropes snapping, John Lee saying I told you so, the guys giving up and heading back. He tried to determine how long all that would take compared to how long he'd been gone, and he turned to look up toward the trail to aid his calculations, and while he was doing this, Jane came from behind him again, but this time she went to the table and looked at his socks as if they were something she might find in the outhouse.

"You just gonna leave them there?" she asked.

"I'll get 'em," he said.

"That's where we eat, Connie."

"We got something to eat?"

She gave him a look and then went to her chair, and they sat without talking.

They sat there for a while like this, side by side just as they did at home except at home she was on the left.

Connie's heart beat had slowed down from all of his exertion, and he yawned, a wide-mouthed yawn that usually signaled it was bedtime. He considered crawling into the tent for a nap, but then he looked up at the sky to judge the time of day and decided it was too late for a nap. He looked at his socks and considered retrieving them since he didn't like not wearing them and he knew that they bothered Jane, but the effort seemed too much, and he didn't care enough to expend any more energy. He turned to his right, to sneak a peak at Jane, wondering again why she had snapped at him, and even though he couldn't put his finger on the exact reasons because he was too tired to engage his brain and think, he was pretty sure he'd done or said something, and he considered apologizing, thinking maybe a general _I'm sorry_ would cover the weekend and bring about some peace. But Jane was looking away from him, toward the vehicles that were just then coming back into the campground.

And Jane, for her part, had considered saying something to Connie. Maybe an apology although she was fuzzy about what she'd done wrong. A good examination of conscience was in order, she knew, which prompted a weak _Come, Holy Spirit,_ but she didn't feel the Spirit move within her and she didn't want to speak without guidance, so she sighed, looked at the sky, wondered about being abandoned, and then turned to the sound of vehicles.

Justin's truck led the way. It pulled up to his camp, and everyone in it got out. Connie started to get up, forgetting his feet, and when he stepped on some sharp thing he winced and sat back down without taking his eyes off of the truck and the passengers.

Jenny got out of the cab on the side closest to Connie and Jane, and she gave them a look, but then looked quickly away and went to her tent where she knelt to unzip the opening. Justin, meanwhile, went to the back of his truck from which he retrieved Connie's rope. He carried the rope into Connie's campsite.

"It snapped," he said, holding the tangle of rope out to him.

Connie took it, but he gave it only a quick look, because he had picked up on a tone in what Justin had said, a tone that sounded accusatory. Did Justin think the plan failed because of Connie's rope? Did it fail because Connie had left? Or was he upset because Connie had left without a word? Connie looked past Justin to the other guys, but they were all walking away, back to their campsites with their backs to him.

Connie said, "Well, sorry about that. It's kinda old."

And then, as if it would somehow make things better, he added, "Like me."

Justin shrugged.

"It wouldn't have mattered if it were new. We tried a few things and couldn't budge that thing. It's stuck."

"Hmm."

"John Lee was right."

"Hmm."

Connie saw John Lee down at his camp, looking in Connie's direction. There was enough distance that Connie couldn't read John Lee's expression well, but from what he could see, it seemed as though John Lee was eager to come over and tell his side of the story.

Connie looked up at Justin, a giant standing before him. He was about to apologize, but then he thought, _Wait, did I apologize already?_ And then he thought, _What am I apologizing for?_ and he looked down at the rope in his hands.

Jane made a sound which might have been a cough or it might have been nothing.

Connie asked, "Didn't budge at all?"

"No. Not that I noticed."

"Hmm."

Connie looked up at Justin, but it was an awkward angle considering Justin's height and closeness.

"Well," Connie said. "It looks like we're stuck here."

"Yeah," Justin said. "Well, thanks anyway." And then he went back to his truck and moved things in the back.

Connie examined the rope more closely, untangling it until he had the two parts on either side of his chair. He held up the ends of each part where the rope had snapped. They were frayed.

"At least it was my rope," he said.

"Huh?" Jane asked. "What difference does it make?"

Connie had been thinking out loud, not really addressing Jane, but he said, "It was my plan. So it ought to be my rope that snapped."

She questioned his logic with her eyebrows, something he saw without actually looking at her, in the language that you and I don't know.

He said, "I wouldn't want to hear from a certain someone if it had been his rope."

Jane questioned that, too, with a slight change in her eyebrows.

And just then, John Lee came into their camp, walking up to Connie's chair. He glanced down at Connie's feet, but only for a second.

"Why'd you take off? It was your idea."

Several possible answers came and went before Connie said, "It felt like the right thing to do."

"It was your idea," John Lee said.

Connie nodded.

"I know, John Lee. And it didn't work."

He thought about apologizing. He thought about conceding that the plan had been stupid. He thought about thanking John Lee for helping. He thought of excuses for his taking off. And he took a breath and opened his mouth, not sure which words would come out, but before he could say anything, John Lee turned to Jane and said, "Where them girls?"

"What? Why?"

"Where they at?"

"Why are you suddenly interested?"

"Who says it's suddenly?"

Jane looked at Connie, but he was just as dumbfounded as she was at this sudden change in topic. She looked back at John Lee and said, "They went for a walk. To the bridge."

John Lee looked toward the bridge, and while he was still looking, he said, "We didn't see 'em."

"Well," Jane said. After a pause she added, "That's where they went."

John Lee turned and looked at Jane, judging her, perhaps thinking she was stupid. Or maybe he just didn't understand why she'd let them go. He walked away in a hurry, crossing in front of Justin's truck, crossing through Justin's camp without the permission that Connie would have wanted. He said something as he walked away, but it was hard to make out, something about _their Daddy_ , and _killed,_ although it sounded more like _kilt._

There followed a long pause during which Connie pulled out the toothpick from his Swiss army knife and went to work on his teeth even though he had hardly eaten. It was just something to do, something he did at home after meals, a ritual.

"Maybe I should go check on the girls," Jane said, turning first to look at Connie and then toward the bridge.

Connie turned toward the bridge, too, and thought a while, but it was hard for Jane to tell if he was thinking about what she'd said or about his teeth.

Then he asked, "Why'd you let them go?"

She'd hoped for more. Support.

"Why not?" she said. "We let our kids run all over this place."

"Really?" Connie mumbled, still picking. "Is that how you remember it?"

She stared at him, annoyed, thinking, trying to remember her kids in this place.

She looked toward the orange tent, then quickly toward the bridge and then she stood up. Without looking at Connie, she said, "I'm going," and with that she was heading off toward the bridge although she went to the road first, not directly through anyone's camp.

All of the hiking that Jane'd done during the weekend had taken its toll, and the fact that she was in good shape didn't matter. Wear and tear was wear and tear, and her legs were just about ready to give out. So when she put her foot down on the edge of a rut and her foot slid down into the rut, she didn't have the strength or reflexes to stop her fall. Her ankle twisted, her knees buckled, her body went down and her hands reached out, and after that, it was just a confusion of body parts hitting road and rocks. She ended up lying face down on the ground.

Every part of her that had touched the road hurt, and whenever she re-touched the ground in her efforts to get up, she felt the pain again. And again. She tried different ways of moving, until she finally worked her way around and she was sitting there in the middle of the road, looking back up the hill in the direction of the camp.

While she was still in the process of getting into this position, a couple things happened. Jane couldn't tell in which order they occurred, but the one that she reacted to first was the giggling that she heard off to her left, not far into the woods.

"It isn't funny!" she yelled. "Brats."

She didn't yell the second part as loudly, and they might not have heard her because after the first part, the girls took off through the woods, moving in the direction of the campground.

The next thing was that she cursed in language that she didn't normally use, language that Connie might use, and as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she was glad that the girls had run off because she wouldn't have wanted them to hear. The cursing could have been meant for the girls, or it could have been meant for her fall and her injuries, which she was only then assessing. But most likely, it was for something that she'd noticed somewhere in her tumbling and twisting. Sometime in there, when her nose came close to her sweatshirt, she had caught a whiff. It wasn't a whiff of the BO someone gets when they spend a couple nights camping. No. It was worse than that.

Old lady smell.

She had noticed it on two or three other occasions. And it always came as a shock.

She had come to grips with the wrinkles that had first appeared years ago. Those were only natural when someone spent has much time outdoors as she did. And she was able to tolerate the liver spots with not much more than a frown and a head shake. And as long as she paid attention to the rogue hair that boldly stuck out from her chin, she could pluck it out and dispose of it before anyone was the wiser. But the odor nearly broke her. It was the smell of her grandmother and, later, her own mother. She had noticed it, too, on Connie's mother before she passed away. They were all in their 80's or 90's, and at the time, Jane had assumed that it was something that would happen to her when she reached the same age. But then, one day, still in her 60's, she'd caught her first whiff.

It was decay. Death. And it was nasty.

When she had first noticed it, she cried and then showered and then went about life on constant alert for the smell. Not much for perfume, she started spritzing it on. She opened windows to let in fresh air and told Connie they didn't need to have the heat so high even though he might be freezing. She doubled down on her dental hygiene. She cleaned until she was exhausted, and she did the laundry more often.

And now, here in the piney woods with fresh scents and plenty of breeze, here it was again.

Granted, the whiff was brief, and sitting on the road with her head above her knee level, leaning slightly back, she couldn't smell it. There was no doubt that it had been there, though. Or was there? She allowed for doubt. This was the great outdoors, after all. Maybe there was a dead animal in the ditch. She held her head up and sniffed, but didn't pick up on anything. Maybe there was something in the dirt of the road, but when she couldn't manage to get her nose right down next to it—the pain of the ankle was starting to demand her attention—she gave up on that idea. She pulled her sweatshirt away from her neck and sniffed at the warm air that wafted out. It was funky, but it wasn't what she'd smelled earlier.

She didn't have time for a second sniff, though, because just then she heard and then saw Connie's truck coming down the road.

"Oh great," she muttered.

Before this, before Jane had gone much beyond John Lee's camp, Connie thought, _So go then,_ and he continued picking his teeth. He hadn't gotten to his molars. But there was something in Jane's demeanor that made this an instance when he ought to go help her. She hadn't asked for help, and he didn't see the need to leave the comfort of his chair, but he felt the need to go. By the time he came to this conclusion, she was near the end of camp, rounding the bend, and moving quickly, so he left the toothpick in the side of his mouth and put his shoes on his sockless feet. When he stood up, he took a moment to assess his breathing and found it to be okay, so he slapped his pockets for his keys and headed toward the truck.

The scouts were returning from their hike just then, and he instinctively checked on the orange tent, thinking he needed to stay and protect it. He looked around for that kid with the stick. At first, for a second, he thought that here was a good excuse for not going after Jane. She had her responsibilities, and he had his. It wasn't his fault she'd let the girls get out of her sight. And then, again, for just a second, he considered enlisting the scouts to help Jane. They could fan out in the woods or wherever and find the girls in a jiffy. But that would entail talking to their leader which Connie didn't want to do. So, forgetting his duties as guardian of the tent, Connie got in his truck, backed out of the campsite and headed down the road.

He rounded the bends at the south end of the campground and looked down the road, expecting to see Jane walking maybe fifty yards ahead. At first glance, he didn't see anyone, and he thought that she had covered the ground pretty quickly, and he stepped on the gas to catch up to her. But he hadn't gone another ten yards before he saw Jane sitting in the road about sixty yards down the road, yards which he covered pretty quickly.

"What happened?" he asked as he jumped out of the truck and came up to her.

"I fell."

"Fell?"

"Yeah, fell. You think I decided to sit in this particular spot?"

"How?" Connie asked, and he looked around for a trip wire or some other sinister device planted on the road.

"That rut," Jane said, but she didn't point or indicate which rut she was referring to in any way. "It doesn't need much explaining, Connie. Just help me up."

But Connie had to solve the mystery first, so he went over to the most likely rut and studied it.

Hmm.

"This one?"

It could've been called a rut. The breakfast burrito that he'd been thinking about all day would not sit completely within it, but still. If someone put their shoe down on it just so, they might twist their ankle. Sure, he could see what happened here. He even saw the markings of Jane's soles in the mud. He nodded at his brilliant deduction and then turned to Jane, prepared to reveal his findings, ignoring her disbelief in his making her wait, ignoring her discomfort.

"Finished, Sherlock?" she asked. "I'm kinda hurting here."

"Okay, okay," he said as he moved to her side, putting one hand on her shoulder and touching her arm with the other.

"What?" Jane asked. "You gonna do a magic trick? Lift me."

He went around behind her, squatted down and wrapped his arms around her, under her arms, clasping his hands in front of her chest, and he tried to lift, but he couldn't get her off the ground no matter how much he strained and grunted. The grunting was mostly for show, so she would know he was trying. They were close to the same height, but weight was another story. It wasn't exactly a Jack Sprat and his wife thing, but she _was_ heavier than Connie despite her more active lifestyle. He, meanwhile, was shrinking away because of his lifestyle and the other issues.

He pulled his arms out and went around in front of her, breathing hard and bending to rest his hands on his knees. Some of this was for show, but he was genuinely worn out from the effort, and he was struggling for air.

"You're gonna have to help some." he said. "I can't just lift you up. I'm sorry."

"My ankle," she said, pointing and wincing, some of it for show.

"I know," Connie said. "But—"

"It hurts!" she screamed.

Connie winced, straightened up and backed away.

"I know," he said.

"How? How do you know?"

_Where's this coming from?_ he thought.

"C'mon, Jane. I'm trying."

Just then, they heard the voice.

"What happened?" John Lee said as he approached from the direction of the bridge. He, too, examined the immediate vicinity to determine why Jane was sitting in the road. But then he looked into the woods and said, "I never found them girls. You said they came down here."

"They did," Jane said. "They were in the woods. They took off for camp when I fell."

"You seen 'em?" John Lee asked, looking into the woods again.

"Yeah. And heard 'em. Laughing. An old lady falling must be funny to them."

"They went back? To camp?"

Jane closed her eyes for a moment, but whether it was due to pain or the surrounding idiocy, Connie couldn't tell.

"Hey," he said. "Could you help me? Get her up?"

John Lee looked down at Jane.

"You can't get her up?"

"No. I tried."

John Lee smirked and nodded, but then he moved to her side and squatted down, putting an arm under hers. He then looked at Connie and waited for him to do the same on the other side. Once Connie was in position, they lifted Jane up. It seemed to Connie, that Jane put forth more effort this time, but it happened so quickly that he wasn't sure how much credit each of them deserved. He was sure he wouldn't get much.

They helped Jane into the truck.

She winced and grimaced and made several faces during the process.

Good grief, woman. You gave birth twice without so much as a whimper.

Once inside, she let out a cleansing breath and then turned to John Lee and said, "Thank you, John Lee."

He nodded and mumbled something and turned to get out of the awkward grouping by her door.

_She'll thank me later,_ Connie thought.

Connie turned to John Lee and said, "You want a lift?"

"Sure," John Lee said, and he got into the back of the truck bed where he sat on the side wall so he could better see into the woods to look for them girls.

Jane winced and muttered curses with each jolt of the pick-up. Getting to her feet and moving to the truck had aggravated the ankle, and once seated, with her foot on the floorboards, Jane experienced a new level of pain. She tried not to utter the curses. She clenched her teeth and tried breathing techniques she'd learned during her pregnancies or similar techniques she'd learned in a yoga class. They didn't help. The curses helped, but she kept them mostly to herself, replacing the actual words with grunts and exhalations.

Some were directed at Connie for hitting every single rut. Every single rut. Some were directed at the ruts. Or at the people who did a poor job of maintaining the road. Or the bridge. If the bridge had been better maintained they'd be on their way home—No! They'd be home. Some were directed at the girls for running off and putting her in this position. Or at John Lee for going off after the girls.

That was the one that made her stop and think. She twisted around in her seat, ignoring the pain when she set her hand down for a pivot, seeing him sitting on the side of the bed, looking into the woods, caring about the girls more than she did. She looked at John Lee and then at Connie and then back at John Lee, and she gave some thought as to why she felt bad for cursing John Lee and not her husband, but then he hit another rut and she finally cursed aloud, clearly.

"Hey," Connie said. "This road is in bad shape."

Jane responded with another grunt, without vowels or consonants, although if it had, it would have rhymed with _truck_.

When they got back to their campsite, Connie hurried around to help Jane out of the truck, but John Lee didn't. He stood up in the back of the truck and looked out over the campground and then turned to look into the woods.

"I don't see 'em."

Connie and Jane weren't paying him much attention since Connie was clumsily assisting her to her chair. He had one arm around her back as he walked beside on the same said as her injury.

"You should be on the other side," she said, so he let go in order to switch sides, leaving her to balance on one foot.

"Connie!"

"What? What?"

He got to her left side and put his arm around her again, but he wasn't bearing much weight. She hopped most of the way as if he weren't even there.

They finally made it to her chair, and Connie did his best to lower her gently into it. His best sucked, though. She leaned down to the chair, putting her weight on one of the arms, and when she did so, the chair started to fall to that side, causing them both to lose balance. She let go of Connie and reached out with her other hand. Instinctively, she put her foot down and howled.

Connie looked around to see how well this show was playing with their neighbors.

Once she'd twisted around and gotten herself seated, she breathed heavily through her mouth, and then through her nose, loud breaths intended to help her with the pain.

"I don't see 'em," John Lee said.

"They're hiding, John Lee," Jane said. "So yeah, you can't see them."

She turned to Connie.

"I think it should be elevated."

"The leg?"

She answered with a look and raised eyebrows.

"Okay," he said, and he looked around to figure out how to make that happen.

"The cooler," she said.

"Oh, okay," he said, and he went to get it.

She winced as she lifted her foot, so he reached down to help, but when he touched her ankle, barely, she let out another howl which startled Connie, making him drop the foot which hit the ground, causing her to howl again.

"Geeze, Jane," he said. "I barely touched it."

"That may be broken," John Lee said, out of the truck now and standing nearby, watching.

They ignored him, and Connie tried again, lifting as gently as he could and bracing himself for her screams as he moved the foot onto the cooler which was not all that high. Her foot was off the ground, sure, but it was still lower than the chair seat.

"You should use the bench," John Lee said, pointing to the picnic table.

Connie and Jane looked at the bench and were considering it when Jenny arrived on the scene.

"What happened?" she asked.

Connie started a long explanation which began with Jane worrying about the girls, but Jane interrupted him and said, "I twisted my ankle."

"In a rut," John Lee added.

Jenny moved to take charge, kneeling down by Jane's foot.

"Get a pillow," she said to no one in particular, and then to Jane she said, "I need to take your shoe off. It's starting to swell."

Connie went to their tent for a pillow while Jenny started to unlace the shoe, and while he was in the tent, he waited for Jane's howls, but none came. He expected to find no progress when he got back with the pillow, but he found that Jenny had taken the shoe off and was working on the sock, moving carefully and professionally. It was mesmerizing to watch. But even so, it seemed that there was still enough movement to produce a little noise.

Connie gave Jane a look, but she wasn't paying him any attention.

"It's probably just a sprain," Jenny said. "There's not a lot we can do for it. You should get an X-ray as soon as possible. For now, we'll do rice."

Connie thought, _Rice?_ and tried to imagine what good rice would do when he noticed Jenny looking up at him.

"Do you have any ice?" she said.

"Oh, ice. I thought you said rice."

"I did. R, I, C, E. The I is for ice."

"Oh. Okay. No, we're all out. We didn't plan to still be here—"

She ignored him and turned to Justin who had come over without Connie noticing.

"Could you get ours?"

Justin went back to their cooler, a giant thing meant for a large family or a small fraternity, and while he was doing that, Jenny turned back to Connie.

"Do you have any water?"

"Yeah," he said, glad to be able to provide something, but then he remembered where the water came from. "It's from the creek," he said and waited for the rejection.

"No bottled water?"

"No. We weren't planning to be here this late."

But she only heard the first word and was already turning again to Justin.

"Bring some water," she called.

She turned back to Connie and was about to ask him something, but she turned instead to Justin again and yelled, "Paper towels, too."

Hey, I can help you there!

But the roll on the table only had two or three sheets left, so he didn't say anything.

Justin came back with his hands full, including a huge bag of ice, and Connie wondered how they had managed to have so much left until he recalled that Jenny and Justin had left camp for a while the day before, so Connie assumed they had gone to town to restock. The roll of paper towels looked to be brand new.

Hmm.

Jenny put the bag of ice under Jane's ankle, thereby raising it a little more and getting Connie's pillow wet.

Hmm.

Then she turned her attention to the scrapes on Jane's hands and knees. Again, Connie was impressed by Jenny's professionalism. She opened a bottle of water and rinsed each hand with half a bottle. He would've used the alcohol in the first aid kit that might or might not be in the cab of his truck. He was glad that Jenny had taken charge because he could only imagine how much screaming there'd be if he had used the alcohol.

By now, some of the other guys, including several scouts, had come over to watch.

They looked at Connie, maybe wanting to ask him what had happened. Then they looked at Jane, and then at Jenny and then back at Connie, and most of them stopped there, maybe thinking he had caused this, and he grew tired of this, and he was just plain tired, so he left the circle of onlookers and went to sit at their picnic table, looking back at his chair which was quickly encircled by the men, looking at it as if it were his recliner.

He turned away from the group, mostly because all he was seeing was their backs, but also because it would be more comfortable if he could rest his arms on the table.

And as he turned, he noticed a couple things: The girls were across the road at the scout camp, and the straps of the tent were untied again. _Hmm,_ he thought, but before he could give it much more thought than that, something caught his attention to his right, and when he looked there, he saw the two guys who had gone to town coming up the road along with two strangers. These last two guys were in uniforms.

None of the four appeared to be carrying food, so Connie didn't rise to greet them.

Jane had to admit, that when you wail as much as she had, you're bound to draw attention. She wanted help with her ankle, but not an audience. Where'd they all come from? And why? To watch some old fool get bandaged up? And, the last person she wanted there was Jenny. Who needs a young girl getting so close? Close enough to sniff out her smell?

Where'd Connie go? His empty chair sat beside her, but he was nowhere around. Was he off pouting?

_He has good reason,_ she thought.

Jane thought back over all that had happened since her fall. She was embarrassed by her behavior. The leg hurt like crazy, sure, although it was better now that it was up on ice, but if it had been one of her girls, she wouldn't have tolerated that kind of bratty behavior.

God, she wanted out of this place. If she hadn't screwed up and done this to her ankle, she'd grab Connie and they'd walk on out of here.

_Those two guys who'd walked out of here._ _They're probably down in Pecos having a cold beer_ , she thought, just as the crowd separated enough for her to see them coming up the road.

The people who hadn't come to watch Jane's care, which included some of the scouts, their leaders and a few other guys, fell in behind the new arrivals. Some of the guys started asking questions of the two guys who had gone to town. Connie couldn't hear the questions, but he knew what he would ask given the chance. Mostly, it would be about food. He imagined the others would be asking about fixing the bridge, but he figured the bridge would not be fixed until tomorrow, at the earliest, and he needed some food, now.

One of the uniformed men came right up to Connie and asked, "Are you Connie?"

It was quiet in the campground just then, and the guy's voice was loud. And since he was close to where just about everyone in camp had now gathered, they all heard him and turned to see what was happening, including Jenny and Jane. Jenny went back to tending Jane, being professional, but Jane and everyone else kept their attention focused on the new action.

Connie was slow in responding. For one thing, he wondered why the uniformed man would come straight to him first. It seemed that going to the orange tent was the more likely thing to do. For another thing, the kid with the stick had worked his way to the front of the bystanders, and even right there with everything that was going on, the kid didn't give the stick a break. He tapped the stick and stared at the tip, tapped the stick and stared at the tip which no one else but Connie seemed to notice which struck Connie as odd. They were all watching Connie, waiting for his response.

They might've thought that Connie's pause was that dramatic pause that guys take when they realize the jig is up. Maybe they thought the guy in a uniform had some information and authority and had come to make an immediate arrest. Once Connie ID'd himself, the crime would be solved.

For a second, Connie considered denying that he was Connie. As a joke.

But he said, "I'm Connie. Yes."

"I'm Deputy Jarrett," the guy said.

Connie was already smiling because of the joke, and he let his smile widen at the mention of a J name. Jarrett noticed the smile, was puzzled, and turned to see if anyone else found humor in this.

"What's so funny?" he asked, returning to Connie.

"Your name. It starts with J."

"What?"

His eyes tightened up as he concentrated.

Connie said, "My wife is Jane. The nurse there is Jenny. We have Justin, John Lee, Joni, and I believe his name is Jack." He pointed toward the orange tent.

Jarrett looked at the tent, then at the crowd, then at some point in space, and he finally shook his head as if he'd been distracted and wanted to get back on track.

"Okay, well," Jarrett said. "I understand you've been watching the tent."

"No," Connie said. "I mean, yeah. I was. But I left the camp a couple times. I was not a good watchman."

Jarrett's mouth dropped open, and his eyes closed for a second, tightly, and then he mumbled something, something negative and vulgar. He opened his eyes and took another look at the tent, and then he glared at Connie.

"This is terrible," he said. "How do we know if someone's been in the tent? It's a crime scene."

This last sentence was spoken as if he were no longer speaking to Connie, but rather addressing the crowd or the other uniformed man or maybe even thinking out loud.

Connie said, "Oh, don't worry about that. I can assure you that people went into the tent."

"What?" Jarrett asked.

Connie said, "Every time I came back those straps were changed. If they were tied when I left, they'd be untied when I got back. And so on. The guys who went to town were probably the only two who didn't go in there."

At this, several guys said, "I didn't."

Connie looked at the kid with the stick who made eye contact with Connie, but the kid quickly looked away.

"Well," Connie said. "Maybe I'm exaggerating. So not everybody. Let's say _some_ people went in there."

"Who?" Jarrett asked.

Connie considered his answer before saying anything. Jane came first to mind, but how would it look if he threw her under the bus? He was in the mood, but still.

Jane, however, beat him to it.

"I did," she said.

Jarrett turned to the sound of her voice, but some of the people who had come earlier to watch her get bandaged were blocking Jarrett's view, so he walked through the ring of people in order to see Jane.

With the attention off of him, Connie looked at the kid with the stick again. The kid gave Connie a look of pleading and fear, and he mouthed the words _no_ and _please_. Connie glanced over at the ties and remembered that the scouts had some back just as he was leaving to go after Jane. He put two and two together and then gave the kid the slightest of nods and a wink and then looked away, ignoring the leader who happened to be watching him.

For a moment, before he turned his attention fully to Jane, Connie thought about the kid and the look of pleading, and he smiled to himself and gave himself a slightest of nods.

But then, when he turned his attention to Jane, through the opening that had been made for Jarrett, Connie caught sight of her hands which Jenny was bandaging, and he thought, _She'll be hell to live with for a while._

Meanwhile, Jarrett had gotten to a spot a few feet from Jane where he stopped and watched as Jenny worked on Jane's hands. Connie imagined that Jarrett saw Jane's condition as proof of violent happenings, and Jenny's care as an attempt to cover up evidence, and that all of this was connected to Connie's bungling of his tent watching duties.

"What's going on?" Jarrett asked. And then perhaps because he realized that that sounded brusque, he said, "What happened?"

"I fell," Jane said.

"Fell?"

"Yeah, fell," Jane said. "Down."

"Where?" Jarrett asked, and he looked around at the immediate vicinity as if doubting a fall here could do so much damage.

Connie expected Jane to repeat the word _down_ , and he mouthed the word as if he were completing her sentences even at a distance, but instead, she asked, "Are you here about my hands?"

"I'm here," Jarrett started, but he paused, and he looked around, at the tent, at Connie, at all the others.

_Because it's Father's Day, and you're low man on the totem pole,_ Connie thought.

Jarrett looked at Connie as if he'd heard Connie's thoughts. His eyes flitted around as he thought about something, looking at the ground as if for clues, at the tent as if he could see through the ripstop nylon, at the men who had gathered in Connie's campsite as if he could detect a sign of guilt on one of the faces, and Connie wondered if this were a matter of technique like many of the TV detectives he had seen.

Jarrett turned back to Jane.

"You went in the tent?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said. "I know I shouldn't have."

Jane shot a look past him at Connie. Then she looked back up at Jarrett and maintained eye contact with him as she told the story that she had told Connie earlier. When she was done, she held the eye contact as if they were in a staring contest.

Jarrett turned away from her and looked at the tent again, thought for a while, then looked around at the crowd. He nodded a few times, and then he said, "Anyone else?"

He looked at some of the guys and then at the scouts, but no one said anything although a couple guys shook their heads _no_. Then, Jenny, without looking up, maintaining her focus on her work, said, "I did."

Jarrett turned to her, waited a moment for her to look at him, but she didn't, so he asked, "When? Why?"

"This morning. He wanted me to confirm that the man was dead." When she said _he_ , she used her head to indicate Connie, then went back to taping the gauze on Jane's hands, the last of it, which she inspected for a moment before she went about closing up her first aid kit. She continued talking. "I checked his pulse. And his eyes."

"That's all?"

"That's all it takes."

"I mean, you didn't touch anything?"

"I touched his wrist and his neck and his eyes. And my other hand was on the floor of the tent."

Jarrett nodded.

The other guy in uniform, who had been down on the road this whole time, stepped up beside Jarrett and waited while Jarrett was sorting out what Jenny had said.

Connie noticed then that the two men had different uniforms with different patches. This second guy's uniform looked more like something a forest ranger would wear, more greenish.

Jarrett raised his eyebrows as if to acknowledge the guy.

The other guy said, "They're here."

"Ok," Jarrett said. "All right. Can you take care of it?"

"Yeah," the guy said. And then he coughed slightly and said to the assembled crowd, "Can I get a volunteer with a truck? We've got some people to pick up at the bridge."

Connie started to stand up, but Jarrett said, "Not you, Connie. I need to talk to you. Over here."

Just moments ago, it seemed to Connie, Jarrett was in over his head. He'd reacted badly to news that the tent had been left unattended, that people had gone inside, and so Connie assumed that Jarrett was leading him away from the others in order to get some advice. But, somewhere between his campsite and the dead man's table, it dawned on Connie that he was heading to an interrogation. Between one step and another, he went from guardian of the tent to suspect. Jarrett wasn't separating him from Jane for advice. He was putting space between two suspects in the way that he'd seen on many TV shows. In the next few steps, Connie tried to reject the idea of an interrogation because interrogations don't happen in piney woods at picnic tables, and they don't involve guardians of tents, and they don't involve innocent men, but then he remembered that, yes, they do, during the first half of almost every TV cop show he'd ever seen, and so, when he reached the table, he went from wanting to face the tent so he could watch it to needing to face the table because that's what suspects do. But he was already in the act of sitting by the time he came to this final decision, so he sat facing the tent at first, and immediately swung his legs over the bench to reverse his position. And Jarrett, seeing Connie take up a position on the bench, moved to sit next to him, until Connie swung his legs through the very spot where Jarrett had intended to sit, and he was forced to back away to avoid getting kicked. Then, when he saw how Connie ended up, Jarrett went to the other side of the table. Once there, he put one foot up on the bench, leaning on his knee in a folksy manner, but gave up on that position and sat down facing Connie.

"Okay," Jarrett said. "Tell me what happened."

It was such a vague question, and Connie considered different ways to respond. The first ones that popped into his mind bordered on immature, and he was sure Jane could hear what with her supernatural hearing, so he rejected them. And then he considered responses that included his observations related to the knee cups, but he figured they were amateurish. He couldn't think of where to begin.

Finally, because he was a suspect, he decided to give only a little information. "I don't know what happened," he said with a shrug. "I didn't see anything. I was sleeping. Or trying to."

"'Trying to'?"

"Huh?"

"You said you were trying to sleep."

"Yeah. I don't sleep well in a bed, and here I was on the ground. And that storm didn't help."

At the mention of the storm, Jarrett repeated the word and looked around the campground as if looking for evidence that a storm had actually happened, as if there ought to be shredded tents or flood waters still pooled in places. When he saw Connie looking at him, he said, "Go on."

"Go on? About not sleeping?"

"What happened before?"

"Before when?"

"Before you went to bed—into the tent."

Connie asked, "How long before?"

Jarrett considered the question, his eyes flicking left and right. He looked over at Connie's campsite, then at the orange tent, then at Connie for a second, then back at the orange tent.

Connie glanced over at Jane. She wasn't watching him just then. She was listening to Jenny who had finished up her work and was standing, giving Jane some instructions. The onlookers started drifting away, back to their camps. Connie noticed his lawn chair. And so, in the hope of getting this over quickly, started talking.

He went back to Friday and told Jarrett about how he and Jane had arrived to find that the man and his daughters had beaten them to that particular campsite, and that the scouts had beaten them to the one across the way. He summed up most of Friday and Saturday by saying that he spent a lot of time in his lawn chair while Jane went off fishing or hiking. He said that the girls had annoyed him when they woke him from a nap which he instantly regretted. Saying the girls were annoying didn't paint the right picture, and he hadn't meant to mention the napping, so he said their noise wasn't really all that bad, not enough to kill anyone over, chuckle, chuckle, and they were actually pretty well-behaved, you could ask Jane. He went on to say that the family had gone off in their car sometime yesterday and had come back around dinner time, but he didn't know exact times. After dinner, he and Jane had followed their usual routine of sitting by a fire for a while until Jane went to bed. He didn't know that time either, nor did he know when he went to bed. "When the fire died down," he said with a shrug. He was pretty sure that the man was still up at the time. So were others, and here he turned to look the camp over. "The scouts were up, so was the girl and her boyfriend. Maybe others, I don't know."

Then, he told about trying to sleep through the storm, and the way he told it, he never left the tent, even though he'd gotten up a couple times to pee, a fact he hadn't thought about until now. He left it out of his story because, for one thing, he didn't want to admit that he peed just over there by that tree as if that were the big crime here, and for another thing, he didn't want to describe how he staggered around in the dark as if he were drunk. It was something that had been happening for a while now. His balance after dark was awful and seemed like a weakness. It was also embarrassing. So he stuck to the difficulty of sleeping in a tent, on the ground, through a storm, and he finished by saying, "You know how it is."

Jarrett said, "No. I don't camp."

"Good call," Connie said.

Jarrett asked, "What? You don't like it?"

"Jane likes it," Connie said. "She likes hiking, fishing. I could put an air freshener in my truck and get all the piney woods I need."

Which wasn't true, and Connie knew it even as he spoke, and he intended to laugh it off and admit that camping was fine, it had just been a long weekend, but Jarrett nodded and said, "Go on," and it seemed like an interruption which bothered Connie, but he went on as instructed. He described the morning, how he and Jane—mostly Jane—got ready to go, how he planned to get a sausage and egg burrito down in Pecos, and how he sat for a while to drink some coffee and pray, leaving out that Jane had advised him not to drink the coffee because he'd have to pee before they got to town which put him in a mood which only made his praying more difficult. Here, he shrugged before he said, "I guess I dozed off for a bit," and then he described the screams and how he'd woken up, leaving out the drool and dropping things. He told how he'd gone to the tent where the girls were and how he'd found the body, but he made it sound as though he had marched boldly up to the tent. He didn't mention that the girls might've been playing a joke. Then, he shrugged again to punctuate the end of his tale, feeling proud of himself for a very good summation.

"Hmm," Jarrett said, and he looked around, disappointed. "So you didn't see anything," which irritated Connie who wanted to point out that he had said that very thing only moments ago, but before he had a chance to say anything, Jarrett turned, swung his legs out from under the table and stood up in a fluid motion that Connie envied.

Jarrett said, "Okay. You stay here. I want to talk to your wife."

And just like that, he left Connie behind.

Connie watched Jarrett walk away, feeling dismissed, tempted to follow Jarrett and tell him that he didn't want to stay put, that he wasn't some trained dog, but Connie was slow in extricating himself from the table, and before he could say anything, Jarrett had already reached Jane. So Connie, obeyed orders and stayed put.

The memory of the boy with the stick came to Connie's mind, the silent pleading, and Connie hoped to get Jane's attention so that he, too, could mouth a plea, but Jane, during her entire interrogation, didn't look his way but once.

She did however, wave her hands as she pointed out this and that around the campground. She was not usually so demonstrative when she talked, but her bandaged hands would bring her sympathy, Connie thought. She was not above that.

She pointed first to the scout camp, and Connie was sure she was saying how, yeah, Connie had gone after that boy this morning, and later, he'd squared off with the scout leader, and if Jane hadn't intervened there's no telling what might've happened.

She pointed down toward John Lee's camp, and sure, she told Jarrett how Connie and John Lee didn't get along well. Hell, Connie didn't get along well with anyone, really. Bossing everyone around.

She pointed to the dead man's camp, and it's likely she told Jarrett that Connie had complained about the girls on more than one occasion even though they really weren't all that loud. It was during this exchange that she made the eye contact with Connie, looking away when Jarrett asked her something.

Connie imagined that she said Connie had gotten up three or four times to pee during the night and was gone several minutes each time.

And no, she said, he likes coming up here. This is his favorite place. He doesn't try to enjoy it like he used to. Never goes with me on hikes or anything. He won't even go down to the outhouse. And when he sits down with his bible and rosary, well, he's asleep in a matter of minutes. He's like that at Mass, too, falling asleep right in the middle of Father's sermons. Granted, they're hard to follow some times, but still.

After a while of this, Connie turned away, looking at a pine cone, waiting for Jarrett to come back over because that's what always happens—the cops come back for a second interview to confront the suspect with things they've learned, things that contradict the first interview. It happened all the time on _Law and Order_.

Connie remembered a sermon he'd heard recently. The priest was explaining how Jesus talked about committing murder in your heart, how you're guilty just for thinking about it. Or being angry. He couldn't remember the exact wording, but that's what he remembered. If the priest was right, he thought, he was doomed. He hadn't actually thought of murder, but he'd had some angry thoughts. He tried to remember each of those thoughts from the last few days, but he was tired and the bench was uncomfortable, and he couldn't bring anything into focus. He no longer worried about what Jane was saying. Instead, he sat there staring at the pine cone and thinking about how badly he'd been behaving, and how it was the exact opposite of what he had planned. Funny how he'd thought of this trip as a chance to grow spiritually, and here he was tangled up in a murder. Not funny ha ha, of course.

The wood of the table was pressing on his back, so he tried a new position, putting his elbows on the table behind him, but this position was awkward and he became uncomfortable in a hurry, so he leaned forward and rested his elbows on his thighs, but this too became uncomfortable because his elbows were bony and the weight of them on his thighs became bothersome. He tried several other positions, but nothing worked. He turned and looked at his chair, wanting to go get it, but he remembered that he'd been told to stay.

He yawned and considered lying on the bench or even on the table top, but he couldn't imagine either position being comfortable, so he did neither.

Connie felt a sudden urge to have his bible and his rosary, and he looked toward his truck and considered going for them, but then he thought, what did he want them for now? Was he really intending to pray? Or did he just want them in his hands when Jarrett came back?

What Connie thought Jane had said was not what she actually said. Her interrogation started with Jarrett asking again what happened to her hands. Jane pointed over at the girls who were at the scout camp just then, telling Jarrett how they'd taken off on their own, spooking some people including John Lee over there. She explained that she went down toward the bridge looking for them, and she ended up falling on the road there, in a rut.

"You fell down?" Jarrett asked.

"Yeah," Jane said. "We covered this already."

Jarrett thought for a moment, and Jane wondered if he remembered asking about her injuries earlier, but then she remembered she'd been snippy earlier for which she felt guilty, and then she thought that maybe he was just asking again because he wanted to ask while Connie was not in earshot, and she cast a glance in his direction, but only held his gaze for a second before she turned her attention back to Jarrett.

"I twisted my ankle in a rut. On the road." And she pointed again in that direction.

"When did this happen?" Jarrett asked.

"About an hour ago maybe. I don't know what time, exactly."

"Your husband doesn't know times either. When he went to bed. When the—dead man went to bed."

Jane looked over at the dead man's camp, at the tent this time, avoiding eye contact with Connie, then looked up at Jarrett and said, "Well, we're camping. We come up here to get away. Relax. We don't look at our watches. And we're not much for telling time by the sun."

"But you can say that you and your husband were in your tent before the man went into his?"

"Yeah, I can definitely say that."

"And you stayed in the tent all night?"

"Yeah. Well, no. Connie gets up to pee. He's, you know, older. So he gets up to pee."

"How often?"

Jane bit her lip and looked past Jarrett toward Connie who was turned away by now, looking down at the ground, his elbows resting on his knees, and even though she was seeing him from the side, he looked sad, beaten, and he inhaled just then, and she wondered if he was struggling, and a sense of guilt came upon her. She looked up at Jarrett, tempted to lie, a white lie. What did it matter?

She said, "I don't know. Twice, maybe. Three. I was sleeping."

She regretted saying that because it wasn't true. How would she know how many times he'd gotten up if she were sleeping? And she felt guilty about pretending to be sleeping when Connie'd come back into the tent, drenched. She thought about that and shook her head at the thought, but then Jarrett said, "You were sleeping?"

"Yeah. Off and on. So maybe it was five or ten times."

Jarrett nodded. He looked at her bandages as if they indicated something other than what Jane had described. And Jane waited for him to say something, but he didn't, not for a while, not until he said, "Okay. Thanks. I might be back."

"Well, I might be here," Jane said, and she regretted the wording and the tone, but it didn't register with Jarrett. He went across the road toward the scout camp.

Jane watched as he crossed the road and approached the girls, and then she wondered what the girls would say. She remembered some of the things she'd thought that day, and tried to recall which words had actually escaped her lips. As she examined her conscience, she stared into the ashes of the fire pit.

Just then, the truck that had gone to the bridge returned, pulling right up to the dead man's camp. The campers got out of the cab and drifted away from the truck as if surrendering it to the occupants of the bed, two men and a lady who all wore similar clothing, jeans and black tee shirts with SMCSD in white lettering on the back. Connie puzzled over the lettering. He kept getting stuck on St. Mary's for the SM and school district for the SD, neither of which made sense. The C could be Crime.

The three hopped out of the back of the truck and started unloading trunks and other gear and, from all of his TV watching, Connie deduced that these were CSI people, and so he further deduced that the CS on the tee shirts was the same as in CSI, and he henceforth ignored the actual lettering and went with CSI.

Once they'd gotten all of their stuff out, one of the guys started unrolling crime scene tape. He wrapped the tape around the mirror of the truck he'd just ridden in and then went to Connie's truck, the next closest thing, wrapping tape around its mirror. Connie started to speak a feeble protest, raising his hand as if to get attention, but the CSI guy had already moved on, past Connie without acknowledging him as if Connie were no different from the table or the tent. He made his way around the campsite, using trees and the dead man's car, working his way back to the truck where he'd started. The campsite became a crime scene with Connie included.

Connie looked over at Jane. She returned his look with a slight shake of her head, but for once, Connie didn't know what the shake meant.

Connie went to the edge of the tape and stopped, well-trained as he was. He looked for Jarrett, intending to ask for permission to leave the crime scene, but Jarrett was across the road. He considered yelling, but before he could do so, Jane called to him.

"What're you doing? Come over here."

It sounded like, _come, boy,_ and Connie was about to say that he'd been told to stay, but that sounded stupid, so he bent down and crossed under the tape.

He sat in his chair which wasn't as comfortable as his recliner at home, but it beat the bench on a picnic table, and he was about to say as much, but Jenny came back just then with a bottle of pills. She shook out a couple of them and handed them to Jane.

"These should ease the pain. I don't have anything stronger."

Jane took the pills and washed them down with water from one of the bottles that Justin had brought over earlier, and then Jenny left without so much as a glance at Connie. For a second or two, he wondered about her attitude toward him, but then he turned his attention to Jane.

She looked so pathetic what with her leg up and the bandages on her knees and hands, and he wanted to say something comforting, but he remembered how she'd squealed so loudly when he'd tried to help earlier, and he remembered all of the things that he had imagined her saying to Jarrett, and he lost his sympathy. He turned his attention to the crime scene.

The CSI guys were moving around the dead man's campsite, setting up lights and taking pictures, and when Connie noticed the lights, he looked up and noticed that the daylight in the valley was fading. The gal was kneeling in front of the tent, the flaps open.

_Join the club, honey,_ Connie thought with a chuckle.

"What did he ask you?" Jane said.

Connie recounted his conversation with Jarrett.

"I said I never left the tent, but I guess I lied about that. I forgot about getting up to pee. I should probably mention that to him."

"He knows."

Connie just nodded. He wanted to remind Jane that he hadn't mentioned her name when Jarrett had asked about who had gone into the tent, but he let it go. He looked back into the dead man's camp, at the pine cone that he had been staring at, and he rehashed some of the thoughts that he had had there, and without any preface he asked, "Do you think I did it?"

She turned to him—without wincing, he noticed—and furrowed her eyebrows.

"Are you serious?" she asked.

"Yes, I'm serious."

"Of course not. Why would you ask that?"

He wanted to enumerate the ways she had demonstrated a low opinion of him over the last few days, as if they were proof that she thought of him as a guy who could shove a fishing knife into a guy's chest, but something the CSI people did distracted her, and she looked over at them. He assumed that their conversation was over, that she had answered his question and that was that, and for a few minutes they watched the action as if they were watching their TV, but then she said, "You're not up to the kind of effort it would take."

That stung, and it sounded like a joke, but he couldn't tell for sure. It was a defense, he supposed, but not what he wanted to hear. There were layers to what she'd said that he couldn't peel away just then.

She said, "I'm sorry. Bad joke." They sat for a moment or two looking at each other, and if they'd been back in Albuquerque, there might have been enough light to see into each other's eyes, and maybe he would have seen enough to understand what she meant, but here in the fading light, Connie couldn't see much of anything, and so he read more into it.

Finally Jane said, "Really bad. I'm sorry."

Her apology sounded sincere. But given all that had happened that day, Connie left Jane hanging, not acknowledging her apology, staring down at the fire pit even though he hadn't built a fire yet, trying to understand her joke in the context of his question, in the context of the circumstances, in the context of his behavior, in the context of his own need to apologize.

"Connie," Jane said, almost in a whisper. He looked at her, glad for the darkness, glad that she couldn't read his expression, but just then the CSI people turned on a light so bright that when it first shone in their direction Jane shut her eyes and lifted a hand to block it, and Connie turned slightly to look toward the dead man's camp. The light was swung away quickly as the CSI people repositioned it, and normally, it was the kind of thing which Connie would continue to watch, being attracted to bright lights and other people working, but this time he turned back to Jane, because her whisper was more compelling then the light. He repositioned himself in his chair so that his whole body was turned toward her, not just his head. And now, because the light was casting enough of a glow on Jane's face, what he saw made him gasp. Jane's face was lit to reveal an image of beauty that Connie loved. She was an older woman, sure, with some wrinkles and weathering, but still possessed of the beauty that had made him nervous in other times, with eyes that shone, and for a moment it was as if she was thirty years younger. But just that quickly, maybe because of some movement of the lights, her eyes dimmed. The dimming may have been due to the movement of the CSI lights, but no, Connie was sure that it was due to something he had done, something here today, or yesterday, or recently back in Albuquerque.

Or worse, he knew, there had been a steady dimming that had started some time ago He couldn't pinpoint a date or event. Many came to mind, but after the first several, his mind became crowded with the events of the weekend, today especially.

He turned again in his seat, preparing to issue his own apologies, to stop the dimming before the light went out forever, and he began by reaching out to take her hand, but she said, "No," and pulled the hand away, and he remembered that it was bandaged. The action spoiled the mood somewhat, but he recovered and was about to try again when he was interrupted by activity on the road, and he turned to see the latest developments.

There were two ladies coming up the road.

"Who are they?" Connie asked, and Jane, who had been expecting something meaningful from Connie made a face and turned to see what he was asking about.

"I don't know," she said. "I can guess."

But she didn't elaborate, so Connie asked, "Well. What's your guess?"

"I think they're social workers. Someone would have to come for them."

"Hmm," Connie said, and he thought about it for a while as he watched the women introduce themselves to the girls. Jarrett had stepped back away from the table and was talking to the scout leader. They stood by the fire pit where the scout leader had been supervising some of the boys in the building of a fire.

Connie looked down the road toward the far end of camp and saw the light from lanterns, but no other fires.

One of the ladies got up from the table and spoke to Jarrett who then led the lady across the road and approached Connie and Jane.

"We need to get some things," he said.

"What things?" Jane asked.

"For the girls."

"What things?" Jane asked again. "And why're you asking me?"

"You have the keys to the car."

"No. I gave them back to the older one. Joni."

"She says you have them."

"Well, I don't."

Jarrett gave her a look as if he were trying to decide what Jane was up to, and he looked, too, at her bandages, and he considered his next move, but before he could act, Ricki appeared with the keys in her hand.

"Joni had them," she said, and she held the keys toward Jane.

But Jarrett said, "Here. Give them," and he reached down and took the keys from Ricki who looked at Jane as if to ask if that were okay. Jane nodded at Ricki, then looked up at Jarrett, but he had already turned to hand the keys off to the lady. She in turn, took Ricki by the hand and headed toward the car inside the crime scene. When they got to the tape, the lady lifted it and started under it, but one of the crime scene guys yelled at them.

"Hey! We aren't done here yet."

His voice was loud, well above what would be accepted in normal campground etiquette.

The lady was a bit shaken and looked at Jarrett as if to say, _I thought you were in charge_. He hurried over to her and then ushered her and Ricki to the scout camp.

Connie laughed and looked at Jane who was watching the trio walk away without any share of Connie's humor.

She shook her head slightly and mumbled something.

"What?" Connie asked. And when Jane just shook off his question, Connie assumed she was passing judgement on Jarrett. "Give him a break. It's his first murder."

Jane nodded and mumbled something else, and she continued to watch what was happening with the girls at the scout camp while Connie went back to watching the CSI action.

They sat in their lawn chairs watching the camp and all that was going on, and if all you had to go on was that—that they were in their lawn chairs—you and I might think that this was just another night in camp. But there were all the things that made this night different. Bandages on Jane's hands and knees, the bright lights in the dead man's tent, the dead man and the dead man's children, a deputy sheriff wandering around asking questions. Connie mostly watched the CSI action in the dead man's camp although he turned his head now and then to find Jarrett and keep up with Jarrett's progress. Jane watched the dead man's camp, too, but not as much as Connie. Mostly, she watched the two girls and the social workers at the scout camp. The girls seemed to be in a deep conversation with the social workers which made her jealous which made her frown which made her take a deep breath and begin the utterance of her prayer which she abandoned after the first word.

After a while, she said, "We're walking out of here in the morning if that bridge isn't fixed."

Connie looked at her and then at her ankle, and then he followed her gaze across the way, trying to figure out what had prompted her comment, but he didn't understand what she was going through, so he started with "Hmm." But then he said, "Yeah. Okay. We can stop for a burrito, though, right?"

He looked again at the scout camp, at the girls and the social workers, and he was trying to understand.

And then, to further confuse things, Jane said, "I doubt they make a TV show about him and his sleuthing."

Connie followed her gaze again, this time to where Jarrett was talking to the campers that Connie had met on the trail earlier. Connie tried to figure what Jane meant this time.

"He's doing his best. I guess. We haven't seen a show with a murder in a campground. This could be a whole new thing. CSI New Mexico."

Jane snorted.

"I won't watch."

"Even if Meryl Streep plays you?"

She laughed and said, "Even if Daniel Day-Lewis plays you."

It was at this point that Jarrett left the two campers and approached the Justin-Jenny camp. As he did so, Justin and Jenny stood up as if they'd been waiting their turn. Jenny, side-lit by the lights of the CSI, looked up at Justin and gave him a slight nod, then moved away from him. Turning to Jarrett, she pointed to their truck, a move that confused Jarrett for a moment. He followed her lead and went to the truck. She went around to the passenger side of the truck which confused him again, but when he saw Jenny getting into the truck, he once again followed her lead and got in the driver side. They sat there, facing the lights at the dead man's camp, well-illuminated for Connie and Jane to see.

Jenny stared straight ahead as she began talking, never taking her eyes off of the orange tent, and Jarrett, for his part, turned to look at her as she talked, never once saying a word, and it occurred to Connie and Jane, experts in procedure because of their years of TV watching, that he had not advised Jenny of her right to be quiet.

Justin stood the entire time, watching the two people in his truck, and although he was far enough away that it was hard to tell for sure, it looked as though there were tears in his eyes.

Jenny talked for twenty minutes. There were no tears in her eyes. When she finished, Jarrett finally said something, and she nodded, and she continued to stare straight ahead, until Jarrett opened the door of the cab and stepped out.

He took a deep breath, looked up to Justin for a moment, and then reached up and turned on his shoulder mic, said something and waited for a reply. While he was talking, Jenny came around to his side of the truck and waited for him to finish on the mic. He nodded to something she said, and she went up to Justin and gave him a hug. While Jenny was with Justin, Jarrett went to the dead man's camp and talked to one of the CSI guys, talking in a low voice so as not to be heard by any of the campers. The CSI guy looked over at Jenny, thought for a minute, then went back to work while Jarrett returned to the Justin-Jenny camp. Justin asked something and pointed to his truck, and Jarrett thought for a second, but then he shook his head no and held up his hands. Then Jarrett led Jenny down the road.

"What the?" Connie said. "What'd I miss?" This was a question he asked at home after he had dozed off during TV shows only to wake up just as the murderer was being arrested.

Jane didn't answer. At home, she ignored Connie's question because she'd grown tired of recapping entire shows to bring him up to speed, but she ignored it here because she knew he hadn't dozed off, that they'd seen the same thing, that she was just as surprised as he was.

She said, "I did not see that coming."

They looked at Justin who watched as Jenny and Jarrett rounded the bend at the bottom of the campground, the beam of white light from Jarrett's flashlight bouncing around in the darkness. When the light disappeared, they looked for Justin, but he had gone into his tent.

After a while, Jane said, "I need to pee."

Connie's first thought was, _So? Go._ But then he remembered her injuries, and he leaned forward with a groan and got himself up. He took a moment to access his breathing status and, once he decided it was adequate, he said, "They've got their tape on my truck," he said.

"I can walk," she said. "Just help me up."

She lifted her leg off the cooler and set it down, wincing. Then she started scooting forward on the chair as she readied herself for the big effort to stand.

"No, Jane. Wait. You can't walk that far. Just give me a sec."

And he went to his truck and around to the passenger side where the crime scene tape was wrapped around his mirror. He unwrapped it and let it fall, ignoring the look that one of the CSI guys gave him. Then he rushed back to Jane who was trying to get to her feet by herself.

"I'm all right," she said, but she accepted Connie's help as he pulled her to her feet. He braced himself for howls, but all she did was wince whenever she put weight on the injured foot.

Half way to the truck, he asked, "You doing okay?"

"No. But I have to go."

During the ride to the outhouse, he said, "Those pills doing anything?"

She said, "Mmm. Not that I'm noticing. Maybe it's too soon."

He wanted to point out that she wasn't howling, so they must be doing some good, but he opted not to.

At the outhouse, he waited outside for her.

He looked back up the road toward the lights of the dead man's camp, never having seen the like. Between himself and the camp there were now several campfires lit, and he wondered how much wood he had left. Probably none, but he couldn't recall. Near the outhouse, there was a pile of free wood that the park service provided so people wouldn't be cutting down good trees, and Connie took the opportunity to grab a few logs while he was waiting although even as he was doing so he wondered if he was going to go through the bother of lighting a fire tonight.

Connie wondered what time it was, and he thought about how he'd told Jarrett earlier that he didn't know times in the campground. And thinking about the time reminded him that if they had gotten out of here as planned, their Father's Day celebration would be winding down about this time. He turned and looked off in the direction of home.

Inside the outhouse, Jane heard the sound of the logs that Connie tossed into the back of the truck, and for a very short instant, the sound distracted her from the suffocating stench that had stung her nose and made her gag when she had first entered. She had closed the door on the light, leaving her to grope around blindly, trying not to touch any infested, infected surface, as she pulled down her pants and squatted over the opening until the pain in her ankle became too much to bear and she finally put her cheeks on the toilet seat, cringing when she felt the cold of someone else's urine. Something about the sound of those logs struck a note that brought all of the discord of the day into harmony as if the Holy Spirit had finally decided to visit her here of all places. But Jane was so damn tired, and the stench was so bad that she couldn't make any sense of it. The visit came and went in flash.

She peed, and stood up, wiping the backs of her cheeks and legs, cringing again, and lifted her hand to open the door.

But no.

She lingered.

Afraid that if she stepped outside where the piney woods and the cool breezes were she'd lose whatever epiphanic insight she had just experienced, but she knew then that she _was_ going to lose it, she could not do otherwise on this particular day, and that realization brought her to tears. And not simply tears, but heaving, wracking sobs that washed down like last night's rain. She stood there, leaning on the door jamb, on one leg, shaking and sobbing, not answering Connie when he asked if she were all right, thinking she ought to say, _No_ , _I'm not all right_ , but then, when she had cried herself all out, she mumbled that yeah, she was fine.

And when she stepped out into the odd light, of course he was right there, her scrawny rooster of a husband, holding out his hand for her.

He saw the tears.

"What? What?"

She ignored his hand and went right for a hug, wrapping her arms around his neck, crushing his head against hers, squeezing until it was too much for him and the pain in her ankle forced her to let go. But before he got out of her grasp, she said, "I'm sorry, Connie. I'm really sorry."

"Huh? For what?"

"I don't know. Just—get me in the truck. This thing is killing me."

Once in the truck, away from the stench of the outhouse and her latest encounter with the Holy Spirit, Jane hoped that Connie would not ask for an explanation, and it did seem as though it wasn't his highest priority because when he got back into his side of the cab, he reached for the key.

"No, wait," she said.

He looked at her, confused, looking as if he were expecting a scolding instead of the explanation.

She said, "You don't have to make a fire," which seemed odd, and Connie started to say something, but she ignored him and said, "I shouldn't have brought you here, Connie. I shouldn't be doubting you—your holiness, your— I'm in denial. I want to fix you. But—"

The tears started up again. Tears without sobs. Just enough to wet her eyes.

"Aw, Jane. No. I—uh. Don't. Don't. Don't."

And with each _don't_ he slid closer to her. He took her hand, but realized that it was bandaged and so let it go. He put his arm around her neck and pulled her toward him.

"Jane. Jane. It's all right. Shh."

Eventually, their positions grew awkward, so Connie moved away. He stopped about midway back to his driver's position and took a breath as if in preparation for a response, but Jane said, "Connie, just take me back. Okay? I'm exhausted."

Relieved, he moved behind the wheel and started the engine, turned the truck around and drove back to their camp.

When he helped her out of the truck, they went straight for the tent.

"Are you gonna brush your teeth?" he asked.

"No. I'm so gross anyway. What difference does it make?"

He thought about making some joke about the matter, something sexual maybe, but he didn't. He just chuckled.

"What're you laughing at? You're gross, too" she said.

"The hell I am. I am quite spiffy."

She crawled into the tent. He held back the flaps for her so she'd have some light as she settled underneath the comforter.

"Can I get you anything?"

"We don't have anything, Connie."

"Touché. Good night."

She mumbled something, but she was in the tent and Connie was not, so he didn't hear clearly. It sounded like, _I'm so tired_ , but it could have been anything. Maybe, _I love you, Connie_.

He zipped up the flap.

"I love you, too," he said.

Connie debated whether he should start a fire. What Jane had said confused him, and he stood by the fire pit trying to decide. He didn't need a fire for light what with the crime scene lighting. And if he made one, he'd have to tend it until it burned out, and he wasn't sure how long he was going to be up. He, too, had had a tiring day. There were a couple of small logs near his fire pit along with the logs in his truck, and he calculated how long they'd all burn, but then he went back to wondering why Jane didn't want a fire. She'd been so emotional. Why would a fire, something he did almost every night, matter?

Just then, a chilly breeze blew through the campground, the first breeze that he'd noticed or paid attention to in a while, and it made him think that he could use a fire for warmth.

"That all you got?" he heard, and he turned to see John Lee standing there.

"Shh! Geeze!" Connie said, and he turned to look at his tent as if he could see Jane inside. "I told you not to sneak up on me. And hold it down."

John Lee looked at the tent and nodded.

"Sorry," he said, and his voice sounded softer than it had all day.

Then he nodded at the logs beside the pit and said, "I've got plenty."

"No," Connie said. "There's more in the truck."

"You want me to do it?"

Of course Connie didn't want John Lee to do it, but something—maybe it was the softer voice, or the fact that John Lee was even offering, or the fact that he'd just been the recipient of an apology he didn't fully understand—something made him say, "Yeah, okay."

John Lee got to work, working quickly and efficiently, starting first with one of the fire starters that Connie kept next to pit. When he took one out of the package, John Lee looked at Connie and said, "Really? You're so old school, I'd figure you for rubbing two sticks together."

By this time, Connie was sitting and watching although he couldn't remember the act of sitting. What John Lee said struck a nerve, just as he'd been doing all day, and Connie regretted letting him take over the fire, but then John Lee said, "Just kidding. I use them all the time." The softer voice caused Connie to sit in silence.

John Lee built a log cabin shape for his fire whereas Connie was a teepee-shaped guy. But Connie wasn't doing the work, and he was tired of trying to control things, so he just watched. John Lee pulled out a lighter and put a flame to the fire starter.

He stood up as the flames from the starter were licking the smaller logs. He said, "I'll get more," and before Connie could say anything, he was off.

When he came back, he set the fresh supply off to the side, and then stood back to look at his handiwork.

"Thanks," Connie said.

And then it got awkward. The man had just built him a fire and had given him a supply of wood, but Connie wanted him to leave.

Before he had a chance to say anything, though, John Lee turned and said, "I came to apologize."

The crime scene lights were shining on the side of John Lee's face at an angle, and they lit his eyes in such a way that they didn't look like the same eyes that Connie had seen throughout the day, beady eyes partially hidden under the visor of his trucker's cap with the mud flap girl although from this angle Connie couldn't see the girl. This was an entirely different guy, transformed, and Connie was just as dumb as when Jane had apologized.

A piece of bark popped in the fire and distracted Connie. He looked at the fire, but found nothing helpful there, so he looked back up at John Lee, not liking the difference in positions, wanting to stand to even things out.

He said, "Uh," he said. "Apologize?"

"I know how I am," John Lee said. "And I know I bothered you today. I'm sorry."

_No! No, no, no!_ Connie thought.

Twice in a matter of minutes someone had apologized to him when he should be the one going around the camp apologizing. He looked past John Lee and around the camp, thinking about the people he had encountered that day and all the things he had done or said. He twisted around in his chair and looked at his tent where Jane was probably already asleep.

No, no, no.

He shook his head, and maybe John Lee thought that Connie was shaking off the apology because he said, "No, really, I'm sorry."

Who was this guy?

Connie looked up at John Lee, trying to think of what to say, but once again, John Lee beat him to it.

"May I sit?"

"Huh?" Connie said. "Oh yeah. Of course. Please."

John Lee sat down in Jane's chair, and for a while, he just looked into the fire, the light from which flickered in his eyes.

Connie, for some of that time, stared at John Lee, but then realized that his staring was weird and rude. When he looked away, he noticed that the bag of ice was still lying beside the cooler from when he'd taken Jane to the outhouse. He got up and put it in the cooler. After he sat back down, he said, "I—uh. You don't need to apologize, John Lee."

"That's for me to say," John Lee said. "I bothered you, didn't I?"

"Well, yeah, but I'm easily bothered lately—"

"So, I owe you an apology."

"Okay," Connie said. "I suppose I owe you one then."

He knew that was lame.

"No, really. No supposing. I really do owe you one. I'm sorry."

Connie turned toward his tent again and wondered if he should wake Jane and apologize to her. Or get her to come out and be a witness to what was happening. Then he looked over at the scout camp and considered going over there. He imagined himself going from campsite to campsite, but as he was looking around, he realized he was ignoring John Lee, a guest in his campsite, and so he turned his attention toward John Lee, but just as he was turning, there was a sudden and shocking movement in the deadman's campsite: One of the crime scene investigators had taken a utility knife and sliced the tent along the top and down the back, pulling the fabric back, exposing the man to the evening chill and all of the bright lights, depriving him of all the privacy that the tent had provided. The noise of voices that Connie had barely noticed stopped then, and he turned to see that the scouts and the girls and the leader and the ladies were watching. He saw, too, that all of the other campers on down the road were looking up toward what used to be an orange tent, but was now just fabric on the ground. The dead guy with a knife in his chest commanded their full attention.

The ladies tried to block the view of the girls who said something that Connie couldn't make out, something that sounded like protest.

"Wow," Connie said. "I'm glad Jane's not here to see this."

And he realized that he was sharing a moment with John Lee. Of all people. Connie stole a glance at John Lee and noticed that his eyes were closed just then, but his lips were moving as if in silent prayer. Connie thought that he, too, should pray. Or something. He felt an urge to make the sign of the cross, but decided that he'd be doing it for show, so he did nothing.

When John Lee opened his eyes, Connie watched him for a moment more, then turned his attention back to the scene where one of the forensic guys was moving around to the side of the body, but he couldn't help thinking about John Lee's questions and comments earlier in the day, the ones about his rosary and bible.

Then he turned and looked into the fire, a place where he spent a great deal of time over the years, a place of comfort.

He was moved to say, "I came up here hoping to pray."

John Lee turned to him, thought for a moment, and asked, "What's that mean? 'Hoping to pray'?"

It was the sort of thing that would have been annoying earlier in the day, but was not annoying now in the softer tone of voice.

"I've been lost lately," Connie said.

That wasn't enough, he knew, so he added, "I thought—I don't know. This place. I thought it could be—I don't know."

Connie regretted opening his mouth.

"Maybe all them beads is too much," John Lee said. "I don't get them. The bible don't say nothing about beads. That's just babbling like the pagans."

Connie reacted, leaning forward, intending to defend his faith. He half-expected to hear his name called out from inside the tent urging him to do just that. But there came no sound from behind, and he was left to fend for himself, and he could think of no words to say. In fact, when he gave a second thought to what John Lee had said, he found himself in agreement. The bit about babbling like the pagans sounded familiar, and not only familiar, but something that had meant something to him when he had read it. Being Catholic, he couldn't remember the book or the chapter or the verse, and he thought about asking John Lee what he was referring to, but Connie stopped himself. How could he ask such a question of a guy with a trucker's cap that had the silhouette of a naked lady on it?

And just then, as if sensing Connie's discomfort, John Lee leaned forward, mimicking Connie's posture. He turned toward Connie and said, "I don't know about them beads, but what you said about being lost? Here's what I think.

"How much of that book you read?" and he nodded in the direction of Connie's truck, somehow knowing that that's where Connie's bible was. "You ever read Kings? About Elijah?"

Connie didn't answer. Again, he couldn't identify chapter or verse, and although he'd heard of the book of Kings and of Elijah, he was mostly ignorant and couldn't speak of either with authority.

John Lee pushed his cap back sightly, the first time that day that Connie had noticed anything of the sort, and the change reinforced the idea that this was a different person beside him.

John Lee continued: "On Horeb—that's Sinai—God tells Elijah to go out from a cave because the Lord would be passing by. There was a powerful wind that tore the mountains apart. Shattered rocks. But God was not in the wind. God was not in a earthquake. God was not in fire. God was in a whisper."

John Lee leaned back in his chair, looked toward the action at the dead man's camp as if he were done with Connie. But after a long pause, John Lee said, "I seen you looking up at the sky today. Several times."

And then John Lee looked away, not expecting a reply, as if he'd said what he'd come to say and was finished.

Connie sat back in his chair, looking down into the fire, looking at nothing in particular, thinking about what John Lee had said, and then re-thinking the words, remembering times during the day when he'd looked heavenward and why, trying to recall if John Lee had been watching, but he was unable to come up with anything but negative memories of John Lee and couldn't think of any time when John Lee might've seen him looking heavenward. But mostly, for quite some time, Connie thought about the whisper.

Connie looked over to where John Lee had been sitting, intending to thank him, intending to say that he was glad to have met him. But John Lee was gone. Connie, for the length of time it takes a spark to pop in the fire, wondered if he'd dozed off, and then chuckled because he knew that, no, he hadn't dozed, and he didn't bother looking for where John Lee had gone.

Another breeze blew through the valley just then, through the spaces between the embers which throbbed and pulsated, orange and black, living and dying, throwing off sparks and the occasional flicker of flame.

Connie breathed deeply of the breeze, a lungful of clean, piney air with a hint of wood smoke. He chuckled again and mumbled something that Jane did not hear, something that no one in the campground heard, something you and I will never know, something some angel took back to God.

