Meeker, Colorado
Meeker, Colorado stirred and yawned and watched the black sky turn salmon. So did Dorothy, in her room in the little house off Kanan Dume Road. The last she heard from her attorney in Houston, nothing had been resolved. The judge was still in a coma and the court...
Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas, Nevada lived up to its billing. Excesses invariably outdid themselves. The bitter wind blowing down from the Great Basin never failed to whip the Strip. She got a job at the Flamingo emptying slot machines. Her shift started at three in the morning. She...
Forks, Washington
Forks, Washington intrigued them all. The wind stirred up just before daybreak. They all knew the big gusts were coming. This didn’t make it any easier. Something Epictetus handed down about our actions determined by our impressions. That was the tough part, the...
Oakridge, Oregon
Oakridge, Oregon danced through the night, lost in festivities so unlikely the mountain lions stayed up late to watch. During their first week hiding out on Kanan Dume Road, if there had been a contest for most composed fugitive, Cecile would have captured every vote....
Monticello, Utah
Monticello, Utah meanders with the charm of an eccentric explorer. They’re different now, the explorers in Monticello, Utah and everywhere else. Lewis and Clark, Carson and Fremont, they leave stirring legacies but not many descendants. Today’s explorers rarely take...
Copeland, Idaho
Copeland, Idaho never knew why. Cecile was stumped. She struggled to understand why she hadn’t been able to turn them against each other, why one brother hadn’t killed the other. This was hardly a longshot. Brothers had been killing each other forever. If Romulus...
Mancos, Colorado
Mancos, Colorado stacked cordwood and readied for winter. Some of the old men around Montezuma County began to put on extra layers of anger, determined to stay warm. They felt the chill of the change. They reeled off all the ways they were boxed in and how their...
Clovis, New Mexico
Clovis, New Mexico had a hunch something was amiss. Too many old men awash in too much anger. These men couldn’t have cared less about fracking. Ask why, and they would tell you they wouldn’t be around to pay the price of all the poisoning. What mattered right now...
Littlefield, Arizona
Littlefield, Arizona showed up late for work. Cecile knew more men would be sent to kill her. They would drift in on the same poisoned wind that blew through Littlefield, Arizona and they would show up soon. The time between attacks was collapsing. At first, she...
Princeton, Oregon
Princeton, Oregon trembled. Evil was returning, racing back on a night train from Reno. Cecile pulled herself up over a boulder and went down the canyon toward Caroline’s house. Dim daybreak dropped vague shadows across the gray chaparral. She saw some of life’s...
Wolf Point, Montana
Wolf Point, Montana flung off tough questions. Cecile revisited her own nagging question. Was she doomed to plod through life as a solo act? This absence of clarity bothered her. Right now, to stay alive, she needed the safety that accompanied solitude. To take on...
Cordero, Nevada
Cordero, Nevada bent back in the desert’s ragged wind. Down in the Santa Monica Mountains, the two men Cecile watched coming up the canyon stopped and spoke to one another. They couldn’t have seen it coming and they couldn’t have done anything about it. When they fell...
Juan Bautista de Anza Park
Juan Bautista de Anza Park was empty. Later on, a few families would show up for lunch and the playground would laugh. For now it was quiet. The five of them sat at a picnic table. “What would Teddy do about these frackers?” Caroline asked no one in particular. ...
John Day, Oregon
John Day, Oregon declined the invitation. It was not a town to excessively mourn. In a tight canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains, the coyotes were now quiet. Cecile lost sight of the two assassins. Their track bent them away from her. She heard them scuff through...
Tucumcari, New Mexico
Tucumcari, New Mexico treasures all those blue mornings when everything glistens. And the town still sifts through a trove of fine memories, even if a few have gone blurry. The old Best Western Motel, the one they tore down back in the eighties, what a place, those...
The Desert Coyote
The Desert Coyote can be tough to distinguish from the darker skinned mountain coyote. Cecile wasn’t sure which she heard. Their sudden outburst of staccato yips slashed through the last of the evening darkness. A soft breeze fluttered. The coyotes’ quarrel in the...
On Melrose Avenue
On Melrose Avenue, east of the Hollywood Freeway, Nick pulled into a Mobil station. The silver Nissan Pathfinder he was looking for was parked by the air hose. He slid in beside it and got out of his car. The man in the Pathfinder joined him and they walked across...
Clives Corners, New Mexico
Clives Corners, New Mexico shook off a century of ingrained resentments. Dorothy decided to step into a life, at least for a while, where precision didn’t matter. She wanted her usual attention to detail deliberately displaced. This focus was so extreme she was able...
