Colville, Washington
Colville, Washington takes its time. There is no hurry, no need to do much of anything. Well to the south, in the living room of a small house off Kanan Dume Road, five freshly minted fugitives explore ways to weave their disparate agendas together. Dorothy, the...
Massadona, Colorado
Massadona, Colorado dreams of a time when explorers pushed through, when flinty voices of frontiersmen floated through the blue air. In the house off Kanan Dume Road, the five of them prepared an impromptu meal of Rao’s Homemade Marinara Sauce, farfalle and leftover...
Santee, California
Santee, California was invisible to Sarah, not even a blur. She could have been anywhere that morning, stepping through thoughts so intense she was oblivious to her surroundings. She wanted to stop thinking about her mother but couldn’t. Somehow a dam had burst. And...
Chula Vista, California
Chula Vista, California glowered on him with unmistakable disdain. The stout man in the salmon sweater six putted the eighteenth green. This tragedy was amplified given that it was committed before five men he vaguely knew, wanted to know better and hoped to do...
On Hilgard Avenue
On Hilgard Avenue he walked alone past low-slung apartment buildings and thought about the old days, what his mother had told him. The constant intensity of the times eluded him. He couldn’t grasp what it would have been like to live with the knowledge an atomic bomb...
The Color Of The Desert
The color of the desert, she knew, didn’t sit well with many people. Often they saw no color. There was only an annoying absence of color. So what they saw, or failed to see, pushed them harder into the harshness of the land. The jagged and brittle Mojave offered...
Agua Caliente, Arizona
Agua Caliente, Arizona heard disturbing notes of a distant song drift up from Gila Bend. If the hotel’s restaurant manager had killed the woman with black hair in the long white dress like he was supposed to, his own life would have been spared. Now she was gone...
Gila Bend, Arizona
Gila Bend, Arizona sang along with the dry wind. Even people driving through town with their windows down heard the crooning, the final foul notes of a mournful stanza. In Bel Air, police cordoned off the crime scene. Their yellow tape worked like a morbid magnet for...
Chapparal
Chapparal, so dense in places you couldn’t make your way through it, surrounded their little house off Kanan Dume Road. Cecile and Caroline were out back smoking Marlboros. “The longer you look at it the more patterns you see,” said Cecile. “And the colors,” said...
Teddy Roosevelt Left The Train
Teddy Roosevelt left the train in Gardiner, Montana on a spring day in 1903. The President was enroute to Yellowstone to visit the park with his friend John Burroughs. Later on, they took a picture of him standing in front of a tent. His right hand is stuffed into a...
Buchanan, Oregon
Buchanan, Oregon didn’t see many rockhounds showing up anymore. Coveted thundereggs they sought were gone. Nobody in town knew much about what had happened to them. Caroline realized she didn’t know much about Cecile or the reasons why she was on the run from the...
The Eucalyptus Tree Along Bel Air Road
The eucalyptus tree along Bel Air Road flutters in the soft wind that curls down from the hills. This is a modest tree. A slender eucalyptus, not nearly as theatrical as the ones found in Griffith Park. It stops short of drama. Branches don’t soar high enough for...
Above Coldwater Canyon
Above Coldwater Canyon, the fallen angel fluttered in the warmth of soft blue air. After an eternity looking over her city, guarding it long before the arrival of the Spaniards, she faltered and then fell. At the time, none of this registered with her. It was as if...
Ajo, Arizona
Ajo, Arizona gazes at the impatient stream of cars rolling through. Most head down to Rocky Point, Mexico. Just one pulled into the Belly Acres mobile home park where the parking lot was dusty and the landlord had some work to do. None of the people in Ajo, Arizona,...
Winthrop, Washington
Winthrop, Washington was where the call supposedly came in from. Miguel Gutierrez knew it was actually from his younger brother Balbino. He didn’t take the call. He hadn’t flown up to Vegas from Veracruz for the first round of Final Four college basketball games....
Mexican Hat, Utah
Mexican Hat, Utah figured the rest of the country could do as it pleased. People in town went about their business unperturbed. In their house off Kanan Dume Road, Nick removed his laptop from an unassuming backpack. With a hand from a few covert tools, he logged...
Malibu Rocky Oaks Estate Vineyards
Malibu Rocky Oaks Estate Vineyards was just a few miles away. Nick and Cecile drove over to learn what they could about the people at the winery and bought a case of the 2019 Pinot Noir. They hadn’t learned much. It seemed like a fine place. The man in the tasting...
Nightfall In The Santa Monica Mountains
Nightfall in the Santa Monica Mountains arrived unannounced. There was nothing orderly about the way light fell into their canyon, one moment blockaded, the next full bore. The patterns appeared so insistent and random they seemed to defy time. At the kitchen table...
