arrangement that called for more practical methods such as a key. Nevertheless, he liked to leave the door unlocked to remind him of the times she slipped in like a thief and stole his heart.
He opened the refrigerator and saw that she had put the remnants of the pasta salad on the top shelf. He pushed it aside and pulled out a beer from the back. He popped open the can and walked out to the deck. He leaned against the railing, thought for the thousandth time how far it would be to fall if the nails gave way, and eased his weight off it a little.
Sam looked out across the smooth water of Elliott Bay , blue from the blue sky above, and tracked the progress of a grain ship leaving the terminal. There were tugboats on all sides, nipping at the heels of the huge ship to get it pointed in the proper direction. They would break off when it reached the sea-lanes. Waves disturbed the shoreline when the ship passed. Farther off across the bay slouched the orange-colored cranes that lifted freight containers onto waiting ships or off them onto railroad cars. They looked like skeletons of prehistoric predators gobbling prey that stood passively below. Proudly, far in the distance, rose Mount Rainier , its snow-white cone refusing to acknowledge any tarnish from the late-summer smog. And he was here at the water’s edge, the smell of the sea in his nose, standing on the deck he had made in the house he had bought following a too short and too unhappy marriage during a fluke in a cruel economy.
He stepped back from the deck railing, aware that his work had held him up one more time. There was no reason to think that it would not. He had hammered in extra nails, all in perfect rows, and had pointed them in different directions so that they could not all give way at once. Still, one day a nail could break free in wood that had been weakened in a year of drought, and another could be damaged by rust, and an invisible worm could pe
net
rate into the heart of the wood. Nothing remained perfect. Someday, he knew, even his carefully built deck could fall.
Chapter 7
Katherine left the city early in the afternoon and drove east across the mountains on Highway 2 toward the wheat fields she still called home. She had not planned this trip, but when she woke in the morning and faced two empty days before her, she decided to go.
She had brought the graduate student once, a well-planned mistake not repeated. He made everyone uncomfortable. She remembered how clumsy he looked when he walked with her in the pastures because of the importance he placed upon avoiding cow dung. She could not remember him taking a full complete step during that entire shortened visit. On the way back to
Seattle
a day earlier than planned, he had wondered aloud how she had ever survived without trees, without people, without buildings. It had not bothered her so much that he did not see beauty where she saw it. It bothered her that he saw nothing. It was hard to imagine
Sam
worrying about a little manure on his shoes.
She warned herself about putting
Sam
in places where someone else had been. What did she know about him? He was pleasant to her, and proper, but that meant nothing. Although he was not married, there might already be somebody special. Probably there was. What made her think she wanted to be special, anyway?
Eventually the straight roads in the wheat country cleared her mind. A person could almost fix the steering wheel, take a nap, wake every so often, and reset the course. As a child she had not liked these roads of interminable straightness. She had liked crossing the mountains, where there were exciting, winding roads with precipitous and dangerous cliffs. She no longer wished for excitement. Unlike her former friend who wondered how she could have endured the boredom, she wondered instead what she would do without the straight roads that took her home.
She could have stayed. Some of her friends had stayed, married, and lived on farms like their
He opened the refrigerator and saw that she had put the remnants of the pasta salad on the top shelf. He pushed it aside and pulled out a beer from the back. He popped open the can and walked out to the deck. He leaned against the railing, thought for the thousandth time how far it would be to fall if the nails gave way, and eased his weight off it a little.
Sam looked out across the smooth water of Elliott Bay , blue from the blue sky above, and tracked the progress of a grain ship leaving the terminal. There were tugboats on all sides, nipping at the heels of the huge ship to get it pointed in the proper direction. They would break off when it reached the sea-lanes. Waves disturbed the shoreline when the ship passed. Farther off across the bay slouched the orange-colored cranes that lifted freight containers onto waiting ships or off them onto railroad cars. They looked like skeletons of prehistoric predators gobbling prey that stood passively below. Proudly, far in the distance, rose Mount Rainier , its snow-white cone refusing to acknowledge any tarnish from the late-summer smog. And he was here at the water’s edge, the smell of the sea in his nose, standing on the deck he had made in the house he had bought following a too short and too unhappy marriage during a fluke in a cruel economy.
He stepped back from the deck railing, aware that his work had held him up one more time. There was no reason to think that it would not. He had hammered in extra nails, all in perfect rows, and had pointed them in different directions so that they could not all give way at once. Still, one day a nail could break free in wood that had been weakened in a year of drought, and another could be damaged by rust, and an invisible worm could pe
net
rate into the heart of the wood. Nothing remained perfect. Someday, he knew, even his carefully built deck could fall.
Chapter 7
Katherine left the city early in the afternoon and drove east across the mountains on Highway 2 toward the wheat fields she still called home. She had not planned this trip, but when she woke in the morning and faced two empty days before her, she decided to go.
She had brought the graduate student once, a well-planned mistake not repeated. He made everyone uncomfortable. She remembered how clumsy he looked when he walked with her in the pastures because of the importance he placed upon avoiding cow dung. She could not remember him taking a full complete step during that entire shortened visit. On the way back to
Seattle
a day earlier than planned, he had wondered aloud how she had ever survived without trees, without people, without buildings. It had not bothered her so much that he did not see beauty where she saw it. It bothered her that he saw nothing. It was hard to imagine
Sam
worrying about a little manure on his shoes.
She warned herself about putting
Sam
in places where someone else had been. What did she know about him? He was pleasant to her, and proper, but that meant nothing. Although he was not married, there might already be somebody special. Probably there was. What made her think she wanted to be special, anyway?
Eventually the straight roads in the wheat country cleared her mind. A person could almost fix the steering wheel, take a nap, wake every so often, and reset the course. As a child she had not liked these roads of interminable straightness. She had liked crossing the mountains, where there were exciting, winding roads with precipitous and dangerous cliffs. She no longer wished for excitement. Unlike her former friend who wondered how she could have endured the boredom, she wondered instead what she would do without the straight roads that took her home.
She could have stayed. Some of her friends had stayed, married, and lived on farms like their
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