Prologue--perish before publish?

Papers and notebooks I weighed in my hands,
me against them on life's scale yes or no.
Did one or other sway me in this land?
Then arms held out in praying just thus so,

my detris did not with some wise voice speak
of worth of efforts to forget thus -give.
Silence the undigested lot did eke.
No rest or resolve, nor did Deus say, 'Live.'

I put the bundle back into the box,
a thin female paste board over its mate,
hiding a word surge with no need for locks,
sleeping seeds till daylight and time seals fate

that again would visit me still in rhyme--
I dismissed them and the light of their days.
Out of my hands and ineptitude times
till seasons for blooms blooming in sun's rays.

The stuff on the shelf could rest there in peace:
My work always starting and never done.
Some small good in the world to other's ease--
I need not rush seeing my setting sun.

Because you asked

This is the poem I wrote the other evening that you asked about. Before reading, you need to know it is part of a novel or drama I am working on about a character, Johnnie Passnstyle. The writing I am doing is like a novel and like a play.

So there are a cast of characters plus a narrator, a kind of chorus figure, in this case a kind of genderless speaker. This person stands apart from the others on stage and tells a story, makes comments, introduces action, etc., like in Greek plays and in Shakespeare. Below the poem in its final form is a kind of translation of the ideas.

[the poem begins]

Unenviable me--my cry of woe--
a choral voice no words to sow.
Without words direct from others?
S/he, that is me, left with druthers.
No wise insights to impart,
from stories! that'd be their start.
Time has passed and passes now,
like waves wash'd against life's prow.

Seasons come and seasons go:
We know not what we would know.

Enviable I, the Winter's Tale, its choral voice,
could accelerate time anon apace.
I would try such a narrative trick
and eclipse my dear heroine's shtick.
But only she can say what went and passed,
so better that I this ditty leave--at last.
I yield the stage to our only sage.
Johnnie's words let this story wage.

[end of poem]

This is translation, but the poem itself is better and more than this.

Unenviable me--my cry of woe--
[I feel sorry for me. I am complaining.]

a choral voice no words to sow.
[I am like a narrator with no words to say.]

Without words direct from others?
[I ask the question about not having words from other people.]

S/he, that is me, left with druthers.
[Without those words, I, genderless, have only my preferences about what to say.]

No wise insights to impart,
[I have nothing wise to say or teach.]

from stories! that'd be their start.
[It is from experience or stories we hear, that is how one gets something to say.]

Time has passed and passes now,
[Time goes on.]

like waves wash'd against life's prow.
[Life is like a boat at sea with waves that bump against the front of it.]

Seasons come and seasons go:
[More time passes now measured in seasons.]

We know not what we would know.
[And still we have nothing to say, or do not know what to say . . .]

Enviable I, the Winter's Tale, its choral voice,
[I am envious of the narrator (chorus) in Shakespeare's Winter's Tale.]

could accelerate time anon apace.
[He or she could speed up the narrative by summarizing details.]

I would try such a narrative trick
[If I could, I would try the same trick in storytelling.]

and eclipse my dear heroine's shtick.
[I would do this by shortening what my heroine has to say, or summarize what has happened that we didn't see or hear on stage. Her shtick (Yiddish) is her story that is very familiar to her to re-tell.]

But only she can say what went and passed,
[Only she is able to say what happened to her.]

so better that I this ditty leave--at last.
[So I had better stop my little song, this poem--it must be boring for you.]

I yield the stage to our only sage.
[I am stopping, will leave the stage of this play, and will give it to the only one who can speak with authority.]

Johnnie's words let this story wage.
[Let her, Johnnie, use her power to struggle to tell the story in her words.]

At this point the novel-drama of Johnnie Passnstyle continues in the heroine's words and in verbatim conversations that she is able to quote exactly (a talent she has).

Hester down

Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.
Nathaniel Hawthorne

I am deathly afraid to make that period of my life come to life by any other means than this particular way, a distant view, intentionally lacking any journalistic props or dramatic conventions I would or I could try. So I do this, and I will not apologize until I am old and worn down and have no one left to blame or to hurt. Here goes.

Years before the escapade in New York, Johnnie and her mother, stepfather, and older stepsister moved to a northern Nevada cattle ranch where the scripts originating in Texas took hold and trapped Johnnie in family dynamics from which she would eventually become desperate to break. Ron and Mary Zapulco were married in Texas, and within the first year of marriage liquidated their separate properties and took a sizable nest egg to Nevada. The girls, Natalie, twenty, Ron's daughter from a previous marriage, and Johnnie, eleven, Mary's daughter, got along fine for as much as they had to considering the difference in age. However, Natalie was Ron's prized daughter and Mary totally indulged her and her father, while she ignored, actually neglected, her own daughter. Not only did Johnnie disappoint because she was a girl, but also she was in the way of two adults playing themselves in some kind of co-dependent drama. So to cope, Johnnie sequestered herself during those years often experienced by many teenagers as troublesome. Growing up in Nevada would eventually have mixed to negative reviews. However, grow up she did so that by the time she was fourteen, Johnnie could have turned heads walking down and up a New York runway--not because of anything she wore. That arguably would come later. She was tall with a noticeably shapely figure with tomboyish short black hair. Yet because of locations psychological and physical, there was no talent scout or mentor to discover and nurture her.

Ron began to take notice in ways that made Johnnie uncomfortable. She had no words to describe the uneasy feelings she got when Ron teased her, or stared at her as she moved about the family house, despite her don't-look-at-me, I'm-not-here demeanor.

Johnnie took to jeans and cowboy shirts and horses naturally; and to avoid any unwanted appreciation as well as the neglectful, not even neutral atmosphere, she hung out at the barn and the bunk house as well as in distant corners of that undulating space that rippled out in all directions from the cattle spread in northwestern Nevada.

Jess was the only year-round ranch hand the Zapulcos had. He lived on the property, in the bunk house. In his mid-forties, Jess was a clean and wiry kind of cowboy who ate simply and just enough. He'd never get fat. He didn't drink or smoke. And he had few words to say even when someone threw a question his way. He kept to business and himself, relying on seasons of experience on ranches out West. With the Zapulcos he was a sturdy and dependable addition who got routine and necessary work done steadily and in a way that he'd not have to repeat  tasks again for lack of care the first time round. He cooked his own food and kept himself, the kitchen and bunkhouse tidy in winter. In summer, he'd ask the temporary hands to do their fair share, and he relaxed or compromised his standards when not living there by himself. It was hard to tell. He was so silent.

Johnnie and he were friendly and acknowledged each other and respected each other's private spaces. Jess had the kitchen, dining table and his room. Johnnie occupied a corner by the fireplace in the shared living, or great, room. Interchange was always short, polite, seldom intimate. Sometimes Johnnie stared into space or the flickering fire,  or she cried silently. The few times Jess noticed, he would ask if she was okay. After nodding she was, or a whispered thanks, Jess and she spent time together in the bunkhouse together alone. Johnnie would thumb through magazines or write in her diary. Jess played solitaire or drew Western scenes, cowboys, roundups and such.

The bunk house was a one storey log structure with its great room at the center with kitchen, eating area, fireplace, a couch, two easy chairs and a glass-topped wagon wheel coffee table. There was also a TV in one corner that sat there mostly gathering dust. There were five bedrooms each with one or two single beds and common toilets and showers behind the kitchen. Depending upon how many cowhands there were at any given time, each had a private or semi-private room as well as a place to eat and congregate. The bunk house faced south and had an arbor for some scraggly plants that were supposed to climb and leaf out in the spring, give shade in the summer and die back and let the sun in winters. There wasn't enough water or attention to effect this amenity and so some time ago someone placed corrugated tin to cover the wood framework, and it often rattled in the dry and pungent sage wind that often blew in northwestern Nevada.

When Johnnie wanted to be alone, there were always expansive spaces outside, and inside the main house she had either her room at the end of the hall at the end of the one level ranch house, or she had the bunk house and its great room. She liked to escape to the bunk house and camp in one of the easy chairs. Sit and think. Or there were old newspapers, mail order catalogs for western wear, a few pulp novels and some men's magazines that needed review and organizing. She would leaf through all of these, especially when a new one showed up, just to pass the time and see what was what. She liked to see the western wear and what men found sexy. Both interests could not be satisfied with the few magazines and catalogs that found themselves in a stack under the TV stand. Winters in the great room, a fire often needed tending, and she pushed and poked the logs and embers around to make sure everything burned thoroughly. She had a need to tidy things and have them just so, and in this too there was little to occupy her. She would answer questions if asked, but mostly she listened to cowboy talk, which wasn't about much. TV was sometimes a diversion in the summertime, but she wasn't into it. Summer evenings were cool and to be outside till late to drink in the night air and listen to the desert silence somehow helped her fit the pieces of a complex yet confined world into some order. Winters sometimes she brought her homework to the great room and worked on it. Often she had her diary with her, and she recorded what she thought and heard exactly as it was in her mind and heart and in the airwaves. She was particularly good at recording verbatim and thereby get rid of what her family had talked about that day.

She busied herself when she wasn't in school, taking it as her duty to help or perform ranch chores that Jess, part-time help and seasonal cowboys were paid for. She got along well with the "silent bunch," she called them, perhaps because she was silent herself during a reticent, self-conscious period. Also, opening her mouth or trying to participate as a fourth with an insular threesome at home never  succeeded; she just didn't belong and she felt it. Although Natalie took her side or stood up for her when things sometimes got a little tense, particularly after Ron serially drunk straight whisky shots and the barbecue fire jumped to life for the last time in the evening with the addition of paper plates and pieces of beef fat. Johnnie dutifully and without being asked to do so, cleared things away. Then she disappeared, saying if asked that she was going out "to check on things." Did the barn cats have water? Did they need food? She attended the ones that nature was taking slowly back to herself, and she buried them in a private ceremony out behind the rock outcropping south of the main house. One could see her walk there shovel in hand to perform the act of kindness and respect, if they had but looked in that direction or for her. Her family didn't. They were about other things Johnnie didn't know or care about.

Summers were different. There was work on everyone's agenda, including Johnnie's. Although not required or expected, she was one of the bunch but occupied herself with mostly her own chores. She joined others as she saw the need or opportunity. Of course she had her horse, Hester. Someone had to drive bales of hay to different feed locations, check on the windmill pump and scattered troughs. Hauling manure? she always left this job till the last to see if someone else would do it. And there were the summer greenhorns.

Summers brought one or two boys from Reno or other places to the ranch for work experience. Natalie took the lead mostly in teaching the boys, but she wasn't hands on. She talked about what to do, but she left the silent bunch to show the greenhorns how to do whatever it was, usually a key task or two for that day. The next day or week would bring something different, something new. Part of paid work at the ranch was to teach others how things were done and no one minded. The boys were usually sixteen or seventeen. Some came back for a second summer before getting their own ranch jobs, or moving on to demands less physical.

The summer Johnnie was fourteen, Buddy came for the summer. He was sixteen. He was talkative and needed a lot of attention before or if he did any work. Sometimes Johnnie got stuck with him and had to listen to a lot of stuff before she could go about her business, which Buddy often made his business, or he wanted to watch while she busied herself. The only way she could get away from him was to disappear in the Ford pickup. She said she had to practice driving alone for her driver's permit, and off she would go down the dirt entry road to the ranch, three miles one way. It was "too dangerous" for Buddy if she couldn't control the truck for some reason.

"But how about you go into some loose sand or a ditch?"

"I'll come back and you can help me get out."

Buddy would wait for Johnnie to return, but the six mile round trip was often prolonged when Johnnie parked the truck and hiked up a small bluff to sit with the petroglyphs till she thought Buddy had given up waiting for her, or she had collected herself enough to return. Inner turmoil and struggles that come with growing up were best handled in solitude. It was Johnnie's way. She wasn't interested in teaching Buddy anything.

Johnnie didn't take to Buddy's hanging about probably because he wouldn't stop talking or asking questions. Or maybe they just didn't have anything in common. After the first month of the summer season, Buddy proved that he would not work out, and his family was asked if they could come pick him up. He didn't want to leave and didn't easily accept why his term had been cut short. No one replaced him that summer. Johnnie curiously missed him for a few days after he had gone, but then forgot about him. Silence was better than being followed by a puppy.

Johnnie turned fifteen that next summer and a boy of fourteen arrived with suitcase and a box of books. His name was James Weatherall. James was good at ranch work; he learned what he was supposed to do quickly and quickly did it. Often he took on extra things, little things that needed doing and no one complained. Johnnie was impressed. He was able to occupy himself productively just as she had learned to do. In reply to a question about his initiative, he replied, "I just would rather get it done than be told to do it." He was not loquacious but what he said carried some weight, at least with Johnnie. Johnnie began to ask him other questions and she got more than she thought she would. James was a reader. When the middle of the day was too hot to work, he would retreat to the bunk house. And evenings? He worked till the chow bell rang. He kept to himself after dinner. The silent bunch could see him afternoons in the shade under one of the few trees out back of the bunkhouse, or in the evenings in his room with the light on till late.

Sometimes James and Johnnie would hang out together, and James would go off on some subject Johnnie knew nothing about. If school didn't cover it, usually Johnnie didn't know about it. So talks with James was like having a private tutor, and once a subject took hold, it was she who did the talking, mostly questions which led to more and more things to know about. James liked his role of young expert and he liked Johnnie because of the look wonder in her eyes. He liked having her as an audience. She needed him even though she was older, and he liked being needed, or he liked her. They got along and the silent bunch noticed but mostly ignored the youngsters. Her family ignored her still. For her long hours away from the main house, they knew or thought they knew where she was and what she was doing. "Down with Jess probably." For her part, Johnnie, enjoyed freedom from unwanted comments from her stepfather, which sounded or felt like he was jealous, or wanted something unspecified from her. She didn't like it, although that _it_ had no name.

On more than one occasion that year, her stepfather would slap her on the rear as she walked by after getting up from the dinner table. It didn't hurt but only shocked. Mary frowned and Johnnie took it without comment. Several times he put his arm around her waist and drew her in close, his hand touching the bottom of her breast. Johnnie thought this was creepy, crossing a line, something about personal space and this is my body not yours. Don't touch. She'd break away as Ron said something like, "Don't be like that." She was fine with being like that.

James came from a wealthy Sacramento family. He went to a private high school, and studied, he called it, during his free time, always in preparation for the next school year, or some future time when he would be tested for what? life's challenges? a quiz-crazy instructor? a question he could not answer? Who knew? His mother seemed to be the loving but driving force behind this, but he took to new knowledge willingly and seriously. He was prepared for any invitation to show what he knew.

So summer work at the ranch came easy for James and he did a good job and created spaces for himself for his private studies. But when Johnnie joined him and occupied the other arm chair in the living area and began asking questions, James would redden before answering; and if he couldn't immediately answer, he'd disappear into his room. He would answer her questions, at first cautiously and eventually loquaciously. He had to warm up where she was concerned, especially at first. She asked, he thought, interesting questions, because they were questions he was asking himself. Sometimes he found he was working out the answers as he talked, and this felt like something he was born for. He felt good about himself and his ability to give information and share what he knew. But again, he had to warm up sometimes.

"What are you reading?"

"A treatise on truth."

"Treatise?"

"Like a long composition."

"Oh."

After a long silence, Johnnie asked the follow-up. "What of it? Isn't it pretty clear what truth is and what a lie is?"

"It's more complicated than that."

Johnnie felt out of her depth, but the territory seemed without any threat or complication. She wanted a simple, straight answer even if  a long one.

"Try me."

"Well, I'm not sure where to begin, perhaps with science and intuition. Are you familiar with the Great Books?"

"No. Tell me."

"I have this project. It's like there are only three things we, I mean people, are interested in. Truth, beauty and goodness. We seek truth, like scientists. We seek beauty, like in art. And we seek goodness. Religion and right and wrong and all of that."

"That's an oversimplification. What about horses and work and," she hesitated, "girls?"

"I mean these three include all of that. Horses. I think of truth and beauty and goodness. But I'm only working on truth right now. I will get to the other two when I am ready."

"How does a dumb horse have anything to do with truth?"

"It's like this, and you know horses. They do what they do. Hester, for example. If you watch them and really study them, they tell you, I mean show you, what they are. And when you get that knowledge and it proves invariable, like there is no exception to what you know all about them, that is truth. When someone tells you they can play the piano, well, you know that's not true. It's not in their nature. It's not even anything they can do. So you have truth or knowledge about horses."

"So truth is like something you are certain about. Truth is knowledge."

"Yes, but . . . "

"Yea, some people are certain about stuff but it doesn't make it true."

And so they continued by taking up science proper, like with water when it freezes, or gut feelings, including veterinary science and what intuition was, until the one stopped asking questions or the other got to the end of his studies on a particular subject.

That summer Johnnie not only discovered someone almost her age she could have a safe conversation with, but she also discovered books. She borrowed two Great Books that James brought but was not reading at the moment, and they discussed things other than work or horses. They didn't talk about parents or siblings or anything personal. Neither wanted to, or dared.

One could say that by the end of that summer, James and Johnnie were friends, platonic-like. When he left, Johnnie missed being able to ask questions and their talks on subjects not from school, from someone she trusted who could bone up on something and have something to say about it. She wanted to be someone who had something to say. She didn't dare test that at home or with the silent bunch. But a world of book learning and having an active, internal conversation with something written, well, she had a new way of sequestering herself. Her diary thus took on a different flavor when she got back to writing after James left that September. There were more words and more topics to exploit and explore.

***

By the time Johnnie was having her New York adventures, her memory of her teens was a blank, something like a deep dark hole she would not step into for fear of feeling. She remembered bits and pieces, but most of the rest she repressed. Certain events would come to mind as she thought about those years. Buddy, James, the silent bunch. Jess and evenings by the fire in the bunk house. The barn cats, how they multiplied. Open range roundups. Feeding stock from the back of the muddy Ford Ranger in the fenced pasture. Pasture, hah! dirt patch.

Her days must have been filled with experiences and people and going to town and friends and stuff. School, chores, sleep, homework, television, her diary, horses, driving the pickup for practice, driving it to and from school when she got her special license at fifteen, books, James . . . and the blame.

***

The following summer saw a changed James. For one, he brought magazines. The second thing was all too obvious to Johnnie.

"You grew up."

"Me? Same old me."

"Not what I see."

"What do you see?"

"Handsome cowboy."

Johnnie smiled, turned and walked back to her house to get some lunch saying over her shoulder, "Later." A feeling of power and sense of confidence came over James as he lugged his duffle bag and cowboy boots to the bunk house to settle in for the summer.

But the confidence he felt did not express itself where Johnnie was concerned. Warming to her seemed threatening somehow. He remembered the previous summer and he dismissed those times immediately. His shyness then was different this summer. Johnnie too had changed. She was like a cover girl on Seventeen magazine. Young, pretty, clean, fresh.

James had girls and women on his mind. He didn't need Johnnie. He had women he could have, sexy women who undressed and posed for him and him alone. They couldn't talk, which was good. Women less complicated than a real person. He had a trove of photos--in those magazines.

"What are you working on this summer. I mean studying."

"What do you mean?"

James had to be reminded of his lofty studies of the previous summer. Once Johnnie had reminded him of them he brushed it off saying that if anything, he was working on beauty. He wasn't sure what goodness was, and there were so many different standards and truths. He was after just simple, straightforward beauty, and he knew it when he saw it.

"When you see it? But aren't there things that are beautiful that you can't see? Like music, for example."

"You're right there," he mused.

"And the taste of great steak from the barbeque. Nevada fed beef."

"I suppose."

Johnnie was ready to resume the dialogues similar to those they had had the previous summer, but James wouldn't take the bait. He was somewhere else. Where? Johnnie tried a number of times, but he became reclusive, ashamedly shy, withdrawn. Was he sullen? Was there something she had done? He disappeared sometimes without saying where he was going or what he was doing.

"Jess, where are those dirty magazines that used to be here?"

"James got 'em, I guess."

"Did the new one come in?"

"What are you looking at that stuff? It's for men, maybe boys."

"Education."

"Education for what?"

"Has he got them in his room?"

"Don't know."

The next time James came in, Johnnie asked him where the girlie magazines were.

"What?"

"Jess says you got 'em. Maybe in your room."

"Oh, those. What do you want those for?"

"Never you mind. Put 'em back so everyone can read them."

"Put 'em back, will you?"

"After I finish reading."

"Never knew a cowboy who read a one," suggested Jess that evening after chores.

Johnnie found this issue tangential and not entirely important. What she objected to was more about things being in their place rather than what it was. Orderliness somehow was her mission this summer where the great room was concerned. Cowhands needed looking after. All winter the room had been hers, mostly. She looked around to straighten up as James sauntered down the hall to his bedroom. A few minutes later she knocked and opened his door.

"Could you let a guy say come in before barging in here?"

"I could but I didn't. Besides, I'm standing in the hall."

"I might be naked or something."

"Wouldn't bother me. What about those magazines?"

"I told ya."

"Told me what?"

"When I'm finished."

"When's that going to be?"

"Maybe never. Could you please. I have something to do."

Johnnie's vigor waned and she left without closing the door and exited the bunkhouse. James threw the bolt on the door and listened to see if she had really gone. No one seemed to be about and so he proceeded to dig under his mattress and bring out the latest Playboy. He opened the magazine and thumbed through quickly and found the spreads on the latest bunnies. The one in lingerie aroused him the most and he relieved the pressure building in his underwear with quick and vigorous strokes while looking at the photos. The bunny was tall with long dark hair. His fantasy was that she was his, like Johnnie, and he was mastering her with the inescapable power of his masculine self. Only after having ejaculated into a clean sock did the need to possess her subside. And who her was by that point was conflated. He knew the buildup and urge would come again soon, and then he would have to find another few moments for secret pleasures and fantasy. And another sock.

By July of that summer not only did James show his maturing self and changes in free time pursuits, so did Johnnie. She had made a friend at school during the winter, and Alice visited the ranch for two and three days at a time from her home near Nixon. Both Johnnie and Alice attended the tiny school in Wadsworth. It was a long commute for both of them, and attendance at school took motivation and effort. The previous year Johnnie could drive to school by herself. Her license would not allow her a passenger. This year it would be different, and Alice would catch a ride on Johnnie's way to and from the ranch. Living in semi-remote parts of Nevada had its advantages and some clear disadvantages for school-aged kids. Spending time with friends from school was one of the advantages, if it could be arranged. Alice was part Paiute and her family allowed her to visit friends in town as well as Johnnie who lived east of Pyramid Lake, that is if Johnnie picked her up on her way home in the truck. Alice was vivacious and outgoing and for Johnnie, she was welcome company.

Alice took an interest in James and drew him into messing around with she and Johnnie. There wasn't much to mess around about except riding out looking for camels, burros or mustangs and feeding the penned stock near the ranch house. There was no work that Johnnie had to do, and so when Alice visited, the girls hung about, chatted endlessly, watched television in the bunk house, made popcorn in the kitchen and giggled over nothings while doing anything. They cooked up a scheme to get Alice with James. Alice would flirt with him. What she might do with him once she had lured him was a mystery, but it was fun to plot and imagine how to rope him. The only problem was Alice wouldn't flirt unless Johnnie was present egging her on.

One hot afternoon, Alice and James found themselves in the barn and Alice tried some of the tricks she had been planning to pull to get some attention. The interplay didn't last long, for a conversation began and took a half hour to conclude. James had found a confidante.

"He's not interested in me. He's goo-goo over you. Didn't you know?"

"You didn't try hard enough."

"I couldn't. He just started in on whether I thought you liked him. Did he have a chance with you. Would you drive to town sometime and go to the movies together. Stuff like that."

"I don't think so. He has his girlfriends."

"What girlfriends?"

"He has these magazines. He brought them with him. "

So Johnnie confided her suspicions to Alice's surprise and curiosity about James the closet pervert.

"You really think so?"

"I'm sure as sure can be. I even went in his room when he was out saddling up for a ride."

"But what if you?"

"I can't compete with those girls in the magazines."

"I don't see why not. Ride him cowgirl."

After Alice had returned home, Johnnie's curiosity got the better of her, but it took something, she didn't know what, to take any initiative to validate Alice's news much less act on it. That something unexpectedly came when out of the blue, James asked, "You getting together with Alice again soon?"

"Sure. I was thinking of going into town with her and . . . "

"Saturday is my first day off in a month and I've nothing to do around here."

"You could come with us."

"That'd be good. You don't mind?" He said it as if he truly considered whether to join them.

"Not a bit. Wadsworth is pretty small. Be nice to show off some with our friends, though."

"Is there a movie theater? Something to do?"

"No. No time for that. Not much to do but visit."

"Oh."

"Don't worry. We'll hang out. You can meet some new people. If it gets boring we'll get into some trouble. Better than . . . "

"Your parents don't mind?"

"No worry about them. They don't care. Mom's at home, probably. . . ." She didn't finish the sentence and James felt it best not to pry.

"Ron and Natalie are checking out some property in California. Natalie wants her own ranch. I don't know when they'll be back. Not today for sure. And I don't care."

That seemed to end the conversation for now except Johnnie said she was glad James would be coming with her.

Nixon was a wide spot in the road and Alice was waiting at the four-way as usual. She didn't realize there would be company and that the plan was to go into Wadsworth. However, she was on her break. She was volunteering at the Pyramid Lake Visitors' Center and had forgotten to tell Johnnie when she dropped her off after Alice's previous visit to the ranch. They never used the phone. Party lines. She said she was sorry, but couldn't join them. The volunteer job might turn into a part-time position, and she wanted that badly, not just for her but her family. There weren't many reservation jobs that came along.

"Besides," she said lifting one eyebrow, "you two have things to talk about."

The drive after Nixon was a silent one, both Johnnie and James unsure of what to say. Although both were glad of this opportunity to be together, this summer was different and both realized it by this point. The  platonics of the previous year seemed to have run their course, and James was more private, with tectonic plates under tension ready break loose. Warming him up to a conversation seemed daunting to Johnnie. She felt he was hiding and covering up something, something more than the magazines he stashed away in his room. His next move was not just ill defined in his own mind, but the one preoccupation was never far from his thoughts. Whatever Johnnie did, now driving silently to pick up Alice, was infinitely arousing. Cutoff jean shorts and loose white blouse didn't help. Suppressing the feelings and urges James had was like trying to tame what? Who knows? It, whatever _it_ was, was powerful.

As for Johnnie, she wanted their relationship like it was before but she had tried and had almost given up. She figured she would just take the bull by the proverbial, and address James's interest in girls. Up front. Directly. What could she lose? He wasn't cooperating as before, time to take a new approach, the direct one. Perhaps in doing so she might find out if what Alice had said about his interest in her was true or not. What is truth? She didn't know but wanted to find out. Girlie magazines was not a foreign subject in that male environment she had escaped to in the bunk house. And she had some of her own hormones asserting themselves.

"Nevada has legal prostitution, you know."

"Huh?"

"Nevada. Prostitution is legal here."

"Yea, I know. "

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"Well, what do you think about that?"

This was a round about way of playing to both the past and the subject of her interest. Johnnie thought herself very clever.

"I think. I think." He paused. "Why are we talking about this?"

"Subject to talk about. You know, Wadsworth had one of the first legal brothels in the state, way back when."

"How do you know that?"

"History, my dear Sherlock. History."

"What history?"

"Nevada history. We have a local historical society also, you know. Even out here in the sticks, although you'd be hard pressed to find a stick round here."

After more silence, Johnnie tried again. "Well, what do you think?"

"I think it's fine, I guess."

"Fine like it's OK or something?"

"Fine, yes, like it's Ok. For some people."

"And the girls?"

"What about 'em? Why are we talking about this?"

"OK, you start. Ask me a question. Anything."

"It's difficult. It's hard to talk to you."

"Me? What about you?"

Thus began a series of misunderstandings. James was flustering, Johnnie asserting, but not vice versa. They danced around each other like this till they could see Wadsworth up ahead. Johnnie broke the  spell and let her attempts to communicate something, she didn't know what, go. "Big city up ahead," which opened a space for what they would do next.

"Yep," said James as he wondered where this day would lead him. He was having his doubts, and Johnnie's ability to take care of herself with talk cautioned him, in fact told him he was up against forces he could not manage, at least not well. He had no experience. Should he have stayed back at the ranch and  worked? There were fence repairs still. He could have taken a day off another time.

"Where do your friends hang out?" There doesn't seem to be much of town for anyone to hang out in.

"They don't."

"I thought you said . . . "

"I did, but that was just to get you to go with us. Now it's just me. Everyone hangs out in Fernley, and I'm not allowed to drive there this  summer."

"But don't you go to school in Fernley?"

"I do now, but my step dad doesn't want me loitering, whatever that is. We can go back to the lake. We could take a look around. Ever been there?"

"What else?"

"Drive on to Fernley. It's not far."

"But you're not supposed . . . "

"Let's get into a little trouble, if you're up for it."

"Drive on, Johnnie." Although he uttered this haltingly, he surprised himself by taking this step into a more familiar space. It was the first time this summer that James had called Johnnie by her first name and it felt good to both of them. Was he warming up? Johnnie hoped and thought so. She could press on with this mote of support and act a little naughty. Almost a conspiracy. James was pleased with himself. He felt that masculine mastery again as well as the feelings of arousal it always seemed to attend it. The mastery was foremost, but the excitement simmered almost subliminally.

Johnnie generally moved about more confidently and more productively. She was coming into her own with horses, cows and ranch work. Her pleasure seemed to be living the life as one of the silent bunch, her quiet or intimidated ways fit right in with being just another hand at work. Leading was not her inclination, not at school and certainly not anywhere near home or ranch. However, today was different. She felt power in age and maturity. After all she was sixteen and James was only fifteen. She was the driver and could handle both car and conversation, while James was mastered by forces seemingly untameable. Being away from home for him put him naturally into new circumstances where he wasn't entirely sure of how to act much less proceed. Where Johnnie was more mature and knew her corner of the territory, she could feel in charge. Johnnie could feel that something interesting and dangerous might happen today; James hoped that something exciting and moderating would. They were both not disappointed.

The drive to Fernley and what they might do or discover that day was but a short distance. Johnnie pulled into a parking space in front of Dollar Bill's Diner on Main. It was eleven thirty and a Saturday morning. She said she'd be right back as she exited the truck. She stepped into the lonely phone booth at the end of the building and made a call. Soon she returned to the truck and came to the passenger side.

"So?" said James.

"A friend of mine will be here in a while. We can go in and eat or have something to drink."

"Okay." James got out of the truck and followed Johnnie into the diner. The air conditioning welcomed them, although the temperature was not so much cold as cooler than outside. They sat at the counter, and Johnnie swiveled her stool to face James.

"What'll ya have. You got money, right?"

"I have money. Are we eating or what?"

"Your choice."

"You have money don't you?" James was not sure of the rules. Their ride to Fernley from the ranch plus Johnnie's confidence and independence helped him realize he was dealing with a person not some object or image. She talked back, just like last summer.

"Of course. But you could treat me. "

"I can. I mean, I'd like to. What do you want?"

Johnnie picked up a menu and chose a burger and strawberry shake. When the waitress came and stood on the other side of the counter and asked, he ordered for Johnnie and said he'd have the same except a chocolate shake.

"That was nice. Thanks," said Johnnie, referring to the fact that James had not only offered to pay but also ordered.

Even ground seemed to spread out before them, and they thought they were making progress in being with each other. They both sat silently for a few moments. Someone played two of the three slot machines by the front door. Other patrons were few. The place felt like an oasis. It was a world away.

"When's your friend coming."

"Soon. You'll like him."

James was not sure, so he asked, "Who is he?"

"Oh, we go to school together. He was my lab partner last year, school year, in the spring. We get along. Big, dark, handsome. Plays on the football team."

He had no more questions. Their orders came with milkshakes first. They ate, Johnnie enthusiastically and James slowly with care. Was he nervous, or was this what he was like at home, Johnnie wondered. Just as they finished their meal, a big, dark, handsome young man entered the diner.

"James, Elk," Johnnie said.

"Elk?" James questioned.

"That's his name," explained Johnnie.

James stuck out his hand and Elk looked at it then took hold, squeezed and shook. James winced.

Johnnie did all the talking and Elk listened and nodded now and then. James silently watched and listened. At the end of one three-minute story Johnnie thought Elk should know about, he said he had to go; and after Johnnie said she understood, he looked at James with an impassive look, nodded and left the diner.

"Nice guy," Johnnie said.

"Seems so." Then he added, "What's next?"

Johnnie said she didn't know. Elk would have but he didn't say. They could kill some time at the park. Not much went on during hot summer days in Fernley anyway, or at any other time of year. Movie theater in Fallon, but that's only open tonight. Not feasible.

"What do people do here?"

"Not much. There are local businesses and some talk of warehouses or something coming. Some Nevada law. Taxes maybe. I don't understand that stuff."

James paid the bill at the cash register and Johnnie said thanks as James held the door open for her. She said thanks again referring to this gesture and smiled at him as they walked to the truck. James beamed inside.

James settled in to following Johnnie and gave up any idea of meeting her friends or doing anything in Fernley. The object seemed to be just being together off the ranch. They drove past the park and both said that it was not very interesting. Johnnie drove back to Wadsworth and found the cemetery. She parked the truck and they got out, looked at tombstones and found a trail to follow along the Truckee River. They walked till the river forked and rejoined again into one channel revealing next a pool deep enough swim in. They sat on the bank and took off their shoes. James caught the smell of Johnnie's soap or shampoo. It wasn't perfume, was it? Intoxicating. Johnnie waded in, turned and started splashing water at James who didn't move but protested. He warned her to stop or he would. . . .

"What. What'll ya do?" taunted Johnnie.

She splashed him again and he tore off his shirt and leaped up and pushed her into the pool of cool water. She was soaked and she looked down at herself, her clothes clinging tightly to her thin frame. She regained her fight, and with the agility of a cat soaked her foe before he could escape to higher ground.

The water fight was soon over, and James laughed and taunted while  Johnnie just stood there in the stream smiling and looking at herself, then at the handsome boy on the bank, then back again to her clothes clinging to her skin. He was muscular with a bare, white chest. Johnnie approved adding, "Look at what you have done," with a look that said she was amused and not angry.

"I did you a favor. It's hot."

They both sat on the bank with their feet in the cool water again. First Johnnie laid back and closed her eyes to the sky and soaked in the heat. "I need to dry off." Then she fell silent. James lay back and did the same. A quarter of an hour passed, and after each had brushed the sand and dirt from the other's back, they pressed on another mile or two in the same direction, crossed the river and returned by way of Bridge Street to the cemetery.

Johnnie drove back towards the ranch and stopped in Nixon. They stopped at the visitors center and talked with Alice. She invited them to stay for a neighborhood gathering featuring fry bread and beer. There would be other classmates there and James could meet real Americans. They could have a look at the exhibits at the Museum and Visitor Center, and if time permitted, which it did, they could have a look at the lake just up the road on 446. Maybe they'd see some pelicans in flight. Johnnie and James followed Alice's suggestions and ended up at Alice's house, a small box of a home with the Nevada desert as its backyard. There the gathering took place with lots of fry bread to go around, but Johnnie and James talked mostly with each other and didn't mix. In fact, there weren't that many to mix with. The gathering included several families with varieties of kin. Elk was there, and as Alice and Johnnie walked off and whispered to each other, Alice passed something to her friend, which Johnnie tucked into the back patch pocket of her shorts, Elk and James acknowledged each other over a cola and beer, James' and Elk's respectively. Elk seemed older to James. Perhaps it was the stately way he carried himself. James felt awkward, not knowing how Elk was related to Johnnie. What kind of friend was he? James was literally out of his element, in a foreign country. Their conversation revolved at first around football. Elk was a lineman. James played in the backfield. Before walking off to greet someone else, Elk said, "Don't hurt her." James sensed he meant it in a most serious way. But how could he hurt Johnnie?

Alice and Johnnie, after giggling and bending over in laughter that prevented further words about something Alice had said, broke off their private conversation and Johnnie rejoined James.

"Had about enough of that?" Johnnie asked referring to the fry bread.

"No, but if you want to go . . . "

"I'm ready. Okay with you?"

"Sure"

By this point at the end of the day and satiated with greasy dough and sweet soft drinks, both Johnnie and James felt closer, and that if there was some interest or attraction, they were finally absorbed in each other's company. They redrew the personal boundary around the two of them at the gathering, and before saying good bye to Alice and others, Johnnie asked the question the answer to which she wanted in words she could hear before that day ended.

"Do you like me?"

"Yes, a lot."

"How much?"

"A lot I said. Really a lot."

"I like you too. I am glad for today."

"Me too."

And that was it. Silence the rest of the way home, and then James went to the bunkhouse and his room and Johnnie to the barn for a last minute check on her horse. She hoped one of the hands had seen to water and feed, which she usually had tended to by this time of night.

James immediately got ready for bed and slipped between the sheets and retrieved one of his precious magazines. It had been a sensual day, one filled with images of Johnnie driving the truck in short shorts, Johnnie drenched in the river her clothes clinging to her, fry bread dripping with oil, and mutual admission of like. Associations briefly reinforced his sense of arousal. Elk, rut, mating . . . expansive, power, inevitability . . . release. As he was turning the pages to one of his favorite nymphs, he heard someone and Johnnie talking down the hall in the great room. He heard the words _Hester_ and _down_ but couldn't make out more. He slowed his breathing as if secreting himself from discovery and quietly turned out the light beside his bed. He caught part of a hurried conversation.

". . . growing up."

"Yes, but I'm not sure I can do it," said Johnnie.

"I'll be with you. I'll help." The other person was Jess.

". . . The best thing?"

"The only choice," said Jess.

James heard the door to the bunkhouse slam shut. They had gone out. Within the next minutes--it must have been two or three--he heard the report of a gun shot. It was followed a few seconds later by second. Then silence. James froze in bed, his hand in his pants and the magazine on his chest. He didn't know what to think or do. He decided it must have been something about an animal. Cat? Chasing off something? He didn't know and was afraid to leave his room and go out into the night to find out. Guns scared him. He shoved the magazine under his mattress and lay there on his back with his hands at his sides for several hours. He listened carefully. He heard nothing and finally went to sleep. He knew he'd find out what happened, if anything, in the light of day.

The following morning Johnnie had disappeared, and the rifle over the fireplace, which James thought was merely ornamental, was missing. By evening James had the story. Hester, Johnnie's horse, had to be put down because of a broken leg. She had kicked through one wooden wall in her stall and had gotten that leg stuck in the hole. She struggled and the result sealed her fate.

Johnnie was missing the next several days. Finally she showed up at the bunkhouse and took her place before the fireplace in her armchair. She sat there and stared and sometimes cried silently. There was no fire in that fireplace during the summer, and there was no fire in Johnnie. Jess would bring her tea or ask if he could get her something to eat, but Johnnie quietly refused all offers. James approached her and each time she waved him off. After sitting for a few hours on two separate days, she disappeared presumably to the main house and her room.

A week passed and Johnnie resumed her chores and came and went from the bunkhouse as before. She acknowledged James when she saw him but didn't pause for conversation. She only stated, "I had to put my horse down. It was the humane thing to do." This was new territory for James. He didn't know how to navigate this territory and went back to his earlier reclusive ways.

A week to the day of their excursion to Nixon and beyond, and in the early evening after dinner, Johnnie knocked and entered James' room. She startled him. He was lying on the bed with his head propped up. He was reading one of his magazines.

"Are you avoiding me?" Johnnie said accusingly.

"No. No. Not at all."

Johnnie took three steps toward James and grabbed the magazine from him.

"Hey, what's with that? That's mine. "

"I need something to read and you're hogging all the literature."

At that James stood up and Johnnie bolted from the room with the magazine. James was right behind her. Johnnie leaped over the couch in the great room and turned round to face him, holding the magazine behind her back with both hands. James stopped in front of her, just out of reach.

"Gimme that, Johnnie."

"Come and get it, Jamesie."

James acted so quickly that Johnnie had no time to turn and escape. James grabbed Johnnie and held her in a bear hug, Johnnie's hands pinned behind her still holding the magazine. Both had shocked looks on their faces as they quickly realized each face found another an inch away.

"Now whaterya gonna do?" sassed Johnnie.

James didn't answer and the awkwardness of it began to release its grip. As she gained enough to move her arms a bit, Johnnie poked her head forward and planted a kiss. She aimed at his mouth but missed and  only caught part of it. James let go and stepped back. He couldn't believe what had happened and Johnnie just stood there waiting for what would happen next.

"Now I'm going to get you."

Johnnie threw the magazine onto the couch. "There's your damn magazine. You won't catch me."

No words followed but the chase was out the bunkhouse door. They raced one after the other. Johnnie was fast but the one who had had practiced his quick sprints caught her before she had put twenty feet between herself and the bunkhouse door. This time James came from behind and as he tackled her about her waist they spun around and went down, Johnnie on top of James, her back to him. She struggled for a minute and then whispered.

"Brute. Stop it. Someone will see us."

"So what?"

"So . . just so." He held her fast, and as she stopped struggling for fear the scuffle would be discovered, James kissed her on the back of the neck. She relaxed."

"Do that again."

He relaxed his arms, kissed her ear then let her go.

They both got up and dusted themselves off as they looked around to see if someone had seen them. It was just dark and Jess and the summer help were all on the other side of the bunkhouse sitting around the barbeque talking in low tones. Lights from the main house suggested that the rhythms of life there proceeded as usual. Ron and Natalie had returned from their California trip, and Natalie had turned right around and returned to California by way of Reno and the family lawyer. Johnnie's mother was no doubt absorbed in quenching her thirst. The cocktail hour for her often lasted from before dinner, through it and ended at bedtime. That time would be soon.

Johnnie led again as she took his hand. "You don't need those calendar girls. You've got me."

All of this can be seen throughout history as girls get together with boys and boys get together with girls. Avoid, attract, then back and forth and forth and back which leads to a kind play, then foreplay and sex play--it has been seen before. This case was without much difference. However, each time it happens it is special to those who have it happen, or make it happen. Intensity, excitement, anticipation, serendipity . . . it is all of a piece and always special.

"What's that mean?"

"Something nice. Something naughty. We'll see."

Johnnie stepped forward, turned and kissed James square on the mouth this time. James responded by putting his arms around her and kissed her back, too hard. It was his first time kissing a girl and it happened so wonderfully fast that later that night he didn't believe it had happened. He wondered about how rough or gentle he should be. There would be a next time. He hoped. Would they could go all the way? Johnnie went to bed in her own room, door firmly closed to her family, her losses, and her secret hopes, open to that formula she needed for such a long time. An ounce of kindness, an ounce of affection. She dreamed of being held in body and esteem. James was a good catch. She felt sure she had caught him, for herself. Or had he caught her with her help? It didn't matter.

Summer romances have to get down to business. They last only so long. James and Johnnie wasted no time. Adventurous, needy and unsupervised as they were, within two days they had made love, James in white socks and Johnnie in white bra. By the third try, each graced the other naked except for condoms supplied--just in case--by Alice; in addition, Johnnie would have no more of the missionary style. Once James had entered her, she held him and rolled on top and straddled him trapping him. James did not resist for this way he looked at her face, her long hair, her breasts, her flat tummy. She pleasured him, or he pleasured himself. What was the difference? Nothing. It was so  intense on the fifth lesson of life, he came inside her three times before his penis finally became flaccid. Johnnie delighted in their play always insisting that they french kiss before and embrace each other afterwards in whatever positions they found themselves when sated.

During the course of that first week, two condoms broke and worried both of them, of course Johnnie more so. She insisted she wanted indefinite independence. A child would not be welcome. James neither protested nor assisted in being aware of or responsible about consequences. Birth control was Johnnie's job as was the lead in the relationship. Somehow she always had a condom ready, just in case. And they both knew what to do with it. Teenagers find out about these things in spite of adults and their squeamishness in having that dreaded, from both sides, talk. After two weeks, Johnnie got her period and that was that until Jess said to Johnnie after she had left James's room one afternoon, "Watch yourself. Don't get hurt."

Catching opportunities for lovemaking was a challenge. During the day the bunkhouse was almost always empty. Jess and the hired hands were out working, and schedules could pretty much be predicted. One catch, however, was James. He was there to learn and work. It was perhaps his unexplained absences and long breaks from chores and daily jobs that finally raised suspicions. As for Johnnie, her comings and goings at the main house were ignored except for that extra shower or two she began taking each day. Ron, who worked in his den at the other end of the sprawling residence began to notice a new routine and wondered what was up. To hide what was going on, Johnnie let her mother know she was having a particularly heavy period and needed frequent bathing, or her hair needed washing. It was so greasy. Mary dismissed Ron's questions with, "It's just girl stuff . . . you know, her age." Ron said nothing, but to be sure that his money was being well spent on hired help and other ranch expenses, he walked about and asked questions more than usual. His pattern was not to enter the bunkhouse. He considered it a  private living space for the help. But about three weeks into his stepchild's affair, he stopped by, found Jess in the kitchen and they had a chat.

By the middle of August, the teenagers were well versed in different ways of making love--they both had read and viewed those magazines James had brought. They were as textbooks for insatiably curious students that had no sex education classes at home or school. The two were focused on experimenting and practicing whenever they could. Sometimes James said he was sore and said he couldn't. Johnnie expressed sympathy in such a way that any soreness was soon forgotten and they were at it again. This too may have had something to do with what happened next. The silent bunch knew the two couldn't be apart for long, and it appeared that "live and let live" or "they're just kids, gotta live when yer young," would ensure secrecy where secrecy was warranted. But no.

And to transform ecstasies and careless living into the very worst, albeit most appalling nightmare--yes, Mrs. Weatherall entered James's room without an appointment about four in the afternoon on about August eighteenth. She had driven all the way from Sacramento to the ranch and was there to save her innocent not from himself but from "that whore of a daughter you have under your roof." Insult to injury, James and Johnnie were in bed at the time. Johnnie was on top. Imagine. No, don't.

The results were minimally these. James packed and was in the family car back to Sacramento within a half hour. The parting words to Ron and Mary was that Mrs. W. would bring charges, sue . . . do something to right a grave wrong. They would be hearing from her lawyer. Jess left that evening with no explanation and no comment. A peek in his room showed no personal belongings. On the nineteenth Lawton became resident wrangler. He was the most experienced cowboy and the most responsible. Ron blew a gasket and moved quickly to the wet bar in the family room. He started as soon as Mrs. W. had left. Mary dutifully became additionally sedated and tisk-tisked her daughter and then went silent. Ron's gasket still leaking fuel as he drank, yelled to Johnnie who was in the bathroom down the hall next to her bedroom. She was to join her sister permanently as soon as the purchase of Natalie's equestrian center in California closed escrow. Johnnie would not be driving off to Nixon or anywhere else from now on and forever, and she would not finish school in Fernley. "Got that you little slut?"

The thing to imagine, or know, is that this summary dismissal and sentence to some rural hole in California was not an end but a beginning for Johnnie. So it was, in hindsight, not a bad thing. Johnnie escaped with her independence, as it turned out, and the first lessons of carnal knowledge. She had before her the possibility of at least sisterly care and affection. She was headed into the unknown, but her stepsister and she, she believed, could work through whatever it may be that would stood in the way of a home and a fresh start. They could make it on their own away from parents. Natalie by this point was ready for a business challenge. She was in her mid twenties. That her stepsister had gotten caught where Natalie hadn't when she played around with boys in her teens, this was a stone in a foundation for the future. What was bad was an effect. Oh, to be sure there were many that could have been identified at the time, but this came into relief clearly--though it would take several years for full definition. Younger men and older men are not to be believed or trusted. The young ones will not, cannot support you in the ways you need. Older ones were just heartless pricks. Snitches and pricks.

Johnnie, now wary of any boy her age or man who came near her, was not yet open for one who was kind and could support, even mentor her in some way, not in matters of the body but about how to get along amicably and grow and maybe, just maybe, strike out on one's own. Just  knowing that there was a loved one in your corner would make all the difference. For now, that someone could be, would be Natalie. Who might she meet in her new school, in college, at work who could in time provide a pillar? help her on her way? She didn't know. Time enough to sort it out in some backwater place in California. Plus she had to lick her wounds before healing fully.

Topaz Lake

For my cousin, Darcie.

/////

Topaz Lake is a peaceful place, if you like that much peace. Johnnie did. With scant vegetation and expansive spaces, the landscape allowed memories to ferment into thoughts and resolves. The very prison of that vast surround forms a closer, more intimate interior wilderness to tame. Topaz Lake itself is unresponsive and silent. When the wind blows and frays the water's surface with ripples that sparkle in  Nevada's winter sun, no one is about. This is the main attraction for Johnnie, who chose this refuge from having to grow up fast and cope with the pains and dangers of past interludes of a dozen or so years. She intuited correctly that she had to drop out of sight and collect herself to feel whole, a state she knew existed but had never experienced fully, pervasively before. She hadn't had the opportunity of allowing herself to feel that--good fate and bad fate had had their ways with her and had shaken things to the extent that there had to be a stop, a refuge, a retreat, a still point. Would that this place and the commitment to be just here and nowhere else in an enduring now permit that constellation into oneness to take place.

Topaz-house was bought not so much on a whim as a chapter's end to a past best left decidedly back there, before anything more, anything new, before any steps in a direction--if any--could be taken. Johnnie's choice was "a permanent residence" and grownup stability. She knew another challenge would come, perhaps having to do with an inheritance. On one hand, if it came, she knew she did not know what she should do with it. On the other, if it did not come, perhaps she would place one plastic flower on the remains that was her childhood and youth, and her parents and step parent--may they rest and shut the hell up. The burden either way was still a mirage in a vague, intermediate distance beyond the present.

Johnnie sat on the south-facing wood deck eyes closed to the bright morning sun and the lake, a baseball cap shading her face and holding her long black hair gathered under the Velcro strap in a kind of pony tail. Her diary, now more a journal and notebook, was on her lap with a pen sticking out marking the page to begin her writing that day. She sat and drank in the fresh air, her hand resting on the nap of her Border Collie's neck. Bark waited for any command or movement other than the soft gentle strokes of his mistress. The phone rang. Johnnie let it ring. Her sister. Natalie would call back.

Johnnie had five fenced acres of arid land. She planned to have a second horse to keep Boss company. Someday when. A well to support a small family homestead sold her on the place as did the view. With eight hundred square feet, she was working slowly to make her one level wood frame house a home. The house was lakeside, the southern border of her property with two trees on the north side where she parked her pickup and horse trailer. She lived on the deck and in the central living space, a modest-sized great room where the winter sun baked a hodge podge of indoor plants. She and Bark came and went by the sliding glass door and surveyed Boss moping about the small enclosure with north facing leanto shelter to escape the sun or the occasional storm. Chores were few. There was plenty of time to mess about the house, ride out over the hill and into the desert, read, feed the animals, do nothing, and settle in, to herself. The television was on in the mornings and evenings for news and classic rock. Johnnie faintly missed the world news, especially stories about Europe, and the local news from the East Coast, New York.

The phone rang again. It rang thirteen times. By the time Johnnie answered there was no one there.

In a former life Johnnie managed her sister's equestrian center in rural California. She learned everything she ever wanted to know about running a business and how to handle horses and their owners. She even had a stint at a normal job, waitress at an art-cafe owned by a former lover. Before that, she grew up on a Nevada ranch north of Reno. There she found horse and ranch work her escape from those people, her immediate family. Horses and the outdoors, a cattle ranch and small town Nevada, these were safe havens for a home that couldn't accommodate the love and parenting, or gentle guidance, she needed then. Boss was perhaps a reminder of her western ranch side and her losses, of her first horse and her innocence. Bark was hers now, a companion to take care of and give a sense of family and laughter to an otherwise empty nest. She was single and alone, but not lonely. She had Bark. She had no financial worries, she thanked the stars; she had only personal ones, about the past. A specific guilt.

Nature called. The morning's coffee and juice had more than replenished what the night's dry desert air had sucked from her slender frame. As she finished up in the bathroom, the phone rang again.

"Hello?"

"Is this Erika Passnstyle?"

"Bloody hell," Johnnie whispered as she slammed the phone down. She stood there with a shocked and defiant expression. How could they? She immediately called Nevada Bell and canceled telephone service. An unlisted number was no answer to stay connected with her one relative and at the same time rest undetected. Thank God her mail went to Natalie.

For the rest of that sunny winter day, Johnnie stewed about who might have been at the other end of the line. Neither a long walk down by the lake nor a two hour ride on Boss over the hill and into the wasteland north and northeast of the house helped. By evening, the inner doubts from Eastern memories returned with a vengeance. Her contemplative retreat, her very private and sacred space, had been invaded. Someone knew where she was. She feared someone might next come knocking on her door. There was only one person who was supposed to know where she was exactly on a map. She'd have to use a public phone to call her.

***

July came. Johnnie had settled in at Topaz Lake. She had routines, and as a woman of means she was the mistress of her time and priorities. She continued her reading and riding. She maintained the house. Her teenage years spent as ranch hand and equestrian center jill-of-all-trades had its advantages for helping a girl function independently. She made simple additions to her home's decor. She cared for her dog and horse expertly, explored surrounding areas and settlements by dusty pickup. She spent long hours in a lounge chair on her deck enjoying the sun and the view. She oversaw scattered boaters on weekends and spied on picnickers on the opposite shore swimming and barbecuing. She particularly loved the barren expanses near at hand and the changing colors of the arid hills and valleys in all directions. She ventured into the mountains to the west and the farm settlements both north and south. She researched the history of this borderland neither California nor Nevada, and felt she was now part  that because of a growing peace and acceptance of her past and the troubles that had haunted her. Haunt now was not the quality; it was a kind of silence and resilience and self acceptance. She had minor regrets and ruminations, no more nightmares, no more ghosts that would appear and disturb her. No one knew her or what she did here. She had the time she needed to come to terms.

One summer afternoon she noticed a late model sedan drive up to the makeshift gate of barbed wire to the  access road leading to her small spread and the dam beyond her property line. The one and only neighbor on that road never stopped by, but perhaps it was this neighbor walking from the parked car past the gate and towards her house. As he got closer, Johnnie noticed that it was a man in a white, long sleeved shirt and what looked like slacks or suit pants. Curious, she followed his progress and realized that he was approaching the other side of her house and not continuing toward the dam. Bark warned Johnnie but didn't leave her side. The horse continued munching hay stacked just inside his paddock.

The old ranch chow bell rang at the front of the house, and Johnnie entered the sliding glass door, passed through the great room to the entry hall and mud room. She opened the door and immediately recognized him.

"Erika. Or is it Johnnie? I see I have found you."

It was that rookie New York detective. She had not seen him for how long, nine months? And he was here in her hideout from the world--on her doorstep.

"Clever. Very clever. Business or pleasure?"

"Business mostly."

"How did you find me? Never mind. It's your job, isn't it?"

"So, it's nice to see you too."

"I'm sorry. I'm being impolite. Come in. Thirsty? You are not dressed for summer. Look at your shoes. Do you plan on staying long?"

Johnnie was pleased to see someone, and for it to be Detective O' Connel didn't matter much. Months of being alone with now someone visiting under whatever pretense unleashed a flood of words and questions. OC began by agreeing that a glass of water would be great. She filled a glass from a pitcher she took from the refrigerator and handed it to him.

"We can sit outside on the deck. You can see my beautiful corner of. . . ." Her words were lost in the empty space between them. OC didn't appear attentive to what she was saying. He had his mind on how beautiful Johnnie looked in loose fitting shorts and a tank top that revealed how much sun she had absorbed doing just what they were about to do, sitting in the bright sunshine.

"So, do you plan on staying around here long?" asked Johnnie.

"I'm on leave actually. So a while I guess."

Johnnie said she was sort of on leave also, "until my birthday or shortly after. Then my life becomes a little more complicated, but it's nothing to worry about really. How did you find me?"

"Well, I was looking for Erika and it took me time to track you down. Turns out Erika is not even your real name."

"New York alias."

"No one knew, and so it took me a little longer. There're not many Passnstyles around. Quite an unusual name. Like Pancrace."

Johnnie was silent and waited for more. After a pause that both assumed the other would fill with sound, OC asked, "Why was that, about Erika that is?"

"Long story. I don't think you'd be interested. I think you are here on assignment other than verifying my background. You've apparently checked that out already. How much do you know?"

"You have no money worries. You didn't even have them when you lived in New York and yet you worked for a living. Three years, was it?"

"Yes, about that."

"But there must be more."

OC had asked an ambiguous question. Johnnie took to one interpretation. "When I turn thirty you mean."

"No, I don't know anything about that. Other than we all do. Turn thirty. Mostly all of us . . ."

"Well, that's another story. A long and a short version. But I don't think that is very interesting either. Let's just say I have nothing to worry about with money except how to save it and how to spend it. Not that much money actually. Tell me about your leave of absence. Is it indefinite, or do you have to leave soon and get back to work. Or maybe you haven't actually left your work."

OC was hoping for a warmer welcome and an easier time of it; he knew he wasn't' there for pleasantries. He was a cop and the only thing possibly between him and Johnnie was Pancrace. "I've come a long way. Isn't there anything you want to tell me. You know why I am here."

"No, and no I don't know why you are here. On leave is all you said."

"And Pancrace. Edgar Pancrace."

"If you are asking if I knew Edgar and his wife, the answer is yes, I did. I am, was, very fond of them. It is difficult to find the right way to talk when talking about people you still care about but they are, you know, gone."

"Tell me more."

"I'm not sure I'm ready for this. I wasn't expecting anyone, least of all you."

"I'm one of your greatest fans. I don't think you know that. I have been living with the image of you for months. Questions, really."

"Ah, catalogs. You got hold of a catalog. You naughty boy."

"I've seen one or two."

"This sounds more like pleasure than business. Your pleasure that is. Which is it then? me or the Pancraces."

"Both if I can have my way, but I am interested in what happened."

"You know, it is really a nice, hot afternoon. Want to change into something more comfortable? take a swim or a walk? Where are you staying? The casino on the other side of the lake has a motel. You could stay there and tomorrow we can see about giving you what you've come for. Stories, I guess. I have . . . stories."

"I'm sorry. I did just drop in unannounced and unexpected, and already we are fencing. Something like that. I've interrupted something. I'm interested in stories, yes. I have time also. And it would be nice to get to know you in the flesh rather than on paper, public records, what people have told me, and . . ."

"What do people know." It wasn't a question. "Nothing."

Johnnie didn't take the obvious bait--flesh--and stepped back a little from an emerging rebellious self and apologized. She paused and said that this situation and what OC had just said had triggered something dark inside her. She was working on it, but sometimes it still came up. She would try not to let it happen again. OC decided to meet her with questions and conversation as and when she was ready. He would find a room for the night and they could meet see each other the next day--if he was welcome. Johnnie said he was until either of them no longer had anything to say to the other. This left OC puzzled, but puzzles weren't supposed to be new to detectives. He was patient with a great interest in stories, a word they both repeated so much that it morphed from trite to pregnant. For Johnnie, their parting that afternoon was welcome and she was doubtful she wanted to tell any stories the next day. After all, where would she begin? and what would he think? what would he do once he knew?

OC arrived early the next morning and just sat and nodded now and then as Johnnie talked about nothing, collected herself, retrieved an old journal from a shelf in her bedroom, poured a cup of coffee. Then she fed Bark and looked over to OC from the kitchen counter which faced out to the sliding glass door and deck. OC was still standing in her living room. She guessed detectives had to listen to a lot of confessions and they withhold judging based on what they heard. That's supposed to be the way it works, she thought, and he had kind of confirmed that by showing up early. He waited, listened, and now just stared at her. She asked him to please sit down as she finally did and began talking. She looked now and then at her journal and sometimes read from it. OC noticed but didn't comment.

***

I arrived in New York that year. I was in London and other places. France, for example. It doesn't matter. Anyway, I arrived and had no place to stay. I was in this little hotel for a couple of weeks. When not looking for a more permanent place, I spent my time researching and looking around, getting a feel for the city. Walking, walking, and more walking. One day I ended up in this bookshop. It was crowded but I collected a couple of books from the drama section. You know, New York is crazy with writers and actors who are looking for parts or their big break. Anyway, I asked this lady if I could sit at her table. The cafe in the bookstore . . . it was the only seat available, and she looked nice. Friendly.

She had this babushka on, and trying not to make eye contact, you know New York, I noticed in the flash of a glance she had eyebrow pencil marks instead of eyebrows. I didn't make much of it and settled in to my coffee and having a look at the books I had collected. After Paris I figured I should know something about Beckett, and among the nineteenth century playwrights, I thought Ibsen would be a good one to know. To read, I mean. At least one play. _Hedda Gabler_ seemed like it would do and I started looking at the list of characters. Why I was interested in drama is another story. I definitely won't bore you. Paris either.

Helen, that was her name. Helen. She noticed me and tried to strike up a conversation and asked if I was a model. I hadn't heard her exactly so I said, "I'm sorry. Were you talking to me?"

"I just wondered if you were a model. You are a very pretty young woman," she said.

I said, "Thanks. No, I'm not a model. Just some lucky genetics somewhere."

"Your parents, then."

"I'm sorry?" I really wasn't paying too much attention. But it seemed at this point she wanted to talk with me or someone. I didn't see what was wrong with that, and so I put the book down and looked at her. I then saw that she had lost her hair. I immediately thought of chemo, for cancer or something.

She repeated, "I said I thought perhaps you had lovely parents."

"Well, not really." I knew what she meant, and so I began to clarify. Stupid. I was rebelling still and the fight almost came up in me. No, I'm not going into that either.

"Lovely. No," I said. "They weren't. My father died when I was very young. I never knew or saw him, not even a picture . . . because my mother repressed all things unpleasant."

Drank actually. I stopped right there. I knew I was about to get into stuff with a stranger that was best left unsaid.

"I'm sorry to hear that, dear."

She seemed so nice. So motherly. Nurturing and understanding. It turned out that first impression was right, but I will get to that.

"My name is Johnnie. I'm new here. And I like to read."

"Well, my name is Helen. I'm a reader too, but not fiction. Real life is almost too much already. I don't care anymore to hide from it. Real life that is."

"What are you reading there?" I asked.

"Self-help stuff. I'm just looking for some answers. How about you? What have you got there?"

I explained what I had picked up and why. I won't go into that right now. Am I boring you? I'm sorry, but all of this is important and some of it's not. Just bear with me. You have nothing else to do here in your city clothes. The view is wonderful isn't it? I bought the house for this deck and view of the lake. So different from where you came from, from where I spent a few, well, let's say interesting years. But I digress. I like that sentence. Gives you an excuse to say stuff, or drop some info along the way. I will know if you have been paying attention when I get finished with this. I really think you are watching as much as listening, and I'll not speculate on what it is you find so interesting, me or watching for something, waiting for something I will say. My dear detective--I wonder if you can take off the uniform, so to speak, and just be a human being and feel others. Do you compartmentalize? Compassion is the word, quality, I am looking for, and I hope it is what I had then. Now also. Forget I said any of this.

At the mention of Ibsen, Helen became quite interested. She said she did look into literature for answers to practical questions, but she didn't find what she was looking for. Literature was great for asking questions; however, the answers were superficial--humans in real life couldn't begin to cope with what they found imaginary characters would do, or actually did in that world. Or the answers were beyond the text. I asked her what she meant. Could she give me an example.

"Well, it all gets a little personal here, doesn't it?"

I said maybe, but I was truly interested in what she was referring to. So I guess I showed I was really keen on knowing.

"Well, dear, you know some people have some challenges. You know, in life. Some, and even life and death ones. My husband has terminal cancer, you see."

I expressed concern and said I was sorry. She said it was okay, that they were coping and had plans how to deal with the next complications. "Et cetera," she said. And sorry? There was no need to feel sorry. Just enjoy the time we have. "I am enjoying talking with you, and seeing you. You remind me of someone I once knew."

This sounded so like a line out of some book or something but at the same time very touching. I wondered who she was talking about. I found out later she was referring to herself when she was young and pretty and had long straight hair. She knew these days were gone and I reminded her, in a good way, I think. I like to think now, in a good way.

Helen continued. "Now, Ibsen, dear. I would like to recommend his play _Ghosts_. Have you read it?"

I told her no.

"Well, if you do, I would like to talk with you about the end. It's one of those works I was referring to, about literature that leaves one having to make a decision about what happens next. I am always interested in what happens next. Sometimes I am afraid of seeing what's next. But at my age and . . . it's just interesting, isn't it? Life I mean."

I said, "It sure is. I will read that play instead of this one. Because you recommend it. Thank you."

"I come here each Thursday after having coffee with my husband. A kind of ritual we have. Sometimes we have a nice lunch. Same place near his work every week. Then I come here. I look through the books to see if there is something that might distract me. Then I sit here by the window if the table is free. I look out and around in here. There are so many interesting people. Bookstores attract all kinds, but you know what they all have in common?"

"They like to read, I guess."

"Yes, that is true. They are curious. I mean that in two ways. They have active brains. They are looking and trying to find things, answers, information, knowledge . . . maybe wisdom. And they are a strange, curious lot. Look here."

She laid her hand out palm up and in a sweeping gesture as if to say, see, humanity in all its diversity. I looked and saw all kinds of people. Colors, shapes, sizes, ages, dress, I could even hear different languages being spoken. You know. New York.

OC assured Johnnie he was listening. "I know. The city is wonderful and complexifying."

"Complexifying. That's a good word. Kind of fits New York and my story."

"How is that?"

"Patience, my dear."

Johnnie realized she may have given a signal. "I may have sounded a bit condescending using the dear-word, but I didn't mean it that way. And considering your earlier hint of interest in me, as a woman? that was probably the wrong word. But oh well.

"All I mean to say is that, and I am sorry about this, my story, my little story, has its ins, outs, and arounds, and unless you get, I mean get, the whole of it, you will never see it, or me, in a true light. I'm not trying to say I'm special or anything, or that what I did can be excused because of the complexity of my story, or my life. I'm just trying to say that this is my confession. And Mr. Detective, you get to hear it. In fact, I have held this so close for so long, it feels good to get it out. I'm not sure you will like me or hate me at the end."

"I will like you, I am sure."

"Not so fast." Johnnie took a deep breath and continued.

***

Helen said she would be at the bookshop the next Thursday. I said I would try to meet her. If I got through the play, we could talk about it. Would that be nice? She said that would be wonderful. But if for any reason she could not make it, try again the following Thursday. I said I would. I enjoyed being with her. In NYC or even in the world, it is truly important to spend time with genuine people, kind and loving people. And I thought for sure she was special, one of these. And to be honest, that is what I missed so much in my life. To find someone in the big city, that was great. I hadn't expected to.

The following week came and we met. We went through pleasantries and a few realities. Her husband's state of ill health was on Helen's mind. And she talked a lot about that and was in great earnest about what she could do to help him. My issue was I hadn't found a small place to rent furnished for the six months I planned to stay in the city. But I had found a job, the one you know about. I was supposed to start as soon as I got settled, which was very kind of my employer. Mostly I listened to Helen. And she listened to me. Then she mentioned off handedly that we might be able to help each other. Before she went into detail about these things, she asked me a couple of questions, to get to know me better, I think. I had no objection.

She asked about my name which brought up my mother and stepfather and Natalie, my sister, and horses.

"You know something about all of that, don't you?"

"I believe I do."

"Right."

Then she asked if I had read Ibsen's _Ghosts_. I said I had. And thus began a long conversation and speculation about what happened next. After the play ends.

"You know this play?"

"Not at all."

"Well, let me cut to the quick or chase or whatever it is. It's like this. Oswald, the son of Mrs. Alving, is dying. At the end of the play, he has his last seizure and has asked his mother to administer a lethal dose of _morphia_, Ibsen calls it, so he, I mean Oswald, will not suffer and will not live as a vegetable. Will she or won't she?"

"What's her last name?"

"Alving. I don't know her first name."

"Not in the play. Helen's. Helen's last name."

"Pancrace. Helen Pancrace. Who'd you think I was talking about?"

"It wasn't clear. At the start. New York has a lot of Helens. And you're in this story. I got confused about who you were talking about."

"I suspect you might not have been listening carefully. Well, that being clear now, now you have clues, don't you? Think about it."

"Yes, I believe I do."

"Keep them in mind and don't conclude or judge anything till you hear how it all comes out."

"Okay. Can I ask one question?"

"Sure."

"Do the Pancraces have a son?"

"No, they were childless. Couldn't have children for some reason. But they would have been great parents. They loved each other deeply and would have given a child everything they could to ensure his or her safety and security. And prosperity, although they were not rich people. And they would have done this all out of love. They were wonderful people."

"You knew them pretty well."

"I can tell you. But not today. It is getting late and this talking, I'll call it, tires me. I'm not used to it. This notebook's finished. I'm actually exhausted. You can come back and I will think about which story to tell you then. Maybe I have another notebook or journal that will help fill in the missing pieces, keep on track with the storyline, you know."

***

The following day the wind blew down from the mountains to the west and across the lake hitting the house and glass door directly. The door and windows rattled and gray skies darkened the lake and the sage covered hills. The color of the arid horizon to the south looked  grayer than the brush that covered landscape, its pungent scent covered everything and invaded even the house. Johnnie's worried face had no relationship to the day or the environment; it was a reflection of the doubts she had about her unexpected visitor and what she should or might reveal to him. He showed up about eleven that morning as promised and seemed to have brought along some mood, although Johnnie paid little attention. She was occupied with trying to work out how to proceed with this official on leave, someone she did not know and wasn't sure now she wanted to.

When OC entered the house, Johnnie excused herself and said she would be right with him. She closed the door to the bathroom, although she had nothing to do there but look in the mirror and wonder who that was staring back at her. Finally, without a clear sense of what to do or say next, she thought she could keep him waiting no longer and returned to where OC was standing looking out the sliding glass door with his hands in his pockets. He was dressed in jeans and a short sleeved shirt and seemed at ease, also waiting for what would happen. But he wasn't at ease.

Johnnie apologized for the delay, mentioning that women had things to do that men should remain uninformed about. It was lame but a nothing-something to adjust the awkwardness that they both now felt, almost tangible it was.

OC looked over his shoulder and asked, "Stories today?"

"I haven't decided. Am I under some obligation to you, like some kind of suspect for what happened to Edgar? Is your visit official, and what's this about your leave? I don't think my stories can supply the recreation you're after. Perhaps you are in Nevada for other reasons than to see if I still exist. You have that answer. I'm here. People come to this state to play at things. Gambling and other things. I think it is time for you to tell me something. Your story maybe. Or more to the point, what are your travel plans, and when do you have to be back in the city?"

"I'm sorry. Do you want the truth?"

"Is there anything that is not true that is as important?"

"No, I suppose not."

He turned to the view again and began talking. He did not want to see the expressions on Johnnie's face as he attempted to open then quickly shut a door revealing an interior.

"I'm not ignoring you. I just can't face you when I tell you what I'm thinking . . . feeling. I'm embarrassed to say. . . ." He paused.

Johnnie sat in one of the two wicker chairs that faced the glass doors looking out to the lake and mountains beyond. She waited, sensing this was something important. He needed a kind of space to say what it was she had urged him to, and did he really want to? She wasn't sure. What was he hiding, for she was sure he was hiding, had been from when he first arrived.

"I know you've heard this before, or you know how people respond to you. In my line of work I have to ignore appearances and try to get at the heart of the matter, usually some injury or wrong. I'm trained to be suspicious and try to think about what is not being said. With you I am not talking about acting like a detective. I just have a hard time seeing and listening to you without being quite taken. You are very beautiful, and I know that has been some kind of factor you have had to consider when people, perhaps even me, are with you or talking to you. You'd be right to suspect motives. I'm just an ordinary guy with a not so pleasant job that I can do moderately well, unless I get personally involved, which I almost never do. I am finding it hard to ignore you.

"You are different from who I thought you were in New York. I mean, I only saw you twice and we exchanged so little at the time. And now, after yesterday, there is a great deal more to you than meets the eye. But a man's eye, it's his burden to be obsessed by the visual. I think every man also thinks or hopes beyond what he sees. Clouds the judgement, and in my case, the case with you, a great distraction.

"I know this all sounds trite and stupid, but I want to know who killed Pancrace, and you're a person, I won't say suspect, who I'm sure knows something. I want to know what that is. Business. I don't want to be confused or to be just another chauvinist, or whatever we are, seduced because we have testosterone, or whatever it is that gets between people that prevents the truth coming out. It's not you. I am distracted by you and it's not your fault.

"I'm going to turn around and I am going to be here to listen to whatever you have to tell me. And we will forget this little speech.

"Oh, and one other thing. Maybe we are talking about both of them. Helen died within a week of her husband. But you knew that I suspect."

He paused and then slowly turned around and found Johnnie seated with eyes cast down. She did not want to look at him. As she hid her Mona Lisa look behind her hand, she quietly said, "I will continue where I left off." In a moment. She got up from the chair and went into another room and returned with notebook. She chose a recliner chair in the sun by the sliding glass door. She sat back in the chair with the noonday sun highlighting her profile for her visitor and began talking as if she were a patient and OC her therapist.

***

Helen and I met that following week at the bookstore. I told you I knew them both, she and her husband. And that second meeting I must have appeared desperate. I could not find a place to rent for about six months, furnished. That was as long as I had planned to stay in the city. I reported on my search for a suitable and reasonably priced place, throwing in bits about my frustrations with this new culture I found myself in. I had both chosen to live in this new place and discovered quickly that it wasn't so easy, even though New Yorkers speak what appears to be English. And so direct. It's not language which makes for different culture, though, but it's a part of it. I was having some trouble. Just like in Europe. Did you discover what I did on my way from Paris to London? No? Well, we might get to that.

Anyway, when I had vented my frustrations and started to inquire how Helen and her husband were doing, she said, "Dear, we have an extra room. You can stay with us till you find a suitable place. It is not far from here, and then you can concentrate on your new job and slowly find something. If you will only be six months, it would be a shame to go to all the trouble of signing a lease and settling in . . . just to move again. Would you like to see our home?"

From there the story pretty much ends. I stayed with the Pancraces till about a month before they died. I moved into my own place, but after they were gone, I didn't feel much like New York, I mean staying. And I ended up here, after clearing up some bits and pieces.

***

"I can't really help that this part of the story is so short, but it was an important period in my life. Very important. Should I try to tell you about that? I'm not sure I can put it into words."

"Please."

"Helen was the mother I never had. Edgar the father. They were loving and accepting. I could be me with each of them, and they for the most part could be themselves. It was a bittersweet time and so very short. I paid my utilities, of course. But they would not take rent. They even told me that they thought of me as their grown daughter, one who had had her rebellious stage and came out sweeter than sweet at the end. Their words. No one has ever thought of me as sweet. Quite the opposite, and I gave many people good reason to think of me as a bitch, especially men.

"Without going into the microcosm of that world, my New York nest, I would have to summarize it this way. I found a home and people to love and be loved by. I surrendered into it like a baby snuggled into a soft blanket cuddled in its mother's arms, with a father that cared and kissed me on the forehead to show his affection. Edgar did that and I didn't mind. I welcomed it. He never did anything to indicate that he had any motives other than to accept and support me. Kind of ideal and different for me, and I needed that medicine. By the end I had received the gift of all gifts and felt more complete than I ever had with my own family, or with others for that matter . . . like the end of the unhappy and unfulfilled life and the foundation for the opposite, a new life, here for example. When I was in that space, I was ready to leave New York and they were gone . . . how I miss them . . . nothing else to hold me there, not even the friends, but of course I miss them too, now especially.

"That's about it. I think it is enough for today. Short and sweet."

"I didn't think you were a bitch when I met you."

"I was on the mend by then. I have tried my best . . ."

"I think you have left one or two things out."

"As I said, details which just illustrate how wonderful and loving the Pancraces were."

"And about the flat? the one across the hall from your boss."

"Oh, that. Well, that has a simple explanation. I told you, or I guess you know, I don't have money problems. I bought it."

"How did you buy it and why across the corridor from the man you were stalking?"

"Whoa. Stalking? Hardly. Sometimes I flirted. My boss knew that. Mary even conspired with me. That was a game the three of us played."

Johnnie silently stared at OC. She shrugged her shoulders and began again.

"Edgar. You know he worked for the city building department. Well, he would come across these distressed properties, and he let me know that someone did not pay their property taxes. This was just after I met him. One thing led to another and I bought the property for back taxes. By the time I was about to leave, the property could be transferred officially into my name. And that is what happened. The fact that it was in Mary's and my boss's building was just a coincidence. A happy one, but a coincidence all the same."

"These people, Pancrace, were essentially strangers and you ended up with a flat as a result of their care, their love, for you. There must be more to the story than that."

"Well, if there is, we're not going to talk about that today. Maybe ever. You have to start talking about you, and I'm not referring to your infatuation or whatever. I want some stories, true or not, about OC, who happens to be, he says, a moderately good detective from New York. I feel too exposed, almost naked psychologically. You are all covered up. So if you are going to be in my house another minute and just ask the occasional question which puts me on the spot and on edge, you are going to have to participate. Or, Detective O'Connel, the party is over. We are not having parity here, unless you have not been forthcoming and I am being interrogated in some fancy way. All that talk about my distracting you and you being only interested in what happened to Edgar. I'm sorry. Helen and Edgar."

"You're not telling me everything."

"Why should I?"

"Because there is more to tell. About you. I am interested in your story, believe it or not. And about Helen and Edgar and your neighbor and boss, by the way, still a suspect in the killing of at least Edgar. Let's finish it."

Johnnie fell silent and nodded and swallowed carefully. She looked up and asked, "Have you ever killed anyone in the line of duty?"

"Yes. Once."

"Was he a bad guy?"

"Turned out she was."

"Oh, and have you put that behind you?"

"No. I think about her still, and other people making the wrong choices, or being in the wrong place. They shouldn't have to die because of these things, but that's the idealist in me. It still bothers me."

"I see."

"Why do you ask?"

"The person who killed Edgar. How could he?"

"He?"

"Yes. I'm sure it was a man."

"Talk to me."

"I'm finished for today. I've given you more clues. What do you think now? Who killed Edgar? You no doubt came up with theories that didn't pan out, and so you came here. So I am a suspect, aren't I?"

"I'm not here officially, and it's been nice getting to know you. I think these days have damaged any relationship we might have had. I'm talking about two civil people, possible friends. I'm sorry. I'm finished also. I know there is something more, but I am not here to drag it out of you."

Johnnie to her surprise felt a stone drop to the bottom of her stomach. She had lost whatever it was OC was for her or promised to be, and she had incited the fire. Her stories had been therapeutic, but she was not finished. She had only opened the door and let him look in. She had not finished what she wanted to tell and to look him in the face as he progressively learned the truths about her and what happened in New York. She felt depressed and desperate. She wanted to call him back even though he had not moved after his last words.

"Would you like to have drinks and dinner together? We can move beyond this and be friendly, can't we? I haven't been out with someone for a long time. How about it? There is a steak place nearby and a couple of real saloons if you are game. What do you say? I'll even pop for the check. I can probably afford it more than you on a civil servant's wage. Well?"

"You're very persuasive. I would like to have the company, before we call it quits."

"That sounds ominous. After a couple of drinks I want you to take that back. Don't get scared or hopeful. I don't do seducing . . . not anymore anyway, especially cops."

"Sounds like another story." Johnnie didn't react, so he added, "Tell me my options again."

***

Johnnie said she just had to get ready and she would drive. She knew what she wanted for herself to get out of the verbal puzzles best left to the confines of her home on Topaz Lake. She or they could try to piece things together after a break, a welcome break.

They got in Johnnie's car and slowly navigated the access road back out to where OC's rental car was parked. He got out and drove his car to where he was staying, the Blue Lake Bed and Bar. Johnnie followed and after parking his car, OC got in Johnnie's and she drove north and west into California. OC didn't know where he was. He wasn't paying attention. He glanced at Johnnie now and then and looked out the front and side windows at the passing sage hills till they entered terrain with sparsely spaced evergreens. Johnnie again asked what OC's leave of absence meant.

"Is it like a vacation or reward for your outstanding service or what?" OC said the leave was with pay for ninety days and then if everything worked out, he'd return to work. He would have to report soon whether or not he was returning. Johnnie asked what that decision depended on and OC said he preferred not to discuss work right now.

"I'm still trying to get used to your being here. So you got on a plane or whatever you did, rented a car, and came and found me? Should I be honored, or cautious?"

"Both. I think I answered that already."

"You can't have it both ways. I tried to tell you that. What do you want, an ex-lingere model or murderess?"

After another non-response from OC and a short pause, she continued. "You realize, of course, that playing detective when you don't have to could get in the way of making progress on other fronts."

"Other fronts? Like what."

"You name it. We're here."

They had arrived at a small settlement with a bar and attached restaurant, post office, and a rock shop, the latter two closed. The sign over the bar and restaurant read BBGs and featured a cartoon-like picture of ample breasts in a cleavage-revealing bra. OC looked up at the sign and then at Johnnie. She smiled and said, "Just what the therapist ordered. Little T 'nd A to get you out of yourself."

They entered and she insisted he go first in case bottles or punches were flying inside. He could protect her, she urged. Johnnie was quite pleased with herself as OC shrugged and entered cautiously but authoritatively. He surveyed the premises but was soon distracted by what he saw on the ceiling, at least a hundred bras in different sizes and colors. "How in hell?" After he gawked and closed his gaping maw, he looked at Johnnie and said, "I don't believe it."

"How can you not believe? It's a bar, so let's get you something to loosen things up."

When the waitress came, OC ordered beer in a long neck bottle. She said he'd get two, one for him and one for the view. Cute. Johnnie ordered a Coke.

"Not drinking?"

"I can't drink. Alcohol first makes me flirt and then horribly hostile. _Assertive_ is not a word that applies. You don't deserve either, and I would be so embarrassed tomorrow. But hey, you'd be gone, right?" She looked at him waiting for an answer and then added, "No. No, I won't drink. I have my self respect."

"I might like the flirting part."

"Sorry, I don't do flirting. Women seem to react, though. Men always come on quick and I never have a chance to try my hand at it. Speaking of relationships, anyone special in your life?"

"My mother, if you're asking. And she's doing fine, thanks. I'm only thirty-eight. I mean she is still alive and kicking."

"And?"

"I'm divorced."

"I'll guess. You take your job too seriously and were never home and you have to work nights and find out if someone is a prostitute or not and if they are breaking the law. She just got fed up and left you."

"Nope. She just fell out of love with me and fell into love with another policeman. I didn't know him or how they met. I was left waiting on that corner at night with no one to go home to."

"Sad. Go on."

"That's it. Been several years now. Don't need to dwell on it."

He took a long drink and set the beer bottle back down on the table and looked Johnnie in the eye. She looked away immediately and he repeated his thought upon entering the bar--"Unbelievable," as he looked up. She added, "But here they are. Question for you. How did they get up there?"

OC left the table and walked around looking at photos on the walls and a brochure that was sitting at the end of the long wooden bar. He returned to the table and said that the pictures and the brochure showed a party-like atmosphere with the bar full of young men and women. There were several shots of women taking off their shirts and bras and being rewarded with a T-shirt that said BarBras Grill on it. There was one photo in the brochure of a woman in short shorts and long bare legs standing on the bar. She was wearing the T-shirt and reaching up to the ceiling with a pink bra and what looked like a dart. She was pinning the bra to the ceiling. OC pointed at the picture and said, "I guess that is how they get there."

"Mayyybeee."

"You sound like you don't believe it."

"Do you?"

"Sure. Why not? Pictures, this brochure promising an uplifting dining and imbibing experience."

"Let's play a little game then. You game?"

"Sure."

The waitress stopped by the table.

"I'll have another two, thanks."

"You haven't finished your second," said Johnnie.

"You're going to help me with one. And one will be all you will have. You won't get crazy with one beer, and I'm not drinking alone."

He passed Johnnie one beer when the next two came. She drew it to herself and then picked up her Coke and sipped gingerly.

"It's called Believe It or Not."

"Like Ripley's."

"Something like that. You tell me a story and try to convince me it's true. It can be or not. I decide at the end which it is, and if I get it right, I have a point. Got it? If I win that round, it's my turn. If not, then you get to go again."

"Okay. I'll go first," said OC. "Hmm. The American quarter horse gets its name from the fact that it runs the quarter mile the fastest among horses. Believe it or not."

"That's a pretty short story. I don't think the rules allow that."

"Hey, you didn't specify how long the story had to be. I could make up some BS about the first time they called the horse a quarter horse, but I deal in simple facts and simple falsehoods."

"Fair enough, Detective. So you want me to tell you if it's true? Maybe I have to prove to you if it is or not."

"Fair enough."

"Okay. It's false, not true. I don't believe it for a second."

"Come on, Johnnie. Every cowboy knows this. Just ask one, like over there, that guy. He looks like a cowboy."

"Every cowboy may know that, but cowgirls know better. The American quarter horse gets its name from its hind quarters. They have a great set of cheeks, pardon the expression. I mean their rear. Muscular, built for propelling them forward, thus fast over short distances."

"I don't believe you."

"You may one day regret not believing a sincere woman fessing up in a bar."

"I'll take my chances. Besides, you're not the fesser-type and we can't prove your story here. No cowgirls. Look around." There didn't seem to be any, but there were several women Johnnie recognized. She waited for the next story.

"My turn still," OC said proudly.

"Don't get cocky."

"This one is simple and simple to prove. This brochure is true. This is what happens here and how the bras get up on the ceiling."

"That's it? You really believe that propaganda?"

"It's not propaganda. It's true. I have this brochure and the pictures all around here to prove it."

"You have to be more detailed or specific in your story. New rule, based on your deviation from the first round. You have to tell a tale."

"A picture says a thousand words." OC waited looking kind of smug.

"You're not going to spin that story out, are you?"

"It's enough. Get out of this one."

"Nothing to get out of. It's not true," said Johnnie.

"How can you say that? I've already proved it to you."

"Are you sure you are going to maintain that how these bras got up there is represented by the pictures you see in this place and the brochure?"

"Yep."

"Okay, buddy. You asked for it. Take a good look at the girls in the brochure."

He glanced at the brochure again. "Yea, so?"

"They're all the same person. Now go out and do your field research. Look at the pictures on the walls and take a good look at the bartender, Barbara by name. Come back and tell me you have your true story."

"OC got up with his beer and walked slowly around the room and ended up standing five feet from the bar looking from the brochure to the bartender comparing. He returned to the table laughing. Well, there is something fishy going on around here."

"Fishy hell, downright American deceptive marketing. Even in the sticks."

"But wait. Who is this person here in this picture. She doesn't look the same. Long legs, and the bartender, she's pretty short."

"All you gotta do is look around again. See anyone who might be the same girl in that picture?"

OC looked around and turned back to Johnnie with a no-results sort of look.

"Take a gander at the girl with the two guys standing to the left at the bar. Go around and have a look and tell me what you see. Focus on the legs, if you can."

OC did and returned with a smile. "I think she's a prostitute or something."

"Bingo. And she's the one in the picture. She's a friend of the bartender and works across the line in Nevada. Work alias Trixie. Cute, eh?"

"How do you know that?"

"You lost that time. You concede?"

"Not yet. How is this deceptive marketing?"

"These two girls cooked up this idea to increase business here. They're friends. Oh, they are ready to go through the motions with a real customer, give 'em a T-shirt and all that, but all the pictures, I believe all of them, are those two acting as if it's always party-time here and customers can expect some titillating entertainment. I won't apologize for using that word by the way."

"Would you take off your shirt and undergarment and pin it to the ceiling?"

"Have some more beer. It's my turn at this game we're playing, this game: Believe It or Not. My turn."

"I want more proof. I don't believe you."

"Do your eyes deceive you? Go ask them then."

"I'm not that drunk."

"Okay. You lose. My story is about me. Hey, the detective in you, listen up, and you have already admitted you wanted to know more stuff. Let me have a sip of this before I start."

She finished the last sip of her Coke and then took the long neck beer in front of her. She put the edge of the bottle to her lips and tipped it gingerly with both hands wrapped around it, just enough to taste the cold beer.

"You have changed the game I thought we were going to play. I was planning a longer story, but I take your lead. I have a short one."

She took another sip of beer and set the bottle down slowly and carefully. It was dripping with condensation. "Believe it or not: I don't know who killed Edgar and I certainly didn't."

O'Connel looked Johnnie in the eye and said, "Bingo."

"Right, that has been the real question all along, hasn't it?"

"You know it has."

"Well, do you believe me?"

"I have some theories as to whether or not to consider you a prime suspect. For example, you might not have known who did the actual killing, but that doesn't preclude your having planned it."

"Now, Detective, I have merely posed the question to you in the form of a statement which is clear as clear can be. I claim I did not kill Edgar by any means, including stratagem."

"Fair enough. But you had a motive. You inherited property that was Edgar's and Helen's. Maybe you did 'em in to strike while the iron was hot, to take advantage of their affection for you."

"We're talking here of Edgar. His death precedes Helen's. Helen could easily have changed her mind about me before her untimely death. I don't think your theory in this instance holds much . . . beer. I don't believe you even think this angle promising. So, proceed to your judgement if you can. I mean about my lying or not."

"I didn't say you were lying."

"Yes you did. You don't believe me. You have theories or hunches or whatever you dicks call them to pin something on poor--oops, sorry, not so poor--innocent girls."

"You are hardly a girl."

"What would you call me then? I have played the gender-bending card before but not with you. Are you referring to my short hair and boyish figure? Do I have to take off this shirt and pin my bra to the ceiling for you to see who the person is you are accusing?"

"I'm sorry. This conversation is going the wrong direction."

"It could have earlier, but I saved you from that embarrassment, out of your esteem for me as object of your fantasies, I guess not me as a person. I don't know which. And because you seem like a nice guy. But you don't seem to get the clues." Johnnie looked at OC knowingly and added, "Hungry? They serve great burgers here."

"One more thing. The apartment you got with Edgar's help."

"What about it?"

"Well, how did it come about that he got that for you?"

"I told you. You don't pay attention, or you see things that aren't there. We've established that. The distressed property I bought. Edgar's role in that was just to alert me to that investment, you can call it my personal financial decision. Besides, he had nothing to gain by steering me to invest. He acted out of, I think and like to think, his care for me, which I never questioned. He was, is a dear man. The father I never had. He even hugged me with no ulterior motives, believe you me. I can't say that about any other man or boy. Helen did also. Game over."

"Game over?"

"Yes. I'm hungry. And I warned you, I can become a harpy when I drink and you have committed the tort of over serving an individual who by her own admission can't take a drink."

"What about the flirting phase. I didn't see that."

"You won't, smarty pants. You're leaving tomorrow and I don't do one-night stands. Let's eat."

They moved from the bar to the dining area and sat at a table by the window. Johnnie looked out the window as Richard studied the menu. A waitress came to the table and asked for their order. Both ordered the American Burger with all the trimmings. Johnnie ordered a chocolate milk shake and Richard another beer. She looked at him and he faintly smiled. He said he had already started making a fool of himself. He was now going to make himself an utter fool.

After a short while, before the waitress showed up again with the drink orders, Johnnie became reflective and misty-eyed. She began talking as if to no one in particular.

"Edgar had pancreatic cancer. He knew he was going to die, soon, probably in the hospital after suffering for some while. He didn't want to go that way. He talked of having assistance in dying. I listened while he and Helen talked about it. She already had cancer and was undergoing treatments. They talked about their affairs and what they should do about this and that. There was no one on either side to turn to or to bequeath. I excused myself early in their talk, because they began talking with me as if I was their closest. I dismissed the notion and said there were other very needy people who could use some help if they wanted, or some cause they could give money to. I told them I had lots of money and was due to inherit more. I mean I had lots of money and when I turn thirty, I get more than I can ever use personally. Actually maybe not cash, but all the same. We talked about how I could be the one recipient, young and healthy and loving--they even knew my story about my lost years. The bad, the confused, the troubled times. They even know about when I was a whore. They said I could carry the standard. They had done some things in life. It would now be my turn with their small contribution."

Johnnie stopped for a moment and looked at Richard. "Did you check out what they did with their money while they were living? He was a reasonably well paid civil servant and she was a model. Got paid well during her day, although not like models now."

Johnnie looked at Richard for an answer and concluded correctly he had not checked this angle and was not going to pursue the subject of whore or anything else at this point. The drink and how the evening had not been that successful had dampened matters. The fire that was or could have been was now ashes.

"I will give you this final clue. Check them out before going any further with your theories. Your investigation should focus attention on them, not me."

She looked away and resumed talking slowly.

"Anyway, that is as it should be I guess. Edgar was taken suddenly, which in a way was a blessing. It was terrible for Helen. But like so many others who are closely related, she went soon afterwards. I hope they have peace and no discomfort or pain where they are. I suspect they are there trying to help still, in whatever ways one can from the other side. I like to think they are helping me now . . . before I make mistakes again. Before I won't have time for talking or thinking back like this."

OC sat there. He had started on the glass of iced water the waitress had brought just after they sat down. He spilled a little as he took the glass in an unsteady hand, and Johnnie took her cloth napkin and daubed the table dry on his side of the table. He looked up and said, "I defer to your wisdom."

"Oh, I'm not wise, but it seems you have a tendency to see things not as they are but as you might like them to be. Is this a character fault or occupational thing?"

"Both I'm afraid. I'm a not technically a rookie but I am on probation. Plus there are a lot of distractions around here."

"You mean Barb's bras."

"Mostly."

"Detective O'Connel, why I think you might be softenin' on me, as one of your more eligible rich-types. How many of us do you know? and how dangerous we can be?"

"Might be at that. Although you're the only rich-type at the moment I'm interested in."

"Then I am flattered."

The waitress arrived with their burgers and asked if she could get them anything else. They said at the same time, "Not right now," and began eating, hungry from all the work they had done, she in avoiding and scolding him and he in trying to flirt and coax something out of her.

The ride back to Topaz Lake was a silent one except for one interchange. "Don't you care who killed Edgar, whether it was an accident or not?"

"No. He was dying. This way he did not suffer. I like to believe that. Catching a criminal or some hit and run weirdo, that doesn't matter now. And your efforts to find out, well, it's rather pointless too."

At the end, in front of the Blue Lake, Johnnie sat in her car and let the motor run. Richard said before he got out of the car that he had enjoyed the evening. Johnnie said she had also and it was nice getting to know him a little. They said good bye and he said he hoped they would meet again sometime. Johnnie did not respond in turn. Instead, she could foresee more personal work ahead of her and hoped she would have the final months before she turned thirty to enjoy her time and the view from her deck to the lake and the hills and mountains beyond. "Bye" was all she said.

***

~~~

Johnnie rose the next morning refreshed. She had a day to herself to look forward to. No more visitors, no more stories. Just the hot desert sun and a horse with open spaces to explore. She planned after breakfast to shower, saddle up, and ride out to places unknown. Bark was ready too.

Johnnie emerged from the shower and heard Bark warn there was someone about. She thought nothing of it, probably some sage hen had wandered into the dog's territory and got chased back out. But within a minute or so, there was a loud knock on the door. Johnnie threw on some clothes and not completely dry, rushed to the door. OC was there rather sheepishly looking up from petting the dog.

"Hi. I'm sorry. Am I interrupting something?"

"Sort of. I was just getting ready to go out."

"Barefoot and wet?"

Johnnie looked at herself and realized she was hardly dressed in short shorts and beads of water spotting a loose fitting blue tank top. Her nipples clearly visible, she looked back up at the stranger in the door. "Like what you see?"

"I'll come back later."

"No, no. Just kidding. After last night, I probably deserve a second look. I'm afraid men operate differently than women when the sky seems to be raining undergarments. Speaking of which, I'll just finish dressing. Feel at home. Check the morning sun on the deck. News on TV. The lake is like glass this morning. No wind, not even a breeze."

OC silently entered the house and walked through the mud room to the kitchen, living area, out the sliding glass door to the deck. Johnnie returned to her bedroom and bath and looked in the mirror.

"Bloody hell. I thought I made it clear last evening. What can he want now?" Johnnie soon found out when she joined Richard outside.

"You are named in the wills of both Mr. and Mrs. Pancrace."

"I know."

"And it hasn't been settled yet. The suspicions around the deaths have held the executor back from proceeding."

"That is also true."

"Why do you think we have this legal delay."

"Because you want to solve how they died, and you suspect foul play. That's your jargon, isn't it, or do I have cops on TV mixed up with those we trust to serve and protect?"

"You sound a bit jaded."

"Just amusing myself with the situation. Whether I receive anything from the Pancrace estate doesn't matter to me. As I said, I don't need it, and I certainly didn't kill anyone for personal gain. Plus, I loved them. They were the parents . . . I am repeating myself."

"You're a lucky woman. No financial worries."

"Yes, that's true."

"What do you do with your wealth. You are wealthy in my world."

"I try to do good."

"Example."

"The Pancraces could have used better health to enjoy more years together. I couldn't give that. But I did spread a little good, shall we say, around New York after I left."

"You mean money."

"Money and other gifts."

Johnnie was not going to go into details, if ever.

"That's it. That's the example?"

"It's not attractive to talk about how generous one is. You'll just have to believe me."

"So far I do. How about another story then?"

"Today's story? I thought we quit that game, a draw you might say. And you were going to leave. We said good bye."

"I have found some energy for one last try. I am ready to play again. The spider, she's got me in her web. I can still escape, but I don't want to. Not just yet."

"Make it a quick one then and you can be on your way. Coffee?"

"No thanks. I've had my breakfast. I just wanted to check one more thing."

"Detective again. Okay, shoot."

"Lingerie. Are you kind of in that business still?"

"What?"

"I mean, do you like lacy stuff and all of that. I'm asking because I think it has a bearing on the case."

"Case of Edgar, I assume."

"Yes, and according to the account, the police report, underwear was found in the car someone borrowed. The back seat."

"The account? what account?"

"Oh, you know. We have the police reports and our own theories about what happened and all of that. That's what I mean."

Richard was backtracking. He hadn't mentioned the document he had received from an anonymous source after the deaths of Edgar and Helen detailing intimate details surrounding the suspects, even himself as he questioned and inquired of parties concerned with the Pancraces. He didn't want Johnnie to know about that until later. He wanted to establish certain aspects of the case before he told his stories."

"How would my underwear get into Mark's car, if that's your question."

"Yes, that's sort of my question."

"Detective OC, should I over- or under-estimate you, particularly after last evening and your powers of observation and deduction?"

"Just asking."

"I'm sorry I encouraged you by taking you to Barbara's place."

Richard waited for more.

"I see," said Johnnie. "Well, if you must know I wear white or black, plain or lacy. My size is, well, hard to fit. I'm between sizes. But I am amply supplied for daily wear, and for a gentleman caller, or gentlewoman."

"That the gender bending business you referred to? Or are you serious?"

"None of your business." Johnnie could be just as manipulative as Detective OC and she waited for him to dig deeper and reveal more of his motives for asking her about intimate details such as her unmentionables.

"I'm sorry. I'm fishing. I just wanted to know. You know, you took me to that bar last evening and I put that together with certain facts in the Pancrace case."

"I'm still a suspect, and after all I have done for you to demonstrate you are in the wrong business and barking up the wrong girl."

He reflected a moment and realized what she was talking about, the game of Believe it or Not and her clear statement, which he really had no reason to doubt, that she had nothing to do with Edgar's death.

Johnnie continued. "Say, Edgar wasn't really hit by that car, was he?"

"No, not that we could tell."

"And was he hit by another car, a similar one that got away?"

"We have no witnesses to that effect. He just apparently fell down in front of a car that was stopped at the crosswalk where he was a pedestrian."

"I see. So he might not have been murdered as you have assumed."

"I guess you are right."

"Well, that leaves us with today. You're off somewhere and so am I. I have plans to meet some spirits in the desert. They don't talk much and they don't ask questions either. They already know what I am wearing and what I am doing, also what I have done. They are comforts and companions for a girl who needs to be left alone."

"I'm sorry. I'll be going."

OC stood up and the sun was behind him as he faced Johnnie. She looked in his eyes and got a funny sensation, one she recalled she had had several times before, particularly one she felt as a teenager with an innocent but all-too-willing soul she had seduced and used for his and her pleasure one summer. She thought she felt wet between her legs as her eyes saw for the first time that OC was basically a kind and well meaning man, somewhat lost in a world he was unsuited to live and work in. She then caught herself and dismissed any thoughts or feelings rationalizing that she did not really know anything about this person, this cop, who had come calling with basically one objective. She felt at that point his questions and the stories she told unimportant. Each had pasts unknown and unknowable, and these past days they were just passing ships and all of that.

She composed herself and said, "It has been an unexpected pleasure, but I don't really know you and you don't know me. Pity. But you have miles to go before you rest, and I have miles to go. Our paths, our roads, they do not go the same way. I wish you safe travels and nice adventures. Where will you go from here?"

Richard lowered his eyes and thought for a moment. He looked up and into Johnnie's eyes. She looked away toward her horse in the pasture. Richard said he would return the rental car to the Reno airport and take a flight to Las Vegas. He would stay a few days and then work his way east by bus. Johnnie absently observed he should have some interesting adventures that way of traveling.

That was it. Richard shook her outstretched hand a little longer than Johnnie felt warranted. He said he hoped they could meet again sometime under other circumstances. Johnnie said "Bye." Richard walked the access road to his car, and Johnnie followed his progress until he disappeared behind some cottonwoods. She turned and went back to her bedroom where she put on a pair of jeans and a white canvas cowgirl shirt. She said to herself that that should do it, reflecting on Richard's exit.

Before she put on her riding boots and hat to protect her from the sun, she went to the bookshelf to the left of her bed. On the top shelf she picked out the black essay book with the manilla envelope tucked inside. She took the envelope and pulled the thin sheaf of papers in it about a quarter of the way out of the envelope. She picked through the pages with her index and middle fingers and verified she had the original typed copy of the account she wanted the New York police department to have. Once she saw it was all there, she took the envelope with papers. She put the essay book back among the journals and notebooks she kept on that shelf. She then went to the wood stove in the great room and set fire to the papers. To make sure they burned thoroughly, she stirred the papers and added the burnable trash from the bathroom, tissues and such, as well as several sheets of newspaper. When she was satisfied that the evidence had been destroyed, she put on her boots, went out the sliding glass door onto the deck, called her dog, and walked to the paddock to saddle Boss  for a long ride to some rock outcropping or dry lake she had not explored yet in her wanderings and wonderings.

That evening after Boss had been put up for the night and Bark had been fed and was lying just outside the sliding glass door on the deck, Johnnie took a new notebook to begin again to put out of herself the recent days not recorded. However, once she sat down and looked out into the evening and the moon's light bouncing off ripples on the lake, she didn't feel the long standing need to put anything on paper. So she just sat there in a state of calm, for all energies expended on hiding and evading and escaping seemed to have dissipated. She had just herself to be with, and the calm led to quiet thoughts that streamed in and out. And then, as if an angel in flight surveying earthly follies, she looked down from a great altitude albeit mental or soul-seated and saw as if for the first time.

OC, Richard, was a blockhead but an innocent. Johnnie had handled him and his questions and his stubborn hold onto getting answers while at the same time admiring her--she handled him just as she had a young admirer in her teens who wouldn't stop following her around. That puppy. Richard was, she thought, much the same, a puppy, insistent, intent, holding onto hope that his crush would be reciprocated. She had an idea he had a playful side, but there was little evidence of it. And what did she do? the same, escape into the empty spaces of a high mountain desert. Then she would be relieved of any responsibility as other forces, forces outside the players, separated them indefinitely or forever. Buddy never came back. James was kidnapped never to be seen or heard from again. Richard would not return either. There was no reason and would be no opportunity. Johnnie was the end of the line for both and both would continue on their separate ways. Interesting and unfortunate, thought Johnnie.

Just as the pebble thrown into the pond creates concentric circles of ever expanding size from the center, so too thought Johnnie of her life. Topaz and she were at a center, a still point in a living space on a lake in the middle of nowhere, neither fully in California nor Nevada. The concentric circles, however were now converging, going the opposite direction, from the outside to the inside. From a life that had been lived almost thirty years to a point into which it would become pregnant and give birth to something--more fortune? or someone--a mature woman. Johnnie no longer felt girlish.

Johnnie's thoughts focused on those converging circles and found that they were all of a piece. The shapes and patterns of movements looked just the same. She escaped the ranch near Nixon and her parents through no act of her own. Her stepfather and mother had banned her from that imperfect paradise. She ended up in a better place where from defeat and sadness, a kind man rescued her and he became her lover. Then once she grew out of that relationship, one flawed because the separate parts were not whole themselves, the benefactor had invited her to divest herself of her coat of many colors and try a new one, or go without to see or do what she did not know, but it was another wilderness entered from which she would return. To the city of New York.

Johnnie began to get a sense that she was trapped within concentric circles or cultures from which and to which she was powerless to break free, really break free. If she were to go back into older notebooks and journals, she believed she would be able to extract the same stuff with just different circumstances. The essence of her life and the ways she lived it were the same, and this disturbed her. The project of changing the coat of her culture had actually not happened. She had deluded herself.

All of which made Richard a blockhead still. He was in the center of his own expanding and converging pool of ripples. He couldn't help who he was, a moderately talented cop and a fumbling flirt. So no blame, no condemnation. He had admitted his limitations in being with her and Johnnie had helped him see some he hadn't noticed. As far as he and Johnnie were concerned, there would not be, could not be intersections unless some other factor, some other pebble or rock got tossed into the pool.

So it came at last. Johnnie felt she too was a blockhead, someone who could not see herself clearly enough from that mirror in her bathroom to a point somewhere up and out and beyond. She could not live without her culture, without who she was and who she had become. Pity. But then again, hope.

Johnnie did not have to apologize for herself or what she did, nor did she have to judge others. We are who we are. If we start from that recognition and see and hear, look and listen, we can live and let live. Which can't be all.

Johnnie screwed up her face and asked herself audibly one of her oft-asked questions which were effectively statements: Is that all there is?

Johnnie took the notebook and pen from her lap and placed them on the table beside her chair. She got up and opened the screen door for Bark to come inside for the night. She got undressed, brushed her teeth, slipped into bed and turned out the light. As she relaxed into the soft folds of her comforter and down pillow, she audibly gave herself the final thought before dropping off to sleep. "I'm a blockhead, too."

***

A few weeks passed. Johnnie put her male caller nicely out of her mind. She had decided at the time he left that he was not worth worrying about, that men were still mostly imperfect pigs, and that she needed to be about her and her sister's business, a business that would probably take her north and beyond.

Johnnie walked round the lake to the gas station and convenience store on Route 395. She went to the lonely phone booth at the corner of the parking lot and called Nevada Bell. She asked them to reconnect her phone. It didn't matter now. Then she called Natalie. She asked if she had any important mail. There was some correspondence from a legal firm in New York. There was also a post card from Las Vegas signed by an Oh-See. It said he had been thinking about things since he had left Topaz Lake and now saw something he hadn't before. Johnnie asked her sister to forward this mail and anything else that came for her to the family ranch north of Nixon. They talked briefly and both looked forward to meeting up in Reno when the trustee for their parents' estate had scheduled the final settlement, the day after Johnnie's thirtieth birthday at the end of October.

Johnnie noted OC's message only in passing. What was left for him to think about? Nothing, except maybe his own career. He missed, she thought, any clues she had given him so that he could solve whatever he had to about the Pancraces. And although he seemed like a nice guy, considerate and handsome in his own way, what would be the chances?

Except for a few loose ends, Johnnie was finished with NYC and all that had happened there. The only memories to hold close were those of Helen and Edgar and the care and nurturing they had for one another, including Johnnie's role at the end of their lives. She did not realize that in her years to this point including all opportunities, experiences, and transgressions lay her answer to the benefactor's challenge. That challenged came down to discovering the answers to a seeming dead end of recycling through the same old stuff.

No, that was not all there was left, but what was missing? Something? Or perhaps someone.