In Open Spaces: A Novel

in

open

spaces

RUSSELL ROWLAND

An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

To my parents

and

In loving memory of my grandfather Frank Arbuckle

Table of Contents

Prologue

Book I

1 fall 1916

2 summer 1917

3 winter 1918

4 summer 1921

5 fall 1924

6 summer 1929

Book II

7 spring 1932

8 winter 1933

9 fall 1935

10 winter 1937

11 spring 1938

12 summer 1939

Book III

13 spring 1940

14 spring 1942

15 winter 1943

16 fall 1944

17 summer 1945

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Praise for in Open Spaces

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prologue

I read somewhere, years ago, that montana is Spanish for mountain, or mountainous. As a native of eastern Montana, I’d venture to guess that Mr. Ashley, the man who suggested this name for our fair state, never traveled east of Billings. Because if he had, he wouldn’t have seen anything resembling a mountain.

What Mr. Ashley would have seen instead is a fraternal twin to its other half, a rolling expanse of land that shares little or nothing with its western sibling besides the same birth date. While western Montana rises up like the front end of a head-on collision with Idaho, our half lies quietly dramatic, its treeless knolls and dry gullies twisting and rippling for miles in every direction.

Carter County, my county, forms the far southeastern corner, sprawling like an old wool blanket spread carelessly across the ground, complete with ridges, wrinkles, hollows, and an occasional hole. The closest thing Carter County can claim to a mountain is the buttes—a series of sandstone flattops that look like the beginnings of mountains, as though some ambitious fellow came along and started building a mountain ridge, but didn’t have the energy to finish it. The Finger Buttes cross the county at an angle, south to northwest, like giant stones laid out to keep the wind from blowing the blanket away.

But back to Mr. Ashley. I understand his mistake. He had obvious reasons. For one thing, Montana is a damn fine name—a noble-sounding name that rings especially full and rich when spoken by a man with a deep voice and a steady character. Someone calm and patient enough to linger on the n’s so that the word hums slightly, bringing a smile to your face in the same way that a nice song would. And it’s impossible to deny that the mountains cluttering western Montana are magnificent. Maybe the only creation that can crowd into the perfection of a blue sky and improve on it.

But despite all that, I prefer the prairie. Mainly because I’ve lived my whole life here, of course. But there’s more to it than that. When I finally had a chance to see the Rocky Mountains, they affected me in a way I didn’t expect. I was still a young man—twenty-three, to be exact. My older brother Jack and I drove to Bozeman in the spring of 1925 to buy some oak flooring for the big house my folks were building. On that clear spring day, we rounded the curve into the Bozeman Pass, and I’d never seen anything so beautiful. There the mountains sat, blue-purple and surprising, like two black eyes.

Up until then, I had not seen any ground higher than the Black Hills of South Dakota. My glances at the sky were brief, just long enough to figure out what kind of weather we could expect. So my neck wasn’t used to holding my head at the angle required to view these towers of rock. Jack and I stared for fifteen minutes, rotating, squinting into the bright sun, shading our eyes. We paid the price later, too, with necks so stiff we had to sleep without pillows. But it was well worth it.

We decided to get closer, so we drove until the two-rut road ended, gawking, saying little. Then we climbed from the flatbed and stared a while longer.

Let’s climb the damn thing, I said.

Jack, in a rare moment of skepticism, peered up at the rising slope of pine, his eyes small and dark. It looked as if we could reach out and brush our hands across the tops of the trees. I don’t know, Blake. I think it’s a little further than it looks.

Ah, come on. Let’s climb it.

Jack gave in, but he proved to be right. Just as our necks weren’t used to bending backward, our legs weren’t prepared for ground that pushed back. We didn’t make it far before we had to rest our cramping calves. I could barely breathe. I began to feel a little stifled up there. I panted hard as we kneaded our aching muscles. I don’t know if there’s a special shoe for this type ofthing, but if there is, I bet that it doesn’t look anything like a cowboy boot, I said.

Jack laughed, and although his smile quickly faded, he seemed more relaxed than he had in years. Something about being up in the middle of those trees seemed to affect him in a different way than it did me. And for a brief moment, I thought about asking him about all the things I’d always wanted to know. About the army, and the years he had disappeared, and about his wife Rita. I wanted to know about his intentions for the ranch. Now that he was the oldest, he was the natural heir, but because he’d spent so much time away, I had more time invested, and I wanted to know whether he planned to take over when Dad and Mom couldn’t take care of the place anymore. I even felt like I had a case for taking over the ranch myself, but we had never discussed the possibility. Just as we had never discussed any of this with our father. For that tiny moment, that conversation seemed possible. But I hesitated, and that was all the time it took for those small dark eyes to narrow, and for his thin lips to purse. He sighed, and looked away, and I could feel him drift. And I knew it was too late.

I turned my attention to the view from where we sat. We could see nothing but trees except far in the distance, where rolling farmland stretched out in patches of green and brown. It was beautiful in a different way from our own ranch—the colors were darker, and the landscape had more abrupt angles.

I wonder what land is worth out here, Jack said.

I shrugged. This question had not even occurred to me. Probably a hell of a lot more than out where we are, huh? I said.

Jack chuckled. Oh yeah, he said.

It wasn’t much longer before he suggested we head on in to Bozeman.

In town, we argued about where to stay. Jack thought we ought to treat ourselves to a room in the Grand Hotel, the most expensive place in town.

We can’t spend that kind of money, I said. Mom would kill us.

Jack frowned. What’re you going to do, squeal? How’s she gonna know? Come on, let’s live it up for once. How many chances like this are we ever going to get?

I was too intimidated to put up a fight, knowing Jack would get surly if I did. But I could hardly look at my parents for the next two weeks, especially when Jack told them a bold-faced lie about how much money we spent.

That night in Bozeman, as I lay in that fancy hotel room, something about the day gnawed at me—something besides the ache in my muscles, or the argument with Jack, or the money. I tossed through a couple of sleepless hours before I figured out what it was. It finally struck me when I imagined being back home, standing at the top of a divide, looking at the circle of open space, the miles and miles of grass around me.

I realized that the mountains just don’t give you much. You hike a ways, and the trees are thick as hair around you, so you walk a few painful yards further. And maybe you find a small clearing, and can see a little further. Even at the top, you might be able to see forever, but everything is miles away.

That’s what bothered me about it, and still does. I realized that the lack of breath I experienced halfway up that mountain was not just the result of the climb. I felt closed in, smothered, up there with so little space around me. I didn’t like not being able to see what was coming, or where we’d been. And I know that if I lived in mountain country, I could never love the land around me like I do my own. That night, I figured out why people like me fall in love with the prairie, even as brutal and unforgiving as it can be. Because when the earth spreads itself out in front of you, completely vulnerable, completely naked, you simply can’t help yourself.

Book I

fire

1

fall 1916

The windows of the old Model T rattled as the mail truck bounced along the winding gravel road from Belle Fourche, South Dakota, to Albion, Montana. It was well past midnight, and I tried to sleep, but my head bonked against the window each time I dozed, until it felt as if I’d grown a corner on my forehead. There was also the matter of Annie Ketchal, the driver, who loved to talk. When I saw that Annie was the driver that night, I cringed, because I knew I wouldn’t get much sleep. Because of her job, she knew everyone, and not only did she know them, but she had a gift for finding out more about them than anyone else knew. At the age of fourteen, I usually found the information she passed on interesting, and sometimes even shocking, but on this night I simply wasn’t interested in lives outside of my own.

Sorry about your brother, Blake, she said after a few miles.

Thanks, Mrs. Ketchal, I answered, feeling my jaw tighten, my lower teeth settling against the upper.

My heart seemed to press against my chest, as if a strong hand had a firm grip on it, squeezing it tightly, telling it, Don’t beat…don’t you dare beat. And I knew as sure as anything that this pain would never go away. I thought I would feel this bad for the rest of my life. My fourteen years hadn’t taught me that you feel this kind of pain sometimes, and that although it may never completely disappear, it does fade. And if anyone had tried to explain that to me then, I would have silently told them to shut up and leave me alone, to let me get a little sleep. Just as I now silently wished that Annie Ketchal, as friendly as she was, would be quiet and let me and my struggling heart be.

I had been standing at the blackboard doing a math problem when the telegram arrived. I was an eighth-grader, just beginning my second year at the Belle Fourche School, fifty miles from the ranch. I boarded with an older couple during the week and caught the mail truck home most weekends to help with the harvest, or haying, or feeding the stock.

Brother George drowned in river.

read the telegram. My mother’s words, as always, would never pass for poetry, but it told me everything I needed to know.

I gave the telegram to my teacher, and standing there as she read it, my mind reviewed all of the immediate concerns of a fourteen-year-old boy. First, I knew that I would be going home immediately. And I knew that there was a good chance that I wouldn’t be coming back. I thought about the dollar a day I could earn if I stayed home, and wondered what I might be able to save up for. And I felt a certain sense of relief about not coming back, because in the year and change that I’d been in Belle Fourche, I had never adjusted to life in town. I didn’t like the pace. I spent most of my time in the classroom wishing I was sitting on a horse in the middle of a broad pasture. I couldn’t keep my mind on the books in front of me, especially when the sun was shining. And although I did well in school, I never felt the same satisfaction from getting a test with a big blue A on it as I did from stepping back and admiring a stack of hay I’d just pitched, or pulling the forelegs of a calf, watching it slosh to the ground and shake its moist head, ears flopping. At my core, I relished the thought of going home.

What I did not think about in the moment was that my life would completely change with this news. I thought about George and his baseball, and how he could scoop a ground ball and whip it to first base with such fluid grace that it seemed as if he caught the ball in the middle of his throwing motion. But I guess I wasn’t ready to think about the fact that I would never see him again.

So when the teacher asked me if I was okay, I nodded without hesitation, and it was true at that particular moment.

All right, she said. You go on ahead then.

So I walked to the boarders’ house, told them the news, packed my bag, and caught the mail truck home. But after several hours in the truck, the reality started to penetrate. I remembered a day the previous winter—an early morning when we were out feeding the stock. It was colder than hell that morning, and George, Jack, Dad, and I were doing whatever we could think of to keep warm, pounding our gloved hands together, running in place, working our jaws to keep the skin on our faces from freezing. George was talking, as he often did. He was talking about cattle, and sheep.

People talk about how stupid animals are, George said, stomping his boots against the ground. But just look at this. Every morning, we get up and come out here to feed these bastards, who aren’t at all cold. We come out here and risk our lives to wait on these animals, and they’re the stupid ones? I think we’re the stupid ones. Not only that, but we paid money for these sons of bitches. We paid money for the privilege of waiting on these goddam animals.

He kept along in the same vein, a half grin on his face the whole time, and the rest of us were laughing so hard, we felt warmer than we had all morning. Even Jack, who usually had little tolerance for George’s monologues, was laughing. It was one of those simple moments where the presence of one person made life better for all of us for a time.

So many youngsters dying, Annie Ketchal said. What was he, nineteen?

Yes, ma’am, nineteen in July, I said, taking a deep breath. Besides wishing that Annie Ketchal would let me sleep, I was annoyed that she was breaking the custom of our people, which was not to pursue a potentially unpleasant line of questioning. She knew better, but as I noticed in my previous rides with her, Annie didn’t think much about what she said. I suppose that with such a lonely job, having an audience was more important to her than etiquette.

So many, she repeated. I lost a nephew last year, and another three years ago. She shook her head. Smallpox, the first one was, and the other just had a bad cold. That was all it took. She snapped her fingers, indicating how quickly it happened. This country is rough on the children, she said. The women and the children. She continued shaking her head. ’Course the men don’t fare much better, but you’d expect to lose a few of them, as hard as they work just to break through this ground.

I nodded, not knowing what to say—actually, knowing that it didn’t matter what I said, or whether I spoke at all.

What was he like? Annie asked. I started driving after he quit school. So I never really knew him.

Besides being offended by the indelicacy of the question, by having to explore something I didn’t want to think about, I was also fourteen and answered accordingly, shrugging. I dunno. He liked baseball.

But the question echoed in me. I thought of it often over the years, when others died. In terms of George as well as the rest. And it seemed that the answers changed as I grew older. If I were to answer the question now, I would say that George was solid—even-tempered, unusually even-tempered for such a young man. That despite taking his work seriously, he was also extremely capable of enjoying life. He never seemed to be overwhelmed by the more overwhelming aspects of our existence.

I guess my manner told Annie that I didn’t want to pursue this line of questioning, as she did not press for more details.

You’re not planning to stay and work, are you, Blake? she asked.

I swallowed hard, thinking to myself that this was none of her business, but not wanting to be rude. Don’t know. They’re probably going to need me.

Oh, Jesus, she muttered. I’m sorry, Blake, but I just think that’s a shame, you being as bright as you are and all. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t say that.

That would be the most accurate statement you’ve made all night, I thought to myself.

In the best of conditions, the fifty-mile drive along the winding gravel road from Belle Fourche to our ranch took about three hours. But Annie had to drop a mail sack at each box along the way, an average of every couple of miles. So we traveled all night. And Annie didn’t miss a beat, sawing away hour after hour with her stories, most of which I’d already heard, about the people on each ranch we passed. There was Tex Edwards, whose first wife, the heir to one of the bigger local ranches, mysteriously drowned in a puddle four inches deep. And Lonnie Roberts and his wife Ruth, both of whom Annie claimed to be consistently unfaithful. And finally, there was Art Walters, whose wife Rose had been one of the many locals who fell victim to the loneliness. Someone found her wandering along the road one day with her baby son in her arms. Rose, who moved out from Ohio to teach school, had been muttering to herself about bathtubs when they found her. Bathtubs and maple trees. They sent Rose back to Ohio, and no one had heard a word since.

I pointed my eyes straight ahead, at the road, answering questions when asked, but mostly letting my mind drift. I thought about George, and about how my parents would take the loss. Dad would take it more personally, like a punishment from God. He would work even harder, trying to gain favor, trying to get more land to prepare for the inevitability of more tragedy. And he would spout invectives, throwing blame in blind directions—at the government, and the weather, and the goddam banks. Mom would turn it more inward, saying things like. We should have… or Maybe if we’d…

While Dad worried about what we should do, Mom would plan what we would do. And we would follow her plan. It was a system that worked well for them, as Dad worked harder than any man I knew, and Mom was a skilled organizer.

I thought about the fact that I was the second oldest now, behind Jack. How they would need to rely on me. I knew that none of them would be moping around, thinking about George, and that they would have no tolerance for anyone else doing that either. Because it would affect a person’s usefulness.

You tired, Blake? Annie asked just a couple of miles from our ranch.

Well, my head was rolling around like a BB in a washtub, so the answer seemed pretty obvious. But I nodded and leaned against my satchel, which sat on the seat between us. It was late fall, a cool night, and lightning had just begun flashing orange off the bottom of a dark cloud cover. The clouds were so thick that my beloved prairie was hidden by darkness, as if a black curtain had been pulled down over my window. But when the lightning flashed, the landscape lit up as if it was late afternoon, if only for a brief moment.

Annie pulled off the road to a solitary mailbox perched on a twisted fence post. We were at Glassers’, our closest neighbors to the south. Cold air blew through the cab as Annie hopped out and plucked Glassers’ canvas mail sack from the truck bed. A clap of thunder rumbled across the horizon. I looked up at the sky, hoping to see lightning. But the flash had already come and gone.

I woke up, my head pounding the window one last time, when Annie wrenched the wheel and turned into our drive, passing under the suspended chunk of driftwood that announced the Arbuckle Ranch, followed by our brand, R (an R and a buckle).

Here we are, Annie declared.

I bent stiffly at the waist, retrieving my felt cowboy hat from the floor, where it had fallen on one of the collisions between head and window. I tugged my hat onto my head.

You tell your folks I’m real sorry about George, Annie said.

I don’t remember being so happy to put some distance between myself and another person, but I minded my manners, remembering that her intentions were good. I sure will. Thanks, Mrs. Ketchal. I pulled my satchel from the cab. Thanks a bunch for the ride.

I lugged my bag toward the house. The truck sputtered and clattered behind me, and the cold air bit my face.

Hey, Blake! The truck had stopped, and Annie’s head poked from the window. I groaned, wondering what else she could possibly have to tell me. But her hand popped out, a gray bag dangling from her fingers. I dropped my satchel, trotted back to the truck, and grabbed our mail sack. And I thanked her again.

Our sheepdog Nate, a pesky black-and-white Border collie with skewed ears, hopped in front of and between and beside my legs, nearly tripping me as I dragged my satchel toward the house. It wasn’t until I stepped up onto the stoop that it occurred to me that the house was going to feel different. I stopped, standing in front of the door, preparing myself for the fact that George would not be in the tiny bedroom we shared with our other two brothers. I wondered where his body was, and decided it was likely laid out in the barn, that they probably had a coffin built by now.

I swallowed, took a deep breath, pushed Nate to one side with my boot, and wobbled on rubber legs through the squeaky door. I set the mail on the table, and crept through the sleeping household, past my parents’ door, which was open a crack. I saw the outline of their prone figures, and heard their whispered breath.

I smelled the memory of kerosene and the wood stove as I continued past the girls’ room, then to my own, where Jack and our youngest brother Bob were asleep. I squinted toward Jack, who was sixteen. He lay on his back, mouth wide open. Bob was curled up like a baby. I set my satchel on the floor.

Two beds stood empty, and I stopped in front of George’s. I thought of never seeing his spry figure sprawled across the narrow mattress. I sank onto his bed, where I felt a lump under my leg. Under the mattress, I found George’s baseball wedged in a hollow there. I also found some papers, but I stuffed them back where they were, feeling as if I had crossed onto sacred ground. But I kept the ball, cradling it in my palm, and I crossed the room and fell onto my own bed, still fully clothed, and finally, thankfully, slept.

Blake, wake up. Wake up, son.

I lifted my head, with difficulty, and saw that the bedroom window was still pitch-black. What?

My mother Catherine leaned over me, and I could barely see her face, round and dull white as a full moon behind a cloud. Her light red hair sparkled like stars around her face. She was dressed.

What? I asked. It’s not morning yet, is it?

There’s a fire in the buttes over at Glassers’. Mom spoke as she always did in such situations, with a gentle urgency that made it clear you needed to hurry but didn’t inspire a sense of panic.

I lay staring blankly, my brain stunned by lack of sleep. I felt as if I had just drifted off seconds ago. George’s baseball slept on the blanket next to me.

Are you all right? Mom asked, touching my arm.

I nodded. I think so was what entered my mind, but I never got around to voicing it.

Come on, son. Mom left the room, and I heard her walk outside.

I lifted myself to a sitting position, shook my head, and reached for my hat, which lay open-faced on the floor. Jack’s and Bob’s beds were empty. I stood, groggy, and staggered outside. Mom and Bob sat in the wagon. My dad, George Sr., was hooking the team up to the yoke. The cold air reached in and held my lungs motionless for a moment, and I had to force a deep breath before I could even move. Although it was still dark, the sky had that just-before-dawn glow.

I stumbled over to the well, where Jack waited with two fifty-gallon barrels. Dad pulled the wagon over, and after loading the barrels into the back, we dumped bucket after bucket into them, filling them until they spilled over. Then Jack and I crawled into the bed, laying out between the barrels. He yawned, rubbing his small, dark eyes. His nose hooked down over his tight mouth. I studied my older brother for a sign of how he might be taking George’s death. Although Jack and George had personalities that couldn’t be more different, they were probably closer than any of the rest of the brothers.

Dad flipped the reins, and the team surged forward.

Are the girls home? I asked.

Yeah, Mom answered.

I worried about the two little ones, who were only four and eight, being home alone. But I didn’t figure it would make much difference if I said anything.

In our country, there is a quietness, a silence that surrounds you and fills you up, beating inside like blood until it becomes a part of you. The prairie is quiet even during the day, except for the sounds of work—the snort of horses, the clang of a plow’s blade against rock, and the rhythm of hooves pounding the ground. But these sounds drift off into the air, finding nothing to contain them. No echoes.

It’s quieter still at night, when you can sit for hours at a stretch and hear nothing except the crickets, or the occasional cluck of a chicken. At night, the darkness seems to add to the silence, making it heavier, somehow more imposing. It is a silence that can be too much for some, especially people who aren’t fond of their own company. And it seems that living in such silence makes you think twice before speaking, or laughing, or crying. Because when sounds are that scarce, they carry more weight.

So like most people I know, we Arbuckles don’t say much, especially in times of tragedy, when no one knows what to say anyway. When something leaves us wondering, we mostly sit and stare off across the prairie, as if somebody might come along and explain a few things. This stoic silence does not come naturally to some people. In those early homestead days, it led to frequent cases of the loneliness, or suicide. And although most of us talked about these afflictions as if they only happened to newcomers, we all knew better. We all lived with a constant awareness of how vulnerable we were. All of us. It didn’t take a genius to notice that some of the sturdiest have been broken down by the pervasive weight of unpredictable weather, and uncooperative livestock, and more than anything, the silent wondering about all these by-products of life on the prairie.

There was only one person in our family who did not possess this stoic nature, and it was George Jr. George took on the silence from a completely different angle, challenging it by doing all he could to fill it up. He talked all the time, but not in a nervous, chattering way. He talked slowly, softly, in a rhythmic, expressive stream, almost like a song. He would pause, chuckle, shake his head, then start again—telling stories, discussing the articles he’d read in the latest newspaper, or plucking a random topic from the air and sorting through the various thoughts he had, moving easily from one side of a debate to the other. I always found the running monologue soothing, and entertaining. But it sometimes got on people’s nerves, especially Jack, who would often tell George to shut up, and give us a little peace. To which George usually responded with a smile and a shake of his head. Then, after honoring Jack’s request for a minute or two, he would start in again. He couldn’t help himself.

Although I didn’t see it then, I assume now that there was something of a nervous energy behind this habit. And I wonder whether the silence did get to George, and that he just hid it better than others. From what I learned later, I eventually had to question how he felt about living out here.

That morning, the quiet was magnified by his absence. With my brother less than twenty-four hours gone, the river seemed louder than usual. It wasn’t, of course. I just noticed it more. I noticed how beautiful and soothing the gentle rush of water sounded, and I was struck by the deception of that sound. I wondered where George had gone down.

I was always amazed when anyone drowned in the Little Missouri River, which was only twenty-five or thirty feet across, not even big enough to rate a name of its own. It just didn’t seem possible that someone, especially an adult, could not find a way to crawl out once they fell in. But every couple of years, some unfortunate soul would plunge into its muddy flow and not emerge until their lungs filled with water.

After about twenty minutes, we could see the soft glow of a blaze along the row of buttes. It was near dawn, and the darkness had just begun to fade along the horizon, as if the fire was leaking into the sky.

I was surprised how wide awake I was, and I wondered how long I’d slept. I wrapped myself tightly in my wool coat, pushing my stiff hands deep into my pockets. Down in the corner of one pocket, I felt a lump. I pulled out a piece of chalk, and realized I must have stuck it there without thinking after I read the telegram. Finally, we reached the base of the buttes, where Dad reined in the team and we hopped from the wagon. Dad, Jack, and I unloaded the barrels, then lugged them up the steep incline, a forty-foot climb. It took us nearly half an hour to carry our awkward cargo one at a time to the top.

I’m tired, Mom, I heard Bob say behind us.

Quiet, son. We’re all tired.

The buttes cross Carter County like the spine of a bull, sprouting more trees than the flatlands. Spruce and pine stand in rows along the table-like tops like sentries in a watchtower. The fire burned among the dry grass and leaves along the floor, inching its way up an occasional tree. The yellow-orange-red blanket spread slowly but steadily, and it smelled too much like a campfire to feel very dangerous. But from the way people were shouting and racing around, it was clear that the fire posed a real threat, that it could spread further, down into the meadows below, where the grass was dry enough that it would ignite like paper. After the soothing quiet of the prairie on our way to these buttes, the shift to this shouting, rushing activity was a bit startling.

But once we positioned our barrels, I found myself inspired by the spirit of battle. Months of sitting in a classroom had me restless, and I was excited about being back at work again. I grabbed a burlap bag from the pile, dunked it into a barrel, and ran toward the flames.

Over here, Blake, someone yelled. Upwind. You’ll get smoke on that side.

I rounded the outer edge, beating the ground with the wet burlap, stomping the embers when the flame was gone. My folks and my brothers worked around me, waving their sacks, which sizzled against the fire.

The blaze covered nearly three acres, and about twenty of us surrounded it, with a few shouting directions, pointing, and arguing strategy. It was invigorating to be doing something with my muscles again. I fought hard, thinking I’d be able to maintain the same pace until it was over. The ache in my chest was gone, and in my youthful view of the world, I was convinced that it had disappeared for good, just as I was sure a few hours earlier that it would never go away.

I batted down flames until my gunnysack was dry and useless, then I rushed back and dunked it again—back and forth, back and forth, probably ten or twelve times before my back started to clench. And I felt the heat through my leather soles. Blisters tickled the bottoms of my feet. Soon my body struggled to keep up with my enthusiasm. And then I couldn’t.

As the adults fought to keep the flames under control, I sat with a guilty conscience and watched for a few minutes. The fire showed a maddening persistence as the crew beat it down, only to have it flare up again. But a routine had evolved, and the team moved from battle to post with the efficient pattern of an ant colony, one column going one way, one column the other.

Art Walters found a tree with a jagged black streak running from its tip to its roots.

Looks like this is where she started, he announced, pointing. Lightning, I’d say.

He got no arguments. For one thing, his discovery was obvious. But also, we all knew Art well enough to see that his real objective was not finding the source but taking a little break. We knew what to expect, and Art delivered. He took some more time to talk about the tree, then he studied it again, came up with a few more theories, and talked about those. Everybody ignored him, and Art took on a meditative expression, as if the job required someone with that quality.

I always found Art baffling. For one thing, nobody in the county ever questioned his devotion to work, or his dependability. There were few people