Graphic the Valley by Peter Brown Hoffmeister Read Free Book Online Page A

a coyote and a fox were always tricking each other, and there was a big bear and a family of deer, and I loved it. We read that book three, maybe four times all the way through, and I could look out the door of our tent at the stars and listen to my father read.”
    “Exactly,” Lucy said. “That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”
    A tourist told us about the first wildfire that night, in the mountains to the southwest. Out of the park, but not far. Cabins burnt. Utility lines and 10,000 acres scorched.
    The tourist said, “It’s going to fill the Valley with smoke. And they’re saying this season will be the worst fire season in a long, long time.”
    Lucy said, “Isn’t it too late in the year for fires?”
    “No,” he shook his head. “Big Indian summer coming. They’re saying lots of fires will go all fall.”
    • • •
    I woke up to the smell of her in my sleeping bag. Didn’t want to sleep anymore. Didn’t want to lose the time with her. I could hear her measured breathing, the quiet pull of air. Water and the seasons. Geology.
    I kissed her face.
    “You awake?” she said.
    “Yes.”
    She said, “I don’t want it to be Sunday night.”
    “Me neither.”
    “Or Monday and the rest of the silent weekdays,” she said.
    “Weekdays like drought.”
    Lucy smiled. She said, “It’s like drought without me?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    • • •
    Then the workweek again. The crew around us, and we worried that everyone would catch on to us. We never talked during the day, but in moments in the evenings, by the bathrooms or the lake, or if the group broke up after dinner. The other boys on the crew continued their attempts with Lucy, so I’d walk off to avoid watching that.
    By Friday, I had trouble eating. I’d been waiting five days to be with her. Each night, sleeping with the ghost of Lucy. Her hair across my face. An elbow in my ribs. I’d smell for her as I listened to the other workers snore around me.
    • • •
    Midmorning on a Friday. Piling slash on a steep hill near Fairview Dome. Two of our crew members were over a small rise, in a ravine shaped like a question mark. They were talking loudly. They couldn’t see each other so they yelled back and forth, the sounds slamming off the fractured granite, spilling out of the ravine to where I was working.
    The first one said, “…with Lucy?”
    I stopped when I heard her name.
    The other one said, “Oh, hell yeah.”
    I thought they were talking about me, so I crept closer. I thought Lucy and I had been discovered.
    The first one said, “I hear that.”
    I snuck up to the lip of the ravine. Looked down into the curve of the question. I was on my stomach, listening.
    The one to my right, downhill, said, “She
is
fine.”
    There was a pause, then the left one yelled back. “Oh, yeah. Real fine, no joke except for that snaggle tooth.”
    Neither of them said anything for a minute while they worked their own sections of the cut. Then the left-side one said, “But that chest and ass?”
    My stomach tightened. I wiped the sweat off my forehead.
    The other one said, “Definitely.”
    “I mean, I’d fuck the hell out of her. I’d just lean her up against a tree and go to work.”
    The blood pounded in the front of my head. I picked up a fist-sized rock.
    They kept talking but I couldn’t hear words. Just the noises of them. One was to my right, but I was working uphill toward the other one, the one who’d said that thing about the tree and Lucy.
    I slid down the embankment, behind a stand of white pine. Crouching. Waiting to move only when he was making enough noise to mask my footfalls. Then I got to him. He was on one knee, oiling the chain on his saw, yelling over his shoulder at the other worker, the other crew member in the ravine.
    I came from the left side, his blind side. I hit him once with the rock. Put him down.
    • • •
    The crew chief called a meeting at lunch. “Guys, we need to talk a little bit about safety. This is