In the Loyal Mountains by Rick Bass Read Free Book Online Page A

stopped and lined up around it, wanting to get into the tender young carrots and the Simpson lettuce. I had put sheets down on the ground to trick them, and we laughed as the rabbits shifted nervously from sheet to sheet, several of them huddling together on one sheet at a time, imagining they were protected.
    â€œTurn back, you bastards!” Tom shouted happily. That woke the ducks on the pond nearby, and they began clucking among themselves. It was a reassuring sound. Nancy made Tom tie a rope around his waist and tie the other end around the chimney, in case he fell. But Tom said he wasn’t afraid of anything, and was going to live forever.
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    Glenda weighed herself before and after each run. I had to remind myself not to get too close to her; I only wanted to be her friend. We ran and rode in silence. We never saw any bears. But she was frightened of them, even as the summer went on without us seeing any, and so I always carried the pistol. We had gotten tanned from lying out by the lake up at the summit. Glenda took long naps at my cabin after her runs; we both did, Glenda sleeping on my couch. I’d cover her with a blanket and lie down on the floor next to her. The sun would pour in through the window. There was no longer any other world beyond our valley—only here, only now. But still, I could feel my heart pounding.
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    It turned drier than ever in August, and the loggers began cutting again. The days were windy, and the fields and meadows turned to crisp hay. Everyone was terrified of sparks, especially the old people, because they’d seen big fires rush through the valley, moving through like an army: the big fire in 1901, and then the monstrous one in 1921 that burned up every tree except for the luckiest ones, so that for years afterward the entire valley was barren and scorched.
    One afternoon in early August Glenda and I went to the saloon. She lay down on top of a picnic table and looked up at the clouds. She would be going back to Washington in three weeks, she said, and then down to California. Almost all of the men would be off logging in the woods by then, and we would have the whole valley to ourselves. Tom and Nancy had been calling us “the lovebirds” since July, hoping for something to happen—something other than what was, or wasn’t, happening—but they’d stopped in August. Glenda was running harder than ever, really improving, so that I was having trouble keeping up with her.
    There was no ice left anywhere, no snow, not even in the darkest, coolest parts of the forest, but the lakes and rivers were still ice cold when we waded into them. Glenda continued to press my hand to her breast until I could feel her heart calming, and then almost stopping, as the waters worked on her.
    â€œDon’t you ever leave this place,” she said as she watched the clouds. “You’ve got it really good here.”
    I stroked her knee with my fingers, running them along the inside scar. The wind tossed her hair around. She closed her eyes, and though it was hot, there were goose bumps on her tanned legs and arms.
    â€œNo, I wouldn’t do that,” I said.
    I thought about her heart, hammering in her chest after those long runs. At the top of the summit, I’d wonder how anything could ever be so
alive.
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    The afternoon she set fire to the field across the road from my cabin was a still day, windless, and I suppose that Glenda thought it would do no harm—and she was right, though I did not know it then. I was at my window when I saw her out in the field lighting matches, bending down and cupping her hands until a small blaze appeared at her feet. Then she came running across the field.
    At first I could hardly believe my eyes. The smoke in front of the fire made it look as if I were seeing something from memory, or something that had happened in another time. The fire seemed to be secondary, even inconsequential. What mattered was that