*****

Down to the Woods
 

Blair leaned on the railing, squinting into the sun. Recent weather in Cascade had been overcast, wintry, eight days' worth of rain driven into a week. This far inland, he'd expected it to be at least as cool, if dryer, but today was autumnal and unclouded. The late afternoon sunlight on his face relaxed the muscles around his mouth nearly into a smile, and made his nose twitch as if to sneeze. For several long moments he stared out across the parking lot, watching a family struggle their way out of a compact car, the movement of their great bodies like the heaving shoves of seals. He looked down and touched his own belly in reflex. Under the dark blue cotton his flesh felt both drumlike and soft. He'd planned to tone up during these past few months. It had been one of several plans that hadn't come to pass. When he looked up again, the swing of his hair reminded him he'd meant to put a hair tie in earlier.

An aging, long-haired, soft-bellied hippie, he told himself with inward cruelty.

At some point along the way he should have grown up, and he wondered now if he'd missed the chance. Should have worked out, cut his hair, taken the. . .well, in short, should have made different decisions. Making those same decisions now seemed less meaningful. Too little, too late.

Instead of tying back his hair he stroked his fingers through the rough curls, which crackled with banked heat. He closed his eyes as the family approached the storefront. His eyelids reddened inwardly with sunlight as he channeled the chameleon in himself, not wanting to be noticed observing the natives. The family jawed amiably together, voices overlapping with enthusiasm.

Blair tuned in, cataloging tones, a snapshot already imprinted of their bright blonde hair, suburban clothes, peachy faces drooping above comfortable necks. The nearer they came, the more substance they amassed, displacing the present. Memories flew into Blair's mind of sun, laughter, sprinklers, cars glinting with light, bicycle spokes. The suburbs of Cascade in the seventies, Naomi inviting the neighborhood children into the backyard, handing out rolled-oat cookies that the kids tossed into the dirt when she returned inside. Naomi, eyes bright, smile trying too hard for her son's sake. The memory was a surprise, contradicting what he knew of his mother now. He opened his eyes, frowned, and tried to regain the certainty of his mother's blithe, jangling detachment.

Naomi. She led his thoughts elsewhere, like a merry pied piper drawing the rats along. Sometimes lately his thoughts slunk in sleek and low and grey, with Naomi at the periphery, and he wasn't sure whether she was driving them in or out of his head, or just leading his ratty thoughts around in circles. Whatever the trend of his thoughts, they carried with them questions equally dark and suspect. Too many questions.

"It'll be dark before we get there," Jim said, having silently arrived at his side.

Blair blinked, took a breath, and reined in his spooked heartbeat, hoping that Jim wouldn't notice his jumpiness. Lost cause. He could feel Jim's head swivel fractionally toward him, finding him out. A big cat, aware of its surroundings. Blair's features knitted together as he turned to his friend. Jim was just looking at him. On another man, that expression, unmoving and unmoved, might have signalled complete uninterest, but Blair knew the arts of camouflage and had become more adept at finding the face hidden in the leaves.

Jim handed over a bottle with a brightly decorated label. "Soba, soya, soda. Not too sure about that, but it looked like something you'd drink."

There was a smirk in the tone and Blair nodded thoughtfully, toting that one up for later retribution. "They didn't have green tea?"

Jim's eyes flashed a semaphore of patience and marvel.

Blair smiled and then aimed his smile out over the parking lot. He preferred being the first to turn away.

"I knew we should have left before ten," Jim murmured. He was genuinely disgruntled. Blair could always tell. He didn't indulge in the choleric frustration of a more demonstrative man, but he was definitely hell-bent on making his point. Blair anticipated a full display of alpha-male chest bumping when Simon came back from the restroom, and wondered if he could defuse Jim's irritability before then.

"Relax, Jim." Sowing the seeds of obfuscation. "Your problem is you think life is a straight track. You may not be a fan of the ponies, but you're in the race. Blinders on, neck down--you're driving ahead like there's a Fort Knox of sugar cubes waiting at the finish line."

Jim's hand sketched a wry question mark in the air. "How'd I become the horse in this little metaphor?"

Blair ignored the interruption. He knew Jim like his own face in the mirror, and long familiarity told him a crack about jockeys could be sprung at any moment. He forged on. "Life isn't a track; that'll just take you around and around in circles. Life is. . .life is like sex. Great when you arrive, but there's no arrival without a journey." Blair cocked his head, then amended, "Or if there is, you may want to brush up on your technique."

The distraction worked too well. Jim's blue eyes stopped their broad, casual scan of the local territory and focused on Blair. He seemed undecided between offense and amusement. "You got some pointers for me, Casanova?" His voice was mild, but its undertones could have been threat or challenge. The language of Jim had a complex structure.

Blair grinned. Despite all attempts to master the nuances of macho camaraderie which defined Jim's world, he usually succumbed to the pure joy of play. "Trade secrets, man. Sorry."

"Ah." Jim might have been trying not to smile. His eyes moved away again. "But you are willing to dispense the wisdom of the ages when it comes to life and horse racing. What is it, Sandburg, zen for dummies time again?"

The biting lightness pained Blair's heart. Rime on the glass between them.

"Come on, Jim." Shame stripped away humor fast enough to leave Blair wobbling on his axis. He hated when Jim was like this; hated the suspicion that Jim might be insecure on a level Blair could never reach and never mend. Jim Ellison should be built on bedrock. Blair searched for something to say. He could hear Rafe's and Henri's voices mingling behind the screen door as they rang up their purchases from a few feet within the store's cool interior. "You know, uh, don't tell anyone, Jim, but--" He paused to gather Jim's gaze once more. It slewed around to him, dark within rings of blue, waiting. "I'm not so bright as you like to think I am."

Jim studied Blair, his upright body half in and out of sun, his hand clasped around a bottle of water. He seemed bedrock again, or illusion. "This self-deprecation doesn't suit you."

Blair sucked in a soft, jagged breath, trying to let go the shock. Jim's stricken face--just a flash, then gone--told Blair the echo had been inadvertant but profound, a chance resonance of words signifying the hidden iceberg they didn't talk about.

"Well, I try to keep up the image. I'm supposed to know what I'm doing here, and. . ." Blair took another breath, drawn in through the pinched ache of his chest. There was suddenly so much more to say that he felt stifled for time and space. The past few weeks, the past few months, the past few years--something massed on the horizon, a cyclone of words heralded only by a breeze. He hadn't been talking lately, and he needed to talk. Given the right elements, he could master the whirlwind that demanded release from himself, orchestrate its sturm und drang so that it spent its force without hurting Jim and without blowing down his own house of cards. Except. . .it was blown and scattered already, wasn't it? His house lay in pieces; he'd never admitted how flimsy it had been. Yet just once he needed to vent, to say, Jim, I'm not that bright. Oh, I'm bright, but I haven't got the knack. You have your knack, so you think I must have mine. Clue in, Jim. My moment bloomed and faded early, and I cultivated a career from wilting laurels and panic. Books don't speak to me the way you think they do. I struggled in school. I struggle now. When I work hard it's because I have to. I don't know what I'm doing with you. I've never known. I'm a fraud, and I've revealed myself, but you still keep me around. You're smarter than I am, you're a hundred times smarter, and I never let you in on this secret, one of too many secrets, and how could you fall for all my anthrobabble--do you really think I knew what I was talking about, sentinels--but sometimes even now you look impressed with my bullshit, and it kills me when you look at me like that, and I can tell you think you need me, and you don't even know how fucking brilliant you are, because you're such an idiot. You embody every heroic quality, Jim; you manage ninety percent of your life effortlessly and the other ten percent you kill yourself to achieve, and you could do it without me if you tried, and I make analogies to horse-racing because it's been eight foggy years since my seminar in 'The Spiritual Journey as Metaphor' and my mind isn't a steel trap, it's more like a bug light where thoughts come and go and flicker and die, and I've died and returned and even that hasn't helped me push through to where I need to be with you.

Blair swallowed his words. He would never have a chance to say them here and now, because this speech was just a dark whirling smudge on the horizon, a momentary impression that died away as he watched Rafe bang out of the store with Henri behind him. And then there they were, Rafe and Henri, two big guys, cops, holding crinkling brown bags full of chips and beer and crowding the slatted wooden porch until Blair imagined he was about to fall backwards through the railing, buffeted out of the fold.

Jim was immediately absorbed into the collective though; he was peering into Henri's bag and sniffing out the aroma of stale chip oil and dusty beer bottles with a pained pinch between his brows, as if there had been no skirted brink of revelation between them. And maybe there hadn't been.

"What kind of beer'd you get?" Blair plucked at the nearest bag. His curiosity wasn't entirely feigned, but the gesture reinforced his role as kid brother in this clubby hierarchy. He'd found the pose useful in the past; doubted he'd have gone far without it. Being a police observer, even being Jim's roommate and friend, wouldn't have earned him membership in this autumn rite: the weekend retreat, masculine celebration not of harvesting but of devolution, from overworked urbanites into arboreal primitives who sustained themselves with fishing, drinking, and sociable card-sharping. For this, he needed to be the mascot, and he accepted his place more or less equably. Even now, after so much had changed, this was how he fit into their picture.

Rafe batted his hand away. "No drinking on the road," he joked. He yanked a plastic-covered stick from the bag, made an alternate offering. "Here, have some jerky."

"Uh, no thanks. You know me. Jerky for breakfast, jerky for lunch. I'm full." Blair rubbed his belly with mock tenderness. Henri, the least tempermental cop Blair had ever met, chuckled happily at this.

"What is this, a church social?" Simon came around the corner, projecting like a bullhorn. "Let's get back on the road. We're losing time."

"Well, if we'd left before ten," Jim began with pointed emphasis.

"Hey, look, a monarch butterfly," Blair said brightly, overriding him. It wasn't one of his better diversions, but his companions, perhaps stunned by the inanity, made a brief, unprecedented effort to look impressed by this sign of nature in the raw; then, buoyed by an air of tolerance for Sandburgian eccentricity, allowed themselves to be herded toward the minivan with only a few rote jibes. ("You bring your butterfly net, Hairboy?") Blair, walking behind them, let himself observe they way the cops chatted together but walked apart. Even as they converged on the vehicle, each man kept a radius of space around him as if readied to draw a gun, to turn with arms extended and fire.

They spent several minutes stowing provisions, a job that required an elaborate effort of unpacking, sorting, and repacking so that the coolers were filled with fresh ice and then stuffed with sodas, ham and cheese, bacon (without which life ceased to hold meaning), sausage, and steak (in case the trout were cagey). Just contemplating the utter meatiness of the supplies made Blair's gut flinch. A reluctant carnivore who'd spent half a lifetime gradually eliminating flesh from his diet, he'd outgrown most of his youthful eating habits until he hooked up with Jim. Now he ate meat more often, with companionable martyrdom. Yet he'd somehow never been able to alter his mother's mistaken conviction that he still liked cow's tongue.

This morning he'd packed a box of his own goods, ignoring Jim's assurances that they'd be picking up most of the food they needed on the way. He'd lived with Jim Ellison three years. The food they needed came from two different worlds. So he'd packed his pau d'arco tea, his Kashi cereal and figs, a box of quinoa soup mix, one bag of plain pistachios, another of lentils, these and a dozen other things that Jim made tiny faces at. But he'd also slipped in the buckwheat pancake mix they both liked. Even three hundred miles from home, a nod would be made to Sunday morning tradition.

While Blair leaned on the side of the van waiting for entry, there ensued a deeply serious debate about whether or not to force a six-pack into one of the coolers. For when we get there, Rafe said. Space was limited, and the vote divided, Rafe and Simon all for bumping the ham and cheese to make room, Jim and Henri coming down firmly against warm cheese and languishing pork.

"It's only two more hours," said Rafe.

"Two hours and that ham's going to be crawling with microbes," Jim said, in the tone of voice used to warn of impending invasion. "If it isn't already," he added darkly.

"Man, Jim, you have got a weird food thing," Simon said, as if confirming a rumor. He folded his arms and jutted his chin at Jim with musing study.

Jim looked startled, almost aghast at the charge. "I do not have a weird food thing."

Rafe was reading the ham package. "This thing is packed with preservatives and wrapped in air-tight plastic. It'll be safe for two hours."

Henri made a face of distaste. "You think there isn't already a swarm of bacteria inside--once it starts getting hot in there, that pork is gonna start to stew. Man, I do not wanna chow down on rancid pork. That's just nasty."

"I don't think this was even refrigerated," said Rafe. He looked over at Henri. "Didn't you see me get this off the shelf?"

"You got that off the shelf?" Jim's voice conveyed sincere dismay.

"Give me that," said Blair in exasperation. He grabbed the package from Rafe, scanned it while the others made eyebrows at one another. "This is dry-cured. It probably has enough salt in it to choke a gorilla. The salt sucks all the moisture out, and the smoke has antibacterial compounds, so microbes can't flourish. Add in the nitrites and nitrates and the fact that this could easily have been sitting on the shelf for the past year and I really think it's safe for two more hours, so just put the beer in the cooler and let's go." He thrust the ham back at Rafe and then made impatient jabbing motions with one hand.

As Blair wound up, Simon was making the small heh-heh sounds that always called Beavis and Butthead to mind. "You city boys," he said to Jim and Henri, "afraid of a little cured pork." He shook his head.

"Oh, right," said Jim, "take the word of the man who'll be eating algae for breakfast tomorrow. I'm sure that's wise." Underlying his dryness was an air of displeasure, as if 'city boy' were an unspoken euphemism for 'fairy'.

"Aren't we all city boys?" Henri asked, glancing around.

"Well, we're not sure what Sandburg is," Rafe said.

"Oh, he's a suburban white boy," said Simon, grinning widely.

"With jungle fever," Jim added.

Blair shot him a dirty look. "Thanks, man."

Rafe was grinning now, less obtrusively than Simon. "I'll bet you wanted to be a basketball player when you grew up, didn't you, Sandburg?"

"So what?"

"Classic," said Henri, nodding. "Student of African cultures, listens to rap, collects spears and drums--"

Henri's offhand jabs hit Blair in a raw place; his lips tightened. "You're about a continent and an ocean off when it comes to what I studied." He added, in pointless afterthought: "And I don't listen to rap." Blair's voice was even, but Jim's head snapped up. Blair could feel Jim's probing assessment, read my agitation, Jim, before the other man broke casually into the exchange.

"Haven't you stowed that ham yet? Come on, let's move out." With that Jim climbed into the front passenger seat. Simon followed suit, walking around the front of the minivan, jangling keys and whistling.

The cops' teasing dissipated in an instant, transient and ungraspable as smoke, and even as they climbed into the minivan, conversation was already moving on to other topics. Blair had his own tricks of forgetting, but a hook in his mind snagged and saved their comments to worry at later. He clambered into the van and slid the door shut. He was sharing the first backseat with Henri, while Rafe sprawled across the second seat by himself, comfortably situated between the window and a cooler. The van was a rental in Simon's name, and though it had come with a clean, neutral odor of rubber and vinyl, it had by now accumulated a vague miasma of men, unwrapped cigars, paper bags, hiking boots. Not unpleasant, but gathering in density.

Simon started the engine, pulled out of the parking lot. They bumped back onto the highway, past a drainage ditch and a pay-phone, a motor-oil sign, and a field fringed by thin, stiff sedge. Robin's egg blue sky overhead. Blair slid into the passive metrics of being driven, counting mile markers and minutes.

No one wore a seat belt except Simon and Jim. Henri's legs, thick in jeans, shifted to find room behind Simon's seat. An empty styrofoam coffee cup rolled around on the floor. The battle of the radio would begin again soon. The cops were talking about traffic, weather, Staties they had known, fishing prospects. Blair was looking out the window, into the distantly ridged treelines. The forests of Washington weren't much like those of Irian Jaya, where he'd taken his first undergraduate steps into fieldwork; but sometimes a flash of hidden similarity was enough to take him back and feel the lifetime that had passed between then and now. Johannes Bijlstra was the senior anthropologist who'd welcomed him that summer as a research assistant; the older man had been living on and off with the Kombai for five years by that time. That summer was ten years past, and they'd kept up correspondence by letter and then by email, until just a few months ago.

Baleamale, thought Blair, remembering. Wiry Baleamale climbing the chopped, narrow ladder to his house high in the trees, with his scrawny spotted dog clutched in one arm. Starred night in the tree tops, the wind of an alien world creating a terrifying creak and sway in the precarious dwelling where Blair had been hosted. The piglets nudging him from sleep in the morning. Roasted sago grubs, taste of another life. His first voyage off the edge of his own familiar map. The brilliance of memory threatened to leach color from the present, but this was the here and now, which had its own value, and he was here and he was now, deeply conscious of gravity's effect on his body and the movement of his eyes mapping the world. The new world he'd made for himself was volatile; its predators more dangerous than headhunters, its familiarity deceptive. Eggs for breakfast, a bullet graze by dinner. Some days, he thought his next breath might bring the end of the world, the end of decisions and history.

Blair breathed, fragmented memories tumbling by as quickly as the trees passed outside the window. Eggs, bullets, fountains, headhunters, cassowaries, term papers, laundry detergent, 10-33, 10-57, jaguars, grid maps, basketball, dissertation and defense, Maya, Sig Sauer, caffe latte, regio olfactoria, two bodies in a shallow grave, the pursuit of ecstasy, the forty-yard line, prosecution, myth, books and reality. And like a straight line cutting through all the erratically scattered points of his existence: Jim.

Jim's arm, clad in maroon flannel, cuff rolled up, his wristwatch tilting a moon of light off and on, the piano movements of his fingers. His hand reaching out, rising like a shark's fin through water. Don't even think about touching that radio. Jim's voice in reply, low and rolling, calm and dry, deriding the Motown falsetto. Informants have a right to remain anonymous. Rafe leaned over the seat, arms crossed. Horn honking up the road, whine of a passing truck, Simon's dry cadences. You drink another soda now, you'll be peeing in the can, 'cause I'm not stopping again til we get there. Anthropologists should not knowingly falsify or color their findings. There is an obligation to reflect on the foreseeable repercussions of research and publication on the general population being studied. Tied this new Baetis Nymph, pretty little thing, olive thread wraps on the underbody, peacock herl thorax, three ringneck pheasant tail barbs. The coffee cup rolling, back and forth, swept around in an arc like a clock's hand. Two, three, four o'clock rock. Jim's arm moved restlessly. Heard Tom Dawson's going to the National Academy next month. Sounds like he's being groomed for the hot seat. Nah, he's already risen to his level of incompetence. There should be no exploitation of individual informants for personal gain.

Tires, something clicking rythmically under the body, Henri stretching his legs.

Blair tried to remember if he'd called Amelia to say he couldn't make the party this weekend, a celebration of passing her oral. He could imagine the event: her tattooed friend with the long blonde hair; nachos and beer and ouzo; the strained conversational circumvention of Blair's disgrace; Tim's parodic guitar tributes; group exegesis of Evil Dead 3. No, he hadn't called, because they'd both known, at the time of her invitation, that he wouldn't go. He's lost in space. Earth to Sandburg. He'd meant to call her anyway this morning, forgotten. Packing his duffel, trying to break the habit of including ziplock bags, Bacitracin, a tape recorder, and failing. Jim downing the stairs, saying that Simon had pulled up below. Flex of his shoulders, the focused job of his moving body, the intent Jimness of his face. He would do anything for Jim. It must be so if he was here. The kid's daydreamin'. Chasin' foxes.

Blair gave and looked in, away from the window. "Yeah, yeah, I hear you." When he turned, Rafe's face was near him, giving him smirkish consideration that was not unfriendly. "Can't a guy do a little thinking?"

"Do that in private, Sandburg." And: "Who is she this week?"

"Uh, she's a Swedish gymnast with a Nobel for mathematics. You probably wouldn't know her." Blair kept it deadpan, accepted the dry looks. Henri's broad face pulled on a skeptical expression that utilized everything from his mobile brows to the thin ridge of mustache above his lips.

"Hairboy, you were built for bullshit. That's a God-given gift."

"Thanks, No-hair-man."

"Oh no you didn't," Henri breathed in disbelief, while Rafe cackled and fell back on his seat.

The remainder of the trip passed, while their strands of conversation wove in loose threads that began and broke and picked up other strands, and the pattern that formed was one of fat, jumping trout and curvaceous women and legal intricacies. Simon and Jim, Henri and Rafe, Henri and Simon, Jim and Blair. And then the lawyer jokes began, and Blair pulled Highlands of the Brazil out of his knapsack and read steadfastly until, much later, the cruch of tires on gravel signalled their turn-off. Then he put the book away again and watched the evergreens brush the windows.

"How much further is it?" Jim asked, glancing at Simon before turning his eyes back on the winding rutted road. Blair could tell that Jim was peering through the foliage ahead with sentinel attention, and he wondered how far Jim's line-of-sight might extend through the overlap of leaves and branches. Made a mental note to ask later.

"Cabin's about six miles in. This used to be a logging road, dates back to the twenties. Only road around for miles, except the one we came in on. Some local mountain man lived off the land here for decades, realtor said. Most recent owners bought it up, cut back the overgrowth on the road, graveled it." Simon paused, grimaced as they lurched in and out of a rut. "Such as it is."

"Coating a road for six miles must set you back some," Henri said. "Not surprised it's thin."

"Some and then some. I just graveled the worst patches. Wish I could afford to keep it up better. But the cabin was a steal, and as long as I don't try to come up in winter, shouldn't be any trouble."

"This cabin," said Blair. "You said it was pretty nice, right? We're not talking mountain man's tanning shed, are we?"

"No, we are not. Relax. It's cedar, only about five or six years old." Simon modulated to factual recitation. "No phone lines and it's not on the grid, but it has diesel and solar PV generators, shortwave radio, well water. Sitting pretty on a tributary of the Okanogan. Pinecone Creek. Realtor said the rainbow trout run about ten, twelve inches."

"Well, that's the important thing," Jim said with satisfaction, rubbing his hands together.

"On the other hand, Miami is playing Atlanta this weekend," Blair noted.

Jim half turned in his seat to give his guide the eye. "I put the tape in."

"Yeah, over my Discovery Channel specials."

Jim turned away again, waving a hand. "You never watch those."

"I was planning on watching those."

Simon shot them an inclusive, irritated look. "Do you mind, Ralph and Alice?"

Blair let Jim do the glaring for both of them, and let himself be distracted by the greenery outside. "Ahh, wow, look at those trees." He craned his head to get a better view of the wildlife that pressed close to their windows. The land through which they drove edged gradually into the Okanogan National Forest several miles to the east, and was still relatively thick with pine, fir and aspen. "You know, you got really lucky, Simon. This area right around here--well, not here, but just across the river--was slated for a slash-and-burn timber sale a few years back. There was a huge national protest, though, and they eventually called off the deal. My mom flew back to the states when she heard the news, got caught up in it for almost a year, along with a bunch of other wilderness issues. Remember Forest Fax week?" Blair laughed to himself. "Man, she must have sent five thousand faxes."

"Oh, Forest Fax week," said Simon, nodding with feigned reminiscence and then snorting none too gently. "Somehow I'm not surprised to learn you've got tree-hugger roots, Sandburg." He looked up and smirked into the rear-view mirror.

"Uh, funny, sir."

Simon winced at the address. "Don't starch my shirt, Sandburg. When I want to be called sir on the weekend, I'll go out for lobster."

"Your mom's one of those types who goes around spiking trees?" Rafe asked, disapproval implicit in the question. He'd met Naomi not too long ago, but she didn't seem to have registered on him.

"My mom's never spiked a tree in her life," Blair said. He refrained from mentioning Naomi's long-held belief that she could hear trees speak and cry out when in pain, and the conversation they'd once had on the subject, which had ended with her firmly irrefutable words, I'm sure it was the mushrooms, honey, but that doesn't make it any less real. Once while on a camping trip he'd asked Jim if he could hear the trees talking. Jim had scrutinized him across the fire with the same care he gave to head wounds and blood spatter patterns, then replied, Yeah, and they're saying, no more beer for Joyce Kilmer over there.

"Naomi's got a good heart," Jim said, and it was neither apology nor defense, simply a statement that brooked no debate.

Blair's own heart stretched happily in its cage, and he hid his pleasure by looking out the window again, into the tapestried spread of fir needles.

They hit another rut and rattled a spray of gravel. "This van is gonna make it, isn't it?" said Henri dubiously. A tree branch dragged heavily across the passenger-side windows as if to underscore his question.

Simon was growing aggravated with the effort of concentrating on the road while trying to avoid potential scratches to the rental. "Did I ask for backseat driving?" he wondered aloud. "Funny, I don't recall that. I've driven down here in a car. The van will make it, because it's actually an SUV, and it has four-wheel drive."

"What's this?" The question floated up from Rafe and accompanied rummaging sounds in the backseat. Henri and Blair looked back to where Rafe was holding up a wrapped package.

"That's spelt loaf," Blair said. "Careful, it's contagious." He glanced over the seat. "That's my food you're in, by the way. Feel free."

"Thanks, I don't think I'm that desperate yet," Rafe said, putting the bread back on top. "And besides, there's always cannibalism." Despite the derision, he continued to inspect the box. "Don't you have any cookies?"

"No. Well, I do have some papaya energy bars. What happened to your bag--I thought you guys got snacks."

"Forgot to get cookies."

"Huh. Maybe we should call the trip off." Though kidding, Blair was newly conscious that by  weekend's close he'd have spent over forty-eight manhours with the guys from the station--per man. It would either set a new record or end in mass homicide. He couldn't tell yet if their wisecracking would ease off or sustain itself for the duration. Already he'd been teased about his name, his race, his upbringing, his hair, his flightiness with women, his mother, his taste in food, and, somewhere along the line, his bootlaces, which were red. None of the banter was new, and Blair had grown used to the attention, but he'd never experienced the men's uninterrupted company for a seven hour car trip. It had been instructive. There was a reason these guys had trouble keeping girlfriends.

"Spelt," Henri mused aloud, on his own track. "Isn't that some sort of seaweed?"

"You're thinking of kelp," Blair said.

"Which is what he eats for breakfast," Jim tossed back helpfully.

"It's only a supplement," Blair said to the back of Jim's head. He turned to Henri and imparted confidingly, "The green color actually comes from the kiwi."

"Kiwi," said Rafe. "Isn't that a bird?"

*****

They pulled up in front of the cabin at last. Simon drove the van up close to the porch, spent a few minutes veering between drive and reverse as he positioned it for some undetermined purpose, then brought it to a stop at what seemed to Jim a haphazardly random angle. But Jim said nothing. He was the soul of saying nothing and was proud of his polite restraint, and yet Simon gave him a dirty look as he shut of the ignition. Some days you just couldn't win, thought Jim.

They all piled out with grunts, mutters, stretches. Jim scanned the terrain, flicking his vision out like a fishing cast and reeling back the catch of his eyes, over and over again at lightning speed, until he'd piled up a fullness of impressions. The cabin was one-story, cedar, porched, and was nestled within the surrounding forest in a picturesque way that could inspire even the dullest real estate agent to poetry. From a more practical perspective, the trees were too damn close. If Simon planned to keep the property for retirement, he was going to have to cut back or find himself on the business end of a sixty-foot pine tree someday. It was a tidy, neat little plot, though, Jim had to admit. There wasn't much clearance, maybe twenty yards around at the furthest point, more like ten in some places, the perimeter fringed by good-sized trees. Where the drive turned in was a tall outcropping of bare rock and tumbled stones. Sparse wildflowers and thicker weeds edged the trees, the rocks, and the cabin, but the verge itself had been recently mowed. He could see far enough into the trees to pinpoint the location of the trout stream, down a southerly path. Behind the cabin, to the west, was an opening in the trees that framed a few neighboring hills. Mountains, really, Jim supposed, but they were never going to be the high point of the North Cascades.

"Canada's about fifteen miles thataway," murmured Blair, at his shoulder.

Jim turned his direction north, shaded his eyes, and pretended to squint for scope. "Got it," he said.

"See any mounties?"

"Nah. Think we've got the place to ourselves."

"Not the wildest wilderness I've ever been in, but it's definitely remote." Blair slid his hands in his pockets, looked around. Wind like a flirting finger rearranged a curl on Blair's temple and like a lover Blair canted his face up to be kissed. The clouded light of the sky held it, milk and freckles, with photographic timelessness. The world was reflected across the gleaming arcs of Blair's eyes in such actue detail as to be hallucinatory to Jim. Rocking on the balls of his feet, charged with energy, Blair said, "There's supposed to be grizzlies out here. Lynx, moose. Wolves. Picking up anything on your radar?"

Jim looked around cautiously, but the others men were clumped on the far side of the van; Simon was pointing out the creek path. Yielding to his guide, he tilted his head, focused on sound. Sound wasn't too hard. Taste and smell took the most effort; vision was more intuitive; touch, the most intuitive of all, unless you counted decrypting melted plastic among its tasks. Now, ears tuning in, Jim began to collect the molecules that the world had shaken loose. The world was a rippling pond, and his ears blossomed into erogenous zones that vibrated with brushstrokes of air. Sound could be maddening or orgasmic, which was one of those tacit subjects Jim never brought up but which Sandburg seemed utterly aware of. Either his tests were that good, or he'd just clued in quickly to what Jim couldn't stand to discuss.

Sandburg had explained sound to him as a concept, years ago, describing things Jim already knew in words that restructured his understanding, so that at times like now he knew that he could focus directionally with barely perceptible adjustments of his head and amplify sound with the muscles of his inner ear--a process that for most people was purely reflexive. The wind engaged millions of pine needles on their branches, like clattering whispers. A rabbit careened through the forest, dashing through dry leaves. Fifty yards. A heavy shifting, possibly a bear. A hundred yards. Birds, too many to count, dotted among the trees, flying, swooping across waves of air. Water, plaiting through fallen tree limbs, slapping across rocks, fish, swish, the unique liquidity of a stream bed, so perfect that it traveled him back to his first childhood fishing trip and returned him to anticipation of tomorrow morning, and then he was listening again, immersed. Movement. Something clattering against wood, scratching, a squawk louder than expected, making him wince. His ear dialed down almost at once, and a touch on his arm realigned his concentration, oriented him. Then the touch gave pressure, drew him back, and he was conscious again, aware of the broken narrative he'd provided his guide, straining to balance the cacophony of the forest with the crunch of boots approaching, near and far, Blair's voice saying something innocuous about the population of grizzlies in North America.

"Okay, let's get this gear in," said Simon. He was all business, but obviously in his element. His khaki shirt strained across his body as he squared his shoulders and waited as Rafe and Henri began drawing out the closest bags from the van's open side door. He looked over at Jim and Blair. "This isn't valet service, gentlemen."

While everyone was chatting and unloading, Simon took a bag from Rafe and climbed the porch steps first to unlock the front door. With armfuls of bags and packs, the rest of them followed Simon's lead up onto the porch and then into the cabin. Once inside, Jim looked around the front room briefly, checking out the clean cedar paneling and floorboards. "Nice," he said with laconic approval.

"Wow, this is great, Simon." Blair stood in the center of the room and took stock. "You said furnished, but I was kinda worried. You've got it all, though."

"Well, it's not a shack, Sandburg."

"Yeah, I know, but 'fishing lodge'. When I heard that, I sort of pictured us sitting around on benches with our poles down an ice hole."

"Man, sounds like my last date," said Henri. He and Blair swatted each other and laughed like teenagers.

Jim shook his head to himself and ignored them, wandering to one side of the room to sniff surreptitiously at the couch upholstery. It was fairly fresh, which came as a pleasant surprise. He went to the side window, lifted the curtain to survey the treeline, then turned back to the room and, without thinking, blueprinted the floorplan onto his mind. There wasn't much to it, though Jim had seen some tract homes the same size or smaller. The front room ran the length of the cabin; a stone fireplace was set into the righthand wall; windows dominated the other walls, and were beginning to let in plenty of light as Simon went around opening the curtains. Opening off the living room to the left was the kitchen; a counter with overhanging cupboards divided the rooms. Down the hall would be the bathroom and the bedrooms; two, Simon had said. It was furnished with a style that didn't proclaim its ownership--large navajo patterned rugs, a thickly hewn dining table, a respectable couch and extra armchairs, small tables. The only discordant note was struck by the table lamps. All different and all stunningly ugly, even by the most rustic or masculine of standards, they included a converted whiskey jug, a stuffed otter, and something draped in chains.

Jim couldn't bite back the words. "Who did your decorating, Simon?"

Simon didn't appear to notice the tenor of his question. "Ladyfriend of mine helped me out. We got the furniture in Oroville, had a local guy deliver it. Went to a few antique shops, too."

"Who, ah, picked out the lamps?"

Simon finally caught the note of fascinated horror and turned to look at Jim with narrowed eyes. "That would be me, Jim." He showed a lot of teeth. "And I just know you appreciate my fine sense of taste and fashion."

"Oh, yes. The otter is particularly. . ." Jim groped for a word, failed, and nodded in vague conclusion. "I'll just finish unloading the van."

"You do that."

Within ten more minutes, they'd emptied the van. Bags, coolers and boxes covered the kitchen counters, fishing poles lay across the broad dining table, and the center of the living room was knee deep in luggage. With the unconscious organizing priorities of men, they'd moved the entire contents of the van inside to the nearest available surfaces; with the mannered reticence of men, they'd trespassed no further into Simon's abode than the front rooms. By unwritten law, you only went as far as you needed to, until the host gave explicit invitation otherwise; so now they stood, waiting for Simon to direct them.

Except for Blair. Rafe and Henri had popped open beers and were sprawled in two dining room chairs. Jim was standing in place, waiting for Simon to finish fiddling with the shortwave. But Blair had already visited the bathroom, both bedrooms, and the basement, ostensibly to check for vermin and varmints, but more likely because he couldn't keep from poking his nose into every corner.

Jim listened to him bounce back up the stairs. First his dark curls reappeared and then the rest of him, swinging a flashlight and brushing dust off his clothes. He paused at the end of the hall, absently shaking out his shirt and eyeing one of the bedroom interiors. Jim tried to communicate remonstrance and propriety down the length of the hall, but Blair's bright gaze was turned away, profile oblivious, and despite himself Jim's face softened and his own gaze lingered and lowered. Hunger was so habitual, so omnipresent, he hardly feared its bite any more.

Blair ambled back into the living room. He set the flashlight on the nearest table, did a double-take at the otter, and directed a pained but comical face at Jim. "Started the generator and primed the pump, Simon." He shot another hesitant look at the lamp. "But, I'll, uh, let you turn the lights on."

Simon didn't even turn. "It's a long walk back to Cascade, boys." With sharper annoyance, he added, "And did I ask you to mess around down there, Sandburg? You broke anything, you bought it."

"It's fine. I've done it a hundred times," Blair assured him.

"Sounds like a conservative estimate to me," Rafe said to Henri.

Henri laughed, then asked, "You bump into any relatives down there in the dark, Sandburg?"

"Prime my pump," Simon muttered to the radio.

Blair ignored Henri, cleared his throat in what passed for a general apology, and rocked from ball to heel on his feet. "So, uh--" He looked over his shoulder. "Does that couch fold out, Simon?"

Abandoning his check of the radio system with a sigh and scrape of his chair, Simon rejoined their group. "No. Two bedrooms, one couch."

"Three beds," Blair said in a mild voice. His face tucked itself in and his gaze dropped floorward,  a maneuver that Jim had long ago learned to interpret as a deferential diversion from the content of whatever he was actually saying, which was. . .wait a minute. Three beds?

There was a contemplative pause.

"Well, Simon should get the main bedroom," Rafe said at last, matter-of-factly. "It's his cabin."

"He does that, one of us'll be sleeping on the floor," said Henri. Disenthrallment with their accomodations wrote itself clearly on his face and he looked sideways at Simon, who held up his hands.

"Hey, I can lump it for a weekend."

"On the floor?" Rafe frowned.

"Well, I'd rather sleep in a bed," Simon agreed. "But that would mean someone--some ones--would have to double up."

There was another long pause, before Jim realized that three people were staring at him, or rather, staring at him and then staring speculatively at Blair. Jim bristled. "What?"

Simon raised his brows.

"Oh, please," said Blair to the room, bending down to grab his bag, dismissing the issue before it started. "Dibs on the window side."

"Why--" Jim began saying to Simon, then cut his sentence abruptly short as he recognized that there was no answer to that question he wanted to hear. "Fine." He caught up his own duffel and brushed past the other man. He couldn't decide whether to be pissed or resigned to the knowledge that he and Blair looked like the kind of roommates who probably didn't mind sharing a bed.

Jim heard Rafe volunteering to take the couch and Simon telling him where he could put his suitcase, but he was really focused on trying to relax his tense muscles, lower his heart-rate and keep his cheeks from heating to the point where his friends would notice when he returned. He entered the bedroom to find Blair unpacking his bag. Blair gave him a carefully neutral look. Jim swung the duffel onto the bed and began removing clothes. Blair started to say something, then Henri and Simon passed by the door on their way to the other bedroom, and he remained silent until they were out of earshot.

"Could have been worse. At least they didn't make kissy noises. . .you okay with this?"

Jim blinked down at the sweatshirt he was unfolding and refolding. He never knew what to say to the simple questions, could never tell if Blair wanted honesty, self-analysis, or equally simple replies. When silence didn't work, Jim usually settled for door number three. Or switched to tactical.

"I was trying the biofeedback," he said.

"Really?" Blair sounded keenly pleased. "Is it working?"

"No. . .sort of. . .I don't know."

"Did you have that ability to make instant, razor-sharp decisions when you were a Ranger?" Blair asked with respect.

Jim tossed a ball of socks at him.

Blair caught the socks and mimed a hoop shot, then tried to twirl the roll on one finger like a basketball. Failing that, he gave the bundle a nimble-handed inspection that was pure cat and curiosity. "Oh, yeah," he said, picking up bubbles and steam, "and I'll bet that folding socks into origami hedgehogs with like, such finesse, is one of those Ranger secrets, too."

Jim was provoked to unexpected laughter, and Blair chucked the socks back at him, grinning.

"Ah, it's the honeymoon suite," said Henri, coming to lean with folded arms against the door-jamb. He was grinning as widely as Blair, utterly without malice.

"Okay, okay, get it out of your system," Blair said. He made the sign of the talking hand. "Mock, mock, mock."

"Now, I'm not mocking," said Henri, striving to look innocent and failing like a lawyer in a leisure suit. "You guys make a real cute couple."

"Thanks, H." Jim moved toward the door and Henri straightened and stepped back with a single instinct. Jim smiled, fangs politely tucked behind the mild line of his lips. "You don't mind if we spend a little quality time, do you? Great. Thanks." He shut the door in Henri's face.

"Jeez, Jim." Blair resumed putting his clothes away. "I'm not really sure that's going to deter next week's water-cooler gossip."

"It's not water-cooler gossip." Jim tossed a stack of tee-shirts in a drawer. "Maybe pastry-cart gossip. And there's no way it could get any more lurid."

"Lurid?" Blair didn't seem unduly surprised, but a new note troubled his voice. They'd had a few off-the-cuff conversations on this subject before, but they'd been so ephemeral that neither of them remembered the details. It was an issue that rose perhaps once a year, skirted and plucked restlessly at their minds, and then diffused back into subtext. "Like, leather-bar lurid, or hearts-and-doves lurid?" He waggled his brows once, which conflicted with the subdued cast of his face. "What have you heard?"

"Oh. . ." Jim, who hadn't seriously intended to raise this topic of conversation, tried to shrug it off. "You know the sort of thing."

"Me? No, I don't know the sort of thing." Blair's minor-key amusement didn't conceal that he was also bothered enough to push. He came over to lean on Jim's dresser. "Come on," he said, lowering his voice. "You don't really think they think--"

"Them? No," Jim said immediately, with assurance. He worked at filling the upper two drawers of the dresser and didn't look at Blair, the observer, that blue gaze unwavering on him, didn't look at him for nearly an entire minute, until he cracked and sighed and met the other man's interested eyes. "There's nothing to tell." He tacked starboard into virtue. "I don't listen to that kind of thing. . .much. And it's just. . .it's not pastry-cart gossip. It's the usual locker-room crap, Blair, from cops who never pulled their head out of their jock. Never grew out of high school. And you don't want to know. There's no reason to go there."

"Wow." Blair looked down a moment, then raised a smoother face. "That bad?" After a pause, he said, "I'm glad you haven't punched anyone."

"I worked through that a long time ago." Long before he'd known Blair, but Jim could not push those extra words out. He spared a quick glance at the younger man to see if any clue was birthing, but Blair's face was just as usual, open and accepting and devoid of any sign that he'd heard the hint. So many hints dropped over the years, you'd think by now the water level would have risen, that the realization would have surfaced behind those eyes. Blair's eyes were always on him, reading him closely, usually with insight, and yet, in this area: nothing.

And he'd never asked. That was what exasperated and defeated Jim, and twisted his gut into a puzzle of indecision. The man with a thousand and one nosy, friendly questions had never asked him, casually, over beer maybe, or late at night, Hey, Jim, you ever slept with a guy? Jim had kept expecting this question or something like it, even as the years passed and they grew closer; he'd anticipated it long before now and had planned out his reply--his range of replies--like a man copying and recopying awkward, difficult love letters. He didn't think of love. Any feeling was in the work itself, the deliberate will to be prepared, ready to give; even if no more was asked of him than truth. Jim had played the permutations of that conversation in his head so many times that he'd worn the scene down to fuzz and white noise. But things were different now, weren't they. That conversation would never play out now the way it might have three years ago. Might have, might have been. . . .

White noise.

"That's why I admire you, man," Blair said, sincerely. You could tell when Blair was sincere: it looked effortful, as if it came from his chest with a labor of extra breathing, and his voice dropped to a register that always made Jim's ears shudder in their depths like perfectly rung bells. "You're so secure with yourself. I--"

"Yeah, well," Jim interrupted. Autopilot on. "No one's that secure, Chief." He closed the top dresser drawer that he'd been holding open for an unnoticed passage of time.

Blair shifted, straightened. For a few seconds he looked away, giving Jim the chance to steal a roving eyeful of him. Sturdy body, frown, messy hair, hands sliding to pockets until only the knobs of his wrists showed, up the swing and button-line of his shirt, to the chokered throat, beads on leather, wishbone angles summing up his body. Dust of stubble, scents both clean and grubby. His face was puppyish with traces of wolf in the blue eyes. Impossible.

"They're probably starting to worry," said Jim, returning to the joke of it. He had no humor in his body, but he had practice at making his words light, easy. Blair tipped up half a smile at him in response.

"Natives getting restless?" he asked.

Jim raised his hearing up a notch and listened. "Just hungry, I think."

They left the room to find the other men in the kitchen like buffalos at a watering hole. Simon was pulling food back out of the fridge that had just been put away, and Rafe was opening various drawers and cupboards without clear aim. Henri stood in the living room, leaning on the counter that bordered with the kitchen, skating a beer bottle around on its edge. He looked over at them as they approached.

"The lovebirds have left the nest," he observed.

"We decided to eat now," Simon said from half within the fridge. "We're doing the steaks."

Jim's stomach perked up at the thought. "Great. Grill?"

"In the front closet there. Not sure it's big enough for all of them at once, but guess we'll make do."

Jim found the grill and charcoal, then he and Henri dragged the works out onto the porch and fired it up. Blair joined them a few minutes later, bringing Jim a beer, which he took automatically while poking the charcoal gently with a long grilling fork.

"Nice fork," said Henri. "What's that got, a thermometer on the end? Huh. High tech."

"Yeah. Think it takes batteries," Jim noted.

Blair had moved to the end of the porch. "Hey, Henri --how far'd Simon say that creek was?"

"Not too far. 'Bout a quarter mile, maybe less."

"Cool. I think I'll walk down, take a look. Scout out a good spot for tomorrow morning." Rather than walking back to the steps, he swung himself over the porch railing and hopped down, a beer in hand.

Jim blinked at the disappearing Sandburg trick. "Don't scare away all the trout, Chief," he called out after him. Blair, ambling across the grass, raised a hand in reply without turning.

Henri turned to lean against the porch railing and watched the younger man go, then looked at Jim. "How's he doing?"

Jim continued to poke the charcoal for no good reason. "About as well as can be expected."

"Not so hot, huh?"

"He's. . ." Jim hesitated, unsure what to disclose. Not his territory; not exactly. "I think he's just bored, mainly."

"Where's he workin' again?"

"Some sort of Internet company. Answering phones. E-mail."

Henri grunted sympathetically. "Man, I hate riding a desk. Guess he'd be used to that, though."

"I think they just have cubicles."

"Even worse."

"Yeah." Jim forced himself to hang the fork back in its hoop, and watched the coals burn from black to grey. He held his beer in one hand, forgotten, then noticed it and took a long pull. It was cold and slid straight down his throat in a smooth ribbon, barely tasted.

Henri had dropped into thought, which he broke after a minute by saying, "Surprised me he didn't take the offer. Thought that was all set."

Jim had resisted getting dragged into this discussion with anyone at the station, including Henri or Rafe; the only exception had been Megan, who'd backed him into a corner, literally, and pestered him into giving her a grudging dole of news. He'd felt like he'd been reporting to his colonel.

"Like I said, he changed his mind. His choice." Jim's voice was quiet, flat. Then, surprising them both, he added, "I should never have let Simon do it." And I should never have gotten up my hopes.

Henri shifted closer, lowered his own voice. "So, uh, what did he do? We figured he must have pulled a few strings."

Jim frowned and made a quick negating gesture with his head. His eyes warned. "That's not for me to say. But the offer--we shouldn't have done it. He didn't want it."

Henri leaned back again. "Yeah, Hairboy as a cop. Not sure I could've seen that. Though he didn't do a bad job, for whatever it was he did."

"Yeah."

Simon banged out the door, a platter of steaks in his hand. "Okay!" he said with energy. "Here we go, boys. Toss a few of those on." He handed the tray to Jim, who began forking the strips onto the grill. "Huh. We may have room after all. Bigger than I thought. . .or maybe the steaks are smaller." Simon watched the process critically, some disappointment appearing on his broad face as he realized that the steaks would all fit.

"Well, we've got some potatoes, too," Simon sighed to himself. "Rafe's wrapping them up."

"Probably should have started them before," Jim said.

"Do you see this?" Affecting aggravation, Simon pointed to his hips, where he'd tied on a bright red apron that read 'A Man's Grill Is His Castle'.

"Yeah, but I'm holding the fork," said Jim.

"Who's grill is this?"

Jim pointed to the sizzling meat with the fork prongs. "Your grill, my fire."

"Our steaks," Henri broke in to remind them, then laughed comfortably.

"Okay, we'll let Jim wear the apron." Simon reached behind him and began to untie the garment.

Jim handed over the fork. "It's all yours, Simon."

"Ah, thank you." Simon smiled smugly and took over prodding the steaks, while Jim watched and tried not to comment too rudely about his technique. They traded some more banter, while Henri added his own easy remarks here and there. Rafe wasn't long with the potatoes, which were added to the coals.

Rafe wandered to the end of the porch. Dusk was falling and a pair of jackrabbits had appeared for play and were zig-zagging through the grass. "Where's Blair?"

Jim, without thinking, cocked his head and listened deeply for the other man, letting that sense open up into a world that was growing rich with the music of nightfall, trebled with crickets and rustling leaves. He could hear the dark. It was a grey, leafy sound, it was the motion of clouds, it was the expiration of day and the stirred respiration of evening. He could hear Blair walking back up the creek path, boots on dry pine needles, the scuff scuff of his soles and the skittering of rocks.

"He's just coming now," Jim said. By the time he caught himself, it was too late. Another thing he'd said without caution, letting too much show. Simon didn't look up from the grill, but the rigid, expressionless manner in which he concentrated on the steaks was more conspicuous than a look would have been. Henri and Rafe turned their gazes almost at the same time and gave Jim the intent, direct regard of familiarity, but with a newer element he'd come to recognize but couldn't quite put a name to. It made his stomach clench with a faint, shameful queasiness. He wasn't sure when he'd lost his instinct for self-protection, but he was getting more careless, and maybe more vulnerable.

"Funny, I don't hear anything," said Henri. His voice was uncharacteristically cool.

Jim turned his face away, looking into the dusked yard, trying to dial down his speeding heartbeat. The tightening ache of his stomach made him nearly breathless. The beer bottle in his hand was heating with the force of his grip.

There was an excruciatingly long silence, a waiting that seemed to drag on forever as they stood wordlessly on the porch. Jim's head throbbed in time to internal clock ticks. Moments passed, and then a full minute. And the beginning of another. And it was actually difficult to hear anything over the sizzle of the steaks and the whirr of the crickets, Jim noticed. And the silence was a heavy thing, filled with the mute rhythms of everyone counting off the moments and waiting to see how long it took for Blair to appear, and not failing to calculate that the longer it took, the farther away he must have been a minute ago. A minute, fifteen seconds, and counting.

At last, in release and what might have been relief, Henri said, "Maybe you--"

"Here he comes," said Rafe, who was watching the treeline.

They were silent again as Blair neared. When he caught sight of Rafe at the edge of the porch, he called out a mild, "Hey." He passed the railings in intermittent flashes of wood and body, and then bounded up the steps into their midst like one of the jackrabbits grown bold. "Oh, wow, those look great," he said, sniffing at the grill's smoky haze. He was bouncing from ball to heel on his feet, energized with the mountain air, enthused at the prospect of food. The knees of his jeans were damp and mud-stained, and his hair had nebulously expanded from his head; a crumbled leaf was caught in one thick strand.

"Simon, that creek has got to be one of the seven secret wonders of the North Cascades. The fish were just about popping out of the water like, like popcorn." He clapped his hands together hollowly to mime the sound, and laughed. "I can't wait to get started. Almost a shame to wait until morning. Up at five, right? I'm ready, I'm definitely ready." He bent in and poked his nose closer to the grill, oblivious to any residual tension surrounding him. "Mm, potatoes too. Good. I'm starving."

Blair straightened and finally looked around. His mood slipped down a peg. "Who's been pissing in the beer?" he asked, jokily dry.

"Well, we were just enjoying the peace and quiet, Sandburg," said Simon, arching his brows. "I'm not so sure we can count on you to keep it down when we hit the banks tomorrow."

"Uh-huh." Blair wasn't fooled, and showed it by continuing to eye them all.

Jim swallowed when those blue eyes hooked onto him. But Blair, his ally in all things, would never ask him anything in front of the others, would say nothing in case it touched on matters they still strove to keep secret. Poorly kept, this secret. When Jim had lived with the Chopec, the youths had worn no more than a thin cord tied from waist to the crown of their genitals; this was their clothing. It covered nothing, but without it they were naked and the swing of their privates was open for mocking. This was the extent of Jim's own coverage; his secret hung out for the world to see, but without the thin cord he'd wrapped around himself he would be exposed past endurance. Besides, now he had no longer had the choice. Loosing the truth onto the world again would render everything Blair had done for him worthless. And Jim still craved the uniform of being ordinary.

"I think I'll get another beer," Blair said.

"Where's the bottle you took with you?" Jim said, needing something to say to break the tightly clamped lock of his throat.

"Marked my spot with it." Blair grinned. "Found the perfect place to start off tomorrow. Nice flat rock shelf a few feet into the bed. I'm just going to stand there and reel in the fish."

"They're gonna be flingin' themselves out of the water for that Sandburg charm," said Henri.

"You know it," Blair said.

Rafe pushed up off the porch rail. "What's your bait, Sandburg?"

"Think I'm gonna tell you? Well, okay. But don't spread this far and wide. My patent here. The trick is: peanut butter."

There was a chorus of rude chortles from the cops; Jim pinched in the start of a smile. Their last trout-fishing trip, after trying every fly they'd brought with them and spending three hours without a bite, Blair had started experimenting with the various contents of their lunch-box, and hooked a huge twenty-five-inch cutthroat with a piece of peanut-butter smeared jerky, a catch that had nearly knocked him on his ass and had him beaming for the following two weeks. That had been a year ago now; hard to believe.

"Peanut butter? Oh man." Henri shook his head. "I knew you were crazy, but I didn't know how bad."

Blair shrugged, not put off by their heckling. "Hey, it works. Watch them flock."

"Wonder if he uses that on women, too?" said Rafe, jabbing his elbow at Henri.

"Don't make me picture that," said Simon, groaning.

Blair made little sounds of amusement and slipped away from them, through the screen door into the cabin.

Jim felt safe enough now to turn completely away from the others and stare out briefly into the verge, where a few out-of-season fireflies dragged luminescent bellies through the air in erratic paths. He eased his full-bodied cramp by bringing various elements of the darkness in and out of focus, and relaxed into that exercise long enough to rebuild a buffer of calm around himself.

The food was cooked and brought in, the wide dining table set in lackadaisical fashion with plates, napkins, and a spill of mismatched silverware. Within half an hour they were gathered around the table, everyone at a chair except for Blair. Minus a fifth chair for the setting, he'd voluntarily grabbed a stool and now sat with legs wound through the rungs, chewing alternately on steak, potato, and tahini-dipped chunks of spelt bread, the last of which had caused great consternation and comment among the other men.

Their attention had drifted from Jim, but he could feel tugging undercurrents, stronger than he was accustomed to when with his friends. The events of past months had changed things, all right. A single week in late May had rolled across his life like a storm, but the repercussions still continued to push and pull at his equilibrium, so that he couldn't sit at this table and eat steak and plot fishing strategy without his thoughts flashing on and off in the pattern of the past, so that without volition he found himself absently wondering what Naomi was up to, and then recalling the dwindling twist of Zeller's body, and then the press conference, the hobbling pain of his leg, now a ghostly twinge, fears and stupid self-delusions and the passing joy of thinking he'd found a partner in all things, and instead the laptop becoming a fixture on the kitchen table, a sense of accumulating dust from within Blair's more oftenly closed room. When they got back he should remind Blair about the boxes in the basement, because leaving them there too much longer was going to ruin with damp any papers he had stored inside.

And he looked up on the trailing end of this thought and there was Blair across from him, hair tied back so as not to swing into his mouth while he ate. His hair's ornate frame removed, the picture of his face was austerely redefined into that angular, serious, nearly-a-professor-mug which made Jim proud and respectful. Long smart forehead, brows like incomplete thumb daubs, full lips parting to nibble bread. A Jewish face, his father had said after first meeting Blair. Sandburg, you said? A Jew, huh. I hope you didn't tell him about your trust. He'd have that out of you in no time. Though it wouldn't hurt for you to start investing it better; he'd probably double your money for you without even trying. They always can.

His dad's compliments were always recognizable by their skew.

"This isn't bad steak for a little side-of-the-road store," said Simon, moderate in approval, but tucking into his plate with steady diligence.

"Not bad at all," agreed Henri.

"Sure you don't want some of this?" asked Blair, holding out a piece of tahini-smeared bread to Simon, who snorted and held up a hand, palm out, in refusal.

The inner door had been left ajar, and autumn chill was creeping across the floorboards by the time they finished eating. After the meal there was a badly coordinated attempt to clear the table, with more or less success. The dishes ended up clean in a drying rack, the silverware remained mostly on the table, some used, some not. Postprandial wandering began, Simon vanishing into the basement, Rafe into the bathroom, while Henri tromped in and out of the back bedroom a few times. Jim, restless, watched Blair go out onto the porch and thought of following. Instead, he ended up on the couch for half a minute before shoving up to check the fire place flue. Things looked promising, but there was no wood inside the cabin. He grabbed the hod and went out.

The air temperature had dropped at least ten degrees during the last hour, and the chill zipped up his shirt tails, straight to his nipples. He grimaced to himself and passed by Blair without a word, knowing that the other man would glide down the steps after him and fall into step.

"Woodpile's around the back," Blair said.

"Yeah, I saw it from the window earlier." The darkness was broken only by contained squares of light from inside the cabin. Blair stumbled as they moved past the grounded chimney stack, where the earth became rough with loose stone as it began to slope toward the rear of the building. "Watch your step," Jim said quietly, hand going out to catch Blair's arm in a firm grasp, steadying him and drawing him closer. He didn't remove his hand, and Blair let himself be guided.

The moon wasn't out yet, and Jim's vision and hearing were spiraling up, attuning him to the night. If it hadn't been for Blair's tethering presence, Jim would have been a man poured alone into a dark ocean of sensation. "Should have taken the flashlight," he said.

"You having any trouble with the dials?"

"No, just. . .there might be animals," Jim said vaguely. He was rewarded by Blair moving a few inches closer, though it might have just been the way their steps aligned together within a rut of broken earth.

They stopped at the woodpile and Jim began loading the hod. "So, what was that about earlier?" Blair murmured, voice drifting down from the dark air above Jim's head.

"Nothing, Chief."

"You know, I've never told you this, because I hate to bust your bubble, Jim, but you aren't very good at saying that like you mean it."

"I figure the more practice I get in, the better chance I'll have of getting it past you."

"Why try."

Jim slid a few more logs onto the hod, pausing to flick a spider off his hand. "Guess we all need a goal in life."

Blair sighed. It was a compressed, exasperated sound, small but weirdly isolated from the rather loud cricketing and settling and shifting of the night around them. When he spoke, his voice was almost a stranger's, dark as the dark itself, dry as Syrian sand. "I love you, Jim, but you work my nerves." The inflection was emotionless, its truth plain and smooth and flat like a stone, and the stone was being slid into the wall that was Jim's life and yet this quality was exactly as it should be, the stone fit the chinked heart of the wall as a sense of completion.

Jim stopped with his hand resting on a log; he felt small beetles rolling under his palm without quite noticing them. "Sorry," he said, and to him the word carried no more value than a penny, but he was unable to issue forth anything more from the stricken length of his throat.

Blair, though, seemed to accept the token as more significant. "I know," he said. Whatever he knew must have been good enough. And then Blair jiggled a bit in the dark and life clicked back into gear, and he said, "Hurry up, Jim. I think something's crawling across my shoe."

*****

Back inside, Jim started to lay the fire, but was forced to yield his place to Simon, whose trip to the basement had triggered homeowner instincts of fussy exactitude. Jim left Simon muttering about the flue liner, and went to the bathroom to check his face and see if he'd suddenly changed into an entirely different man, maybe one who was going to do something vital and new with his life. Discovering himself to be exactly the same, yeah, that's him, officer, he turned from the mirror, pissed, washed his face and hands, then inspected the shower for mildew while wondering how many gallons the hot water tank held. Five men up before five a.m. This weekend was bound to be unpretty.

Once the front door had been closed and the fire started, the cabin began to retain heat quickly, proving the soundness of its construction and making Simon beam with happy pride.

Beer drinking and desultory poker filled the next hour or so, but the drive had been long, the hour was late, and the ancient tradition of fishing demanded total dedication. Play began to taper off early. There was more quick folding than usual; Henri excused himself a few times to forage in the kitchen for snacks, while Rafe and Blair distracted themselves in a volley of opinions about the football season to come, a topic of such intricacy, weight and scope that it eventually sucked them all in, making concentration on the cards difficult.

"Fold," said Jim, sliding his cards away. He had two tens, but couldn't muster enough interest for a bluff.

"Too bad Joel couldn't make it," said Blair, frowning at his cards.

Jim read three eights in the reflection of Blair's eyes and took a swig of beer to hide his smile. The bottle ceded less than a mouthful, prompting a mental tally. Four beers. It wasn't much of a bender--hyperactive senses had proved a weak accelerant for inebriation--but Jim didn't drink much any more. Novelty, more than anything else, brought on a pleasant haze that wrapped him loosely in its clasp. I'm a cheap date these days, thought Jim, remembering a time in his reckless youth when he could toss down two six packs and a pint of vodka without puking. Much.
 
"Oh, I'm sure he much rather wanted to go to that wedding," said Simon, directing a heh-heh-heh into his fanned cards.

"Poor guy," said Rafe. His head drooped at a meditative angle and his dark hair slid from carefully styled perfection to create a messy forelock across one temple. He sounded earnestly grieved about Joel's absence, which meant he probably shouldn't have brought the whiskey bottle to the table.

"Willetta has a lot of cousins," said Simon. "I think the man goes to a wedding every other month." He mock shuddered. "Divorce has its benefits," he said.

Blair looked up from his cards. "Ah, you don't mean that, Simon."

Jim slid his chair back from the table, stretched and laughed. "Yes he does."

Blair ignored him. "I can't believe that things were that bad, Simon. Look at Daryl. If the two of you made him, you can't have done all wrong."

"That's very kind, Blair," said Simon in an unexpectedly gentle voice. "But do me a favor and let's not talk about my ex-wife, okay? I've spent enough lost time there, and this weekend is a wife-free zone."

"Hey, no problem, Simon."

Jim, unreasonably irked at the fuzzy warmth of his friends, rose from his chair and went to poke the fire and make sure it was settling down for the night. He shoved the poker vigorously into the crumbling logs and watched the sparks snap and lost himself gradually to the brilliant orange embers and their whitening surface of char. Minute shifts signalled the inexorable degredation of the wood, and the intense energy was hellish and mesmerizing, and he knelt there staring into the pit, sight opened wide, until a cinder struck his left eye, and he dropped the poker and swore wildly.

Blinded and in pain, it took him a minute to acknowledge the concerned voices hovering around him. Still kneeling, he waved them off, one eye tearing up, the other squeezed shut in sympathetic denial. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," he rasped out viciously.  "Fuck!" he added, helpless to articulate more.

Two square, strong hands gripped his shoulder and worked their way up to his head. Jim held the edge of one hand out diagonally in front of his face, against intrusion, and kept the other covering the stabbing fire of his eye.

"Come on, Jim. Come on, let me see." Blair's hands, steady and purposeful, worked through his barriers, and after a mulish tug-of-war Jim gave in and let his hands be drawn away, first one and then the other. His eyes remained tightly shut, then Blair was thumbing the sore one open. Jim hissed.

"I know, but let me see," Blair said in the sensible tone loathed by children and wounded men. Nonetheless, Jim relaxed into the command and let his left eye be pried open, at which it watered violently.

"Got something there," said Blair. His grave face was close and surprisingly pale in contrast to the red sun of Jim's inner eye. He wet his thumb abstractedly and before Jim could protest dragged it along Jim's lower eyelid, removing the gritted cinder. Jim blinked rapidly.

"I think you've got a little burn," Blair said. "It's near the corner and doesn't look too bad. But you should probably have Doctor Frege see it when we get back." Task done, he stood up and brushed his hand down his jeans.

Jim, his pleasant buzz thoroughly destroyed, stood up and reoriented himself, taking a moment to glare at Simon just for the hell of it. Rafe and Henri stood cautiously off to the side at the distance of idle spectators.

Simon removed his unlit cigar from his mouth. "You all right, Jim?"

"Yes," said Jim in a voice honed to slit throats.

Simon cleared his own throat lightly as if feeling the steel. "Well, okay then. Think I'll be turning in now."

They all made motions to retire. With the commiseration of drunkeness, Rafe clapped Jim on the shoulder as they passed one another by the end of the couch. Jim grunted once in return, then made himself say goodnight. He was pissed off and his eye hurt and he hated making a spectacle of himself and now he had to crawl into bed with Sandburg and try to sleep for five hours before rolling to wakefulness and going out into the cold to catch fish. The fish-catching prospect cheered him, though, and gave him an object to focus on while he undressed and slid under the covers.

Through the wall, Jim could hear Henri taking a shower. He was singing doo wah ditty and giving it some Ella scat that wasn't half bad. The man had hidden depths. Well hidden. Jim eased into the lyrics and the sound of water splashing off the shower walls, as Blair came in and shucked his clothes and shivered into a pair of red longjohns.

"Chillier back here," Blair said. His voice husked mellowly on the words, from beer or cold or sleepiness. He puttered through some drawers, then found a blanket in the closet and spread it out over the bed without asking. Jim lay and stared at the ceiling, cultivating his indifference as the spread settled across his body with an extra and not unwelcome weight.

. . . .doo wah ditty, ditty do ditty doo-wah-jah-jee-ju, deet-deet doo, jeepers-creepers ju-ju dit-dah-doo-dah, doo doo doo. . . .

"I'm closing the door," Blair said, shooting Jim a quick look. "I know it's going to cut down on air circulation, but--" He closed the door, came back to the bed as he spoke more quietly. "--you know how Henri snores. I just can't take it, man."

"I think it was just that one time," Jim said. "He had a cold and that tenament wasn't heated. Stakeouts can be a bitch."

"Yeah, maybe," Blair said. "But I'm taking no chances. The man hit the Richter scale on at least one of those rips. Can't believe the building survived. It wasn't in very good shape, you know."

"Very funny." Jim smiled at the ceiling, affection collecting in his cheeks.

"How's your eye?"

"Better."

"No trouble seeing?"

"Seems okay."

Blair bounced on his edge of the bed, leaned over, adjusting his thermal socks. Jim stole a look at the other man's back. "You look like a Christmas elf," he said, trying to come across mean and big brotherly and hoping he didn't sound as goofy as he felt.

"Ho ho ho."

"Elves don't ho,  Sparky."

"Hey, what--Sparky?"

"That's Santa's chief elf." Jim laughed.

"You are totally making that up."

"Then again, you could be Sparky the little red fireplug."

Blair gave him an evil look before his mouth rolled reluctantly into the shape of a smile. "You should really hope you don't fall asleep first, Jim. And besides, Santa was an elf."

Jim gave another soft bark of laughter. "What?"

"He was a jolly old elf. And he hoed."

"He hoed."

"Ahh, shut up," said Blair, turning back to his socks and checking again to make sure they were tucked up into his longjohns.

Unable to resist, Jim reached over, hooked an arm around Blair's waist, and hauled him into bed; Blair was tumbled onto his back making small, sharp sounds suspiciously like the giggling joy of a porpoise. Jim tickled him, until they were both squirming in a tangle of covers.

"Ho ho ho," Jim said, fingers digging for the soft spots.

"Oh man, stop, stop--"

"Hey!"

Both men were startled from their play, and looked up toward the door where Simon stood, one hand on knob, the other on the jamb. "If you both didn't have the mental age of eight-year olds, I would worry about this," he said. "Stop messing around and go to sleep. . .feel like I'm talking to my kid. . .damn friends. . .MTV all night. . . ." His mutters died out as he pulled the door shut after himself.

"Does that door lock?" wondered Blair.

"Never mind. We're going to sleep anyway. Get that light."

Blair burrowed under the covers first, then clicked off the light, mumbled some good nights, and was asleep in ten seconds.

Jim lay there, and after about ten minutes realized he was still smiling at the grey ceiling. His face ached in a good way, but it was time to stop smiling and he made himself stop, and then made himself breathe. He breathed for a long time, sliding deeper and deeper into the night, and toward the shores of sleep. His eye ached too, though, and drew him back from time to time. It was a while before his body began to undo the buttoned stress of its joints and unzip its clenched muscles; not long after this, he rolled over on his side and saw the outline of Blair's side in a cracked swathe of strange moonlight. He reached out and drew the blankets further up the companionable body, no thought disturbing the purity of his act, and then under the warmth of the covers he laid his hand on Blair's hip, and Jim's eyelids dropped, and he slept.

*****

What felt like another ten minutes later Jim woke to sudden alertness. It was dark and there had been a knock on the door, brief but firm. His hand went straight for his gun but didn't find it under the neighboring pillow. Where the hell was he? And then he knew, in the cabin, gun in the bedside table, five in the morning, time to fish.

"Hell th' fish," Jim muttered in disgust and broken grammar, closing his eyes again and snuffling into the pile of hair he'd found. He inhaled and pressed his nose into the soft mass until he bumped and rubbed the skull. Beneath their two heads was a cottony mound of pillow, impregnated with dust and feathers, and his next deep inhalation made his nose draw up and loose a dry, dust-tickled sneeze into the hair surrounding his face.

Reawakening, Jim blinked. "Get your hair outta my eyes, Sandburg," he said. Strands tangled in his lashes, redolent with the sage of his shampoo and clinging microscopic particles drawn in from the air of the loft, as if he were carrying the seeds of home around with him.

Jim propped himself up on one arm awkwardly. Oh great, he sighed subvocally, gazing down the sleeping stem of body, which was attached to the spilled corona of hair Jim couldn't seem to get free of. The body nestled back against him, and though matters could have been worse, they were pretty much as Jim had feared at the prospect of sharing a bed with Sandburg. This scenario was the grandaddy of barracks stories with which homophobic recruits hazed each other, stories he'd once thought completely apocryphal. He was too old to be finding himself here, dick prodding his roommate's ass. He'd disciplined himself to avoid all tempation years ago.

"Mmrrumph," Blair said, as Jim eased away.

"Shhh," Jim said. He brought his tripped heart-beat back down to a steady pulse. No need to panic. He stroked Blair's hip, hoping it would keep him soothed while he made his escape.

"Umm, that's good. . .Jim."

Jim's voice choked on itself, then he manged to grind out a soft, "What?"

"Uh huh. . . ."

It was a sort of yes, and it made Jim nervous. "Shh," he said again, and managed to slide to his side of the bed and then abruptly onto the floor in a tangle of bedclothes that left the bed and its occupant bare.

"Hey!" Blair sat up, awake at once. "Jim, Jesus, shit. It's cold!"

"Yeah, sorry, Chief," Jim said from the floor.

"What are you doing down there?"

"Lost my. . .blankets."

"No fucking duh," said Blair in his most savage morning voice. Sitting up in the semi-dark, in his red thermals, hair in disarray and face sleepily frowning, he looked about twelve years old. But this was misleading. This was the Sandburg of Death, A.M. "Hurry up and get back in bed."

"It's actually time to get up, buddy. Fish." The cold floor had shrunk Jim's ardor and restored him to relative equanimity, but Blair snarled at him in response, lunged across the bed to snap the covers out of Jim's hands and in one swift, skilled motion rolled back up in the blankets, cocooned himself, and was breathing audibly in moments.

Jim debated carrying the other man into the shower and blasting him awake, but it was too cruel. And too dangerous. Jim rubbed his hands over his face, gathered himself together, and found a pair of sweatpants. He left the room, and met the smell of brewing coffee with a sense of bliss.

The kitchen laid a geometry of light across the central floor, but the rest of the living room was dark; only the otter lamp had been turned on, providing a weak orange glow. Jim could see Rafe's sleeping form on the couch. When he entered the kitchen, he found Simon there waiting for the coffee to finish, leaning against the counter, his dark face heavy and scrubbed raw by the kitchen light, features downturned with the pull of sleep.

Jim dug a mug out of a cupboard and put some milk in the bottom, then as an afterthought grabbed another. He took his place at the other side of the coffee pot to wait, and when the coffee was done filled his mugs and left the kitchen, all without speaking or being spoken too. It was too early to be verbal.

Even so, he dredged out some speech when he returned to the room. He sat on the bed next to the lump that was Blair, set the coffees on the table, and turned on the light. "Okay, Chief, time to get up."

The lump made sounds. Jim laid a hand on its back and patted it. "The fish are waiting for us." Leaving Blair alone with coffee at hand, he hit the shower. He gave himself five minutes, lathering and sluicing off speedily, missing only the bounce of dog-tags against his chest to recall his mornings in basic. He came back, towel slung around his hips, to discover Blair sitting against the headboard and sipping from the mug. He gave Jim's entrance a squint then buried his face in the coffee again.

"Might be some hot water left if you hop in now," Jim said.

"Uh huh."

Jim slid off the towel and began getting dressed. "More coffee in the kitchen." When Blair didn't reply, Jim glanced his way. The other man's eyes were closed and the coffee mug was cradled tipsily in his lap. After four years, Jim was used to this; Blair was characteristically slow to start. Soon after they began sharing the loft and going into the station together a few days a week, there had been a period during which Jim built up a head of frustration every morning; he'd prod Blair into reluctant motion, and vent his spleen at having to do so. Blair had ignored his outbursts, and had never gotten any better at waking--or even tried. But somewhere along the line Jim's impatience slunk off and never reappeared. Maybe it was because at this time of the day only, Blair was capable of being far crankier than him, a bullying moppet who stalked around, slurped down algae shakes, gave Jim amazingly dirty looks, and left the bathroom a wet heated mess before banging out of the loft. As time had passed, Jim had been forced to yield his primacy with respect to the uncompromisingly prickly creature with whom he shared his mornings and to save any lecturing for later in the day, when Blair was malleable and conscientious again.

Jim fastened on his watch and looked at the time. He estimated Blair would join the ranks of homo sapiens in another ten minutes, but it would be closer to a hour before he deserved another sapiens tacked to his name. No problem; as long as the other man was ambulatory and dressed, sentient communication could wait. Jim even preferred silence; another reason why he'd stopped his harangues. He'd learned that if he just helped quietly, nudging Blair through his morning rituals, they could proceed faster and without fuss.

Of course, left entirely to himself, Blair would simply roll over and go back to sleep.

Jim went over and took the coffee cup from Blair's lap and drew back the covers. Blair's eyes opened, dark and glittering. Jim gave him an appeasing smile. "Fish," he reminded.

Blair grunted, leaned forward, then launched himself upright. He went straight for his dresser and began pulling on jeans and shirts over his thermals.

Oh well, thought Jim. The other man always smelled good to him, and now he'd developed that moist, musky cloak of scent that made Jim want to go over, nuzzle him, and bite deep. The others wouldn't even notice or care that he hadn't showered. It was that kind of weekend.

They left the room together this time, Blair carrying his hiking boots in one hand, Jim with the coffee cups. All the living room lamps were on now, and Rafe was nowhere to be seen, having commandeered the bathroom a few minutes earlier. Simon sat at the dining table, picking through his tackle box. Henri was in the kitchen cooking eggs and sausage, and looked frighteningly cheerful.

"Hey there, guys," he said when he caught sight of them. "Some eggs here."

"Looks good," Jim said. He handed Blair his coffee cup and gave him a tiny shove toward the pot before joining Henri to assist with the jumble of frying pans and bowls.

"Heya, Blair," said Henri, projecting heartily across the small kitchen. "How you doin' there? Sleep well?"

Jim, cracking eggs, leaned in conspiratorially. "Might want to be careful, H. He's cranky in the morning. People have been known to lose limbs. Even heard reports of small pets gone missing around our neighborhood." Henri looked over his shoulder and Jim followed suit.

Blair, hunched into double layers of flannel, peered owlishly at them over the edge of his refilled coffee cup and said nothing in a significant way.

Henri laughed and went back to arranging a panful of crackling bacon. "Once we get out in that fresh mountain air, we'll all wake right up. Nothin' like it."

More than an hour passed as they collected their gear and breakfasted, and then packed some food to minimize the necessity of returning to the cabin, but it was still dark when Jim stepped out onto the front porch to sniff the cold morning air. Late crickets creaked out of the grass, while a few early birds called out through the trees. The air had a sharp, mineral tang that rapidly filled his nose and lungs. As Jim's vision adjusted, he saw, across the verge by the tall outcropping of rock, two deer standing motionless and watching him in return. His left eye was aching again, and he blinked once and worked some sleep grit from the corner; when he focused again, the deer were gone.

The others soon joined him on the porch, fly-rods in hand, shoulders draped with vests and waders, creels and boxes, and they set out down the creek path with Simon in the lead, flashlight aimed at the ground. Companionable silence governed them until they reached the creek, where they began to break the pre-dawn spell with quiet chat, low enough to keep the fish lulled but increasingly genial as they grouped on the bank and scanned the creek under the lightening sky.

It was a view that would have inspired any angler, and it made Jim's heart glad. He estimated the creek at fifty feet wide--a good-sized stream, really. Its banks had a gentle slope, unusual for the mountains, and were overhung with trees, some of which had cast off their blowdowns into the stream bed. It was a rocky bed, dotted with sleepers and larger boulders that poked out above the water line, but the current was mozying along easily, and the water was low and clear in the shallows, with no sign of recent run-off. More exciting to his gaze was the stream's thalweg, a wandering heart which further downstream straightened and deepened to a perfect run in which the trout milled and rose.

Blair whacked him with his hat, and Jim caught his eye and grinned at the peeved expression on the other man's face; Blair hated it when Jim used his sentinel vision to scope out the fish, but in front of the others he couldn't vocally complain.

"This must be where anglers go to die," said Jim with rich contentment.

On their home bank, one of the previous owners had established a crude base camp in a clearing, marking its perimeter by fallen trees and dragging down a scarred picnic table whose surface bore evidence of gutted fish. They stopped here to don their waders and vests, and trade off-color badinage about rubber suits.

"Not sure I like these new waders," Blair complained.

Jim glanced over, then snagged Blair by the front of his waders and drew him closer to yank up the material and adjust the suspenders.

"Hey," Blair said, as Jim tightened the waders to his chest. "Why're you pulling them so high?"

"It's going to be cold out there, Chief. Why do you think I got you these?" Jim swatted Blair's hands as the other man tried to wriggle the material back down. "Hypothermia's a poor trade-off, no matter how fat the trout are." The air temperature was around fifty and climbing, but the stream temperature wasn't going to rise along with it. Simon swore it was spring-fed and stable, averaging about fifty-five degrees, but ideal as this was Jim had a stab of annoyance at himself as he gauged the conditions. "Damn. . .I probably should have gotten the neoprene instead," he said.

"Jim got you those?" said Simon.

Jim shot him a warning look over Blair's shoulder.

"Nice birthday gift," said Simon, ignoring Jim's piercing frown.

Blair squirmed as if to look over his shoulder at Simon, then capitulated to Jim's care. "You know my birthday's in January, Simon. . .don't you?"

"Oh yeah, that's right." Simon began unwrapping a cigar. "Expensive, those Gore-Tex waders. What do they go for, Jim. Three hundred? Four?"

"I got them on sale," said Jim curtly. But he was too close to Blair to avoid those deep blue eyes, and their clear regard. He turned away, face warm in the cool air.

"Help me seine, Jim?" Simon invited, sticking the cigar in his mouth.

Jim nodded. He unrolled a spread of cheesecloth and waded out into the shallows with Simon, leaving the others on the bank to assemble their fly-rods. They held the seine in for a few minutes, then returned to land to inspect what they'd collected. While the rest of the men joined Simon to prod their representatives of local bug life, Jim eased back out into the water to turn over a few rocks and poke around the grassy banks.

"Decent mix," said Simon to him when he climbed out of the water. The big man was stroking a finger through an array of winged critters. "Probably get an early hatch of October caddis later today. Bluewing olive, too. Looks like that nymph might come in handy, after all."

Everyone began digging out and trading flies, and tying their lines for business. Rafe and Henri weren't particularly experienced, and Jim let himself be drawn out to supply tips. Blair, though an unrepentant novice, appeared bent on doing his own thing today, and when Jim raised his head from explaining to Rafe the markings on an orange stimulator he saw that Blair had taken up his chosen perch a few dozen yards down the bank, where he was sitting cross-legged on a flat rock, intently wiping down his reel. Bulked up in flannel, vest and waders, hair ponytailed midway up his head, face grave and pure, he struck a nice, masculine figure and yet embodied a youthfulness it seemed he would never outgrow. Kid brother. Sidekick. Boy anthropologist. Jim didn't think there was any other man who could look so intelligent and quirky, yet stir this roiling heat in his balls.

Rafe waved a hand in front of his face. "Yo, Jim, you with me, man?"

Jim sighed and nodded to Rafe, and thought, I've got it bad.

*****

Blair could feel Jim's eyes on him, but he didn't look up from assembling his fishing rod. He was determined to make a good showing for himself today. Blair wasn't sure if the culturally mourned lack of male role models really influenced character development that much--before meeting Jim he certainly hadn't thought so. But the eager, generous way Jim set about teaching him fly-fishing had filled a small hollow need in Blair not previously acknowledged. Even though their first lesson had been cut short with unexpected violence, it ranked among the best days he'd had with Jim.

Blair preferred it when he and Jim fished alone, in perfect tandem, but this weekend's outlook was improving by the hour. It pleased him to make preparations as Jim had taught him, knowing that the other man's hands were echoing the same meticulous pattern, attaching reel to rod, winding on backing and flyline, knotting backing to line, leader to flyline, tippet to leader, then threading and fastening the rod's halves together. Every time he did this Blair remembered Jim's sure hands the first time he'd demonstrated the assembly, the rough and complex hues of his voice as he talked about his childhood fishing trips.

Four hundred dollar waders, thought Blair. He tried not to think of the waders; his own casual gripe about the gift no