Graphic the Valley by Peter Brown Hoffmeister Page B

people who scrounged around for a while, anyone who wanted to live long-term here, that’s who really went for it. I know a lot of people who never needed to work again. Not even Search and Rescue.”
    Greazy puffs one, two, three. Waits to blow smoke. He says, “There was just too much damn money in that plane.”
    • • •
    Out along Tenaya Lake, early morning, the sun showing layers and spangling the flat blade of green water.
    Lucy said, “Do you know?”
    “Know what?” I said.
    She looked at me. Her eyes flint. She laced her fingers into mine. She said, “I didn’t think about that. Did you?”
    I kept looking at her. We stood there next to the lake.
    “Yeah?” she said.
    Then I understood. “No, wait. Really?” I said.
    She nodded.
    “No,” I said, “I didn’t think about that possibility.”
    “Me either,” she said. “I’m a little scared.”
    We started walking again. We walked for a while, not speaking. The water lapped on the granite next to us, each wave like the sound of a person gulping.
    Lucy shivered and leaned in to me. She said, “I came up here to work for a few months, to think about leaving the park. I used to be so close to my father.”
    I said. “But you’re not now?”
    “No. He’s into other things. And I don’t know all of them. I need to get closer to him again. He keeps saying that he’ll ‘bring me in on it,’ but I don’t know what that means. I’m trying to decide if I want to be brought in on everything he does. I’m thinking I do, but maybe I don’t.”
    Lucy walked a little faster. The birds were moving now, and out on the water, an eagle hit for a fish.
    She said, “Are you close to your father?”
    “Yes,” I said. “But not as close as we used to be either. I spend a lot of time away now.”
    “Why?” she said.
    “I don’t know.” But I thought of the superintendent, my first summer away. I said, “I guess I didn’t know how to tell my father everything anymore. And that mattered to me.”
    “But he still talks to you?” she said.
    “Yeah, we still talk, and he still tells me to be a warrior.”
    Lucy said, “A warrior in what war?”
    “The old one, I guess,” I said. “Or the one he says is still going on. Either way, I want to make him happy, so I think about it.”
    • • •
    When we got back to the tent site, the day was warming fast.
    “Play me in checkers?” Lucy said, and pointed to the slab below the dome’s headwall.
    “Okay,” I said.
    She got out the board and we crossed the road. Walked up to find rocks. She leaned down and picked one up. “I’ll be white,” she said.
    “All right,” I said, “I’ve got dark then.”
    We found twelve stones each, sat down, and set up the game.
    Lucy said, “You go first,” and we started to play.
    I watched her think. The way she scraped her teeth together, top and bottom, the way she touched her tongue to her one turned tooth.
    I touched her ankle. “My parents will be interesting,” I said. I slid a gray rock toward her front line.
    She rotated a rock, spun it in a circle, and tapped it on the board. She said, “They won’t be happy with this?”
    “Well…” I said.
    She said, “They won’t be happy with me?” She slid a white rock to the left edge where she was protected by the sideline.
    I slid a checker to back up my first. “Maybe not with this,” I said. “Not with all of it.”
    She moved a piece on the opposite side of the board.
    I said, “My parents are…it’s tough to explain. You’ll see when you meet them.”
    She nodded and looked at the board.
    “They’re interesting,” I said. I moved a middle rock forward into an open space, a stupid move, but I wasn’t thinking about checkers. I said, “My father told me stories growing up.”
    Lucy raised her eyebrows. Jumped my unprotected checker. We played back and forth for a moment. Lucy’s teeth sounded like two pebbles, grating. I’d noticed the slight indent where they rubbed on her right