The Signal by Ron Carlson Page A

really went down. He had lived forever at the edge of his money and he was tired of it. After they were first married, he had to rent the place out and he and Vonnie took a place in Driggs, across the border, an old refurbished trailer at the end of a road for the grayest year of his life. At first it was right. He could feel the money they were saving, positive four hundred dollars a month, almost, working the mortgage along, but the stupid place was built into the hillside and cold at all times and actually not even level, but they were in love and poor and so fine, but then they wore out poor and they did some damage to love. Her parents offered help and they took some, and it stung Mack and he took the stinging as a weakness, but he could not turn it into anything good.
    He remembered one day when she came out of the little tin bath in just her shirttails holding up a pair of her underwear to the light and he could see them worn thin and she was laughing, saying, “This is us in the glory days, my ass a millimeter from the world. If I have to go to the hospital, change my drawers first, please. Promise me. Go to Woolworth’s and get me a highwaist pair of whities before they operate.”
    She was laughing and laughing, and so he swallowed it all and laughed too, the poor ranch owner a millimeter away from losing the deed. But it hit him and was a seed of his desperation. He was working odd jobs, one in a bookstore drugstore/drive-thru liquor in Driggs, and she was teaching piano out at the ranchsteads. In the spring, when they moved to Jackson and took a two-bedroom townhouse a hundred dollars over their budget, the farmer they had rented from hauled their terrible trailer out to his summer house and buried it for a septic tank. They had laughed about that too. Seven years ago or six, he forgot.
    Now he stood up. “You want to fish? There’s still some light.”
    “It’s cold and I’m tired,” she said, “but yeah.”
    “Okay, let’s go down.” They geared up in camp and walked down fifty feet to the lake. Three boulders protruded into the water, each as big as a bus, and they stood downwind and cast into the mirrored sections along the shore.
    “How’s your fly selection,” she asked, an old joke. There was no selection. He only had one size of big woolly caddis, but he had twenty of the things.
    “Perfect,” he said. “They like these bugs.” He had clipped on a red bobber and threw it thirty yards straight out, the wind ballooning his line as it fell.
    “A bobber?” she said.
    “I like to use it once and put it away.” The light failed imperceptibly. A mote across the lake became an eagle, a crescent that looped and landed alongside another in the top branches of the skeleton of a massive dead piñon. Vonnie glassed them with her binoculars.
    “Somebody’s been to REI.”
    “These are good,” she said, handing them to him.
    He was surprised at the lensing. He could see the throat feathers ripple. “It’s mother and daughter.”
    “You don’t know that.”
    “They’re women,” he said. “See how calm they are.” He gave her back the new glasses. “I’ll be back,” he said, clipping his rod with a stone. Mack walked back up to camp and looked down on Vonnie lifting her line for another set. He powered the BlackBerry and dialed the window. He’d have to get within a mile to catch any signal from the missing part, and he didn’t know if that was sightline. The odds were crazy. He typed in: 10.5K Valentine. Send. He turned it off and looked at the device and put it back in his pocket. It was an uncomfortable lump, just like the whole deal.
    He’d been out of jail two weeks when Yarnell called. They had stayed in touch through the years with Mack doing short spot contract jobs, softcore hacking, for Yarnell for cash from time to time. It was a weird call, but they were all weird; whenever Mack was with Yarnell, he felt it in his gut. It was going to be trouble, but Mack felt he