They talked for a minute or two longer, then disconnected. As she left the library, it occurred to her it might be best for all of them if both their parents were institutionalized. As for “the time that John wrote of”—that was no more real to her now than it had ever been. It’s humanity’s mess, and humanity’s job to clean it up, if we can, she told herself. Till then we’ll have to live with it.
15
This just in! At 10:42 a.m.—moments ago—an explosion shook the New York Stock Exchange, doing extensive damage, and killing an undetermined but presumably large number of people.
Headline News
Atlanta, GA,
Oct. 21
When Luther Koskela arrived in Montana, his face had worn a week’s growth of reddish stubble. When he arrived at the Ranch, it had had ten days more growing time. Lank, sandy-brown hair showed beneath his rolled stocking cap, and he wore a crucifix outside his shirt. He knew he didn’t come across like a hippie, but neither did he fit the crewcut or skinhead image people had of mercenaries and militia.
He drove the newly bought but well-aged Ford across a cattle guard, and stopped for one of the uniformed entry guards: an Indian, who walked up to the driver’s window as Lute lowered it. “This is a private road,” the guard said. “Do you have a permit to drive on the Ranch?”
“Nope.”
“How long do you plan to be here?”
“I don’t know. A day. A couple weeks. Does the Dove come out here sometimes?”
“Not since I started work here in July. Park over there.” The man pointed to a large area, leveled and gravelled. Twenty or so cars and pickups were already parked there. “That’s as far as you’re allowed to drive without a permit. Do you have camping gear?”
“A sleeping bag.” Frowning, Lute gestured at the tent camp. “What about those? Can I use one of them?”
“They belong to people that brought them. Ask around. Maybe someone will let you stay with them. And please use the latrines. It’s unsanitary to relieve yourself on the ground, and disrespectful to other people.”
Koskela nodded, rolled up his window and turned into the lot. The cars already there tended to be in scattered small clusters. He parked behind one of the clusters, well away from the guards. Then he got his day pack from the back seat, slipped into the shoulder straps, and walked toward the tents, wondering what the people were like here. “Hippies” was an old term resurrected, and applied to a range of types. Those camped up here at 7,800 feet in October, he told himself, couldn’t be too tender.
His watch read 11:17 a.m., and in the thin, high-elevation air, the sun was bright and warming. The temperature, he guessed, was in the fifties. He wondered what it had been at daybreak. Maybe twenty.
A few of the tents were canvas tepees, with smoke rising barely visible from their vents. He knelt outside the door of one. There was a smell of burning manure. Someone there knew the old Plains Indian practice of burning dry buffalo chips, or in these times cow chips.
“Helloo,” he said. “Anybody home?”
No one answered, and he peered in. A young woman in a Navaho-style blue velvet skirt sat crosslegged like a yogi, hands loose in her lap, cupped palms upward. Her eyes were closed, her face relaxed. Meditating, he realized, and went to another, where two small children played outside. They were digging in the dirt, one with a spoon, the other with a screwdriver.
“Hi!” he said to them, and they raised dirty faces to look alertly at him. “Is your dad at home?”
The elder got up and scurried to the tepee’s entrance. “Dad,” he called, “it’s a stranger!”
A man ducked out through the opening. He was big and thick-waisted, with a pirate mustache beneath a broken nose. His forehead had encroached halfway back across his skull, but behind that his hair was long, black streaked with gray, and gathered in a ponytail.
“What can I do for you?” The man’s voice was rough, and vaguely Hispanic.
“I just got here,” Koskela said. “I’ve been hearing about this place, and the Dove, and thought I’d check it out. Just now I’m looking for someone who can tell me stuff.”