Kirk Russell: Shell Games

That night he chopped oak kindling, split a log, and built a fire. He poured a scotch and sat on the stone bench near the fireplace and used a knife to cut the pages from his Kline file. One by one he fed them to the fire and watched the cardboard backing curl and burn and the photos color and smoke, then darken at the center and burst into flame. And he wept for his dead friends, tears no one would see that dried with the fire heat, tears he’d held back for more than a decade. He broke the ashes apart with an iron poker, poured another scotch, and then walked out onto the deck under the stars and knew that for him, it was over.

A few weeks later on a cloudless morning in October when the sky was a dark blue and the sunlight gold with the fall, Marquez drove up the coast to an abalone festival with Katherine and Maria. They turned off the coast highway onto an open grassy field above the ocean about a mile before Mendocino. A volunteer wearing a fluorescent vest waved them toward a parking spot at the end of a long row of cars. It was a cook-off, an annual deal put on by the Mendocino Area Park Association.

Blue cooking smoke rose in the clearing and pickups, cars, and campers were backed up to barbecues and grills. Beyond it all was the dark blue line of the ocean. They walked in and Marquez handed all but one of the tickets he’d bought months ago to Maria, then bought a couple cups of chowder and stood with Katherine in the sunlight as Maria wandered off. You handed a ticket over and got to taste somebody’s abalone recipe and he watched to see what line Maria would get in. But she went first to the tables of beaded jewelry, T-shirts, and other fairground paraphernalia. She leaned over a table, a long-legged young woman wearing a tube top and jeans.

“Gaining weight,” Katherine said.

“She’s going to be okay, Kath.”

And so were they, he thought, finding their way to some dif-ferent space. It would take time but he was more patient with that now and knew they’d get there. He checked his watch, glanced back toward the entry gate. He’d had another conversation with the FBI yesterday and though the man he’d talked to didn’t seem happy about it, they were going to treat his killing Kline as self-defense. They wanted him to sign something tomorrow and he’d agreed to.

Katherine slipped her hand into his and he moved closer to her. He scanned the crowd out of habit, took in the faces and saw the DFG table and the uniformed officer talking to a couple of women, probably explaining the habitat of abalone and the effort at sustainability.

“Here she comes,” Katherine said, and they watched Maria walk back across with a plate of fried abalone. One of the pieces had a little American flag stuck in it.

“Try this,” Maria said. “It’s got this great sauce,” and Marquez picked up a piece and bit into it. He reached for another and she pulled the plate back, her eyes lit with a wry humor he hadn’t seen in a while. “Get your own,” she said. “You’ve still got a ticket.”

An hour later, Maria and Katherine were ready to leave and went on ahead to the truck while Marquez waited through the last of a line to use the remaining ticket. The cook was pounding abalone on his tailgate, then grilling it in strips on a barbecue. Marquez watched it cook, got served a plate and walked toward the exit. He looked back once, figuring she’d made other plans and had decided not to stop by. Then he spotted her. She was with Stuart and stand-ing with another couple, people who looked like they were friends. Petersen wore a cap and stood a little back from the group and to the side. He could see Stuart laughing and judging from their faces it looked like the other man was telling a funny story. Marquez took a bite of abalone and lingered near the exit, debating whether to cross the clearing. But he was unsure whether to interrupt.

He’d talked with her plenty on the phone and had been to see her in Redding about a week and a half after Petersen had gotten home. They’d sat in her living room drinking tea while she told him how she’d find herself crying unexpectedly and how her mind would go blank at times. She was getting help with it, seeing a psychotherapist. He saw her face turn in sunlight, the cap that had shadowed her eyes coming off as the man with the funny story started talking to her. When she smiled that light quick smile of hers he felt a rush of warmth.

There were some things you never really got over, but you could get past them. Petersen put her arm around Stuart and looked out across the clearing and saw him now. Marquez saw her nod and held up his index finger, an old joke between them, signaling her that she was the number one warden. But it wasn’t a joke today and he wanted her to know that. He held her gaze and smiled back at her, then waved and slowly turned away. It was time to go home.