Don Winslow - Way Down on the High Lonely

They thought they might treat themselves to a little vacation and headed east out of Reno, finally ending up in the Reese River valley. She loved it too, so they ended their vacation early, bought this chunk of land, got a good deal on an old trailer, and settled in.

Steve got a job driving a mining truck over on Round Mountain and Peggy waited tables at the one diner in town. They used their spare hours to clear enough land for a corral and a barn.

Peggy started the garden, lost most of it to bugs and rabbits, and then started it again behind a wire fence that represented about a month of tip money. Steve joined a few of their new friends on some jack-lighting expeditions and put a winter’s worth of venison in the freezer he’d bought fourth-hand from Brogan’s place in town.

They lived in the trailer for two years before they saved enough money for a house. Two years of his wrestling trucks around treacherous switchbacks. Two years of her pouring coffee, flipping burgers, and putting down whispered remarks about her “neat little rear” with a withering glance, and once twisting the arm half off a trucker who gave her neat little rear a pat. Two years of saving every penny except for their twice-a-month expedition into town-twenty miles away-to drink a few beers and dance a few dances at Phil and Margie’s Country Cabaret to the country tunes of New Red and the Mountain Men. (Old Red having been caught with half an acre of marijuana behind his house and the Mountain Men being composed of two men and two women.)

Steve and Peggy built the house themselves after Kermit Wolff had put in the foundation. They started in May and had the roof party in mid-September, about half of north central Nevada showing up to help them raise the damn thing and polish off the beers chilling in ice in the horse trough. They had one hell of a party, and Peggy shed a few tears when the young Shoshone from down by lone hauled off the old trailer. Steve got real busy finishing the house when Peggy came home from Fallon with the news that she’d done in a rabbit with something other than her pellet gun.

Shelly was born in the middle of winter. There were problems with the birth and weren’t going to be any more babies. Peggy was pretty down about that, but Steve didn’t care because he loved that little girl positively to distraction.

Neal could see why just as soon as Shelly came bursting in the door a good minute before dinner hit the table.

She had her father’s eyes and smile and her mother’s strong features. Her chestnut hair was shoulder length and thick-Peggy swore that she had broken scissors trying to trim it once. She dug into her steak and baked potato with the voracious appetite of the young, guileless, and guiltless.

She was a junior in high school. Biology and chemistry were her best subjects, English and history her worst, meaning that she had to work for her A’s in them. She wanted to go to the University of Nevada and then on to either med school or vet school, because she couldn’t decide which she wanted to help more, people or animals. She had succumbed to classmates’ pressure and become a cheerleader, although she thought it was pretty boring and a little silly. She’d rather have spent the time with one of the horses, or helping out on the place, or taking long rides with Jory up on the trails in the mountains.

She was a secure kid from a secure home. She knew her parents loved her and each other, and she loved them back.

She also loved Jory Hansen. They planned to go to Reno together and get married after they established their careers, she a medico of some type, he a crusading district attorney. Her parents didn’t disabuse her of her plans by telling her all of the things that usually happened to a relationship on the long trek through college. She was a level-headed kid and she’d take it all in stride.

She had clearly been told by her mother to suppress her natural curiosity about their house guest, and for the first twenty minutes avoided asking Neal the three thousand questions she had about the world outside of Austin.

“How was your afternoon with Jory?” Peggy asked her between bites of cherry pie, by way of rescuing Neal.

“Fine,” she answered.

Peggy picked up on it. For her exuberant daughter, “fine” was a barely positive description.

“Why? What’s wrong?” Peggy asked.

“I don’t know. He’s been a little quiet lately.”

“Jory Hansen’s never been exactly a chatterbox,” Peggy said.

Shelly hesitated. “He seems angry,” she said.

“Honey, I think he’s been a little angry since his mother died,” Peggy answered.

Peggy knew how he felt. She was angry too. Barb Hansen had been one of her closest friends. They had raised their babies together, helped each other through all of the childhood illnesses and injuries, sipped on a little wine together when the men were up in the hills cutting timber or hunting. They had spent long summer afternoons down at the creek, watching their kids splash around in the water and trading notes on marriage, business, cooking, ranching, and just plain stuff. She missed Barb Hansen too.

And Jory-short for Jordan-was such a sensitive kid. Much more like his mom than his dad. It was a hard loss for him.

“That’s three years, Mom.”

“I know.”

“He talks strange lately.”

“Strangely,” Peggy corrected, “and what do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Politics. How the country’s changing. He talks like a right-wing Republican or something.”

“I knew there was a reason I liked that boy,” Steve observed.

“He just seems angry,” Shelly repeated. “It scares me a little.”

“Maybe you ought to go out with other boys,” Steve suggested, ducking his head closer to his pie to avoid his daughter’s sharp eye.

“What other boys? Jory’s the only one around here who thinks that there might be more to life than roping cows,” Shelly answered. “Besides, I love him.”

“There’s always that,” Steve answered and the conversation turned to the local economy, politics, and the usual topics that people discuss when they’re getting to know one another.

And then the conversation turned to Neal.

He pretty much made the cover story up as he went along, letting it out little by little, playing at being shy and embarrassed but always observing the number-one rule of a good cover: stay as close to the truth as you can.

So he told them he’d been in graduate school in New York, that he’d fallen in love with a woman who broke his heart, and how all of a sudden life didn’t make any sense anymore and he just needed to get away to think.

So by the time he was into the second piece of pie and the third cup of coffee he was telling them how he’d flown to the West Coast, hadn’t found what he was looking for there, and decided to buy a cheap car and work his way back east.

All of which was technically true in its parts and a complete lie in its whole. The essence of a good cover story.

After dinner they repaired into the living room. Shelly went upstairs to take a shower and go to bed early.

Neal sank into the sofa and took the glass of scotch that Steve handed him. It smelled a little like the smoke from the charcoal fires in the monastery kitchen. He took a sip and let it linger in his mouth a moment before he swallowed it. It felt like a blanket wrapping around him.

“You look like you’ve been rode hard and put up wet,” Steve said to him.

Neal had no idea what he meant but nodded anyway. He took another swallow of the whiskey and drew the blanket a little tighter around himself.

Peggy came in from the kitchen. She had a drink in her hand and a serious look on her face. She sat down next to Neal on the sofa.