Five Skies by Ron Carlson

Author:Ron Carlson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

In the deep night with the temperature inside the worksite tent forty degrees, Ronnie Panelli opened his eyes. It took him half a minute in the sure dark to place himself, and he felt a smile rise on his face. His dreams now were fainter than even a month ago. Something had filled the hollow place where a kind of terror had burned briefly every time he woke up. Now he smelled the canvas shelter almost happy, and he heard a noise, a small concussion, and he listened hard until he heard it again. It was odd; he perceived it as a tap deep in the scar on his shoulder. Ronnie quietly turned his head toward the opposite cot where Traci slept. Her breath was an exhausted whisper. He could hear the river also, a white friction tonight, and he could hear his heartbeat as he swung his feet onto the floor and sat up. The sound came again. There was something else too, and he held his breath until he ascertained that across the site someone was walking back and forth. In the tick of a second he was awake, every part of him, the way he felt in the old days, last year, when he was breaking and entering, sometimes in the room with people sleeping while he opened their dresser drawers, his mouth always the shape of an O as he breathed shallowly, silently in and out.

His old two-iron was under his cot, but he left it and stepped barefoot to the lodge flap, and delicately pulling the heavy fabric open near the bottom, he knelt and peered out. The first thing he saw was the far field of stars like some trick of vertigo, pulling him off balance until the yard focused, and in the shimmering night Ronnie witnessed the two men hauling lumber to their truck. There was no moon. They were joined by their load, four two-by-sixes, and one of the men walked backward. At the truck, they paused, adjusted their grips and silently coordinated the last lift onto the stacked lumber there. They were being quiet, but not overly so, and Ronnie Panelli understood that they thought the plateau was abandoned. Darwin’s jeep was gone. They might have seen it go through town. He looked at his watch, one-thirty. The big guy he remembered from the Antlers.

Ronnie dressed and found and tied on his old Nikes, shoes he hadn’t worn in almost a month. Now he grabbed the two-iron and knelt by Traci’s cot. In the small light she smiled at him sleepily, her face an unreasonable joy in his heart. “Was I snoring?” she whispered, and he put his finger against her lips.

“There are some guys here,” he told her. “Do you know them?” He helped her out of the sleeping bag and they crept to the opening.

After a half minute, she came back and whispered against his ear, “It’s Buster Jensen and his dad.”

“From town?”

“From Concept. They ranch out there.” Traci pointed at the older man.

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