The Signal by Ron Carlson Page A

Daylight, town square, I don’t care.”
    Weston Canby smiled. “You’re a waste of time, sonny. You should take a minute and consider how things really work. You’re tied to me ten ways.”
    He gave in to the shadows in his memory and followed them, thinking this moment was worst, no this, and finally knowing it was when he realized that Vonnie had left, found shelter and more with her old friend Kent. Mack stood with his sickening dictionary and it was the worst moment. The truth was that his worst moments made a long string, and when he finally hit the wall drunk in Jackson, he’d come to long enough to find Kent’s car and break the windshield with a tire iron, which seemed a lot more work than it should have been and gave Mack the thought right in the middle of it, I’m out of shape here, mister—breathing like a lumberjack while I break a glass window? He was a ruin and when taken to jail, he had vomited in the tank all night, the dry spasms finally cramping his back, feeling in the aftermath a bruise warm like the hand of his lost father. Mack lay in the foul dark place and his hands were scarred and grimy, the cuticles bloody and the scratches a black scribble.
     
     
     
    Night came in purple layers. Mack had walked out to the promontory over the black lake so he could look back at the campsite, the tent, the little fire, the spot of his dishtowel. He tried for a star but knew they would only come out all at once and when he looked away. Above a dark lake at night in such a place, it is hard not to think of all the thousand years before and those to come a thousand thousand, regardless of your troubles. Is that it? he thought. Is that what this place does for me?
    The fire was a pulsing mound of coals now and Mack fed it up again for the light.
    He buttered two slices of pita bread in the frying pan and warmed them.
    “I’m cooking here,” he whispered.
    Her face appeared and she said, “Perfect.”
    “Are you cold?”
    “Not really.” She came by the fire and sat on the flat stone. “I fell asleep.”
    “You want some wine?”
    “No, I’m a little dizzy already and I’ve got the headache.”
    “Drink this,” he said, handing her the green punch.
    “Bug juice,” she said. “A cure-all.”
    Mack tugged the foil-wrapped fish from the fire and opened each package gingerly on paper plates. The fish fell apart under their fingers bite by bite and they ate the burned bread and drank the whole quart and then another of the green-flavored punch.
    “Were there rocks in the Garden of Eden?” he asked.
    “Is that where we were?” They were pinching the trout in the dark and eating it.
    “Did that girl really have red hair?”
    “She did. A big girl with red hair.”
    “That’s enough information. I’m tired.”
    “I ate that fish,” she said, lifting the skeleton up over the fire and dropping it there.
    The night was still and clear and the stars had now all appeared and tripled. They seemed to be stepping closer. “Clear and cold,” he said. “You want in the tent?”
    “I’m good,” she said. She set her paper plate and its tangle of remaining fishbones in the yellow fire and their faces were lit again. “But I’m all in.”
    “We’ll have bear claws for breakfast.”
    “And your coffee.” Vonnie got into her sleeping bag and he saw her squirm out of her clothes and her face disappeared. He burned his plate and caught the ashes.
    The screen of the BlackBerry said: Logan Peak E or N. Check. He typed back: Will do am. And then he crawled into the old tent.
    Hours later he felt her, the sleeping bag first and then her in it, bumping him knees and back.
    “Who is it?” he said. Then he said, “You okay?”
    “Yes, it’s just cold.”
    “Oh my, you came into the tent,” he said.
    “Nothing,” she said. “Shut up. Kent knows me.”
    “He’s lucky,” Mack said. “Did you wipe your feet?” She shifted and settled against his back and was quiet. “You want me to tell you