Point of Law Read Free Page B

repolarization of my brother’s soul. I know, even now, that this is simply a last hurrah before the odds catch up with him. There’s no chance in hell he’ll ever become an ordinary citizen, responsible with his life and his future, and constrained by the rules that civilization demands.
    So I say to my father, “No strategy, Dad. Just show him that we love him, that if he keeps this up we’ll be the ones who suffer.”
    My father shakes his head and uncharacteristically expresses some emotion in his voice while looking at the red and gold stone of the canyon’s opposite wall. “Shit, Anton, it’d be hard to suffer much more. It’d be a relief if he were dead.”
    You’d think a son would be shocked to hear his father talk about his brother like that. But I’m not. In my darkest moments I often think the same thing. I’m tired of waiting for the telephone to ring late in the night; waiting for the quiet voice of some Colorado police officer to tell me that my brother’s dead.
    There isn’t much more to say than that.
    I close my eyes and recall a scene from this morning, just a few hours ago, when my father and I sped on the highway out of the seemingly endless suburbs of Tomichi in the predawn blackness, on our way to the valley. I’d been glancing over at my father’s deeply lined face while we talked, noticing how old it looked in the glow of the dashboard’s lights. His mouth opened suddenly. His eyes narrowed. I snapped my own eyes forward to the road. A big coyote was braced facing us in the middle of the lane. His eyes burned with green fire in the reflected heat of the headlights. The silver-tipped ruff of fur around his neck and shoulders was standing straight up. I swung the wheel hard to the left, onto the wrong side of the road, mashing the brake and throwing my big dog in the backseat across the truck. The coyote never even flinched.
    That coyote was just like Roberto. Totally defiant in the face of law and civilization, even when it’s coming at him seventy miles per hour in the form of three thousand pounds of rusty Japanese steel. Utterly audacious, reckless, and not long for this world. But beautiful all the same.
    I realize that my brother’s luck must soon run out, that the world won’t swerve away much longer. And that Roberto’s nuclear-powered élan combined with whatever sort of shit he likes to spike in his veins will vastly magnify the force of the inevitable collision. What I don’t yet realize is just how many lives are about to be lost in the crash.
    Opening my eyes to the blue sky, I take up the sling of gear my father has laid between us. Without a word I add the pieces from the anchor I’d pulled below and slip it clanking over my head and one shoulder. Standing, I arch my neck upward and try to plot the course that will take me another rope length into the sky. My skin touches the warm, rough rock as I slide my fingers over the lip of a small contour above my head. The familiar texture of it for the first time in my life fails to give me a small thrill. For a moment I’m caught off balance, experiencing a sense of vertigo and dread I’ve never experienced before. This is a mistake, I tell myself, as I will the web of well-conditioned muscles in my forearms to grip with my fingers and hold me on the ledge. Something bad is going to happen. A cold sweat seeps out of my skin. I glance at my father and see him looking back curiously. Concerned.
    “Locked and loaded?” I ask, trying to reassure myself with the start of the short litany he’d drilled into Roberto and me as children. We examine the harness buckles and knots at each other’s waists.
    “Tight and right,” Dad responds, his voice puzzled.
    “On belay?”
    “Belay on.”
    “Climbing.”

TWO
    I T TAKES MORE than an hour to rappel down the cliff’s four pitches. Oso’s yellow eyes track me all the way. But the beast doesn’t come out from the shade of the cottonwoods until my feet are on the stony