Slickrock Paradox Read Free Page B

much country remained to be searched. At his current pace he knew it would be the work of a lifetime. He put the pencils back in their box and turned out the lights.
    In the bathroom, Silas regarded himself in the mirror. Disoriented, he retreated to the bedroom, where the bed was the only piece of furniture he had kept from Flagstaff. He reached to turn out the bedside light, letting his fingers trail over the framed picture that rested there.
    She smiled back at him, as she always did in his memories, her midnight hair pooled like the waves on a river where they break over stones just below the surface; at once soft yet strong. His fingers traced the line of her cheek and then trailed down her mouth and chin. A tear ran from his bloodshot eyes and he brushed it away. He turned out the light, and into the emptiness of the night whispered the first words he had said all day: “I miss you.”

THEY SAT TOGETHER AT THE dining room table. The room was illuminated by two candles flickering in their brass holders. Silas held her hand. Outside, in the dark woods that ringed the San Francisco Peaks, the snow lay deep and cool. It felt good to be cool again.
    Dinner had been cleared away and they sat facing one another across the end of the long antique table she had inherited from her Mexican grandmother. He topped up her wine, then they raised glasses and drank. She smiled at him, the same smile he had first fallen in love with more than a decade ago when he was a visiting professor from the University of British Columbia. She had been an associate in the Department of English at NAU . They had different tastes: he chose Wallace Stegner, Bernard DeVoto; she liked Edward Abbey and Cormac McCarthy. They had argued long into the night. It had been like that, in the beginning; he was drawn to her youthful vitality and she to his experience.
    In that candlelit room the passion was still there.
    He felt her hand drawing back and felt the hot flush that always accompanied that retreat. Not this time. Not this time. Please don’t go , he thought, holding her large brown eyes. “There is water in Sleepy Hollow, Si,” she said, calling him by his nickname, her fingers tightening around his hand.
    I don’t understand.
    â€œThat’s where you’ll find what you need.” Her hand slipped away. He stood up, the table rocking, the candles flickering, sending shadows swooning across the blackness of the room. Please wait. I don’t know what you mean.
    He made his way from the dining room into the study with its wood-paneled walls and tall bookshelves crammed with tomes. He found what he was looking for, always seemed to be searching for, and rushed back, the book in hand, flipping through the worn, dust-stained pages. But she was gone.
    â€œPenny!” He turned in a circle. He felt the cool wind sweep through the room and the candles blew out, casting the house into blackness. “Penny!” He ran for the door, dropping the book. The front door was open, the winter chill sweeping down the hall, snow and leaves on the floor.
    He stepped out onto the broad front porch. The moon was up and full and cast its hollow light down on the ponderosa pine forest that ringed the house and crept up the slopes of the peaks above, the winter trees like skeletons in the blue light.
    â€œPenny!” he yelled again, but she was not there. The tracks led off into the woods, and in his stocking feet he ran after her into the black and white landscape, but the tracks led on and on and he could never follow them far enough.
    HE WOKE WITH a start. He had dreamt that he was cool once again, but it was the same dream as ever and he was sweating, naked on top of the sheets. He rolled onto his side and looked at the clock. It was almost five. There was no light outside from stars or moon or the first rays of the sun. He tried to remember everything about the dream; the way her hand felt in his, the soft gaze of her beautiful