When Totems Fall Read Free

half-rose from his chair, only to see that Seahawk Guy was still going stronger than ever and in his fervor had re-positioned himself in a way that made passage difficult.
    Dalton sat back down heavily.
     
    The lecture, focused originally on the mechanics of how teams acquired rookie players, had now blossomed into a full oration on the game in general. It wasn't necessary. Dalton's antisocial behavior had nothing to do with the sport itself. On the contrary, Zeb loved the favored American pastime. He did, although, interact with it differently than pretty much everyone else on the planet.
    Most viewers zero in on a popular player or obvious focal point of the play. Big run: eyes on the tailback. Great tackle? Zoom in on the crushing concussion and ensuing smack talk as teams regrouped to their huddles. Single points of focus. One, maybe two players at a time. That's what others experienced.
    In contrast, Zeb saw everything.
    Literally everything.
    To the former military man, American Football created a giant moving formula; a dynamic, living entity worthy of his observation and engagement. Every action and reaction of the twenty-two men on the field presented an ever-changing array of potentialities. An offensive lineman shifting six inches to the left, instead of seven. A defensive back's first three steps in coverage at a slightly reduced speed than was his norm. Zeb not only noticed these minute adjustments, his fertile mind immediately registered their impact.
    At once. Clearly.
    It was no exaggeration to say that when watching, and he often did, that Dalton was viewing an entirely different game than the millions of others tuned in at the time. Like a giant, three-dimensional display hovering in mid-air, Dalton factored and connected the unending lines, arcs, and data fields. To anyone other than Zeb, the sight would appear both stunning and confusing. For the former signal corpsman it was simply the way he accessed the world.
    This ability to account for and compute all existing contingencies was nothing new for Zeb, had in fact shown itself in early grade school. A jumble of information at first, sometimes frightening to the young boy, this sensitivity eventually emerged as a hyper-aware, calculated view of events unfolding around him. Like any such gift it had to be corralled, disciplined, lest it lead to chaos, potentially madness. More informed calculation than instinct, his mind chopped through reams of data as efficiently as a hi-tech combine rolling across fields of gold at harvest time.
    The current status of his thinking then—dulled, preoccupied, slow—was quite unsettling. All in all, a new and unpleasant experience.
    A look down to the screen of his smartphone.
    7:45am.
    Plan D—work, would be the winner.
    "Uh, I need to get going..." Zeb said, pointing faintly to the indisputable numbers.
    Thankfully, no last words were spoken, no parting shots given. Zeb's beautiful cone of silence lie shattered before him. His coffee was cold, no stealthy plane gracing the cup's exterior to indicate otherwise. And while the office wasn't too far away, the downtown congestion of the Emerald City could always be a bear on a weekday morning.
    Frustrated, Dalton grabbed his stuff, dropped the mug off at the counter, and walked out the front door.

 
     
     
     
    THREE
     
     
     
     
    Zeb's usual routine brought him across mid-town, toward the waterfront piers and ferry landings.
     
     
    From there he would head south past Safeco Field and Century Link Stadium, edging his way into the parking lot of the Bay City Printing Company as the workday began.
    Dalton was your basic sales guy. His trade: full color, offset press work. Corporate identity. Brochures, catalogs. Lots of pages. Perfect or spiral binding.
    Need something printed? Z. Dalton—BCPC , had you covered.
    Like everyone else the firm expanded into digital delivery and web-presence as the industry evolved. Their bread and butter, though, was still paper, run