It sure sounded personal to me. Maybe that’s what he’d learned during his exile after Rainier. Take it personally.
Krom turned abruptly and went to the creek bank. He dropped to a crouch, examining something.
I tensed. More gas?
He stayed poised on the bank for what seemed like minutes, then he lunged and stood, all in one movement. He held something cupped in his hands. He walked past us and approached the hot pool, testing the ground with each step. He was within a stone’s throw of the water.
Carow turned to watch. “What the…?”
I said, “You’re too close, Adrian.”
Krom crouched, holding his cupped hands outstretched. Then he brought his hands to his chest — like getting ready to pitch — and he did pitch, a soft one, and his ball landed just at the edge of the pool and I wondered if he’d missed, if he’d meant to throw it in.
It was a small frog. Yellow-legged mountain frog. It sat frozen, but for the eyes, which swiveled wildly. Then its legs flexed and it launched and landed and hopped again, unhappy with each landing because the ground was rough with pumice. It hopped once more — this time toward the pool, the bubbling sound of water — but it did not land as it must have expected in wet creekside mud. It lit on the thin lip of the pool. The delicate crust cracked and gave way beneath the minuscule weight of the frog, and crust and frog dropped into the scalding blue water.
I clenched in expectation of a scream, even the smallest scream, but there was nothing.
Carow was looking at Krom with open disgust.
“Picture the guy with the camera going in for a closeup of that pool,” Krom said. “Picture kids running loose.” He folded his arms. “If Lindsay’d agreed to close this area — and I mean barricade the road, shut off access to the whole place — we wouldn’t be here having this talk and that little creature would die of old age.”
Carow stared. “Why didn’t she close it?”
I didn’t know that Krom had asked her. “If she said no, listen.”
Krom flipped a hand. “She’s says jump, you all jump. She says wait, you all wait. I say barricade, she says it’s too soon.”
I said, “She puts up a barricade too soon and she’s crying wolf.”
“Define too soon.”
I couldn’t.
He smiled. “You’ve all been too close too long. The cult of Lindsay Nash.”
I said, tight, “She knows this place like you’ll never know it.”
“Then she should know better.” Krom strode over to pick up his pack. “This place warrants closing.”
Carow worked another cig from his pocket, and the white stick steadied his hand. “Fuckin good idea.”
I felt the heat rise. I’m a fool. You fool, I thought, you clueless little sandbagged frog, you sure played your part. Getting Carow out here so Krom could turn Hot Creek into a battleground. And Lindsay’s not here to defend herself.
I walked away.
Krom called after me, “Cassie, this isn’t a question of loyalties.”
I kept going. I knew Lindsay wasn’t against a barricade just because Krom was for it. She had a reason. Don’t cry wolf. A fumarole hissed as I passed. I knew if it got to the point that the whole area needed closing, she’d say so. She’d come out and build the damn barricade herself.
My eyes stung and my throat was on fire.
I thought of Coyote. Coyote, in the end, did escape the giant’s belly: he came upon a swelling volcano and recognized it as the heart of the giant. He could not resist. He pulled out his hunting knife and hacked at the heart. Lava spurted, and the belly trembled, and the giant opened his mouth in a roar of pain and Coyote ran out with the terrible fire scorching his heels.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“So you coming out for the race tomorrow?” my brother asked.
Jimbo and I were shoulder to shoulder at the kitchen counter, shredding lemon peel and grating nutmegs. Hot spiced cider in our house has always been a beverage of balm — bad day, fall on the slopes, D on a test, didn’t get the job, out comes the cider pot. My day today, watching Krom cook a frog, had been less than perfect. Jimbo’s day, training up at Lake Mary, had been foul as well. He’d missed a shot and taken two falls, and in the biathlon 20K race that’s all she wrote.
As if losing a race was the worst thing that could happen tomorrow at Lake Mary.
I focused on the lemon peel. Not my job to make a fuss about race scheduling. I said, light, “Tomorrow? I really should wash my hair.”
Jimbo fired a nutmeg at me.
I caught it. “Shoot like that tomorrow and you’ll win.”
“Wash your hair tomorrow and I’ll shoot you.”
I said, “You are seriously sick,” and he nodded. The old black humor. I’d finally adopted it myself, the family black-humor gene expressing. Got blacker as we grew from kids into teenagers, from teenagers into adults, as time took us farther from our brother Henry’s death, by God. Jimbo and I are living together now because we both got the jumps after a big quake swarm hit a couple weeks ago. My crummy condo is a couple blocks away and I’ve been gradually ferrying my stuff here. Jimbo’s scummy house, rented with four other guys, is on the other side of town and Jimbo goes back mainly to play beer pong. It’s weird, but good, living again at home.
Technically, we’re house-sitting while Mom and Dad are in Scotland settling property Dad inherited. Jimbo has his old room upstairs and since my old room is now my parents’ workroom, I have the cottage out back. And we seem to feel better having the jumps together, here. Tonight, the old black humor fit like a skin. Would you rather be buried in lava, Jimbo asked after the latest quake, or smothered in ash? It’s good to be back home.
I tossed the nutmeg back to him. “Trade you for a biathlon cartridge.”
He missed. “Say what?”
“Cartridge. You shoot them instead of nutmegs.”
After Hot Creek, I’d finished my dig at Casa Diablo and then returned to the lab. I’d spent several hours oven-drying my samples and catching up on paperwork. I’d nuked a burrito for dinner. I’d come home beat and taken a marathon hot shower. In an hour or so — after my cider nightcap — I plan to haul my rejuvenated carcass back to the lab and find out what I’d got at Casa. And if the gods are with me, and the soil and the gunpowder match the evidence, I’ll know where Georgia last walked.
And if the gods are indifferent, and there is no match, I’ll know where I have to go next: the biathlon range. Which is okay. If she last walked there, it did not mean anything other than she took a stroll at Lake Mary. And so I convinced myself that my dread of a dig at the biathlon range was nothing more than dread of digging through a shitload of snow. And then, as I’d been showering, I’d had the brainstorm of getting a cartridge from Jimbo. I know this about biathlon: the ammo is specifically designed to work in the cold. Few other than biathletes use the stuff and they use it in limited circumstances. If I could rule out biathlon powder, I’d save myself a dig.
I said, “Georgia picked up some gunpowder and I’m trying to trace it. If it’s biathlon, that’ll narrow the field.” And if it’s not, that’ll make my day.
Jimbo gave me a sidelong look, then swept up a handful of nutmeg and lemon peel and carried it to the pot of cider on the stove.
Our kitchen is huge — our house is huge, like a rambling old train station — and the counter is a long way from the stove. My brother remained across the room, needlessly stirring the cider. Jimbo is slender and wiry and almost always in motion. He has wing-cut blond hair that sails with every move. Even indoors, just hanging out, he moves — stretching, bobbing on the balls of his feet like he’s going to launch into a sprint, coming around you to knead your shoulders. Now he stood quietly, hand on the spoon.