Salt River by James Sallis Page A

lead an unabstracted life. It was foolishness, but it was a damned near heroic strain of foolishness.
    Driving back I thought how, as Americans, there are mountain men or cowboys inside us all, Henry David Thoreau and Clint Eastwood riding double in our bloodstreams and our dreams.
    Always slow off the block, I didn't have my first tree house till I was fifteen. Just past the backyard, a hill swelled, partly cut away and thick with trees, a remnant of wilderness tucked into one far corner of our property, jutting out above the chicken-wire run where my father kept his bird dogs. I had his permission, and a stack of lumber from a feed shed he'd torn down a while back. Just watch for nails, he said.
    For weeks I prepared. Took graph paper I hadn't used since fifth grade and drew up plans. Dad had passed along a number of his old tools; I put them, along with a tape measure heavy as an anvil, in the shoeshine box he'd built me when I was ten or so. Struggled up the hill with two or three planks or two-by-fours at the time and left them there in piles roughly sorted by length. Had the wheelbarrow up there too, complete with jelly jars of nails and brackets, a bunch of rags, a carpenter's level, and a spot for a pitcher of red Kool-Aid. I was ready.
    I went up the hill Saturday morning at eight after scarfing down the oatmeal my mother insisted upon. In turn I insisted upon taking lunch, peanut butter and apple-jelly sandwiches, with me. Dad came up around noon to see how I was doing, then a few hours later to tell me I should think about coming on down, then finally to fetch me back to the house.
    I was at it again, not long after daybreak, on Sunday. And for the next two weeks I was obsessed. Up there after school until dark, one night even talked Mom and Dad into letting me take along an old kerosene lantern and hang it from a limb. Put the frame and floor down three times before I got it plumb, planed and whittled at boards till they fit together for walls, corners had to be aligned just so. I pulled old nails and filled the holes, sawed off ends, sanded out rough spots.
    The tree house was completed late Saturday afternoon. I'd even built in benches along two sides, and a tiny porch out front. I sat on that porch most of the rest of Saturday and Sunday.
    After that I rarely went back. From time to time I'd idly climb the hill and check, watching as it slowly came apart. Years later, back from jungles half across the world and on a rare visit, I wandered up there after dinner and came upon it, surprised. I'd forgotten my tree house. Little was left, a few floorboards and fragments of wall, rusted nails in the trees. On one of the remaining boards a mockingbird had built its nest.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
    THEY'D STABILIZED MILLY, sent her on up to Memphis, Doc said. Out of our hands now. He'd been sitting on the bench outside the office when I returned. We watched as lights went off and stores got locked up and cars pulled out toward home. Except for the diner now, everything was deserted. Framed in its front windows, anonymous heads bent over burgers, steak platters, pie and coffee.
    "But damn, that felt good. Can't tell you how I miss it, Turner."
    "Saving lives?"
    Mind caught in memories, he was quiet a moment.
    "Not really. It's more about knowing exactly what to do—the branching decisions you make, the way each decision, each change, calls up a sequence of actions—and doing it almost without conscious thought. Not much in the world that compares."
    Doc would have gone on, possibly for hours, but it was right about then that Jed Baxter pulled up in his Camry. I met him at the street.
    "Back so soon? And please tell me that the passenger in your backseat is merely sleeping."
    "Damnedest thing," Baxter said. "Got a late start, so I figure what the hell, I'll grab lunch before heading out. And I stop at this mom-and-pop-looking place—out there right before you hit the highway?"
    "Ko-Z Inn."
    "Right. Nasty food."
    "But