See Also Deception by Larry D. Sweazy

forward with an annoyed lurch. I really needed to talk to Jaeger about giving the old truck a tune-up.
    A half hour on an empty road in the middle of land and sky that goes on forever seemed like an exercise in futility. Even though I recognized familiar landmarks, it felt like I wasn’t any closer to home than I had been when I’d left town. The roof of my mouth was as dry as the road, and I could taste gravel dust over everything else. It was a wonder that my throat hadn’t been cemented shut. A cigarette would have only made things worse, so I passed. Besides, I could still smell the inside of the tavern on my clothes. Hank would be able to smell it, too, but I was sure he’d understand why I felt the need to stop and see to Herbert Frakes once I explained my reasons for going into the tavern. He would have done the same thing, if he’d had the chance, or ability, to do it.
    The radio was silent. I had no desire to hear the news or another sad song by a dead singer.
    I slowed the truck as the turn to the house came into view. Our property was marked with four-foot cones of rocks as big as pumpkins on both sides of the road. My grandfather had stacked them there one by one, a monument to the work he’d done clearing the first field to plow. Digging rocks was how my father had developed his endurance and strength as a boy, and there had been a time when folks thought this land wouldn’t grow anything but boulders and worry. Rocks still rose to the surface like pieces of flotsam in a calm and tamed sea—rocks that could do, and had done, serious damage to a sturdy plow.
    I brought the truck to a stop even though I hadn’t planned on it. I noticed a six-foot tall plant growing behind the cone of rocks on the north side of the road. It was a dead thistle plant, one like so many others that I hadn’t noticed before I started indexing the Common Plants book. The weed looked like it belonged there, like it had been growing there since the prehistoric seabed had receded and vanished from sight and memory. But it was possible that I didn’t know what I was looking at. It could have been another immigrant, anxious to flee the old country and spread seeds all across the new land, from New York to North Dakota and beyond, just like the rest of us.
    Curious, I made my way out of the truck. The wind pushed my dress up as the dry dirt crunched under my feet. I made a halfhearted attempt to pin down my hemline. I was alone, out of view of any house or car for miles; I could have been naked and it wouldn’t have mattered. At least to any human. A nearby jackrabbit popped its head up and froze, hoping to blend into the dun landscape like everything else. I didn’t let on that I saw it. No use ramping up its heart rate any more than it already was.
    Thistle had no practical use that I knew of, which, of course, meant that there was no money to be made from its presence by a farmer or a seed salesman. Just the opposite. The thistle, especially invasive—immigrant—thistle could take over a pasture or field and choke out the healthy, more desirable, grasses and wildflowers. I felt fairly comfortable that I could identify the thistle before me, and upon reaching it I determined fairly quickly that the plant was my illusive and troubling musk thistle.
    The plant’s spent head drooped, and the brown, crispy bracts looked like little pine cones. The stems were heavily branched, with spiny wings that fluttered outward without interruption. If they had been interrupted, this plant would have been plumeless or bull thistle. The leaves weren’t pubescent, and most of the seedless flowers were gone, eaten by birds or other wildlife. There was no doubt in my mind that this was musk thistle.
    I reached down and carefully touched Carduus nutans. My identification of it was a gift from Leonard Adler’s incomplete and maddening description of the plant. Biennial or perennial wasn’t