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Back The Cloud Chamber Save as PDF
Chapters (35)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Acknowledgments
  5. Author’s Note
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. Six
  12. Seven
  13. Eight
  14. Nine
  15. Ten
  16. Eleven
  17. Twelve
  18. Thirteen
  19. Fourteen
  20. Fifteen
  21. Sixteen
  22. Seventeen
  23. Eighteen
  24. Nineteen
  25. Twenty
  26. Twenty-One
  27. Twenty-Two
  28. Twenty-Three
  29. Twenty-Four
  30. Twenty-Five
  31. Twenty-Six
  32. Twenty-Seven
  33. Twenty-Eight
  34. Twenty-Nine
  35. Thirty

Poppa took the news about his lost watch better than Nate had expected. All he said was “Turns out I mostly know what time it is anyway.” Walking out to the parking lot, he even put his arm over Nate’s shoulder, something rare for him.

“Careful now,” Poppa said as he lifted the back hatch of their mother’s station wagon for Nate to set the cloud chamber inside. “That contraption looks breakable to me.”

“So what if it breaks?” he said. “What difference would that make?”

Suddenly Nate could imagine how it had been for his father that day, standing out in the snow with his rifle cocked. He could imagine the moment when the pull of the black hole had gotten the best of him, and it seemed easier to let go. Nate thought about dropping the cloud chamber onto the blacktop—thought about taking off, right then and there, it didn’t matter where. He had never needed more to see his dad, but even if he got to that hospital room in Warm Springs, what did he have to offer now, except the angry words exploding in his brain: Don’t you know, you messed up everything?

Twenty-Eight

NATE HAD PICTURED THE AUCTION AS THE KIND OF event where five or six ranchers showed up, looked over his family’s machinery, and offered a price. But the cars started pulling down their road just after seven, and by nine thirty there must have been thirty or forty vehicles parked in the field. People were milling around everywhere, wandering in and out of the barn, picking through the piles of their possessions.

Judd Payton, the auctioneer, had set up a tent with folding chairs in rows and a table at which a pair of women sat with an adding machine and a ledger book. They were giving out numbers to people for bidding. The auction wasn’t due to start for another half hour, but already every seat was filled, and other people were standing around the piles of items up for sale.

Nate had known they were parting with the farm equipment, of course—the milker he’d spent so many hours operating, the old buckets he and his dad had hoisted all those years, the baler, the cider press, all his dad’s tools.