He thinks of their land, up on the northern California coast near Eureka. Beautiful windswept pines, on a rocky hillside falling down into a wild sea. Ten years ago they bought five acres as an investment, and Dennis had even thought to retire up there, and build a home on the land. “Sometimes I’d like to just throw it in, move up to our land and get to work up there,” he says aloud. To build something with your own hands, something physical that you could see taking shape, day by day … it’s work he could love, work in stark contrast to the abstract, piecemeal, and endlessly delayed tasks he performs for LSR.

“Uh-huh,” Lucy says carefully.

It’s the tone of voice she uses when she wants to humor him, but doesn’t agree with whatever point he’s making. As Dennis well knows, Lucy hates the idea of moving north; it would mean leaving all her friends, the church, her job … Dennis frowns. He knows it’s just a dream, anyway.

“Do you think the trees have grown back yet?” Lucy asks.

Just a year after they bought their land a forest fire burned over several hundred acres in the Eureka area, including everything they bought. They tracked up on vacation to have a look; the ground was black. It looked awful. But the locals told them it would all recover in just a few years.…

“I don’t know,” Dennis says, irritated. He suspects the fire did not bother Lucy all that much, as it made it impossible for them to move up there for a good long while. “I’ll bet it has, though. The new trees will be small, but they’ll be there. The land recovers fast from something like that—it’s part of the natural cycle.”

“Except they found out some kids set the fire, didn’t they?”

Dennis doesn’t reply to that. After a minute or two he sighs, answers what he takes to be Lucy’s real point: “Well, we can’t go up there anyway.”

His black mood condenses to a big lump in his stomach. That bastard Lemon. He feels bad; certainly he transferred some of his anger at Lemon onto his idiot son, who surely deserved it, but still … that look on his face …

What a day.

“Did Jim say he was looking for a job?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Chapter 17

17

Tashi Nakamura gets to Jim’s writing class just before starting time. Tashi’s interest in writing is minimal, but Jim’s classes depend on enrollment for survival, and this semester it looked like there might not be enough students to keep the class going. So Tashi decided to sign up. It was a typical Tashi act; he has a streak of generosity that few know about, because of his shyness and poverty.