Free The Dogs of Winter by Kem Nunn Page A

the gravel road that would carry her back to her husband’s land did she realize she had forgotten the butane tank. Clearly, she would not go back for it. In its absence the death coach would be quite cold. By morning she would be able to see her breath and there would be no hot water for the shower.
    She sat for a moment at just this point in the road. To the left the road curved uphill and into the big trees. To the right it fell away, among the spruce and poplar, and even with the windows up and the engine running, she could hear the rain-swollen river sweeping past her, wide and rapacious and unclean.
    She turned off the engine that she might be alone with the sound of the water. She sat with her hands atop the wheel, behind windows streaked with rain. Gazing upon the floor of her truck, she saw that her purse had toppled from the seat, that the little wooden board had slid from it and lay now amid the clutter. If only he had not reacted as he had when she confronted him with it, when she had worn Amanda’s clothes. If only he had dismissed it and carried on as before. But things were set against them here. She had known it from the start. Their coming had awakened a sickness. And then one night a girl had died. Just somebody. A girl in an alley arguing with a man. She rested her forehead upon the wheel. Perhaps it was her, she thought. Perhaps it was only her mind fucking with her. It wouldn’t be the first time. A little electronic stimulation applied tothe posterior of the right temporal lobe, you might get voices, music from unseen harps. Stimulate the middle gyrus, you might get Yahweh and burning bushes. A little indigestion, you might get Marley’s ghost.
    And yet when Pam had asked her, she had said yes, as if his guilt were a thing one could be sure of. And her of all people. She looked once more at the board. The sight made her vaguely nauseous. She opened her door and stepped into the rain. There was a spell in one of the books—it was one of the cleansing spells, a spell for self-acceptance, for the absolution of regret. She tried now to remember how it went. The rain poured down upon her hair, plastering it to her head. She wheeled about in the mud at the edge of the embankment that dropped down toward the water, casting her circle in the air. In the mud she drew a pentagram and stood facing the north, for the north was the most powerful direction, the direction of mystery, of the unseen. She drew a dark stone from the mud and pressed it to her forehead. “I am the mother of all things,” she said, which was all she could remember, and at which point it occurred to her that she was drunk on her ass. She pressed the stone to her head a moment longer, hard enough to hurt, then threw it toward the water on its way to the sea.

5
    T he van needed a water pump. The station was able to replace it but the surfers lost three hours. By the time they passed the junction with 580 and the turn to San Francisco, the sky had begun to color. It was dark when they hit Redding. They stopped here for food, then picked up the road to the coast. It was a long and winding road, and about an hour and a half into it, Fletcher’s van blew a tire. Unhappily, he was without a spare.
    At this point, they were about three miles outside a town called Dutch Gulch. They walked the three miles only to find the town closed for the night. They walked the three miles back and slept in the van. Actually, Fletcher slept in the van. The others slept outside, beneath a stand of trees some ways off the road. Fletcher woke early to find Robbie Jones defacing a state mileage sign with his wrist rocket. It was noon by the time they had dealt with the tire and gotten something to eat.
    Fletcher could feel his future unraveling along with his vehicle.There were directions to Drew Harmon’s house, but no phone number. Apparently the man had harbored some objection to giving it out and there was no way to tell him they were running late. He could,