Free Dreamer of Dune by Brian Herbert

mellow glow in the sky….
    On a Victrola hauled in by pack mule my parents listened to classical, jazz and swing music. In the evenings they read or played cards by the light of a kerosene lamp. They developed their own card game, a two-hand version of Hearts in which they played and drew, played and drew, so that no one knew where all the hearts were.
    The young couple wrote short stories at every opportunity, sitting separately with typewriters set up on footlockers. His stories were pulp adventures and hers romances. Mom also composed an unpublished poem about what it might be like to trade places with her new husband and look back at herself:
    If I were you and you were me,
    I’d lie flat on my back and sing,
    To see you sitting where I am,
    Writing this silly thing.
    She often curled up on a pillow with a good book and a red-and-white pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes that were cellophane-wrapped and bore the company slogan “LSMFT”…“Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco.” Invariably she tucked a book of matches into the cellophane wrapper. She had been smoking since the age of fourteen, and had a constant, nervous need to be doing something with her hands. If she wasn’t holding a cigarette, she enjoyed knitting or crocheting.
    Dad found occasion to utilize his hunting skills on Kelly Butte. He hadn’t brought along a rifle, but did have a .38 pistol, an Iver Johnson five-banger. Early one afternoon, near the northern boundary of the butte, he spotted a blue grouse in a clump of shrubbery. With scarcely a moment’s hesitation, he drew his pistol and blew the head off the grouse, thus avenging an earlier insult committed against his father by another of that breed. The honeymooners prepared a fine meal with the fowl that evening.
    One day, after transmitting the location of a fire to the dispatcher and to all other lookout towers in the area, Mom forgot and left the microphone open. Dad was preparing to make the trek into Lester, and she was going over the grocery list with him. She read the list aloud, saying, “…Three pounds of flour, two dozen eggs, fresh carrots, oh my God, there’s a bear!” She had spotted a large black bear outside as she spoke. Subsequently they received cards and letters from fire watchers, rangers and others who had heard the broadcast and were amused by it.
    On warm summer days they were in the habit of hauling mattresses outside and making love on the walkaround ramp of the lookout at sunset, with a golden glow around Mount Rainier. I was conceived on that porch.
    When they saw Howie Hansen a few days later in Seattle, Dad said to him, proudly, “Just feel these muscles in my back, from carrying a pack up and down hills!”
    Howie felt them. They were hard and taut, like cords.
    â€œDo you know what we did up there?” Dad said. “We conceived a child!”
    â€œThe biggest fire in the woods was us,” Mom added.

Chapter 5
The White Witch
    O NE M AY afternoon in 1947 when my mother was very pregnant with me, she found herself overwhelmed by a craving for watermelon. The grocery store was only a couple of blocks away in the Queen Anne district of Seattle, so she walked there and made the purchase. On the way back, she noticed a man and woman in a car looking at her and laughing. She had been carrying the watermelon in front of her belly, and didn’t realize how funny it looked.
    Before dawn a few weeks later, the time came to rush her to Maynard Hospital. As my father wrote years later in a special dedication to my mother, they were in a silly, joyful mood as they entered the hospital. They laughed and giggled as they walked down the corridors, holding hands. Their ebullience drew surprised stares, since hospitals were, after all, supposed to be serious, sober places.
    I was born on June 29. My parents brought me home from the hospital on Independence Day, July 4, 1947, a year to the date from the day they trekked