Free Cool Water by Dianne Warren Page A

here for Rachelle, but he makes him say it anyway.
    â€œCan I talk to Rachelle?”
    â€œI would imagine she’s asleep,” Norval says.
    Kyle shifts from foot to foot, still holding the railing. A full minute passes. He seems to have forgotten where they are in their conversation, if it can be called that.
    â€œI guess I should go,” he finally says.
    â€œI think that would be best,” Norval says, feeling irresponsible for sending Kyle out on the road in the state he’s in, but damned if he’s going to let him into the house to climb the stairs and crawl into bed with his daughter. He has his limits.
    He watches Kyle stumble down the walk, a cell phone in one back pocket of his Wranglers and a round tobacco tin in the other. Kyle’s about to get in his truck—he’s having trouble finding his keys—when Rachelle bounds down the stairs and pushes past Norval wearing some kind of gym pants now and a very worn and almost transparent T-shirt. She and Kyle throw their arms around each other right on the street, and then Lila calls from upstairs, “What in the world is going on down there?”
    â€œNothing,” Norval calls back, and then he says to Rachelle, “Don’t you dare get in that truck and drive anywhere.”
    â€œI won’t,” Rachelle says.
    â€œI don’t know how you can stay out late and then go to work in the morning. Don’t you have to be alert? Wouldn’t you say the state of being alert is an essential part of the job, Rachelle?”
    â€œI don’t have to work until eleven. Just go back in the house, Dad.”
    Norval doesn’t go back in the house and instead finds himself staring at his lawn. Thanks to his careful watering it’s the greenest lawn on the block, green as Ireland, he imagines. It needs mowing, yes, but it glistens in the light of the street lamp, a fine-looking crop, thick and even and free of a single weed, or blade of grass that was not planted by him.
    â€œDad,” Rachelle says impatiently. “Have you gone to sleep or what?”
    Norval says, “Promise me you won’t go anywhere in that truck.”
    â€œI promise,” Rachelle says.
    Both she and Kyle stare at him, waiting for him to leave. Norval goes back inside and closes the door.
    â€œNorval?” Lila calls. “Is something wrong? Should I come down?”
    â€œNo, Lila. Go back to sleep. I’ll be up soon.”
    He goes to the fridge and finds a slice of leftover meat loaf. Lila would kill him, he thinks, if he were to carry it into the living room and eat it in front of the TV with no utensils and no plate to catch the bits he spills. He carries the cold slice to the couch that he secretly thinks of as his couch and sits down. It will be a great day on the Prairies, the perky TV weather lady says. She looks right at Norval when she says this, as though she is telling him to buck up and look on the bright side. Norval takes a reckless bite of meat loaf.
    Horse Thief Moon
    The horse jigs his way out of the yard with Lee holding him back until he can find a place where it’s safe to lope him out. Cracker badly wants to come along, but Lee says, “Get to the house,” and the dog immediately hangs his tail and obeys.
    Lee rides in the ditch for a quarter-mile and then he sees in the darkness that the wire gate to Hank Trass’s pasture is stretched out on the ground, which could mean kids from town have been drinking at the buffalo stone again, although it more likely means that Hank has moved his yearlings onto his north quarter. Lee heads for the opening in the fence and steers a course past the wire. He guides the horse toward the giant stone, amused once again by Hank’s response to the Juliet high school grads’ recent and much-discussed spray-painting exploits. The students had chosen the buffalo stone as the spot to record their year of graduation, and when the chair of the local