An hour later they passed a one-room line shack. The sun was getting low in the sky. Horses and riders were covered in a thin coating of snow. Jan was beginning to wonder how much longer it would be before they would stop. He urged his horse to a trot, catching up with Zan. She pointed to a dot hiding in the trees about a mile away. “Home. We’ll be there by sunset.”
Jan nodded but didn’t reply. Relieved, he fell back in line.
The snow had stopped. The barn door was open. Probably sensing that food and rest awaited them, the horses quickened their pace. As Jan and Amal moved up to Zan, she pulled a key fob from her coat pocket and pressed a button. Light flooded all around them. The sound of barking dogs split the silence.
Jan laughed, and Amal looked puzzled.
“I thought Colin said you two were living off the grid!”
“We are,” Zan said, “but you know what a gadget freak Colin is. Let’s get the horses in for the night and I’ll show you the house. You won’t believe it!”
“Are those guard dogs I hear?” Jan asked.
“Anatolian Shepherds,” Zan answered. “They keep me company when Colin is out on the range. When it’s dark and the wind howls, it can get a little creepy being alone in the house.”
THE SINGLE-LEVEL
house was made from hand-hewn logs. The living room had a cathedral ceiling made of smoothed redwood boards. A large fireplace on the north wall, and a floor-to-ceiling window set into the south wall, dominated the room. Leather sofas, flanked with end tables, faced the hearth. Homespun rugs covered much of the pine flooring. Behind the sofas, a trestle was laid out for a meal. All that was required was the food. “Stunningly refined rustic” was how the magazine
Architectural Digest
had described the house when it was featured in one of their lead articles: “Living off the Grid with Elegance
.
”
Jan remembered that while the magazine had had free access to the house, both Colin and Zan had refused to pose for photographs. In a letter to Jan, Colin explained that he was proud of his house, but his privacy was off-limits.
Zan pointed to a hallway. “Amal, your rooms are that way. There are four, so pick any you want. As soon as you’re settled, we’ll eat.” Zan hung her hat on a peg by the door.
“Zan,” Jan said, “I have to ask. Where does the power for all these lights come from?”
“From Colin, where else? He’s terrified of a house fire. The way his mother died has haunted him all his adult life. Everything is electric, even the fireplace.”
Jan knew the story. Angela, along with her parents, had been burned alive in a house fire when Colin was just fourteen. “Yes, his aunt Elaine told me. Colin never talked to me about it.”
Zan propped her boot on a saddle stand and began removing a spur.
“I’m not surprised,” Zan said without looking up. “It took me a long time to get him to open up about it. After we decided to come here, Colin went all out with renewable energy schemes. This house, the police houses, and all the line shacks are solar heated—lights, and cooking too. He also set up two wind farms. He’s very proud of it.”
“I’m proud of
him
.” Jan looked around the room. “He’s come a long way from a frightened boy to all this.”
“You’re telling the wrong person,” Zan said as she stripped off her chaps. “I’ll get supper started. I know Colin will want you to ride out with him early tomorrow, so we’ll have an early bedtime.”
Jan watched Zan walk toward the kitchen. Her tone had been sharp. He wondered if it was about him, or Colin.
Starry Night
BRILLIANT VENUS
shone like polished silver through the darkness that had fallen hard around them. Jan lay on the ground, his back nestled on a bed of fragrant pine needles, his head resting on his saddle. He had cocked his hat low over his brow and pulled a woolen blanket up to his chin. Colin added a new log to the fire to ward off the night air, and then joined him, settling his back against his own saddle. After a while Colin said, “Can we talk? I mean… about you and my mother.”
Jan pushed his hat back and looked upward. He had dreaded this conversation ever since, on a snowy New Year’s Eve, Colin’s aunt Elaine callously dropped Colin off on Jan without warning, without ceremony—unless a shouting match with Elaine could be considered ceremony. At the time Colin was in his midteens. Colin, the son Jan never knew he had, suddenly became inextricably a part of his life. Now alone, with only silent Venus to eavesdrop, and after so many years and so many missed opportunities, Jan understood that Colin wanted answers.
After a pause, Jan said, “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know what she was like. Was she ever happy? I… don’t remember her being happy.”
What was she like? So much of their brief marriage was made up of angry fights, silent nights, and emotional walls made thick with Angela’s bottomless need and Jan’s complete lack of understanding those needs. Defining her without hurt would be almost impossible. Jan’s devil whispered in his ear,
Come on, you’re a lawyer. You know how to make a mud brick look like a gold bar.
Jan’s
good angel countered,
He deserves to know. He’s waited a long time for this. Don’t let him down.
“Happy?” Jan said. “Yes, when we first met she was happy. She was studying voice at Saint Joe’s the same time I was there.
I
was the one who was unhappy, or more to the point, angry. My relationship with Tim was in trouble. I was tearing it apart, and furious with myself because I didn’t know how to stop…. Then your mother came along, just when I needed to be with someone who didn’t make me so mad at the world.”
“Did she know about your relationship with Tim?” Colin probed.
“Your mother was a smart woman, but she wasn’t shrewd. She knew I lived with Tim, but I don’t think she thought beyond that, not until after we were married.”
“You mean because of the sex? Oh, gosh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean….”
“I know what you meant,” Jan said softly. “No. Sex, or the lack of it, was just a symptom of deeper problems…. This is hard to express.”
“It’s okay. I’m not made of sugar. I want to know.”
Jan thought about the first time he met Angela, and smiled. “I heard your mother’s voice before I even laid eyes on her,” he said. “She was in one of the studios at the university. It was in September. The day was warm and the music department’s windows were open. As I passed by, I heard this strong soprano voice singing
Let the bright seraphim in burning row, their loud uplifted angel trumpets blow.
”
Jan closed his eyes for a moment and let the memory sweep over him.
“Go on,” Colin urged, clearly eager for answers to questions that had plagued his mind since he was just a boy.
Jan looked over at Colin, who’d now rolled onto his side, watching his father closely.
Jan continued, “I was curious. So I went to see who belonged to that voice. I introduced myself and complimented her singing, and her choice of Handel. We talked after her rehearsal, had coffee, and set up a date…. That went on for a few months, plays, movies, horseback riding—she loved horses. She laughed at my jokes. She sang for me. I liked her, and she liked me. Most important to me, she cooled my rage. I found someone who didn’t threaten me, someone who liked me, not for the fancy address, or the money, or for the eye candy. For her part, I believe she was looking for someone to love her the way she wanted her father to love her. That was a role I neither understood nor wanted. A year after we were married, she began binge eating, followed by starvation diets. Nothing I did pleased her, and everything I didn’t do sent her into rants about other women, and eventually about Tim. There were two more years, two more years of crying, fighting, eating, followed with the inevitable divorce.”
“Did you hate her by then?” Colin asked.
“No. Never. The love was gone, killed, but that space was not replaced… just… empty. On our last night together, she wanted to make love. One more time for Old Glory, as she put it. The next day she left in a taxi for the airport. I never saw or heard from her again. I sold the house in Society Hill and sent a check to her parents. I never got a response.”
“Didn’t you miss her at all?” Colin’s voice blurred with emotion.
“I missed the woman I’d met… in those early days, but the last? No. I didn’t miss the helpless anger. I wish for your sake I could say so. I suspect that’s what you’d like to hear.”
They sat quietly for a while—father and son. A soft breeze stirred in the treetops. Colin broke the silence. “Dad, in the end, when it was finally over between you and Mom… did you regret it all?”
Jan shook his head in the campfire’s half-light. “When I look at you, Colin, I have no regrets, except the hurt… not my hurt, but yours. Fathers ache when their children cry. You were so broken when you came to me, sad in your soul, and very angry because I was the only one you could rely on. You were so sore… I… I didn’t know how to reach you. I’m….” Jan suddenly realized that perhaps he’d said too much. “Colin, I’m sorry, this has to be hard for you to hear.”
“No. I asked for the truth. It’s just… I wonder what it would have been like to have had a father… you know, all the time. I wonder what might have been.”
Jan shook his head and murmured, “Might have been… I think those are the sorriest words we ever say.”
Jan looked up at the sky, now crowded with stars. “Looks like Venus has gotten some company for the night.” He looked over at Colin. Were those tears he saw, reflecting in the firelight?
Indian Love Call
THEY’D BEEN
up since before dawn, and just arrived at Colin’s solar Station Number One. “I just need to check on a panel that I installed last week. I won’t be long,” Colin said as he swung out of his saddle.
Jan dismounted too. He walked the length of the station and back again. “Colin, this is amazing. How many of these do you have?”
“I’ve built ten. The line shacks they supply aren’t far. Fiber-optic cables carry all the energy produced. Add to that, the shacks have batteries that kick in if the power level dips. So far that hasn’t happened.”
“Why do you have so many line shacks anyway?” Jan asked.
“There are miles of wilderness here. The shacks are only two hours apart by horse, or four hours on foot. Everyone on this range knows where the shacks are located. It’s not foolproof, but so far, no one has been lost in bad weather.”
“What about the wind farms?” Jan asked.
“Oh boy, Dad! Wait until you see those. They’re the workhorses. Eventually, they’ll take the place of the solar stations. But these have to do until I can get enough mill sites set up and—”
A buzzing noise split the air. Colin looked toward the emergency call box. A red light blinked off and on. “What now?”
While Colin spoke on the phone, Jan walked off and sat on a fallen log. He looked over at Colin and thought,
Dad. I think I can count on one hand how many times he’s called me that. Feels nice.
Colin returned a few minutes later with a scowl on his face.
“What’s up?” Jan said.
“That was Zan. I guess my cell phone was turned off, so she took a chance that we’d be here. Anyway, the schoolteacher in the Indian compound phoned to say that two teens have run off. Sounds like the two families are squaring off in a shouting match. We’d better see how far this has gone.”
Jan stood and walked over to his horse. As he swung into his saddle, he said, “Does this happen often?”
“No. Not so far.”
“Shades of the past,” Jan said with a wry smile.
The memory of a teenaged Colin running off and ending up in the hands of bad guys was not lost on him. “It’s not quite the same thing, Dad. But I take your meaning.”
COLIN AND
Jan rode hard for about a half hour, arriving at the compound of four houses, each with a barn and corral. A fast-running stream ran between them, separating two of the houses from the other two, creating the sense of a larger community. Two men led horses across a grassy plot that served as a common area. Each man carried a rifle. Another man sat on a porch step, watching. Three women stood off to one side. Children ranging from toddlers to early teens hung back, away from the fray.
“Jim Barrows…. Bill Taylor,” Colin called out. “What’s going on here?”
The two men stopped. The one called Jim cupped his hand over his eyes, shielding them from the sun’s glare. He looked up at Colin and Jan as they urged their horses closer.
“Mr. Phillips, what are you doing here?”
“Heard there was a problem. You wanna tell me about it?”
“I can tell you what’s going on here, Mr. Phillips,” Bill Taylor said angrily as he stepped closer. “Eddie, that’s Jim’s boy, took my daughter off somewhere. Far as we know, all they brought with them was the clothes on their backs, and Eddie’s rifle.”
Jim rounded on his neighbor. “Bill, if you hadn’t tried to keep them apart, this wouldn’t have happened. Admit it, you don’t think my family is good enough for you!”
Bill shook his head. “Jim, we’ve been friends for years. There’s nothing wrong with your family. There’s nothing wrong with Eddie, except he’s too young to get involved with Olivia.”
Colin held up his hand. “All right. That’s enough.”
“Just a minute, Mr. Phillips,” Jim Barrows said. “This here is a family matter. Just because we get our houses for free doesn’t mean you can mix in our affairs.”
Colin leaned forward in his saddle. “Jim, maybe you don’t understand. Your houses are part of your pay package. Nothing is free here. You all keep the range working. It’s hard work. You all know it, and so do I. But the range is my property, and when it comes to trouble that can lead to violence, it becomes my business.”
“Your property, Mr. Phillips?” Jim said, sweeping his hand in an arc. “This belongs to all of us. You’re just a caretaker, like us. In the end, the only property we get is six feet.”