Twenty-five.

A HIGH HIGH, mottled cloudshelf was keeping the day cool, and Marin found she enjoyed driving the big flatbed north on I-90, sitting up above the passenger cars, Einar napping on the seat beside her.

He woke as she ramped down into Billings and told her where to turn, and they drove up into the Heights. They were looking for an antique store he remembered, and when they couldn't find it she pulled into a parking lot in front of a coffee shop. Einar craned around, looking out the windows.

"There should be a sign." He was alarmed, disoriented. "A big sign with red letters."

"I'm surprised," she said, "but the drive wore me out completely." She spoke calmly. She laid a hand on his thigh. "Can we go inside?"

He was staring at her hand, which seemed to anchor him. He nodded and followed her into the shop.

She ordered a cinnamon latte, got him to try a sip, and he ordered one too. They carried their coffees to a table by the front window.

"I know this is the spot." He sat staring out at the truck.

"I'm sure it was." She kept her voice soft and even, reaching across the table to pat his hand.

He pulled it away. "You're not sure at all." He held the hand like it had been stung. "You're sitting there thinking your brother's lost what little mind he has left."

"That's not true. Stores go out of business every day, Einar. When was the last time you were up here?"

"I was here with Ella."

"Well, for Christ's sake. How long ago was that?" that?"

He took up his coffee cup in both hands, sipping. "I guess it could've changed owners." He looked toward the young man running the espresso machine. "Maybe it was that boy's father who sold antiques. Remind me to ask him if it was."

"I'll ask for their phone book," she said. "We'll find a good place, maybe even better than the store that used to be here."

He had a froth mustache and she tapped her own lip, but he didn't notice so she licked the corner of her napkin and leaned across the table to wipe his mouth. He let her.

"I'm sorry you lost her so young," she said.

"You mean Ella?" He was calming down now.

"I had Alice almost my whole life."

"I never understood how she could want a bald man." He turned his hat up on the end of the table, scratching absently at his stiff gray hair, and when he saw her looking at his head he said, "Charlie Newland's who I'm talking about. He and Ella sort of partnered up for awhile."

"You don't mean like bridge partners, or they went fishing together?"

"No. I mean the other." He sipped his coffee. There was a line at the counter now. "This is a nice place," he said.

"We'll come again if you like. The coffee's good."

"I don't really think I was ever what you'd call good help in bed, so she had it coming, I guess, and Charlie, he had that shriveled arm he got from having polio when he was a kid. Maybe he thought he had it coming too."

She started giggling, and that got him started, and finally a young woman waiting in line came over to ask if everything was okay, and Marin told her it was far better than that.

They found a used-furniture store downtown, where she picked out a walnut dresser and matching armoire after checking her diagram of the cabin to make sure they'd fit.

The owner and the large, docile boy introduced as his nephew got the pieces loaded up against the truck's cab with any surfaces that might rub padded with sheets of cardboard. Einar roped it all snug, the lines standing taut.

"I never could tie a knot worth spit," the owner said, standing back with his hands on his hips, still short of breath from loading the furniture.

"If you live around horses," Einar said, clearly pleased, "it's not something worth bragging about."

The man slipped a business card from his wallet, holding it out to Marin. "You folks drive careful, now," he said.

When they got in the truck she asked if he was hungry yet, and he said, "Fuddruckers."

"That sounds like a strip joint."

"Well, it's not, unless it's moved. Griff and I ate there last fall when we were up here delivering a bull to a man from Molt. They'll let you build a hamburger sandwich any way you want."

"Do they have salads?"

"They have lettuce and tomatoes and onions, I know that much. And they sell beer. It's been awhile since I've had a cold beer."

She was pulling into the street. "I'm disappointed it's not a strip joint," she said.

After she'd had her salad, watching him drink a beer and eat a burger as large as her hand, she checked a phone book again. They drove to a store on King Avenue, where they lay down, one after the other, on half a dozen mattresses before she found one that suited her.

"We ought to get you a comfy chair while we're here," he said. "Something you might sit in in the evenings."

He turned to find a clerk and felt the carpeting fall away, and a sudden panic rose, crowding the air out of him. He lurched to the side with his arms waving, thinking, Oh, my God, not now, we were having such a good day Oh, my God, not now, we were having such a good day. There was a sharp and spreading pain behind his left eye.

He felt someone grip his elbow, and when he turned around an old woman was standing at his side, mouthing something in a language impossible to understand, some guttural phrase that sounded like a small dog barking, and he wondered if she was from a race of people who breed with beasts. "Where am I?" he screamed, watching her eyes fill with tears.

"Einar," she called, her mouth moving slowly, but at least she knew his name and she smelled familiar, like something from home. Unlike everything else in the store.

Then he was standing behind the foreign woman, the two of them watching the man she had by the arm stagger and fall, a standing lamp going over with him. All of it was as slow and silent as some movie with the volume turned down, but he felt unbounded and terrifically happy, and then he was on his side, the fluorescent lighting burning his eyes, every sound a knifepoint. He struggled to his knees and, with the woman's help, to his feet again. He could hear his teeth grinding, and he stepped away from her, one foot at a time, feeling for the edge of the world where it dropped off into darkness, the thin crust crumbling beneath him.

Since there were no windows in the room, he couldn't determine whether it was night or day. A tube was taped to the back of his hand, his arms and chest bare. His sister was asleep in a chair by the side of the bed. He tried to reach out to her, but there was an unexpected heaviness in his arm. His head throbbed, and he thought he must've fallen. The whole building hummed. He could feel it in his shoulders and back, in the back of his legs. He pushed up in bed, and when Marin opened her eyes and saw him, she stood out of the chair.

"I want to go home," he said. The words sounded like a slurred, off-key lullaby.

But she bent down over him, holding her cheek against his, her hand cradling his head. "I know you do, sweetheart," she said.

Twenty-six.

GRIFF HAD BEEN awake thirty-six hours and now it was after midnight again, the surrounding darkness flashing with unexpected bursts of pastel light. Mulberry, rose and amber. She's been this tired before. awake thirty-six hours and now it was after midnight again, the surrounding darkness flashing with unexpected bursts of pastel light. Mulberry, rose and amber. She's been this tired before.

She knelt at one of the buckets of water she'd carried up from the creek and immersed her head until she was out of breath and sat back gasping. She felt raw, jittery, like she might start cackling and not be able to stop.

She stared down at her forearms, expecting the skin to be split and weeping, but it was just spotted with pinesap, charcoal and clay. She pushed herself up against the rim of the bucket and shuffled to the front of the kiln, where the yellow bricks throbbed with heat.

At dawn he'd said: "You can sleep now. It's my shift. I'll stay."

"We already know that's a lie." She'd been standing by the hammock pulling her clothes back on. She'd meant it to sting. Then she asked him to leave. Well rested. Well fucked. This firing was hers.

She pulled on the thick canvas gloves, opened the door to the firebox and laid in the split pine for this last stoking. Her shoulders and knees ached and her ears rang with the fresh roar of the fire. The heat made her stagger.

When the box was filled she latched the door and stripped off the gloves and began mixing the sand and fireclay into a wet slop, one bucket at a time.

She circled the kiln, mudding up the spyports and ventholes and finally the firedoor, careful not to burn her hands. She shut the damper down. She could hear the wet clay sizzling against the metal door, the fire huffing for oxygen. Two days to cool, maybe two and a half, and the colors will be set into the ware. She was so tired she drooled, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand.

She upended the remaining bucket of water over her head and stood there sputtering, shaking her head, trying for a last burst of clarity. Just enough to get home. She put the lanterns out and picked up her thermos and Einar's old black lunch pail. The kiln groaned in the dark.

She stumbled down the trail out into the meadow above the house and finally across the porch. She stood leaning into the front door, the exhaustion spreading like a drug, but when she stepped inside she could feel their absence like a second bucket of cold water. She didn't need to check the rooms, just stepped back onto the porch and swept the beam of her flashlight over the workyard. The truck wasn't there. Oh, God, she thought.

She stood weaving at the table in the hallway, staring down at the blinking message light. She pressed the button.

"Griff, this is Marin. Your grandfather's all right. He's had a stroke, but a very minor one. We're at Saint V's. He's resting now so please don't call back tonight. I'll call in the morning. About eight. I love you, and he really is going to be all right."

She sank to the floor, lying over on her side just a minute to rest. A shower would bring her back, a pot of coffee, and she'd be in Billings in three hours, tops.

She woke with the kitchen linoleum cool against the side of her face, then remembered where she was. It was just starting to get light. Five-thirty. She listened to Marin's message again and called Paul. There wasn't anyone else she could think of.

"It doesn't mean he's going to die," he said.

She held the receiver away, pressing it against her thigh, then sat at the kitchen table. She could feel her heart drumming in her chest.

"Are you okay?"

"I had to sneeze." She didn't want him to know her whole body was buzzing. Like it was filled with birds trying to fly out in every direction. "Marin said she'd call back this morning."

"I'm coming over."

"All right." And then: "Don't say anything to anybody. Not even McEban."

"He's in Cheyenne."

"Where's Kenneth?"

"They're together. McEban called yesterday afternoon. Said they had plans to tear up the town. He said they'd be home when they were done."

She could hear the morning downdraft rushing in the trees, the songbirds starting up. "I'm getting off now," she said.

She was sitting on the porchsteps when he got there, and they went in the house. She picked up the phone to check for a dial tone, then set it back in the cradle. "I need to clean up. I didn't want to get in the shower until you were here."

"I'll come get you if she calls," he said.

She stripped out of her clothes, and washed her hair twice, soaping and rinsing the woodsmoke away, finally standing braced against the side of the stall, crying until the water turned cold. Her eyes were puffy when she came out in her robe. She sat at the table.

He'd made coffee and poured her a cup, but her throat was so dry she coughed it back up through her nose.

She cleaned her face with a paper napkin, dabbing at the stains on the front of her robe. "Do you ever watch yourself?" she asked.

"Sure. Sometimes I do."

"I watch myself all the time," she said, "and right now I'm a fucking mess."

"I think you're doing fine."

She held a hand out between them. It was shaking. "You always think I'm doing fine," she said.

He took a cribbage board from a drawer and talked her into a game, but she had trouble deciding which cards to play. She folded her arms on the table, resting her cheek against a forearm. He reached over to rub her neck.

"Don't," she said.

"I wish you'd tell me why you're mad."

"I'm not." She puffed at her hair and it lifted, falling back against her face.

"Then how come you wouldn't let me help you finish the firing?"

"I wanted to see if I could do it myself. Straight through."

He tried to comb his fingers through her hair, moving it away from her eyes, and she sat straight up.

"I was tired of looking at you," she said. "Okay?"

He studied her face. Mostly she looked just tired. "Okay."

He took a carton of eggs and a package of bacon from the refrigerator and put a pan on the stovetop.

"I'm not hungry," she said.

"You could try."

"I tried a piece of toast when I was waiting for you. I felt like I was going to puke."

The phone rang and she was up and had the receiver even before he could turn toward the sound.

"Are you there? Hello?" Marin's voice sounded fragile.

"I'm here."