The Clinch Knot Read Online Free Page A

Dog.
    Yeah, well, I guess that’s it. The sky looks like a dirty sock when I step out of the liquor store. The Canyon Ferry Lake fire has pushed a smutty wrinkle up beneath the jet stream, and the smoke sprawls out over Livingston, stinking and trapping heat. I feel bad leaving. I just feel bad. But here I go.
    Inside the Cruise Master one block behind Main Street I get ready to ride. I decant Smirnoff into a travel cup, shake in Tang, stir with my finger, give it a healthy taste test and then lodge the cup in its holder. I rip open a pack of Swisher Sweets, find matches, and set these in readiness on the little ledge in front of the odometer. I’m ready to pull out. I’ll head down Main toward the BP station on Park Street for seventy-one bucks of gas. That’s how far I’ll make it toward my dark deep on the Big Two-Hearted River before I’ll have to stop again and do life. I’m deciding between interstate and local when a shrill whistle makes me hit the brake.
    “Trying to kill me?” huffs the jogger at my window as he passes down the middle of the street.
    I’m in a bit of daze as I watch this guy. He is lean to skeletal, shirtless and freckled, in scant silky yellow shorts and a red ball cap. A large fanny pack rides one hip, a holstered water bottle the other. Dust coats his ankles like a pair of raw umber socks. He kinks along like he’s in pain, his left leg splaying wide, his right hand jerking up and down like a band leader’s to keep things balanced. All this and he still manages to flip me my third bird of the day.
    It is one of those moments, to be sure. I am a split second from a particularly nasty fit of road rage.
Try running on the sidewalk, turkey-butt.
I yearn to flatten him with the Cruise Master. But I check it and watch, thinking I’ve seen this guy before.
    At the next storefront—law office, I think—he stops. He’s done running, is ready to collapse, but this phase too must be done centrally in the public arena. He spreads his legs across the sidewalk, puts his hands on his knees and then heaves, gobs on the sidewalk, a string of saliva yo-yoing from his chin. Then he straightens up. Hands on hips, head thrown back, he staggers in gaudy circles, gulping air. Off comes the harrier’s cap and next comes the water bottle, its last few ounces dumped over the top of his stiff, reddish hair. From his next gesture—he fires the empty bottle to the pavement—all of us among his audience are to understand that he is unsatisfied, that he thinks he should have done better, and we are to discover therein how driven, how heroic this man is. Or something.
    Instead I’m thinking:
As a matter of fact, I
have
seen this lunatic before. Someone Sneed pointed out as one of Jesse’s former men friends.
    And:
Can I drive on the sidewalk? Could I get up enough speed to run him down?
    The jogger enters the office and the moment passes. I’m over it. I turn the Cruise Master around and realize I’ve decided on a detour.
    I am leaving Livingston to the south. The Big Two-Hearted can wait a bit. I’m going to drive down along the Roam River, check out this movie star Dane Tucker’s place, check out his fences and his skinhead watchdogs. I am going to look, I have decided, for a little slip-through in the fence, a little recreational trespassing. Scoot in, fish the bastard’s stolen water.
    But instead this happens. I drive the entire length of Tucker’s property, twenty-five road miles, looking for a weakness, a way in. There is no such thing.
    I double back. All the access roads are gated and chained. All the rangeland is fenced tight with four-strand barbed wire and posted NO TRESSPASSING.
    I triple up, wasting precious gas now. For long stretches, the lower Roam River is a full-bodied and sinuous dream, taunting me from the road—and then it disappears entirely into upstream canyons that force the pavement several miles west. Yet still here, along glittering rhyolite cliffs and non-negotiable jack