Electric God

Chapter One 1996THE HEADLIGHT ZONEHayden Reese picked his way on foot in the dark, straight uphill into national forest territory, his Jenny dangling heavy on his right shoulder. Still supple she felt, and almost warm. His only little bit of comfort.In his left hand, the shovel.Here and there he'd take hold with his right, grasp the smooth, red, strangely burnished trunk or limb of a manzanita for balance, for pull, gently pressing the fistful of shovel handle to her smooth flank to keep her from tumbling. The sun would be coming all too soon.He'd kept this trail clear by his own maintenance and concern, hiking by day with a sheathed trail saw hanging on one side of his belt, a strong hinged clipper for smaller branches on the other. He knew this trail the way he'd known his Jenny, could navigate it in the dark, knowing by memory when to grasp, when to duck his head.What few things Hayden knew, he knew. The rest was a mystery, pure and simple.As he grasped and ducked he cursed himself, and his burning chest, and promised himself he'd quit smoking again, this time for real, and touched his shirt pocket, wondering if he'd remembered to bring the pack along. It both comforted and disgusted him to feel it there. He'd lean on them now, because he needed to; then, in a day or a week, he'd reclaim his stolen wind.He reached the saddle of the ridge, the clearing he'd created and maintained, and gently spread her on her side on the cool ground and sat for a moment before going to work. Sat by her side and fired up what he hoped would be one of the last, and set the shovel across his knees, hating the finality of the whole deal. And touched one hand to her cooling side, wishing the sun was up so he could enjoy her smooth blue coat with his eyes and not just his hand. He drew hard on the cigarette tucked deep between his first fingers, watching the red tip glow, hating the way the hot smoke soothed him going down.Maybe his eyes had adjusted to the dark, or maybe that odd moment of predawn had found them, because Hayden noticed he could nearly make out the silhouettes of buckbrush, the gnarled shapes and nature-sanded smoothness of the manzanita branches. He felt his thinking change about Jenny. He did not wish to see her, not now. Not like this. And the dawn would bring the heat of the day, the enemy, tormentor of men with shovels. No. It wasn't dawn. Couldn't be. Still long too early for that. But it would be, sometime. He had better get started.For one brief moment he allowed himself to think about Laurel, let himself feel the need, a touch or a word from her to fill the ache of this moment. Hayden told no one, not even Laurel, when he ached, but he often ached for his ache to be seen, to be known by her. To be cooled and settled.He put the urge away again but it left an echo, the blank, unfilled shock of a craving deferred.He set about to dig in the hard ground.Hayden stared down at his hands, at black dirt still packed underneath the nails, ground deep into the calluses of his palms. He didn't mind dirt, not as such. He minded the lack of sleep, the sandy eyes and dicey stomach from staying up the night, challenging the dry soil inch by inch. He minded that Laurel would come soon to start the cinnamon rolls in the half dark, in the barely-morning light, and what if she reached for him or allowed him to reach for her? What, then, would he do with all this dirt?More even than this, he minded his Jenny in the ground, lost to him. Minded it so much he could not permit his mind to complete that revolution, to spin its gears around to the new, real, entirely changed day. He needed instead to stay mired a few more moments in that foggy no-man's-land, like the moment between sleep and waking when a vivid dream slides away, one unlikely image at a time.He sat in the dawn in the cab of his old pickup and waited for her to unlock the diner's back door, thHyde, Catherine Ryan is the author of 'Electric God' with ISBN 9780743437561 and ISBN 074343756X.