Mud Lake, ID, west of Rexburg
I think a change would do me good.
Cyrus Link sat in his truck staring through the windshield at the peeling paint on the side of his graying farmhouse, listening to the soft hum of the spinning flywheels scavenging every scrap of energy under the hood. The far end of the porch sagged a little more, and the scabrous siding evoked sickness, a symptom of some disease of the place causing all his trouble.
Behind the house, the sun was well below the horizon, the jagged mountains of the Lemhi Range to the west backlit in the fading glow, the first stars in the sky brighter by the second. Cyrus only saw the house.
He glanced down at the white plaster dust on his sleeve of his red plaid flannel shirt. His little discovery would make him rich, finally, and he wasn’t going to miss this opportunity to reverse his long stretch of bad breaks. The strange piece of jaw he found in the creek bed at the edge of his property had to be valuable. It wasn’t like any animal he knew.
Tracy leaving him, the kids and all their troubles, his broken leg, the drought, losing all the spuds last fall to the freak early freeze. This was it. He’d sell the fossil and get enough money to pay his bills, finally get the bank off his back, and buy a new pump for the irrigation equipment. Drill a new well, get back on his feet, or, maybe, he’d just sell the whole farm and move to Vegas, or Tahoe, or go north to Calgary, or Jasper, finally free of debts and out of the squeeze between suppliers and buyers and the megas who owned everything. Anything was possible.
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, lost in his dreams of a better life, until a flicker of light from one of the upstairs windows caught his eye. He leaned over and looked up at the house. Now what? Not those damn kids again.
His neighbor Harlan Peterson certainly did well with his fossil. Started with a tooth, then found part of a skull, turned out it was some new kind of tyrannosaurus. Sold it to a private collector and made a fortune. No reason I can’t get my share, Cyrus concluded. The glow of light appeared in a different upstairs room. Cyrus scowled.
Goddam kids.
This was the third time since the winter he’d have to chase them off. Go away for more than a couple of hours and they were in his place, looking for something to steal for drug money. Tracy never liked that he was always so eager to confront intruders, one of the many causes for the endless fighting between them. Ironically, he ended up chasing her off, but she knew what she was getting with him and their hardscrabble life.
He got out of the truck and stepped up onto the porch, avoiding the squeaky boards. At the front door, he paused to listen, saw it was ajar, and slowly pushed it open. He stood in the entry and looked around in the dim light, assessing the stealthiest route to his gun safe.
The chair at his desk was pushed away, the papers scattered, the drawers opened and rifled. The furniture had been moved, one of the easy chairs tipped over on the side. The room was a mess.
He crept further inside, listening for movement elsewhere in the house, then into the back room to his gun cabinet. He selected the small key from his bundle and reached up with the key poised, then froze at a sound behind him. He turned slowly and saw a figure in the doorway to the kitchen.
“Back up,” the intruder commanded.
Cyrus saw the oddly shaped gun first. Except for his face, the burglar was covered from head to toe in a puffy black paper suit, down to his bootied feet. He made a swishing, crinkling noise as he walked forward. Cyrus couldn’t help but stare at the paper medical mask covering the intruder’s nose and mouth.
Cyrus lifted his hands over his head without being told. A second black clad figure appeared on the stairs, descending with the same soft swishing sound.
“Nothing upstairs,” the second one reported. The first intruder stepped forward and raised the gun to Cyrus’s face.
“Where is it?”
Cyrus struggled to control his trembling.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do. Where is it?”
Cyrus couldn’t take his eyes off the bulbous silencer at the end of the pistol.
“I…you…uh…”
The intruder pushed the silencer into Cyrus’ cheek, nudging him with each word.
“Where…is…it?”
Cyrus swallowed convulsively, mouth too dry to speak, now shaking visibly.
The intruder gestured to his companion.
“Get a chair. Let’s help him remember.”
Robert Wack 