Winter Moon

slipped out of the fifties. Heather walked with her hands jammed in

jacket pockets and her shoulders hunched. She was pleased to see that

Jack took the hill with vigor, not limping at all.

Occasionally his left leg ached and he favored it, but not today. She

found it hard to believe that only eight months ago, their lives seemed

to have been changed for the worse, forever. No wonder she was still

jumpy. Such a terrible eight months. But everything was fine now.

Really fine.

The rear lawn hadn't been maintained after Eduardo's death. The grass

had grown six or eight inches before the aridity of late summer and the

chill of early autumn had turned it brown and pinched off its growth

until spring. It crackled faintly under their feet. "Ed and Margaret

moved out of the caretaker's house when they inherited the ranch eight

years ago," Paul said as they drew near the stone bungalow. "Sold the

contents, nailed plywood over the windows. Don't think anyone's been

in there since. Unless you plan to have a caretaker yourself, you

probably won't have a use for it, either. But you ought to take a look

just the same."

Pine trees crowded three sides of the smaller house. The forest was so

primeval that darkness dwelt in much of it even before the sun had

set.

The bristling green of heavy boughs, enfolded with purple-black

shadows, was a lovely sight--but those wooded realms had an air of

mystery that Heather found disturbing, even a little menacing. For the

first time she wondered what animals might from time to time venture

out of those wilds into the yard. Wolves? Bears?

Mountain lions? Was Toby safe here? Oh, for God's sake, Heather She

was thinking like a city dweller, always wary of danger, perceiving

threats everywhere. In fact, wild animals avoided people and ran if

approached. What do you expect? she asked herself sarcastically.

That you'll be barricaded in the house while gangs of bears hammer on

the doors and packs of snarling wolves throw themselves through windows

like something out of a bad TV movie about ecological disaster?

Instead of a porch, the caretaker's house had a large flagstone-paved

area in front of the entrance. They stood there while Paul found the

right key on the ring he carried. The north-east-south panorama from

the perimeter of the high woods was stunning, better even than from the

main house. Like a landscape in a Maxfield Parrish painting, the

descending fields and forests receded into a distant violet haze under

a darkly luminous sapphire sky. The fading afternoon was windless, and

the silence was so deep she might have thought she'd gone deaf-- except

for the clinking of the attorney's keys. After a life in the city,

such quiet was eerie.

The door opened with much cracking and scraping, as if an ancient seal

had been broken. Paul stepped across the threshold, into the dark

living room, and flicked the light switch. Heather heard it click

several times, but the lights didn't come on. Stepping outside again,

Paul said, "Figures. Ed must've shut off all the power at the breaker

box. I know where it is. You wait here, I'll be right back."

They stood at the front door, staring at the gloom beyond the

threshold, while the attorney disappeared around the corner of the

house. His departure made Heather apprehensive, though she wasn't sure

why. Perhaps because he had gone alone.

"When I get a dog, can he sleep in my room?" Toby asked. "Sure," Jack

said, "but not on the bed."

"Not on the bed? Then where would he sleep?"

"Dogs usually make do with the floor."

"That's not fair."

"You'll never hear a dog complain."

"But why not on the bed?"

"Fleas."

"I'll take good care of him. He won't have fleas."

"Dog hairs in the sheets."

"That won't be a problem, Dad."

"What--you're going to shave him, have a bald dog?"

"I'll just brush him every day."

Listening to her husband and son, Heather watched the corner of the

house, increasingly certain that Paul Youngblood was never going to

return. Something terrible had happened to him. Something-- He

reappeared. "All the breakers were off. We should be in business

now." What's wrong with me? Heather wondered. Got to shake this damn

L.A. attitude.

Standing inside the front door, Paul flipped the wall switch

repeatedly, without success. The dimly visible ceiling fixture in the

empty living room remained dark. The carriage lamp outside, next to

the door, didn't come on, either.

"Maybe he had electric service discontinued," Jack suggested. The

attorney shook his head. "Don't see how that could be. This is on the

same line as the main house and the stable."

"Bulbs might be dead, sockets corroded after all this me." '- Pushing

his cowboy hat back on his head, scratching his brow, frowning, Paul

said, "Not like Ed to let things deteriorate. I'd expect him to do

routine maintenance, keep the place in good working order in case the

next owner had a need for it. That's just how he was. Good man, Ed.

Not much of a socializer, but a good man."

"Well," Heather said, "we can investigate the problem in a couple of