Within half an hour of our launch we were one rider. The motorcycle rhythms re-emerged from my decades-old muscle memory so that once I picked up the clutch nuances my leg became Newgate's, knowing when a shift was coming and synchronizing my timing precisely with his. He'd… Read full post »

Sleep was fitful. I felt drugged from the pain and fatigue, yet bothered by my encounter with the coyote, the close call, shooting, and I wondered what had happened to Newgate, especially considering the hogan seemed not to have been damaged by the helicopter attack. Too… Read full post »

The rain had let up to a drizzle long before I drew near Newgate's camp. Still no light, though, as cloud cover screened the heavenly bodies from view. Fortunately the trail was navigable in the dark, and I had my pocket flashlight for moments of… Read full post »

The worst of the storm's fury abated in concert with the departure of my dad's essence as if the old man dead still exercised more natural influence than most living men. Not quite enough to stop the rain, though, which fell in a steady downpour as I… Read full post »

I felt his presence before I heard him speak. It was his stare. Political writers called it “The Look” and rarely failed to mention it when referring to his outsized influence in the senate, especially at the pinnacle of that influence when he parlayed it into an… Read full post »

With the storm upon me my thoughts shifted from pensive to instinctive flashes of survival mode. I dove to the ground when the rainspray morphed into hail, strafing me in horizontal bursts with pea-size pellets that stung like a yellowjacket swarm. The thunder was constant now and… Read full post »

I felt the epiphany coming the instant I started back up the trail. The sensation was akin to the vertigo I get with the approach of a headache but with a greater sense of urgency, a dire need to bring coalescence to a myriad of notions of varying… Read full post »

We were about halfway from the hogan when the helicopter appeared. My ears picked it up first, the wupwupwupwup of the rotorblades drawing near. My first reaction was to freeze. Joan and Pink were up ahead and I was awaiting the blaze-orange signal to do… Read full post »

It was mid-morning when we started out. The air was warming from the cool spell after the last storm as a bank of grayish clouds inched up from the southwest horizon bringing another. Our goal was to reach the road before the next one hit, which the… Read full post »

Joan started after Newgate, muttering “Oh dammit great job Stonebraker somebody kick my ass goddammit to hell...,” but I stopped her before she reached the blanket.

“Joan! No! Let him go!” She stopped and turned her head back toward me, neck-length brown hair whipping imp… Read full post »

Joan's reaction to Newgate's little demonstration was to harden into the icy, unwavering police-mode she so often had exhibited during our White House days. I recognized this subtle withdrawal of feminine warmth before she spoke. It might have seemed to someone who didn't know what to look for that… Read full post »

It took two days before Doc Bot pronounced Pink “out of the woods,” with the infection and fever gone and the healing of his face progressing satisfactorily. You couldn't have known this from looking at it. The nightmarish swelling was gone but I winced every time I saw the… Read full post »

Doc Bot, or Botticelli, as Newgate introduced him to us, was a small man with white curly hair that crowned the back of his head. The first impression he made on me was of a grumpy toad. This came partly from the shape of his head, a horizontal ovoid… Read full post »

Soon after Pink mumbled he wasn't hungry for breakfast we decided he needed to see a doctor. Bruised and swollen, his face looked as if he'd gone a couple rounds with Rocky Marciano. His breathing was still labored, and he said his head felt like it was going… Read full post »

I awoke after a couple of hours and had to pee. A cacophonous blitz of snoring disoriented me at first, especially after I opened my eyes and saw the dark shapes of other sleepers around me. Then I remembered the night before, sleeping in the open during the storm, and/… Read full post »

In her turn with the questions Joan made it clear she was more than casually curious about Newgate's background and circumstances. Where did the electric power come from. Who owned the property he was squatting on. Where had he been a cop. Where did he get his… Read full post »

Not much was said on the way back to the hogan. After a tense introduction, Newgate allowed Joan to keep her sidearm. He seemed flustered at first.

“I wondered how much of the book was real,” he said, “But I didn't think it… Read full post »

[Note: Yes, I've change the title!  Shorter and with more foreshadowing and sizzle.]

I was sure enough it was our Enclave that the sight of it ablaze on the video sent me into a minor fugue state, a complete withdrawal from my immediate circumstances into an internal emergency conference. I… Read full post »

It was early afternoon before Newgate sat at his desk and powered up his laptop. The deliberate way he approached it, standing for three or four seconds and gazing at it as if debating with himself and then moving resolutely to the flimsy chair and lowering himself carefully onto its… Read full post »

Despite his apparent weariness Newgate seemed nervous or anxious about something. It was clear he wasn't comfortable. He seemed more than casually concerned about Pink's injuries. His eyes squinted, furrowing his brow, as he peered at the bleeding scientist. He leaned forward to get a closer look… Read full post »

But I'm in!   Zimmerman needs to spend a night locked in the coop with me and my hens.

Just one night!

Read full post »

Confusion. Surprises leading to confusion leading to more surprises leading to... My state at the moment Newgate charged off through the underbrush to find, he grumbled, “a rope to get another goddam cat down from a tree,” was a near paralyzing mix of the two, seasoned by embarrassment… Read full post »

I lay on my back squirming in a rain-soaked briar patch and staring up at a nutcase who glared down at me with malintent and a rifle. The perception that time had slowed to a glacial pace alerted me that the most primitive regions of my brain were quite aware… Read full post »

Our captor stared at us so intensely it seemed imprudent for me and Pink to try to communicate with each other. At one point, moments after the man calling himself Randy Newgate told us he would feed us breakfast, I started to turn my head enough to try to… Read full post »

Awkward.  I strongly suspect there's a better word beyond my immediate grasp to capture all or most of the emotions churning within me as I stood in calf-high weeds on a chilly cloudy night with a crashed and burning helicopter a mile up the road and the leading winds… Read full post »