Skeleton Canyon

By the time the Eagle neared the big wash, the storm was starting in dead earnest. First came hard, wind-driven drops that pounded into the dry earth and sent up little puffs of powdery dust. Then came a cloud of needle-sharp hail while jogged forks of lightning crackled across the sky. After that, the sky seemed to open up and the rain fell in torrents. The laboring windshield wipers couldn’t come close to keeping up.

Lack of visibility forced Joa

“Unbelievable!” George shouted over the roar of the wind, rain, and thunder. “I’ve been here for months and never knew it could storm like this.”

Going into the big wash, Joa

Winfield looked. behind them. “Are those washes really dangerous? I keep suspecting that all the flash flood nonsense is so much hooey-something old-timers tell new arrivals just to scare their pants off and keep ‘em in line.”

“They’re not nonsense,” Joa

“How can that be?” George asked. “It doesn’t look that deep.”

“The sand liquefies in the water,” Joa

“No shi-” Winfield stopped himself. “No kidding,” he corrected.

Joa

“It’s all right if you use the word shit around me,” Joa

“It’s just that..”

“That’s one of the differences between my mother and me,” Joa

George smiled and nodded. They reached the fence then. Joa

They were almost to the turnoff at Apache before he spoke again. “Why do you call her that?” he asked.

“Why do I call my mother Mother?” Joa

“No. Why do you call her Eleanor?”

Until George pointed it out, Joa

“Do you call her that to her face, or is it just when you speak of her to other people?” George persisted.

Again, Joa

“I see,” George said, nodding thoughtfully and rubbing his thin, “So what you’re saying is that it’s not so much a matter of disrespect as it is a matter of distancing.”

And because the questions and George Winfield’s resulting conclusion came far too close to home, Joa

“She I tied to hold me too close,” Joa

For a long time after that, while they traversed the rest of the gravel track into Apache and then for several miles after they turned onto the blacktop, they drove through the curtain of pouring rain with neither of them saying a word.

“Ellie isn’t doing it anymore,” George Winfield said at last. “I believe she’s willing to let you go, Joa

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

By the time they reached Douglas, Joa

In Douglas proper, the highway’s railroad underpass was closed-for good reason. Years earlier, the highway department had painted markers on the wall in foot-long increments in order to measure and warn otherwise unsuspecting motorists of the water’s dangerous and potentially lethal depth. Joa

“Now I see what you mean,” George Winfield murmured as the Eagle sat idling next to the yellow-and-black sign that stated the all-too-obvious-DO NOT ENTER WHEN FLOODED.

Southeastern Arizona’s summer thunderstorms are often fierce but brief. For some reason, this one, after that first incredible outburst, had now settled into a steady downpour. George Winfield’s clothing, still damp from getting out to open the gate, made the windows inside the Eagle keep steaming up. Unfortunately, because the air-conditioning compressor wasn’t working, neither was the defroster. As they waited in the detour line to be routed around the flooded underpass, Joa

Seeing the car reminded Joa

Thinking of Angie reminded Joa

You’re batting a thousand, old girl, Joa

At the Double Adobe turnoff, Joa

Joa

“‘Thanks, Joa

The usually dry creek in Mule Gulch was ru