Page 7 of South of Nowhere

He read the full message, and his mind was instantly transported to a different place altogether. His father’s infidelity became a secondary issue, as did Margaret and her mission.

After sending a brief response, he charted a route to the destination provided in the text.

His eyes took in the documents once more, and he came to a decision. Gathering the stack up, he shoved the sheets into an empty orange gym bag sitting under a nearby table. He wouldn’t abandon the search for Margaret altogether. He placed a call to his local lawyer, Tony Rossano, whose office was a few miles away. The man sounded shocked at the news, which Shaw relayed nearly in a whisper. The attorney, sworn to secrecy, agreed he would continue the search for Margaret in the maze of Ashton’s writing, in Shaw’s absence.

After disconnecting, Shaw collected his black backpack from the floor beside the desk and walked into the kitchen, where he told his mother he had to leave immediately, and gave her what details he knew.

“Oh, my, I’m sorry to hear.”

He told her that he didn’t know how long it would take but to count on his missing the mushroom-free dinner.

They embraced and then he hurried out into the morning.

He fired up the white-and-tan Winnebago and headed down the lengthy drive.

GPS assured him his destination was forty-five minutes away.

A quick trip.

But as to the question: Would he be too late?

That was another matter entirely.

3.

Hanlon Tolifson walked to the end of what had been Route 13, a darkly auspicious number to some. Though he was not a superstitious man, he felt the digits appropriate, reminiscent of the election in which he’d won the mayoral race by 666 votes.

He looked down at the rushing torrent of water that had just sliced off the top of the levee as smoothly as a supervillain’s blast would have done in the apocalyptic movies his grandkids watched. It had been a long time since he’d been tested like this.

It wasn’t like when his wife passed. He simply had to be strong for his children and theirs.

And it wasn’t like fighting in county board meetings to win money for Hinowah.

Nor taking on parents who resisted the hiring of a gay teacher.

Those were moments you had to be strong. You stood up.

But this was a different kind of test. You met the challenge because there was somethingyouwanted, something that moved you forward in life and you needed to prove yourself.

A test…

He looked back over his burg. An old mining town dating to the 1800s, Hinowah had been settled because of its silver, not because the topography represented a safe environment for its citizens. Theplace was as vulnerable as could be, a deep bowl surrounded by low hills to the north, west and south, the levee in the east. The earthwork, built more than a hundred years ago, was now a waterfall, twelve inches deep and thirty feet wide, pouring over the mudslide that had been the top of the levee, and into a grim retention pond. From there it gushed into a spillway that diverted the water around the village.

The spillway—a concrete chute ten feet wide and three feet deep—had not, in his decades as a resident, been a conduit for a single drop of water from the Never Summer. There was constant talk about breaking it up and putting a bike trail in.

Thank God for bad-tempered, unyielding and environmentally skeptical residents.

Hinowah was protected for the moment, but the flow was increasing as the waterfall ate away at the top of the remaining levee. He wondered how long it would be before the spillway filled to the brim and water invaded the town.

Tolifson was dressed in a long, bright yellow coat that was called, he believed, a sou’wester, as in “southwestern”—which was a wind or storm or something in New England, he thought, even though the outerwear’s name and that part of the country were in direct opposition. In this part of the state, given the annual rainfall, he had worn the outfit once in six years. The matching floppy hat looked silly, and he’d replaced it with an Oakland Athletics cap.

Tolifson was six two and weighed one hundred and seventy-three pounds, hardly imposing. But his eyes were keen and he had learned to identify and deflect BS without a hem or a haw. He was mayor by election and now police chief by default, as Hiram Folk had ended a twenty-one-year career to take care of his aging parents in Florida. A meeting of the town council had been planned to hire a new chief, either promoting one of the two senior officers—TC McGuire or Leon Brown—or hiring from outside. Résumés were currently being accepted.

And then there was the testing.

As a youngish widower—he was fifty-three—the job of running the only home inspection company in this part of the county had never excited him.

Then he jumped at the chance to run for mayor.

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