At The Edge Page 2

  But it was the younger woman who piqued Dan's interest. She wore a skirt appropriate to the day, drawn in tight at the waist, ballooned out, then falling straight down from the hips to the top of her sharp-toed black boots, not unlike the boots he had seen on female clients at his law office-in winter, never summer.

  Her face had a lean angularity, the nose strong but not too prominent, and the cheekbones high. If only he could see the detail of the eyes that looked at him, that tugged at the darkest recesses of his mind. He knew that those eyes held a child's innocence, that they owned the sun, that under the sepia tone of the photograph her eyes were golden, surrounded by blue.

  The first time he looked at the photo, it had taken him a moment to recognize her. He had watched her from across the courthouse hallway a couple of weeks ago. Last summer, he'd sat a foot away from her in a pickup. It was now apparent that Maria Fischer's reason for choosing to meet at Muldoon's Pub, next door to the antique shop in Old Town Palmer, was that she had some connection to this place.

  He checked his watch: 9:55 a.m. He took a new grip on the briefcase. Even though the handle was slick with sweat, its contents growing heavy, he didn't want to put it down. He stroked his lip, where up until this morning there had been a mustache. He was unable to escape the odd feeling that someone might be watching him. Yet the many mirrors revealed no one.

  "Can I help you?"

  The salesclerk wore a raw silk blouse and black pants that looked modern Italian, and she wasn't quite what Dan expected.

  "I've been looking at this photo. It's made to look antique."

  She smiled broadly. "Right. It's a good fake. It was taken last year."

  "I suspected."

  ''Actually, it's my cousin with her mom and dad. A friend of hers took it with a plain old Nikon 35mm."

  "The dog belongs to Dad," he said.

  "How did you know?"

  "Your cousin is a lawyer?"

  "You know her?"

  "The earth woman."

  "And you are?"

  "Oh, I'm just a colleague, and I'm late. Nice meeting you, though." He tossed the words over his shoulder as he strode out.

  Context. Everything was context. You would barely recognize your own mother if you knew, just knew, you were looking at a photo that was one hundred years old.

  Dan wondered what Maria Fischer would do when she recognized him. He had only had one face-to-face conversation with her and it was about a year ago. He had waded into a demonstration at an Otran mill and had headed for the speaker's platform with a request that the crowd disperse or face the police. Things had gotten a little rowdy in the crowd; she had jumped off the pickup bed that served as a platform and then pulled him into the cab. It was an old red Ford with dents and rust, and with blankets tacked on the upholstery. There they had a shouting match before they made a deal that she would get the demonstrators away from the mill gates in a half hour.

  Now he was giving her money. He and his clients had to trust her to keep it quiet-although they had gone over that part very carefully. Everything about the drop was covered by the attorney-client privilege and it was inviolate. Even a judge could not order disclosure of the facts concerning the handoff. He had worked that out carefully and they had reduced it all to writing. Technically at the moment of the drop, she and her clients were clients of his and the opposite was true. Accordingly, for this very limited purpose on this one occasion, the courier and the donor were clients of hers, even though Maria personally had no notion of either the courier's or the donor's identity.

  Since Maria didn't know Dan well and he was without his mustache, he wondered if in the dark corner of a tavern he could, for a few minutes, disguise his identity. Even if only for a short while, he wanted to talk to Maria Fischer without her hating him. And it was the sort of humor he couldn't quite resist.

  Dan Young was a member of an old-school law firm that worked for private industry, mostly a group of lumber companies owned by one Jeb Otran. Unlike the other attorneys in his firm, Dan was anything but traditional. He had distinguished himself early on, not only because he was daring and shrewd, but because under the country-boy exterior was a man who prepared like a bean counter and spoke with the eloquence of a prophet. He wore cowboy boots, usually without the barnyard mud.

  Dan had grown up on a ranch in eastern Oregon near the Deschutes River, outside of Maupin on Deep Creek (pronounced "crick"), in the baking-summer tan-sand hills and winter-bleak snowdrifted valleys. He had learned to string fences, doctor cows, and take in the hay; on Friday nights he'd drink beer and dance with Tess until 10 o'clock; then they'd adjourn to the Young family home and he'd fall asleep on his mother's old tan couch with his head in Tess's lap, her fingers combing his blond hair or tracing the faint white lines that ran across his palms and the backs of his wrists-scars from years of handling barbed wire.

  His mother, Gertrude, and father, Lucas, had worked the land all their lives, seldom driving their 1972 Dodge pickup farther than Maupin or the Dalles except when they went to the cattle auctions in Portland. Although neither had a college education, they were well-read, never having owned a TV and not being much on socializing. Winters were long, dark, and cold. Lucas had inherited the family ranch when his brothers and sisters had moved off to the cities. He had hoped the same legacy for his eldest boy, Dan.

  Even after Dan graduated from Harvard Law School, Lucas still wanted him to take over the ranch, even conspired with Tess's dad to expand it. There was talk of merging the Young ranch with a portion of the Johnson ranch, making the "JY" a sprawling place with 500 acres irrigated, maybe 20,000 acres total, beginning 2 miles farther down Deep Creek.

  Gertrude Young knew what her husband wanted to deny that Dan was uncommonly gifted and that he wanted to roam and travel places with people who could not be found in the backlands of Oregon. Tess was just like Dan in that regard, and as Gertrude saw it, Dan and Tess would be together forever in some place far away from Deep Creek, barns, mesas, canyons, and livestock.

  As Gertrude predicted, Dan and Tess ended up exchanging snow-coffined Maupin for damp-souled Palmer. But Tess always said, once a cowboy, always a cowboy, and to this day Dan occasionally roped a calf, although he'd long since gone cold on the bronc and bull riding.

  When he had a chance and an invite, he still went to roundups and brandings for a local northern California rancher or two, but never to Oregon, never back to the high desert. Once he had left, he was done there for good except for family gatherings and holidays. Tess and he had made a life for themselves on the northern California coast in a medium-sized city by Oregon standards, and there Dan had made a name. He had even considered running for state senate when the party pushed him. In fact, some said that if Tess hadn't died, he'd probably be wearing his cowboy boots in Sacramento on his way to Washington, D.C.

  If he never went into politics, he was destined to one day lead his firm or another one like it. He was always popular with the court clerks because he never took himself or his successes too seriously. The judges liked him fine when he wasn't pushing the line on the rules of evidence or procedure.

  Dan still usually won at arm wrestling, never played golf, and drank his scotch neat if he wasn't having beer. Seldom if ever did he miss a 49ers game, and he never failed to analyze new players and game plans. Although he bet only in office and tavern pools, his track record at picking winners and spreads was nothing short of phenomenal.

  But Dan had struggled to maintain his winning approach to life after the loss of Tess. Previously he had been possessed of exceptional good humor; now he tended to brood while he drank his beer. He always had a sharp wit, but lately he used it as a sword rather than a foil. Light furrows of melancholy and little forehead lines cut by the anxiety of perpetual sadness gave his face a rugged brand of character that added years.

  His life consisted of small things: parent-teacher conferences, sleep-overs for his son, Nate, and his friends, helping out his sister, Katie, taking out the gar
bage, washing the cars, picking up groceries for Pepacita, roping a few calves, and tending his law practice. Every Saturday morning when he was in town, he went to a fried-eggs-and-coffee place overlooking the ocean and sat alone at the very table where he and Tess had dined.

  Sometimes he would remember Tess the wrong way- her lifeless body wrapped around the steering wheel of her car, reduced to a grotesque arrangement of flesh and bone. He would remember her just the way he had found her, still warm, just after a drunken driver had put the steering column through her chest in a head-on collision. The red lights flashing, pouring onto the rain-slick, shiny black street; the rank, bracing smell of petroleum; the blubbering, slurred

  "I'm sorries" of the other driver; and the hurt, cold and deep, and seemingly endless-all of it had clung to him.

  At first his friends said he had bounced back quickly- up early every morning, concentrating on his cases like never before. He had become quieter at work-a little more garrulous socially. But eventually the forced cheerfulness at dinners with friends became nearly real. People stopped giving him books about grieving and depression. Now he had a smile for most every occasion, a joke or two like usual, and he no longer had to pretend at every party.

  Dan had stopped seeing the counselor almost before he started. The counselor claimed that a man's life could become like an iced-over pond. A thin veneer on the surface that looked solid, but a man could drown if he fell through. "Well," Dan explained, putting on his coat after the last counseling session, "if I fall through, I'll swim on over to see you."

  It was a year after Tess's death that his father died, but Dan didn't feel like he had much more "stuffin' " to be knocked out of him, so he sucked it up and continued on.

  Muldoon's Pub stood five blocks from the downtown university campus, such as it was. As Dan had expected, there was only a light Saturday-morning crowd, most of it near the TV at the end opposite the fireplace. He found a booth far from the other patrons, in a dark and quiet corner of the room.

  He blew out the candle on the table, deepening the shadows. Without his cowboy boots he felt naked, but he had deliberately shed his little trademarks for the meeting. Remarkably, he had come without his hat.

  He asked for water and corn tortillas with salsa, no real drink, pledging to keep this meeting short and keep it sober. This rather brash cash-delivery plan was amusing, but it had to work and it had to be completed in absolute secrecy. Although he and Maria had never actually done battle in the courtroom, their jousting confined to pre-court skirmishes, he was rapidly becoming her nemesis. Still, context would work for him here just as it had momentarily fooled him with the photo. Maybe they'd have a talk before she came unglued.

  And then-five minutes early-Maria Fischer entered the pub ramrod straight, her stride measured and steady, searching for a tall gentleman dressed in a herringbone sport coat.

  This was not at all like the Maria Fischer he knew. Perfectly coiffed, she wore gold earrings and necklace flat against her smooth, bronzed skin, complementing the smart-looking silk blouse and tan business suit that she wore with all the panache of the French model who first took it down the runway. Her dark hair, with the sheen of its reddish highlights, made the most of the brighter light at the center of the room. Even a casual observer would have recognized her immediately as someone on her way to something important. But for a careful watcher, there was something more. It was vulnerability, a quality that, for Dan, had remained completely hidden in his observations of her at the courthouse and their encounter at the demonstration.

  He'd heard stories about her. That she'd studied law with a correspondence school while living somewhere around Fairbanks, Alaska, in a one-room cabin. That in winter there was no way to access her cabin except by cross-country ski, snowshoe, or snowmobile. That she had come out of Alaska to save the forests and for that reason alone she had become an attorney.

  People all agreed, friend and foe alike, that the woman's power came from her absolute guilelessness. She could be accused of being a zealot, of being overly passionate and too serious about everything, but no one doubted her absolute sincerity. Since in Dan's mind she was often sincerely wrong, that made her a particularly dangerous adversary.

  She paused, searching, and Dan waved, sticking his hand out of the dark corner keeping his face back. Natural, unpretentious warmth lit up her face. For just a second he felt an odd pang of guilt.

  "I enjoyed your lecture so much." She spoke their prearranged code sentence with perfect ease.

  "That's flattering coming from an attorney with your considerable speaking talents." He mouthed the correct response. In accordance with their understanding, he didn't rise from his chair.

  Dan searched her face, looking for any sign that she might recognize him in the gloom or remember the timbre of his voice. Looking into her unsuspecting eyes, he understood in a new way the extent to which, in another life, under different circumstances, his soul could have become mortgaged to the look of her. The soft light masked both the autumn gold at her pupils' edges and the light blue of her outer irises. She was waiting for him to speak next.

  "Well"-he tried a chuckle-"here's what you came for." He shoved the briefcase with his foot.

  "I just want to say how much we appreciate what you're doing." She paused as if such expressions did not come easy to her.

  "All for the cause," he replied as she took a seat. "Will you have something to drink before I walk you to the bank?''

  "Iced tea would be good."

  The waitress came through the murk to their dark corner. Dan ordered two iced teas, then changed his mind, called her back, and ordered a beer as well. What the hell, he might as well enjoy himself.

  "I would love to tell you about our work, if you have a minute."

  He responded by nodding, knowing that it would be safer to take her and the money to the bank.

  "My work is the wilderness…"

  Thinking Dan a city man, Maria gave him a verbal slide-show, enriched by Dan's own memories of exploring the mountains with his grandfather: an August moon, heavy and round like an ancient, knowing face, looking down on silhouetted peaks shouldered by jagged, granite ledges spilling down into the shadows above a river. There were rocky crags, crystalline waterfalls, and miles of white-water rapids, enormous gorges carved by the river, rock walls covered with mosses, lichen, and ferns.

  Dan studied Maria as she spoke, not hearing every word.

  The waitress came by, and Maria paused until she left.

  "Are you part of the movement?" she asked without warning.

  "Oh, I'm not much a part of anything."

  "You don't have to tell me, if you don't want to." The sincerity in her eyes felt like a weight on his chest.

  "I'm a nameless courier, in a darkened tavern, secretly passing cash in a briefcase."

  "I wonder, could I ask you to sit forward a little? I just can't see you back in that corner."

  He couldn't help but smile as he leaned forward.

  "Well, I'll be… Dan Young. You shaved your mustache."

  "Tell me something I don't know." He chuckled.

  "Oh and what could I possibly say to you, short of you giving me lots of money, which you are. I can't believe this. I'm speechless."

  "Doesn't sound that way to me," he said.

  "Now I feel completely stupid dressing up this way. Why are you doing this?"

  "I'm only a lawyer, just like you. They didn't ask me what I thought."

  "Why'd they send you?"

  "Nice smile?"

  "This isn't a joke, is it?"

  "The briefcase is full."

  "So what do you want?"

  "To give you the money, get a little info."

  ''Info? This"-she gestured at the briefcase-''is to help us get the Highlands Forest designated as a park. Lobbyists and court battles cost a fortune. Patty McCafferty and I and a lot of others are determined to save it."

  "Well, I know that." Dan had watched Patty McCafferty speak
in a voice that transformed her words into religion for the faithful. Maria Fischer's voice was a lesser instrument of that same fervor-a more interesting voice.

  "So how do you feel about helping our cause?"

  She waited for his response. He took the last gulp of his beer and contemplated the iced tea.

  "You want my views on another forest preserve?"

  "Well, maybe not."

  "Let's talk about it sometime when we don't have to go to the bank."

  ''I know I'm not supposed to ask. But why all the secrecy? Why doesn't whoever it is just write a check for such a huge amount and take credit? Not to mention the risk of loss. Isn't it just crazy to carry around cash?"

  "I guess I don't know, really."

  The waitress asked if they'd like something more to drink.

  "You?" he asked Maria.

  "Thanks, no."

  "I don't care for anything, thank you. Just the check."

  "It is an individual donor, right?"

  "You don't give up easily."

  "Well, maybe you guys regularly sneak around with cash paying people, but we don't."

  "I could take it back. Tell them you don't want it."

  "Yeah, right."

  "Tell me," he said. "What drives you to save an old-growth forest?''

  "It's still there. It's part of where we came from and what ties us to our past."

  "No. I don't mean that. What created this fire in your belly?"

  "That's a bigger subject than a beer and a bowl of chips. Listen, I know we said we'd both go to the bank, but I can handle it from here. The bank is just down the street."

  "You think that's a good idea?"

  "Nobody knows what's in here. It's just a briefcase. And I don't really want to be seen with you."

  "Ouch."

  "It's nothing personal."

  He gave her the I-don't-believe-you look with a little smile. "So would you meet me again in a dark corner?"

  "You get us another half million and we'll talk about it."

  Of course before she knew the courier was Dan Young, she had had many reasons to impress the man; she was talking to a big donor, after all, or at least the donor's representative, and the coalition desperately needed the money. But when she first saw him, there was more. She had felt him looking at her; he had seemed attuned to every detail of what she was saying-then again, maybe it wasn't what she was saying.