Archive of Our Own ^beta

My email is [email protected].
For Martha, who not only convinced me that there was a future, but bullied and begged until it darn well had a happy ending--and then had to beta it.

I Still Believe

I wake up before my alarm, in a dim room that seems too large and too bare. I'm just a little cold, so I reach down and snag the comforter. Across the hall I hear Jim moving around in the bathroom. He opens and closes the closet, rummages through the boxes we haven't yet unpacked....The shower hisses on, a contained rain that changes as he gets in. A thump, the soap falling. A quiet cough that goes on, stifled down so that it won't wake me. Even though, if he's checked, he knows I'm already awake.

I sit up, pulling my legs in and resting my head on my knees. Listening. The cough sounds better than it did six weeks ago when he started the medication. Doesn't it? No better since we'd been here--but it's only been four days. You couldn't expect an improvement in four days, could you?

Everything is going to be fine. A few weeks, maybe a little more.

I try to stop myself from thinking about what it will mean if I am wrong.

If I have selected the wrong solution.

Or am trying to implement it in the wrong place.

My alarm buzzes then, and I turn it off. Across the hall I can hear another buzzing, like the hum of an electric razor, but slightly higher, and I smile. Jim is getting downright cooperative in his old age; five years ago I would have had to nag. Now he doesn't even pretend to fight me most of the time.

I wait until he has completely cleared the bathroom before going in for my shower. My nervousness might show, and I want a few more minutes to collect myself before letting the sentinel look me over. Hell, I want to wash before he smells me.

It would have been nice to have two bathrooms. We're grown men, and the whole sharing the potty thing is the one part of this roommate business we can both do without. But we'd been kind of in a hurry to find a place, and Dorset County just doesn't have a huge real estate market. Jim talks about finding some land and building, but I know that when you do that the house is never finished. And then there's the whole building materials issue; treated lumber, fiberglass, sawdust. Stain. Paint. Carpet glue. Even if we hired a builder, I just know that Jim will wind up handling that shit....No. No house. I'll take second turn at the shower until they have to ship me off to the old folks' home, but I am not exposing Jim to construction.

When I come into the kitchen I'm in my new uniform. I skipped the whole uniform thing in Cascade--I had a set of blues for dress occasions, but I'd only worn them once a year or so. This uniform is brown. It says 'deputy' on it. I feel like Barney Fife.

Jim pauses in pouring the orange juice to shove a bagel in my direction. "You will never guess this morning's magic numbers, Chief. 110 over 71. I'd like to see your mother's guru beat that. I am the king."

"Hey! That's great!" The bagel is already sliced and the low-fat vegetable spread is open in front of me. "Um. You realize that is about the low end of normal right? I mean, you're not going to try beating your record or anything?" I have visions of Jim passing out in the patrol car and coming to shouting, "Did you see that? 90 over 40!" just before we crash into a tree.

"You just have no faith in me at all, do you? I'm not a complete idiot."

"No, just...competitive. Sometimes. A little."

"Me? No way. You must be thinking of some other guy."

"Right. Well, if you see that other guy, tell him I want to see the same numbers at the end of the day."

"Oh, you're hard. Absolutely ruthless."

"Yup. Ruthless. Totally without ruth. That's me."

He motions at my half eaten bagel. "Well, hurry up, O ruthless one, we don't want to be late."

The house is five miles out of town--three bedrooms, tiny lawn, no garage. It is white and too bland for Jim's taste, let alone mine. But it is quiet; no neighbors and off the road. The only other serious option was the Baptist manse (Ithaca Baptist has not managed to get a full time preacher for four years now), and while it is nicer, Jim was sure that as soon as we unpacked they would find a minister and we'd be back house hunting again.

We moved in on Thursday, and spend the weekend scrubbing and unpacking and repairing little things like the hole in the screen door. Jim's standards are anal, to put it unkindly. No doubt we would still be cleaning today, but we have a meeting with the county commissioners.

The Sheriff's Department is in Ithaca, which is the county seat of Dorset, but not the largest town. The downtown, both streets of it, is not new, but it's not falling down, either. It's kind of quaint. Which Jim has pointed out each of 4 times he has seen it. He points it out again as we pass the converted log cabin that houses the branch bank, and I say, "You do realize that it is a forty mile round trip to the nearest Wonderburger."

"I love a nice drive in the country."

"You are so hopeless," I say, because he expects me to. It took me too long to finally figure out the whole Wonderburger thing. For years I thought his attachment to greasy hamburgers and soggy fries was basically social-American consumer culture or machismo or rebellion against the restrictions of post-industrial health food morality. Something. Now I am pretty sure it is a sentinel thing. See, Wonderburger food tastes exactly the same in every restaurant, all across the country. For Jim, who tastes so much, having that much be totally predictable is an incredible relief. Following me so far? Now, compound that with the fact that Jim's control is highly dependant on his state of mind; if he is not worried about unhappy surprises, his taste buds are more likely to work properly, so there will be no unhappy surprises. I, myself, like variety, but I can appreciate the value of predictable and safe in a world of chaos and danger. It gives a whole new dimension to the concept of comfort food. I still tease him about eating that garbage, but I don't try to stop him anymore.

And, no. I haven't forgotten that it is garbage. I don't know what I would have done if it had turned out that salt did affect his blood pressure. I don't know what I'll do if his cholesterol ever does come back over 200. Maybe I should just be grateful for the small mercies, however long they last.

The county commissioners are waiting for us at the courthouse. They remind me of the school board from The Music Man. They squabble a little and finish each other's sentences and try to seem very professional. They don't sing. They do talk to Jim at length about the budget (I take notes), and show us the jail (which is in the basement of the courthouse), and the court room where the circuit court convenes (it's upstairs.) They seem as avid to have us now as they did when they interviewed us three weeks ago.

Up until recently, sheriff had been an elected position. But last year the town voted to go from 'dry' to 'wet,' and bars opened up in Ithaca and Bickford. Then the announcement came that the state was putting the highway extension right through the southern end of Dorset County, and the sheriff got up at a commissioner's meeting and announced that this job really needed a highly trained professional and he was not it. Well. He was nearly 70. I can see his point. So they held a special election to change the charter, retired their sheriff of over twenty years, and went looking for professional law enforcement personnel.

Reading their advertisement was a godsend. A miracle. Manna from heaven. Jim's last physical had only been a couple of weeks before, so he considered the problem relatively recent, but I had been watching things slide downhill for months. When he came home and gave me that handful of prescriptions I wasn't exactly surprised to find out things were crashing so fast. I suppose I was already looking for ways to stop us before we smashed into the bottom.

Jim stopped sleeping last May. He said it was the noise. I said, "You own six white noise generators." He said it didn't matter, because even when he couldn't actually hear what was happening, he still knew what was probably happening, and his imagination was usually even worse than the real thing.

He started to react to the antibacterial soap in the dispenser at the station (his hands looked like they'd been dipped in boiling water). He stopped going to sporting events--he said it was the crowds. And the noise. And the smell.

He stopped eating out. He got headaches. He made me change my deodorant four times. He snarfed antacids like they were the fifth food group.

July last year was very hot, and low pressure systems would just sit over Cascade messing up the air quality, which most of the time was pretty good. It hardly rained, but it was humid and sticky. People talked about ozone. Jim got testy and pessimistic and very picky about what he ate.

The thing about not eating and not sleeping and being depressed is that it screws up the immune system.

He got sick. Repeatedly.

Now, let's think about this. Headache and body aches and sore throat and post nasal drip and all that are miserable when you're not a sentinel. For sentinels, a really good round of influenza is comparable to the kind of torture that breaks hardened spies. And he can't take medication, either over the counter or prescription. He won't take Genjaka Indian's root. Niktabi is great, but if you take it more than 3 days in a row your body acclimates and it looses its effectiveness for several weeks. He can't dial the pain down when he's feverish, and aspirin (yes, he can take that) usually stops working in about two hours, even though you can't take more for four. So the fever comes back. And the pain comes back.

There is no relief.

Jim caught every bug that went through, and every one of them knocked them on his ass. And what did I have to offer him? Tea, mostly--Marshmallow tea, eucalyptus tea, ginger tea, green tea--and lots of capsules of herbal supplements. I would have given him Senquil, if I'd thought it would give him a good night's sleep. But swapping coughing and fever for audio-visual hallucinations wasn't exactly a good trade. He still wouldn't have gotten any rest.

Fall was bad. Winter was worse. Sick again and again, until by spring he hardly seemed to get better in between. By the time annual physicals rolled around I was just waiting for bad news. Maybe really bad news. Not Jim though. He walked in the door looking a little shell-shocked; apparently he had still been thinking it was just uncomfortable or inconvenient, and not a big deal.

He handed me three prescriptions for chronic bronchitis. Scary as shit, but not a surprise, not really. And we could cope--We have a plan for meds. I have a PDR, and after checking everything out for anything obviously incompatible with his senses, we start him on them one at a time, on weekends while he's home and I can watch him. The ones that don't work out, we cop to one of the traditional side effects and the doctor gives him something else. Reasonable. So far, so good.

The fourth scrap of paper was a high powered antacid. So. Jim's stomach problems weren't an ulcer. A surprise, that, and good news.

The next surprise wasn't good news. High blood pressure. Jesus. I hadn't even seen that one coming. Oh, Jim.

Oh, God.

That's when I knew we had to get out, and get out now. Being sentinel of the Great City was killing him. The first round of pills didn't make a dent in the magic numbers--I suppose he was just short circuiting them, like pain pills. The second put him to sleep for sixteen hours. I couldn't wake him up. He didn't get a third prescription. We did what I should have done immediately--what I would have done if I hadn't freaked. I bought a machine that measures blood pressure and started him on biofeedback. Four days later, he could drop it back to normal on command. A little more slowly, he's learning to keep it there.

And I started searching for small towns looking to add to their police force. Brown had gone to the academy with a guy whose younger brother worked for the sheriff's department in Dorset County. And Dorset County was impressed with our arrest record, even though it had plunged by more than fifteen percent since Jim started missing so much work. Yes, they'd hire both of us--ambitious up-and-comers weren't exactly lining up to move to the wilds of Central Washington. We were flashy. And urban. And professional. We'd be reassuring to a populace facing social change. We were hired.

And if they thought anything about the two of us relocating together...Jim and I were long past caring what other people thought. About that anyway.

Now, three weeks after giving notice to Simon we were here, wearing brown uniforms and being introduced to the Jailor (still an elected position, but the jail is only equipped to house ten inmates. Any overflow or anyone sentenced to more than thirty days is shipped off to the regional facility in Chelan).

The Jailor--his name is Marty and he raises champion Dalmatians in his farm just outside of town--escorts us next door to the Sheriff's Department. The building is fairly new, and someone has planted pansies around the flagpole.

We'd been here before, when we came in for the interview. The entire department is here now, though, nineteen deputies and seven support staff (which we share with the district court when it's in session). And a canine unit. They watch us warily--even the dog. If we have something to prove, it will be proved on their jobs. After everybody gets introduced, Jim shoos out everyone who is supposed to be on patrol or off duty and goes in to meet with the senior deputy. No, it's not me. It is a 50-year-old grandmother named Millie. She is on permanent night shift, since she stays home during the day to take care of her grandkids while their mother works. The kids are here now, hanging out in the tiny kitchenette scribbling in coloring books. It feels weird, after being in Major Crime for about ten years, to hear them arguing over who has the green crayon.

I look over the computers. The state distributed a new batch of tracking software last month, but no one's touched it yet. I can install it myself, but I doubt I'll have the time to teach anyone to use it properly. I know there was some money for training in the budget the commissioners just gave us. I'll have to talk to Jim about sending someone up to Tacoma for a seminar.

After Millie, Jim meets with Sherry, the office manager, and then the canine unit. Jim has never supervised a dog before. The handler is a blond giant named Elliot Shoemacher. While Jim is in with Sherry, Deputy Shoemacher pulls out a photo album. Doris's successes. Doris at the big pot bust at the high school (huge local scandal last year. Doris at last year's Fourth of July right after she caught two teen agers with illegal fireworks. Doris is cross trained. See? There is Doris ripping the arm off a practice dummy. And that is what Doris did to the arm of the pumped up perp who tried to hold up the hospital pharmacy and ended up taking two lab techs and a pharmacy assistant hostage. Really, from this angle, and with all the blood, you can't see the job she did on him. Maybe that's just as well. Oh, and here is Doris with the Ithaca County Elementary sixth graders on their field trip to the Sheriff's Office.

Doris is asleep under Sherry's desk. She is a large, dark shepherd mix, and with her ears flopping like that she doesn't look like much of a wonder dog. Elliot goes on and on, pointing out Polaroids of Doris's Greatest Moments. He looks at her with the same worshipful obsession I focus on Jim. Not that this is an observation I am going to share with him.

After the morning meetings, Elliot and Sherry take us out to lunch at a diner down the street. Mom's is classic small town America, down to the formica tabletops and the swivel stools at the counter. The waitress is my age, with the unclassic name of Brittany. She flirts with Jim, who is polite, but doesn't seem to notice that she is doing everything but leap onto the counter screaming, "take me now, big boy!" But he hasn't looked at women since last spring. March, I think.

In retrospect, Jim's libido was probably the canary in the mineshaft. It might have been helpful to start looking for problems then, but I don't poke around in Jim's love life. Well, that once, but Laura was a criminal and messing with him chemically. Other than that, I've tried to stay out of his bedroom. So to speak. From the beginning there was a quiet war between what I needed to know in order to make the sentinel thing work and Jim's need for boundaries. I did understand that--I mean, I knew I was in his face. After I met him, I dropped all my other lines of inquiry. He needed all my time, and he was my only informant. I lived with him, went to work with him--Imagine! the whole consuming scrutiny of participant observation turned on one man. He barely got to pee in peace. Even Malinowski--speak the language, live in the community, ask about everything, write everything down Malinowski who invented participant observation when World War I trapped him in the Trobriands and inflicted him on a couple really unlucky villages who have probably not yet lived it down-- had hundreds of informants to divide the burden of his irritating presence. And he went home at night to his own tent. I slept ten feet under Jim. His bedroom didn't even have a door. So I let him have that one scrap of boundary, and tried to leave his sexuality alone.

When Jim stopped dating, well, he'd been slowing down for a while. And he was going on 43, not a kid anymore. So I didn't worry about it and kept my nosey questions out of his love life. Even if I knew then what I know now, I don't know what I could have done about it.

Brittany throws herself at Jim (he is thinner and has a little less hair, but he is still beautiful). Jim is aloof and stiff, but scrupulously polite. I pretend not to notice that she is tall and broad shouldered and very much his taste. I try not to remember how his eyes used to narrow just a little when he was checking out a woman.

We've come to the right place.

Jim will get better.

After lunch we check out the town, introducing ourselves, getting the lay of the land. There is a hardware store--small, but it charms Jim more than Brittany did. I have to practically have to drag him out. A real Five and Dime, not quite driven out of business by the Something-mart over by the country line. A bank. A doctor's office. A pizza place--Jim is polite enough inside but outside he mutters, "Roaches, Chief, and you do not want to know what is growing under the sink in the kitchen." The phone company--sleek and modern inside, offering DSL connections and cellular. An antique store? I don't know how an area like this can support an antique store. If the little old lady behind the counter did not look so much like someone's grandmother, I'd think it was a front for moneylaundering. It's crowded with little china dishes and old jewelry. Jim pauses to admire a couple of pieces of furniture--we don't have enough to fill the house. I stare at a ghastly 1950's print hanging over the cash register. It shows a collie howling over the dead body of a lamb curled up in the snow. There are times I still do not get mainstream America. What kind of mindset would hang that up in the house?

When we finally get through the whole town, it's time to head home. We drive separately--I take my little Ford truck, Jim takes his cruiser. The commissioners want him to use it off duty. They want to see it parked casually by the Shoprite or the Five and Dime, remind the good citizens (and for that matter, the not so good citizens) that they have a sheriff and he could turn up at any moment.

I pull in behind Jim, just in time to see him climb out of the car. He is moving slowly, hunched forward and taking small steps. I wonder how much of the energy he showed today was faking and how much simply got used up. Even though I'm behind him, I have to slow down myself or I would pass him before he reached the front door. Inside, he sits down on the couch without bothering to remove his gun or jacket. "This thing is totally shot. I don't know why we bothered to pack it," he grumbles.

Methodically, I remove my hat, my jacket, my shoes. The heavy utility belt and my gun get locked in their drawer. I hang up the key. "You've said that before. I've agreed with you what? Six times now? We'll get another one as soon as we have time. There's a furniture store over in Bickford, isn't there? We need to check it out anyway."

"We can put off Bickford for a while; they're not our jurisdiction. They have their own police force."

"Hey, fine," I say, "but remember this next time you get annoyed at the couch." I pause, looking down at him. God, he looks old. I should touch him--who does he have for comfort but me? But he'll see that I'm worried, if I touch him, so I don't. I go into the kitchen to scare up some dinner. Is there ground buffalo left? Yes. Burgers then.

When buffalo started showing up in regular markets at accessible prices a couple of years ago it was a huge help. Jim says he doesn't like it as much as beef, but it's red meat and I let him have as much as he wants, so it makes him happy. It has less saturated fat than chicken, more protein then beef AND it's organic. What more can a man ask?

I cook. We eat. We take his blood pressure--grand moment, magic numbers--I accuse him of cheating. He accuses me of being a fascist. And possibly a communist. I explain why the ideologies are incompatible. He rouses himself to try to convince me that he has enough control over his bp to try caffeine again. He fails. We're in bed by 9:30. I try not to think about....Anything.

We spend the next three days driving around Dorset County. Up every back road. Past every winery and orchard. The trailer park south of Bickford. The Fish and Game Club's tiny park on the thin flood plain of Big Creek Canyon. Jim drives everywhere with the windows rolled down, staring out the windshield, not talking. I think this is a good sign. I hope it's a good sign. I have no data on what happens when you try to transplant a sentinel from one territory to another. Maybe you can't. Maybe Alicia Bannister was crazy because she wasn't bonded to a territory. Probably not, but maybe. Maybe the reason Jim's senses went underground after Peru had nothing to do with his culture shock, massive emotional trauma, and 'debriefing.' Maybe it was removing him from the Chopec Pass.

I don't think Jim knows what we're risking by leaving Cascade. He depends on his gifts now. As often as he wished them gone in the beginning, I think he'd experience loosing them now as a maiming.

But we couldn't stay in Cascade.

Maybe that's my fault. Maybe if I had a clue what I was doing we could have made the city work.

The thing is--and maybe this is pride talking, but I really don't think so--Sentinels evolved to detect minute changes in the weather, hear game half a mile a way, see the enemy across the plain, know when the water was tainted. They weren't designed to cope with a world where people manufacture poisons and have to regulate noise pollution.

And they are not designed for this kind of stress: war in tribal societies, when it happens, usually results in two or three casualties a year. Before industrial society, sentinels would be listening for a single scorpion, not a bomb that will go off to kill a hundred people. Nerve gas, serial killers, hard drugs, terrorists--the cumulative high stakes violence of a modern American city, and Jim always right in the middle of it. Always. Because his senses put him there. What can you do, when you're his back-up, to make this not be too much? What can you possibly do?

I think, in the end, we would have had to leave sooner or later.

So, here we are. Dorset County. Hopefully soon enough. Hopefully clean enough, and quiet enough.

And so far, things seem to be going pretty well. At home, Jim is up early and sometimes up late, staring out the windows or sitting on the porch. At night, he sleeps. He coughs in the morning, but not so much during the day. At work he roams the highways and rough county roads, practically ignoring me. Which I am almost positive is a good sign, at this stage. The calls we get--they're all I could have hoped for. A barking dog. Three teenagers shoplifting in the Five and Dime. A non-injury accident on Rt. 4. No serial killers, no criminal masterminds, no bombs.

On Friday morning we are at it again, parked at the side of a dirt road, looking down on Applejack, the smallest town in Dorset County. If you can call a gas station, a feed store, three houses and a live bait shop a 'town.' Jim is standing by the front fender, his eyes nearly closed. Smelling, I think. I haven't pried too closely into whatever is going on. What matters most, that I understand this transition or that it succeeds? So if he wants to stand there all day, ok, and I won't ask any questions.

The radio snaps and whines. "Sheriff, you still on County Road 4?"

I take the mic. "Bobbi, we left County 4 half an hour ago. If this map is right we're in the middle of an apple orchard." I have been trying to navigate. The way Jim drives, this would have been a challenge even if all the roads had been on the map.

"We gonna have to send Elliot and Doris after ya'll, Blair?"

"Very funny. We can see Applejack from here, and that is on the damn map."

She laughs. Bobbi's voice is low and sweetened with a broad southern accent. I imagine her as tall and lean, with creamydark skin and luminous eyes. I haven't seen her yet--dispatch operates from an office at the back of City Hall in Bickford. I remind myself that she is married and rub it in by saying, "Jack like the paella?"

"Thought it was fantastic. He did the happy dance." There is a short, awkward pause, and she adds, "Deputy San'burg, that did not come out right."

I get the laugh out of my system before I hit 'talk.' "Why, whatever do you mean, Bobbi dear?" I cannot quite match her accent.

"Um. Ok. Gettin' back to business. You're at Applejack?"

"Roger."

"Miss Lillian just called in, and said she has a rattlesnake in her basement."

"You're kidding right? No. Shit. No. Don't tell me there's no animal control!"

"We have an animal shelter. Volunteer." She sounds like she thinks this is very funny. "Take Turway Road west outta Applejack and go about two miles down the road. Miss Lillian's is a white frame house on the right next to the barn with the hex sign on it."

Jim gets back into the car before I can turn to tell him we have a call. "You heard?" He nods once and starts up the car. "Should we get some special equipment first, do you think?"

"Like what? It's no big deal, Chief. This isn't the right area for rattlers. It's probably a garter snake. I think we can handle it."

Miss Lillian meets us at the front door. I don't know what I'd expected, but it wasn't this energetic old woman with curly white hair and perfect make-up. "My, Sheriff, but you made good time. Seems like I just called! You boys come right in. The snake is in the basement--Perhaps you'd like some coffee first?"

Jim blinks. "Ah. Miss--Lillian? Do you have--"

Graceful smile, precise speech. "Mrs. Lillian Billings, actually. The children always called me Miss Lillian. I have a covered bucket in that closet, and here is a hoe and a broom." The hoe is spotless, and slightly damp. I think she has just washed it. Jim thanks her, declines the coffee and asks to be taken to the snake.

At the head of the basement stairs, he pauses. "You better stay here, Chief. Another body down there isn't going to help."

I shrug. I think I ought to be helping, making useful suggestions, at least. Can I think of one? Ah, nope. Ok then. I wish him luck.

He tramps down the worn wooden steps.

Miss Lillian and I wait at the top of the stairs. We can hear him walking, the occasional slide of furniture being moved.

I smile politely, knowing I should be able to think of something charming to say, but my mind is still on the snake. Before I can get it together, she starts to draw me out. How do I like Ithaca? Have I toured the vineyards yet? How long was I a police officer in Cascade? What did I think of the weather--did I know Dorset County averaged 300 days of sun a year?

"I always liked it when we covered the meteorology unit in class. Of course, it wasn't very sophisticated. But you have to learn about clouds and humidity and temperature sometime. And rain."

"You taught school?" It isn't much of a guess.

"Third grade. For thirty-five years! I'm practically an institution." We talk about classroom funding and Halloween parties and recording grades by computer. She grills me about all the places I've traveled, "I've never been east of the Mississippi or over the ocean, but I love to hear about all the wonderful places we talked about in geography."

My third grade class never had geography.

From below there is a muffled curse and a thud as something falls over. I check my watch. Twenty minutes. I smile resolutely.

Miss Lillian listens raptly as I talk about Irion Jaya. She seems to find me riveting, which is disconcerting, since I am usually the one who finds other people riveting.

Something else falls over below.

"Don't rush, Jim," I whisper. "Don't fight him. Breathe. You know where he is," I mutter at the floor and hope Miss Lillian doesn't think anything of it.

Thirty-two minutes from the moment he set off down the stairs, Jim is coming back up with a closed bucket of snake. There is an angry rattle under the lid.

"Not the right area for rattlesnakes?" I ask.

He smiles at me too sweetly and says, "Apparently I was wrong."

Miss Lillian invites us for coffee, and I am surprised that Jim agrees. In ten minutes she has his life story and has nearly convinced him to coach peewee football in the fall. I am stunned.

She lets us borrow the bucket. Which is good. The lid is taped down, which is also good. I set it at my feet in the cruiser and ask, "What do we do with it now?"

"Delicious," he says in Quechua.

"You're kidding!"

"Well, are you going to let me kill an innocent animal and then NOT eat it?" He is digging around in his pockets. I take his stomach pills out of the glovebox and hand him one.

"How'd it get in there, anyway?"

"Broken grate in the drain. I'll fix it when I take the bucket back."

As it turns out, we neither kill nor eat the snake. Central Washington University over in Ellensburg has a biologist who keeps snakes, and he is happy to take ours.

The rest of the day is wonderfully, marvelously boring.

On Saturday, Jim wakes me up at 5 o'clock. In the morning. He wants to go fishing. Yes, he knows where the fishing gear is. No, we won't need to bring more than a snack; with luck there'll be fish for lunch.

We take my little truck, since Buzzard Lake is supposed to be up this hellish back road up by the county line. Jim navigates, and he has no problem finding it. We park in a tiny gravel lot and unload our gear. The lake is at the bottom of a steep hill, the heavy trees cut only by a thin trail. Halfway down, Jim stops and motions for me to be quiet. Slowly, he puts down his pole and tackle box. A single, distracted "Wait here," and he is off again, faster and much, much quieter.

I do not stay there. I carefully put my stuff down and nip back to the truck. There is a gun locked in the glove box. As fast as I can, as quietly as I can, I rush back to catch up with Jim. Impossible, of course. He is kneeling beside the lake when I get to the bottom of the hill. I leave the trees slowly, my eyes flittering around, searching for danger.

As I get close to Jim, he turns, furious, half-zoned. "I told you to stay back! What's the matter with you? It's poisoned, its dangerous!"

I take a step back. "Jim. Man. Take it easy--"

He blinks, looking at my gun, my face. "Why did you--can't you smell it? The water's poisoned, it's filthy, it's--" he breaks off, having come back to himself enough to realize that I can't smell it. "It's polluted, Blair. Most of the fish are dead, the rest you couldn't eat. It's--"

I put the safety on the gun and put it in my pocket. For a moment I am too pissed to think. Shit, what do I do? "Are we in danger just standing here?"

"No, I ...guess not."

"Can you tell where it's coming from?"

"Nnn-o."

"Ok. Let's think about this."

Before I come up with anything, Jim takes off along the bank, tugging me after him. The lakeshore is rough and sometimes so narrow that we have to scramble and hold onto trees to keep from getting our feet wet. After about half a mile, Jim stops at a small creek emptying into the lake. He pauses for just a moment, then staggers back, bumping into me, almost falling. I wrap my arms around him and pull him backwards. He's shaking, and that scares me until I realize it's rage. Which, when I think about it, also scares me.

I push him down, onto a fallen log and get between him and the polluted tributary. "Jim, breathe."

"I'll kill them." I've seen rape victims who look less violated--Oh. Someone poisoned his territory.

"Jim. You're a cop. You aren't going to kill anyone. You're going to arrest them." Or something.

"What kind of--How could someone--" He didn't react like this to the Switchman! He's taken out terrorists threatening to kill millions of people, and he's totally thrown by a chemical spill or industrial waste.

I shake him, "Cut it out!" and he blinks at me and deflates.

"I don't know what to do here, Blair."

"Yeah, well, lucky for you, I do."

"So?"

"So. We find out where it's coming from. We get evidence. We nail their asses. We do not--and remember this, because the whole plan depends on it--we do not loose our tempers and screw it all up. Ok?"

"Ok." Jim stands up and looks around. After a moment he retrieves an empty soda can and heads toward the creek.

"Oh, no." I take the can away from him. "You are not touching that." I rinse it out in the water and scoop up a sample. The sample will not do for legal purposes, but we need to know what's in the water. Then we start the hike upstream. I keep Jim high on the bank, twenty feet or more from the water that kills fish.

Four miles later we are outside a small papermill at the edge of a scraggily town. Jim is trying to breathe through another round of mindless fury, but he's breathing fast and glaring bloody murder across the parking lot in front of us.

And we're armed, or at least I am. I have to admit, killing them all would be justice...Shit. I take Jim's hand and place it flat against the trunk of the nearest tree, and I step between him and the factory.

"I'm letting this go," Jim says between his teeth.

"No. You're not. We are going to nail these bastards and hit them where it hurts."

"How?" He doesn't sound hopeful.

"Well, first we have to get back to town."

We hitch a ride back to our car, collect the fishing gear and go straight to the department. "First we get the sample analyzed, we have to know what we're dealing with. While I take care of that, you get a map and figure out exact locations for all of this."

It turns out the paper factory is across the county line. Not our jurisdiction, which will make things a bit more complicated. But it's not like we're going to run in arresting everyone anyway. This is the kind of battle you win by deploying the EPA, lawyers, an environmental auditor, and strategically placed and photogenic protestors. And the media! I make a note to myself. What we really need is an expert, someone who hasn't been out of this business for a decade, someone with friends everywhere. I sigh. "Jim. I think we should call my mother."

If I didn't know it already, I could tell he was desperate because he didn't argue about that.

The rest of the day passes in a frustrating haze. Trying to get a government agency over the weekend is a bitch. Finding out who owns the factory is time consuming, but possible; computers don't care what day of the week it is.

Sherry gives us lunch--cardboard tubs of dried soup from the kitchenette. It can only be described as "amazingly bad," but Jim is too focused to care and I am too hungry.

When we finally leave, Jim is no longer actually rabid. Federal charges won't be as satisfying as bloody vengeance, but a hefty enough lawsuit will make them suffer much more than dying would.

We get home at about 7:30, and have sandwiches for dinner. There is some movie we've been wanting to see on cable, but neither of us can settle down enough to pay attention to it. I turn off the tv and send Jim off to check the magic numbers. He comes back with 170 over 115, and he looks ashamed, like it was something he did wrong, like it's his fault.

I shrug like it's no big deal and pull him down beside me on the floor. We stretch and breathe for an hour--I don't call it yoga, even now, although he knows perfectly well what we're doing. He's becoming quite good, actually, loosening up enough for some of the more advanced positions. He is cooperative and focused. When he stands on his head, I talk to him softly; he is so turned inward he might zone on the sensations inside his own body.

But when we take the numbers again, the little machine says 140 over 90.

We've got to do better than this, but I don't say so. I tell him he impresses the hell out of me, which is true, and I send him off to shower. 140 over 90 is borderline.

I spend the next two hours on the computer, most of that catching up on the notes for this week. The first time Jim caught me writing myself reports on him after the dissertation fiasco, he was so angry he seemed almost possessed.

"They're safe, Jim, I swear. They're not just password protected, they're encrypted. Jack recommended the program. Nobody but us will ever see them!"

"What the hell are you going to do with them? It's not like you need to prove I exist anymore!"

Where do you even start? I mean, when you go to the Trobriands you expect the locals to have no idea what you are doing, and that they won't believe you when you tell them, so you make a note of whatever explanation they give themselves and you collect your data and go on. Because your priorities just don't qualify as plausible motives for them. But I have to explain to Jim, because the priorities that do qualify for plausible motive for him scare the hell out of him.

I turned the computer around and pulled him down in front of it, even though he could have read the print from across the room if he wanted to. "I stopped documenting your existence in the first month. What I spend at least 5 hours a week documenting is what works and what doesn't. What your normal ranges are, what your endurance is, what circumstances are optimal, what causes interference."

"Oh, well, then. Wouldn't want to be sloppy about that--"

I did get angry then. Physically and hotly angry, and I let go of him and pulled away even as his eyes widened. "God damn you. Do you have any idea how--how complicated you are? Do you think I just remember everything? Every bottled water you react to, every food? Do you think things just pop out of my head? I have tables and charts and lists--" I tried to shut up then. I pulled my glasses off and put my hands over my eyes, but my mouth kept going, "I need these to take care of you, Jim. And, God, even you have to admit, I never screwed up on that part, I haven't fucked up the sentinel thing..."

He put his arms around me then, and began petting my hair. I wondered if he thought I was having a nervous breakdown or some kind of panic attack--and if it was something in my smell or my heartbeat that brought him to his conclusion. "The password's your pin number," I whispered. "I thought you'd probably want to change it, but we hadn't gotten around to talking about it. There are three files, one of them's called 'handbook,' it's the conclusions without all the data underlying them. Advice, you know. Lists. The other two, one is incoherent and the other one is fieldnotes, pretty tedious. But you can read them any time you want. I mean, of course you can."

After a while he began to shake. I wondered if maybe he was having a nervous breakdown, and how I'd know. I held him until he asked if I wanted to order pizza for dinner.

I don't know how much of the notes he's read. He's still pretty paranoid and controlling, but he also gets pretty freaked out reading about himself. I grew up analyzing everything to death, getting up close and friendly with my own issues. Jim, however, was raised....No. Let's not get started on how Jim was raised.

About the notes--he used to make additions, sometimes. Every few months I would find a paragraph or two waiting for me like the toy in a box of crackerjacks. But it's been a while since that's happened. He may not even open the files any more.

I finish by eleven o'clock and head to the bathroom to take out my contacts. Jim is still awake; the cough is worse than it's been in a while. I wonder if he is having so much trouble tonight because today was unusually stressful, or because his body is trying to cope with whatever poison was in that water.

I go to the kitchen and make some hibiscus tea, heavily sweetened with local honey. The valerian tincture in the bottle is at half strength, and I add only one drop of it. He's really wound up tonight. I wish I could give him something stronger, but I don't dare anymore. Certainly not when his lungs are kicking up.

He puts down the book he is reading (a county history) as I come in and wrinkles his nose. "Yeah, I know," I say, "but you need to relax. We have to get up tomorrow for church."

"You're kidding me, Chief. Church?"

I sit down on the bed and hand him the mug. "These people depend on you, Jim. You have to be part of their lives, and that includes praying with them. There are twenty-two houses of worship, it won't take all that long." Of course, I'm not really thinking about the good citizens of Dorset. I'm thinking of Jim. He needs to bond with the people to bond with the place, and it seems likely that there is a spiritual aspect to this. But there are still some things I don't come right out and say to him.

"Oh, come on. They'll think I'm hypocritical to attend a service I don't believe in."

"Nope. They will understand that you respect their beliefs even when you don't share all of them."

He gives me a dirty look because he knows he has lost and holds his nose to drain the mug. I take the empty mug back and run my hand once over his short hair. "Think you can lie down?" He lets me take away the second pillow and starts to stretch out. I nudge him over onto his stomach and push up his tee shirt to rub his back. His muscles are tight. I slow my breathing, knowing he will follow. For a few minutes we are quiet, and then he starts to cough, and has to sit up to spit into a tissue.

As he lies back down he whispers, "I'm not an idiot, Sandburg." And my guts freeze.

"Of course, not! I never said--Jim? Have I done--do I make you feel like, like it's your fault you got sick? Do you think I think--"

He turns over and catches my hand. "No. Not--" he can't look at me. "I just mean, I'm not an idiot. I know what's important. And what's real." He is talking so quietly I can barely hear him.

"Of course you do--"

He shakes his head. No. No. "I didn't. I used to believe...all that crap. About being a man, about not being weak, about...winning." He swallows, and I realize that we are talking about something very important, even more important than it looks, but I don't understand it yet. "I knew it in my heart somehow, I think, but I didn't listen...I didn't listen to my instincts. I--I traded gold for a load of horse shit." He takes a deep breath and raises his voice a bit. "Repeatedly. So you would be fair, if you thought...if you didn't know that I knew what was important."

"What's important, Jim?" I whisper.

He still won't look at me. "This a test?" And then he smiles at me. "You. Me. Us. This." He squeezes my hand. "The work we do. That's what's important."

"Yeah, Jimmy," I whisper. I finally get where all this is coming from. After that we're quiet again. He is not fighting the valerian, and his eyes are heavy. I sit with him until he falls asleep, and a little after that. I pretend that this is enough, that I can protect him, that I can make it all ok again.

As Jim pulls onto the blacktop road I pull out my copy of The Perfect Guest. "They're Baptist, Jim. It's probably going to feel a little informal to you, but really, it's very structured, if you know what to look for."

"I've been in a Baptist church before, Chief. I'm not going to embarrass you."

"Sure, you say that now. But Holy Virgin of Protection is Russian Orthodox, and you do not want to be crossing yourself like a good Catholic boy in there."

"Oh, come on! Why are you going on about this? It's not like you believe in any of it anyway."

"What are you talking about? I believe in all of it!"

He gives me a look like he thinks I'm screwing with his head and says, "You were an anthropologist, right? Well? Isn't all this just a social construction or something?"

"First of all, even if that's what I believed, or what anthropology thought of it, just because something is a social construction doesn't make it unreal."

Jim snorts.

"Marriage is a social construction," I say icily. "The law is a social construction. Music is a social construction. The concept of the all-you-can-eat buffet is a social construction. Name one thing that really matters to you that isn't."

His eyes flick to me and back to the road. "These senses."

"True. Fine. Leaving aside that the discipline of biology is a social construction, they are a biologically verifiable fact. But without a social context and a set of structures to provide control, what are they?" I don't answer my question, and I don't give Jim time to. "Even if--even if--I thought religion was a social construction, it's an important enough social construction that people regularly kill one another over it--and why am I even having this conversation with a man who has a spirit guide?"

He laughs at that. "Just because it happens to me doesn't mean I believe in it." Which is why I don't have spirituality conversations with Jim. But he lets me read him the entry under Southern Baptist without interrupting.

The next week we are on the evening shift, going in at four. We get off in the wee hours and stumble home for sandwiches and bed. By Wednesday I feel seriously sleep deprived, but Jim has taken to sleeping till noon. This makes me very happy--for him. For me, I pretend I am an undergraduate during finals week and get my ass out of bed relatively early. The schedule gives me time during the day to nag the EPA. Also, with Jim sleeping half the day away, I have a chance to do my own bonding with the territory. I leave the uniform and drive around in my little Ford pickup. Ithaca, the county seat, is not the largest town. That honor belongs to Bickford, which has three thousand residents, its own tiny police department, the hospital, a chain supermarket, 3 bed and breakfasts, two fruit packing plants, and a little candy factory. I tour the candy factory and bring back a batch of chocolate jellies for the girls working dispatch. Bobbi, it turns out, has long red hair. She is short and round in that southern way that isn't so much 'soft' as 'lush.' Magnificent, but not my type. Ah, well. She's married anyway. I go food shopping and pick up onion sets and baby tomato plants at the feed store. I finally install the new tracking software

I take water samples from every ditch and pond I notice. This business with Buzzard Lake has me nervous. There are lots of orchards and wineries around, and every flowering tree I see now makes me think of pest control. Yeah, half of them are advertising as organic now and the rest realize they have to be careful or they'll kill off the useful bugs with the bad ones...but what if? What if they're cheating? What if they make a mistake? The thought makes me mad, furious. Ok, yes, and also scared.

It's strange...I spent my whole childhood being carted from one environmental protest to another. Even after I grew up, I was chaining myself to redwoods with Janet Myers or picketing some nuclear plant inland. And that was...the right thing to do. Moral. Good. Important. Obviously and completely the right thing to do, and I cared, I did! I cared a lot! But this is--Oh, God, this is--!

This is different. This is Jim. It's not just a little patch of Mother Earth that's sick, it's Jim, and I can't deal with that. I'm scared.

I feel guilty that I seem to care so much more about my roommate than the biosphere, but there it is.

And I'm hysterical. I'm pretty sure. Blowing everything out of proportion. Because he is sleeping now. And eating. And he hasn't taken more than two stomach pills in the last week.

Ah. There. See this is the problem: this week. Jim is supposed to get sick this week. By Tuesday, actually, which is yesterday. He gets the latest bug every six weeks. Just long enough for the germ to mutate or his immune system to begin to forget or something. You can set your calendar by him. Or you could. I know: I've been taking notes.

Am I jumping the gun, hoping that things are already so much better? Because he's a day late?

Possibly not. When I meet him for whatever that meal is that you have at 3:00 just before going on duty, he looks sharp and alert. We order the special, catfish, and desert, homemade pie, and coffee (still decaf for Jim) which is not as good as Simon's was. He teases me for leaving the bathroom a mess. It is actually smaller than the bathroom at the loft, and we are still dividing up counter space. Then he starts talking about furniture. We need a new couch. There is an entire third bedroom, entirely unfurnished. Should it be a guest room, or an office?

I, of course, am ready to agree with anything he wants. He isn't coming down with something, he wants to shop. I am giddy. As anxious as I was this morning, I am floating now. Up till now, Jim's interest in the house had been confined to half-hearted complaints and slow, if thorough, minor repairs. Now he wants to shop!

It occurs to me that lately he's been like one of those babies that cry all the time and never lets their parents sleep. Never comfortable, never happy, never curious, hardly eat, don't grow. Failure to thrive.

Huh. Now, isn't that an ugly thought. See, I've been wondering for the past ten years where all the other sentinels were. Even through my numbers are based on guesses based on very thin data, even given that contemporary American society presents minimal opportunities for traumatic isolation (and what kind of civilization makes NO provisions for giving its adolescents vision quests, tell me that. It is just irresponsible.) There ought to be more sentinels. There ought to be some.

But what if I was wrong about the isolation being necessary. Jim's talents were manifest in childhood. What if that was the norm? What if even five percent of those failure-to-thrive babies out there can't sleep because the sirens across town are keeping them up? What if they are just stuck howling the complaints they can't explain until their misery makes them repress the senses or they, or they get diagnosed with learning disabilities because they can't focus on the world everyone else is living in. Or they just don't grow up.

For a moment, it is all I can do not to jump off the stool and storm out of the diner so I can find a library and start sifting through the pediatric literature. But I don't. Even if the information I found suggested I was right, it wouldn't be proof of anything. I still wouldn't know anything, wouldn't be able to do anything. And I really don't want to have to believe that there are thousands of baby Jims out there. Not now.

I don't want my pie, but Jim is happy to take it off my hands.

Jim is just finishing up when Bobbi calls on my cell: Is the sheriff with me? No, we aren't on duty for another twenty minutes, but can we come in anyway? The Bickford police are asking for help. At the edge of town, a little girl has wandered out her back door and into the woods. They just don't have the manpower to cover the whole hillside, and it'll be dark soon. They need the sheriff to call out the reserves...

Jim has heard both sides of the conversation. With one hand he digs out cash for the bill, with the other he takes the phone. He gets the address and tells Bobbi to contact Chief Anders and promise him our complete cooperation. "The day shift is not going off-duty. Direct them to the house. For now, the shift that's coming on gets assigned as usual. I want to see the situation myself before I call in the volunteer reserve."

Up a short, gravel drive is a tiny, white frame house fronting an orchard. All three of the Bickford police cars are already parked there, as well as four county patrol cars. Police Chief Anders, a little guy with a bad banty rooster complex, is pleading reasonably with an even smaller woman who stares resolutely at the ground, but seems not to be responding. Elliot and Doris are prowling the edge of the orchard, trying to find a trail. In the distance I can hear people calling--Mara? Martha? Marta?

For a moment I am somewhere else, somewhere precarious and malevolent. The child is not simply lost, but kidnapped for leverage or ransom and we are not trying to find her, but outthink some unseen enemy. Or--no, perhaps she is dead, killed by some roving madman who did terrible things to her first. Or it was her own parents or the babysitter? and they have hidden the body and thought up this story about the child wandering away. The woman with Anders is sinister, a dark and grasping witch--

Then Jim touches my arm to prod me forward and everything is normal and small and simply difficult instead of cold and evil and impossible. The sinking sun is still bright and warm. The searchers are optimistic and jazzed and a little disorganized. The woman is only frightened and desperate and ashamed that she could have turned out to be such a bad mother.

Anders greets Jim with bad grace, reminding me once again how glad I am that I chose to deal with my height with charm rather than aggression. He is trying not to look impressed by Jim's greater stature and larger unit, thanking the sheriff for his help in that way that reminds everyone just who is on whose territory. I am almost surprised that he called us in, but in a situation like this he will look very good if this has a speedy and happy ending no matter who actually finds the child.

For his part Jim graciously invites Anders to coordinate the deputies along with the Bickford police. Jim doesn't expect it to matter anyway, he's certain he can find the child before the rest of the searchers even arrive.

We head off in the direction Anders allots to us, but as soon as we are out of sight in the trees, Jim cuts north. He moves fast, purposeful and certain for a few hundred yards. He pauses, turns slightly, and takes off again. I stay behind him, close but quiet. He knows what he's doing. I can hear Doris barking in the distance, but I think this time she's not getting her picture taken. My money's on Jim.

The leaves crunch, sweet and damp and smelling of spring. We leave the tidy, open orchard for wild woods. Yes, this is why I like Dorsett County: because even the serious assignments involve a nice, peaceful walk in the woods, with no one shooting at you, no one threatening to kill millions of people if you don't outsmart them, no one bent on revenge, no helicopter chases, not a building, in fact, over four stories....

Jim stops suddenly, zoned, turning in small increments. I creep up to him. "Lost her," he says. Which is alarming--what if something happened to her?

I lay a hand on his arm. "Where was she last?" I ask, like she was a misplaced watch. But Jim closes his eyes and reaches for my shoulder. He's sweating. In the distance I hear someone shout, "Mara," and faint as it is, Jim winces. "Don't listen to the voices. The searchers don't matter."

He turns, slowly. Frowning. I am beginning to worry, seriously worry about what has happened to this baby, when he starts forward and then freezes again.

"Ok. Is something distorting the sound? Is she in a cave?" I whisper.

Jim comes back to himself just long enough to glance at me impatiently and then he fades out again.

Ok. It takes however long it takes. I'm not impatient. I am relaxed.

Jim tears away, running, totally focused. I stay right behind him as we race laterally along the hillside, trying to balance with one foot higher than the other, dodging trees. Doris's bark bounces off the hillside, distant but sharp and carrying well. Jim looses his footing and falls and then slides, and I only manage not to trip over him by grabbing a tree.

I have almost pulled Jim to his feet when Elliot crows over the radio, "We got her! Repeat, we found Marta! She's not even crying!"

I don't say anything as we hike out. The sun has gone behind the hillside and dusk is coming on fast, but with Jim ahead of me, I am not worried about the dark.

Worried about everything else though. He is limping; that leg hasn't been quite right in seven years or so and that was a hard fall and, and, and,

WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT? What just happened, anyway? What was Jim tracking in the wrong fucking direction and why wasn't it a little girl? I don't know. I have no idea.

Most of the trip back is taken up by me not panicking. He can't afford me freaking out. So I breathe in rhythm with my steps and pay attention to the ground and hang back, because Jim is giving off "don't touch me" signals...

Is he angry with me? Could this be my fault, somehow?

But everything started out so normal!

He's just thinking, sorting it out. Let him have some space. I am relaxed.

We are the last group in. Anders waves and checks us off his list. Jim waves back. One of the two ambulances the hospital owns is parked in the grass off the drive, and an EMT is checking out the little girl, who looks two and confused. Elliot is already showing Polaroids of Doris the heroic rescuer.

I manage to let Jim have the space until we get in the car. "Jim, do you--"

"No, I don't know what happened. No, I don't want to talk about it. No, nothing is wrong. Anything else?"

"Nope, that about covers it," I say easily.

We set up a speed trap on Old 97. It turns out that speed traps are actually more boring then stake-outs. Go figure. We pull over less than one an hour. The night comes on warm and damp, and with the windows rolled down we are inundated with the mating song of some kind of cricket or tree frog. They surround us in a teaming throng, chirping (croaking?) unflaggingly. Then seem almost to be rubbing it in--that they, at least, will probably be getting some this year. Unlike the rest of us.

We haven't talked about what happened during the search. Whatever it was that happened. He hasn't said much, but it isn't a bad kind of quiet, not even a cold kind of quiet, really.

At 9:00 Jim suggests we break for dinner, and I put down the radar gun feeling grateful for the change as much for the food. Jim gets the mini-cooler with the sandwiches I made this morning out of the trunk, and I think very hard for something neutral to talk about. "What do you want to do about furniture? That store in Bickford?"

"We could go up to Chelen this weekend. Hit something bigger."

"Hey, support the local economy, man. Besides, not this weekend. Your dad's coming up."

"Shit. I forgot."

"Next weekend, though. Or during the week; we've got graveyard next week."

"Ok, yeah." Jim stops and blinks at his sandwich, lifting up one corner to peek at the filling. "Remind me again who sets up the schedule?"

"You do."

"Oh, yeah," he smiles a little, "remind me to have a talk with me about that later." He discretely slides the sandwich back into its plastic box and nibbles a potato chip.

"I saw that. What's wrong with the sandwich?"

"Nothing. It's fine. I'm just not hungry."

"You still want the chips. What's wrong with the sandwich?" God, I am so tired of playing tempt Morris the cat. No, that would be better--Morris was at least consistent. But with Jim, what's NineLives one day is the cheap cat food the next. Then I follow him around begging him to eat, and he gets annoyed because I'm in his face--And I would just like to say that trying to decipher his randomly fluctuating culinary moods is not my idea of fun. "You can't just eat chips."

Jim zips the baggy shut and drops it back into the cooler.

"You can't not be hungry. You haven't eaten in five hours."

"Fine. You know when I'm hungry? You know what I'm thinking? The ham is too salty. It's inedible. A piece of shit. Are you happy now?"

"The ham is too salty and the potato chips aren't?" I can't believe we are having this conversation. Last month, ham--this brand of ham--was the only sandwich he would eat.

"Yes, the ham is too salty and the chips aren't! Do you think it makes a damn bit of sense to me, either?"

"So dial it the hell down and eat! I am so sick of playing this game!"

There is a horrible silence during which Jim withdraws inward and I realize that I have yelled at him for letting his uncontrollable senses inconvenience me. "Jim--"

"Is that what you think this is? A game? I'm dicking you around here?"

"No. Of course not. I just--I'm a shithead, ok? Ignore me, I'm a jerk. Look, if you're hungry, there's apples. Or eat the chips. Whatever you want. I'm sorry about the sandwich."

I hand him an apple, he hands it back. "I'm not hungry."

I swallow my response, put away the remains of my lunch, and pick up the radar gun.

Thursday and Friday go back to boring, which is good...but I am sort of down anyway. And there's no reason for it, because, like I said, boring is good. Thursday afternoon we check out Appleberry Furniture just outside of Ithaca, looking for couches. Jim thinks all the options are uncomfortable; I think they are all ugly, so it is a unanimous 'nope.' We break up a fight in the hospital emergency room on Thursday night (we were passing through town at the time and the tiny police force was dealing with an accident at the bridge) and patrol up and down Rt. Four. Naomi calls Friday to say that she has finally corralled the EPA into sending out an inspector on Monday, which is great, yeah, the best news I'd had in a while. And she has a friend who works for the biggest independent environmental auditor on the west coast--he can cut us a deal, but it will be several weeks before we can get on the schedule. I tell her to go ahead, although I don't know how we'll pay for private audit yet. I'm going to have to talk to the Commissioners, and maybe the Chamber of Commerce. Never mind. Once we get official proof of a violation, we can start organizing public protests and alert the media. Which is cool. I should be pleased. And Mom is coming up for the Fourth of July. Which is great news, really. There is nobody better to have at your back during an environmental mess. Although, heck, July is over a month away. Maybe the owners will have caved and cleaned it up by then. No reason why not.

And Friday night is quiet, too. Jim and I do paperwork in the office until dark, then go out and set up a speed trap at the city limits of Bickford, hoping to catch speeders coming out of the new bar. With any luck the speeders will also be drunk. Hauling in drunk drivers is more satisfying than I would have thought, and I am thinking it might cheer me up.

But, no, it's quiet, and the two speeders we get are only speeding. In between, we sit in the dark, not really talking to each other. Things haven't been right in a couple of days. If it would do any good, I would apologize, but I don't think this is really about me being an asshole for five minutes. And whatever it is, I can't seem to remember how to coax or tease or drag it out of him.

At 11:30 the teenage DUI we've pulled over produces a knife while I am trying to see if he can touch his nose. It's dark and Jim is over by our car running the guy's plates, but he sees everything. He takes maybe two steps before it's all over--the little shit is face down on the asphalt with my knee in his back. In one of my hands is the knife, in the other is the kids wrist. It will break if I push it two inches further up. I explain the concept of assaulting an officer before reading him his rights.

When we get home at about 1:30 Jim is still quiet, and watching me too closely. In my opinion, it wasn't even a very near miss. Hell, I was in tighter situations twice a week back in Cascade even when I was a police observer, never mind the 7-plus years I've been a cop. But if Jim needs reassurance, I'm not going to tell him it's unreasonable. I sit down on the couch (damn it, it still needs replacing, and there is only one furniture store within 30 miles and everything in it is ugly) turned half away from him. "Come here, Jim."

He kneels behind me. "Chief?"

I push the short curls up off my neck and lean back slightly. The neck concentrates smell nicely without letting it turn sour. "See for yourself, Man. I'm fine." He doesn't move, though, and I glance behind me. "Jim?"

"You smell worried all the time now, Chief."

"Yeah, well." I turn to face him and put my hands on his shoulders. "It's been a rough year."

"Not that rough. Not really. Not for you to be this upset all the time. And I have to wonder here, Chief, if there's something you're not telling me."

"About your health?"

He nods, but adds, "About anything."

"Jim, I don't tell you every possibility I think of. But everything I know for sure, yeah, I've told you."

"You watch me all the time."

"I've always watched you all the time." But I understand what he isn't saying. I don't want to worry him, but if I keep things from Jim, he thinks he's being manipulated. Given his history, this is reasonable... and yet, despite his history, he wants to trust me. He knows in his head that he can. Kneeling here so close to me, asking me--he's trying to trust me. He's trying. He's asking me to make my behavior and his information match, and I can do that. "Jim, I'm going to be a little hysterical sometimes. I'm in love with you."

He flinches and then goes very still. I squeeze his shoulders. "You knew that."

"It's been almost ten years."

I smile. "It's been more than ten years."

"I've wondered--I've wondered why you never did anything."

"It wasn't what you wanted."

"You could have...."

Oh, yeah. I could have. I may try to stay out of Jim's love life, but I know him better than anyone else. And I know his senses. And he does love me... I could have seduced him. And afterward I probably could have given him a framework to make sense of it, a way to cope. "Surprised I had it in me? That much restraint?" I have to swallow. "It wouldn't have been right."

A short, unhappy pause, then, "because you were studying me?"

"Not really." There are a lot of very good reasons why anthropologists don't sleep with informants. It is a bad idea, even in the few respects that it isn't actually a flat out dishonorable thing to do. But that isn't why I never seduced him. "I probably could have been convinced to scrap the project about six months in, for the right incentive." I try to smile. "If I could have thought of a way to keep my ridalong."

"Then why?"

I think about the endless months I spent trying to stifle my hard-on and my pheromones. God, it had felt like I was about to die. At any moment. Or split in half. Or explode. The only thing that got me through thinking about Jim had been thinking about Jim. He had been a mess in those early days--zoning almost every day, headaches, food that went from tasteless to five-alarm between bites. And even though I'd been in lust with him at first sight (well, not first sight, actually. For that first day and a half or so, all I could think about was 'sentinel!' and I would have worshipped him if he'd looked like grandma Moses) and infatuated with him since he'd unstrapped me from Lash's evil dentist chair, and in love with him--head over heels, desperately hopelessly in love with him--by the end of that first semester....he'd needed so much then. "I was your teacher. Your back-up." It would have been as bad as if I had been his doctor or his therapist. Worse even, because you can change therapists, and I was the only person in the world who had a clue what was going on with him, the only person who believed him, even. And if I were sleeping with Jim, then a huge chunk of our relationship would be about me: what I wanted, what I needed, what I felt. And if I were so blinded by love, so desperate with lust that I could barely sleep and expected to spontaneously combust at any moment....well. What would I do when I was so angry I was ready to spontaneously combust? What would I do if I felt hurt? Or jealous? Or whatever? Jim deserved better than a guide who was depending on him for sex, comfort, and emotional validation.

He deserves better than this now, but my hand runs over his hair, possessive, affectionate. His friendship is the thing I treasure most in the world. "It's enough," I say. "This is enough."

It is a lie (sort of), and he knows it. I pull him into my arms, hug him hard. "Jim, listen. I'm glad I didn't try it. Because I would have fucked it up. I'd have lost you. But look! You're still here. I still have you."

He is holding me, too, clinging to me, like he's desperate, like he's a little kid. I hold him back, hard. He's going to say something. He's going to apologize now, and how will I explain that his apology doesn't even make sense? Because even if I don't have everything I ever wanted, I have more than I ever hoped for. Much more.

But when he talks, he says something else entirely. "I...know I haven't been much fun lately."

Oh. That. I know what he means. He's barely been here, lately. Jim has sort of wandered away and left an exhausted, testy stranger who lets me make all the major decisions. Except I know that Jim is actually in there, my Jim. And that he's so ephemeral because he's miserable all the time. Softly, I say, "From here, it looks like it's getting a little better?" He doesn't answer me, and I rub my cheek along the top of his head. "How does it seem to you?"

"It's better. It is. But--I can remember before...God, Blair, how long has it been?"

"'bout a year."

"Just a year?"

"Jim, if this isn't working, we don't have to stay here. I'll take you further away than this. Canada. Peru. Something. Somewhere quiet enough, and clean enough."

"No. No! I'm ok. I just--tonight. You know? He had a knife, and I was so slow, and you..."

Jim doesn't say anything else, and I shake him gently. "Hey. I'll have you know, you weren't that slow, I was just that fast."

"Oh, is that it?"

"Yeah. Well, that or you're just getting old." It turns out that last crack wasn't funny. Jim gets very still again. Damn. Ok. Be the damn guide, Sandburg. I force myself to relax, leaning on him just a little. I breathe in, feeling the movement in my stomach, feeling the floor beneath my feet. Relax. I center myself, taking Jim with me. "Jim, I'm sorry, but it's going to be a little longer. You've done such a great job so far, and I'm really, really," I have to drop my voice here, because I have no right to be proud of him, Jim was magnificent long before he met me, but he needs to hear it, "proud of you, and I'm sorry I can't just make it all go away right now. But I know you can beat this if you hang on a little longer. I know you can do that. Just don't let go." I don't let myself think about how sorry I am that I can't do any more for him than this. I only let myself think that I believe in him.

"I know. I know. I just. I feel like I've been fighting forever. You know? When do I get to win?"

There is no way Jim's dad will find us on his own, so Jim has gone to meet him in town. I wander around the house censoring the books and straightening up. Jim has repeatedly forbidden me to change anything for his father--my clothes, my cooking, my counterculture tastes. And the old man is very polite to me--he never comments on my clothes, my cooking, or my counterculture tastes. He even has me call him 'Bill.' But I still put away the most telling signs of what he would consider deviance.

I vacuum and dust, glad for the chance while Jim is out. Even when he has the energy to do house cleaning anymore, he ends up wheezing afterward. My socks are scattered around the bathroom. Again, damn it. My sneakers are by the sofa. I don't remember how they got there, but I put them away, pretending that I don't mind being tidy. On the coffeetable--two law enforcement journals, a yoga magazine, an old copy of Green Egg, and one, two,...five alternative health journals. I move them all to the book case. In the cd changer is Susan Werner's Last of the Good Straight Girls and the latest hive-rock from Blind and Bloody Ex-Husbands. Yipe. I take them out and put in some classical, in case Jim wants background music later.

They arrive at last, later than I expect. Bill is carrying wine and commenting on the town--it's quaint. Real small-town America. He looks at me hard, and I realize that he's wondering what I miss about the city. Surely not what he would miss, the country club and the fancy restaurant over on Fifth and Vine. But he knows I must be missing something, and perhaps he imagines it is the Ethiopian restaurant on Sixth Street or New Years' in Chinatown. For a moment, he looks a little pitying, and I look at Jim instead.

Jim is carrying a very large, flat package tied with string. He is looking smug. "Chief, wait till you see what I've got."

"Where did you get it?"

"Dad wanted to see the town, so we walked around some. The antique store was open." He is tearing off the paper, and underneath is that idiot fifties print from over the cash register. "Isn't it great?"

"You're kidding," I say, because he must be. It's too ugly, too stupid. Too horrifying.

"You don't like it?"

He looks deflated, but I can't even pretend to like it. I shouldn't--if I encourage him, he'll try to hang the ghastly thing in the living room. "Like it? Jim, it's a picture of Lassie and a dead lamb."

"What, no, it's--Dead? It's not dead, Chief. Just, well, sleeping. Lost or something. See? The sheepdog is calling for help..."

I try to see it that way. There's no blood; it might not be dead. Just a baby lamb curled up in the snow. Snow? I must have been in law enforcement too long. The whole serve and protect thing, because all I can see is a failed guarddog and a dead baby sheep. Maybe I'm thinking of little Mara Whittaker, and what could have happened if nobody found her. It makes me a little sick.

But we have company. "We'll talk about it later," I say. "Bill, can I get you something to drink?"

We show him the house, the tiny back yard, the tomato plants I put in at the edge of the woods. We chat politely. Talk about local politics, but not in any detail. Brag about the weather: I can't say 300 days of sun too many times. We start dinner. It is all very....pleasant.

The potato salad is almost done when Jim goes out back to throw the steaks on the grill. Bill finishes opening the wine and just stands there, looking at me. "Can he hear us?"

I glance at him once, over my shoulder and go back to measuring mustard. "If he's listening."

He thinks for a minute, digesting this. I resolutely measure mustard: See? I don't know anything. I'm not causing any trouble.

Despite the signals I am sending he pushes ahead anyway. "How is he doing?"

"Why don't you ask him," meaning, I won't discuss him with you.

"I'm asking you." The voice is not nearly as forceful as the words. I remember, despite myself, that this man is Jim's father, and that just because he never did it well didn't mean that he never loved him.

"He's fine," I say, because it is mostly true.

"He's not. He's lost weight. He's had that cough since Christmas. What's wrong with him?" It feels like he's trying to press me, but he doesn't look threatening. He looks whipped, totally lost. And why not? He knows he's fucked it up. As far as Daddy is concerned, little Jimmy juggles stars and shits sunshine, but they are careful and polite with each other, not warm and affectionate. They are not at war anymore, but they are not at peace either. I look at Bill and I think, 'Yep, here's your example of eyes that are wiser. I guess we all know what William had to lose before he lost his illusions.'

And I also think, 'you son of a bitch, if you had just given him a little support he wouldn't have needed me. He wouldn't be struggling now, he'd be ok.' But that thought is unfair. And unkind. And I don't even know if it is true.

He loves Jim. He's bad at it, but he loves him. His eyes are scared. "Don't worry about it. We're taking care of it."

Bill stares at the floor. I wonder--will he try to push his way in? But he just sighs. "You know--if you need anything, if there's anything I can do for him--"

God, sometimes I really hate him, handing out drops of too little, too late bullshit to the wrong person. I want to say, 'Wanna help Jim? How about touching him sometimes. Did you even shake his hand when he met you in town? He's a sentinel, for crying out loud! Touch has tremendous power over him, and the only people he ever touches besides me are the criminals he is arresting!'

Which would be a shitty thing to say, since poor Bill is doing the best that he can, since he must have been working up his nerve all day just to talk to me. I really can't imagine them hugging more than once a year.

And, hell, losing his illusions cost Bill a hell of a lot more than losing mine cost me. It's easy to judge when you've escaped the worst.

Besides, if I have to get Jim to a rainforest somewhere, I'm going to need Bill's money. Jim is above asking for help, but I sure as hell am not. "Thanks, Bill. I'll let you know." I think I manage to sound polite.

Jim comes in with the steaks just then.

Dinner is pleasant. Jim doesn't talk much, but Bill is charming. He must have been one hell of a business man, really. He tells good stories. Last week a zoo transport truck got into a minor accident on the Heighly Overpass and the police and animal control spent the next four hours trying to round up three escaped moose. To continue with the animal theme, he tells the story of Sally versus The Evil Genius Mouse. The incident took place when Jim was about nine, and involved a series of complicated and unlikely traps because Sally refused to call an exterminator or put down poison. I wonder if she refused the heavy chemicals because she was protecting Jim. Jim brightens some as his dad talks about Sally. She is retired now, and living with her sister across town, but Bill promises to bring her next time he comes.

Bill does not spend the night, and leaves fairly early because it is a long drive back. Everyone is pleased with this--there is only so much nice we can stand.

I wash the dishes while Jim puts away the food. The windows are open, and the spring air is cool, but dry and sweet. I feel good. I feel like I'm home.

But.

One little thing to take care of, and I can't put it off, or Jim will think I'm keeping something from him.

Although, frankly, the reason I don't want to talk about it is that I am too tired to think an awkward discussion and a possible rehashing of Jim's childhood sounds like fun.

But I can't put it off. "Jim?"

"Hmmm?"

"Um, your dad--"

He looks up from the leftover steak he is sealing in Tupperware. The only one who didn't finish was me, and even if it wasn't buffalo, I'm glad Jim ate all of his. "Yeah. I heard."

"Oh." I am relieved. "Ok." And then, because I feel I should say something else, "He really is proud of you, you know."

He shrugs, and for a moment I think I've said the wrong thing. But then he sighs. "I'm ok. Really. You don't have to do this."

"'This'?"

"This. Play peacemaker. Be kind. Whatever. I'm fine."

"Ok. Right." I rinse the potato salad bowl and put it in the drainer. "You know, we could have your dad and Sally for the Fourth. My mom is coming. We could have Simon, too. Make it a real party."

"You realize we're working on the Fourth. It's going to be some party, with the hosts patrolling downtown."

"Just that Friday and Saturday. And not for 24 hours straight. Besides, most of the fun will be in downtown in Ithaca. The carnival. You know, all the civic events. They'll be downtown, we'll be downtown. We'll all have lots of fun." I remember something. "Oh. About the Fourth."

"Yeah?"

"Well, you've sort of volunteered to judge the turtle race."

"You're kidding. They race turtles? How do they get them to run in the same direction? And wouldn't they all kind of, well, pull their heads in when the gun goes off?"

"Well, no, actually, it's a ring, I think. The first one to get out--"

"Chief, when exactly did I volunteer for this?"

"The other day I ran into Miss Lillian at the grocery store," I begin.

"Never mind, I've got it."

"So, um."

"It's fine. Don't worry about it. But, ah, Sandburg?"

"Yeah?"

"It's ok. You don't have to try so hard. I'm bonding to the new territory just fine."

"Oh. Ok." There is a short silence while I stare at the clean dishes. "Ok then. Good."

"Yeah."

"So...you've been reading the notes."

"You said I could."

"Sure. Of course. I just. I mean, any comments? You know? Anything I've missed?"

"No. They're fine."

"Oh. Ok."

He pats me on the head as he turns out the light and leaves the kitchen.

The next day is Sunday. This week: Pentecostal.

A bit more Pentecostal than I expected, and I think, halfway through the service, that it was a mistake bringing Jim here. It's just too...exuberant. People are smiling, the choir uses a guitar and tambourine. There is no speaking in tongues, much to my personal disappointment, but there's still a lot of energy. As long as I've known him, Jim only goes into a church for police funerals. And he's stiff: he's not ready for this.

But he stands (or sits, in the part where you sit) through the whole thing as calmly and respectfully as you please. And afterwards he shakes hands with the preacher, makes polite conversation with all the older women who swarm around him making mothery noises. He's pretty cool, actually.

He doesn't say anything on the way home, though, even when I try to make conversation. I write it up to tiredness until we're halfway home when he drops a bombshell in my lap.

"I saw the panther."

I swallow. Sometimes the spirit guide predicts disaster, sometimes it just accompanies it. "Oh. Where?"

"In there. The whole service."

"Oh." I swallow again. "What was it doing?"

"Nothing, really. Just...Hanging out."

I am sweating. "Any idea what it wanted?"

"No. No, I just thought...I'm just telling you."

"Ok." I think. "Did you want to go back?"

"No, not really."

"Oh. Well. Keep me, you know, informed. You know."

He nods.

Lunch is tuna sandwiches. Jim eats. He even talks, suggesting we start having people from work over for dinner. As soon as we get a new couch. Everything seems fine.

After lunch he goes out to putter in the living room while I wash the dishes. I need to think. Normally I would look into the spirit guide thing, push, start some serious meditations--except he is meditating quite a lot now anyway and the last two days have been approaching good. Do I really want to start pushing right this moment? Let the man have a break.

I decide on that. A break. We can go outside, do a little yard work, trim the bushes out front, weed the tomatoes. And then we can take a nap, since we are on graveyard this week and it starts tonight, and damn it, I am going to want the sleep.

I am on my way out to tell him when I see it. Jim has put up the picture. In the living room. And it's just too much, the dead lamb hanging over the couch. "Ellison! What the hell is that sentimental, 1950s, whitebread piece of crap doing on the wall."

He blinks, and smiles a little. "Tell me how you really feel."

I'm mad enough to want to rip it down, to throw a tantrum. To throw the print. But I am a grown up. Grown-ups don't throw tantrums about art. "We don't." I say, trying to sound annoyed and not hysterical, "Decorate. With dead sheep."

He frowns, like for the first time he has realized that I actually don't like the painting. "It's not dead," he says, like it's obvious, like I'm delusional to suggest it was. "It's not dead, Chief. It's just zoned."

There is a tearing feeling that leaves me breathless. A horrible moment when all the meanings spin. When the world makes sense again, I am flying through the back door. The screen slams with a bang behind me as I bolt past the barbeque and over the narrow patch of grass. The ground hits my feet hard and uneven and then I am in the woods, still running.

Because that lamb is gone, ok? Clearly, it's been dead for hours. Days, maybe. That collie is way too late.

But Jim looks at that picture and sees that there's still time, that Lassie is somehow going to come through and save the day. He thinks the dog is somehow going to guide that baby home.

I trip. I fall hard. I get up at once, because I know Jim is listening, and he'll follow me if he thinks I'm hurt. He may follow me anyway....I catch myself against a tree and press my hand over my mouth. I'm not going to get far enough away that he can't hear me. Oh, God, what am I doing? Jim doesn't need this! What am I doing?

Of course, I realize as I puke all over my hand, I know exactly what I'm doing. Blair Sandburg is nothing if not in touch with his feelings. This is not about Jim's decorating. This is about all those months last fall as I watched him get quiet and tired and sick. I handed him bee pollen and echinacea and dithered about What To Do. Not admitting to either of us that I was scared.

Still scared. God. I'm scared.

But throwing up with no way to rinse your mouth out, and nothing to wipe your hand on but a tree is better for hysterics than being slapped.

It's a long walk back to the house, and Jim doesn't meet me on the way. I wonder if this is good or bad. I stop in the bathroom and clean up, before going back to the scene of the disaster. The print is off the wall and a rectangle-shaped, garbage-bag-covered lump is leaning against the arm of the couch. Jim is sitting in the chair, staring at the floor. He's not zoned, but he doesn't quite look at me as I come in. I clear my throat and sit down on the couch. "Um. Sorry about that."

He nods. "Thing is, Chief. I'm not too good at mind reading. You wanna tell me what that was all about? Because I really don't think my taste is that bad."

I can't tell him the truth. What would I say? I can't deal with your mortality? I can't deal with my responsibility? I can't handle doing my best day after day and making so little difference? "It's ok. Don't worry about it. I...I won't do that again."

"If I had to guess...The only thing I can think of...are you--Have I done something?"

So I have to tell him something. Because he always jumps to the worst damn conclusion when you don't tell him the truth. And I want to tell him. The hard part of this is doing it without leaning on him, and I can't lean on him. He's carrying too much right now as it is. "I just--get a little bit freaked out by how much you trust me, ok?"

"Oh. Yeah. I get that. I get freaked out by how far you're willing to go for me."

I nod. But Jim's not done. After a short pause he goes on, "I used to wonder--you know--what you--what you wanted--in return."

Not a surprise. I know Jim. Besides which, it was a fair question, which makes it so hard to answer. I want a lot. I want it badly. For a while, before last year, I had it. "I got what I wanted," I say.

"Well, yeah. I figured that out, eventually. I do have a clue about what's important, remember?"

I nod. I'd like to say something encouraging or comforting, but I can't open my mouth.

He gets up and sits beside me, even on the hated couch. Leaning back, he pulls me against him. Shit. He only holds me this close when there is something really wrong with me. I am going to have a hell of a time convincing him that I'm fine, since I'm not. But I sigh and lean into it. The last time he held me like this was eight months ago or so, when some car-jacker got me on the shoulder with a baseball bat and Jim was positioning me for maximum use of an icepack.

"I miss the way you smell," he murmurs.

I remember what he said the other day, about me smelling scared all the time, and open my mouth to jolly him out of it. The crack about my socks dies when I see his face. Ok. Reassuring, not funny. "I've been thinking about that. There are a couple of detox teas that might help. It really is just a matter of chemicals."

He goes hard under my hands. "Don't. Just don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Go all...competent. Professional."

"You don't like it when I'm competent?" I am still trying to tease him. I can't understand--why won't it work?

"I'm not talking to someone competent. I'm talking to my friend. I'm not talking to my nurse or my God damn Guide."

Shit. I'd better be the guide just now, because if I'm his friend, I'm going to start crying again. I try to smile gently. "Jim, you better be talking to your guide, because even in 2006, men do not talk to their men friends about how they smell unless they're trying to tell them to use deodorant."

I'm congratulating myself on keeping it light when his face falls. "God damn you. Do you think I'm an idiot? Your pet throwback? You think because I'm not sleeping with you, because you can't smell it on me, that I don't love you?"

"Jim, no--"

"You think I don't care that you've given up your life? Again?"

"What--Oh, no you don't!" I check, but I'm not shouting at him. Not shouting, even when I'm angry, has become a habit. "Don't you take that away from me. That was my choice--hell, it was my idea!"

"Because you always wanted to live in a really small town? The quaint heartland of America? You can't date three women at a time here, Sport, because they'll notice, and you sure as hell can't do anything else! Not while you're working for the county--"

"Excuse me!" I explode away from Jim, angry, really angry. Angry enough to hit him. "How dare you!"

"I didn't mean it like that."

"How did you mean it?" But I can see it on his face. He's sad for me, and kind of frightened. Ah, hell. I go back and squat in front of him. "How can I make you understand? I'm--"

"Don't tell me you're ok." He's still upset, angry.

"Fine. I'm not ok." And I smile, because I know Jim, I know what he needs to hear right now. I know how to end this peacefully. "I'm also not going anywhere."

"I know that," he says impatiently. "It's starting to mess me up, actually."

Huh?

"Blair... I haven't been fun for months. I'm not a decorated detective anymore. I'm barely competent as a sentinel. I'm not the man you fell in love with when you were twenty-five and given to hero worship, ok? But--here you are. Anyone else would have said, 'well, that was nice, wasn't it,' and shipped me off to the woods to be a hermit somewhere. Alone. But here you are, and you still..."

He stops. He can't look at me now, and although he's shaking he isn't even trying to do focus breathing. I don't know what to say. I've been managing him for more than ten years and I don't know what to say.

"You're still here, only you're so scared and so sad, and I don't know how to tell you, you aren't alone, either."

He's doing really well, actually. Better than I was ready for.

When he's like this, he stuns me. He can be so much brighter and stronger and saner and--and braver than he has any reason to be, than anyone raised by that timid, distant stranger who came to dinner last night has any right to be! I want to give him everything. Anything. But it seems like I already have. And the kicker is, he has finally figured out how to accept it.

Actually, I see what he meant about that messing him up. I have no idea what to do now, either. I've never managed a Jim Ellison who wasn't afraid.

And then he says--get this--he says, "When you're upset, you need to come to me. Friends talk to each other."

I stare at him.

He blinks nervously. "Right?"

I clear my throat. "Oh, yeah. That's right."

And he smiles.

I say, "So, wait. You've been waiting for the last, what six years? Seven? For me to wander off or something?"

"Well, no. Not exactly. Not precisely." He snakes an arm behind my back and pulls me toward him, leaning down so that his face is close to mine. With his other hand, he nudges my face to the side and smells me. Slowly, from my right ear to my left armpit. "Oh, yeah. Much better."

"Not exactly," I repeat. For a moment everything is very surreal. The world where I am a middleclass white male in law enforcement and must respond to another male taking such liberties with my person by breaking his arm collides with my hippie upbringing and the casual co-ed cuddle piles at Music Festivals in San Francisco during my early twenties. And somewhere behind all of that is ten years in anthropology where you have to turn your own boundaries off and dance if they say dance and drink sour goat's milk if they say drink and shake hands when they shake hands, even if their 'handshake' seems a lot like copping a feel. Whatever. Literally.

And--God--I love him. His ear is about an inch and a half from my mouth, his warm hands are pulling me forward, keeping me balanced. Everywhere he touches me I burn.

It is almost like vertigo, this moment of puzzlement, this multiple valance. It only lasts a moment, and then I am with Jim. Jim, my sentinel who tracks my mood and my movement by my scent and my heartbeat. Jim, who has trained himself to me--which is good, actually, because my essence saturates everything around him, and I would drive him crazy otherwise.

It's not even hard to turn my own desire off.

I bend my head further to the side and offer him more of my neck.

He doesn't take it. Instead, he moves down to sit cross-legged on the floor beside me. "Close your eyes," he says. "Try to relax." He is just close enough to be barely touching, and then he puts his hands on my shoulder. And sits there, not talking, just breathing slowly--

Oh.

He's taking care of me, trying to help me meditate.

And that's...sweet of him. I appreciate it, I do--

He closes his eyes.

And grounds himself.

He's like a pillar, a fucking tree!

Holy shit!

And takes me with him.

And it's like--

That moment of stillness--

Fearlessness--

The crystalline quiet where you can look at --everything. Yourself.

It usually takes me hours to get to this moment. Not that I've been there lately.

--for a moment I don't think anything--

When I do think something I notice that my head is in Jim's lap. "Hey."

"Hey."

I am about to tease him about going all guru on me, but from what he said before, he doesn't need it. His self image has taken a lot of hits lately, and his ego seems fine, so he can probably handle acting like some hippy, touchy-feely, meditating flake without me downplaying it. I just smile instead.

He checks his watch. "Why don't you get some sleep? We go on duty at midnight."

Turns out Sunday nights hereabouts are big for domestic disturbances. Between midnight and 2:30 we get four calls, two of them involving drunks screaming obscenities at each other and two, teenagers knocking each other or their parents around.

I pretty much skipped the whole domestic disturbance thing in Cascade. The brutality and pettiness are amazing. After the last one, a woman whose ex boyfriend showed up drunk, yelling to wake the dead, never mind the neighbors, and demanding money and whom she beat senseless with a frying pan (he wouldn't press charges for assault, she wouldn't press charges for trespass, and the neighbors--presumably the people who had called us in the first place--didn't want to get involved), I said to Jim, "This is just unbelievable. If people acted this way to strangers in the street it would be a crime. People would get arrested. But it happens at home and everybody acts like it's ok."

"I'm not acting like it's ok. I would be happy to arrest them," Jim growls. He has a headache from all the yelling, and, I suspect, from the really appalling hygiene in domicile number 3. He lets me drive, but the rest of the night is quiet, and after a couple of hours we go back to Ithaca to do paperwork.

After our shift I get exactly three hours of sleep before having to get up to go meet the man from the EPA. Jim, it turns out, can't come. He has a doctor's appointment in town.

Shit.

I'd forgotten all about it. I mean, poof. Gone. Totally forgotten.

How do I forget something like that? God, I must be losing it.

Jim can't afford for me to get careless.

He tugs on my hair before I can wind myself up too tight. "I'm a big boy, Chief. I can go to the doctor by myself."

Not the point, not at all, but I promise myself to do better and pretend to let it go.

Jim drops me off in front of the courthouse where the federal--looking sedan is already parked. The EPA guy is--shit--a kid. He hops out of the car, calls me 'Mr. Sandburg,' and pumps my hand. "Hope I'm not late, got held up by a road block on I 97. Wow, you're way out here!" He talks as we get into his car, through town, and all the way to Buzzard Lake, pausing only when I have to give directions. He's been with the Agency for only about a year; he doesn't usually get out into the field, but there was a rush on this job: "You must know somebody, 'cause we're short staffed with a three month backlog. I don't know how you got pushed to the head of the list." I hear about the budget, the cases pending in Central Washington, the dearth of fast food restaurants in the area...Where can he get the energy?

He's careful, though. He takes samples at the lake, at the creek, and all around the paper mill. "So--pen? Thanks--you ran a preliminary sample? What did you get?"

My feet squelsh in the mud as I follow him through the boggy field north of the parking lot. "Phenols, mostly. A little ammonia."

"Oooh. Nice. Personal favorites of mine." He pops a sample into the bag and passes me the pen again.

His sarcasm is not reassuring. "It's nasty stuff."

"Yeah," He frowns for a moment. "But the clean-up isn't all that expensive these days. You could be looking at a lot worse." But he has to reach over a dead frog to fill the next sample container. "Pen?"

It is almost five before he drops me off at the house. Jim is already there. He pokes his head into the living room as I come in the door. "Chicken all right for dinner?"

"Great." I slip out of the muddy shoes.

"How did it go with the EPA guy?"

"Brad. Just fine. He said to expect results in about three days."

"That's good."

"It's what comes next I'm thinking about now."

"I thought the media and protests came next."

"Well, yeah. But I'm not sure if I should be the one organizing them. I mean what kind of example is that, a deputy inciting civil disobedience?"

"Who are you and what have you done with my partner?"

"No, really. These things can get ugly. I don't think I want the county government involved in that part. For a lot of reasons."

Jim shrugged. "Give it to Miss Lillian, then. She must know everybody in town."

"You're a genius."

"Yeah, I know." He heads back into the kitchen and I pad after in my sock feet.

"So how'd it go with the doctor?" Did that sound casual enough?

He pulls the chicken out of the oven. "Man's an idiot. Living in the dark ages."

"Um. Oh?"

"I admitted I was controlling the BP with biofeedback and not the pills and he acted like I was practicing home surgery." He methodically begins to flip the chicken.

"Oh."

"So I told him to take it himself. He did, it was fine. And he said, get this, that it didn't matter. That according to the records from my last physical, it was too high and too unstable to trust to 'irresponsible alternative medicine hooey,' and if I didn't get with the program pretty quickly I'd be committing suicide."

I take a deep breath and roll my shoulders. With the Anazar Jim was unconscious for sixteen hours. I spent that day sitting cross-legged beside him on the bed, pretending to read a munitions manual. "It's your body. If you want, you know, to try it their way... If you think he's right, you know I'll help you find one that works." I swallow.

"Are you crazy? The man's an idiot. He took my numbers six times, and I called it within two points every time. I don't need their drugs for this." For emphasis, he shoves the chicken back into the oven and slams the door.

"Uh, I'm sorry. You what?"

"I'm doing just fine with the biofeedback. The man's a fool if he can't see that. And I'm taking enough crap for my lungs without adding a prescription I don't need."

"No. Um. You 'called it' six times? You knew what your blood pressure was before he took it?"

"And I varied it more than 20 points. If that's not proof of control, then I don't know what is."

"You know what the numbers are without using a monitor or having the doctor take it."

"Sure. Usually. If I'm centered."

"And you can control it yourself? To within a couple of points?"

"Isn't that what you wanted?"

"Isn't that...what I...wanted."

"I can't do it every time. It's easier if you're there."

"And you can control it?" Isn't that what you wanted? Shit, Jim. I just wanted you not to be sick. "Ah, what is it now?"

"About...122 over 86."

"You're sure?"

"Do you want to measure it?" He looks a little hurt.

"No, I'm just surprised. This is really impressive. I'm, I'm impressed. How long have you been able to do this?"

"Consistently? Well, today."

"Oh."

"But I've been really close for a few weeks now!"

"No, I'm impressed. That's amazing."

"So we'll have to find another doctor, because I'm not going back to that quack."

"Of course not." I could go get the monitor and test him. Twenty or thirty rounds might satisfy me.

The phone rings and Jim goes to answer it. When he comes back he turns the chicken off. "Grab your uniform, Chief. We're on."

Shit. There goes dinner. I pull a package of little tuna cans and a bag of crackers out of the cabinet. "What's up?"

"Breakout at the Chelan Regional facility. They found a car stolen by the prisoners crashed up by Chatt Canyon. Dorset County. The state police are asking me to call out the reserves."

"Civilians with guns. My favorite thing."

We are dressed and on the road in under seven minutes.

The sides of the road are choked with police cars of both the blue and the brown varieties. The captain from the state police pounces on us almost as soon as the car stops. He wants those county reserves. Reserves have been a big deal in these parts for years, and especially lately they've gained some notoriety for their help with problems in the national parks. But although they are pretty well proven, as far as Jim is concerned civilians are entities you protect, not what you send into the woods after escaped felons.

While Jim haggles with the state police I snag a copy of the files on escapees. Oooo. Donald Grey, writing bad checks. My, that's a lot of bad checks. Were you trying to deforest the Pacific Northwest all by yourself? I look at the picture: little, wiry, scrawny guy. Reserves? Heck, the Scouts could take out this guy. Smart, though, maybe. He got away with it for a while.

The next escaped con isn't such a weenie. Gregory Strom. Repeat offender. Assault, mainly. He beats the shit out of people with anything handy, apparently--brass knuckles, bricks, two-by-fours. Oh, my. Awaiting trial for attempted murder. With a tire iron.

The two of them got out early this morning, probably in a food truck. The blue Toyota with its hood crushed against that big pine tree was taken at about 9:00 from the parking lot of a Walgreen's.

They are probably Armed And Dangerous.

Elliot pulls in. With Doris, naturally. Elliot looks confident and excited... I hate him, the smug bastard. I hand him the rap sheets while Doris sucks up to Jim, shamelessly whining and licking his hand. Tell me she doesn't know who the boss is. Well. At least she is graceful enough not to gloat.

Jim nudges me, and we get back into the car. "So?" I say.

"We're hitting the houses up and down Big Creek Canyon."

"Ok, yeah. We were there last week. Strange: neither the creek nor the canyon are big." I reach down beside the seat for the map. Elliot, grinning amid the growing clot of state police and deputies, waves. I wave back. "You know, pets are really good for health-lower blood pressure, boost the immune system, relieve stress..." I point at Doris. "Animals like you. We have the space now."

"Chief, I have dog slobber all over my hand. It's disgusting. I'm seriously considering amputating, here. Do we have any of those baby wipes--Oh, thanks. And they shed. And they stink."

"Well, ok, I can sort of see that. Maybe a cat?"

"They also shed. And just how many times a day would you have to clean out the litterbox to keep me happy?"

"Right. Ok. Fish?"

"They don't even use a litterbox."

"Ah."

The houses here are spread out, sometimes clustered two or three together, but mostly standing alone. We have only been through this area once; I would worry that we might miss a house, if Jim wasn't Jim. He spots all the hidden driveways, all the narrow tracks. We stop at each house, go up to the door, speak to the people. Most of them have not heard about the escape. I do the talking, Jim listens to make sure that everyone is calm and honest, that there isn't an extra heartbeat pounding just out of sight. In the car, in between, he checks in by radio.

A little A-frame. Two trailers, close together. A big, new house, a summer place for someone, still empty this early in the year. We've been out for an hour when Jim stops in the tiny yard as we walk away from a worn, 1970s ranch. He turns his head toward the hillside, the steep side of the little canyon.

"They're up there. Lost, I think. I can hear them talking."

"How far up are they?"

"I don't know." He nudges me toward the back of the cruiser. "Get the rifle and the emergency supplies." He reaches in through the window for the radio, "Bobbi, this is the Sheriff. I'm up at the Archer place off Big Creek Canyon Road. We have a report of two suspicious campers up on the ridge."

I add the tuna and crackers to the backpack that holds the emergency supplies. I check the first aid kit, the batteries in the small radio, and the MREs. I check the ammunition for the rifle. Overkill? Only if you haven't spent much time wandering around in the woods unarmed and hungry with people shooting at you.

Jim comes around as I am closing the trunk. "So?" I say to him, "What did they say?"

"The state police want me to wait for back up. He's made it an order."

"Poor guy going to be disappointed?"

"Hell yes. It's my county."

"Right." I follow his gaze into the mountains. We are in the foothills of the Cascades. They're not big enough to be dramatic, but they are big enough--and steep enough--to be inconvenient. This is private property, but there is a small national reserve about five miles away. They'll be hard to find if they go deep into that. Worse, though, there are houses close by. Route Four is just two or three ridges away. Lots of people live along there.

Jim pauses at the house to tell the Archer family what we're doing and to expect more police. Then we start up the hill. It's hard going; the grade is about sixty percent and the ground is slippery with old fallen leaves. For twenty minutes we are as much crawling as hiking, my trip made more awkward by the backpack and rifle. Finally, it evens out from 'cliff' to 'just murderously uphill.'

The sun slips behind the ridge on our left. It isn't dusk yet, just deep shadow. It seems suddenly cooler, but that has to be all in my head. Jim...isn't quite right. He's quiet and intense and moving fast, which is normal for Jim in the woods. But he pauses for half a second every five minutes or so, and he's not moving in a straight line. And I have no trouble keeping up with him.

Then, after one of the pauses, he makes a couple of false starts. What's confusing him? Another tentative step forward that doesn't get completed. Hell. "Jim?" I nudge him. "Ease off a minute."

He looks at me blankly and then deflates. With his hands on his knees and his eyes closed he pants. I swing off the backpack and fish out a water bottle. "Here."

It is a moment before he can drink and he only takes a little. Even as he hands it back he's frowning at the trees again. "Jim. Jim."

"Yeah. Ok."

"How're your numbers?"

"One-eighty something over one-forty-nine." He says absently. He blinks. "Oh."

I put a hand on his shoulder. "Can you fix that?"

He nods and leans into me a little. I give him a full minute and then hand him back the water. He straightens and drinks. Giving me back the bottle, he turns his head to look around--and closes his eyes.

"Jim? What is it?"

Whispered, but angry: "It's too big. There's too much here, too many. I can't find them."

"Jim, you've been in the woods before. Just filter it out. You know what you're looking for."

He sneaks a glance past me, then stares resolutely at the ground. "I can't. They want--I'm supposed to relax now, and I can't. I can't do it here." He gets this report out fast and quiet. He doesn't want to talk about it. This is bad.

"Jim, you've worked in jungles. Don't tell me a little hillside is screwing you up this badly."

"It's too much."

"Like hell. I don't know what's going on with you--"

But he's not listening. He's looking past me. "I can't." Whoever he's answering, it isn't me.

I put the rifle down and take his face and both hands and turn his face toward me. Please, God, let this be a sense thing and not a health thing. Because if it is a health thing, I am probably making the wrong choice. "What are you supposed to do?"

"Relax."

I shake him a little. "So? You're practically a professional at that. You could give lessons. If it were a competitive sport, I'd not only enter you, I'd bet on you." I try to smile.

He's panting and shaking a little under my hands, but he collects himself enough to answer coherently. "You don't understand. There's too much here. If I stop fighting, it'll...it'll drown me." He swallows. "And those men--I can't find them. They might be close. If I relax, Chief, if I try to deal with this, this place...They'll find us. I have to stay in control. I have to protect us..." He shudders hard and looks past me again. "I can't. Leave me alone." I turn my head, but I don't see anything.

"Jim? Jim? I'm your backup, remember? The person who watches out for us when you're working your deal?" I slid my hands up his shoulder until I can touch the skin just above his collar. "Nobody's gonna sneak up on us. You're not gonna get lost."

"You don't understand."

"Yes I do. You have to stop fighting."

He doesn't say anything, but his breathing slows down a little. Somewhere nearby must be water, because the crickets or treefrogs or whatever start up.

Jim steps back. "Pick up the gun."

"Ok."

He steps to the side, so he's not in my face, and grabs a handful of my belt. Not tight. And closes his eyes.

I force myself not to focus on him. Somebody has to keep watch, so I watch. It isn't so dark that I'd miss two guys in orange jumpsuits sneaking up on us, but the trees here are close together and they limit visibility. I listen. As hard as I can with my normal human ears. A dry wind shushing in the tops of the branches. The crickets (or whatever). I turn my head slowly back and forth, trying not to think too much about Jim. As long as I hear him breathing, as long as he's holding my belt, he's fine. He's fine.

You don't understand. There's too much here. If I stop fighting, it'll...it'll drown me.

No. It won't. This is what he evolved for. It's a different kind of territory than Cascade, but he'll adapt. He's fine.

Some kind of bird flies by, startling me. It doesn't make any noise, so maybe it's an owl.

He's fine. Still. Relaxed. The grip on my belt is loose. He's fine.

I look around. Still just trees.

Suddenly, Jim tugs my belt once and takes off at a dead run headed uphill. I scramble after him.

No hesitation, no little pauses now. He runs, and even though he hasn't got his speed back, he does a better job than I've seen for a while. His legs are long, and he never once puts his foot in the wrong place. I am barely keeping up. He crests the top of the ridge and angles northwest, still without pausing.

My radio spats as someone tries to raise us. "Not now!" I snarl into it. "We're close!" Which may not be true, but I cannot talk and run, and I dare not stop. There's no stopping Jim.

The evening is clear and cool and growing darker. I stumble more than once. Just as I am beginning to worry Jim turns, catches the front of my jacket, and pulls me down into the black shadow of a fallen tree. I fall half on top of him and we cling to each other, gasping. "Close," Jim whispers. He coughs into my shoulder, trying to be quiet. I hold onto him with my free hand, trusting him not to have landed us on a nest of rattlers.

"Fifty yards. That way." He positions my hand, showing me a direction. "They're in a tree." He chuckles. "They're afraid of bears."

"Oh, yeah. Very funny."

"There are no bears."

"You said that about the rattlesnakes, man." I suddenly feel less secure kneeling on the ground.

Jim shakes his head slowly. "No bears." And he is absolutely sure. I swallow hard.

Jim turns, peering over the log, then slides back down to whisper in my ear. "You're going to go forward, that way, until you reach that big rock." I start to lean up to look for it, but he pulls me back down. "You'll find it. It's big. I'm gonna circle around, and when you're in position, bring them out of the tree. If we're lucky, it'll be tidy. If they run, they run toward you. Got it?"

I swallow and nod. I wish, suddenly, that we had waited for back up. Jim squeezes my arm, takes the rifle, and slides past me, disappearing into the shadows. I sigh and ease over the log, creeping forward as silently as I can. Quiet, that's the thing. Speed doesn't matter. Jim will know when I'm in position.

After a forever of taking slow steps that seem to crash in the gathering darkness, and sharp sticks that seem to reach out to stab me, the rock looms overhead. I lean against it and crouch down. "Ready when you are," I whisper.

Jim's voice comes at once, less than twenty feet away. "All right, boys. This is the Dorsett County Sheriff's Department. Throw down your gun and climb down out of the tree."

Three shots, two from ahead and above me, one from the rifle. One short yell. I jump, straining to see them, Jim, anything! I can't see anything, and for a moment all I can hear is my own breathing.

Jim's voice comes from a completely different place. "Gentlemen, you are not getting another warning. Throw down your gun or my next shot knocks somebody out of the tree."

A clunk and rattle. Cursing. The rattle of leaves, branches. A small, wiry man eases into view, with a bigger man half falling gracelessly after. I ease out from behind the rock, my weapon trained on them. Jim appears behind them--out of thin air, like a stage magician. "Assume the position. Up against the tree, there." A predatory chuckle. "You know the drill."

The little guy, Grey, puts his hand on the nearest tree and leans forward. But not Strom. He spins and leaps at Jim, trying to come in under his aim. Jim catches him on the point of his knee, and, as Strom staggers and charges again, reverses the rifle and clubs him hard on the shoulder. Strom goes down, but Jim loses his balance and falls, too. Hard, with his leg twisted under him.

Strom starts to rise again, but his head isn't even a foot off the ground when his eyes meet the barrel of my gun. His eyes rise a little further, meeting mine, and then he drops back down onto his face in the leaf litter.

On my left Jim rises slowly, panting a little with pain. I want, more than anything, to go to him, to touch him, to ground him. Jim, aiming his handgun at Grey, who is still in The Position, takes two careful steps sideways and reaches out to lay his hand flat along the trunk of a tree. He breaths in and straightens, suddenly standing easily.

I've seen him center himself before, but that was...fast.

Careful of his line of fire, I carefully search and cuff the prisoners. When they're secure, Jim retrieves the rifle and the handgun our prisoners had, and we turn the radio back on. The state police have a party coming up from the south. Jim catches my eye and nods to the side. The posse is a bit off course, but Jim can find them, even if they can't find us.

Going down is harder then going up--in the dark, with two prisoners who have their hands cuffed....We're careful. We take it slow. Jim goes first, I go last. Twice I call a stop to pass around the water bottle from the backpack. And finally--finally--even I can hear the police, see the tiny, bright dots of their flashlights.

Since the state has jurisdiction, Jim and I don't spend half the night doing paperwork. We go straight to work, though, after we finish dissecting the manhunt with the gathered law enforcement of three counties. Speedtraps, until after midnight, and then a long meeting with Millie, the nightshift supervisor. Dinner, grabbed in between, is the plain canned tuna and crackers.

It is daylight long before six. We don't go home until shift change at eight.

I am so tired that my eyes and calves burn. It is all I can do to fumble the door unlocked and stumble in ahead of Jim. I chuck my jacket and utility belt at the coat rack, and shed my shoes and shirt on my way down the hall.

My gun is on that belt. Shit. I go back to the door, move my weapon to the drawer, turn the key, hang the key on its hook, and head back down the hall, this time dropping pants and socks in my wake. My step hitches as I get to my room. Jim is face down on my bed. On the bottom sheet. With the covers snarled around his ankles.

Ok.

It's only a double bed, but he's left me room, so I climb in. "You ok?"

"Uh, huh."

"Numbers?"

"Uh, huh."

I heave my eyes open. "Numbers?"

"Um. Bottom number is 'bout 82."

The bottom number is the important one, and 82 is fine. So. What the hell is wrong with Jim and why is he making me work for it at 8:35 in the morning? I nudge him with my elbow. "You ok?"

"M'fine."

Obviously not, or he wouldn't be in my bed. But a part of me has noticed I'm being stupid. If I were awake, I would be thrilled--whatever he needs, he's come to me for it, without hesitating or apologizing or waiting until he's falling apart. But I'm too tired to read his mind. I nudge him again. With a grunt he captures the offending arm and drops his head on my shoulder. Whatever he needs, it can't be too urgent, because he's already snoring. Good enough: I stop trying to stay awake.

When I wake up, the room is bright with late afternoon sun and I am pleasantly over-warm. Jim is hiding from the light by tucking his face into my armpit. Would have thought the smell would be worse than the light, but hey.

His hair is near my face, short and dark brown and grey here and there. Beautiful. His weight is pleasant against my side. It's hard to hold still, to resist petting him, but he needs the rest. And he needs to be sure that he can come to me, even like this, without me groping him.

He stirs against me, clears his throat.

"Morning," I whisper, although it is not.

He lifts his head out of my armpit, leaving my arm feeling cold and too light. "Hey." He clears his throat again, and slides his hand along my stomach, up under my shirt. Warm, his hand is warm, and slow as it combs through my little hairs.

Shit. It's arousing, and he'll smell it on me.

"Don't," he whispers. His right hand is straying lower and his left hand is in my hair. I wonder, don't what? but he's leaning over me a little, watching me with more than his eyes. "Don't stop yourself. Not unless you want to."

For a moment, all I can think about is profound relief: I don't have to short circuit this desire. I can feel it.

He leans further down, and I think he's going to kiss me, but no, he puts his cheek close against mine. It is sweet and lovely and hot and I want--

And this is the part where I usually stop myself from wanting. What comes next if am actually allowed to feel it?

Jim's hand slides between my legs and then slowly back up. I am filled with--What? happy fire? Happy rain? Frolicking kittens? Nothing feels like this, nothing. Nothing describes this except perhaps being thirsty and then drinking....or having an itch and then scratching.

I can't do this. I can't do this to Jim.

He kisses me. His mouth is softer than I expected. Gentle, careful, slow.

I have been in a desert forever, and here is water.

"What do you want?" His voice is inquiring, but his eyes aren't. His eyes are hungry. He wants.

I want. My arms slide around him, and he fits. His hands slide over me, and I know the shape of them. He has never touched me like this before, but I know his touch. This is right.

This is wrong. Jim's been sick. He's just getting some energy back, starting to feel good. And he's come to me because he trusts me. He loves me. He knows he'll always be welcome here. And he is. (Oh, God. Jim strong and relaxed and warm in my arms is the most welcome thing in the world!) But he hasn't decided to change our whole relationship after more than ten years. Tomorrow he'll be feeling even better, and he'll be looking at Brittany over at Mom's Diner.

His hands pause and I look up. His face hovers just above mine.

So what, if this doesn't change anything? I haven't been sitting on my hands year after year hoping things would change. I have been waiting for the last year for Jim to recover from being testy, exhausted, and overstimulated--and look! He's smiling.

He's slept, he's rested, and he didn't wake up coughing. He's feeling good, and he's come to enjoy it with me, he's come to celebrate and be strong and happy in my arms. And, God, when he's happy, he's so beautiful!

I lean up just a little and slide my tongue along the soft depression just below his ear. His skin is like silk, and tastes salty and earthy. I whimper. As if that's the permission he's been waiting for, his hand stops its playful straying and goes right to one of my sweet spots.

I smell him, I taste him. He is everywhere, and I am dizzy with him. I slide my hands over his chest, gently, carefully, letting him lead. Even as light as I'm being he shakes under my hands. I hum deep in my throat, trying to ease him with sound--

--I gasp.

--And then I come. Too soon, like a teenager, but I've been living like a monk since before we moved. And then Jim follows me, twisting and arching and holding his breath. His orgasm is short and hard, and afterward he falls against me, twitching.

I don't try to touch him; he is dialed up so high that air is like fire on his skin. Come to think of it, my skin is tingling, and the room is tilted from all the blood that has left my brain for parts south. I grin and slow my breathing and wait, enjoying the lovely warm, boneless feeling spreading out from my groin. In a while Jim starts breathing with me.

We do not get to stay in bed nearly as long as we would like. The county is holding an open meeting tonight, and we're putting in an appearance before our shift starts.

It's raining when we arrive at the courthouse. The first rain we've had since we arrived. How quickly I got spoiled! We rush in under the cover of the big front doors. We're a little late, but the meeting hasn't started yet, and a dozen people are still loitering in the hall.

As one, they close on Jim, congratulating him on his capture last night, bragging that he beat out the state police and the tracking dogs. Their new sheriff, and it's only his first month! I pat Jim's shoulder once, reassuringly, and step away.

Jim handles it gracefully. Of course. Spreads the credit around. Smiles. I fold my arms and lean back against the wall, as proud as if I'd raised him from a pup. We used to have scenes like this two or three times a year in Cascade. So what if this time we were hunting a fraud and petty thug. We found them long before anybody else.

It strikes me that he doesn't look as thin as he did. Does he? I am still unsure when Miss Lillian sidles up beside me. "Well, the two of you are off to a roaring start."

"Oh. Yeah. Miss Lillian. Hi."

"Congratulations, Deputy."

I smile. "It was all Jim. He's the tracker."

"Wouldn't have guessed. Took him long enough to catch that snake."

"Oh, right. Look, we still have your bucket."

"No hurry."

"And Jim wants to fix that grate in your basement."

"I'd appreciate that."

"And I kind of want to talk to you about something."

"Oh?"

"Well, it's--" but Jim is coming to collect me. The meeting is about to start. "It's sort of civic."

"Come to breakfast after your shift on Friday morning. I'll make flapjacks with homemade blackberry syrup."

"Wow. Thanks."

We're in the big first floor meeting room and taking our seats when I notice that she seems to know our schedule.

The meeting lasts two and a half hours and is....heated. Heated is a good word for people shouting obscenities at each other across a crowded room. The County Judge keeps order about as well as a substitute teacher in a classroom of fifth graders pumped up on sugar.

See, somebody got the idea that a local festival would increase tourism dollars. Bickford wants a wine festival, and Ithaca wants a folk music festival.

Wine and song.

You wouldn't assume the fights over that could get really ugly, would you?

When the Judge Executive starts pounding on the table and threatening to expel the mayor of Bickford for profanity, I lean over to Jim and whisper: "Who are you rooting for?"

"Neither! Shit, a wine festival? Can we say, 'drunk and disorderly?' and 'underage?' We can't hold more than ten people in the jail at once."

"Man. You are such a killjoy. This would be, you know, highbrow."

Jim snorts.

"What about the music festival?"

"Buncha doped-out, naked teenagers? Puking in the bushes at my fair grounds? Let's not even get into the noise!"

"No, no, you've got it all wrong! Folk music. Acoustic stuff. Small-label singer/songwriters. An audience your age."

Jim gives me a dirty look and shushes me: the president of the Ithaca Chamber of Commerce has just called the head of the Winegrowers Association an uneducated, plebian, shortsighted bitch.

The meeting ends before any decision is reached, but before violence breaks out.

Dinner is leftover chicken and carrots microwaved in the office kitchenette just before shift change. I can't wait to get back on a more normal schedule--I miss regular meals. And regular sleeping.

But Jim is happily arguing with Millie the shift supervisor about the relative merits of wine versus song, putting away his chicken and half of mine. So I have nothing to complain about, really. Nothing.

They get interrupted by a call, naturally. A shooting. The people calling 911 are all hysterical, so we all go--everyone in the office, everyone on duty--which tonight is just five.

We beat the ambulance. The house is just outside of town, off by itself and with no outdoor lights, although every indoor light is blaring. Millie and I approach with our guns out, but Jim just goes up to the door and knocks. He doesn't even seem to notice the rain.

It's... messy. Even before we get to the victim. I take charge of a herd of sobbing witnesses, many of them drunk. I order everybody to sit down, send a teen-aged girl (the only person in the room not hysterical) to get glasses of water, and set Millie and the two deputies who arrive just after us to taking statements.

I find Jim in the basement, a little homey rec-room all decked out for a card game. Jim is kneeling behind a woman in a mumu, positioning her hands as she administers direct pressure to a pasty guy lying in a puddle of blood. At the same time a short, wild-eyed man is looming over them, confessing. If you can call howling, "Oh, God, I shot him. I shot Ed. Ed's dead! Oh, my God!" a confession.

I haul the drunk and screaming headcase away from Jim and shove him into a chair. "He was cheating!" Headcase grabs me frantically. "The son of a bitch was cheating! Anyone can tell you! Oh, God. He's dead!"

I am reading him his rights (not that he can hear me over his own keening) when the ambulance crew arrives.

As of 8:03, when Jim and I go off shift, Ed is not dead. In critical condition and about to be transported to Ellensburg Mercy Hospital in Kittias County, but not dead. Attempted murder, however, takes almost as much paperwork as successful murder, and we have spent most of the night on paperwork.

"Well," I say experimentally, as we pull up in front of our house. "That was ugly."

"What, shooting your brother-in-law over a card game? Since when did a little thing like that bother you?"

It is a lovely morning, still damp from the rain. A bird hops along the driveway behind us as we get out of the car.

"It's just so....personal. All those guys, just playing cards...all those...relatives."

Jim sighs. "Yeah. In Cascade it was just business. Or revenge. Not so...intimate."

"Not so pointless."

"Almost makes me miss Tommy Wu. Or Gordon Abbot. Or a good old fashioned serial killer."

"Lash," I say, without thinking.

"Not Lash."

"Right. Sorry."

Jim squeezes me once, briefly, before digging out his keys. He stops with his hand on the lock and leans his head back. "On the other hand," he turns me around, so our backs are toward the door, "On the other hand, maybe personal and petty and pointless is good."

"Oh yeah?"

"Oh, yeah. Cause we're not hunting anybody. Nobody's out there. No bloodthirsty psychotic lurking in my territory planting bombs or choosing his next victim. Anger, mistake, victim, arrest, and it's over." He turns around and finishes unlocking the door. "I could get used to this."

"Well, yeah, I guess. But it's still petty and pointless."

"So what? Dead is still dead." Jim strips off his gear and heads for the kitchen. "What have we got for breakfast?"

It turns out we have pancake mix and overripe bananas and eggs and buffalo sausage. While he cooks, Jim sends me off to shower. "No offense, Chief, but you smell like a murder scene."

When I come out Jim is changed into sweats and is putting a stack of banana pancakes on the table. I sit down gratefully and drain the orange juice he has laid out for me. As he leans down to refill the glass he sniffs me thoughtfully and nods. "Much better." And he kisses me softly on the mouth.

I sigh, but only inwardly, and brace myself: "We have to talk."

His eyes are disappointed, but his mouth says, "I knew you'd want to sooner or later."

"Ok. So?"

"So?" He continues dishing up the sausage without breaking stride.

"So? Jim? What are you doing?"

He pulls back looking puzzled and sets the pan down.

I lean over and catch his hand. "Jim. You're not gay. I'm pretty sure you're not even bi."

He blinks, puzzled sliding into bewildered. "What are you talking about? Sexual orientation is just a social construction. The category is barely a hundred years old. You've said so yourself."

"Jim! Just because it's a social construction doesn't mean--"

"Don't say 'it doesn't mean it isn't real.' That's exactly what it means. If I don't believe in the category, it doesn't matter."

I close my eyes. "No. Oh, no. You don't know what you're doing."

"What I don't know what I'm doing? I've been practically married to you for a decade. I love you. What else am I going to know?"

I take a deep breath, sliding back my chair to put more room between us. "Aw, Jim."

He sits down across from me, still holding my hands. "Don't, Ok? Please. Don't do that."

"I'm not being your 'nurse,' Jim. I'm being your friend. I am."

He stands back up, but not to run from me, to pace. "No, but you're...you're protecting me. From myself. From you. Do you understand? That's the last thing I need from you right now."

Aw, God. "Jim."

"I mean, the shit you let slide by! And you never push--you always--" He pauses, tripping over himself. "You're so careful, but look, when was the last time you were unsure of me? Actually unsure of us?"

"Never." Ask me a hard one.

"Never?" Frankly disbelieving.

"Well, not after I actually knew you. Pissed at you. Worried about your sanity, sure. Once or twice. But that's it."

"Don't protect me."

"Hurt, sometimes," I admit, wondering if that's what he's looking for. Hating to say it, because he beats himself up over shit like that. "But that's normal, Jim. People hurt each other all the time. Not because they want to. They just do--But Jim, I wasn't unsure of us!"

He takes a deep breath and moves back over to me. "And I am absolutely sure of you. Even when I'm being a paranoid headcase worthy of a padded room...I know that's me, and not you."

He is waiting for me to say something. I can't talk. I can barely look at him. He comes closer, and slides one hand behind my head. "Blair, I'm not sick, and I'm not confused, and I'm not scared anymore. Please don't protect me from this."

"What do you want me to do?" It's a croak, but I'm surprised I can even manage that.

"Tell me you love me."

God, ask me for an easy one! I try not to say that to him, that I love him. So I don't put him in an awkward position, push him in to things he can't deal with. Protecting him, all right, yes. Until now, he has been pretty content with it.

His hands are in my hair. His face is close to mine. "Don't protect me from loving you."

"I don't need this. I don't need you to do this."

He's smiling. "I know."

"Love and sex--"

"They are to me." Oh. Right. This is Jim. I know him. It would have to be all or nothing with Jim. If he loved me, sooner or later it would have come to this. And he does love me.

This wouldn't even be a surprise, except I've spend the last few months so obsessed with my own terror that I couldn't hear what he was telling me.

"Please, Blair."

"Tell me again...what to do?"

"Tell me you love me."

"I love you." I lean up and kiss him.

• Epilogue --

The house is spotless. As soon as Jim left to go pick up the new couch, I was racing around cleaning the living room, the bathroom, the kitchen. He is in pretty good shape, but I want the dust settled and the house aired out before he comes home. I think I might make it.

Shit. How did that sock wind up behind the toilet?

Tomorrow my mom, Jim's dad, and Sally arrive for the Fourth of July weekend. Simon can't make it--he has to do something civic back in Cascade--but Daryl and his new girlfriend are coming up for the barbecue on Sunday. All in all, it should be a lot of fun.

Not that it will be all fun. Mom's gonna get together with Miss Lillian, talk about planning protests and fund raising. Mom got us a really good deal on the independent environmental auditor (and with luck, Northwest Quality Paper Ltd. will pay their bill as part of the settlement), but even cheap chemists don't come, well, cheap.

Never mind. Our chemists have them on the ropes. The EPA is pitching a fit. No matter who pays the consultants, Buzzard Lake will be cleaned up--and it looks like sooner rather than later.

The last thing I do is I check the clean linens: Jim's dad will go in Jim's room, Sally will go in my old room, and my mom on an inflatable in the spare room. Jim and I will share the fold-out couch Jim is fetching even at this very moment. Nope, gonna have to wash sheets.

Jim honks as he pulls in. It might be a honk that means, "I return at last, a mighty warrior with his hard-won booty," but I think it is more likely a honk that means, "Sandburg, get your ass out here and help me carry in this damn couch." Yep. That second one. I can tell by the look on his face.

Jim is in pretty good shape. No, Jim is in great shape. In quick, sure movements he undoes the knots tethering the plastic-wrapped sofa to the bed of my truck. Jim passed his last pulmonary function test with flying colors. His doctor--who is actually a nurse practitioner over at the county hospital--has taken him off the medication. We'll have to watch him. Closely. Forever. And keep him away from irritants. And the next time he gets a sniffle he gets a trip to the hospital and probably antibiotics. But--considering how things have been? I'll take it.

Lynn is a doctor we can work with, despite not being an actual doctor. We met while she was stitching up a gash in Jim's side. She paid attention when I listed the pain medications he can't take. She listened when I warned her that the local would wear off half-way through the procedure, and she was ready with a second shot when it did. She thinks the blood pressure trick is cool, and is trying to talk us into teaching a workshop on relaxation for some of her patients. She assumes the "drug allergies" are some kind of veteran thing, something the army likes to pretend doesn't exist. Although we might have to enlighten her someday...we haven't yet.

"You go first," Jim says as he starts to ease the couch out of the truckbed.

"Uh, uh. You go backwards."

"You're shorter than me."

"Oh, it's heightism now, is it?"

"No, but if I go up those steps first, you're gonna wind up swallowing this couch."

"Oh, right. Sure. Use logic."

"Hey, look. I don't want to squash you like a bug, but if it's really what you want...."

We don't talk while carrying it inside; it is way heavy. When we carried the old couch in a couple of months ago, we had to stop three times. This time it is a straight--if careful and not terribly fast--shot. Yay, Jim. Thank you, God.

The couch looks beautiful under the picture window. It's kind of gold and cream, with plump, fluffy pillows. Jim bounces on the seat once and jumps up. "Well, Chief? What say we open her up and give her a test run?"

"We'll have to sleep on it tomorrow night. That'll be soon enough."

Jim widens his eyes dramatically. "But--Blair! We won't be able to do anything tomorrow night. We can't--I mean, even if I could with my father in the house, I sure as hell couldn't with your mother in the house!"

"Oh," I say innocently. "That kind of test run."

"Yes! Will you please get your mind in the gutter!" He is trying to look fierce, but his eyes have already gone all soft. He pulls me close and leans down, nuzzling my hair. "The house looks great."

I lean into his arms. "So it's my tidiness that turns you on."

He doesn't tease me back. "I would have helped, if you'd waited."

I shrug, trying to distract him with kisses. "I didn't mind."

"Right. Because you just love to clean. Um, just wondering, but you realize that you're way over protective, right?"

"Oh, yeah. Totally clued in."

"And you are going to stop...?"

"Probably in the next few years. If things work out. Possibly."

"Right. Just checking." He nudges me down onto the new couch, his hands sliding up under my tee-shirt. "I love you too, Sandburg."

The end

Author's note: Good for you if you caught the reference: the song "Still Believe" actually can be found on the Susan Werner's small label album "Last of the Good Straight Girls."

End I Still Believe by Dasha: [email protected]

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