Unspeakable

tired.

She was still standing there when Daisy appeared.

'Mommy? I heard something.'

She tried to smile. 'That was only me. I was having a bad dream just like you did.'

'It wasn't you.'

Holly turned around and put her hands on Daisy's shoulders. 'There's nobody else here, pumpkin. I promise you.'

'It wasn'tinside. It wasoutside,tapping at my window.'

'Honey, we're three stories up. Nothing can tap against your window.'

'It sounded like a bird.'

'A bird? How do you know?'

'I could hear its wings. It was tapping against the window with its beak and it was flapping its wings too.'

Holly said nothing but bent forward and kissed the top of Daisy's head.

'It was a bird,' Daisy insisted. 'It was a bird and it was trying to get in.'

Mirror Lake

They reached the cabin at Mirror Lake just before noon. The water was so still that it reflected a perfect upside-down world with dark sawtooth pines and scatterings of red-and-yellow maple leaves. The cabin itself was painted a rusty red, with a gray shingle roof and a veranda running the length of it. It stood on a small promontory on the southeastern side of the lake, next to a sagging wooden jetty where an old green rowboat was tied up.

Doug climbed out of the Voyager and stretched. He was wearing a logger's jacket in orange and brown check, with a lamb's-wool collar and a cap to match. 'Smell that ozone!Haaahh!Smell that pine! Haaahhh!'

Katie wore a bulky maroon sweater with elks on it and a knitted hat pulled down low over her forehead, so that she looked like an affluent bag lady. 'I thought Ned would be here by now. He only had to drive up from Government Camp. I hope he'scoming.'

Holly walked to the very edge of the lake. She was wearing black: a black windcheater with a fur hood, black jeans, and black leather boots. Although her world was always silent, she could almostfeelthe silence here. Beyond the lake, above the treeline, Mount Hood loomed, only three and a half miles away, ghostly and grand.

This close, the mountain's gravity was overwhelming, even though its whiteness made it almost invisible. She felt as if it were pulling her toward her destiny with a greater force than ever before.

'What do you think?' asked Doug, joining her at the lakeside.

'It's beautiful. So peaceful.'

'You should be here when the geese are mating. It's like a traffic snarl.'

Katie called, 'Are you going to give me a hand with the shopping, Doug?'

'Sure thing. Did you remember the pickles?'

'I sure did. I bought some of those Rocotillo peppers you like too.'

Doug was silent for a moment, and then he said, 'My grandfather built this place. He used to say that you could stand by this lake and talk to God.'

They carried their bags into the cabin. It was chilly inside, and musty, but as soon as he had taken his case to his bedroom, Doug took the fire screen away from the gray stone hearth and started to build a fire. Katie led Holly through to a small bedroom at the back, with pine furniture, a hand-sewn quilt on the bed, and a view of an overgrown yard, with bracken and rusty-colored ragwort.

On the wall hung a small oil painting of a woman standing in a field. She was wearing a blue apron and a bemused smile, as if she couldn't understand why anybody would think that she was interesting enough to paint. Not far away from her, perched on a single fence post, was a large black bird with ruffled feathers.

Holly went through to the kitchen, where Katie was unpacking the shopping. 'We'll go down to Lyman's Hotel for lunch; you'll love it. But this evening I'm going to cook my famouschuletas veracruzana.'

In the living room, Doug had already got a good fire crackling. The living room had a high ceiling with exposed rafters and was furnished with big, comfortable couches upholstered in flowery chintz. The rafters were hung with copper pots and pans, and all around the walls there were glass cases containing stuffed fish: salmon, trout, steelhead, and sturgeon.

'My grandfather was mad for fishing,' said Doug. 'See that baby at the far end? That sturgeon? That weighed nearly fifty pounds.'

Suddenly he lifted his finger. 'That'll be Ned.'

He opened the front door and Holly saw a bronze Land Cruiser parked next to Doug's Voyager. Katie came out of the kitchen and said, 'You're going to like this guy, I promise you.'

'What did I say?' Holly retorted. 'No matchmaking, if you don't mind.'

'How about a beer? Come on, I know it's a little early, but this is our weekend off.'

'Sure, I'll have a beer.'

Doug came back into the cabin, closely followed by Ned.Well,thought Holly,at least he isn't a short, pudgy guy with a comb-over.In fact he was tall and broad- shouldered, with wavy reddish-blond hair and clear caramel-colored eyes and a square, suntanned face that put Holly in mind of Robert Redford but thirty years younger and with a much thicker neck. He was wearing a navy sports coat, a blue-checkered shirt, and Armani jeans.

'Holly, this is Ned Fiedler. Ned, I'd like you to meet Holly.'

Ned nodded and grinned. Then he made both of his hands into Y shapes and made a pulling-apart gesture, after which he pointed directly at Holly and made a circular gesture over his head.

Holly smiled. 'I'm sorry? I lip-read but I don't sign. Signing has a totally different grammar, and I never needed to learn it.'

Ned flushed. He looked helplessly at Doug and said, 'What do I do now?'

'Youtalk,that's all,' said Holly. 'So long as I can see your lips, I can tell what you're saying. And thanks for trying to learn some ASL?. That was very considerate of you.'

'Was I any good at it?'

'Well, I think you just about managed to say 'How you, big hat?''

Katie came out of the kitchen with four bottles of Portland Ale. 'We're real glad you could make it, Ned. I've been trying to persuade Holly to have a weekend off since Labor Day.'

Ned raised his bottle to Holly and said, 'I'm glad I could make it too. Here's to us, and here's to having a great time.'

'To us,' they chorused. 'And to having a great time.'

Ned Gets Serious

They went for lunch to Lyman's, a picturesque redbrick hotel built in 1905 and surrounded by larches. It stood on a promontory overlooking the Columbia River Gorge, and through the windows of the old-fashioned saloon bar they could see the river shining as it ran between the hazy, sun-gilded mountains. The water was wide here, and it was crisscrossed with the multicolored sails of sailboards, reds and yellows and blues.

'You ever tried windsurfing?' Ned asked Holly. 'Amazing sport. Really amazing. And this is the best place in the whole darn world to do it. You got your strong, steady winds, anything between fifteen to thirty-five miles an hour, and at the same time you've got your strong opposing currents.'

'I'm more into cycling. Well, I have a little girl and most weekends we take our bikes around Forest Park.'

'A little girl, huh? How old?'

'She was eight in May. She's very good company.'

'You ought to bring her along with you one weekend. I could teach her how to windsurf. You, too, if you like.'

'That sounds exciting.'

'Oh, believe me.'

There was a long silence while Holly picked at her grilled chicken salad with smoky mayonnaise, and Doug made a spectacular mess of his Dungeness crab baguette, dropping lumps of crabmeat onto the tablecloth.

'Doug was raised by warthogs,' said Katie. 'That's why he eats like that.'

'Hey, I enjoy my food,' Doug protested. 'Irelishit, unlike you. I like to get physically involved with it.'

'So does the front of your sweater.'

They drank another toast. Doug put his hand in front of his mouth to suppress a burp, and then there was another long silence. Eventually, Holly said, 'So, Ned? wood pulp.'

He gave her what he obviously believed was a winning smile. 'That's right. Wood pulp. Fascinating business, wood pulp.'

'What is it you actually do?'

'I'm senior exec in charge of recycling. That means making the best use of residual fiber and other waste materials.'

'Oh, right.'

He put down his fork, with a neatly cut square of steak still on the end of it. 'You see, not many people realize this, but there are all kinds of different waste materials. There'spreconsumer waste, which is leftover scrap generated in the paper-and box- manufacturing process. That's what we call 'clean' waste. Then there'spostconsumer waste, which is articles that have been used for their intended purpose and are ready to be discarded, such as OCC.'

Holly looked blank.

'Sorry-that's short forold corrugated containers.'

'I see.'

Ned leaned closer. There was a shred of steak caught between his two front teeth. 'Recycling is far more important than biodegradability, because very few items are actually biodegradable with current landfill practices. What I aim to do, Holly, is to capture used itemsbeforethey reach the landfill and put them to their best possible use.'

'You make it sound like a mission.'