between its tires and wheel wells, and then clean its headlamps of the filmy white cataracts of snow that would collect over them, blocking their output to render them all but useless.
This, then, was their third unplanned stop in the past two hours, and it had seemed to throw Yousaf — never a talkative companion — into an especially sullen and overanxious state. His hands locked around the wheel, he had watched in brittle silence as Khalid pushed out his door, then sat very still with the motor running, and the wipers making their ceaseless rhythmical swipes across the windshield.
He went to the back of the jeep, used a few good, hard kicks to break up the clotted snow around the mudflaps of both rear tires, and scooped whatever didn’t crumble out of the well with his gloved hands. Then he returned to the vehicle’s front end. A glance through the windshield revealed that Yousaf was still staring at him rigidly from the driver’s seat, as if he were somehow to blame for the storm and its resultant delays.
Khalid crouched to brush off the snow-covered right headlamp. To get out of the fiendish weather and know their objective was accomplished… these alone were adequate reasons for his eagerness to arrive at the town of Halmat in the valley. But the thought of separating himself from Yousaf and his foul moods gave him added incentive to push on.
Finished with one lamp now, Khalid set himself toward the passenger side of the jeep to clean the second, but had barely gotten as far as the middle of the fender when he was startled by the loud rev of the engine.
He turned his head toward the windshield, thinking Yousaf must have accidentally footed the gas pedal while still shifted into PARK… and then was horrified to see the jeep come bounding forward, bearing down on him with a sudden snarl of acceleration. Yousaf’s tightened features were visible through the windshield, his eyes locked on Khalid with a terrible, narrow intensity.
Khalid was too shocked to have a chance of getting out of the heavy vehicle’s way, too shocked to do anything but scream raggedly into the wind as it struck his body — and then even screaming was beyond him. He flew backward off his feet, taking a half spin before he landed roughly in the snow, his left arm and leg twisted at a grotesque angle. Blood squirted into his mouth from somewhere deep inside him, spilled over his chin, steamed from his torn flesh in the subzero Himalayan cold.
Gagging and choking, Khalid flopped over onto his right side, felt a sharp stab of pain in the center of his chest, and knew at once that several of his ribs had been shattered. Then he realized through his pain that the jeep’s lights had continued to shine on him, pinning him in their beams. The right headlamp dim with its film of snow. The one he’d cleared off harsh and blindingly bright. He somehow managed to prop himself up on his elbow, tried dragging himself through the snow out of its direct glare.
But again Khalid was given no time to move even an inch. His eyes wide, his mouth yawping with shock, he saw Yousaf stop the vehicle, shift into reverse, come to another momentary stop, and then charge rapidly toward him again.
The jeep rolled over Khalid at full speed, crushing him into the ground, its wheels dragging his limp, mangled body along for almost two minutes before finally leaving it behind in a heap of churned and bloodied snow.
Yousaf did not bother to look back. His face set with determination, he plunged on alone through the storm- tossed darkness, bearing his precious cargo to those who awaited it across the furthermost borders of night and nation.
Roger Gordian studied the pile of rocks in front of his wheelbarrow, saw one he liked for the course he’d been laying on his stone wall, picked it up with a grunt of mild exertion, and then placed it atop the last two rocks he’d stacked. Nice, he thought. A beaut, in fact. Shifting it around for the best fit, Gordian pressed down on it with his hand, noticed it wasn’t quite balanced, readjusted it, pressed down again, felt it wobble some more, made another unsuccessful readjustment, scratched his chin, and knelt to investigate.
From his crouched position Gordian could see a gap between his latest addition to the wall and its two underlying stones. He poked his finger into it, discovered it went in all the way to the middle knuckle. What he would need to do here was fill that hole.
He got to his feet, studied the rock pile for something the right size, didn’t see any likely candidates, and hunted around in the grass for a minute. Then a little chunk of quartz caught his eye from a nearby patch of grass and he went on over for a closer look.
Above him at the crest of the hill that sloped down in landscaped terraces from the verandah of their Palo Alto home, Ashley stood watering her hillside plants with a garden hose, sweeping it from side to side, leaving transitory rainbows in the air as sunlight passed through the fine mist around its nozzle. A year earlier they’d spent thousands for an underground sprinkler system after Ash had decided that using the hose was ridiculously obsolete. For a while she’d given the newly installed system unqualified raves, preached the gospel of liberation from the endless dragging and snagging of hoses, and talked repeatedly about donating the evil rubber serpent — and its various carriers, extensions, and attachments — to a Goodwill shop she supported in town.
Then she’d had a spontaneous reversal of faith. Or at least it had seemed spontaneous to Gordian. Maybe she’d contemplated it long and hard in private. All he knew for certain was that Ashley had stalked in from the garden one day, complained the sprinklers weren’t reaching anything close to all her “spots,” and gotten the old hose out of the shed where it had languished for months — unused but surprisingly undonated. Sprinkler systems, she’d declared to him, were at best secondary aids to dedicated keepers of the green, and, at their worst, excuses for the lazy and slothful to shirk their gardening responsibilities.
Gordian hadn’t personally noticed a significant difference between Ash’s pre-sprinkler and post-sprinkler hillside plants. They had always looked beautiful and well-tended to him. But then, he accepted that she had superior garden aesthetics. Just as it went without question in their household — well, mostly — that he was the better builder.
Gordian plucked the stone he’d spotted from its grassy nest and inspected it in his palm. It was about four inches wide and somewhat wedge-shaped… just what the wall-doctor ordered.
Now he brought his new find back to the wall, worked it partway into the gap with his fingertips, took a hammer from his tool belt, and carefully chinked the stone into place. Then he gave the large rock he’d been trying to stabilize another test.
It sat steadily on the two supporting rocks beneath it.
Gordian stood admiring the wall for a bit. There was still a lot of work ahead of him before it was finished. Two weeks’ worth, maybe three. But he thought he’d gotten the hang of how to make the stones hold together, and always took satisfaction from figuring out how things worked. Simple things, complicated things, they were all enjoyable to him.
Gordian frowned at the nagging voice in his head. It didn’t speak up too often, but when it did, it was with the leery, contentious tone of an attorney cross-examining a reluctant witness on the stand, always using the old courtroom tactic of never asking a question whose answer you didn’t already know. It would not, however, be necessary to put Gordian under solemn oath to gain an admission that his backyard stonewalling didn’t approach — never mind
