But Tess always said, once a cowboy, always a cowboy, and to this day Dan occasionally roped a calf, although he'd long since gone cold on the bronc and bull riding.
When he had a chance and an invite, he still went to roundups and brandings for a local northern California rancher or two, but never to Oregon, never back to the high desert. Once he had left, he was done there for good except for family gatherings and holidays. Tess and he had made a life for themselves on the northern California coast in a medium-sized city by Oregon standards, and there Dan had made a name. He had even considered running for state senate when the party pushed him. In fact, some said that if Tess hadn't died, he'd probably be wearing his cowboy boots in Sacramento on his way to Washington, D.C.
If he never went into politics, he was destined to one day lead his firm or another one like it. He was always popular with the court clerks because he never took himself or his successes too seriously. The judges liked him fine when he wasn't pushing the line on the rules of evidence or procedure.
Dan still usually won at arm wrestling, never played golf, and drank his scotch neat if he wasn't having beer. Seldom if ever did he miss a 49ers game, and he never failed to analyze new players and game plans. Although he bet only in office and tavern pools, his track record at picking winners and spreads was nothing short of phenomenal.
But Dan had struggled to maintain his winning approach to life after the loss of Tess. Previously he had been possessed of exceptional good humor; now he tended to brood while he drank his beer. He always had a sharp wit, but lately he used it as a sword rather than a foil. Light furrows of melancholy and little forehead lines cut by the anxiety of perpetual sadness gave his face a rugged brand of character that added years.
His life consisted of small things: parent-teacher conferences, sleep-overs for his son, Nate, and his friends, helping out his sister, Katie, taking out the garbage, washing the cars, picking up groceries for Pepacita, roping a few calves, and tending his law practice. Every Saturday morning when he was in town, he went to a fried-eggs- and-coffee place overlooking the ocean and sat alone at the very table where he and Tess had dined.
Sometimes he would remember Tess the wrong way- her lifeless body wrapped around the steering wheel of her car, reduced to a grotesque arrangement of flesh and bone. He would remember her just the way he had found her, still warm, just after a drunken driver had put the steering column through her chest in a head-on collision. The red lights flashing, pouring onto the rain-slick, shiny black street; the rank, bracing smell of petroleum; the blubbering, slurred
'I'm sorries' of the other driver; and the hurt, cold and deep, and seemingly endless-all of it had clung to him.
At first his friends said he had bounced back quickly- up early every morning, concentrating on his cases like never before. He had become quieter at work-a little more garrulous socially. But eventually the forced cheerfulness at dinners with friends became nearly real. People stopped giving him books about grieving and depression. Now he had a smile for most every occasion, a joke or two like usual, and he no longer had to pretend at every party.
Dan had stopped seeing the counselor almost before he started. The counselor claimed that a man's life could become like an iced-over pond. A thin veneer on the surface that looked solid, but a man could drown if he fell through. 'Well,' Dan explained, putting on his coat after the last counseling session, 'if I fall through, I'll swim on over to see you.'
It was a year after Tess's death that his father died, but Dan didn't feel like he had much more 'stuffin' ' to be knocked out of him, so he sucked it up and continued on.
Muldoon's Pub stood five blocks from the downtown university campus, such as it was. As Dan had expected, there was only a light Saturday-morning crowd, most of it near the TV at the end opposite the fireplace. He found a booth far from the other patrons, in a dark and quiet corner of the room.
He blew out the candle on the table, deepening the shadows. Without his cowboy boots he felt naked, but he had deliberately shed his little trademarks for the meeting. Remarkably, he had come without his hat.
He asked for water and corn tortillas with salsa, no real drink, pledging to keep this meeting short and keep it sober. This rather brash cash-delivery plan was amusing, but it had to work and it had to be completed in absolute secrecy. Although he and Maria had never actually done battle in the courtroom, their jousting confined to pre-court skirmishes, he was rapidly becoming her nemesis. Still, context would work for him here just as it had momentarily fooled him with the photo. Maybe they'd have a talk before she came unglued.
And then-five minutes early-Maria Fischer entered the pub ramrod straight, her stride measured and steady, searching for a tall gentleman dressed in a herringbone sport coat.
This was not at all like the Maria Fischer he knew. Perfectly coiffed, she wore gold earrings and necklace flat against her smooth, bronzed skin, complementing the smart-looking silk blouse and tan business suit that she wore with all the panache of the French model who first took it down the runway. Her dark hair, with the sheen of its reddish highlights, made the most of the brighter light at the center of the room. Even a casual observer would have recognized her immediately as someone on her way to something important. But for a careful watcher, there was something more. It was vulnerability, a quality that, for Dan, had remained completely hidden in his observations of her at the courthouse and their encounter at the demonstration.
He'd heard stories about her. That she'd studied law with a correspondence school while living somewhere around Fairbanks, Alaska, in a one-room cabin. That in winter there was no way to access her cabin except by cross-country ski, snowshoe, or snowmobile. That she had come out of Alaska to save the forests and for that reason alone she had become an attorney.
People all agreed, friend and foe alike, that the woman's power came from her absolute guilelessness. She could be accused of being a zealot, of being overly passionate and too serious about everything, but no one doubted her absolute sincerity. Since in Dan's mind she was often sincerely wrong, that made her a particularly dangerous adversary.
She paused, searching, and Dan waved, sticking his hand out of the dark corner keeping his face back. Natural, unpretentious warmth lit up her face. For just a second he felt an odd pang of guilt.
'I enjoyed your lecture so much.' She spoke their prearranged code sentence with perfect ease.
'That's flattering coming from an attorney with your considerable speaking talents.' He mouthed the correct response. In accordance with their understanding, he didn't rise from his chair.
Dan searched her face, looking for any sign that she might recognize him in the gloom or remember the timbre of his voice. Looking into her unsuspecting eyes, he understood in a new way the extent to which, in another life, under different circumstances, his soul could have become mortgaged to the look of her. The soft light masked both the autumn gold at her pupils' edges and the light blue of her outer irises. She was waiting for him to speak next.
'Well'-he tried a chuckle-'here's what you came for.' He shoved the briefcase with his foot.
'I just want to say how much we appreciate what you're doing.' She paused as if such expressions did not come easy to her.
'All for the cause,' he replied as she took a seat. 'Will you have something to drink before I walk you to the bank?''
'Iced tea would be good.'
The waitress came through the murk to their dark corner. Dan ordered two iced teas, then changed his mind, called her back, and ordered a beer as well. What the hell, he might as well enjoy himself.
'I would love to tell you about our work, if you have a minute.'
He responded by nodding, knowing that it would be safer to take her and the money to the bank.
'My work is the wilderness…'
Thinking Dan a city man, Maria gave him a verbal slide-show, enriched by Dan's own memories of exploring the mountains with his grandfather: an August moon, heavy and round like an ancient, knowing face, looking down on silhouetted peaks shouldered by jagged, granite ledges spilling down into the shadows above a river. There were rocky crags, crystalline waterfalls, and miles of white-water rapids, enormous gorges carved by the river, rock walls covered with mosses, lichen, and ferns.
Dan studied Maria as she spoke, not hearing every word.
The waitress came by, and Maria paused until she left.
'Are you part of the movement?' she asked without warning.
'Oh, I'm not much a part of anything.'
'You don't have to tell me, if you don't want to.' The sincerity in her eyes felt like a weight on his chest.
