Thanks for subscribing to my enewsletter. Here's a little sneak preview of Revelation.
Like Riding a Bicycle:
An excerpt from Revelation
There were still plenty of unmarked lanes on Makah Jo hadn't wandered, despite the Sunday drives she took with Laura. Tucker Trail, leading down to Tyler's place was one of them. It was steep and rugged and what there was of a road washed out with even an inch of rain. She wasn't sure how much more her axles or her suspension could take of Makah. Maybe she'd drop the Volvo at Danno's garage and have them put on a lift kit. She chuckled to herself as she crawled along, picturing her car, the definition of suburbia, on monster truck tires.
She lurched through one more pothole and parked. It had taken almost thirty minutes from her house to get this isolated south shore of the Island. The cabin in the near distance looked exactly as though a twenty-something misfit oversaw maintenance. The color had likely once been dark navy, washed by sun and winter storms to match the gray blue of the water lapping at the bulkhead holding it up. A blue tarp covered the ridge of the roof front to back. Tattered and faded Tibetan prayer flags swagged the front. Beneath them a collection of scrap metal, car parts, and beer cans created a rusted display decorating the porch the way some people set out planters of geraniums in the spring.
Jo heard a distant rumble. A massive Hanjin tanker cut slowly across the vista, blue and white dividing the horizon. The view the crumbling shack enjoyed was breathtaking. There was nothing between her and Mount Rainier except a mile of the Puget Sound and the silent cityscape beyond the water. The water swished and slapped on the rocky shoreline and chatted back at the circling gulls and crows, diving in and out of the drafts. It was hard to believe there wasn't a million-dollar bungalow tucked down here.
Jo took a deep breath of cold, wet, air, turned up the collar of her pea coat, and examined the parking lot of junkers sprinkled in between blackberry brambles behind the cabin, including the burgundy and duct-tape Nissan she'd seen in Luke's driveway yesterday.
Tyler Sealth appeared from around the far corner of the house. A cigarette hung from his lips. Sleek hair stuck out at every angle under a black hoodie, his outfit a carbon copy of yesterday's grungy homage to Goth. The young man had already counted up the sins of the world and declared the total ironic.
"Hey Tyler. I'm Jo – you remember me from Luke's workshop? I wanted to follow up with you, since we didn't have a chance to talk really."
"I don't know anything about anything, lady. Mountain's worth seeing today, but you wasted a trip." He inclined his head at the rich man's view, ashed his cigarette, and shrugged.
She caught wind of the smoke and realized it wasn't a cigarette. The marijuana in the Pacific Northwest grew wet and it grew pungent. If Tyler was high, she might get something out of him. Then again anyone who smoked a joint the way James Dean smoked a Pall Mall probably didn't get high unless he tried pretty hard. She took her classic angle of approach on tough guys who weren't all that tough. When he wasn't holding a blowtorch, this skinny boy whose eyes kept flitting toward the vista didn't even ping at the edges of her watch-your-six radar. "Maybe you don't know anything, but I didn't want to just write you off. I could really use your help. Need to keep my job, so I thought I'd try."
He sucked on the joint, pinched it out with his fingers as he exhaled, then pocketed it. "Reporters don't have jobs. They're just paid to be nosy."
"Everyone needs a paycheck. I've got a couple friends who are artists. Sometimes people don't think much of them getting paid either."
"Artists make things that are original. Things that last. They work, they should get paid."
"I agree." Jo nodded. "And artists also notice things. It's important that they get the details. So, I was wondering if maybe you noticed any details related to this whole copper business?" She couldn't help pulling her shoulders together against a gust of brackish sea air.
Tyler snorted. "I'm not an artist." He looked down at the sandy dirt and pulled his own arms in close. "It's cold. Come inside if you want. Still don't know anything, though."
She followed him up on to the creaking porch and into the cabin that smelled like dirty socks, old beer, and fresh weed. She was wrong about being warm. The stove in the corner squatted black and empty. She remembered the mound of wood rounds piled outside, next to the truck. Splitting and hauling firewood probably wasn't best done when drunk, and maybe wasn't any fun high.
She paused at the window, pointed to a small, asymmetrical sculpture that looked a lot like the larger version in Luke's workshop. "Did you make this?"
"Yeah." He stared at the passing curtains of rain, apparently uninspired by his own work.
"It's compelling. Looks like what Luke was working on the other day when I came by."
"It's kind of a collaboration. He's been interested in my stuff lately. He says I've got a good 'voice.'"
"I can certainly see that. But doesn't apprenticeship usually go the other way around?"
"He's getting bored with his stuff. He's blocked." Tyler sparked, then took another hit of his joint, and turned his head away, out the side window facing east to Tacoma. Winter white light filled the cabin. He crossed the blistering beige linoleum toward the kitchen, pulled open a small fridge and helped himself to a can of Rainier beer. He didn't offer her one but did incline his head toward a decrepit orange sofa.
She focused on her next round of questions and didn't think about what old stains she might be sitting on as the couch sagged under her weight. Evidence of an unsupervised boy abounded. An open cereal box on the counter, three different stereos of dubious function, and bare walls with bubbled, peeling paint and a tattered map of Makah tacked up on one side of a large flat screen TV. On the other side, a poster of Marshawn Lynch mid-grind through the Bronco's offensive line. Island boys loved their Seahawks. Other than that, the place was stark.
He flipped a metal folding chair at the kitchen table and sat facing her, resting his arms on the back. "Ask away – uh" he paused and put up his chin. A strip of stubble told her that he was perhaps he was making a very bad life choice and working on a soul-patch.
"It's Jo – Joanna Ford."
"Right."
"How did you end up working with Luke?"
"I don't work with Luke. He works, I learn."
"How did you know you wanted to learn from him? Why sculpture?"
"Because sculpture is everywhere." He pulled on the beer again. This time though, he met her eyes. "Look around outside if you don't believe me. At the woods and the mountains."
"And the birds." Like those striking, serene metalworks floating in Luke's garage.
"Right." Tyler looked again toward the Sound and the mountain, and the black eyebrows that seemed glued together parted.
Steady on, Joey, Big Jack and Jo agreed on the warming status of the rapport with the kid. "Did you take many art classes at Makah High School?"
"Shit no. They don't have money for it. None of the stuff I want to do, anyway."
He was right-on there. Jo had reported extensively on the last mill levy that had failed to pass come election time, leaving MHS with a leaking roof and a moat in the gravel parking lot. "So, you got lucky and Luke took you under his wing, so to speak?"
"Kinda." Just a flicker in his black eyes at her joke. "Luke's got plenty of kids who want to work with him. But I used to date his daughter's best friend."
"His daughter is Ashley, right? She okay? She seemed off, I guess, yesterday."
Tyler didn't reply immediately. He considered his beer, then Jo. "Ash is pretty much always off, one way or the other."
"Why is that?"
"Couldn't say." With a third long pull, Tyler finished his beer. A rivulet of white trickled from the mouth of it, down his chin, which he wiped with his sleeve. He hurled the empty toward an overflowing blue recycle bin and it clattered down a hill of brown bottles and white cans.
"But you're sort of close, I'm guessing, since you dated her best friend?"
"Maybe. Yeah. But we broke up like two years ago. It started to feel weird after I graduated. But Brittany was great. Really great."
"Was? Did she move away?"
"No. Just, like, was – she was great as a girlfriend, is what I meant."
"I see." Jo saw her window, threw the change up, and leaned back on the sofa to settle in with a hurt boy and an interview that had broken wide open. "You probably guessed I was going to ask, but did you know Randy Fuller?"
Tyler started to shake his head, when a shout from outside the cabin broke the silence between them.
"Hey! Fuck face! What I tell you about staying out of the Alibi?"
Tyler's thunderous brows came back together. He stood. He looked down at Jo as he towered over her. "Leave," he muttered, as he disappeared through the door.
She followed him on to the porch, where he replied to the less than friendly greeting from the newcomer.
"Look Jered. My ride home last night ditched me. I had to hang around for another one."
"Do I look like I give a flying fuck about your dying Jap-box car? I said stay the hell out of that bar." Jered – Brasier, she remembered. The boy from the south end dock with the pale skin, foul mouth and brown greasy hair hanging limp at his shoulders finally noticed Jo. He scraped a look up and down her sturdy frame. He leered. "What the hell you doing here?"
"I'm Jo Ford, by the way." Who let this bastard off his leash? She instantly agreed with Vi about this kid and where he belonged versus the decent half of humanity. She also wondered exactly what Brian Stewart and his Kibo fortune were doing with him. She put her hands in her pockets and strolled toward him, past Tyler and off the porch. Jo had one angle on bullies. She raised her pitch to match his. "Who are you?"
"Jered Fucking Brasier." He looked back to Tyler then cast his oily dark eyes at Jo again.
"Is that with an F or a Ph?"
"What? I don't know. And like I asked, why are you here?
"Same question back at you – why are you here? I'll add another one, if you can keep track. "Why were you watching me and Vi at the dock the other day?"
"Bitch none of your business." Jered dipped his shoulder to the side and rolled his head at her. Under his unzipped hoodie, a baggy black Primus t-shirt told Jo that he had bad, angry white boy taste in music. His faded Kibo beanie told her he was old-school Makah.
He stepped toward her. He had to be six-foot-one at least, and he was lanky. He looked up at Tyler and the whine in his voice grew. "Seriously, man. Why's snatch taking up my time?"
Jo took another step toward the guy, and now there were only a couple feet between her and his skinny, crooked teeth and smelly jeans. If nothing else, these two boys loved their pot. "I said my name is Jo. Not snatch." It crossed her mind to be scared, and she decided against it.
"Bitch I don't have time to learn your name. Be on your way." His sharp Adam's apple bobbed as he rolled his long neck again and waved toward the driveway.
She turned to Tyler, scrambled around to give him an out. He and Luke were still her best leads. "Luke just told me you might do some welding for cash, on the side. But if you don't want the job, Tyler –"
Tyler's upper lip curled. He pulled the joint from his pocket, cupped a hand, and relit it. "Not from you."
"Fine." She shrugged, bumped Jered's shoulder as started toward her car. As she walked away, she heard the boys still at each other with raised voices.
The rise in the seawall below looked like it might provide decent cover. Jo decided to stick around, and doubled back.
She lurched through one more pothole and parked. It had taken almost thirty minutes from her house to get this isolated south shore of the Island. The cabin in the near distance looked exactly as though a twenty-something misfit oversaw maintenance. The color had likely once been dark navy, washed by sun and winter storms to match the gray blue of the water lapping at the bulkhead holding it up. A blue tarp covered the ridge of the roof front to back. Tattered and faded Tibetan prayer flags swagged the front. Beneath them a collection of scrap metal, car parts, and beer cans created a rusted display decorating the porch the way some people set out planters of geraniums in the spring.
Jo heard a distant rumble. A massive Hanjin tanker cut slowly across the vista, blue and white dividing the horizon. The view the crumbling shack enjoyed was breathtaking. There was nothing between her and Mount Rainier except a mile of the Puget Sound and the silent cityscape beyond the water. The water swished and slapped on the rocky shoreline and chatted back at the circling gulls and crows, diving in and out of the drafts. It was hard to believe there wasn't a million-dollar bungalow tucked down here.
Jo took a deep breath of cold, wet, air, turned up the collar of her pea coat, and examined the parking lot of junkers sprinkled in between blackberry brambles behind the cabin, including the burgundy and duct-tape Nissan she'd seen in Luke's driveway yesterday.
Tyler Sealth appeared from around the far corner of the house. A cigarette hung from his lips. Sleek hair stuck out at every angle under a black hoodie, his outfit a carbon copy of yesterday's grungy homage to Goth. The young man had already counted up the sins of the world and declared the total ironic.
"Hey Tyler. I'm Jo – you remember me from Luke's workshop? I wanted to follow up with you, since we didn't have a chance to talk really."
"I don't know anything about anything, lady. Mountain's worth seeing today, but you wasted a trip." He inclined his head at the rich man's view, ashed his cigarette, and shrugged.
She caught wind of the smoke and realized it wasn't a cigarette. The marijuana in the Pacific Northwest grew wet and it grew pungent. If Tyler was high, she might get something out of him. Then again anyone who smoked a joint the way James Dean smoked a Pall Mall probably didn't get high unless he tried pretty hard. She took her classic angle of approach on tough guys who weren't all that tough. When he wasn't holding a blowtorch, this skinny boy whose eyes kept flitting toward the vista didn't even ping at the edges of her watch-your-six radar. "Maybe you don't know anything, but I didn't want to just write you off. I could really use your help. Need to keep my job, so I thought I'd try."
He sucked on the joint, pinched it out with his fingers as he exhaled, then pocketed it. "Reporters don't have jobs. They're just paid to be nosy."
"Everyone needs a paycheck. I've got a couple friends who are artists. Sometimes people don't think much of them getting paid either."
"Artists make things that are original. Things that last. They work, they should get paid."
"I agree." Jo nodded. "And artists also notice things. It's important that they get the details. So, I was wondering if maybe you noticed any details related to this whole copper business?" She couldn't help pulling her shoulders together against a gust of brackish sea air.
Tyler snorted. "I'm not an artist." He looked down at the sandy dirt and pulled his own arms in close. "It's cold. Come inside if you want. Still don't know anything, though."
She followed him up on to the creaking porch and into the cabin that smelled like dirty socks, old beer, and fresh weed. She was wrong about being warm. The stove in the corner squatted black and empty. She remembered the mound of wood rounds piled outside, next to the truck. Splitting and hauling firewood probably wasn't best done when drunk, and maybe wasn't any fun high.
She paused at the window, pointed to a small, asymmetrical sculpture that looked a lot like the larger version in Luke's workshop. "Did you make this?"
"Yeah." He stared at the passing curtains of rain, apparently uninspired by his own work.
"It's compelling. Looks like what Luke was working on the other day when I came by."
"It's kind of a collaboration. He's been interested in my stuff lately. He says I've got a good 'voice.'"
"I can certainly see that. But doesn't apprenticeship usually go the other way around?"
"He's getting bored with his stuff. He's blocked." Tyler sparked, then took another hit of his joint, and turned his head away, out the side window facing east to Tacoma. Winter white light filled the cabin. He crossed the blistering beige linoleum toward the kitchen, pulled open a small fridge and helped himself to a can of Rainier beer. He didn't offer her one but did incline his head toward a decrepit orange sofa.
She focused on her next round of questions and didn't think about what old stains she might be sitting on as the couch sagged under her weight. Evidence of an unsupervised boy abounded. An open cereal box on the counter, three different stereos of dubious function, and bare walls with bubbled, peeling paint and a tattered map of Makah tacked up on one side of a large flat screen TV. On the other side, a poster of Marshawn Lynch mid-grind through the Bronco's offensive line. Island boys loved their Seahawks. Other than that, the place was stark.
He flipped a metal folding chair at the kitchen table and sat facing her, resting his arms on the back. "Ask away – uh" he paused and put up his chin. A strip of stubble told her that he was perhaps he was making a very bad life choice and working on a soul-patch.
"It's Jo – Joanna Ford."
"Right."
"How did you end up working with Luke?"
"I don't work with Luke. He works, I learn."
"How did you know you wanted to learn from him? Why sculpture?"
"Because sculpture is everywhere." He pulled on the beer again. This time though, he met her eyes. "Look around outside if you don't believe me. At the woods and the mountains."
"And the birds." Like those striking, serene metalworks floating in Luke's garage.
"Right." Tyler looked again toward the Sound and the mountain, and the black eyebrows that seemed glued together parted.
Steady on, Joey, Big Jack and Jo agreed on the warming status of the rapport with the kid. "Did you take many art classes at Makah High School?"
"Shit no. They don't have money for it. None of the stuff I want to do, anyway."
He was right-on there. Jo had reported extensively on the last mill levy that had failed to pass come election time, leaving MHS with a leaking roof and a moat in the gravel parking lot. "So, you got lucky and Luke took you under his wing, so to speak?"
"Kinda." Just a flicker in his black eyes at her joke. "Luke's got plenty of kids who want to work with him. But I used to date his daughter's best friend."
"His daughter is Ashley, right? She okay? She seemed off, I guess, yesterday."
Tyler didn't reply immediately. He considered his beer, then Jo. "Ash is pretty much always off, one way or the other."
"Why is that?"
"Couldn't say." With a third long pull, Tyler finished his beer. A rivulet of white trickled from the mouth of it, down his chin, which he wiped with his sleeve. He hurled the empty toward an overflowing blue recycle bin and it clattered down a hill of brown bottles and white cans.
"But you're sort of close, I'm guessing, since you dated her best friend?"
"Maybe. Yeah. But we broke up like two years ago. It started to feel weird after I graduated. But Brittany was great. Really great."
"Was? Did she move away?"
"No. Just, like, was – she was great as a girlfriend, is what I meant."
"I see." Jo saw her window, threw the change up, and leaned back on the sofa to settle in with a hurt boy and an interview that had broken wide open. "You probably guessed I was going to ask, but did you know Randy Fuller?"
Tyler started to shake his head, when a shout from outside the cabin broke the silence between them.
"Hey! Fuck face! What I tell you about staying out of the Alibi?"
Tyler's thunderous brows came back together. He stood. He looked down at Jo as he towered over her. "Leave," he muttered, as he disappeared through the door.
She followed him on to the porch, where he replied to the less than friendly greeting from the newcomer.
"Look Jered. My ride home last night ditched me. I had to hang around for another one."
"Do I look like I give a flying fuck about your dying Jap-box car? I said stay the hell out of that bar." Jered – Brasier, she remembered. The boy from the south end dock with the pale skin, foul mouth and brown greasy hair hanging limp at his shoulders finally noticed Jo. He scraped a look up and down her sturdy frame. He leered. "What the hell you doing here?"
"I'm Jo Ford, by the way." Who let this bastard off his leash? She instantly agreed with Vi about this kid and where he belonged versus the decent half of humanity. She also wondered exactly what Brian Stewart and his Kibo fortune were doing with him. She put her hands in her pockets and strolled toward him, past Tyler and off the porch. Jo had one angle on bullies. She raised her pitch to match his. "Who are you?"
"Jered Fucking Brasier." He looked back to Tyler then cast his oily dark eyes at Jo again.
"Is that with an F or a Ph?"
"What? I don't know. And like I asked, why are you here?
"Same question back at you – why are you here? I'll add another one, if you can keep track. "Why were you watching me and Vi at the dock the other day?"
"Bitch none of your business." Jered dipped his shoulder to the side and rolled his head at her. Under his unzipped hoodie, a baggy black Primus t-shirt told Jo that he had bad, angry white boy taste in music. His faded Kibo beanie told her he was old-school Makah.
He stepped toward her. He had to be six-foot-one at least, and he was lanky. He looked up at Tyler and the whine in his voice grew. "Seriously, man. Why's snatch taking up my time?"
Jo took another step toward the guy, and now there were only a couple feet between her and his skinny, crooked teeth and smelly jeans. If nothing else, these two boys loved their pot. "I said my name is Jo. Not snatch." It crossed her mind to be scared, and she decided against it.
"Bitch I don't have time to learn your name. Be on your way." His sharp Adam's apple bobbed as he rolled his long neck again and waved toward the driveway.
She turned to Tyler, scrambled around to give him an out. He and Luke were still her best leads. "Luke just told me you might do some welding for cash, on the side. But if you don't want the job, Tyler –"
Tyler's upper lip curled. He pulled the joint from his pocket, cupped a hand, and relit it. "Not from you."
"Fine." She shrugged, bumped Jered's shoulder as started toward her car. As she walked away, she heard the boys still at each other with raised voices.
The rise in the seawall below looked like it might provide decent cover. Jo decided to stick around, and doubled back.