Descent (36 page)

74

T
hey sat drinking coffee in the motel coffee shop, staring out the window at the passing cars and the reflections of the passing cars in the glass of the building across the street, and each time the cafe door opened they turned to look and each time it wasn’t their children the air darkened and the blood emptied from their chests, and there was time enough to see themselves on that other morning long ago when they’d stood naked in the motel room as the world instantly became something else, themselves with it, time enough to see all that had passed since then too, their two lives playing out between them like silent film, one imposed upon the other as if those two histories were a common one after all and could never be viewed except together—until at last and when they thought they could not bear it another second the cafe door opened and there he was. Blond like his mother, holding the door for his dark-haired sister on her crutches, and the blood poured back into their hearts and they stood and Grant left twenty dollars on the table for two cups of coffee and the four of them went together out to the parking lot and a few minutes later they slipped into the traffic going east, into the dusk. Grant at the wheel and Angela beside him and Caitlin in the backseat with her leg stretched out. Behind them, for now, was Sean and the old green Chevy, and behind the Chevy was the lit and diminishing city and beyond the city were the high summits, undiminished by distance, and beyond these the sun was falling into the west but they did not see it—nor the mountains nor the city but only the darkening sky ahead and the climbing moon and the road, and it was a road as straight and flat and bare as any they’d ever seen and it raced away before them over the plains, hiding nothing.

Acknowledgments . . .

. . . is a poor word for what I owe so many, beginning with my father, Joe Johnston, and stepmother, Amanda Potterfield, without whose dream of Colorado this book never would have been written, period. Also: nieces Brenna and Chloe, who grew up waiting for me to finish; and their father, my brother Tyler, who believed and safeguarded all along the way. And my mother, Judy Johnston, whose constancy and bone-deep goodness have meant more than I can say.

For years of friendship, shelter, and wisdom I thank Mark Carroll, Carmela
Rappazzo, Jim Hodgson, Nancy Russell, Nicolette and Henry. I thank Chris Kelley, steadfast reader and countryman; I thank Mark Wisniewski, P.D. Mallamo, and deep snow consultant Ted Mattison. I am forever indebted to my teachers and friends David Hamilton, George Cuomo, and Roberts French. I thank Thomas Mallon, Faye Moskowitz, and the George Washington University for a life-changing year in DC. I am deeply grateful to the MacDowell Colony, the MacArthur Foundation, David Sedaris, Don Foster, Erin Quigley, and Marianne Merola. For all the beautiful hard work she put into my manuscript I thank Genevieve Gagne-Hawes, and I thank my agent, Amy Berkower, for being the finest advocate a book and its author could hope for. I thank my editor, Chuck Adams, for taking such good care of this story, and I thank
everyone
at Algonquin for an exceptional book-making experience start to finish.

Lastly and ongoingly: sister Tricia, brothers Tad and Harris, Uncle Rick and Aunty Kathy, for all the love, complexity, and humor of family, amen.

TIM JOHNSTON, a native of Iowa City, is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of Memphis. He is the author of a young adult novel,
Never So Green,
and the story collection
Irish Girl,
winner of the prestigious Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction.
Descent
is his first adult novel. (Author photo by Dave Boerger.)

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Published by

ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL

Post Office Box 2225

Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of

WORKMAN PUBLISHING

225 Varick Street

New York, New York 10014

© 2015 by Tim Johnston.

All rights reserved.

A portion of this novel appears, in slightly different form, as the short story “Up There” in the author’s story collection
Irish Girl,
2009, University of North Texas Press. Another portion first appeared, in slightly different form, on NarrativeMagazine.com as the short story “Two Years,” and was then anthologized in
Best of the West 2011: New Stories from the Wide Side of the Missouri,
2011, University of Texas Press.

This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN 978-1-61620-430-3 (ebook)