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of, of – ’
    â€˜At
what?’
    â€˜It. The subject of stealth and preparedness.’
    He’s talking to nothing, to the void in front of him, moving down the invisible road and releasing strings of words like a street gibberer. The owl sounds off again, and then something else, a rattling harsh buzz in the night.
    â€˜Of course I remembered the diapers.’ The reassuring thump of his wife’s big mannish hand patting the cross–stitched nylon of her daypack. ‘And the sandwiches and granola bars and sunblock too. You think I don’t know what I’m doing here? Is that what you’re implying?’
    He’s implying nothing, but he’s half a beat from getting excruciatingly specific. The honeymoon is over. He’s out here risking arrest, humiliation, physical abuse and worse – and for her, all for her, or because of her, anyway – and her tone irritates him. He wants to come back at her, draw some blood, get a good old–fashioned domestic dispute going, but instead he lets the silence speak for him.
    â€˜What kind of sandwiches?’ Sierra wants to know, a hushed and tremulous little missive inserted in the envelope of her parents’ bickering. He can just make out the moving shape of her, black against black, the sloped shoulders, the too–big feet, the burgeoning miracle of tofu–fed flesh, and this is where the panic closes in on him again. What if things turn nasty? What then?
    â€˜Something special for you, honey. A surprise, okay?’
    â€˜Tomato, avocado and sprouts on honey wheatberry, don’t spare the mayo?’
    A low whistle from Andrea. ‘I’m not saying.’
    â€˜Hummus – hummus and tabouleh on pita. Whole–wheat pita.’
    â€˜Not saying.’
    â€˜Peanut butter – marshmallow? Nusspli?’
    A stroll in the park, isn’t that what she said? Sure, sure it is. And we’re making so much racket we might as well be shooting off fireworks and beating a big bass
drum into the bargain. What fun, huh? The family that monkeywrenches together stays together? But what if they ARE listening? What if they got word ahead of time, somebody finked, ratted, spilled the beans, crapped us out?
‘Look, really,’ he hears himself saying, trying to sound casual but getting nowhere with that, ‘you’ve got to be quiet. I’m begging you – Andrea, come on. Sierra. Teo. Just for my peace of mind, if nothing else – ’
    Andrea’s response is clear and resonant, a definitive nonwhisper. ‘They don’t have a watchman, I keep telling you that – so get a grip, Ty.’ A caesura. The crickets, the muffled tramp of sneakered feet, the faintest soughing of a night breeze in the doomed expanse of branch and bough. ‘Tomorrow night they will, though – you can bet on it.’
    It’s ten miles in, and they’ve given themselves three and a half hours at a good brisk clip, no stops for rest or scholarly dissertations on dendrology or Strigidae calls, their caps pulled down tight, individual water rations riding their backs in bota bags as fat and supple as overfed babies. They’re carrying plastic buckets, one apiece, the indestructible kind that come with five gallons of paint at Dunn–Edwards or Colortone. The buckets are empty, light as nothing, but tedious all the same, rubbing against their shins and slapping at the outside of his bad knee just over the indentation where the arthroscrope went in, scuffing and squeaking in a fabricated, not–made–for–this–earth kind of way. But there’s no talking, not anymore, not once they reach the eight–mile mark, conveniently indicated by a tiny Day–Glo E.F.! sticker affixed to the black wall of a doomed Douglas fir – a tree that took root here five hundred years before Columbus brought the technological monster to a sunny little island in the Caribbean.
    But