Here’s an excerpt from The Wind Knot (spring, 2011)
A few hours earlier, Dog had driven in five miles along the sand road beside the West Fork of the Two Hearted. He was a fool to get in that deep. The road had become a soft-bottomed roller coaster, interrupted by hard patches where heavy tree roots humped and kinked across the narrowing track. He stopped at the last place he dared to leave the Cruise Master. The road dropped off into bog on either side. The river was a hike. He was unsure how he would manage to turn around.
He left the vehicle like a cork in the road. He didn’t worry about it. It didn’t matter.
He geared up and fished, not productively but in total isolation. He smoked Swishers to fuddle the mosquitoes. He saw two eagles, a kingfisher, a quill pig up in a tree, and a Detroit-to-Shanghai jet, hanging like a noseeum, a tiny annoyance in the blue sky above his head. He wasn’t certain, he realized, of the exact date on the calendar. But it was early September.
He fished down to place where a shelf of Canadian Shield planed the river into a smooth sheet of root beer candy. He walked along in water that looked still. That water nearly buckled his knees from the back. Finally the shelf narrowed, clogged with snags, and dumped the Two Hearted into a deep, chaotic froth.
A man in waders could die in there, Dog thought. Eamon’s deathday was less than a week ahead now. He laid aside his rod and hat. He unbuckled his wader belt and stepped in.
