Ain't Talkin'

Lake Tahoe appeared around a bend in the road where a number of cars had piled up in some long-forgotten accident. An old wooden sign welcomed visitors with a depiction of the lake in faded blue and green paint. The lake itself was nothing short of it’s paintings polar opposite.

From the road the lake stretched away into the southern distance. It had gone dry over a century ago. It’s bottom was strewn with ancient vehicles, garbage solidified to a mass and bones. Roche had never seen the lake when it still had water in it, but once, as a child he had seen pictures of it in a book in the old library where he had learned his letters. The water had been the vibrant blue of a child’s eyes, surrounded on all sides by trees of deep green and old rustic cabins of strong-looking wood.

As a child Roche had made a promise to himself that he would see all the wonders of the world, and Lake Tahoe had been one of those places he had wanted most to visit.

Visit Historic Nevada. That had been the book’s title.

Mollie was gone, and after her he had taken to the white. When he emerged again some number of years had gone by and he was a walker. When he finally saw Tahoe his heart sank much the same it had when she’d died.

The lake was a blistered basin of sand and rock and the leftovers of a world that had long ago died.

He was an ant picking at the corpse of that world, and if Tahoe had once been a brilliant blue eye it was now a moldering socket, all bone and leathern skin.

Lucky nickered. They’d stopped walking. Roche didn’t think he’d woahed the horse but he must have, if only to stare at the dank yellow of the lake’s bottom from on high atop route 50.

The smell of smoke jarred him a second time. Camp fire smoke and Roche scanned the road where it stretched out beneath him. There was not a plume of smoke in sight, and the old witcher who stilled the vodka he liked so well lived further to the south.

Still nothing, yet Roche continued to look out from beneath the brim of his hat and behind the lens of his shades. The hunter settled a hand on his revolver all the same and moved Lucky back into a steady walk down the 50 with dead trees on all sides. Sure-footed she picked her way through the cars that clammed up a portion of road, and for a half a heartbeat Roche could have swore it wasn’t camp fire he smelled but the scent of cool water and pine. He shook the scent from his mind and kept on towards the lake.