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The official position of the Sheriff's office was that there was no need to keep a particularly close eye on The Stag.

A gentlemen's club and dive-bar inside a converted barn on the outskirts of Echo Arizona, the Stag served a rough clientele, mostly of miners It was clearly the cause of occasional speculation, in the parlors or dining rooms of Echo’s respectable citizens, as to why the Sheriff never shut the place down. Diaries and preserved correspondence raise the issue more than once: wasn’t the place a known haunt for unionists and socialists and therefore presumably crawling with criminals? Surely proper law enforcement procedure would be to raid the place now and then, just to remind the riff-raff who was in charge? To which we can find it replied, well, Sheriff Adler was known to occasionally visit the place. And it had to be admitted that no crimes, no riots, no outrages seemed to originate from the place, ||assuming one didn’t count that one. You know. The one we don’t talk about||.(1) They said the Sheriff used to be a fancy detective, in one of the big cities back east—accounts differ as to which one—and everyone knew how dangerously criminal those places were. Whatever he was doing instead of raiding the Stag, why, it seemed to be working, and no doubt it was cheaper!

Such discussions did not happen in the parlors or dining rooms of Echo’s non-respectable citizens, due to non-respectable citizens’ lack of parlors or dining rooms. They are not to be found in non-respectable diaries and preserved correspondence, for these do not exist. Wherever such people had their discussions, whatever those discussions were, they were not written down.

Sheriff Adler himself never seems to have expressed much of an opinion on the Stag. He was known to, occasionally, go there for a drink, with one or more friends.

Deputy Bronson(2), however, was known to make not-infrequent visits.(3)

1. Ok, what the hell. Why did someone cross out whatever this says?

2. This is what made me buy the book.

This was just some random thing in the corner of the thrift store. I just wanted something to kill time with while L. dug through the sports gear. Nothing special to it, no dust jacket, no title on the spine, sun-faded cover. No ISBN number, no publication information, cause if there was a title page it’s been cut out. Can’t even be sure when it was printed.

It claims to be by ‘le Fils de la Rumeur’ which is no fucking help at all.

There have been several pages cut out, actually, all through the thing.

I figured best case scenario this was some grandma’s self-published memoirs, maybe if I was lucky it’d have a couple decent reference photos. Worst case scenario was it was a textbook so obsolete that even this state’s system doesn’t want it. It’s clearly neither of those things.

I hadn’t figured out what it was by the time L. was done window shopping tools. So now here it is at home, with me still trying to figure it out.

Cause why is S’s last name in here?

1. Fell asleep at my desk.

_ “Well howdy there!” _

_ “Deputy?” The huge badger looks a little surprised. “Will did not mention the two of you would be here tonight.” _

_ “Oh, well, Will ain’t here, not tonight.” The dark-furred otter takes a seat next to the badger. “Jes me by myself.” _

_ I’m watching them from behind the bar, in this dream, but I don’t think I’m the bartender. It feels more like I’m where you’d expect one of those big mirrors, in an old fashioned bar like this, behind the rows of bottles. _

_ “And what can I help you with, Deputy?” Everyone in here is wearing clothes that look like something off the history channel. _

_ “Uh well,” the otter looks bashful, in a way where it looks like he’s very used to looking bashful, “I ain’t workin’ tonight. So I thought I’d come have a drink!” _

_ The badger seems to consider this for a while. But whatever conclusions he draws, seems he decides to keep to himself. _

_ “So uh, what do they got that ain’t, you know,” the otter’s paws drum on the bar-top, “inebriatin’?” _

_ “Root beer, I think,” the badger answers. “But why are you concerned?” _

_ “Well, it ain’t accordin’ to the word-a wisdom,” the otter brightens at a chance to explain, “see, hot drinks or alcohol, they ain’t fittin fer-” _

_ “But I thought,” the badger smiles subtly, “that your word of wisdom was not for people like you and me.” _

_ The otter looks like he’s just walked into a trap but doesn’t yet understand how. _

_ The badger’s smile grows wider. He leans toward the otter and says softly “Samuel has told me about the evening he and Will spent with Mr. Dunbar and yourself.” _

_ And now he understands the trap. _

_ “Ah,” the badger passes him a mug. “Here is your root beer.” _

And that was when L. woke me up.

There is not much, in the historical record, on Mr. Nicholas King, who seems to have preferred Nikolai Krol to those who knew him. This is perhaps not to be wondered at. How many thousands of immigrants leave no official traces beyond paperwork at a port of entry, an employment record, and perhaps a train ticket or an arrest record?

He is known to have come originally from Lahkia, to have arrived in the mining town of Echo at the height of the boom, and to have lived through the beginning of the slow decline. He is known to have served as an officer in the union, once it was recognized ||in the wake of the 1915 disaster||.(1)

And his name appears among the records of The Saguaro’s Hip, the local hotel and brothel, though not in connection with any of the ‘working girls’ there. Given Sheriff Adler—whose name also appears on those same papers, and who was known to have a close friendship with the Hip’s handyman and general factotum—is known to have used the brothel as a source of intelligence, and given that his administration resisted attempts, from state-level enforcement agencies, at abolishing the miner’s union in the 1930s, it is very possible that Krol was Adler’s ‘man on the inside’ in said union. Whether this was a form of backchannel diplomacy, or the kind of corruption that would become a sadly all-too-common pattern in organized labor, cannot be discovered merely from the historical record.

Deputy Bronson is easier to trace, which is perhaps to be expected. He was appointed to the Echo Sheriff department by Sheriff McKinney, not long before he died and was succeeded by Adler. He was from a prominent local family—mostly ranchers, but various members occupied positions of trust in the town from barber to banker.

While we might expect his deputy career to become another means of familial control over the township, the too-familiar ‘good old boys’ network, if anything like this ever happened we can find no record of it. He never won election as sheriff himself, indeed, he seems to never have run for the office at all. His service record, ||save of course for the hysteria outbreak,|| is laudatory but unremarkable. He seems to have distanced himself from his family, to some degree, the Bronson genealogies make no mention of him once he reaches adulthood, and whatever his issue may have been, they were not recorded. His social circle seems to have been that of his superior officer, Will Adler.

The mere historical record could easily lead one to say that apart from his friendly relations with the unionist miners, Mr. Krol in particular, there is nothing whatsoever extraordinary about Deputy Bronson.(2)

To explain why either of these men should matter to us, we must look deeper.

Let us then explore the tale of Sheriff William Adler, of the alleged serial killer Kane Dunbar. Of the shopkeeper turned Mayor Murdoch Byrnes, of the School Superintendent Clifford Tibbets, of the Suffragette Brothel Madam and Saloon Keeper Cynthia Tsosie. Of intrigue, of secret societies, and of what might have been a bootlegging operation that, had it been discovered, would rival Seattle, New York, and even Chicago.(3) And ultimately of the unionist organizer Nikolai Krol, and of his apparent close companion, Deputy Todd Bronson.

1. Dammit, again. Am I gonna have to find some way to read through this redaction?

2. _ I’m in a room I’ve never seen before, in a bed I don’t know. But they both feel very familiar. _

_ The badger, from the last dream, is above me. It feels like he weighs as much as a matress. His arms around me are thicker than my head. His fur smells earthy, musky, and faintly sweet, in a way that reminds me of a tootsie roll. _

_ And his cock, in my ass, is so thick it ought to hurt. It doesn’t. He’s fucking me steadily, deeply, moaning something the dream won’t let me hear properly—it’s not my name, but the dream keeps insisting that it is. _

_ When he finishes in me he holds me so fucking tight that I expect my back to pop. The sound he makes is as if he’s about to cry. Instead he kisses me, still repeating into my mouth that he loves me, until he finally goes still between my legs. _

_ I don’t know how much time passes—dreams, of course—but now we’re just curled up in eachother’s arms. “You are dangerous, you know. You’ll make every man in this town fall in love with you.” _

_ “That’s my job, isn’t it?” My mouth moves, but I only know what I’m saying after I’ve heard myself say it. _

_ “Maybe. But who is going to look after these poor fellows, once you’ve made them realize they need a man to hold? You have only so many hours in the night, especially if you keep spending them with me instead of working.” _

_ “I’m working!” I object, “Will covers your nights, you know that!” _

_ “He does not have to,” I feel, rather than see, him blush. “I explained this.” _

_ “Even if he wasn’t,” I stroke his face, the way I know he likes, even if I don’t know who he is, “I’d still need nights with you. The boys’ll just have to take care of eachother when I’m not available. They got tails and muzzles, don’t they? I showed ‘em how to fit a cock in those, didn’t I?” _

_ He looks oddly thoughtful at that. _

I woke up rock-hard and wildly horny.

Rolled over and nudged L. Say what you want about him, at least he’s never not eager to suck me off, even at two in the morning.

1. If you’re not from Echo, if you’ve never been there, then you might not realize what a hard pill this is to swallow. Getting pretty convinced this is just conspiracy nonsense.

But why ‘Bronson?’ What’s S’s family doing in here?

The mining company was not the only business to be heavily reorganized in the wake of ||the hysteria outbreak||. Before ||the event|| the general store ‘Red’s’ was owned by Mr. Byrnes. Afterward, it was still owned by a Mr. Byrnes, but a different one. The former, Alfred, had been replaced by his son, Murdoch.

In isolation, this would be nothing worth remarking on. This is just how family businesses are meant to work. But in conjunction with other circumstances, it begins to call for an explanation.

Alfred Byrnes appears often enough in the town records, though not so much as his wife, Gretchen. The expansion of the general store charts the growing civic economy, the development of the school shows a population putting down roots, the establishment of the local suffragette party parallels the national movement. The appearance of three children on employment records, the return of two of them from college, the marriage of a daughter, the tragic but hardy unheard of accidental death of a fourth child—one could hardly ask for a more archetypal narrative of the maturing of a boom town into a settled community. Between the two of them, we can see a silhouette of the Echo’s history, like a stencil in two halves.

Yet how suddenly that outline disappears.

The blank spot in the “official” historical record(1) passes within a year, but once we can see clearly again we find a great many changes went on behind the curtains. Alfred and Gretchen are both entirely gone, no word as to where or why. The general store is now under the proprietorship of Murdoch. Dahlia is in Boston, as shown by a number of telegrams between her and her brother. No communication is to found from Holly, but we do have her ||pre-event|| marriage certificate, and from it we know her married name, and that her spouse was an assayer for the mines. So it is possible we have located her in a fox by the name of Mrs. Holly Sterling, in Lillooet, British Columbia, in the 1920s while the gold mines in that region were active.

But the school where she and her sister taught was shut down, and not reopened for some years.

To get a clearer picture of what became of Gretchen’s legacy, we must turn to the rest of our cast.(2)

1. Genuinely don’t know what blank spot this is talking about, or which “official” record this person was reading. I called F. at the town hall, and when told me to go fuck myself I called C. and he talked F. into looking up whatever town hall actually has. Should’ve started with C, honestly. But what town hall had was more blank spot than actual record. I couldn’t find any place in it that was more of a gap than any other.

I also couldn’t find any mention of most of the people this book seems to expect me to be able to look up.

When was this written? Did the archives used to be more complete than they are now? If so, what happened to them?

Can’t shake the feeling that if I could find a way to read whatever’s under the blacked-out ink redactions I’d know.

1. By now you’re probably wondering why I’m putting these dreams I’m having in the footnotes. The one I’m about to explain is why.

_ I’m floating in the lake, not far from where I used to play when I was growing up. I see something moving underwater, but the dream won’t let me duck under the surface to see what it is. _

_ The badger, from the other night, comes down to the water. He’s got an old-fashioned lunch pail, the kind with a cup and flash built into the lid. He takes a seat on the shore like he’s waiting for something. _

_ Whatever’s under the water moves toward him. _

_ Just before it breaks the surface, the badger says “It is good to see you, Bronson.” _

_ “Mr. Krol!” the otter tries to stop himself surfacing, overbalances, almost does a backward somersault on his own buoyancy. “I didn’t expect to run into you down here!” _

_ “William told me,” the badger pulls off his shirt. He’s sweaty, and a little dusty, and built like a mountain range, “that this is where you like to swim.” _

_ “Well, shore,” the otter is keeping low in the water, chin against the surface. “Been comin’ here for my constitutional dip ever since I was a young’un. I, uh,” his eyes flick nervously to the shirt, vest, pants, and bandana folded up on a log right behind the badger. “I ain’t really decent at the moment, though.” _

_ The badger’s still getting undressed. “I am used to the showers at the mines, Bronson. It is nothing I have not seen before. and I would enjoy a bath myself.” He doesn’t wait for an answer, just leaves the rest of his clothes on the log and wades into the shallows. _

_ The otter stays carefully submerged. For a time neither of them speaks. The badger rinses dust and sweat from his fur, the otter tries not to look like he’s watching. _

_ “The two of us have the same problem,” the badger faces away, like he’s explaining to the opposite shore, “the same need.” _

_ “I spose that’s true of a lotta folks…” _

_ “It is a need named Samuel,” the badger cuts the otter off. “And he is generous, and I hope I am never ungrateful for what time he gives me. But there is only one of him.” _

_ “...and it’s shore hard findin the time to spend a night with him.” The otter seems surprised he said that out loud. _

_ “But look at the examples of some of our fellow men,” the badger approaches the otter, who shrinks a little but doesn’t retreat, “Mr Byrnes and Mr Tibbets have been given less of Sam than either of us, so they turn to eachother, they help eachother - they are working reopening the school, Tibbets told me - and that is good. That is solidarity. That is what a good man ought to do for his fellow men.” _

_ “I don’t think I unnerstand what you’re askin of me, Mr Krol,” the otter says. _

_ “I am asking, Todd Bronson,” the badger says, “if you would like to have a drink with me, some evening.” _

These are the guys from the book. This is Nikolai and Todd. And sure, it’s not impossible to dream about something you read in a book, though it doesn’t feel, in the dreams, like these are people from a book I’m reading. It feels like people I used to know.

But the thing that can’t be explained away is the mention of the school. Because I had this dream before I read the next section.

Clifford Tibbets is a mystery. While town records list him as a “traveler from Europa” who was caught in ||the event||, no mention of such person can be found in customs records, in ship travel manifestos, or in any of the countries—if the claim of his Europan origins is true—he would have come from. Neither in Gaul, in Albion, in Almany, nor even in Vallonie can there any mention of the name “Clifford Tibbets.” As far as the historical record can tell, the man appeared out of nowhere in Echo, ||suspiciously soon before the event,||(1) and took superintendentship of the school(2) after it was abandoned by Gretchen Byrnes.

It must be noted that, under his tenure, the Echo school was reduced in scope. For one thing, the population decline had already begun. For another Hendricks family funding for the school was no longer available: impressive luxuries like a theatre or an observatory were, in this period, out of the question. And it must be admitted that by all accounts Tibbets was as competent a schoolmaster as could be expected: Mellissa Boike, for example, speaks highly of him as an employer and colleague in whatever parts of her memoirs are prosaic enough to be comprehensible. But even though he did the job adequately, even if the school were reduced to the necessity of making use of whatever, and whoever, happened to be available, a foreigner without any connection to the community, without known credentials, would still be an extraordinary choice.

How to explain it, then?

The 1910s, the decade in which Tibbets arrived on this continent, was the golden age of a certain very specific kind of con-man. Usually from the poorer classes of the cities of Europa, where it was possible for an impoverished neer-do-well to pick up sufficient knowledge and mannerisms to pass for a member of nobility, their favored hunting grounds were the ocean liners that carried the wealthy across the atlantic. Columbian businessmen, new to high society and thus both naive to its ways and anxious to secure their access to it, would be a favored victim. Most famous among this type of confidence man was likely Victor Lustig,(3) but thousands of such criminals plied these routes, and a significant fraction were never caught.

While Murdoch Byrnes would have been the perfect mark, Tibbets ought to have skipped town if Byrnes were merely a victim. But staying would make sense if he was recruited as an accomplice.(4)

This partnership would prove to be the first step taken on the road toward the corruption of Todd Bronson.(5)

1. So far the only lead I have on a method for reading these would be scorching the pages, and that would only give me a split second look at the text, assuming it even worked.

Not that not that the idea of burning this isn’t tempting.

1. And here’s the other half. I hadn’t read this, though I suppose there’s no way to make you believe that, when I had the dream that mentioned it.

Somehow I’m dreaming a different account of… whatever this book is talking about. And I guess that means I have to try to give both sides of the story. At least until I have some idea what those sides are.

1. Bohemian con-artist, 1890 - 1947.

2. Starting to go full-on conspiracy theory, which honestly is a lot more like the Echo I remember.

3. _ “I guess I jes need to ask what I’m s’posed to do next” _

_ I’m on the back porch of the Sheriff's office. I don’t know how I know it’s the Sheriff's office but I recognize it immediately. Todd—going to try and remember to use the names, now that I’m sure of them—is here with me. He’s got a gun, an old fashioned one, taken apart on a table beside him. He’s carefully cleaning each piece. And he’s asking my advice. _

_ Why is he asking me? _

_ “He was awful nice, is all. Was real nice talkin to him, bout all the folks he knows, all the worries they got. I guess I didn’t never figure minin’ was a bed-a roses, but it shore seems a lot harder than I woulda guessed!” _

_ “It was worse,” I say, “before the union.” How do I know that? Am I a miner, in this? _

_ “D’you think I oughta get a union? Fer deputyin’?” _

_ That gets a laugh out of me. “With who, Will? Ain’t he the boss you’d be unifying against?” _

_ “Well I ain’t gonna be the only deputy fer forever!” Todd’s ear are going pink. “Once population starts growin’ again there’s gonna be too much policing fer just me an Will to keep up with…” _

_ “Will’ll just work himself till he drops, we both know that.” Maybe I’m not a miner, if I know the Sheriff this well. “But don’t go thinking you can dodge the question!” _

_ “I weren’t dodgin nothin! I jes got sidetracked is all!” He fumbles the cylinder back into the frame. “Anyway, I guess I woulda been s’posed to know what to do if it were a lady. Mebbe Ma’n Pa woulda set things up? Or maybe not, there’s more’n a couple brothers ahead-a me in line… point is, I don’t really know what to… do.” _

_ I snort at him. “You were pretty quick to figure out what to do with your mouth, as I recall.” _

_ “Not in bed!” He hisses, and I can smell him from here. This must be what it’s like for L., how he always knows I’m in the mood. “I mean like… bein’ all romantical and such! You’n Will don’t really act all that sweet on eachother-” _

_ Oh, hang on. _

_ “And Mr. Byrnes’n Mr. Tibbets are fancy enough gentlemen, together-” _

_ Oh are they! _

_ “-but I don’t I ever seen em get terribly affectionate.” _

_ “I have,” I smirk. He blushes. _

_ “I jes… I’m real flattered he’s interested, but I don’t really know what to do, is all!” _

_ “If Nik is interested, then you don’t got to do anything but say yes. Nik’s real good at…” I shoot him a significant look, “...being interested.” _

When I woke up I double checked with the book. Will is the Sheriff, and for some reason I’m dreaming he’s fucking me, even though I was also dreaming that Nik was too?

Murdoch and Cliff are that shopkeeper and the schoolteacher this author’s obsessed with, and they’re together. Is that the scandalous secret the book’s gonna expose?

And Nik and Todd, now?

Whose dreams am I having, anyway?

Deputy Bronson is listed as a tenant, in an apartment located above his uncle’s barbershop, as early as 1918. The first breadcrumb in the trail is that the previous tenant was Tibbets. The second is that his co-tenant is Nikolai Krol.(1)

Tibbets himself is, by this point, renting a room in the Byrnes home. Of course, one might say, a bachelor living alone in a childhood home from which all his siblings have gone might very well let rooms. Of course a school administrator seeking to re-establish the education system’s legitimacy might very well place himself in a similar position, in the eyes of the community, as the previous administration, such as the house where she lived.

But innocent explanations are for the innocent. When put in context of what else we know(2) of them—for example, of the persons herein named, only one served in any capacity in World War one, Sheriff Adler’s son Andrew—the entire picture becomes obvious.(3)

1. Christ, is this author really ignorant enough that “they might’ve been gay” never occurred to them as a possible explanation?

2. You don’t know anything you oblivious homophobe oh my god. Do you think gays were invented in 1977 by Sylvester and The Village People?

If they’re so desperate to believe this was all some shocking scandal, then why are they ignoring the thing that would’ve actually been scandalous at the time?!

L. thinks this is hilarious. I’m just baffled, because while this attitude is exactly the energy of Echo I remember, I still have no idea who this is.

Too angry to continue. Gonna hit the pool, come back and have a nap.

If I’m lucky I’ll be able to get some better info out of whatever I dream.

Don’t tell my professors I said that.

1. Felt better, after a swim. Still didn’t want to go back to the book, instead got to spend some time with L. I think he’s worried I was getting obsessed.

I don’t usually fall asleep after sex.

_ “I think Ma’s gettin’ a notion.” _

_ I look up from a hand of cards. I didn’t notice falling asleep, but I’m sitting at a table in, I dunno, some kinda office, it looks how you’d expect the town hall to be in one of those historical recreated village places. _

_ Around the table is a fox, a weasel, a wolf built like a bulldozer, and that badger again. They’re all looking at the other otter, the one who just spoke up. _

_ “What do you mean she’s getting a notion?” Says the wolf. Maybe a coyote? It’s hard to tell, especially since the only light is a kerosene lamp on the table. _

_ “I mean,” Todd hasn’t picked up his cards. “I think she’s gave up on findin’ me a wife. Oh, she’s said often enough that there ain’t so many eligible girls, that the elders an’ bishop and godly men like that come first in line, that we oughtta be patient… but she ain’t pressin’ me to go on a mission no more, she ain’t got after me to go testimony meetin, she even stopped botherin’ to ask if Will’s tempted me inta liquor or coffee.” _

_ “We all know that the stuff Will tempted you to start drinking,” says the fox, “isn’t liquor or coffee.” _

_ Weirdly, Todd looks at me when he blushes. _

_ “Will you need help,” the badger—Nik, I mean, I’m pretty sure—says, “keeping a roof over your head? If you no longer feel comfortable in your parents’ home.” _

_ “Oh, I’m sure I couldn’t impose-” _

_ “It is no imposition. People like us,” and Nik looks at me too, now, “must sometimes be family to one another, when the families with which we were born fail us.” _

_ There’s noises of polite agreement from the weasel and fox. _

_ “But, I mean,” Todd is clearly desperately nervous about something, his eyes keep darting back and forth between me and Nik. “I mean, it ain’t none-a my business, but… I thought you… you know… with…” _

_ Nik lowers his head and sighs. “It cannot be so difficult as all that to share my bed with more than one man, from time to time.” But when he lifts his face there’s a wicked little smile behind his beard. “After all, Samuel manages to do it.” _

_ Everyone laughs. I don’t get it, but I’m already waking up. _

Why was everyone looking at me? Do they somehow know I’m there, having this dream? Or is it… just that these are dreams. That I dreamed about Todd and Nik moving in together because I read, in the book, about them doing that, and it doesn’t mean any more, when they look at me, than when I dream about my legs falling off or being trapped in an underwater car.

I can’t believe I have to remind myself of this, but maybe my dreams aren’t as reliable a source as this book.

Deputy Bronson is listed as a tenant,(1) in an apartment located above his uncle’s barbershop, as early as 1918. The first breadcrumb in the trail is that the previous tenant was Tibbets. The second is that his co-tenant is Nikolai Krol.

Tibbets himself is by now renting a room in the Byrnes home, from Murdoch. Of course, one might say, a bachelor living alone in a childhood home from which all his siblings have gone might very well let rooms. Of course a school administrator seeking to re-establish the education system’s legitimacy might very well place himself in a similar position, in the eyes of the community, as the previous administration, by living at the same address as she once did.

But innocent explanations are for the innocent. When put in context of what else we know of them—for example, of the persons herein named, only one served in any capacity in World War one, Sheriff Adler’s son Andrew—the entire picture becomes obvious.

The plan would have come from Tibbets, the capital from Byrnes. Sheriff Adler’s cooperation would have secured protection for the operation, and Krol's ties to the union would supply both laborers willing to whatever was required and a dues system with which to launder profits. Bronson would have been the obvious go between. Why else would the two of them live together?(2)

The need for such a go-between, though, gives us the vital clue as to what, in fact, the entire racket was.(3) Recall that formerly Adler and Krol had been using the Saguaro’s Hip as the venue for their clandestine meetings. The alternative means of contact, the cohabitation with Deputy Bronson,(4) only begins once the whole Tibbets affair is underway. There must have been some need, then, to distance the affair from the Saguaro’s Hip.

Which brings us to the place’s proprietress: Miss Cynthia Tsosie.

1. Gonna give this another shot. Not gonna let a little homophobic ignorance stop me.

2. Gee I Wonder.

3. Again, the only evidence there even was any “racket” at all is that this person thought there couldn’t possibly be any other reason for two men to live together for a long period of time besides ‘they are making their living off a long-term criminal conspiracy.’

4. _ I'm looking in through a window. I don’t really know how, because I'm pretty sure this is the second floor and I'm not standing on anything. _

_ “You shore? I don't got a heckuva lotta experience with…” _

_ “It is not your experience I wish to share my life with.” _

_ The bedroom looks cozy. Kinda cluttered, actually. But that’s not really what I’m looking at, cause Nik is sitting up in bed, naked, holding out his hand to Todd, who is hovering nervously in the doorway. Also naked, though he’s got his clothes wadded up in both hands, held in front of him like a shield. _

_ “It’s jes… I don’ want you to feel like yer… I mean… I don’ wanna disappoint none. I know how you feel about Sam.” _

_ “I love Samuel, I do not deny it. I always will.” God, there’s something in Nik’s expression or tone or somewhere that’s eerily like L. Like he’s so sincere it almost hurts. “But I am not alone in that. I know how you, too, feel about him.” _

_ Todd doesn’t seem to have an answer to that. But he does edge close enough to sit on the foot of the bed. _

_ “I know it must feel like a fearful thing.” Nik doesn’t try to move toward him, or pull him closer, not yet. “But what seems more fearful, to me, is to be alone. I do not fear death. And I do not fear secrecy. I fear a world in which everyone is a stranger to me, in which there is nobody for me to call my friend, or to hold. Perhaps in another life Sam and I could have lived all alone with one another, and in that life I would be content. But in this life, too, I can be content with being his friend. With being one of the men who is lucky enough to get to love him.” And only now does he hold out his hand. “And I can be content with being one of the men who is lucky enough to love you, as well.” _

_ “Gosh…” Todd whispers. _

_ “I know what kind of man you are.” Nik pulls, when Todd takes his paw, until the other otter is leaning on him. He looks like a tiny farmhouse among acres of tall grass against that chest. “You are earnest and honest and wish always to see the best in those around you, to help them, and to protect them. You deserve someone to hold you just as much as do I. Just as much as does William, or Sam. If it is a fearful thing to be alone, then it is good and right that people like you and I should save one another from loneliness.” _

_ “Oh golly…” Todd whispers, I can barely hear it from the window. “I dunno what to say.” _

_ “You do not need to say anything.” Nik answers. “But if you will accept me, I will hold you forever.” _

I woke up not just horny, but desperately craving to be held. Touch-starved, I think it’s called, which is nuts, I dunno how anyone living with L. could be touch-starved.

He was still up, playing some game, but he came right to bed when I called. I think he thought I wanted another blowjob, and like, I didn’t NOT, but when I asked him to just hold me against his chest, let me disappear against him like a farmhouse in the plains, he looked concerned.

I guess it was an odd thing to ask.

I think I’m worrying him. He held me really tight.

||Before the much-discussed disaster of 1915||(1) the Saguaro’s Hip, rather than the library, the school, or any of the churches, was the cultural hub of the town. The charitable reading is that most of the town did not know the place was a brothel, thought it merely a hotel, saloon, and restaurant with space for the occasional performance. And no doubt such charity can be extended to many in the town.

As for those to whom it cannot, we must conclude that either they didn’t know of the prostitution carrying on there, or they did not care. ||Some have said that it was just such unseemliness, such baseness, boiling over, that was the cause of the event.||

No doubt some of them were clients. Indeed, proof of prominent names—doctors, lawyers, state legislators, local magnates and dignitaries, all appear in the proprietress's records, kept no doubt for blackmail purposes.

Huxley Green, a banker, is to be found there, as Jim Sterling, who is possibly the same James Sterling that later married one of the Byrnes sisters.(2) More interestingly, we can find the name Clifford Tibbets. As well as Nikolai Krol.

Obviously these are not the only names discoverable. Merely only those revealable, at this point, by the author.(3)

Unlike the Saguaro’s Hip, the Stag ||was entirely destroyed in the chaos. But a disreputable shack is more easily reconstructed than a first-class hotel, even if that hotel is also a house of ill repute, and another establishment is to be found, soon enough, operating under that name. Whether this is under the same proprietorship, or in the same exact location, the records do not reveal.||

||It is perhaps surprising that the Saguaro’s Hip was not entirely lost. It was, according to some accounts at least, nearly the epicenter of the disaster. Certainly more than one building in the immediate vicinity was irreparably lost. Of course, we cannot know what the content of the delusions most of the rioters were laboring under, any more than we can know the source.|| Speculation is fruitless.(4)

||The closest one comes to a working theory is that the Hip was not the only apparent epicenter.|| Like any complex thing, ||the event|| had a complicated origin and took a complicated course. ||Given the ill-will between the mine owners and the workers, who after all formed the bulk of the riotous mob through sheer statistics, it is perhaps unsurprising that both the Hendricks mansion and the residence of Gregory Briggs burned down. It is less clear why the school was similarly attacked. But however many other targets were converged on, each might very well have drawn attention away from the hotel itself.||

||It is known, at least, that several persons successfully took shelter in the building.||

But though ||it took longer to repair, the Hip did recover.||(5)

1. Goddammit, again.

2. Why not redact any of the names? If you’re covering up a scandal, this’d be the first thing you cross out.

If this isn’t a sex scandal, what is it covering up?

1. Well this is useless. The next page is worse, entirely blacked out.

I guess that means it’s time to try some of the restoration techniques the internet suggests. Cause if they don’t work, and all I end up doing is destroying that page, then what have I lost

1. Especially if you do this to the text!

2. _ I’m standing on a train platform. Next to me there’s a fox, I dunno who she is, but something about her reminds me of J. We’re both wearing black. The whole crowd on the platform is wearing black, and it’s not a small crowd. _

_ Someone starts singing as the train begins to move. Be Thou My Vision, I recognize the song, even though I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before. _

_ Everyone stands and watches the train head east. When it’s out of sight, the fox takes my hand. _

_ “Come on,” she says, “we’ve got a will to see to.” _

I have no idea what this dream had to do with anything.

Well, the page didn’t survive.

I tried a thing where you photocopy it with a sheet of aluminum foil behind it. The guy at the computer lab was giving me suspicious looks so I didn’t manage more than a couple attempts.

I tried a graphite rubbing.

I tried a sprayer of lemon juice and a hair dryer.

I finally even tried a trick I saw in a detective novel once where you grip it flat between two things of metal screen and set it on fire. I don’t even know if that one was real.

Nothing.

At least I don’t know any less than I did when I started.

L.’s been hovering all day. Asked to help a couple times but it’d take more effort to explain what I’m doing than to just do it myself.

_ “It’s like they’re joined at the hip!” I point out. _

_ “That’s real funny coming from you,” Will huffs at me over his newspaper. _

_ “Oh ha ha.” It drives me crazy when he gets like this. “You can’t pretend that Todd wouldn’na been happy to spend every hour of every day with anybody he was sweet on, if he could, and wouldn’t even notice that was unusual. And if Nik didn’t have work, he’d let him.” _

_ “That sounds like you’re jealous.” _

_ “That sounds like I’m worried they’ll slip up!” He knows me better than that, he’s just being an ass. “Nik was already real lackadaisical about his discretion, and Todd’s such a pollyanna, I wouldn’t put it past them to kiss in front-a the mayor!” _

_ “Considering who’s about to be mayor,” He waves Murdoch’s face, on the front page, at me, “so what if they did?” _

_ “You know what I mean, Will,” I try to sound more serious, cause one of us has to. _

_ “I do,” he gets to his feet. “But things’re different than they were before the riots and the fire. Than before the war, for that matter. There’s places in Almany, Tibbets says, where a man don’t even have to pretend he’s not like us.” _

_ “You can’t seriously think Echo’s ever gonna be one of those places.” _

_ “Maybe,” is all he has time to say before Todd walks in at last. Funny how he used to be here before the dawn, when he lived with his folks, but ever since he moved in with Nik he’s been showing up well after Will’s started work for the day. _

_ If Will’s ever gotten on his ass for it, I aint seen it. _

I woke up on the couch, after midnight. I don’t remember falling asleep. One second I was cursing at the remains of page 53, the next I was so deep in one of the dreams that I’d completely forgotten it was a dream.

I feel like I understood things, or remembered things, while I was in the dream, that would’ve made all this shit make sense. But as soon as I wake up, or get lucid, it all goes away. It’s like I can’t actually know whatever whoever this is knows and be me at the same time.

L. was in bed, but not asleep. Says if I want to sleep on the couch, that’s fine, just say something to him about it, he’d been worried I’d had some kinda seizure and passed out.

I said I was sorry. Told him I was fine, nothing like a seizure.

I’m not sure that was true.

The Volstead Act did nothing to dampen the popularity of the Saguaro’s Hip. The beginning of the prohibition of alcohol has no visible effect on the bottom line, in the hotel’s business records.(1) This is, it must be admitted, hardly extraordinary. Hotels and speakeasies in every state in the nation maintained supplies of intoxicating spirits all through the depression.

But maintaining a supply of an illegal substance requires suppliers willing to break the law. And we have established that there was a group of men ready to do just that at hand.(2)

It is worth asking, then. What kind of arrangement existed between Clifford Tibbets, the ringleader, and the proprietress, Miss Cynthia Tsosie?

Supplying a single speakeasy, even one so popular as the Saguaro’s Hip, with liquor, would hardly be worth arranging a conspiracy of this magnitude, even with the consideration that the place’s real line of business was prostitution and the alcohol was, from a business standpoint, merely a pretext to get clients upstairs to one of the girls.

But what if the introduction went the other way? If Tsosie introduced Tibbets to her supplier? That would, then, make the elaborate arrangements with the union and the Sheriff’s office more understandable, and make Tibbet’s and Byrnes’s financial interests make sense. The money in bootlegging was not to be made in supplying to a single venue. It was in supplying to customers in their homes.(3)

And that would explain the presence of the final member, of this criminal affair, to be introduced: Kane Dunbar.(4)

1. According to you, maybe. Because like always when I looked up the Saguaro’s Hip there’s no business records to be found. If whoever wrote this is willing to make up people’s life histories to explain away their sexuality, then why wouldn’t they be willing to make up ‘sources’ that don’t exist?

What matters, though, is what I did find. The only thing F. found in the archives, under that name, was a handful of old photographs.

Some of them were people I’d already seen in the dreams. Sheriff Adler was there. So was the weasel, writing on the back confirms that’s Tibbets. Which means the fox must be Byrnes. I’ve put a name to everyone in the dreams.

Whatever the dreams are, they’re not just dreams. I’d never seen these photos before, but I somehow already knew what these people looked like.

1. No you haven’t. Is it even worth it to keep saying?

I suppose technically they’re not wrong. Being gay was illegal, so yes, they were, technically, willing to break the law. But they’ve proved nothing. And only I know it, cause only I’ve seen the truth in these dreams.

How the fuck do I prove it to anyone else?

1. I finally heard back from the research librarian. They couldn’t find any more about this book’s background than I could myself.

So that’s nothing on A.B.E., nothing on WorldCat, nothing in the Library of Congress. The guy at the rare book dealer in Bountiful couldn’t find anyone who’d heard of the author. Either the ISBN is missing or it never had one, though that doesn’t prove much, they only started using those in 67 and plenty of self-published books don’t have them even today.

And whatever secret databases a research librarian would know about, that I wouldn’t, also drew a blank.

As far as the libraries of the world know, this book doesn't exist. Which I think explains the redaction: this must be the author’s proof-copy, from before any copies were printed or distributed. Whatever is under all this ink is something that Fils Dela Rumurr, whoever they were, either decided to take out or was told they had to take out. That would fit with it being this unhinged screed accusing public figures of criminal conspiracies based on, well, no evidence at all. And would explain why it ended up in a thrift store where I would stumble across it: who would give a shit about what goes on in Echo, enough to write a book, but somebody who lived in the area?

The librarian was apologetic, but they did say this isn’t uncommon. Lots of retirees around here, wind up with nothing but time on their hands and a word processor, and then that goes nowhere. They run into this kind of dead end from time to time. They’re used to it.

But I’ve got a source they don’t.

1. _ “And after I had to work so hard to get you to ask in the first place…” Nik says softly. _

_ I didn’t hear what Todd said, that this is a reply to. I’m standing in the open bedroom doorway, I think the room behind me is a bathroom. But more than that, the other otter has his face in the badger’s armpit. _

_ “Well, seemed like a pretty dirty thing to want, is all,” Todd surfaces, breathing heavily. “I figgered you’d take it amiss.” _

_ “Perhaps it is dirty,” Nik is lying back, one paw behind his head, oak-trunk arm lifted in invitation, “But perhaps I am not afraid of dirt.” _

_ “I dunno why I like it, I just…” Todd trails off, buries his muzzle in the badger’s pit again. If he finishes the sentence he’s breathing too heavily for me to hear. _

_ They’re both naked, of course. Nik is hard, but not as hard as Todd. _

_ “It is not so strange,” Nik is stroking Todd’s fur, his side and his back, with the other hand, “for all of your senses to want a man. For myself…” his hand goes somewhere I can’t see from here and Todd gasps, “I prefer touch.” _

_ If Todd has a response, all of it except the word “Gosh” is lost under huffing and moaning. _

_ “But then, how could I hold you,” Nik’s started stroking Todd, “as close as I have,” It should feel like I’m intruding “as long as I have,” but this feels deliberate, like something I’m being shown, “and not learned to love the smell of your body?” as if someone means for me to see this. _

_ I still do avert my eyes while Todd finishes. _

_ “So you don’t think it’s… weird, or nothin?” Todd has his chin resting on Nik’s chest when I turn back. _

_ “You do not think you are the only one, do you?” Nik chuckled. “I have heard Samuel describe, too often, and a little too passionately, what William smells like for him to plead innocence.” _

_ “Well, Will does smell pretty good too-” Todd stops abruptly. I don’t think he meant to say that. _

_ But Nik just chuckles again. “Not as good as Sam. And not as good as you.” _

_ “Aw golly, Nik, gonna make me blush.” Todd shakes his head. “And I can’t be doin’ that, someone’s still gotta take care-a you!” _

_ He’s not wrong. Nik is still ramrod-stiff. _

_ It looks like Todd likes how he tastes, too. _

Nowadays the term for someone like Kane Dunbar would be ‘Serial Killer.’(1)

In the early days of the frontier, there was a place for men such as this. Hired killers, moving from town to town, existing on the margins of nascent society and serving as supplementary muscle to both criminal operations and understaffed law enforcement.

Finding a place like Echo,(2) an operation that was both, must have been a godsend to Dunbar.

By ||1915|| the days of the ‘Wild’ west were over and done. Legendary gunslingers of the likes of Bill Hitchcock or Jesse James have either found ways to leverage their fame into more civilized careers or died in gunfights. The less-than-legendary must scrape out livings as nomadic criminals doing their best to legitimize themselves with terms like ‘bounty hunter.’ Which means leaving trails of bodies in their wake.

||It is impossible to say whether Dunbar was present for the disastrous event. If he was, he must have found it a congenial environment, perfectly suited to him.|| While some sources(3) will attribute any number of murders to him—Huxley Green, Mary Applegate, Jimmy Fisher, Ben Keyes, ||Jack Abner||,(4) Nathaniel Hutcherson, Rev. Caldwell—these must regretfully be dismissed as speculation. Any proof of Dunbar’s involvement would unfortunately have found its way into Sheriff Adler’s custody, and of course quietly disappeared, like all the rest of the evidence about the entire Tibbets arrangement.

But then, what evidence could have been more damning that the mere presence of man such as Dunbar?(5)

But once placed within the arrangement, Dunbar would have had plenty of employment. A distribution network for illegal alcohol(6) would have no end of uses for a hired killer.

1. This is actually useful, I realize. For this word to be something the author knows, the earliest they could’ve written this book would be 1966 or 1967.

While it’s technically possible for them to have lived through the period they’re talking about, it’s not likely. The likeliest thing is their parent heard of these people, and the main thing this story is based on is on second-hand accounts.

That might explain the pen-name. And the fact there’s no supporting evidence.

1. I keep thinking about a single thing from one of the previous dreams, can’t remember which one right now. Will the Sheriff was talking to me about there being places where gay relationships don’t have to be in the closet, and I said:

_ “You can’t seriously think Echo’s ever gonna be one of those places.” _

And part of me wants to deny it, insist that’s wrong. You can have a real relationship, I do have a real relationship, with another man. L.’s never, for all the years I’ve known him, put up with being in the closet for even a second. It’s maybe his most admirable quality.

But then another part of me says, _ but you’re not in Echo, are you? _

And I don’t know how to answer that. I’m not. We’re not. And I don’t know if the two of us would be possible if we were. I don’t want to consider that L. and I are so… shit, I dunno, conditional, as that. I love him. But… it’s hard to imagine being willing to stay in Echo for him.

Between these two I don’t know which part of me is having these dreams.

1. Such as? Cite your sources or admit you don’t have any!

2. So why redact whatever name this is? The list of brothel customers didn’t merit any redaction, but this one name in a list of assumed victims does?

If I had any idea why the redactions were made in the first place, then maybe I’d at least have a guess why a single name would be anything to do with them. But without even knowing what the name is.

This is so fucking frustrating.

1. So the proof that there were crimes is that they were hanging out with criminals. And the proof they were criminals is that there must have been crimes.

The logic is literally going in circles.

Want to bet that—if this guy even actually existed at all—he was just a drifter that hung around cause he was also gay?

1. I think this is actually the first the books bothered to actually SAY what he thinks these people were guilty of.

I guess the charges could’ve been buried somewhere under the redactions. But I wouldn’t put it past them to just act like they already proved this conspiracy existed somewhere earlier and so now they don’t have to bother with things like ‘evidence.’

Why am I putting myself through this book?

Ok wow. No sooner do I write that than L. comes and starts an argument about ‘why are you putting yourself through this book?’

Not gonna bother writing what we said. Most of it doesn't matter, and I probably look like the bad guy in it anyway. Christ, I hate feeling like I hurt him. The look he gets when you raise your voice like he can’t believe it was you that just stabbed him in the heart. Or the way he smiles at you, after, like he’s just given up his seat in the lifeboat for you.

I guess I forgot to tell him that I’d seen the name ‘Bronson’ in here, in the first place. He didn’t know that, all along, I was trying to find out about that. I guess I kinda forgot myself, a little bit.

The important thing is that he asked, if I’m trying to find out about S.’s family, why I haven’t called S.?

And I didn’t have an answer for that.

I was going to go to bed. I swear.

The last thing I remember, before, was tossing my clothes in the hamper and going to brush my teeth. I look up into the bathroom mirror, and-

_ -I’m standing on the lakeshore. I’m sure it’s THE lake, but I don’t know how I know. It doesn’t look like I remember, but the way it does look is, for some reason, how I feel like it should look. _

_ It’s the middle of the night. Sky full of stars, the way it never is here in the city, and the surface of the lake is too. _

_ There’s nobody else here. This is the first of these dreams where there’s nobody to talk to or spy on. But then I step to the water’s edge and look down. _

_ It feels so strange to see my reflection—brown fur, round ears, chinstrap beard—and feel myself thinking of it as someone else’s reflection. It’s even stranger to realize that even though “I” think it’s weird to see “someone else” in the reflection, I’m not surprised. _

_ Whoever I am, I expected this. _

_ “What’s going on?” Which I think is the first time in one of these dreams I’ve been able to say anything I wanted to say. Except my mouth doesn’t move, when I speak. The reflection’s does. _

_ “You don’t want to know.” I feel my mouth moving, but the mouth that actually looks like mine, in the water’s surface, stays still. I watch my face look shocked and worried, and feel the face I’m looking out of roll its eyes at that. “The less you know the better off you are.” _

_ “Then,” my reflection says what I want to ask, “why are you doing this? If the less I know the better off I am why are you making me know things?” _

_ “Who the fuck said,” my lips and tongue move, and I can feel the contempt behind them, “that I want you to be better off? And now you’re about to say you don’t understand. Of course you don’t. Quit asking stupid questions and ask the real ones already, just reaching you is hard enough.” _

_ “Which is real? The book or the dreams?” _

_ “They’re both real. Just one’s bullshit. And you already know which.” _

_ “But… I don’t have any proof that Nik and Todd-” I can feel something twist in my throat when reflection says those names “-loved eachother.” _

_ “So?” _

_ “So… how do I know it’s not bullshit?” _

_ “Same way you know it’s not bullshit when his arms are around you. When you kiss him. When the setting sun hits his fur from behind and you get that stupid feeling rising up your spine.” I sound disgusted, like loving L. is some tedious chore that whoever-this-is has to sit through. “Same reason it was so hard to leave him, all those times you did.” _

_ Now I’ve got no idea what I’m talking about. “I’ve never left-” _

_ “What did I say about stupid questions? Ask a real one or stop wasting my time.” _

_ “What do you care?” my reflection glares for me. “Why does it matter enough to you, whoever you are, for you to show me Nik?” I feel a twinge of something like regret or longing, so my reflection brings up more names from the dreams because fuck this thing for doing this to me and then acting like it’s my fault for not getting it. “Why show me Todd and Will, or Byrnes and Tibbets?” But I think the twinges of regret hurt me more than they do him, to him they feel, well, not good, but vindicating? Like feeling sad when those names hit him proves him right, somehow. _

_ “Because someone should know.” I say. _

_ “Know what?” _

_ “Know they were there. They lived. They mattered. That someone cared about them. Nothing that book says fucking matters, but what I showed you does. That’s what you’d better goddamn remember. I don’t even know if it happened, for you, but you’re gonna remember them like I did. And that’s close enough to winning.” _

_ I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean, but I feel angry and impatient enough that I rush what’s probably the last question I’m gonna get. “Who are you?” _

_ I look up into the sky. The moment I can’t see me in the water anymore I feel the dream start slipping away. _

_ “I’m what’s left when nobody remembers.” _

The next thing I know L. has me by the shoulders, he wants to shake me but isn’t sure enough of what’s going on to do it.

According to him I’ve been standing in the bathroom, naked, lights off, for over an hour. My toothbrush is bone-dry. He asks if I was just staring into the mirror in the dark, and I have to admit I’m not sure, but I think I might have been.

He says he’s worried about me. I tell him I know. And by now I agree with him.

I bit the bullet and wrote to S.

I know he thinks I hate him, that we all hate him. I guess I can understand why: look how much effort it took me to send him an email about this project that I only started cause I thought I saw his name in a book at a thrift store.

Just every time I think of him, I can’t help but go over what happened to T. About what if I’d been just a little closer, if I’d heard or seen something in time. Would things have gone differently? Would I have been able to do anything? Could I have saved T.?

Maybe ‘Don’t worry about what might’ve been, be there for the people who are there, be happy with who you’ve got in your life now’ is what the dreams are trying to tell me? That seems to be what Nik and Todd did.

Or maybe they just want their story told.

Or maybe there’s no message, no meaning. Maybe they’re just dreams, no mind behind them but mine.

I don’t know how to tell. As surreal as the dreams have gotten, they don’t answer questions any more than the book does, they just say what they say and leave me to try to make sense of them.

So I guess that’s what I’m doing. One way or another I’ll finish this, if only so L. can stop worrying about me.

We’re driving down there tomorrow. Gonna take the book with me. Finish it on the trip.

As can be seen in this photo,(1) the Saguaro’s Hip became Echo’s answer to the Jazz age. Illicit drink, music, debauchery, and glamor. Women of ill-repute in flapper dress consorting with the respectable working men looking for a thrill of temptation.

And at the center of it we see our whole gallery of suspects. From left to right: Nikolai Krol, Deputy Bronson. Miss Tsosie, standing behind the bar. Clifford Tibbets, near the center as befits the ringleader. Murdoch Byrnes, camera in hand, presumably taking advantage of the bar mirror to get a shot of the whole group. Kane Dunbar, looming ominously behind Sheriff Adler. The mountain lion in conversation with him is unidentifiable, presumably this is some associate from out of town, for as a bootlegging operation they would have needed contacts in Payton or Camp Rosa or any other place to which they were sending shipments.(2)

Photographic evidence of the Stag is not to be found. But doubtless(3) the clientele there were much further from respectable.

1. Of course there’s no photo. I don’t see a missing page, so I don’t know if the photo is gone or was supposed to be there but didn’t make it into the print.

Maybe this supports the theory that this was an author’s proof, to make redactions and corrections in, and things like photos were going to be added in the next print run?

1. I’m not getting any dreams off this. Slept last night undisturbed. L. very relieved.

Maybe it—whatever it is—thinks I’ve seen all I need to see?

1. Whoever this is needs to be banned, by court order, from using the word ‘doubtless.’

Driving back there feels like it takes days. But as we start turning onto smaller and smaller state highways, numbered routes, finally county roads, and the potholes get more numerous, the memories start coming back.

There’s something about the smell of the desert and the outline of the particular mountains against the sky that has me feeling like I’m a teenager again. It’s not exactly a good feeling.

There isn’t another car in sight for the last hour.

L. makes small talk, from the driver’s seat, when we pass the lake. Probably trying to distract himself as much as me, but I can tell he’s still worried about me. Asks about what I hope to do with this project, once it’s finished. I have to admit I don’t know. There’s part of me that’s still baffled that the little nowhere of a place I grew up has all this forgotten history, all these secrets.

Something wants me to remember Nik and Todd, even if all I know about them is what it shows me, and what this book gets wrong about them. So I guess that’s the answer. I’m gonna remember.

We’re staying at C’s place tonight, going to meet S. tomorrow. We were gonna get a room at the motel, but apparently it’s shut down. L’s old place has been abandoned for two years, who knows if it’s habitable, and last I heard from Mom our old house is condemned.

I tried dozing on the way over, I never have trouble falling asleep in the car. I feel like I got a very brief glimpse of Nik taking some kind of pie out of an oven? I remember the smell, anyway, berries and sugar and butter, but beyond that, nothing.

(Transcribed from recording made by the interviewer)

C: Hey! Good to see you.

S: It’s been a while, huh. F---- said you had some questions, guess they must be pretty important if you’re willing to come all the way out here for em.

C: We can get to that when we get to it. You doing ok?

S: Heh. Well, I took a bad bump the other month, had to miss a show. But I’ll be back on my feet in no time, that’s why God made opioids.

C: So you’re still doing the wrestling, huh?

S: Looks that way. Yeah yeah, I know, I hear it often enough from F---- and C---. Anyway you didn’t drive all the way out here to tell me things I already know like how wrestling’s an unhealthy career.

C: Well, no.

S: This is about T---, then?

C: No, actually. So, I was doing some research, and I ran across this name. Wanted to know if it was anyone you knew.

S: Ok, shoot.

C: Todd Bronson.

S: Uh… I think I had a cousin Todd, one of the, y’know, the creepy ones. Who grew up at the compound. I wanna say he ran away, wound up in a shelter in Bountiful, maybe just cause that’s what mosta those kids do. But I dunno why his name’d be showing up in any research.

C: Well, this one would’ve been about our age in 1915.

S: Oh, so an old fart.

C: He was apparently a Sheriff's Deputy here, then.

S: Huh. You asked F----?

C: Yeah. He said he couldn’t find anything.

S: And he probably told you to fuck off.

C: Yup.

S: Well, the deputy part sounds a little familiar. I think I wanna say someone mentioned a deputy at some family reunion I got dragged to once? Lemme think here.

C: Take your time.

S: So, cousin wise, if you go back there’s three brothers, and that’s the three like, branches, right? There’s Amos, and Lehi, and Gregory. _ I _ can’t think of anyone on the tree who isn’t _ descended _ from one of those _ guys _.

C: Is it possible he didn’t have descendants?

S: I mean, I guess? I wasn’t ever all that attentive to like, genealogy.

C: Can you think of any reason why he’d have been deliberately omitted?

S: Oh sure! I guarantee they’ve already taken me off the list! There’s all kinds of stuff you can do, drinking, apostasizing, fucking, internet porn… and that’s just the stuff on my bingo card!

C: So if he’d been, for example, gay?

S: (no response)

C: S-----?

S: _ What do you think you’re going to prove here? _

C: I, uh, I dunno.

S: _ So what if he was? So what if they knew? So what if the matriarch covers it up, the patriarch goes numb, the family quietly disinherits, and what does he care if so? _

C: S----- are you alright?

S: _ If thy right hand causeth thee to sin, cut it off. If thy eye causeth thee to sin, pluck it out _.

C: What are you talking about?

S: _ He still gets a life, doesn’t he? He’s got some man keeping his bed warm. No need to rip a paw off in the trap, no need to look in through the windows at what he’s doing in the house _.

C: …what who is doing?

S: _ Some brother or some best friend. They’re warm and safe and dry, and you’re cold and wet, and they forget! They fucking forget! _

C: What the hell-?

S: _ Well I didn’t forget. And you won’t get to either _.

C: Oh shit, L--, catch-!

(unintelligible noise)

C: Are you ok?

S: Uh, yeah, what happened?

C: You collapsed, man, are you alright?

S: Did I trip or something?

C: What were you saying about, well, all that? The matriarch? Right hand causing thee to sin?

S: What?

C: Something about looking in at someone’s brother through the window?

S: …the hell are you talking about?

C: What’s the last thing you remember us saying?

S: Uh, you asked if there was some reason why a guy’d be taken off the family tree, and I said yeah, I sure was. Look, not to be a bitch, but can we call this? My head is killing me.

C: Uh, sure man. Sure.

S: …_ should be you carrying this _…

C: What was that?

S: What? I didn’t say anyth-

(end recording)

Ultimately of course the arrangement didn’t last. The prohibition of alcohol was repealed in 1933, and with it went any reason for the kind of racket Tibbets and his cronies were running.

Some of them, of course, had the legitimate careers—cultivated as smokescreens, but still something—to fall back on. Tibbets himself continued to run the school until declining population shut it down circa 1947 and Echo was incorporated into the Payton school district. Byrnes did not seek re-election, no record of his actions afterward seems to have survived, but presumably the general store remained operational in some capacity. Adler is listed a handful of times as ‘consulted’ by the Sheriff's department after the county seat is relocated to Payton in 1949: presumably he commanded some respect even in retirement. ||Having seen the town through the 1915 disaster, and|| presumably supporting the town’s illicit economic lifeline through the depression must have been worth something.

Others disappear from the record. We cannot hope to guess what became of Cynthia Tsosie or Kane Dunbar. ||There are some rumored claims of another event in the 1950s, but these are specious at best.|| More likely they merely moved on, as much of the population, both criminal and respectable, did. They were, after all, both.

While the author will not name them, some of their descendants(1) remain residents of the area to this day.

As for Todd Bronson and Nikolai Krol, they would have found little reason to maintain their cohabitation once the bootlegging operation was no more. This is supported by what little evidence we have.

Krol is recorded on the membership rolls of the Miner’s union for some years more. Beyond that he cannot be traced.

Bronson purchases a small plot, carved out of a distant corner of his family’s ranchland. Absent the racket, he would never have had any reason to associate with the Sheriff’s department, via Adler, or the Union, via Krol, again.

The last place his name appears is a registration form, at a county fair, in 1959. He is listed as exhibiting domestic ducks.

1. Whatever else is going on with you, S., thank you. I hope you’re ok.

The book was in my bag when we left the diner. L. and I both saw it.

When we pulled up at the apartment it was gone.

I can’t explain it. We only stopped for gas once, and one of us was with the truck the entire time. Nobody could’ve gotten at it.

But it’s still gone. All I have are the few pages I xeroxed to take notes on.

Between that and S.’s reaction, at least L.’s convinced now that the dreams must have been something more than just dreams.

Is it weird that I’m okay with this? I don’t know what kind of abyss I was looking into, when I picked up this book, but something definitely looked back at me. If all it did before it left was tell me that S.’s uncle once had a boyfriend/husband, then I’m not going to argue.

But I did have one more dream.

_ I’m getting out of an old, old pickup, the kind where they’ve only barely invented suspension. We’re up in the foothills, overlooking the lake, just pulled up in front of some cabin. _

_ Will gets out the other side. He looks… old. Fur’s greyer and a little thinner, and he’s chunky in the way a man gets when he used to work out all the time but can’t as much anymore. _

_ For that matter, I feel old. My back and my knees don’t hurt, exactly, but they do feel like they could, if they wanted to. Everything looks a little too bright, like I’ve just stepped out of a dark room into high noon, even though it’s sunset. _

_ “Well hey there!” I hear Todd’s voice and look up. He’s coming down off the cabin porch. He’s got some age on him, as well, there’s grey in his muzzle and a trace of whistle in his voice, but he hugs me as energetically as ever. _

_ Nik stands in the cabin door behind him, wiping his paws on a dish towel. His black stripes are almost entirely invisible. _

_ “Take care of him, boys,” Will can’t help glancing, side to side, to make were we’re alone, before he kisses me goodbye. Old habits die hard, I guess. “I need him back in one piece, come morning!” _

_ “You could always,” Nik has to clear his throat, and cough, halfway through, but he presses on, “stay as well. There is room in the bed for four!” _

_ “Oh gosh!” No matter how many years he’s had to gets used to it, Todd still blushes. _

_ But Will waves and drives off. _

_ The dream shifts, and I’m having dinner with them. Nik’s cooking remains amazing. _

_ The dream shifts again, to the bed. Nik is holding me, from behind, while I ride him. His arms around my chest are still so strong it’s almost frightening. _

_ And Todd is on his knees between my legs, sucking hungrily as I stroke his ears. _

_ “I love you…” Nik pants. _

_ Todd moans in agreement. _

_ I glance to the side and make eye contact with the mirror on the bedside table: the one I gave them, from my old room at the Hip, as a closest-thing-to-a-wedding present. _

_ Where my reflection should be, there was a scrawny, awkward looking otter. _

_ I mouth silently at him, “fuck off, kid.” _

And then I woke up.