Erlan returned the Knucklehead, its chrome dusty and splattered by bugs and several crow’s breakfasts, to the AB Garage on the edge of town. He heaved up one of the old wooden garage doors, backed the bike into an empty bay, and tossed the keys on the desk.

He was due at the Roadhouse next - they’d expect him to share a toast - but first he had to make a call. He found the battered wall phone in the back of the deserted office and got Alli’s voice mail.

"Hey, its Jake,” Erlan said. “I’m out in Montana. Sorry I didn’t call sooner, but... "

There was a click as Alli picked up. "Jacobsen? Where are you?

"Montana. At my dad’s funeral."

"Your Dad?. You never said he was ill."

"It was an accident. He lost control of his motorcycle."

"Oh, Jake. I’m so sorry. I know you weren’t close..."

"It’s fine, Alli. Other than I keep expecting him to pop up around every corner, like this was another on of his cons."

“Jake. It still has to be hard.”

“I’m okay, really. Silence crackled on the line for a moment. "There are some things I need to take care of out here, just for a couple days..."

"Don’t worry. We’ll reschedule the caterer."

"Damn, that’s right,” Erlan smacked his forehead. “No, don’t reschedule. Get Turf to do it. He’s got better taste than me anyway."

"Delegation? Is this how you plan to handle all your husbandly duties?"

"I’m sure Turf would be willing to oblige," Erlan said.

"Just get back here before I decide to let him," Alli said.

Erlan smiled. "Thanks for being sweet about this. How are things going otherwise?"

"Everything is on plan, except for my wandering fiance, but he will be back in time to meet the tailor, I’m sure of it. He is very trustworthy."

Erlan stifled a groan. "The tailor, right. When was that again?

"Next Saturday at 11 AM. Do we need to go over the dates again?"

"No, no, I am well aware of the Sovereign Importance of the Schedule. I’ll be there. You’re beautiful."

"True, and you better.” Alli’s tone turned serious again. “I’m sorry about your father, Jake. Is there anything I can do?”

“I’ve got it handled. A couple days, and I’ll be back.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

#

After he hung up, Erlan reflected that the call had gone pretty well. Except for the lying.

Not long after they started dating, Erlan told Alli a little about his past. She knew he had done eight months in juvenile detention for assault when he used to ride with the Alder Boys, and that Erlan was estranged from his father now. He had neglected to mention that his old man was the founder of the motorcycle club, as well as a Church that believed aliens visited Earth, not in space ships, but through magic trees. He’d have to tell her the whole truth eventually, maybe about the time their kids were in college.

Erlan left the front door of the garage unlocked like he’d found it, and walked half a mile through town, savoring the mountain views on the way back to the funeral home and the moving van. He discovered that he missed the elevation out here. Things were calmer back east, but flatter too.

Erlan turned the van onto the highway and headed west. The Roadhouse was ten miles outside of town, up through the foothills dotted with juniper and herds of Pronghorn antelope.

Pronghorns where the fastest land animal in North America, capable of speeds up to sixty miles per hour. They’d needed that speed thousands of years earlier, when the American Cheetah still roamed the plains. Erlan wondered if any old antelope ever got on some young pronghorn’s case about the old days, when there were real predators who could chase you down for real, not just men with sharp thunder who knocked you dead out of a clear blue sky.

His father had taken him through the trees several times when he was a boy, to someplace he called Rain. They’d watched a big cat take down a pronghorn on the run. The predator was too long and skinny to be a mountain lion, it’s hide tawny and plain, like a cheetah without spots. Erlan still hadn’t figured out how Keylor had pulled that trick.

#

Erlan remembered being five or six, standing next to his mother inside the shop window and watching the Alder Boys roll into Tall Timber in the spring, announced by the rumble of engines and the sound of doors slamming as the residents hustled their valuables and their daughters under lock and key. Sapphire pointed him out, the big man riding in front, head shaved like a marine, blue eyes like Erlan’s. Keylor used a number of aliases back then, but most people knew him as the Dustman, leader of the Alder Boys motorcycle club, the man with “Dust to Dust” stitched over the alder tree on the back of his jacket.

“There goes your bad half,” Sapphire said, one arm around Erlan’s shoulder, the smell of strawberries bubbling up from the canning stove in the cellar. “A fine example. Mind who he is and what he does, then head 180 degrees the other way.”

Advice Erlan had taken to heart with varying degrees of success through out his life.

Erlan was eleven years old the first time he actually met the Dustman. He’d gone to bed one summer night, the smell of raspberry jam in his nose this time, the sound of lids plinking as the cans cooled. He woke the next morning in a forest - deep, wet woods like Montana hadn’t seen for an ice age or two. A big man with a jarhead haircut and startling blue eyes sat on his haunches a few feet away. He pulled a stem of grass out of his mouth.

“I hear you’re my boy.”

Erlan blinked, feeling groggy. He rubbed his eyes and looked around. A dozen unfamiliar patters, pops, trills and chirps came out of the trees. In between it was quiet enough to hear dew dripping from the branches, a silence miles deep in every direction.

“Where am I?”

“Fairyland.”

Erlan looked around again. A snake the size of a fire hose dropped out of the lower branches into the underbrush a dozen yards away. There were sounds of a struggle.

“Is that the one in Florida or California?”

The Dustman stared at him. Erlan stared back, figuring he could do it all day, but pretty soon that face, an older, harder reflection of his own, started to freak him out, and he found himself looking at the ground, leaf mold and sticks clutched in his hands.

“Good question. I hear they got one in China now,” said the Dustman.

“Paris and Tokyo, too.”

“How about that.”

The Dustman tossed a bundle on the ground next to Erlan. A square of leather wrapped around a curved piece of horn and a couple of rocks. The Dustman took out a similar bundle and spread his square of leather out on his knee.

“Pay attention, boy. This is flint. First off, I’m going to teach you to make a spearhead.”

“What for?”

“Because you’re going to get hungry soon.”

So Erlan learned to make a spearhead that was sharp enough to cut a shaft of wood and carve a notch to seat the head in. Then he threw the spear at a variety of small forest creatures before going to bed hungry. The next day he did it again until, shockingly, the shaft stuck in the side of a rabbit. It gave a pitiful squeal and ran. Erlan followed drops of blood for an hour, sad for the rabbit, but so hungry he knew he’d eat it. The Dustman followed a few strides behind, saying nothing. When they found the rabbit, the Dustman drew a small, beautifully made obsidian knife and showed Erlan how to dress the carcass. They ate strips of meat roasted on sticks over a small fire.

“Isn’t that cheating?” Erlan asked when the Dustman pulled out a box of kitchen matches to light the fire.

“Simple, reliable, and worth their weight in all the worlds of the Groves.” The Dustman shook the box and smiled for the first time. “Don’t leave home without them.”

Erlan fell asleep with a full belly and woke up back in his bed. He was tempted to consider it all a dream, but his fingers still hurt from chipping the flint, and his guts were messed up. Sapphire only cooked vegetarian food, not even eggs or milk, so the meat was a shock to his system. Sapphire hugged him harder than usual that morning, after he told her all about it.

“Your father’s a snake in the grass,” she said, “But you’ll inherit his power someday, like it or not.”

That was the first he’d heard of the vestiture, the mysterious power Keylor’s first born child would inherit.

#

The van’s tires picked a ragged tune across heat-buckled slabs of asphalt. Erlan put a hand to his forehead. No fever. Keylor Moss had been dead for three days now, and it seemed that vestiture, like most of his father’s promises, was not going to materialize.

Instead, Erlan was left with a mess to clean up, and a comfortably familiar bitterness. It would take all he had to extricate himself from this one, but this was the last. His father would never drop him in a pile of shit again.

Erlan turned off the highway onto the lane that led to the Roadhouse, wondering why the thought should make him sad.

Next Chapter: The Road House