Kate Wilhelm - Winter Beach

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First published in Redbook, 1981

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HUGH LASATER stood with his back to the window watching Lloyd Pierson squirm. They were in

Pierson's office, a room furnished with university-issue desk and book shelves, as devoid of personality

as Pierson himself was. He was one of those men no one after the fact could ever identify, so neutral he

could vanish in a mist, become one with a landscape, and never be seen again.

Lloyd Pierson stopped fidgeting with his pencil and took a deep breath. “I can't do it,” he said primly,

examining the pencil. “It would be unethical, and besides she would appeal. She might even have a sex

discrimination case.”

“She won't appeal. Believe me, she won't make a stink.”

Pierson shook his head. He glanced at his watch, then confirmed what he had learned by looking at the

wall clock.

Lasater suppressed a laugh.

“You do it, or I go over your head,” he said mildly. “It's a funny thing how people hate having this kind of

decision shoved at them when it could have been handled on a lower level. You know?”

“You have no right!” Pierson snapped. He looked at Lasater, then quickly away again. “This is

insufferable.”

“Righto. Dean McCrory, isn't it? I just happen to have his number here somewhere. I suppose your

secretary would place the call for me?” He searched his notebook, then stopped, holding it open.

“I want to talk to your supervisor, your boss, whoever that is.”

Lasater shrugged. “Got a piece of paper? I'll write the number for you.” Pierson handed him a note pad

and he jotted down a number. “That's a Washington area code. Dial it yourself, if you don't mind. You

have an outside line, don't you? And his is a direct line, it'll be his private secretary who answers. Just tell

him it's about the bird-of-prey business. He'll put you through.”

“Whose private secretary?”

“Secretary of Defense,” Lasater said, as if surprised that Pierson had not recognized the number.

“I don't believe you.” He dialed the number.

Lasater turned to look out the window. The campus was a collage of red brick buildings, dirty snow, and

too many people of an age. God, how tired he would get of so many young people all the time with their

mini-agonies and mini-crises, and mini-triumphs. Unisex reigned here; in their dark winter garments they

all looked alike. The scene was like an exercise in perspective: same buildings, same snow, same vague

figures repeated endlessly. He listened to Pierson parrot his message about bird of prey, and a moment

later:

“Never mind. Sorry to bother you. I won't wait. It's all right.”

Lasater smiled at the bleak landscape, but when he turned to the room there was no trace of humor on

his face. He retrieved the note paper, put it in an ashtray, and set it afire. After it was burned he crushed

the ashes thoroughly, then dumped them into the waste can. He held the pad aslant and studied the next

piece of paper, then slipped the pad into a pocket. He kept his amusement out of his voice when he said,

“You will never use that number again, or even remember that you saw such a number. In fact, this entire

visit is classified, and everything about it. Right?”

Pierson nodded miserably. Lasater felt only contempt for him now; he had not fought hard enough for

anything else. “So, you just tell her no dice on a leave of absence. You have about an hour before she'll

get here; you'll think of a dozen good reasons why your department can't do without her services.” He

picked up his coat and hat from the chair where he had tossed them and left without looking back.

Lyle Taney would never know what happened, he thought with satisfaction, pausing to put his coat on at

the stairs of the history department building. He went to the student union and had a malted milk shake,

picked up a poetry review magazine, bought a pen, and then went to his car and waited. Most of the

poetry was junk, but some of it was pretty good, better than he had expected. He reread one of the short

pieces. Nice. Then he saw her getting out of her car. Lyle Taney was medium height, a bit heavy for his

taste; he liked willowy women and she was curvy and dimply. Ten pounds, he estimated; she could lose

ten pounds before she would start to look gaunt enough to suit him. He liked sharp cheekbones and the

plane of a cheek without a suggestion of roundness. Her hair was short and almost frizzy it was so curly,

dark brown with just a suggestion of gray, as if she had frosted it without enough bleach to do a thorough

job. He knew so much about her that it would have given her a shock to realize anyone had recorded

such information and that it could be retrieved. He knew her scars, her past illnesses, her college records,

her income and expenses ... She was bouncy: he grinned at her tripping nimbly through the slush at the

curb before the building. That was nice, not too many women were still bouncy at her age: thirty-seven

years, four months, sixteen days.

She vanished inside the building. He glanced at his watch and made a bet with himself. Eighteen minutes.

It would take eighteen minutes. Actually it took twenty-two. When she reappeared, the bounce was

gone. She marched down the stairs looking straight ahead, plowed through the slush, crossed the street

without checking for traffic, daring anyone to touch her. She got to her car and yanked the door open,

slid in, and drove off too fast. He liked all that. No tears. No sentimental look around at the landscape.

Just good old-fashioned determination. Hugh Lasater liked to know everything about the people he used.

This was data about Lyle Taney that no one would have been able to tell him. He felt that he knew her a

little better now than he had that morning. He was whistling tunelessly as he turned on his key, started the

rented car, and left the university grounds. She would do, he told himself contentedly. She would do just

fine.

* * * *

Lyle put on coffee and paced while she waited for it. On the table her book looked fragile suddenly, too

nebulous to support her entire weight, and that was what it had to do. The book had a flying hawk on the

cover; sunlight made the rufous tail look almost scarlet. The book was about hawks, about the word

hawk , about hawk-like people. It was not natural history, or ornithology, or anything in particular, but it

had caught on, and it was having a moderate success. A fluke, of course, such a long shot it could never

happen again. She was not a writer, and she really knew nothing about birds in general and hawks in

particular, except what she had researched and observed over the five years it had taken her to do the

book. The book was so far removed from her own field of history that it was not even counted as a

publication by her department.

Her former department, she corrected herself, and poured coffee, then sat down at the table with it and

stared at the book, and went over the luncheon one more time.

Bobby Conyers, her editor for the hawk book, and Mal Levinson from the magazineBirds had insisted

that a follow-up book on eagles would be equally successful.

“Consider it, Lyle,” Mal had said earnestly, on first-name basis instantly. “We want the article. I know

ten thousand isn't a fortune, but we'll pick up your expenses, and it'll add up. And Bobby can guarantee

fifteen thousand up front for the book. Don't say no before you think about it.”

“But I don't know anything at all about eagles, nothing. And Oregon? Why there? There are eagles in

other places, surely.”

Mal pointed to the clipping he had brought with him: a letter to the editor of a rival magazine, it mentioned

the bald eagles seen along a stretch of Oregon beach for two years in a row, suggesting they were nesting

in the vicinity.

“That part of Oregon looks like the forest primeval,” he said. “And eagles, bald eagles, are on the

endangered list. That may be the last nesting site on the west coast. It'll make a terrific article and book.

Believe us, we both agree, it'll be even better thanHawks. I'd like to call itBird of Prey .”

Bobby was nodding. “I agree, Lyle. It'll go.” She sipped her coffee, her gaze still on the book. In her

briefcase were contracts, a map of Oregon, another one of that section of coast, and a Xerox copy of an

article on eagles that Mal had dug out of back issues of his magazine.

“What if I can't find the nest?” she had asked, and with the question she had realized she was going to do

it.

“It's pretty hard to hide an eagle's nest,” Mal had said, grinning, knowing she had been persuaded. He

began to talk about eagles then, and for the rest of the hour they spent together, it had been as if they all

knew she would go to Oregon, search the jagged hills for the nest, set up a photography blind, start

digging for facts, tidbits, myths, whatever else took her fancy to make up a full-length book.

And she did want to do it, she told herself again firmly, and tried not to think of what it would mean if the

book failed, if she could not find the nest, if the eagles were not nesting there this year, if ... if ... if ... She

would have to face Pierson and ask for her job back, or go somewhere else and start over. She thought

briefly of filing a claim of discrimination against Pierson and the university, but she put it out of mind again.

Not her style. No one had forced her to quit, and no one guaranteed a leave of absence for a job

unrelated to her field. Pierson had pointed this out to her in his most reasonable tone, the voice that

always made her want to hit him with a wet fish. The fleeting thought about the statistics of women her

age getting work in their own fields went unheeded as she began to think seriously about the difficulties of

finding an eagle's nest in the wooded, steep hills of the coast range of Oregon.

Presently she put the book on a chair and spread out the coastal map and began to study it. The nest

would be within a mile or two of the water, and the exact places where the bird had been seen were

clearly marked. An area roughly five to eight miles by two miles. It would be possible, with luck, and if

the bird watcher had been right, and if the eagles came back this year...

* * * *

Lyle sat on the side of her bed talking on the phone. During the past week she had packed up most of

the things she would take with her, and had moved into her study those things she did not want her

subleasers to use. She would lock that door and keep the key. Almost magically the problems had been

erased before her eyes. She was listening to her friend Jackie plead for her to reconsider her decision,

and her mind was roaming over the things yet to be done. A cashier's check to open an account with in

the village of Salmon Key, and more film and developer paper...

“Jackie, it's not as if I were a child who never left home before,” she said, trying to keep the edge off her

voice. “And I tell you I am sick and tired of teaching. I hadn't realized how tired of it I was until I quit.

My God! Those term papers!”

She was grateful a moment later when the doorbell cut the phone call short. “Lunch? Sure. I'll be there,”

she said and hung up, and then went to open the door.

The man was close to six feet, but stooped; he had a big face. She seldom had seen features spread out

quite as much as his were: wide-spaced eyes with heavy long lashes and thick sable-brown brows, a

nose that would dominate a smaller face, and a mouth that would fit on a jack-o'-lantern. The mouth

widened even more when he smiled.

“Mrs. Taney? Could I have a few minutes to talk to you? My name is Hugh Lasater, from the Drug

Enforcement Administration.” He handed her his identification and she started to open the door; he held it

to the few inches the chain allowed.

“Ma'am, if you don't mind. You study the I.D. and the picture, compare it to my pan, and then if it seems

okay, you open the door.” He had a pained expression as he said this.

She did as he directed, then admitted him, thinking he must be looking for an informant or something. She

thought of the half dozen vacant-eyed students in her classes; the thought was swiftly followed by relief

that it no longer concerned her.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Lasater?” She motioned to a chair in a halfhearted way, hoping he would

not accept the quasi-invitation.

“No one's here with you?”

She shook her head.

“Good.” He took off his coat and hat and put them down on the sofa, then sank down into the chair she

had indicated. “You almost ready to go?”

She started, but then, glancing about the apartment, decided anyone with an eye could tell she was going

somewhere. “Yes. Next week I'm going on a trip.”

“I know. Oregon. Salmon Key. The Donleavy house on Little Salmon Creek.”

This time when she reacted with surprise, the chill was like a lump of ice deep within her. “What do you

want, Mr. Lasater?”

“How'd you learn that trick?” he asked with genuine curiosity. “You never had any intelligence training.”

“I don't know what you're talking about. If you'll just state your business. As you can see, I'm quite

busy.”

“It's a dandy thing to know. You just step back a little and watch from safety, in a manner of speaking.

Useful. Damned offputting to anyone not familiar with it. And you're damned good at it.”

She waited. He knew, she thought, that inside she was frozen: her way of handling anger, fear,

indignation? Later she would analyze the different emotions. And Hugh Lasater, she realized, was also

back a little, watching, calculating, appraising her all the way.

“Okay, I'll play it straight,” he said then. “No games, no appeal to loyalty, or your sense of justice, or

anything else. We, my department and I, request your help in a delicate matter. We want you to get

fingerprints from a suspect for us.”

She laughed in relief. “You aren't serious.”

“Oh yes, deadly serious. The Donleavy house is just a hop away from another place that sits on the next

cliff overlooking the ocean. And in that other house is a man we're after quite seriously. But we have to

make certain. We can't tip him that we're on to him. We need someone so innocent, so unlikely that he'll

never give her a second thought. You pass him a picture to look at; he gives it back and you put it away

carefully in an envelope we provide. Finis. That's all we want. If he's our man, we put a tail on him and let

him lead us to others even more important and nab them all. They're smuggling in two-thirds of all the

coke and hash and opium being used in the States today.”

He knew he had scored because her face became so expressionless that it might have been carved from

wax. It was the color of something that had died a long time ago.

“That's contemptible,” she said in a low voice.

“I'm sorry,” he replied. “I truly am. But we are quite desperate.”

She shook her head. “Please go,” she said in a low voice. In a flash the lump of ice had spread; her

frozen body was a thing apart. She had learned to do this in analysis, to step out of the picture to observe

herself doing crazy things—groping for pills in an alcoholic fog, driving eighty miles an hour after an

evening in a bar ... It was a good trick, he was right. It had allowed her to survive then; it would get her

through the next few minutes until he left.

“Mrs. Taney, your kid wasn't the only one, and every day there are more statistics to add to the mess.

And they'll keep on being added day after day. Help us put a stop to it.”

“You have enough agents. You don't need to drag in someone from outside.”

“I told you, it has to be someone totally innocent, someone there with a reason beyond doubting. You'll

get your pictures and your story, that's legitimate enough. The contracts are good. No one will ever know

you helped us.” He stood up and went to his overcoat and took a large insulated envelope from the

inside pocket. “Mrs. Taney, we live in the best of times and the worst of times. We want to squash that

ring of genteel importers. People like that are making these the worst of times. It's a dirty business; okay,

I grant you that. But Mike's death was dirtier. Twelve years old, overdosed. That's pretty damned filthy.”

He put the envelope down on the end table by the sofa. “Let them make the first move. Don't try to force

yourself on them in any way. There's Saul Werther, about sixty-two or three, cultured, kindly, probably

lonesome as hell by now. And a kid he has with him, cook, driver, handyman, bodyguard, who knows?

Twenty-one at the most, Chicano. They'll want to know who you are and why you're there. No secret

about you, the magazine story, the eagles, it's all legitimate as hell. They'll buy it. You like music, so does

Werther. You'll get the chance. Just wait for it and then take advantage of it. Don't make a big deal of not

messing up his prints if he handles a picture, a glass, whatever. Don't handle it unnecessarily either.

There's some wrapping in the envelope; put it around the object loosely first, then pop it in the envelope

and put it away. We'll be in touch.”

Now he put the coat on. At the door he looked back at her. “You'll do fine, Lyle. You really will. And

maybe you'll be able to accept that you're getting back at them just a little bit. It might even help.”

* * * *

Brilliant green moss covered the tree trunks; ferns grew in every cranny, on the lower dead limbs, on the

moss, every inch of space between the trees. Nowhere was any ground visible, or any rock; all was

hidden by the mosses and ferns. Evergreen bushes made impenetrable thickets in spots where the trees

had been cut in the past, or a fire had raged. Logging had stopped years ago and now the trees were

marching again, overtaking the shrubs, defeating them, reclaiming the steep hills. Raindrops glistened on

every surface, shimmered on the tips of the emerald fronds; the air was blurred with mist. The rain made

no sound, was absorbed by the mosses, transferred to the ground below efficiently, silently.

Lyle sat on a log and listened to the silence of the woods on this particular hill. The silences varied, she

had learned; almost always the surf made the background noise, but here it was inaudible. This was like a

holding-your-breath silence, she decided. No wind moved the trees, nothing stirred in the undergrowth,

no birds called or flew. It was impossible to tell if the rain had stopped; often it continued under the trees

long after the skies had cleared. She got up presently and climbed for another half-hour to the top of the

hill. It had been a steep climb, but a protected one; here on the crest the wind hit her. Sea wind, salt

wind, fresh yet filled with strange odors. The rain had stopped. She braced herself against the trunk of a

tree twisted out of shape with sparse growth clinging to the tip ends of its branches. She was wearing a

dark green poncho, rain pants of the same color over her woolen slacks, high boots, a woolen knit hat

pulled low on her forehead and covered with the poncho hood. A pair of binoculars was clipped to her

belt under the poncho. She took them out and began to study the surrounding trees, the other hilltops that

now were visible, the rocks of a ledge with a drop of undetermined distance, because the gorge, or

whatever it was, was bathed in mist. She did not spot the nest.

She turned the glasses toward the ocean and for a long time looked seaward. A new storm was building.

A boat so distant that it remained a smudge, even with the full magnification, was stuck to the horizon.

She hoped that if it was a fishing boat, it made port before the storm hit. There had been two storms so

far in the sixteen days she had been in Oregon. It still thrilled and frightened her to think of the power, the

uncontrollable rage of the sea under storm winds. It would terrify her to be out there during such a storm.

As she watched, the sea and sky became one and swallowed the boat. She knew the front would be

racing toward shore, and she knew she would be caught if she returned to her house the way she had

come. She stepped back under the trees and mentally studied the map of this day's search. She could go

back along the western slope of the hill, skirt the gorge (it was a gorge cut by a tiny fierce stream), follow

it until it met Little Salmon Creek, which would lead her home. It was rough, but no rougher than any

other trail in these jagged hills that went up and down as if they had been designed by a first-grader.

The wind blew harder, its cutting edge sharp and cold. Her face had been chapped ever since day one

here, and she knew today would not improve matters. She started down the rugged hillside heading

toward the creek gorge. The elevation of this peak was one thousand feet; her cabin was one hundred

feet above sea level. She began to slide on wet mosses, and finally stopped when she reached out to

grasp a tree trunk. Going down would be faster than getting up had been, she thought grimly, clutching

the tree until she got her breath back. The little creek plunged over a ledge to a pool fifteen or twenty feet

below; she had to detour to find a place to get down the same distance. “A person could get killed,” she

muttered, inching down on her buttocks, digging in her heels as hard as she could, sliding a foot or so at a

time.

The trees were fir, pine, an occasional alder, an even rarer oak, and at the margins of the woods

huckleberries, blueberries, blackberries, Oregon grapes, raspberries, salmon berries, elderberries ... She

could no longer remember the long list of wild plants. They grew so luxuriantly that they appeared to be

growing on top of and out of each other, ten feet high, twenty feet. She never had seen such a profusion

of vines.

Down, down, slipping, sliding, lowering herself from tree trunk to tree trunk, clinging to moss-covered

rocks, feeling for a toehold below, sometimes walking gingerly on the scree at the edge of the creek

when the berry bushes were impenetrable. Always downward. At last she reached a flat spot, and

stopped to rest. She had come down almost all the way. She no longer had any chance of beating the

storm; she would be caught and drenched. Now all she hoped was that she could be off the steep hill

before it struck with full force. She looked seaward; there were only trees that were being erased by mist

and clouds leaving suggestive shadows. Then she gasped. There was the nest!

As Mal Levinson had said, it was hard to hide an eagle's nest. It was some distance from her, down a

ravine, up the other side, a quarter of a mile or perhaps a little more. The roiling mist was already blurring

its outlines. Impossible to judge its size, but big. It had to be old, used year after year, added to each new

season. Eight feet across? She knew any figures from this distance were meaningless, but she could not

stop the calculations. Half as deep as it was wide, four by eight then. It crowned a dead pine tree. A gust

of wind hit her, lifted her hood, and now she realized that for some time she had been hearing the roar of

the surf. She got up and started to make the final descent. In a few moments she came to the place where

the little creek joined the larger one, and together they crashed over a rocky outcropping. Now she knew

exactly where she was. She stayed as close to the bank of the creek as she could, searching for a place

where she could cross. Farther down, near her cabin, she knew it was possible, but difficult because in

its final run to the sea the creek was cutting a deep channel through the cliffs.

How lucky, she was thinking, to find the nest this close to her own place. The two creeks came together

at the two-hundred-foot altitude, child's play after scrambling up and down one-thousand-foot peaks.

Less than a mile from the cabin; it would be nothing to go back and forth, pack in her gear ... She

stopped suddenly and now felt a chill that the wind had not been able to induce in her. There was the

other house, Werther's house. The nest was almost in his back yard.

The boy appeared, coming from the garage carrying a grocery bag. He waved and, after a brief

hesitation, she waved back, then continued to follow the creek down to the bridge where tons of

boulders and rocks of all sizes had been dumped to stabilize the banks for the bridge supports.

The rain finally started as she approached the bridge, and she made her way down the boulders with the

rain blinding and savaging her all the way. The creek was no more than a foot deep here, but very swift,

white water all the way to the beach. Normally she would have picked her way across it on the exposed

rocks, but this time she plunged in, trusting her boots to be as waterproof as the manufacturer claimed.

She had forgotten, she kept thinking in disbelief. She had forgotten about Werther and his young

driver/cook/bodyguard. At first it had been all she had thought about, but then, with day after day spent

in the wet woods, climbing, slipping, sliding, searching, it was as if she had developed amnesia and for a

week or longer she had not thought of them at all. It was the same feeling she had had only a few days

ago, she realized, when she had come upon a bottle of sleeping pills and had looked at it without

recognition. Then, as now, it had taken an effort to remember.

She made her way up her side of the boulders; five hundred feet away was her cabin dwarfed by

rhododendrons. Weakly she dragged herself toward it, turning once to glance briefly at the other house,

knowing it was not visible from here, but looking anyway. The boy had walked to the edge of the creek,

was watching her; he waved again, and then ran through the rain back toward his own house,

disappearing among the trees and bushes that screened it.

Spying on her? That openly? Maybe he had been afraid she would fall down in the shallow treacherous

stream. Maybe he thought she had fallen many times already; she considered how she looked: muddy,

bedraggled, dripping, red-faced from windburn and cold. She looked like a nut, she thought, a real nut.

She found the key under the planter box and let herself in. The cabin was cold and smelled of sea air and

salt and decay. Before she undressed, she made up the fire in the wood stove and put water on to boil

for coffee. She wished she had not seen the boy, that he had not spoiled this moment of triumph, that the

nest was not in Werther's back yard almost, that Lasater had never ... She stopped herself. She wished

for golden wings.

“Don't waste perfectly good wishes on mundane things,” her father had said to her once when she had

still been young enough to sit on his lap.

She was smiling slightly then as she pulled off her boots; her feet were wet and cold. Ah well, she had

expected that, she thought sourly. She made the coffee, then showered, and examined new bruises

acquired that day. She had not lost weight, she thought, surveying herself, but she was shifting it around a

lot. Her waist was slimming down, while, she felt certain, her legs were growing at an alarming rate. She

would have legs like a sumo wrestler after a few more weeks of uphill, downhill work. Or like a mountain

goat. She pulled on her warmest robe and rubbed her hair briskly, then started to make her dinner.

She sniffed leftover soup, shrugged, and put it on to heat, scraped mold off a piece of cheese, toasted

stale bread, quartered an apple, and sat down without another thought of food. As she ate, she studied

her topographic map, then drew in a circle around the spot where she knew the nest was. As she had

suspected, it was less than half a mile from Werther's house, but not visible from it because of the way

the land went up and down. There was a steep hill, then a ravine, then a steeper hill, and it was the flanks

of the second hill that the eagle had chosen for a building site.

She started in surprise when there was a knock on the door. No one had knocked on that door since her

arrival. She looked down at herself, then shrugged. She was in a heavy flannel robe and fleece-lined

moccasins. Her hair was still wet from the shower, and out every which way from her toweling it. Her

wet and muddy clothes were steaming on chairs drawn close to the stove. Everywhere there were

books, maps, notebooks; her typewriter was on an end table, plugged into an extension cord that snaked

across the room. Mail was stacked on another end table; it had been stacked, now it was in an untidy

heap, with a letter or two on the floor where they had fallen when the stack had leaned too far.

“What the hell,” she muttered, stepping over the extension cord to open the door.

It was the boy from Werther's house. He grinned at her. He was a good-looking kid, she thought

absently, trying to block his view of the room. It was no good, though, he was tall enough to see over her

head. His grin deepened. He had black hair with a slight wave, deep brown eyes, beautiful young skin. A

heart throb, she thought, remembering the phrase from her school years.

“I caught a lot of crabs today,” he said, and she saw the package he was carrying. “Mr. Werther thought

you might like some.” He held out the package.

She knew he had seen the remains of her dinner, her clothes, everything. No point in pretending now.

She held the door open and stepped back. “Would you like to come in? Have a cup of coffee?”

“Thanks,” he said, shaking his head. “I have to go back and make our dinner now.”

She took the package. “Thank you very much. I appreciate this.”

He nodded and left in the rain. He had come through the creek, she realized, the same way she had

come. Actually it was quicker than getting a car down the steep driveway, onto the road, up her equally

steep driveway. Over a mile by road, less than half a mile by foot. She closed the door and took the

package to the sink. The crabs, two of them, had been steamed and were still warm. Her mouth was

watering suddenly, although she had eaten what she thought was enough at the time. She melted butter,

then slowly ate again, savoring each bite of the succulent crab meat. Werther, or the boy, had cracked

the legs just enough; she was able to get out every scrap. When she finished, she sat back sighing with

contentment. She was exhausted, her room was a sty, but she had found the nest. It had been a good

day.

And Lasater? She scowled, gathered up her garbage, and cleared it away. Damn Lasater.

* * * *

For the next three days she studied the area of the nest minutely. There was no good vantage point

actually for her to stake out as her own. The pine spur was at the end of a ravine that was filled with trees

and bushes. Nowhere could she see through the dense greenery for a clear view of the nest. She had to

climb one hill after another, circling the ravine, keeping the nest in sight, looking for a likely place to put

her lean-to, to set up her tripod, to wait. She finally found a site, about four feet higher than the nest, on a

hillside about one hundred feet from it, with a deep chasm between her and the nest. She unslung her

backpack and took out the tarpaulin and nylon cords, all dark green, and erected the lean-to, fastening it

securely to trees at all four corners. It would have to do, she decided, even though it stood out like a

beer can in a mountain brook. She had learned, in photographing hawks, that most birds would accept a

lean-to, or wooden blind even, if it was in place before they took up residence. During the next week or

so the lean-to would weather, moss would cover it, ferns grow along the ropes, a tree or two sprout to

hide the flap ... She took a step back to survey her work, and nodded. Fine. It was fine and it would

keep her dry, she decided, and then the rain started again.

Every three or four days a new front blew in from the Pacific bringing twenty-foot waves, thirty-foot

waves, or even higher, crashing into the cliffs, tearing out great chunks of beach, battling savagely with the

pillars, needles, stacks of rock that stood in the water as if the land were trying to sneak out to sea. In the

thick rain forests the jagged hills broke up the wind; the trees broke up the rain, cushioned its impact, so

that by the time it reached the mosses, it was almost gentle. The mosses glowed and bulged with the

bounty. The greens intensified. It was like being in an underwater garden. Lyle made her way down the

hillside with the cold rain in her face, and she hardly felt it. The blind was ready; she was ready; now it

would be a waiting game. Every day she would photograph the nest, and compare the pictures each

night. If one new feather was added she would know. The eagles could no more conceal their presence

than they could conceal their nest.

When she reached her side of the bridge again, she crossed the road and went out to the edge of the

bluff that overlooked the creek and the beach. The roar of surf was deafening; there was no beach to be

seen. This storm had blown in at high tide and waves thundered against the cliffs. The bridge was

seventy-five feet above the beach, but spray shot up and was blown across it again and again as the

waves exploded below. Little Salmon Creek dropped seventy-five feet in its last mile to the beach, with

most of the drop made in a waterfall below the bridge; now Little Salmon Creek was being driven

backward and was rising. Lyle stood transfixed, watching the spectacular storm, until the light failed, and

now the sounds of crashing waves, of driftwood logs twenty feet long being hurled into bridge pilings, of

wind howling through the trees all became frightening and she turned and hurried toward her cabin. She

caught a motion from the cliff on the other side of the bridge and she could make out the figure of a

watcher there. He was as bundled up as she was, and the light was too feeble by then to be able to tell if

it was the boy, or Werther.

The phone was ringing when she got inside and pushed the door closed against the wind that rushed

through with her. Papers stirred with the passage, then settled again. She had to extract the telephone

from under a pile of her sweaters she had brought out to air because things left in the bedroom tended to

smell musty. The wood stove and a small electric heater in her darkroom were the only heat in the cabin.

“Yes,” she said, certain it was a wrong number.

“Mrs. Taney, this is Saul Werther. I wonder if I can talk you into having dinner with me this evening. I'd

be most happy if you will accept. Carmen will be glad to pick you up in an hour and take you home again

later.”

She felt a rush of fear that drained her.Please , she prayed silently,not again. Don't start again. She

closed her eyes hard.

“Mrs. Taney, forgive me. We haven't really met, I'm your neighbor across the brook,” he said, as if

reminding her he was still on the line. “We watched the storm together.”

“Yes, of course, I'd ... Thank you. I'll be ready in an hour.”

For several minutes she stood with her hand on the phone.

It had happened again, the first time in nearly four years. It had been Werther on the phone, but she had

heard Mr. Hendrickson's voice. “Mrs. Taney, I'm afraid there's been an accident...” And she had known.

It had been as if she had known even before the telephone rang that evening; she had been waiting for

confirmation, nothing more. Fear, grief, shock, guilt: she had been waiting for a cause, for a reason for the

terrible emotions that had gripped her, that had been amorphously present for an hour and finally settled

out only with the phone call. No one had believed her, not Gregory, not the psychiatrist, and she would

have been willing to disbelieve, yearned to be able to disbelieve, but could not, because now and then,

always with a meaningless call, that moment had swept over her again. She had come to recognize the

rush of emotions that left her feeling hollowed out, as the event was repeated during the next year and a

half after Mike's death. And then it had stopped, until now. “Mrs. Taney, I'm afraid there's been an

accident. Your son...”

She began to shiver, and was able to move again. She had to get out of her wet clothes, build up the fire,

shower ... This was Lasater's doing. He had made the connection in her mind between Werther, drugs,

Mike's death. He had reached inside her head with his words and revived the grief and guilt she had

thought was banished. Clever Mr. Lasater, she thought grimly. He had known she would react, not

precisely how, that was expecting too much even of him. He had known Werther would make the

opening move. If Werther was involved with drug smuggling, she wanted him dead, just as dead as her

child was, and she would do all she could to make him dead. Even as she thought it, she knew Lasater

had counted on this too.

* * * *

Hugh Lasater drove through the town of Salmon Key late that afternoon before the storm hit. He and a

companion, Milton Follett, had been driving since early morning, up from San Francisco in a comfortable,

spacious motor home.

“It's the hills that slowed us down,” Hugh Lasater said. “The freeway was great, and then we hit the

coastal range. Should have been there by now.”

Milton Follett was slouched down low in his seat; he did not glance at the town as they went through.

“Could have called,” he grumbled, as he had done several times in the past hour or so. He was in his

mid-thirties, a blond former linebacker whose muscles were turning to flab.

“Thought of that,” Hugh Lasater said. “Decided against it. Little place like this, who knows how the lines

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FictionwisePublicationswww.fictionwise.comCopyright(C)1981KateWilhelmFirstpublishedinRedbook,1981NOTICE:Thisworkiscopyrighted.Itislicensedonlyforusebythepurchaser.Makingcopiesofthisworkordistributingittoanyunauthorizedpersonbyanymeans,includingwithoutlimitemail,floppydisk,filetransfer,paperprintout,...

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Kate Wilhelm - Winter Beach

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