Chapter 4
Stroud led the way between staff cabins, all of them identical brown clapboard with metal roofs and concrete stoops. Porch lights threw yellow cones that stopped short of one another, islands of light with dark water between. The only sound was gravel under their boots.
A bat cut through the gap ahead of them, wing motion jerky, gone before Yuji could track it. Somewhere past the last cabin a cricket started up, sawed twice at the silence and stopped.
“Got a briefing at six.” Stroud didn’t turn. “I can take you out to the foothills after.”
“I can find it.”
“I know where the wash forks. You don’t.”
Yuji didn’t argue. His legs felt heavy, fatigue settling in.
Stroud’s cabin sat at the end of the row, closer to the maintenance sheds than the visitor center, no porch light out front. He unlocked the door with a key from his belt clip, pushed it open, and hit the switch.
One overhead fixture lit the whole of it—smaller than Yuji’s motel room in Beatty.
Kitchenette along the left wall, gallon jug on the counter.
Stroud’s bed against the far wall: a single mattress on a metal frame, sheets pulled tight.
His desk beneath the window AC unit—NPS field manuals stacked, a chunk of desert varnish holding down loose papers.
A couch against the right wall, striped wool blanket folded over the arm.
Stroud hit the AC switch and it groaned through a full cycle before pushing stale air.
“Give it ten minutes.”
Yuji set his pack by the door. The cabin held the day’s heat in its walls, its linoleum, the still air pressing against his sunburned skin. Stroud moved past him to the kitchenette—close enough that Yuji caught his musk, warmth radiating off his uniform shirt.
Stroud opened the cabinet above the stove, pulled out a pillow and a folded sheet, set them on the couch. His forearms flexed as he smoothed the fabric flat. Tan line sharp where his sleeves ended.
“Bathroom’s through there.” Stroud nodded toward the narrow door beside the bed. “Hot water takes a while to come through, but the pressure’s decent.”
The bathroom was cramped and clean, nothing but a rust stain in the tub’s basin to suggest anyone lived here. He looked in the mirror. Sunburn across the bridge of his nose, dark crescents beneath his eyes, hair coming loose from the bun. Hollowed out.
His clothes peeled off stiff with dried sweat.
The tap ran cold when he stepped under it, sharp enough to make him flinch, but it warmed in stages until the chill was gone.
The pressure was decent, like Stroud had said.
Water ran down his chest, the flat plane of his stomach, pooled at his feet and swirled toward the drain.
He stood with his palms flat against the tile and let the water work into his shoulders.
The thin door did little to muffle Stroud moving in the other room—a board flexing under the linoleum, a cabinet opening and closing, the clink of glass.
Yuji stood naked in the man’s shower, water running down his back, and the strangeness of it settled over him.
Stroud’s soap on the wire rack. Stroud’s razor by the sink.
The towel on the hook that Stroud had used that morning.
He turned off the water and the silence was immediate.
The fogged mirror showed only a blur where he stood, no features, just the shape of a man.
Toweling off loosened the headache to a dull weight behind his eyes.
He pulled on his boxers and stood there a moment longer, not quite ready to go back out.
When he came out, Stroud stood at the counter pouring water from the jug. He’d stripped to the waist—his broad back filled Yuji’s view, lats fanning wide from his spine.
Stroud turned and handed him a glass. Their fingers brushed on the transfer—Stroud’s hand dry and warm, knuckles rough.
“You look better.”
“I feel better.” Yuji drank. The water was tepid but it didn’t matter—his body wanted it.
They stayed at the counter. Stroud’s bare shoulder was close enough that Yuji could see the grain of his skin, the fine pale hairs catching light.
“How long have you been watching the springs fail?”
“Long enough.” Stroud drank. “First few years, everything cycled the way it should. Wet winter, spring flow. Dry winter, low flow—but flow. Then the perennials started going seasonal. Seasonals started skipping years.” He turned the glass in his hand.
“Even wet years don’t bring them back anymore. Something deeper.”
“That’s the deep aquifer.”
“That’s what I figured.” Stroud looked at the dark window above the sink. “Wrote it up, sent it to the park hydrologist in Bishop. He said the monitoring wells hadn’t shown significant drawdown.” One shoulder lifted. “Wells are in the valley floor. Springs are in the foothills.”
“So they’re measuring the wrong water.”
“Yeah.”
The maintenance shed’s compressor kicked on—a low mechanical surge that folded into the building’s hum. Stroud’s forearm was close enough to touch, faded tan line from a watch he no longer wore.
“All that time out here.” Yuji set his glass on the counter. “What makes you stay?”
Stroud held his gaze long enough that Yuji felt the weight of it, overhead light carving shadows beneath his brow and along the hard line of his jaw.
“It’s quiet.”
“Where were you before this?”
“Eastern Oregon, up in the Blues above Pendleton.” Stroud pushed off the counter and moved to the couch. “Whole different kind of quiet. Rain and fir trees—dampen everything down.” He smoothed a wrinkle in the sheet. “Out here, sound carries. You know when something’s coming.”
At the bed he sat on the edge of the mattress and worked his boots off, setting them beside the frame with the care of long habit. Yuji stayed at the counter and told himself he wasn’t watching.
Stroud’s hands went to his belt. The buckle clinked loud in the quiet as he worked it free, then he stood to push his pants and briefs down past his hips in one motion.
He stepped out of the pooled fabric and kicked it toward the chair, unhurried, the muscle in his ass tensing and releasing with the motion.
He walked bare-assed to the bed in the overhead light. Yuji turned toward the window, but the glass reflected everything—Stroud’s chest thick and built, body hair trailing down to where his cock hung soft against his thigh, heavy even at rest.
Stroud swung his legs up, pulled the sheet to his waist, and settled with one arm behind his head. He turned toward Yuji. “More comfortable like this than pulled out. The couch.”
Yuji crossed to the couch on legs that felt distant from his body and reached for the light switch.
The fluorescent died and took most of the room with it. What remained was the green glow of the AC indicator on the far wall and faint compound light bleeding through the window, enough to pick out the desk, the bed, the slow rise and fall of Stroud’s chest.
The cushion was still warm from the day when Yuji lay back. He drew the sheet up over himself and closed his eyes, but the image was still there waiting for him: belt unbuckling, pants dropping, his cock swinging as he walked to the bed like Yuji wasn’t even in the room.
“Goodnight, Stroud.”
“Night.”
From somewhere west of the compound a coyote let out a single yip that stretched into a thin rising note and cut off. Yuji lay still and listened to Stroud’s breathing across the dark room until it slowed and steadied into sleep.