Dead Sleeping Shaman Read Online Free PDF Page B

think about all of that tomorrow—like Scarlett. Thinking was making my brain throb.
    It was dusk, but still better to be out at the lake with Sorrow. Though I didn’t have as long a history with him as I had with Jackson Rinaldi, it sure was happier. I called my dog, kissed his eager black-and-white head, looked into bright happy eyes, and figured maybe he was the best, and least complicated, friend I had in the world. We headed down to Willow Lake to frustrate the ducks and anger the beaver.
    I picked up the sandy, slobbery stick from where Sorrow had dropped it on the wobbly old dock. I gave the stick a long, hard toss, as far as I could get it, out into the evening-still lake. Before the stick hit the water with a mighty splash, Sorrow launched his big black-and-white body off into space, shaking the dock and me. He hit the water, wallowed around for a minute, then struck out for the place where the stick floated, his paws cutting the water, chin up, head focused on nothing but that magnificent prize. Over near the beaver’s den, there was a splash as the angry rodent slapped the water with his tail and retreated to his house.
    Sorrow had to be part retriever no matter what else our vet, Doc Crimson, claimed for him. Maybe part some kind of English sheepdog, too. Part mastodon. Parts of a lot of things I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, name. His mother must have been quite the slut, one of a long line of sluts, to have spawned a dog of so many flavors.
    I watched him swim full-heartedly after that stick and couldn’t remember ever not having him with me. Sorrow might be ugly and ungainly—an animal that did nothing but annoy me most of the time—but when I needed him to come lay his head in my lap, roll his eyes up so that the red rims showed, and give me total and complete love, my heart felt as if it could burst out of my body. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t remember ever being affected by Jackson that deeply.
    If I could only find a man like Sorrow …
    Christ! I thought, standing there on the dock in long shadows, watching my dog and hugging my sweater close, the last thing I needed was a new man in my life. The very thought of picking up someone’s dirty underwear and smelly socks, or having to put meals on the table—how quickly experience punctures romance.
    A tired sun sprang from behind a bank of surly clouds for just a minute, then it was gone. The air was so crisp you could take a bite out of it. Willow Lake lay quiet in the dying light. The water circles Sorrow made with his arcing leaps from the dock moved off in widening silver rings, catching the lighted clouds in sparkles. Around the lake, the willows had turned a soft yellow, branches hanging into the water. Red maples, golden oaks, tarnished beech and birch—they blended into a hazy, moving, mirrored image of autumn.
    Sorrow crawled from the water, dropped his stick, and squatted to pee—like a girl dog. Something was delayed in Sorrow. He should have been lifting his leg by now. It was one of my many worries—that he would never develop fully because all he had was me: no guy to show him how to do it right.
    When he finished, he retrieved his stick, parted the reeds along the shore, and bounced down the dock to drop the stick next to my foot. He shook. Water flew everywhere. I was drenched, yelling, and cursing a string of fine blue words.
    “Emily Kincaid?” a voice behind me called over my manic swearing.
    Back up the beach, Crazy Harry Mockerman, my neighbor from across Willow Lake Road, stood giving me a quizzical and distinctly disturbed look.
    “You ok, Emily?” Harry asked.
    The skinny man in the shiny black funeral suit he wore every day of his life stood tall, surprised by my choice of epithets. He held a bouquet of golden oak leaves in his left hand. His right arm hung rigidly at his side, fist clenched.
    My friend, Harry, was once a log skidder with one of the last companies to pull down the virgin pines. That was back in the