Gift of the Golden Mountain Read Online Free PDF

at used car dealers, a long cluttered stretch of A&W Root Beer stands, laundromats, auto parts stores. Then a sign for a town called Wheaton, and suddenly wide streets and great trees and houses set in an expanse of green, with porches all around, houses lived in for a hundred years, old houses from another time.
         She slowed and tried to think what it would have been to grow up in a town like this, on a hot afternoon in August, sitting on a front porch in white shorts, barefoot, with a hot wind rising. At the edge of town she stopped to let a tall boy cross the road. He loped along, not to hold her up, raising his hand in a small gesture of thanks.
         She should probably stop and call ahead. He could be away, be out of town, it could be a bad time for her to show up. She didn't stop because she knew it didn't matter if he was there or not. She had a name and an address and a phone number, she had an excuse, and it was all she needed.
         Then she was out of town and there was nothing but cornfields and an expanse of country that stretched out flat and forever, a country so wide that even the occasional farmhouse seemed only to emphasize its great emptiness.
         Road signs loomed, a light flashed a detour. She followed the arrows, swinging onto a narrow blacktop lane that cut straight into the wide green heart of the August land, a road narrow and slick and rimmed with cornfields rustling high, the earth plowed to the very lip of the roadway. There was no end to it, none at all, as far as she could see. She was alone in a red Mustang riding a country road into the heart of nowhere. She stepped hard on the

gas, gulping in the air. It didn't matter how fast she went, she knew that she was never going to get there, never going to reach the other side.
         She glanced at her watch. It was one in the afternoon and suddenly it was dark. The clouds that had been threatening closed in, the wind was rising, blowing, she could feel it coming . . . something was coming. She slowed the car, waiting, listening as the wind raced flat and hard through the dry cornstalks, the sound a hollow rasping that echoed into the clouds and expanded, like the swelling song of some infernal choir.
         A crack of lightning shattered the sky and then the sound hit her full force, thunderous and bone-rocking, and she shook with the shuddering blow of it. The wind rattled through the cornstalks, seven feet high all around her, reaching a crescendo, but all she could see was the straight path of the road ahead. She felt the first drops on her arm, heard them as they hit the roof and splattered. She reached across the passenger's seat to close the window, just as a second flash of lightning pierced the sky ahead. She braced herself for the thunder roll, her skin went cold and she shivered. It was raining hard now, so hard she could barely make out the road, she squinted and leaned forward to peer through a small patch cleared by the windshield wipers. The rain flooded the windows, she could not see at all but she was afraid to stop, afraid to be still, afraid not to be in motion. The light and the sound surrounded her, crashed around her and drowned her in noise, in the staccato drumming of rain on the roof, in a long silver shriek. Was it her? Had she screamed?
         She glimpsed something through the water that coursed down the windshield, blinding her, something dark and massive across the roadway . . . Branches? A tree? She pulled hard at the wheel, the car spun, turning and sliding. She felt it slip into the soft mud and stop. The water coursed down the windows so that she could not see out. She was trapped, caught, and the noise of the storm filled her head. Shaking, she put her hands

over her ears and longed to cry for help but she couldn't think who to cry out to.
         Not mother, not father. No one.
         Karin and Faith and the twins were waiting for her at Kit's apartment, waiting for her with streamers