Point of Law Read Online Free PDF Page A

face. I can’t help but admire the expanse of smooth, pale skin that extends below her brief shorts down to her bare feet. Her hair is a rat’s nest of dreadlocks and tight beaded braids. On her upper half she wears only a purple tank top that is cut to reveal a flat stomach. Braless. She has an unconscious spring in her step, as if she’s delighted to be here, half-naked in the meadow.
    The other woman is smaller, older, and darker but even more striking. She radiates intensity. My eyes are drawn to her despite the lush blonde’s obvious appeal. She’s thin, almost to the point of being gaunt, with lean muscles carving down from her shoulders to her wrists. I guess her age at middle thirties, and that’s only because of her clothes, her confident manner, and unlike the other youths in the meadow, her face is unpierced. She wears a white sleeveless shirt that she’s buttoned almost to her neck with old jeans and a pair of worn-out running shoes. Her face is all angles. High, sharp cheekbones, a long jaw, and a slightly oversized nose. The most striking thing about her is that despite the dark hair that spills over half her face, a black cord is visible where it stretches across an exposed part of her forehead. Beneath it there’s the oblong shape of an eye patch.
    “That dog’s not going to bite, is it?” she asks as they approach our camp. She looks from the beast to us warily. Our appearance, mine in particular with my damaged face, probably doesn’t inspire much confidence.
    “Oso!” I call to him. “Cut it out. Get over here.” I click my tongue against the roof of my mouth, and Oso sullenly turns, coming to sit at my side. “He’s harmless, really,” I say to the women.
    My father chuckles from behind me, not at all persuaded. It’s the first real bit of mirth I’ve heard from him all day.
    “We saw you guys come in this morning. My name is Kim Walsh,” the one-eyed woman tells us.
    “I’m Sunny,” the blonde girl says, smiling down at the dog and displaying perfect white teeth. The name is totally appropriate for her.
    I introduce us as “Antonio and Leonard Burns,” leaving out our respective titles of Special Agent and Colonel, then ask if they want some Kool-Aid.
    Kim shakes her head but Sunny says, “Sure!” and takes my father’s bottle from him.
    I have a hard time taking my eyes off Kim’s face. It isn’t the eye patch but something else, some sort of feeling in my gut that I’m destined to know her better. That sort of feeling has happened several times before, like when I’d seen a particularly beautiful girl in class the first day of school and
knew
she’d become my girlfriend. It has always proven true. The thing that surprises me about it now is that this woman seems to be almost a decade older than me, probably a more appropriate age for my father than me. I’ve never felt much heat for an older woman before. Yet I suppress an urge to self-consciously run my hand over the scar on my face.
    “You guys are climbers, huh?” Sunny asks.
    When I nod she says, “I’m learning how to climb. A guy I met here in the valley’s teaching me, but he’s kind of a beginner, too. Am I going to get muscles like yours?” she asks with a laugh.
    “You might,” I tell her. “And scabs and scars and all that.”
    “God, I hope not!”
    “It depends on how hard you want to climb.”
    Kim breaks in, “I was hoping for the chance to talk to you gentlemen about what’s going to happen to this place. Have you been here before?”
    I wait for my father to answer but he doesn’t. So I glance at him and say, “Dad put up a bunch of the routes in the canyon, like a hundred years ago. Before anyone even knew about this place.”
    Kim looks past me at my father for a long time while neither speaks. Measuring him. Sunny seems on the verge of saying something to break the silence, when Kim says softly, “Then you must really love this place.”
    Again Dad doesn’t answer. I’m used to