Saving Jason Read Online Free PDF Page A

wire stop them, regardless of the electric charge? Four. I could feel the pounding of those hooves on the ground behind me. Two. I dove under the wire, sliding throughthe tall grass, imagining I could hear the crackle of thousands of volts running over my head. I scrambled to my feet, took the last three strides to the outer fence in two hops and a jump. I jammed my toes between the links and climbed as fast as I could.
    One of the bulls managed to stop before hitting the fence, skidding to a halt, hooves grinding a pair of parallel trenches in the dirt. The other bull, less experienced or merely more aggressive, hit the wire at full speed. I was already approaching the top of the fence and still climbing, but from the corner of one eye I saw the animal hit. The wire gave way like a rubber band, but there was an immediate crack of discharged electricity and the two-thousand-pound bison flew backward as though fired from a giant slingshot. Every hair on my body stood on end and the mixed odors of ozone and burnt flesh were overwhelming. But I kept climbing.
    The bison was down and on the ground, but it was moving. As I threw my leg over the top of the fence and started down the far side, I saw it roll up onto unsteady legs. A long red welt ran down one side of its body. The other bull was already racing up the field. But the guys in the truck hadn’t quit.
    The truck was tearing down the drive. It would take precious minutes to open the two gates and follow me. I could be in the car and long gone before they would be out. I jumped the last three feet to the ground and turned to run for my rental. I thought I was safe.
    Halfway to the car, I looked back over my shoulder. The truck had veered and was now leaping and bucking over the field, headed straight for me. I knew they wouldn’t be able to plow through the fence, but that farmhand would be able to climb it and chase after me. I had a good lead, but the truck was eating it up quickly. I had seconds to spare.
    Of the few things I did right that day, the most important may have been to leave the car unlocked. I jumped in, started it up, and swung it into a U-turn, bouncing on, off, and back on the pavement, fishtailing slightly in the sand. The truck was coming up inside the fence, but I was on firm, smooth asphalt. In seconds I was pulling away, as theycontinued to bounce through the field, keeping just clear of the electric fence. The end of the property line—and the corner of the fence—approached. I kept my right foot to the floor and raced away back through the woods toward the lesser hazards of the L.I.E.
    The usual westbound slowdown at exit 39 had caused a backup to 41. Creeping along at an average of eight miles an hour gave me time to readjust my adrenaline levels. Fear and aggression became annoyance and exasperation and, finally, acceptance. I could think. I marveled that a spray of relatively small trades had led to me being chased, and nearly exterminated, by a creature almost extinct in the wild. Too bad I couldn’t also read the future and see the long list of ills that were to come. That in just a few months my son would be lost in the desert, and that I would face death saving him. And, once again, there would be a death on my conscience.

2
    S keli, the light of my life, the woman of my dreams, and the mother of my unborn child, was sitting across from me in a booth at the Athena Coffee Shop on Amsterdam. She was having a Greek coffee shop version of a salade Niçoise—no potatoes, and red onion and cucumber instead of green beans. Skeli was plucking the curls of onion out and putting them on her bread dish. She was long past the morning-sickness stage of her pregnancy, but food in general had become an issue. Smells and textures had become strange, and things she had once loved had turned toxic. Raw red onion was one of the most virulent of past loves. Mostly she got by on yogurt, lettuce, and a few bites of fish or chicken. And midnight binges of