The Black Silent Read Online Free PDF Page A

stepped back, disgusted with the whole matter. Nothing like this ordinarily happened in these islands. People were civilized and thoughtful. The old stench of unadorned aggression hung heavy over the scene. Sam reached over and tried to help the man up, but he was too badly incapacitated. Sam took off his coat and put it under the man's head. Men like this did not come to this island in winter, and Sam wondered at his wardrobe. Then another thought came to him: already today Sam had seen others like this guy, and it didn't leave him with an easy feeling.
    "Who is he?" he asked Sherry.
    "Just came a day or so ago. Calls himself Rafe something. Thinks I sold him my body just because he bought my stereo. I told him I didn't want to sell it. Told him it wasn't worth a thousand, but he insisted. And then after he took the stereo, he got real ugly when I wouldn't have dinner with him."
    "That other one," she said, meaning the smaller man, who'd already disappeared, "I guess is trying to take up pimping."
    "So he's not with the heavyweight champ here."
    "Not regular, I don't think."
    The insanity was starting to make a little more sense.
    "What's this guy doing on the island?"
    "I don't know, but he's got friends."
    Sam nodded.
    Rafe what's-his-name was coming around. When he got up, he kept his eyes pointedly away from Sam, brushed himself off, and walked straight away.
    Sam went back and resumed his reading until he felt the weight of someone else's gaze.
    Without looking he knew that it was Haley, her brunette curls and eyes like bluish green silk, which were perceptive and inquisitive, and that once might have held just the proper mirth. Sam hadn't seen that light in her eyes in a long time, not since the Fourth of July, 1994.
    She had missed the "Mud Head and Rafe Show" and that was just as well. She would have insisted on fighting.
    Following his capture and torture and the death of his wife, Anna, Sam had decided on San Juan Island as the site of his convalescence. His relationship with his uncle Ben and Haley turned out to be the perfect balm. In his growing-up years, he on occasion came to visit Uncle Ben and now-deceased Aunt Helen, and quickly grew fond of them.
    During the summer of his twelfth birthday, he had spent the entire three months working with Aunt Helen on the landscaping and Uncle Ben had taken time from work for a number of salmon fishing expeditions. There were various other visits and more salmon. For a time, when she was nineteen and he was twenty-nine, he and Haley had almost been an item. Over his recent months on the island, Sam had found this dormant bond with Ben was growing. Haley was more complicated.

    Life had kicked Haley to the ground, but Sam admired her because she kept trying to get back up. The prestigious Sanker Corporation had thrown her out in disgrace, claiming she'd stolen the work and ideas of her fellow scientists. That was shocking because she was the adopted daughter of the eminent Dr. Ben Anderson, also at Sanker, known to be the straightest of the straight.
    Sam knew that Haley's life had been a strange mixture of ups and downs. Before her adoption at age nine, life had been very tough. With Ben and Helen her intelligence flourished. By sixteen she could fly Ben's float plane and run any boat that floated.
    Academically she excelled, obtaining a Ph.D. degree in marine biology at age twenty-seven.
    Because of her success, Sam knew the last great fall was very hard.
    For the present she had taken to operating a bicycle and motor scooter-rental business thirty feet from Sam's sitting spot. She owned it, and had part-time employees, but lately seemed to be showing up herself. Sam's return to the island had just followed Haley's expulsion from her job and concurrent ostracization from local scientific society. She hadn't wanted to talk about the scandal much. He glanced her way and waved. She used that iron will of hers to return a good smile left over from better days and waved