4.01 / January 2009

The summer they began construction on the Resort at Squaw Creek the walls shuddered with each explosion. Grandpa said they used dynamite to fell the trees. A chopper choppered them out somewhere where I’m sure they were cut up and used to build the exact hotel they had died for.

It is 2 a.m. and his body makes only a soft thud as it hits the bumper. A sound like a heavy suitcase being tossed into a car trunk, followed by a squeal of brakes. The car stops. The engine idles and the keys dance back and forth above my thigh.

I’m one monitor down and a hair’s breadth from the crazy. Sometimes, it takes every ounce of good sense I have not to cover every speaker hole and slot in the token booth for fear of it seeping in. There’s always at least three per nightshift, but the overtime is too good to turn down.

Everyone does, no one questions it: thin white walls of skull, hip’s thick whorl. Grass cracks beneath my steps, I say it sounds like bones. See, I name things to know I matter: Dust Creek, Bone Hollow. The wind I call Unforgiving.