beaches. I wish we could go anyplace. Egypt would be nice.”
“Not in the summer—wrong season. Anyway, we’ve got some science fiction cons to go to over the summer.”
“No sandy beaches, just crowded elevators.”
Jack Naile started the car. “Bank?”
“Bank.”
“Can you do those photos for me today?”
“This is another one of those roundup articles, isn’t it? Guns, holsters, knives?”
“Yeah, well, but the only way I can write it is having the pictures to work from. Only way to organize it.”
“I hate roundup articles.”
“Well, people like to read—”
“Hey, look at this!” Ellen was sifting through what she had labeled as junk mail. “You’ve gotta see this.”
Jack Naile put the car back in park, and he and Ellen leaned close together over the center console, their heads touching. In her hands she held a page from a magazine. Attached to it was a small piece of paper with a few typewritten sentences. “I see your articles in the gun magazines a lot. Thought you’d get a kick out of this. Looks like somebody in your family was gainfully employed at one time.” The note was signed with a name Jack Naile didn’t recognize.
“Look at the picture! Look, Jack!”
He didn’t have his glasses, but a little squinting helped a lot. A caption beneath a black-and-white photograph described a street scene from northern Nevada in 1903. The street was broad, unpaved, dusty, obviously the main drag. Horses and wagons were in the street, as were various pedestrians. On the far side of the street from the camera was a board sidewalk, several wooden storefronts adjacent to it, the buildings packed together like row housing. One of them, the far left edge of its sign almost obscured by a hanging advertising shingle, read “Jack Naile—General Merchandise.”
Jack Naile lit a Camel from a half-empty pack and took the Suburban out of park. He made a right, caught the traffic light and paralleled the railroad tracks, made a U-turn across them and then a quick right into the lot for the bank’s drive-thru. “How’s about a cup of coffee when we get home?” Jack asked.
“Sounds good.”
They were able to pull up at the actual window, Ellen ready with the deposit slip. He signed the check and passed it to the pretty, smiling woman on the other side of the bullet-proof glass.
Jack Naile turned up into their steep driveway and, after stopping briefly to let Ellen out, put the Suburban under the portico; the passenger door couldn’t be opened once the Suburban was parked. Parking under the portico always reminded Jack of sticking a size-thirteen foot into a size-twelve shoe. Ellen was already unlocking the house. Jack crossed the broad front porch, and they let themselves in, Jack making a quick right off the shotgun hall and into the office. He wanted to be working on the book, but he had to finish the roundup article. The magazine piece was running too long, but that couldn’t be helped. Pretty soon he’d be stuck until Ellen got the rest of the photos taken and they got them back. That, of course, meant better than twenty miles each way to the only place around that developed black-and-whites. He heard the piss-poor excuse for a car that had at one time been a Saab pulling into the driveway. Without looking away from the computer screen, he called out, “David’s home, Ellen, Elizabeth. Ellen? You hear me?”
“I’m not deaf!”
The front hallway door was just outside the open door to the office. When Jack Naile heard the door opening, he called out, “Hi, David. Your mom’s got something to show you and your sister. Came in the mail. How was summer school?”
“Okay. I’m gonna be late for work, so I’ve only got a minute.”
Jack saved what he’d just written and got up from the creaky old swivel chair his father had given him when he was two years younger than David. The chair was used and looked it. Lookswise, it hadn’t changed much since he’d gotten it. But its creaking was getting ominous.
“Elizabeth? You dressed yet?” Jack Naile shouted up the stairs to his daughter. “Come on. See this thing we got in the mail!”
“Coming, Daddy! Just two minutes.”
“I don’t have two minutes, Dad,” David called back over his shoulder as he headed into the bathroom.
“You want a sandwich or something?” Ellen asked as David started to close the door.
David stuck his head out and said, “Yeah. But I’ve gotta hurry.”
“I’m making tuna salad. Want one?”
“Sure.”
Jack Naile lit a cigarette. He could hear Elizabeth starting