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Автор Рейчел Гибсон
Rachel Gibson
True Confessions
© 2001
Chapter One
There were two universal truths in Gospel, Idaho. First, God had done His best work when He’d created the Sawtooth Wilderness Area. And except for the unfortunate incident of ‘95, Gospel had always been heaven on earth.
Second-a truth just as adamantly believed as the first-every sin known to heaven and earth was California’s fault. California got the blame for everything, from the hole in the ozone to the marijuana plant found growing in the Widow Fairfield’s tomato garden. After all, her teenage grandson had visited relatives in L. A. just last fall.
There was a third truth-although it was viewed more as an absolute fact-come every summer, fools from the flatlands were bound to get lost amid the granite peaks of the Sawtooth Mountains.
This summer, the number of lost hikers rescued was already up to three. If the count stayed at three, plus one more fracture and two more cases of altitude sickness, then Stanley Caldwell would win the Missing Flatlander Betting Pool. But everyone knew Stanley was an optimistic fool. No one, not even his wife- who’d put her money on eight missing, seven fractures, and had thrown in a few cases of poison oak for excitement-expected Stanley to win the kitty.
Almost everyone in town played the pool, each trying to outdo the other and win the sizable pot.
The betting pool gave the people of Gospel something to think about besides cattle, sheep, and logging. It gave them something to talk about besides tree-hugging environmentalists, and something to speculate over besides the possible paternity of Rita McCall’s brand-new baby boy. After all, though Rita and Roy had been divorced going on three years now, that alone didn’t put him out of the running. But mostly, the pool was a harmless way for the locals to pass the hot summer months while they pulled in tourist money and waited for the relative calm of winter.Around the beer case at the M & S Market, conversation centered around fly-fishing versus live-bait fishing, bow hunting versus “real” hunting, and, of course, the twelve-point buck the owner of the market, Stanley, had shot back in ‘79. The huge varnished antlers hung behind the battered cash register, where they’d been on display for more than twenty years.
Over at the Sandman on Lakeview Street, Ada Dover still talked about the time Clint Eastwood had stayed in her motel. He’d been real nice and he’d actually spoken to her, too.
“You have a nice place,” he’d said, sounding just like Dirty Harry; then he’d asked for the location of the ice machine and for some extra towels. She’d about died right behind the check-in counter. There was some speculation on whether or not his daughter with Frances Fisher had been conceived in room nine.
