She counts his change, rings him up and slides the can into a brown paper bag.
When he steps outside, it starts to pour again. Not a hard rain but Seattle’s thin needles of water through the saturated air. He stays under the awning, admiring the wet pavement leading out to muddy grass and blackberries.
He cuffs down the top of the brown paper, but it still soaks with beer and gets in his mouth. It doesn’t bother him. He stares out over the horizon. The sun setting to the west. It is low enough, between the earth and the clouds, that its pink light reflects back down off the bottom of the cloud cover and silhouettes the pine trees atop the distant hill line.
Cars speed up and down Lake City Way. This is his land. His domain. If not his, then whose is it?
A red Chevy Cavalier Z24 pulls up in front of him and the passenger-side door swings all the way open. The interior is white-walled with smoke.
“Holy shit,” J.C. says to Robbie. “I told you it was Lane. The one and only Lane Bueche.”
Lane considers the pronunciation and lets it go.
“What up, man?” Robbie pulls J.C.’s seat handle and starts pushing it forward so Lane can climb into the back. “Where you going?”
“Remember Lonnie?” Lane says. “I was gonna walk up and meet him and his girl for their GED class. They need a new instructor or something.”
“Lonnie has a girl?” Robbie ponders out loud.
Lane finishes his Rainier. “Crazy shit happens like every day.”
“Get in, dude,” J.C. says. “We’ll give you a ride.”
“You sure?”
“Weed’s free. And you don’t gotta pay no gas money.”
Lane tosses his can into the garbage, feeling a quick pang of guilt that it’s not the recycling, and climbs into the back seat.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank everyone who supported and encouraged me directly or indirectly through this winding, multiyear process.
Thanks to my earliest readers Duffy Boudreau, David Lipson, and Maria Dahvana Headley; to Jonathan Evison (whom I met at the Rimrock) for telling me years ago that he would get behind this book and help me make it happen, and then did exactly that; to my lawyer extraordinaire, Caitlin DiMotta; to Jim Thomsen, who got the manuscript cleaned up and ready to sell; to my unflappable and always thoughtful editor, Harry Kirchner, who took this from manuscript to a real book; to everyone at Counterpoint (and Catapult) for supporting my vision for this story, bringing it to fruition, and being everything that publishing can and should be. Thanks to all of my friends who blurbed this book, joined me at book events, or supported in any other way to get the word out.
I would also like to thank my parents; my brother and his family; my children; and especially my wife, Tábata, who makes everything possible.
© Lucien Knuteson
THOMAS KOHNSTAMM is the author of the memoir Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? and owns a digital multimedia studio where he produces a variety of video and animation series. Lake City is his first novel. He lives in Seattle with his wife and two children—and wrote this book, his first novel, in Lake City.
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