We stood facing each other—or rather our silhouettes—through the cold, opaque milk at the bottom of the Sink.
The Sink’s hardpan is not buried deep, and winter rains saturate the soil quickly. The rainwater that flows off the lower elevations of the Range finds the ground impenetrable and spills out across the floor of the basin. Puddles form everywhere. It doesn’t take much water to flood a flat world. Once the storm clears and the sky opens, the earth’s heat escapes heavenward. In the thinner air of the mountains, the heat escapes even more quickly. As the heat rises into space, the dense, cold mountain air slides down the steep slopes of the Range.
the milky way
This sheet of frozen air spills out across the wet basin floor and compels the moist basin air to condense and shed its aqueous load. A dense fog like a lake of cold milk forms. The surface of the lake seems solid, as if it were a layer of cream. The air above the milk is blue, crisp and clear, though the denizens of the blinding and deafening murk below—after days or weeks of submersion—hardly realize it.
Armen had been invited to a game of tag football at the high school campus. He was not commonly invited to these pick-up games, but bodies were needed for the contest. There was usually a game there among neighborhood boys around ten on Saturday mornings and fog days. Armen resisted the suggestion at first, but he folded when a little pressure was applied. He had other things he’d rather do, but he wouldn’t mind being humiliated on the gridiron. His world had grown beyond the playground.
All the usual characters were there. Doug lived for sports, and for good reason. He seemed to be talented at just about every sport, and turned out to be on his way to the NFL Pro Bowl. Brad was a runner. He brought foot speed to the game. Clara was the little sister of a couple of guys on their way to the NFL, and had learned a thing or two sparring with her big brothers. James was a gangly Trekkie who didn’t care much for football, but he had the moves, so he got the call. There were less noteworthy regulars, and a couple of new faces as well.
The milk was especially creamy that morning. It was so thick that on the first snap, Doug had to call his receivers back because he couldn’t see them when they ran a deep pattern; and he had to call out again, the fog having muffled his voice.
Armen covered James, the receiver on the right side. Doug called out the snap count.
As soon as Doug took the snap, Clara started barking out the rush count and the receivers took off. Armen turned and did his futile best to keep James close. When he heard the rush count complete, Armen turned to check the action at the line of scrimmage, and immediately realized that he couldn’t see that far. They were all shrouded in the milk.
Suddenly, a distant voice shouted “bootleg” and Doug materialized through the murk, cutting across the field from the right. Before Armen could figure out what was going on, Doug split the field between Armen and the place where the left cornerback should have been, while James and the left receiver turned to block, and Doug was home free, until he ran into something in the fog.
It was one of the new kids. He was a touch taller than Doug. It seemed he’d tagged Doug a little too hard when Doug had tried to break around him. Doug fell hard, and he wasn’t happy about it. The new kid offered Doug a hand, but Doug leapt up and paid him back with a shove. The kid took the shove without protest, or even a blink. He didn’t seem to mind.
Armen had hardly noticed the drama, just as the others had hardly noticed him.
That was Doug’s introduction to Sam Dorah. It wasn’t pleasant, but it would prove beneficial to the both of them over the long haul. They’d meet again in more pick-up games, and farther down the line, as teammates.