D. H. BROWN

I was buttoned up, the dog was bouncing on his three good legs at the door, ready to go.
     I gave the cabin a last once-over to make sure I'd turned off and on everything: the coffee pot, answering machine, lights. Then pocketed one of my plain jane cells, the Blackberry and a combat flash. That would give me communications. Deciding to be safe rather than sorry, I got my blood testing kit from next to my recliner, stowed an insulin injector from the fridge in the thermal pack from the freezer and dropped it into my left jacket pocket. Time to get this show on the road.
     As I closed the cabin door and secured the alarm system, I realized I hadn't seen this time of day since last hunting season. The absolute stillness of the unusual cold spell in the forest was striking. Nothing moved, and dawn was still more than a hour away. The security floods came on as Black Dog and I moved down the porch steps in to range of the sensors. The only sound was my boots crunching the frozen moisture in the gravel.
     Bessy, my old ‘73 GMC ¾ ton 4 wheeler, was covered with frost. She may look like she's dying of a terminal case of rust but under the covers she's nothing but sweet. The engine turned over the first time and settled into a quiet purr. I got back out and scraped the windows clear. Telling Black Dog to load, I climbed in behind the wheel, turned the defroster on high and waited for her to warm up. Cold starts and driving does more damage to an engine than years of normal wear and tear.
     Five minutes later, I turned on the driving lights and tripped the security floods on the workshop and woodshed as I cut the circle around the yard to the road leading out. My drive is almost a mile long, winding its way out of the middle of my 640 acres of timberland. I unlocked the inner gate with the remote fob on my key ring, and nudged it open with the bumper. My fingers were like ice as I crawled back in the warm cab after shutting it. Shit, I hate cold.
     A quarter mile later, I was back in the freeze to open the outer gate, shut it behind me and secure it with the chain and lock. I don't like leaving an open invitation and I wasn't expecting any company as Blon had driven her year-old Subaru Outback into Seattle to visit her mother, and no one else had any business coming into my place while I was gone.
     About twenty minutes after the phone had chirped like Jiminy Cricket, I was headed north up the Hoko-Ozette Road toward Clallam Bay, and Jimmy's problem. Black Dog lay beside me on the seat, his head resting on my thigh. He knew this was no normal wake up.

Most everyone around these parts knows me only as Major Westfall, a long buried cover that pays tribute to the only grandmother I'd ever known. I'd been one tired runaway when that logger's widow saw me on her doorstep on the outskirts of Forks, and took me in. I keep myself and my life simple.
     For twelve years my self-imposed hermitage had been my comfort zone then, last Fall, it'd been invaded when my Montagnard War Brother, Y'Ang Boun Dhung, was kidnapped, tortured and killed almost on my doorstep. They say every cloud has a silver lining. The ray of sunshine slipping through those overcast skies had been Ang's daughter, H'Blon. She'd escaped her captors, run into the forest and almost died from exposure before I found her. Or rather Black Dog did. Got to give a good dog his due.
     Before she entered my life, I'd spent thirty-five years grieving and raging for my Montagnard wife, H'Sung, our daughter and unborn child, all lost in the jungle of Vietnam. Blon had squirmed her way into the depths of my frozen soul, warmed my humanity and was still teaching me how to love again.

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