Inhabited. Charlie Quimby

the downtrodden. You’d think he’d never met a businessperson with a soul.

      Zack showed her where a vet named Wesley Chambers had set up camp across the channel. A stripped white bicycle frame anchored a crude footing of submerged stones between the beach and a low island choked by more tamarisk. A beaten pair of desert tan boots faced the shore. Painted on the toe of the right boot: NO. On the left: GO.

      “Wesley and a couple others live there. When the boots are pointed the other way, the heels say OK, which means visitors can cross.”

      “What if you don’t know the code?” said Meg. She peered toward the island. Something about empty boots used as a warning. Or maybe it was the bike frame, like bones of the drowned. She was ready for this to be over.

      “Wesley’s okay. Just wade over and poke a flier in the boot,” Amy said. “No need to disturb him.”

      “There’s no need to disturb anyone,” Zack snapped. “No one’s hurting anything.”

      “Except for the ones with the loose dogs, open fires, trash. Fighting, rape, drug abuse. Kids don’t belong here. And you know it’s unsanitary for everybody.”

      “So kick them off the river and make it illegal to camp anywhere else. If this town really cared, they’d have a place to go.”

      “I hear you, but why should taxpayers be deprived of enjoying their riverfront?” Amy said. “Nobody wants them to suffer, but there’s a price tag for everything in life.”

      “Yeah, so many people in favor of doing the right thing. So many excuses not to do it.”

      “Our team’s trying, just like you are. But not everybody wants our help. People like Wesley are down here for a reason.”

      “So am I,” Zack said. “A good reason.”

      Up ahead a pale cottonwood towered fifty feet high, its bark in rags, limbs uplifted as if in surrender.

      Stabilize the riverbanks and kill the trees. Reclaim the abandoned parkland and dislodge the poor. Offer helpful services and create dependence. Meg’s business was so simple in comparison. Buyers and sellers brought contending interests to the table. They understood both sides had to be satisfied for a deal to work. The money was important but she helped find other ways to complete the transaction. The parties shook hands. Closure. In business, money was the lubricant that got things done, while in public matters, it was the reason to accept shameful outcomes.

      Amy said, “This is your big night, right? If you need to leave, go ahead.”

      “It’s okay. I’ve kind of stepped away from managing the event.” It was flattering to know Amy knew.

      Scholarship Night had been Meg’s creation. In the first year it had been an achievement just to get scholarship recipients from the four district high schools to appear on one stage. The resulting shuffle of teens receiving a handshake from the superintendent was no one’s idea of a fun night out, so Meg proposed a follies format for the second year, letting students demonstrate the talent they considered responsible for their scholarship. The staid ceremony turned into a variety show with musical performances and dramatic readings, dribbling exhibitions and blindfolded gymnasts on balance beams. One scholarship winner declaimed a sonnet celebrating the Tenth Amendment. A science nerd recited pi to one hundred places while juggling glass beakers. A kid dressed as a rodeo clown rode a mechanical bull from a defunct country and western club.

      “Well, I hope the kids are still doing those crazy tricks,” Amy said.

      “Unfortunately, no. It was too much fun. The school administration squashed it. They made it into a reminder of why bright kids don’t come back after college. Maybe we could slip in a guest appearance, though, if you have a trick you’d like to perform.”

      “I’m not that entertaining, really.”

      “My ex-husband called you a stud. He said you played ball as if you had superpowers.”

      “I wish.”

      “Okay, superpower granted. What would it be?”

      Amy paused. Meg heard it, too, a low drift of voices. The disembodied murmur so close by chilled her. The sound came from a section they hadn’t yet canvassed, near the dead cottonwood.

      Amy noted the direction but showed no concern. “Okay, I’ll take time travel, the power to give people do-overs. I’d return kids back to the day before they were abused, before they first shoplifted because their folks didn’t feed them, before they tried booze or weed or meth. If I only had one shot, it would be Jimmy Johncock, the first guy from the river we finally got into rehab. Tony and I went when Jimmy graduated from a program in Denver. We were so proud. We were new to this outreach stuff and we’d thought we’d made a save. Three years later, Jimmy’s right back here.”

      Richard and Zack appeared from a side path. Amy motioned to them to wait.

      “Just to be safe, I want to check it out up there,” she said.

      Amy walked down the path and stopped where it made a turn toward the thick understory around the cottonwood. She fingered the radio mic clipped to her shoulder and spoke too quietly to understand. A dog started woofing, setting off the pit bull pair behind them.

      “Anybody home?” Amy called. The barking intensified. Meg thought she heard muffled curses. “Grand Junction Police. Secure your dog and you’re fine. We’re just bringing by some information for you.”

      A hoarse voice called back, “Hang on, hang on, just a minute.”

      Amy raised a hand toward Meg and then disappeared around the bend.

      The voices again, one high and one low, words impossible to sort out. Branches crackled and snapped. Meg thought she heard a car door thump closed. There was no road in here… No, it was more like a watermelon dropped on the ground. The dog quiet now. Scrambling sounds of retreat, then the commotion stopped.

      Okay, she’s letting them go.

      Meg and Richard waited, expecting to hear the okay. Zack had a different notion.

      “Amy!” he cried. “Amy!”

      Amy. When they ran in her direction, it was toward the silence.

      Home is where the memories are.

      —“Home” with Meg Mogrin, Grand Junction Style

      The Avalon Theater, built as an opera house just as vaudeville was expiring, had devolved into a movie theater before being abandoned by a bankrupt cinema chain. After community efforts had failed to revive the building as a performing arts center, the Avalon stood as a city-owned monument to stalemate, too treasured to level and too costly to renovate. In the lobby, the scholarship kids ignored their parents and dribbled salsa on the carpet. Teachers, out of habit, scanned for trouble. Businessmen thumped each other’s backs, their accessory wives already in the auditorium, saving seats and clutching purses they dared not set on the gummy floor. Meg lingered under the marquee glow with the stragglers measuring their pre-event cigarettes. Eve Winslow had promised to meet her, but Meg understood that Eve might be playing mayor at the hospital tonight.

      At least Meg had not seen the worst of it, only Amy on the ground and the rusty truck wheel above her quivering from a cable like some malevolent sputnik. Richard Diaz stopped Meg and told her to call 911. Zack and Richard worked to stabilize Amy, while she went out to direct the EMTs back to the scene. Amy was alive when they took her out. All Meg had heard since was a brief news report and angry accusations on talk radio.

      This event was difficult enough, watching another girl accept her sister’s memorial scholarship, celebrating one’s potential while being reminded of another’s loss. She wasn’t going to be pathetic about being stood up. She’d give Eve a few more minutes before chancing a run past Senator Pinecone, camped at the entrance. The former state senator turned clean coal lobbyist had just snared a banker with a handshake only a check could uncouple.

      Her