Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 148, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 900 & 901, September/October 2016

The first glow of dawn snapped me awake instantly, on full alert. I stayed silent and solid as a rock, taking in my surroundings. Sniffing the air for danger. There was none, of course. No Taliban in these hills, no tribal jihadis hunting me. The clearing around the charred ruins was on high ground with a clear view for miles in all directions. I was safe as a church up here.

I scanned the terrain anyway, out of pure habit. I’d been living at orange alert for so long that hyper caution seemed normal to me.

The forest began seventy yards below the clearing, scrub brush that blended into clumps of tag alders, then willowy poplars, then pines and hardwoods. Beyond that, the treetops rolled away from the hill like a vast green sea, stretching to the edge of the world, where the silvery line of Lake Michigan defined the horizon like a freshwater necklace.

Magnificent. Even better than my dream, actually. But seeing it again nudged my memory. Bringing back old feelings I’d forgotten.

Funny, as a teenager I’d grown to hate this place. The solitude. The eternal dusk of the deep woods.

But mostly the poverty.

I’d grown up wood-smoke poor. Dad was a logger, Ma worked in town. And they were happy here, I guess, though back then I couldn’t imagine why.

Then I hit the smart-ass time of my life. I looked around, and all I saw were rusty pickup trucks, loggers sweating in the deep woods for minimum wage, poaching game off state land to feed their families.

Losers. Like my father. No ambition, no gumption. Or so it seemed to me, with the vast experience of my eighteen summers.

I didn’t understand that there’s more than one American Dream. That the tapestry of life in the back country had nothing to do with numbers in a checkbook or the latest gee-whiz computer game.

Folks could walk free in these forests, harvest wild raspberries in the spring, take salmon and turkeys and white-tails in their seasons. Or whenever they damn well pleased, really.

If the Internet crashed and took civilization down with it, they’d scarcely notice, or care all that much. But at eighteen, I knew so much better.

I knew that the Secret of Life was money. Rack up enough long green, and you can buy anything or anybody. The world’s for sale. Buy as much as you want.

And because I’d grown up in wood-smoke country, I had marketable skills. I could hunt, shoot, track, and run like a spooked buck. I’d been working construction since I was twelve, already had my journeyman’s card.

And the U.S. Army was hiring, and paying a lot more than minimum wage. So my best friend and I signed on with the army, and then the Company after that, rebuilding Afghanistan. And there was plenty to rebuild, since the locals seem dead set on blowing everything up. Including us. Still, I took to the work. And I was good at it. At first...

I shook off the dark memories before they could settle in and take hold. Rummaging through my pockets, I found half an energy bar stashed, then strolled the yard, munching, loosening up.

And noticed something I’d missed at first light.

A paper sign, stapled to a pine tree.