Page 66 of The Killing Plains

“You’re pale. Have you eaten?” Russ asked. “We can grab a couple burgers at the Dairy Queen.”

Colly’s stomach roiled. “Please shut up.” She pressed the heels of her hands against her temples. “Stop the truck.”

Russ pulled over. Colly threw the door open, but Russ grabbed her arm. “Put your head down, Col.”

Too nauseated to object, Colly complied, resting her head against her knees.

“Breathe through it,” Russ said. “Nice and steady.”

For a few seconds, Colly had the odd impression that it was Randy seated next to her, speaking soothingly and rubbing her back. When the queasiness passed, she sat up.

“Have some water.” Russ produced a bottle from the center console.

Colly took a drink. “Thanks.”

“Better?”

“I’m fine. Let’s go.”

Russ frowned. “If you’re still dizzy when we get back, I’m taking you to a doctor, whether you like it or not.”

The Crescent Bluffs, a long, low ridgeline some twenty miles southeast of the eponymous town, were named for the narrow ravine that sliced through them—which, from a distance, appeared as a scimitar-shaped gash of blue sky in the red rock surrounding it. Through that ravine ran Whiskey Creek. At most times a dry wash, the creek transformed into a boiling, rust-colored torrent after heavy rains.

As the SUV crept up the switchback road that mounted the bluff-face east of the ravine, Colly, still fighting a headache and nausea, stared out of the window, hardly aware of the sweeping vista beneath. She was preoccupied instead with holding at bay the painful memories—of a bright autumn afternoon nearly a quarter-century ago.

She’d been queasy that day, too, already three weeks pregnant with Victoria, though she hadn’t known it yet. Thanksgiving 1996—a year into her relationship with Randy. She’d been to the ranch twice before, but this was her first major holiday visit. After an enormous midday meal and an afternoon nap, she and Randy had gone for a hike up the bluffs to watch the sunset.

“You won’t regret it,” he’d insisted. “The view’s spectacular.”

There was no road then—only a steep footpath up the talus slope. The climb was slow going. Juniper bushes, stunted and warped by the wind, clung to the escarpment, their roots burrowing into cracks and dislodging stones that tumbled onto the path below.

After an hour’s sweaty scramble, they’d crested the ridge. And there, in a broad, empty tableland of sage and switchgrass, beneath a sky of pale autumnal blue, Randy pulled a jeweler’s box from hispocket and dropped to one knee, while the wind whipped around them and the whole world seemed spread at their feet...

“I hate these hairpin turns,” Russ said, wrenching Colly abruptly back to the present.

She looked around. “How do they bring up the installation equipment? No tractor-trailer’s coming this way.”

“There’s an industrial-haul access ramp out towards the gravel quarry, but this is quicker for us.” Russ downshifted up the last, steep slope and braked at the top.

Colly leaned forward, squinting into the hazy glare. Once an undeveloped expanse of grassy scrub populated only by jackrabbits, lizards, and red-tailed hawk, the blufftop had been transformed into something like the surface of Mars. The ground was rutted by heavy equipment, the plant life trampled into the red clay. A line of gleaming turbines now marched down the center of the ridge, their tapered blades spinning slowly in the wind.

The closest was still under construction. Though several hundred yards away, it seemed impossibly tall, its headless mast towering into the sky alongside a gigantic crane. Smaller cranes, bulldozers, and portable toilets ringed the area. A dozen men in hardhats crawled over a flatbed trailer, though Colly couldn’t tell what they were doing.

“Is this the last installation?”

“On this side. They’ll start west of the ravine after this. That’s on a separate ranch, but both owners agreed to lease us the land. We nearly lost the westside contract after the bird-strike accident. Lucky for us, Talford knows the owner and pulled some strings.”

Russ let out the clutch, and they lurched slowly along a pitted track towards the construction site. He parked a football field’s distance from the work zone, and Colly now saw that the flatbed trailer held a single turbine blade, which the workmen were apparently preparing to unload.

“That thing’s huge,” she said as they climbed out of the SUV.

“Everyone says that when they first see one up close.”

“No, really. Randy took me to the factory once, but I don’t remember the blades being likethat.”

“We were probably still making 126-footers then. Other manufacturers have lengthened their blades to boost power output, but Dad was too cheap. After he died, Momma decided we should upgrade. We’re a lot more competitive now.”

“The retooling must’ve cost a fortune.”

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