Death Echo

Those glory days were more than a half-century gone, but the town refused to adjust to the new reality of tourists and boutiques. It was a battle that had been fought through the city council and mayor’s office for as long as Mac could remember.
    As far as he could tell, about everyone lost. The fishing was gone, the forests logged out, the crabbing unpredictable, the town itself too poor to pave some of the streets within the city limits. People who lived in Rosario drove to nearby towns to shop for anything more durable than groceries and beer.
    Through all the years, smuggling was the only Rosario industry that had truly thrived. Cigarettes north and marijuana south, a round trip that could net thousands or end in gunfire, prison, or death.
    The smuggling was run by the Eastern European immigrants who had been fishermen and smugglers in their homeland. There had been no reason to change a winning combination when they emigrated to America a century or more ago. With each generation or each old-world conflict, their ranks grew. Overseas cousins, second cousins, relations by marriage, and relatives no American bothered to count fled to the New World when the Old World became deadly.
    Once, Mac had thought of joining the local smuggling industry. A close friend of his had been Ukrainian, another was Salish Indian, giving him an entre into the closed worlds of Rosario’s immigrant and native communities. Mac had been seventeen and too full of testosterone to put up with the small town of his birth. But after a few smuggling runs, he got smart, left town, and joined the navy.
    His best friend died two months later, simply vanished during asmuggling run. Tommy still survived, if anyone called living as a barely functioning alcoholic on the rez survival.
    Most of the time Mac thought he’d made the right choice in leaving Rosario and smuggling behind. If he had any doubts, all he had to do was visit Tommy.
    My own personal penance.
    Yet Mac couldn’t figure out what he was paying for. He’d got out, Tommy had stayed, and life went on either way. Yet somehow Mac felt guilty, as if whatever life he’d enjoyed had come at Tommy’s expense. It was stupid, but there it was. Guilt for being born white in a time and place where non-whites were considered second class.
    The distant flash of headlights in the rearview mirror shook Mac out of his bleak thoughts. There wasn’t much traffic out late on a weeknight. The people who had families to support were asleep. The people with habits to support had either scored or gone home with the shakes. The drinkers were wrapped up in their favorite bar, huddled protectively over their poison of choice. They wouldn’t move until they passed out or the bars closed.
    God, I hate this town.
    But I love Puget Sound.
    The headlights in the rearview mirror jiggled again as the vehicle went over a rough patch of pavement. The state highway that headed out to the federal freeway always needed repair. Eventually the state highway would get what it needed, after the densely packed voters in Seattle got what they wanted. Simple math and electoral politics.
    Mac slowed so he could turn onto Tribal Road without hitting his brakes. No point in making it easier if someone was following him. Since his white guilt had taken him many times to see Tommy, Mac knew the way. He could have driven without headlights, but he didn’t want to run over stray animals or people.
    He watched in the rearview mirror as the headlights that had been behind him passed the Tribal Road’s turnoff.
    So much for paranoids having real enemies , he told himself.
    Tribal Road skirted the edge of tidal mudflats for several miles before heading into the scrubby, fourth-growth forest that bordered the tidal zone. The road was in the open until Mac reached the trees. He kept glancing at the rearview and side mirrors.
    Brake lights glowed on the highway as a vehicle slowed, then made a U-turn and came back toward Mac. The vehicle turned onto Tribal Road.
    Score one for paranoia, he thought unhappily.
    He killed his headlights, accelerated hard, and prayed the tribal cops were drinking together. He didn’t lift his foot until he reached the bend in the road. Fifty yards later he turned and coasted onto twin dirt ruts that bored into the scrubby forest. The tires skidded a little in the shallow muck before they bit in. He kept coasting until he saw the old cedar stump. It was twelve feet