He was willing himself to focus on the road, the weather getting worse by the minute, and he had to keep one hand on the tuner because the radio was fading in and out as they looped higher into the mountains. “It was a water spout,” she said, her face a soft pale shell floating on the undersea glow of the dash lights, “or that’s what they think, anyway. I mean, that’s the rational explanation—the eels congregating to feed or mate and then this eruption that flings them into the air. But imagine the people. Imagine them.” He could feel the rear wheels slipping away from him each time he steered into a curve, and there were nothing but curves, one switchback after another all the way up the flank of the mountain. The night was absolute, no lights, no habitation, nothing—they’d passed the last ranch house ten miles back and were deep into the national forest now, at fifty-five hundred feet and making for the Big Timber Lodge at seventy-two. There was a winter storm watch out for the Southern Sierras, he knew that, and he knew that the back road would be closed as soon as the first snow hit, but the alternative route—up the front of the mountain—was even more serpentine than this one, and a good half hour longer too.
