Sometimes, too, a look passes between them, a gleam of competition over who will use the material first and who will write it best. It is late. We are drinking small, strong coffees from an espresso machine they've just bought. Ray finishes, gets up, and stokes the wood stove for the night. He's a little restless and does not look or move at all like a man who almost died from booze.
Ray shuts off the playback and takes the phone off the hook.
Next morning we plan to rise at four and go fishing for steelhead trout. But the rivers are muddy and swollen with rain, and we drive back home at sunrise, the long swift caravans of logging trucks blowing past us. The classic 1950s and '60s cars and trucks on the road look picturesque, but are a matter of economy. After El Paso, Ray and Tess moved to Tucson, where Tess had a teaching appointment at the University of Arizona. That was 1979, and Ray had been given a Guggenheim Fellowship to spend a year on his fiction.