Excerpt
Part One: Welcome to Coulee Country
Right here and now, as an old friend used to say, we are in the fluid present,
where clear-sightedness never guarantees perfect vision. Here: about two hundred
feet, the height of a gliding eagle, above Wisconsin's far western edge, where
the vagaries of the Mississippi River declare a natural border. Now: an early
Friday morning in mid-July a few years into both a new century and a new
millennium, their wayward courses so hidden that a blind man has a better chance
of seeing what lies ahead than you or I. Right here and now, the hour is just
past six a.m., and the sun stands low in the cloudless eastern sky, a fat,
confident yellow-white ball advancing as ever for the first time toward the
future and leaving in its wake the steadily accumulating past, which darkens as
it recedes, making blind men of us all.
Below, the early sun touches the river's wide, soft ripples with molten
highlights. Sunlight glints from the tracks of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe
Railroad running between the riverbank and the backs of the shabby two-story
houses along County Road Oo, known as Nailhouse Row, the lowest point of the
comfor ... read full excerpt from Black House ebook
