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Before The Fires Went Out - Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO THE HOUSES BEYOND THE PALISADE Rain had fallen during the night but not long enough to settle the dust. By morning the lower districts beyond the central mound had become a mixture of damp earth and churned mud where thousands of feet moved daily between houses, workshops, storage pits, and narrow market lanes. Smoke from cooking fires drifted low beneath the gray sky and settled heavily between the packed rows of buildings. The smell of wet clay, wood ash, and standing water lingered across the district long after sunrise. Makwa-itha walked southward beyond the central plaza accompanied only by one attendant who remained several paces behind him and spoke to no one. The roads nearest Monks Mound were broader and better maintained than those farther outward near the palisade. There the city narrowed into crowded passages lined with timber houses plastered in clay and roofed with reed thatch darkened from years of smoke and rain. Women knelt beside grinding stones beneath co...
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Before the Fires Went Out - Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE THE RIVER RETURNS WRONG The river had withdrawn too early. Makwa-itha stood near the edge of the eastern embankment where the packed earth sloped gradually toward the broad floodplain below the city. The morning air carried the smell of wet mud and reeds left too long beneath a hard sun. Farther out, beyond the last lines of standing water, long ribbons of exposed earth twisted through the basin where the Mississippi should still have spread wide and slow beneath the late summer heat. The flood had come hard in the spring. Too hard. The water had climbed quickly against the lower fields, swallowing fishing camps and drowning sections of the eastern maize rows before retreating almost as fast as it arrived. The river usually lingered after flooding, feeding the black soil and leaving shallow channels where fish gathered thick enough for boys to spear them by torchlight after dusk. This year the channels had become stagnant pools. A fisherman from the southern marshes...
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Cahokia Tribes

The people commonly called the “Cahokia Indians” were part of what archaeologists call the Mississippian culture, a highly organized Native American civilization that flourished in the Mississippi River Valley roughly from A.D. 800–1400. Their greatest city was located near present-day Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, just east of modern-day St. Louis. At its height around A.D. 1050–1200, Cahokia was the largest urban center north of Mexico. Estimates vary, but many scholars believe the population may have reached 15,000–30,000 people, which made it larger than many European cities of the same period. It was not a primitive village. It was a complex city with: Planned neighborhoods Large ceremonial plazas Defensive palisades Sophisticated agriculture Long-distance trade networks Political and religious hierarchy The most famous structure is Monks Mound, a gigantic earthwork larger at its base than the Great Pyramid of Giza. It rises about 100 feet high and covers roughly 14 acres. I...
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The Quiet Ledger - Chapter 3

A Gunny McKenna Story The Quiet Ledger Chapter 3 I stood at the desk while a sergeant with a neck like a ham and a mustache that looked government-issued turned over a blotter page with the solemnity of a bishop opening doctrine. “Help you?” he asked. “That depends,” I said. “Lieutenant on the Callahan dock accident.” His eyes came up half an inch. “Why.” “Because I’m curious.” “That contagious?” “Only if the paperwork’s bad.” He let that sit there, then leaned back in his chair until it complained under him. “Name.” “McKenna.” “Police?” “No.” “Reporter?” “Do I look underfed?” That got me almost nothing. Men behind precinct desks don’t waste smiles on private investigators. Too much professional overlap and not enough pension security. He said, “Lieutenant Barrow handled the scene.” “In?” “In the building. Against all odds.” He pointed with two fingers toward a corridor lined with dented file cabinets and old wanted posters. I thanked him the way men do in police stations when gratitud...
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The Quiet Ledger - Chapter 2

A Gunny McKenna Story The Quiet.Ledger Chapter 2 The waterfront never looked clean, even after rain. It just looked freshly rinsed, like a drunk who’d splashed water on his face and called it repentance. Morning lay low over the docks in a flat gray sheet, the kind of lake fog that made distance look dishonest. Cranes stood against it like crooked gallows. Chains clanked. Diesel engines idled somewhere beyond the sheds. Gulls worked the air above the slips, complaining in thin angry voices. The whole place smelled of wet rope, rust, coffee gone bitter on a hot plate, and the black sour breath of the river sliding out to meet the lake. Pier 47 sat where Nora Callahan said it would, a long slab of timber and steel with boxcars waiting inland and a freighter tied up outboard, its hull dark with rain and old work. Men moved cargo in thick coats and caps pulled low, boots striking hollow on planks that had heard worse news than mine. Nobody looked at me more than once. That was how I knew...
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The Last Reservoir - Chapter 1

Chapter 1 — The Last Drink The reservoir had died standing up. Its concrete walls still rose from the desert, immense and pale beneath the morning sun, holding back nothing. The spillways opened onto emptiness. Intake towers stood marooned in miles of hardened mud. Rusted ladders descended toward a waterline that had not existed for years. Ethan Cole crossed the exposed lakebed alone. The ground had broken into plates beneath his boots, each slab curled slightly at its edges like burned paper. His steps made small, dry sounds. There were no birds. There were no insects. Even the wind seemed reluctant to move across that place. A speedboat lay on its side thirty yards ahead, half buried in sediment. Its white hull had yellowed. The name painted across the stern—SECOND CHANCE—had cracked down the middle. Ethan did not look at it for long. He kept his head lowered and his scarf pulled over his nose. The air tasted of alkali and old metal. Each breath dried his mouth a little more. He carr...
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