Excerpt from THE CURIOUS DEMISE OF PUG LEBREAUX.

[In this scene, protagonist screenwriter Steven Meyer and wife Jane have hiked to the top of Cisco Butte to check out a possible location to stage a film. Only the day before, Steven’s attempt to climb to this summit was thwarted.]


…From this vantage point Steven thought he could pick out which square mile sections the government owned and which were in private hands.

“That’s odd.”

“Jeez, what now?”

“Looks like mine tailings right off over here.” Steven pointed to a talus slope of fresh, crushed rock about where the little ridge that flanked from the log building intersected the side of the butte.

“Mr. History Man,” Jane said, “the gold rush. Forty-niners before football. You know: washboards, banjos on knees...”

“Yeah, but we're at eighty-eight hundred feet. Wasn’t much gold to be found at this elevation. I mean, who’d have the energy to dig it out?”

“People who didn’t know any better?”

Steve pointed. “Someone dug a big hole over there, and I don’t think gold was what they were prospectin’ for.”

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t know. Just a feeling,” Steve said. Then he added, “Actually Janie-biscuit, I don’t really know much of anything.”

She smiled knowingly.



THE TEMPERATURE continued to climb. The air, sweet as nectar. A rock promontory just beyond the communication antenna offered a three hundred sixty degree view. The spot begged for a pair of picnickers. The panorama from the Sierran crest all the way across the valley to the coast range, incomparable. A bite of cheese and Rykrisp washed down by some refreshing, cool beer seemed the perfect compliment to this nearly postcard-perfect scene.

Steven took a draught of Pabst. “Whadaya think, dear?”

Jane responded with a comely smile and dancing eyes. She reached a hand behind his neck and pulled him slightly. Steven leaned over and touched his lips to hers again. Something about the wilderness made him feel extra-human or sub-human or maybe just a little animalistic in certain regards. Steven liked this – everything about this. He liked the high sun in a topaz-colored sky. He liked the smell of the sage. He liked the above-it-all view and the romance it inspired. He liked the honey-sweet smell of Jane’s hair, the subtle fire of her embrace and her kiss. Kisses up here, Steven thought, have all that magic of a first kiss. All that magic all over again.

What her eyes told him made him love her more.

This is what heaven is like.

Not long into this lunchtime diversion, with a whistling roar that was anything but natural, Steven felt the earth move again, accompanied by a peppering of granite bits and a furious blast of spiny, brittle twigs. He covered his wife, shielding her from the angry squall of soil and debris. From a yawning chasm, something rose that Steven had seen only once before and quite recently.

Something Jane had tossed off as one of her husband’s creative delusions; but something, about which, she would soon believe.

Excerpt from THE CURIOUS DEMISE OF PUG LEBREAUX.

[In this scene, protagonist Steven Meyer, a rather bumbling screenwriter, is on a wilderness hike, scouting locations to stage a hot-air balloon crash that will serve as the setting for a screenplay.]

…At the edge of the carpet of greens and colors rose huge, fragrant red cedars and deep green firs with black bark. One kind of pine in this environment, Steven recalled from his failed days as a boy scout, gave off the scent of butterscotch or vanilla if he stuck his nose into a crevice in the bark. Steven spotted a pine, seeing its clusters of long needles and veered from the road to take a sniff. Wading through the undergrowth of manzanita, scratching his bare ankles on the spiny, stiff branches of the plants, he made it to the base of the tree and inhaled.

Wrong pine tree.

Advancing from the distance, from up the hill, came the gentle putter of a trail bike or two. Hondas. 90cc. Steven recognized the sound as he treked to the next pine sentinel. As a boy, he’d owned one of these bikes and had enjoyed days of exploration in these very woods. Closer and closer the tiny motorcycles drove as Steven inhaled the bark of another tree a few yards from the road.

Wrong again.

Steven stumbled a bit farther off the track and found a third tree. Bingo! The aroma filled his nose and almost set his mouth to watering. The tiny rumble of the trail bikes ebbed to an idle. Over their puttery din Steven heard:

“Shhhh. See that, son?”

“Yeah, dad.”

“Tree hugger.”

Steve secreted glances at the two. Tree hugger?

“A what?” asked the kid.

“Tree hugger.” The older rider pointed at Steven. “Must be one of those damned tree huggers that Pug LeBreaux’s always talking about on the radio.”

LeBreaux. Steven thought. He’s everywhere.

“Really?” asked the kid.

“Yeah. You can tell.” The older rider pointed. “See, he’s too close to that tree to be peein’ on it,” the older rider said. “I seen bear, and elk and coyote and even shot me a deer or two. But I don’t think I ever seen me a tree hugger before, son.” The engines of the two trail bikes continued at idle.

“Is he dangerous?”

Of course I’m not, Steven thought.

“Don’t know. Just better keep our distance,” the older rider warned. “Might be a young one around somewhere and you don’t likely want to get between ‘em.” He laughed and slapped the younger rider on the shoulder. “C’mon.”

“Wow,” the kid uttered breathlessly, clearly believing his old man. The two throttled up their motorbikes and continued on the road toward the camp.

Steven shook his head remembering the conversations of a few days before, back in the Squirrel Cage. There are wing nuts and nitwits and worse nowadays, everywhere, he recalled Hines saying. Then he thought: Maybe this LeBreaux fella is the source. The fountainhead.

© 2002, 2010
Church of the Open Road Press