Whenever Harlan needed to turn things over in his head, he went out to the ranch. The familiarity of boyhood streams and summer campouts bred a certain comfort that usually gave Harlan the clarity he needed. When the V.A. doctors first told him of the cancer, he cleared the brush from the old corral while exploring the implications of the treatment options. In the months since the Morton boy"s funeral, Harlan had spent a lot of time on the ranch but found little of the clarity he sought. Steering the Chevy down the dirt road bisecting his grandfather"s eight hundred acres, Harlan wasn"t hopeful.
The previous year notwithstanding, change wasn"t something Harlan ever gave a lot of thought to in his sixty-six years. It wasn"t that he had something against people who wanted things different t
