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The road sht hand off the wheel and laid it onFor a little while he and I both pretended it wasn’t there Then I asked him, "What would these people around here say if they knew you had your hand on a white girl’s thigh?"

He smiled "They’d say I was a lucky son of a bitch"

He lifted the hand and ran his palhtly, just stroking the hairs and not the skin My nipples stood up and led and my whole body wanted that hand on it, everywhere at once But he took it back and put it on the steering wheel, and I pitiedwheel

"You still haven’t told ," I said

He nodded at the road "That’s where we’re going We’re aleared down into four-wheel drive and turned off the dirt road onto a side path, not really a road but a pair of tracks in the gravelly ground If you hadn’t known it was there, you’d never have seen it

If we are going to see soht, I’irl Noabout kissing Loyd I looked away fro out there now but fields of yelloers, rocky red hills in the near distance, and off to the east very high mountains softly blackened around their tops by a pelt of pine forests It would be cool up there now, even today I picturedunder the pines on a floor of brown needles It was hard to keep Loyd out of the picture

"What is this?" I was out of the truck, entranced, before he’d even set the brake

"Kinishba," Loyd said "Prehistoric condos"

That’s just about what it looked like Out there in the ht, sat a long rectangular building made entirely of carefully set stone, no mortar Dozens of small doors opened into it across the front

"Can we go inside? Is it allowed?"

He hooked his elbow around my neck, like a friendly wrestler, as alked toward the site "It’s allowed I allow it"