A Deadly Twist by Jeffrey Siger (free novel reading sites .txt) 📕

Yianni opened his eyes. “I know. I’m just complaining for the sake of complaining. Thank you for listening.”

Popi smiled. “That’s an admission I rarely hear from a man. Your girlfriend really did raise you right.”

“It’s been a challenge. For us both.” He smiled at Popi. “But it’s worth it.”

She smiled back. “I know.”

* * *

At a juncture with a main road just north of the airport, Popi turned left, then headed north.

“Are we heading back to town?” asked Yianni.

“Who’s doing the driving?”

“Okay, I’ll take that as a ‘please shut up.’”

“No need to say please.”

Yianni stared at her. “Why do I feel your husband and I have a lot in common?”

She turned right off the highway onto a narrow dirt road passing between broad swatches of farmland mixed in among fields of tall grass and newly baled hay. Tall bamboo, planted to protect the crops against strong Cycladic winds, lined both sides of the road, and of the handful of structures Yianni saw along the way, half looked to be businesses catering to tourists.

“Is this what most of Naxos is like?”

“Around here, yes. Away from here, no. We’re on the edge of a fertile plain that spreads out south and east into major growing areas. Once we hit the highway, we’ll be heading into the mountains and you’ll get a bigger picture of where we are now.”

“I think what you’re trying to tell me is that down here, I can’t see the forest for the trees.”

“Yes, but more like you can’t see the farmland for the bamboo. Naxos no longer has forests. Thanks to the practices of those who lived here before us.”

Yianni stared out the window, wondering how this area might look a few years from now.

“Are you into goat herding?”

Yianni looked at Popi. “That’s a strange question to come out of nowhere.”

“You said you thought my husband and you had a lot in common.”

Yianni paused for an instant. “Are you saying your husband’s a shepherd?”

“That’s for sheep. He’s a goat herder and one of the best.” Popi glanced at Yianni. “You seem surprised.”

“I am. It’s just so different from what we do.”

“Not really. He spends much of his time like us, trying to keep critters in line who’d otherwise go astray at the first opportunity.”

“Interesting perspective, but you must admit it’s not the sort of career you hear much about these days.”

“You do if you live in a rural community on Naxos. You may think being a cop is glamorous, but at least herding has profound biblical significance.”

“We have more TV shows.”

She smiled. “Good point.”

Popi turned left onto a paved road, then right onto a two-lane highway lined with a hodgepodge of buildings and unkempt grounds typical of the sorts of businesses necessary for supporting a community.

She kept left each time the highway split. “Here’s the road we want.” She nodded toward a sign pointing left and marked KOUROS, KINIDAROS.

“Ah, at last, a chance to find myself,” smiled Yianni.

“Huh?”

“That sign, it has my last name on it.”

“Oh, I see, that was a joke. Next time warn me.”

“I assume Kouros is where Naxos’s famous six-meter long, unfinished marble statue of a young boy has lain on its back since the seventh century B.C.E.”

“How’d you know that?”

“Trust me, if your last name also happens to be the term used to describe nude statues of young boys, you learn all about them, whether you want to or not.”

Popi laughed. “Now that’s funny.”

“And I didn’t even have to warn you.” Yianni stretched. “So, how much longer until we get to Siphones?”

“We should make it in about a half hour, depending on traffic.”

“What sort of traffic?”

“Slow buses, slow trucks, slow tourists, and of course, the ever-present possibility of goats on a road.”

“You must know all the tricks for driving through a herd of goats.”

“Yes, sit back, relax, and wait, because if you want to see a pastoral herder turn wildly insane, try driving through his herd and scattering his goats in every conceivable direction.”

“Oh.”

“Enjoy the ride.”

They left the developed part of the island behind them, passed through rich bottomland plains, and began their climb up into the mountains. Each time the road narrowed down to run through a village, Yianni’d catch glimpses of the weathered faces of old men sitting on the front porch of their local kafenio. He wondered what thoughts passed through their minds as they sipped their coffees, watching so many vehicles stream by on their way to who knew where. Perhaps they thought of their children and grandchildren out working the farms and tending the flocks in the same age-old ways as they once had.

More likely how naive we city types are. Why would their kids, let alone their grandkids, be willing to put in the sort of fifteen-hour days of hard labor their lives once demanded?

As the pickup slowly passed close by a tiny, bougainvillea-draped stone house surrounded by daisies, poppies, and anemones, Yianni rolled down his window for a whiff of the scents. With that, he caught the rhythmic beat of cicadas nesting in a roadside patch of fig trees.

“Can it get any better than this?”

Popi smiled. “Just wait.”

Once up in the mountains, the road turned to twists, switchbacks, and panoramic views of long, fertile valleys and stone-edged mountaintops. At times he’d see a slice of the distant deep-blue sea, or a mountain face shaved white for its marble. Down in the valleys, rows of olive trees swept up against fields of copper, emerald, and sage, while stone walls streaked with age held planted terraces snugly in place against sharply slanted hillsides.

In the bright early afternoon sunlight, every color showed true. Dots, dashes, spires, and blotches of green popped out against a richly earth-toned land deep into its seventh millennium of cultivation.

Roadsides boasted colorful flowers mixed with grasses, herbs, maquis, and gorse in among eucalyptus, fig, olive, oak, and other such hardy trees the ever-present rock and winds permitted.

Even the occasional concrete plant or marble quarry could not diminish the awe-inspiring majesty