30. Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty
BEN
The north gate isn’t sticking.
I check it twice because Silas told Ella to tell me it was sticking. This one swings sweet as a bank vault because I rehung it myself three weeks ago.
Silas is leaning on the fence beside it with two pairs of gloves and a wire stretcher, watching me work it back and forth.
“Huh,” he says. “Must have fixed itself.”
“Must have.”
“Funny how things sort themselves out around here lately.” He hands me a pair of gloves, face straight. “Since you’re up anyway. The west line’s got three posts leaning and a run of wire gone slack. Fetch the truck.”
I take the gloves and say nothing, because there’s nothing to say that his grin under that hat brim hasn’t already said.
Full summer has the ranch by the throat, and it’s a good strangle.
Cicadas sawing away in the tree line. Heat shimmer standing over the far pasture by nine.
The creek’s dropped to its August levels early, lazy over the rocks, and the cattle stand in the willow shade like they’re waiting on a bus.
We work the west line mostly quiet, all rhythm.
My shirt’s soaked through by ten and my hands know every job before Silas names it.
Somewhere in the third hour, I start humming.
I notice because Silas has stopped tamping and is looking at me over the post like I’ve grown a second head.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He goes back to tamping. “Merle Haggard. Interesting choice of song.”
“I wasn’t…”
“Two verses and the chorus.” Tamp. Tamp. “Been at it since the second post.”
I stretch the next run of wire and consider the evidence. A month and a half ago, I caught myself whistling while I framed up a new life, and it felt like theft, like a man caught spending money that wasn’t his. This feels the opposite. It’s easy as breathing.
“Caleb asked me how I was feeling,” I say. “Morning of the wedding. Big effort for him. We don’t often talk deep.” I crimp the wire and test the tension. “I told him I was fine, but it was one of the biggest lies I’ve told. I couldn’t have found the truth with a map.”
Silas tamps his post and waits.
“Ask me now,” I say.
“How you feeling, son?”
“Happy.” It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud in my adult life, near as I can figure. “Genuinely happy. Working your fence in ninety degrees, sweating through my second shirt. Happy.”
Silas nods as if I’ve reported the clover coming in good.
We break at noon in the willow shade with May’s sandwiches, and I’m reaching into the truck for the water jug when I find the notebook.
Ella’s. Not the venue binder, not the client diary.
The little kitchen-drawer one with the cracked blue cover, her lists and her margins and God knows what else, the one that lives in her back pocket or her hand.
It must have ridden down here in the truck last night, slipped from wherever, and it’s fallen open on the seat, face up, her handwriting looking up at me. Pages of it.
I look at it for one second. Long enough to see it’s not lumber numbers. Long enough to see my name partway down a page, in her small, tight cursive, with words after it I don’t read.
I close it.
It’s not even a decision. My hand does it the way it’d catch a falling glass, before the thinking gets involved. I square the cover, take it to the cab, and set it on the dash where she’ll see it first thing, and that’s that.
Silas watches from the shade with his sandwich.
“You didn’t read it.”
“It’s hers.”
“Your name was in it. I saw from your face.”
“Then it’s hers with my name in it.” I sit down in the shade and take my sandwich. “If there’s a thing in there I need, she’ll hand it to me when it’s ready.”
Silas chews on that a while, along with the ham.
“You know,” he says at last, “I’ve buried two dogs, one tractor, and every secret May Lockhart ever trusted me with, and I’ll tell you the whole of what I know about it. Trust that gets checked isn’t trust. It’s surveillance with better manners.” He balls up his wax paper. “You’ll do, Ben.”
Second time he’s said it. It sits the same as the first.
We’re loading the stretcher and the spare posts when I say what I’ve been hauling up and down this fence line all morning.
“My leave was up last week.”
Silas coils wire without looking up. “I wondered if you knew.”
“I called Ethan last night. Told him I won’t be back on the fourteenth, and he should hire on proper help, not hold a place for me.
” I make myself look at Silas, because a man’s owed eye contact with a thing like this.
“He refused. Flat. Said the string would keep till I knew my mind.” I set the stretcher in the bed.
“So that’s the state of my employment. The arrangement here was a month.
I’m asking for longer, but I can’t put a number on it. ”
“Son.” He throws the last coil in after it.
“That month ran out while you were painting window frames and courting my daughter, and not one soul on that porch was fixing to mention it. May struck you off the guest list and onto the chore rota weeks back. You’re the last man on this ranch to know you’re staying.
” He climbs into the truck and shuts the door on any further discussion, then through the open window he says, “It was well asked, though.”
And that’s that. Somewhere between the gate and the west line, the biggest decision since June quit being a decision. All I did was catch up to it out loud.
Naomi’s car is at the venue when we rattle back in at two.
She’s on the new decking with a folding chair, a church fan, and a legal pad, holding what appears to be a site meeting with herself, and she waves the fan at me like I’m late for it.
“There he is. Borrow you ten minutes?”
“You can have fifteen if you don’t tell my boss.”
“Which boss?” She says it sweet as pie, watching me climb the steps. She pats the rail. “Wedding logistics. I’ve got questions Ella can’t answer because they’re your side of the shop. Parking. Dinah’s got cousins coming from three states, half of them in trucks. Where do they go?”
“East pasture. I’ll mow a lane and stake it the week before. Solid ground, even if it rains.”
“The arbor.”
“Built by August. I’ll set it so the aisle looks straight down the valley. Afternoon light’ll come in over her left shoulder, which the photographer will want.”
Naomi asks more questions and writes all my answers down, nodding, fan going, and then she caps her pen and looks at me a moment.
“You know what you just did,” she says. “You answered every question like a man who’ll be standing there in September.”
“I will be standing there in September.”
“I knew it.” She gathers her legal pad, entirely satisfied. “But some things a person likes to hear said out loud.” She pats my arm on the way past, then pauses at the top of the steps. “You’re smiling, by the way.”
“Ma’am?”
“You’ve been smiling since I saw you. Thought you should know, since you plainly don’t.” She goes down the steps, fan working. “September, Ben.”
“September, Naomi.”
While her dust settles down the track, I take out my phone and text my brother.
Fixed fence all morning. Hot as sin. Happy as a pig in shit.
The reply comes back before I’ve pocketed the phone.
Who is this? Happy?
Then, ten seconds later, Regan says about time. So does everybody else. Bring her up to meet the family before summer’s out. Maeve’s already counting chairs.
I stand on the decking and think on what Naomi said. She’s right. It’s just there now, the smile, resting on my face. I told Ella I felt peace, but it’s also happiness. It’s been so long it could take some getting used to.
Down the hill, Ella’s truck turns in off the valley road, back from the napkin man, dust standing in the air behind her.
I’ll give her back her notebook and let her know I didn’t read a page.
I didn’t need to. After Carla, I should have my guard up, but it’s impossible not to trust Ella.
She’s the most straight-up woman I know.
If there’s anything serious in that notebook, she’d have told me about it by now.
That’s what I tell myself, watching her truck come up the track toward me, smiling without being sent for.
There’s nothing between us left to find.