Chapter 2 – CASH #2
“She covered it with makeup,” Brice says. “You could tell, though.”
“Bull crap.”
It’s getting late. The sun’s almost resting on the peak of Stonecut Mountain. It’s still bright enough, but the shadows are growing long. It’s Sunday, so I have dinner with my folks. Maybe I could go into town afterwards. See what’s going on.
“Glenna Dobbs is never gonna give you the time of day, my man.” Brice stands, stretches, and scrubs his abs.
“I don’t need Glenna Dobbs. I get plenty of play.” In a way, it’s the truth. I’m not hurtin’ for attention. Never have. But on the other hand—I’m full of shit. I might not need her, but I want her. Bad.
“All right then.”
“And if I had a thing for Glenna Dobbs, I’d have her eating out my hand.” Now I’m telling a bold-faced lie.
“Sure thing.” Brice folds his arm and smirks. “You gonna finish those shingles while there’s daylight, or you just gonna go on and on about how you don’t have a thing for Glenna Dobbs.”
“I can do both.” I half climb, half crawl back up to the eaves and finish the repairs. I did the roof myself, and I did make mistakes, but I’m learning.
I’ve been working on this cabin for over a year, almost two if you count the months of planning.
I felled the trees, debarked them, dried them.
I laid the foundation. I mean, I couldn’t have done it without Brice—I’d have gone nuts with no one to talk to—but at the end of the day, it’s mine.
Made by my own hands. My own design. With my own money.
I know how people look at us Walls, like everything is given to us.
And they aren’t wrong. But my folks have had nothing to do with this.
I bought the land with money I got crabbing in Alaska for a couple winters after I graduated high school.
I saw it on TV. Turns out it’s legit. Dangerous and cold as hell, but lucrative.
The cabin is gonna be awesome. Brice and his folks are a half mile up the mountain, and there’s no one else on this face except hunters and campers.
The view is gorgeous. You can see the river wind through town, watch the train chug through the valley.
You can hear the church bell when the air’s clear.
And in the other directions it’s nothing but birch, beech, sugar maple, and white pine.
I like people, and people like me, but I kind of get sick of it—quicker these days than when I was younger. Let’s just say I understand what it must be like when a band has got a new album, but the crowd only wants to hear last year’s hit.
Glenna Dobbs would like the view up here. Her pictures are mostly of the mountain. She’s got an eye like Brice, narrows in on the particular so it takes you a second to realize she’s shot something or someone you see all the time.
Glenna ain’t never gonna come up to my cabin, though. I heard a rumor she broke up with Toby sophomore year, and I asked her to homecoming, and she pretty much cried and ran away. Couldn’t get a stiffy for weeks after. Definite low point of my high school career.
I pry up the last few nails and drive them in again so they’re straight. The sun’s right in my eyes now.
“You almost done?” Brice calls up.
“Five more minutes.”
I take my time finishing and gathering my tools. The roof is fixed. Shingles are perfect.
“You gonna hold the ladder?” I holler down.
“You’ll be fine. I’m at a tricky part.” I glance over the edge. He’s still whittling. Could be a model for his next project or it could end up as kindling. You never know with Brice.
I throw my leg over and proceed down. Granger sees me from way down in the meadow where the creek runs through, and he starts running for me, ears and jowls flapping in the breeze.
“Best damn animal in the world” is what I’m thinking when I step off that last rung right into a squelching pile of dog shit.
Brice falls out, cackling, grabbing his sides. Granger reaches us and goes nuts, dashing between us, yapping at me for being so dumb as to land directly in his business.
“You saw him do it.”
Brice wipes fake tears off his cheek. “I did.”
“And you couldn’t warn me?”
“Would’ve ruined it,” he says, and then he holds up the hunk of wood he was working on. It’s carved into a perfect replica of what my face must’ve looked like the instant I sunk an inch deep in dog turd.
I march over, scuffing the sides of my boots in the grass, and I snatch it from him. “You keep laughin’. I’m gonna sell this on the internet for a thousand dollars.”
“Ask for five. You’ll get it.”
“Five thousand? Seriously?” It’s the size of a pill bottle.
“Yessir. I signed it.”
I flip it over and there are his initials on the bottom in the fancy way he does. Goddamn.
One of these days he’s gonna move to New York City to be famous and break my heart.
“Don’t cry about it,” he says. “They’re just shoes. They’ll clean up.”
I eye his pristine Timberlands. He ignores me and whistles for Granger.
Granger bounds over from where he was snuffling under the porch. Bet a raccoon’s been under there. Putting up a porch skirt is on my list. Maybe I better move it to the top–could be a skunk.
I slip the carving into my pocket and loop around the place to get Miss Tasha some elk from the freezer out back and check that everything’s locked up and secure. I’m not worried about people, but black bears are canny as shit, and they’re not hibernating yet.
Last thing, I load my tools into the bed of my nutless truck. The vehicle just looks wrong without ‘em. Naked.
“Can’t believe someone’d just cut ‘em off.” I shake my head.
Brice ambles over to stand beside me and mournfully consider the bare hitch.
“I bet Glenna Dobbs did it ‘cause of that sugar stunt,” he says.
“She wouldn’t.” Glenna’s above it all. I’ve given her no end of grief, and it’s rare I can get her to bat an eye. It’d be beneath her.
One day I’m gonna make her lose her temper. It’s gonna be glorious.
In the meantime, I’ve got Sunday dinner with the ’rents, and then I gotta run into Pyle to pick up my clients for the week.
It’s a CEO-type looking to bond with his two sons-in-law.
None of them ever been hunting before. Promises to be a shitshow.
I’ll consider it a success if nobody shoots himself in the foot.
I give my missing nuts one last sigh, and then I round the truck and hop in the cab. “You coming?”
I told Brice I’d drop him home on my way down the mountain.
He climbs in the bed and opens the tailgate so Granger can leap in with him. “I ain’t riding in that cab. Your shoes stink.”
“And whose fault is that?” I call over my shoulder as I back up.
“Yours for leaping before you look,” Brice says while my dog laps his face. “Like always.”
He’s right enough.
I’ve got half a mind to drive all the way back into town and see if Glenna’s working. Ask her if she wants to go fishing. Or off-roading or something. Can’t ask her out for a drink. Goddamn blue laws.
But there’s no way she’ll say yes.
I don’t know what she likes, but I’m not it. She’s made that abundantly clear since junior high.
And I’ve done shot myself in the foot a thousand times with her, and unlike me, she’s not a dumbass.
When I drop Brice off, I ask him one last time if he’ll come to dinner at my folks’.
“Not tonight, man.”
“You never come down anymore.” When we were younger, he came to Sunday dinner all the time.
“Mom’s expecting me here.”
“You’ll give her the elk and say hi to Pops for me?”
Brice nods and gives Granger one last rubdown before he drops the tailgate and hops out of the bed. I swing open the passenger door, and Granger jumps down and comes around. He keeps his head out the window all the way down the mountain.
Guess he doesn’t care for the smell of his own shit either.
* * *
Dinner with the Walls isn’t like dinner with the Carrolls.
The food is good both places, it’s just different.
At the Carrolls’, we’re loud, and everyone carries on and busts each other’s balls.
Miss Tasha insists you go back for seconds and thirds if you want, and she makes you a plate to take home.
My mom puts leftovers in little Tupperware containers and stacks ’em neat in the fridge for my dad’s lunch, and if anyone raised their voice at her table, she’d shut that down right quick. It’s a different vibe. Not bad. Just not my style.
The hassle begins when I walk in the mud room.
I’m trying to take my boots off so I can leave them outside, and all John’s kids come running, climbing up my back, tryin’ to choke me out with their chubby little arms. I can bench press two-twenty, but John makes ‘em big. I need leverage to wrangle them; sheer brute force won’t do.
So I get a little dog shit on the linoleum.
Mom comes crowding in, shooing them off with a dish towel, while John belatedly calls, “Tripp, Wyatt, Maddox, get your asses back in here.”
“Don’t forget Hope!” I call back. She’s the worst of them, hanging off my neck ‘til the blood pounds in my face. No mercy and cute as a damn button.
Hope skips off in her socks leaving a trail of dookie behind her. Mom stares at the floor and sighs. “Oh, Cash. Why didn’t you take your boots off outside?”
“Coyotes might get ‘em.” It’s the first thing that comes into my head. Truth be told, I wasn’t really thinking.
“Since when do coyotes go after shoes?”
“Since when have they had the opportunity?” I flash her my best smile, the one that never fails to convince her that she’s got more useful things to do than nag me.
“You’re cleaning this up.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And we’re already holding dinner for you.”
The Carrolls wouldn’t have. Mr. Joe wouldn’t allow it. He waits for no man, and he’s a firm believer in you snooze, you lose.
“Sorry, Mom. I’ll get this mopped right up.”
“And you’ll have to follow after Hope. I bet she’s tracked that mess through the whole house by now.”
“Shouldn’t be hard to follow the trail.”
“Cash.” Mom’s face has that pinched look she gets when she’s about had enough of me. “I’m not amused.”
“No, ma’am.”