Chapter 16
The afternoon sun slanted through the trees and laid warm patches across the clearing.
I sat in my camp chair by the fire pit, pipe clenched between my teeth, watching the big stainless steel pot rattle on the grate.
Steam escaped from under the lid in little hissing bursts, carrying with it the smell of shrimp and sausage and vegetables and herbs.
Beside me, Abner sat with his legs stretched toward the fire, a tin camp cup of whiskey balanced on the arm of his chair.
A gunshot cracked from down near the pond. Then another. Then silence, followed by the distant murmur of voices.
Scout was keeping her promise and teaching Grace how to fire a pistol. They were in the same area Scout had taught me, aiming for the same target against the hillside.
A third shot, and this time I heard a solid thwack as the round found the stump.
Abner tilted his head toward the sound. "Your girl Grace. She's a quick study."
"Better than I was when Scout first put a loaded gun in my hand."
"That is not a high bar to clear."
"No, it is not," I agreed.
Abner sipped from his cup. The faintest trace of amusement lit his eyes, which was as close to laughter as the man seemed to get.
Another shot. Another thwack.
"Four out of six," Abner said, counting the last shot. "At range, too. A good start."
"She looks focused. And Scout is a good teacher."
"Yes, she has proven so." He took another sip. "Have you been practicing?"
"I have. Bought three more boxes of .38 Special from the sporting goods store in Forks last week. I've been out at the stump several times now."
"And how does the GP100 treat you?"
"Better with single action than double action."
"Understandable."
"I'm keeping them on the stump now, at least. Not sending rounds into the hillside like I was that first time. Next thing I want to do is get some .357 Magnum. Try the full-power loads."
Abner's blue eyes found mine over the rim of his cup.
"Make sure Liberty is present when you step up to the magnum. The recoil is a different conversation entirely. The .38 Special asks politely. The .357 makes demands."
"I will."
More shots from the pond. I pulled the pipe from my mouth and leaned forward to lift the lid on the pot.
The boiling liquid inside was cloudy and rust-colored, rolling hard.
Chunks of potato and corn on the cob tumbled in the boil alongside fat pink shrimp, their shells curled tight, and lengths of dark sausage.
I lowered the lid back and the pot resumed its chattering.
"How much longer on this?"
"The potatoes will tell us. When they yield to a knife without resistance, we eat. Ten minutes, perhaps. Perhaps less."
"The other ingredients look delicious. What all is in there?"
Abner gestured with his cup toward the pot as if conducting a small orchestra.
"Venison sausage from the buck I took. Wild onion. Garlic. Bay laurel. Red pepper flake. Celery. Corn. Yukon Gold potatoes, which hold their shape better than russet potatoes in a long boil. And the shrimp went in last so they don't turn to rubber."
"Where'd you get the shrimp?"
"Fellow I know runs a boat out of Port Chasten.
I trade him venison and deer skin gloves.
He gives me shrimp and the occasional Dungeness crab.
It is an arrangement of mutual benefit and zero paperwork, which is the finest kind of economy.
" Abner paused. "We'll save the shrimp shells after we eat.
Shrimp shell makes excellent fertilizer.
Claire could use it on the tea plants. Calcium, nitrogen, chitin.
The soil breaks it down and the roots drink it up. "
"Be sure to tell her when she gets here."
Abner opened his mouth to say something else and instead produced a cough that bent him forward in his chair.
It was a harsh, wet sound, the kind that came from somewhere deep in his lungs, and it went on for a long time.
His shoulders shook. The tin cup trembled in his grip.
He pressed his free hand flat against his chest as if holding something in place.
When it finally passed, he sat up straight and took a slow, careful breath. Then he lifted the cup and drank.
I watched him carefully. The coughing had gotten worse since I first met him months ago.
"Does the whiskey help with that?"
"No." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "But it makes the coughing more tolerable. There is a distinction."
I pulled on my pipe and let the smoke sit in my mouth before releasing it. The question had been building in me for weeks and I let it come out gently.
"When's the last time you saw a doctor, Abner?"
His eyes stayed on the fire pit. The pot rattled. Steam curled upward and dissolved.
"I know what is in my lungs, Thomas. I breathed it for many years.
Burn pits in Balad. Burn pits in Tikrit.
Plastics, batteries, medical waste, human waste, jet fuel, everything the United States military didn't want to look at, they set on fire and men like me stood downwind.
A doctor can put a name on it. He cannot take it out.
" He sipped his whiskey. "I have made my terms with the arrangement. "
I wanted to push. I wanted to say that making terms wasn't the same as giving up, that there were treatments, that the VA owed him at least that much. But I knew this man. I knew where the walls were.
"All right," I said. "Well, let me know if I can do anything to help."
Abner nodded once. The subject was closed.
Voices rose from the direction of the pond, growing louder. Scout approached, walking with her long easy stride, the Smith & Wesson holstered at her hip. Grace came beside her, practically bouncing, her cheeks flushed pink and her eyes wide.
"Oh my God." Grace dropped into the empty camp chair and pressed both hands against her face. "Oh my God, oh my God."
"I take it the lesson went well," I said.
"Dude. Duuuude." She pulled her hands away. Her eyes were bright. "I just fired a giant freaking gun. Like, a real actual gun. A big ass revolver."
"I heard. How'd it go?"
"Okay, so at first? I was literally shaking. Scout hands me this thing and it's so heavy and I'm like, there is no way. No way! I'm going to drop it or shoot my foot off or something horrible."
Scout settled into the chair beside her father and stretched her legs out.
"She did not drop it."
"I didn't, but like the first shot scared the absolute shit out of me. Like, the noise? And the way it kicks? I wanted to put it down and walk away. I told Scout I was done."
"What changed your mind?" I asked.
Grace looked at Scout. They shared a warm look.
"Scout put her hands over mine and held the gun with me.
Didn't say anything about it being okay or that I should relax or any of that shit people say.
She just held it steady and said, 'Again.
' So I pulled the trigger again. And the second time, I knew what was coming so it didn't scare me as bad.
And the third time..." Grace grinned. "The third time I hit the stump and I was like, Oh. Oh, I get it."
"She has a natural point of aim," Scout said. "Some people fight the pistol. Grace lets it settle. She also followed every safety rule I gave her without exception, which is more important than accuracy."
Abner regarded Grace with those pale blue eyes. "A weapon is only as dangerous as the hand that holds it is careless. It sounds as though your hand was not careless."
"I was so careful, for real. Scout made sure of that. She was like a drill sergeant but, like, a really nice one."
Scout's mouth curved. "I've been called many things. Drill sergeant is new."
I sat there watching the two of them, Grace with her breathless energy and Scout with her stillness, and felt something warm settle in my chest. They were so different from each other.
Yet somehow in the months since Grace had parked her RAV4 on my property, they'd found a frequency where their two signals overlapped.
Scout had someone her own age to talk to for the first time in her life.
Grace had someone who showed her a different way to live.
"Scout says I'm a better shot than you already," Grace said, turning to me with a grin.
"I don't doubt it. My shooting needs serious work."
"It does," Scout confirmed.
"Thank you for that."
Abner leaned forward and lifted the pot lid. He produced a small folding knife from his pocket, opened it, and pierced a potato. The blade slid in with almost no resistance. He closed the knife.
"It's ready."
Grace jumped up. "I have bread. Two big crusty loaves from the bakery. I made them myself this morning. Irma let me do the whole batch."
"I'll grab the folding table from the trailer," Scout said, already moving.
Grace and I headed into the cabin. She went straight for the kitchen counter where two round loaves sat wrapped in a clean flour-sack towel.
Their crusts were dark golden, crackled, and dusted with flour.
She picked them up and tucked them under one arm, then pulled a sleeve of paper bowls from the shelf above the sink.
"You really bake those yourself?"
I lifted two of the dining chairs, one in each hand.
"From scratch. Irma's teaching me her sourdough starter. It's like a hundred years old or something. She says I have good hands for bread." Grace hip-checked the screen door open and held it for me. "By the way. Scout told me about the shooting practice. She says you flinch."
"I'm working on it."
"She says you squint your eyes right before you pull the trigger."
"I'm working on that too."
"She says you're getting better though."
"That's generous of her."
We came through the door and I stopped. Claire's Subaru was parked next to Grace's white RAV4.
The doors were open and Claire was pulling grocery sacks from the back seat while DJ hauled a blue cooler by its handle, tugging it across the ground with both hands.
Bessie Anne came around the passenger side carrying a cloth bag.
"Claire!" Grace shouted across the clearing. "I made bread!"
Claire raised a hand in greeting. She wore a green tank top and jeans and her red hair was loose around her shoulders. DJ spotted the fire pit and the pot and broke into a trot, dragging the cooler behind him.
"Is that a shrimp boil?" he called out.
"It is," Abner said from his chair.
"It smells awesome!"
Everyone converged on the clearing at once.
Scout appeared with the folding table balanced on her shoulder and set it up near the fire pit with a practiced flip of its legs.
I went back inside for two more chairs. Grace arranged the bread and bowls on the table.
Claire set her grocery sacks down and started pulling out containers of coleslaw and a jar of pickles and a bag of lemons.
Bessie Anne lowered herself into a camp chair with a small exhale of relief.
"Got some lemonade and sweet tea in the cooler," Claire said. "And I brought plates in case we need them."
DJ dragged the cooler the rest of the way to the table.
Grace found a cutting board and a serrated knife and began sawing through the first loaf, which crackled and resisted and then gave way to reveal an interior that was open and airy, shot through with irregular holes.
The smell of it mixed with the shrimp boil steam. My stomach rumbled with anticipation.
I positioned the chairs around the fire pit and the table, arranging the circle wider to fit everyone. Then I got the ladle from the cabin and came back out to the pot.
I lifted the lid and set it aside. The boil roiled and popped. Shrimp, pink and curled. Venison sausage in thick coins. Potatoes split and tender. Corn, bright yellow. Onions translucent and soft. All of it swimming in that rust-colored broth that smelled like the ocean nearby.
I held the ladle over the pot... and stopped. Because the scene around me had arranged itself into something I needed to hold still to see.
Abner and Bessie Anne sat together at the edge of the circle.
He'd poured her a small measure of whiskey into a second tin cup that she held in both hands.
They were talking quietly, their heads inclined toward each other.
Bessie Anne's eyes held that gentle concern she couldn't hide, the look of a woman who understood that the man beside her was diminishing by degrees.
Abner's posture had softened in a way I'd never seen.
His shoulders weren't quite so square. He was listening to her, and in the late afternoon light his weathered face looked peaceful.
At the table, Grace stood cutting the second loaf while Claire arranged slices on a plate.
Grace said something I couldn't hear and Claire threw her head back and laughed loudly.
Grace bumped her with a hip and Claire bumped back, and they fell into the simple rhythm of two women who had discovered they liked each other and had stopped being surprised by it.
At the far end of the circle, near the last chair, DJ stood looking at the revolver on Scout's hip.
"I wish I could carry a gun like that," he said.
"When you are ready to learn, you should start with an air rifle." Scout told him gently. "That is how my father taught me. An air rifle first, because it teaches you the fundamentals. Breathing. Sight alignment. Trigger discipline."
"How old were you when you learned to shoot?"
"I was eight.”
DJ looked up at her with those careful blue eyes.
"Would you teach me?"
Scout glanced at Claire across the fire pit. Claire, who had been watching, gave a small nod.
"When your mother says you're ready, I'll teach you."
DJ looked back down at the revolver. He studied it with the grave respect that showed he knew this was serious business.
I stood there with the ladle in my hand and the steam rising around me and the late sun painting everything gold. My throat was tight, my heart thrumming.
Four months ago I'd driven onto this property with an Airstream trailer and the quiet fear that the best parts of my life were behind me. I'd been a man with a divorce decree and a 401k receipt and twenty-two years of adjusting other people's claims while my own life went unadjusted.
Now I stood in a circle of people who had found each other by accident or necessity or some combination of both. It made my heart ache to see us all together like this.
The pot was ready and the bread was cut and the sun was warm.
I dipped the ladle into the boil.
"All right," I called out. "Everyone bring your bowls."