Chapter 23
The woods road was a dirt drive that wound up through the forest. I took it slow, my truck bouncing along the rutted path. Abner watched the trees go by with an expression of deep relief etched on his face.
Scout rode in the back seat with her hand resting on the portable oxygen concentrator wedged between her boots. The machine hummed steadily, feeding a thin clear line up to the nasal cannula looped behind Abner's ears.
Abner looked frail in the passenger seat, his flannel shirt hanging loose at the shoulders, his beard freshly combed but somehow thinner than I remembered. The color had returned to his face, though. That was something. Three days ago in the hospital, his skin had been the gray of wet newspaper.
"Two puffs of the rescue inhaler at the first sign of tightness," Scout said from the back seat.
Her voice carried the flat authority of someone reciting instructions she had already committed to memory.
"Not one puff, two. The albuterol is every four hours as needed, but you are not to treat it as optional.
If the coughing starts and doesn't resolve within ten minutes, we're going to the hospital in Forks. "
"I was present when the physician spoke," Abner said.
"Physically present, yes. I am simply making sure you are diligent in following the plan laid out by your health care team."
Abner turned his head toward me, one eyebrow cocked. "Apparently I have acquired a warden."
"You acquired a warden when you collapsed in Thomas's clearing, Father."
"Best to surrender now," I grinned.
"Wise counsel," Scout agreed.
The clearing opened ahead of us and I pulled the truck in slow. The cabin sat solid and plain beneath the Douglas firs. The goat pen stood intact. The garden rows showed green. The door to the mudroom was secured.
I killed the engine. Scout got out first and came around to the passenger side.
Abner opened his own door but accepted her hand when he stepped down.
He stood for a moment with his other hand on the truck door, the oxygen line trailing back to the concentrator Scout had already lifted out and set on the ground beside him.
The goats heard the truck and came to the fence. Cincinnatus first, as always, with Thoreau and Aristotle close behind and Beowulf trailing at his own pace. They gathered at the rail and regarded Abner with the serene interest that had unsettled me at first.
Abner walked toward them slowly. Scout picked up the concentrator and walked beside him, matching his pace without comment, the clear line between them swaying gently like a leash.
Abner stopped at the goat fence and put his hand on Cincinnatus's broad forehead. The goat pushed into his palm once, then turned away to resume browsing. Abner watched him go.
"Coat's good," he said quietly.
"I brushed them," I said. "Just this morning, before I left for the hospital."
"Well done."
Abner's eyes moved to the garden. The tomato stakes stood straight. The bean rows had been weeded. I'd watered everything at dusk the way Scout had told me to, and I'd repaired the section of fence where Beowulf had tested the wire with his horns on the second day.
"The fence," Abner said, noticing the fresh wrap of wire on the lower rail.
"Beowulf had a go at it. I don't know why."
A sound from Abner that might have been amusement. He walked on past the woodpile, which was stacked and covered. Past the rain catchment barrel, which was almost empty during this dry summer. Past the solar array, whose panels I had wiped clean of pollen and fir needles yesterday afternoon.
He stopped at each one and looked, and I could see him cataloging, the inventory running behind his eyes, measuring the gap between how he'd left things and how he found them.
Abner completed his circuit at the cabin's front step. He put one boot on the lower plank and rested there, breathing. The oxygen concentrator hummed at Scout's side.
"It's well kept," he said. "Thank you, Thomas."
"Glad to do it."
He turned and looked out over the clearing one more time. The late afternoon light came through the firs in long gold columns.
"I am happy to be home," he said.
The mud room door swung open and Scout went in first. Abner followed with me trailing. We stepped into the cabin. I could see Abner looking toward the far wall.
Abner and Scout's pistols hung on their respective chair backs by the woodstove. Abner gave me a sharp nod, acknowledging the care I'd taken with their weapons.
Then Abner saw the kitchen table.
A round loaf of bread sat on a wooden cutting board, golden brown. Beside it, jars of butter and honey beneath a folded cloth napkin.
"There's more in the oven," I said.
Scout went and opened the oven door. Inside, a roast chicken sat in a cast-iron Dutch oven surrounded by quartered potatoes and carrots gone soft and caramelized at their edges. A small ceramic boat of gravy rested on the rack beside it, held warm by the low heat.
"Thomas?" Scout straightened and turned to me. "What is this?"
"Claire and Bessie Anne made the chicken and the vegetables.
Grace baked the bread this morning at Irma's and drove it out here before we arrived.
" I pulled out a chair for Abner. "Claire said she timed it so it would be warm when you got home.
She was pretty precise about it. I gave her our ETA from the highway. "
Abner lowered himself into his chair as I set the oxygen concentrator beside him. He looked at the bread, then at the oven where Scout was lifting out the Dutch oven with a folded towel, then at me.
"They did all this," he said.
"They did. Bessie Anne made the gravy from scratch. She was firm about that. Said store-bought gravy is a moral failing."
Scout set the Dutch oven on the table and stood with her hands still wrapped in the towel, looking down at the bird. The skin had crisped to a deep bronze. Steam curled from a split in the breast where the juices ran clear.
"You always told me it should be like this." Scout was looking at the chicken but talking to her father. "You always said that community isn't a word. It's the people next to you who show up without being summoned."
Abner said nothing for a long moment. His hand lay flat on the table near the bread.
"I said that," he agreed.
"And here it is," Scout said. "On your table."
"There's one more thing," I added. "Irma sent a custard pie. She said it was your favorite and to tell you that you're not allowed to die before you eat it."
Abner's mouth moved beneath his beard again. His eyes crinkled, went bright and full.
"It is my favorite pie. And I will try to fulfill Irma's command."
"Chicken dinner first," Scout said gently.
Scout carved the chicken with the efficiency of someone who'd broken down game animals since childhood. I got the plates ready, sliced the bread, and set the gravy boat within reach.
Scout and I sat on either side of Abner.
Abner went still, his head lowered. It was not a prayer, not a formal grace. Just a man with his hands in his lap and his eyes half closed, sitting in his own chair at his own table in his own cabin on land he'd chosen and built on and defended.
The oxygen line traced a gentle curve from his nose to the concentrator on the floor. Outside, one of the goats bleated and fell silent.
Abner opened his eyes and picked up his fork.
"Let's eat."
We ate.
The chicken was perfect, the potatoes soft enough to crush under a fork. The gravy was thick and savory. Grace's bread had a hard crust and fluffy interior, and we ate it with butter and honey and used it to soak up the gravy.
We didn't speak, all of us intent on the food before us.
I had almost cleared my plate when I noticed what Abner was wearing.
"What is that?" I asked.
Abner set his fork down and lifted his wrist. An olive-drab silicone wristband circled it, stamped with white letters: DVMAS.
"Disabled Veterans Mutual Aid Society." Abner turned his wrist so I could read it better. "A volunteer from the organization found me in the hospital."
"Found you?"
"The VA flagged my admission. They have people who visit. She sat with me for an hour. We talked about the organization, what they do, how they're structured." He touched the wristband with his other hand. "She gave me this."
"I'm very glad you joined their group, Father."
"I haven't joined anything."
"You took their bracelet, though? That seems beyond the bounds of mere politeness."
"The organization is volunteer-run," Abner said with the careful precision of a man drawing a boundary line.
"No government funding. No corporate control.
Veterans helping veterans through direct mutual aid.
It is the precise inverse of what I have always opposed.
My objection has never been to people helping people.
It has been to systems that surveil and control under the pretense of helping. "
"And this group?" I asked.
"This group is people. Just people. Some of them breathing through the same damaged lungs I have."
"She said the burn pit group meets in Tacoma," Scout told me. "Virtual attendance is encouraged. Some of them have made headway with disability claims. Others just enjoy the company. You should connect with them, Father."
"I'm considering it."
"You can use the Wi-Fi at my place to go to the virtual meetings," I offered. "I'll set it up for you."
"I appreciate the offer."
I watched Abner turn the wristband on his wrist once, twice, then leave it alone. Abner finding a support group was unexpected. It seemed like an encouraging development.
Abner looked across the table at me. "Has Isaac Greene reconsidered speaking with our young journalist?"
I set down my bread. I'd been hoping this could wait, but Abner asked direct questions because he wanted direct answers.
"Aimee talked to him again last week. He won't do it. He won't talk to Richard."
"His reasons?"
"Aimee thinks there are two. The first is that he's afraid of Harlan. Harlan's still got reach in the county even with Isaac retired, and Isaac knows what Harlan does to people who cross him." I paused. "The second reason is harder."
Abner waited. I collected my thoughts.
"Aimee thinks Isaac is ashamed of what he did during his career.
The things he signed off on, the paperwork he processed, the complaints he buried.
All of it under Harlan's influence." I met Abner's eyes.
"And the thing he's most ashamed of is what happened to you.
Your electricity. The tax assessments. The inspections.
Isaac was in the office when those actions were taken. Aimee says it weighs on him."
Abner said nothing. Scout looked between us but held her silence too, reading the moment with the same attention she'd read the doctor's instructions. The oxygen concentrator hummed. Outside, the evening birds had started up in the firs.
Abner picked up his water glass, drank, set it down. In the quiet, I looked across the table at Scout.
She was watching her father, the fading daylight from the window catching the blonde of her hair.
Three days since I'd seen her. Three days since the phone call where she'd quoted Rilke and I'd stood afterward with the receiver in my hand and the quiet turmoil inside me.
Three days since Claire had come to my porch with the morning sun behind her and held my hand at my kitchen table.
Scout looked up and caught me watching her. Something moved in her blue eyes. Recognition, maybe. The awareness that there were things between us that needed to be talked through. The Rilke poem. Claire. What the three of us were becoming and what it meant, if it meant anything at all.
But then her hand drifted to the oxygen line where it crossed the floor near her father's chair. Scout adjusted it slightly where it had kinked and I understood the reality of where we were.
Scout's focus was here on her father. His lungs, his medications, his recovery. Everything else, all the questions I carried, would wait.
I gave her a small smile. She returned it. That was enough for now.
Abner started coughing.
It started low in his chest and climbed. Scout's hand was already reaching for the rescue inhaler on the table before the second cough broke. Abner took it from her, shook it, placed it to his lips, and pressed twice, two measured puffs.
He breathed in, held, breathed out. The cough subsided. He set the inhaler on the table beside his plate, within arm's reach, and picked up his water glass again.
Scout watched closely. She didn't hover or fuss, but her focus was clear. Abner cleared his throat and settled back in his chair.
"'The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be.
And that which is done is that which shall be done.
And there is no new thing under the sun.
'" He paused. "But guilt? Guilt is always new.
It renews itself each morning in the man who carries it.
And shame is a fire that the shamed man stokes because he believes he deserves the burning. "
"Ecclesiastes for the first part." Scout tilted her head. "But the second part is your invention."
"Indeed."
"Guilt and shame. You think that about Isaac?"
Abner didn't confirm or deny. He looked at the wristband on his wrist again. The silence stretched, but it was a warm silence. The silence that comes after a good meal in a safe place with people who care about each other.
"I'll get the pie," I said.
I brought it to the table and cut three slices. Irma's custard sat perfect in its crimped shell, the surface golden and set, trembling slightly when I placed each piece on its plate. I set one in front of Scout, one in front of myself, and the largest in front of Abner.
Abner Flint regarded his slice of custard pie. He picked up his fork.
"Yummy yummy, get in my tummy," he intoned.
The sound that came out of me was not a laugh, it was a startled explosion, a full-body bark of shock and delight that bent me forward in my chair.
Scout's composure crumbled. She pressed both hands over her mouth, but the giggle came through her fingers anyway, high and bright and helpless, her shoulders shaking, her eyes squeezed shut.
Abner chuckled, pleased with himself in a way that made him look ten years younger.
We laughed together at Abner's table, the three of us, with custard pie and the remains of a meal made by neighbors and the summer light washing through the cabin windows. The oxygen concentrator hummed its steady note as our laughter filled the room.