10. Justice #2
She looks at the bottom. Then at me. The math is obvious. One bunk wide enough for a single person. One of me, who is not a single-person-sized man.
"I'll take the floor by the stove."
"Justice, it's freezing."
"The floor by the stove," I repeat.
She opens her mouth to argue. I give her a look that closes it. She crawls into the bed and pulls the layers up to her chin. The bunk frame creaks under even her slight weight.
I sit on the floor. Back against the wall. Legs stretched toward the stove. The planks are cold through my jeans.
I feed another round into the fire and settle in to keep watch.
The fire settles into a low, steady burn.
I crack the stove door an inch to check the coals.
Orange and white. Good bed. I add two splits, close the door, adjust the damper down a quarter turn.
The cabin holds at a warm sixty-five now.
Condensation tracks down the inside of the log walls where the warm air meets the cold wood. Normal. Fine.
I lean my head back against the wall and listen.
Wind. Constant. A low, sustained roar that rises and falls but never stops, like the mountain is breathing through clenched teeth.
Snow drives against the metal roof in waves.
The stove ticks. The logs creak as they absorb heat and expand against each other.
Below all of it, the deep structural groan of snow accumulating on the roof, packing tighter with each passing hour.
I catalog the sounds and file them away. None of them are human. None of them are engines. None of them are boots on packed trail.
My eyelids drop. I force them open.
An hour passes. Maybe two. The fire needs another round. I feed it. Sit back down. My spine protests the angle against the wall and I shift, adjusting the way my shoulders sit against the logs.
From the bunk, a rustle.
I go still.
Emilia's breathing has been steady for the last hour. Deep and even. Asleep. But now I hear the blanket shifting, the foam pad compressing under changed weight, the soft pad of bare feet hitting the plank floor.
"Go back to sleep."
"I can't. My feet are cold."
I open my eyes. She's standing beside the bunk in the dim orange glow, the flannel hanging past her thighs, my sweatpants pooled around her ankles. Her toes curl against the cold planks.
"Put your boots on."
"They're wet. You hung them by the stove."
Right. I did.
She crosses to the bunkbed and kneels beside it, reaching underneath. The storage space beneath is deep, running the full length of the bunk frame to the wall. I keep the supply tote at the front for easy access. Behind it, pushed against the back wall, are things I haven't touched in years.
"I'm looking for another blanket," she says. She's careful. Like she knows I'm seeing her and doesn't want to spook me.
"There isn't one. Take the canvas tarp. Fold it double."
She doesn't answer. I hear her pulling things out. The scrape of the tote sliding forward on the planks. A nylon stuff sack that holds tent stakes I never use. Something wooden that thuds against the floor.
Then silence.
A different kind of silence. The kind that has weight.
"Justice."
"What."
"What are these?"
I don't move. My brain is running inventory on what's under that bunk and the answer arrives about two seconds too late.
She backs out from under the bunk frame on her knees, and in her hands she holds two Moleskine notebooks. Black covers. Worn soft at the corners. The elastic bands that held them shut have long since snapped, and the pages fan open as she tilts them, catching the stove light.
I stop breathing.
She opens the first one. Holds it toward the stove glow. Her lips part.
"Oh my God."
The charcoal catches the light in a way that makes the graphite look wet.
I know what she's seeing without looking.
I drew every page in those books. The east ridge at sunrise, where the granite faces turn gold for exactly nine minutes before the angle changes.
The creek basin in late October, when the aspens drop their leaves and the water runs black under a ceiling of bare white branches.
The old fire lookout on Dutton Peak, abandoned for thirty years, its windows broken and its frame listing twelve degrees to the south but still standing against the sky like a fist raised at God.
I drew them with sticks of compressed charcoal I bought at an art supply rack, sitting on stumps and tailgates, wiping my fingers on my jeans between strokes. No training. No classes. No teacher.
She turns a page. Then another. Her fingers hover above the paper, not touching, as if the drawings are fragile.
"These are... Justice, these are incredible."
She stands. Walks toward me with both books open, one in each hand, holding them out like offerings. Her eyes are enormous in the firelight. Bright with something that looks dangerously close to reverence.
"The detail on this one. This is the valley, right? From the ridge where we hiked? You can see every individual tree line and the shadow pattern on the snow. How did you get the texture of the granite like that? It looks like you can reach in and touch..."
I'm on my feet before I finish the thought. The distance between us disappears in one stride. My hand closes around the nearest sketchbook and rips it out of her grip so hard the spine cracks.
"Don't."
The word comes out like a bark. Too loud. Too sharp. It bounces off the close walls and hits her in the face.
She flinches. Both hands fly up. An instinct I recognize and hate myself for triggering. The other book drops from her fingers and hits the floor face down, pages crumpling under its own weight.
I snatch that one too. Shove them both behind my back like a kid caught with something he stole.
My pulse hammers in my ears. The back of my neck burns.
Nobody was supposed to see those. Nobody has ever seen those.
They're the one stupid, soft, useless thing I have ever allowed myself, scratched out in charcoal by hands better suited to pulling transmissions and swinging axes.
Dirty hands. Uneducated hands. Hands that never held a pencil in a classroom past the tenth grade because there was a garage that needed running and a dead father's debts that needed paying.
She peers at me. The flinch fades. Something else takes its place. Not fear. Not anger.
Understanding.
And that is so much worse.
"Get back in the bunk."
"Justice..."
"Now."