Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Hunter
“Sleep well, Casden?” Porter barks.
I’m still standing in the doorway of the kitchen, wearing nothing but boxers, still half-asleep. Normally I’m not this groggy, but I got ten hours of sleep in a real bed last night, and my body’s not used to it.
“I slept fine,” I say, already feeling defensive. As out of it as I am, I can just fucking tell he’s spoiling for a fight.
“Good,” he says, and shovels a spoonful of cereal and milk into his mouth. “You’ve got a door to fix down at the Methodist church.”
I clench my jaw and open the fridge too forcefully, getting out the milk. I don’t respond to Porter just yet, because if being in the Marines taught me one thing, it was how to fucking bite my tongue when I needed to.
“You hear me?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say, pouring myself a cup of coffee and adding the milk. Coffee’s a rare luxury for me during the summers — anything not strictly necessary doesn’t usually make it into a fire camp — and Ryan goddamn Porter is ruining it.
It’s not even that he wants me to fix the door.
Obviously I need to fix the door that I kicked in.
It’s the asshole way he says it, like I’m a child who needs to be kept in line.
I like my job, but I’m not sure how much longer I can deal with having him as a boss, because sooner or later, I’m going to stop being able to keep my mouth shut.
“You gonna fix that door?” he goes on.
I take a long, long gulp of coffee and look out the kitchen window, forcing myself not to say anything until I’m good and ready.
It takes a little while.
“I’m heading over there right after breakfast,” I finally say, the words clipped and brusque, not that I give a shit whether Porter knows I’m annoyed.
“Good,” he says, scooping another spoon into his mouth. “Try not to kick in any more doors to get to the pussy behind it, all right, Casanova?”
I put my coffee mug down too hard and it slams onto the counter, the coffee sloshing out and over my hand. My anger flares, hot and bright, at someone calling Clementine the pussy.
“I thought she was choking,” I say, my voice tight and short. “I misread the situation. I made the wrong call. I’ll fix it.”
Porter just levels his gaze at me, chewing his cereal.
“Casden, don’t go thinking I don’t know what motivates you,” he says mildly. “I don’t care who or what you stick your dick in as long as it doesn’t reflect poorly on Canyon Country. And broken doors reflect pretty goddamn poorly.”
I pour more coffee but skip the milk this time, because I need to leave this kitchen before I make the situation worse.
“Understood,” I say, then leave the room before Porter can respond.
Back in the dorm room I’m sharing with three other guys, I consider not fixing the door at all, just to prove to Porter that he can’t force me to do anything. When I was twenty, I’d probably have done just that.
It’s a wonder I made it out of the military with an honorable discharge.
I pull on clothes, gulping down my coffee. No matter what Porter thinks, I am actually mature enough to know what needs to be done, and I’m grown enough to fucking do it without being told.
I leave the house through the side door so I don’t have to see his face again.
Forty-five minutes later, I’m standing in front of the busted door frame with Phil. He’s balding, double-chinned, and might be the slowest talker I’ve ever met.
I grew up on a ranch. I’ve known some slow, serious talkers, but none of them ever managed to annoy me like this guy does, standing there with his hands on his hips, his unsmiling face looking at the door.
“Well,” he says, for at least the fourth time. “You sure did do quite the number on this here frame.”
“Sorry about that,” I say, doing my best to sound sincere and not irritated.
“Cracked the wood right off there,” he says.
Then he pauses.
“Yup. Clean off.”
I take a deep breath.
“I’ll probably need to replace the whole jamb,” I say, running one hand up the inside of the door. “I could glue it back together, but that wouldn’t—”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t glue it if I were you,” Phil says, interrupting me.
I just fucking said that, I think.
“I don’t think that would be very sturdy at all,” he goes on. “Not. At. All.”
“No. That’s why I’d prefer to replace to whole jamb,” I say, starting to feel like I’m talking in circles.
He nods.
“You ought to replace the whole door jamb,” he says, like he thought of it himself.
I don’t answer, because clearly, it’s pointless.
“There’s a hardware store a little ways down Fishfawn Road,” he says. “A little closer to the interstate, but before you get to Goldfield Crossroads. It’s right across from the McDonald’s where that little bar-bee-cue joint used to be...”
He gives me long directions to the hardware store, based mostly on landmarks that used to be there.
Slowly, he shows me to a closet that’s got some tools in it, also in the basement of the Methodist church.
He reiterates his opinion that I should replace the whole doorjamb, instead of gluing it back together. He gives me more directions.
By the end, I’m beginning to worry that Phil has brain damage or something. At last, he walks off to go talk slowly at someone else, and I take a deep breath of relief.
Then I go borrow a truck and head to the hardware store. The one across from where the barbecue joint used to be.
The good thing about listening to Phil’s endless slow talk was that it kept me from thinking about Clem. But now, driving this borrowed truck down the winding, two-lane road, there’s not a lot else to think about.
Here’s the thing: I’ve thought about what would happen if I saw her again.
I’ve thought about it a lot; I still live part-time in the town where we grew up, where I think her parents still live.
I went to our high school reunion three years ago, because it happened to be between tours of Afghanistan.
I keep thinking I’m going to see her, but I don’t. I kept looking for her, out of curiosity if nothing else, but she’s not even on Facebook.
And then she showed up in a little town, presenting a plaque, and it was nothing like I thought it’d be. I’d imagined it being strange and awkward. I imagined her being engaged or married.
Once I had a dream where she was pregnant, and I was unsettled all day.
I thought we’d fight. We sure as hell fought the last time I talked to her, and the time before that, and the time before that. I can still remember her, the video connection between Missoula and Afghanistan crackling apart, shouting I don’t fucking care if you come home.
Not that I was a saint either. I said some shit I sure regretted later.
But it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t awkward, and it was only weird that it wasn’t weird. It felt like we’d talked last week, like we’d stayed in touch all these years. Like all that time didn’t matter.
It feels like it used to, and I have no fucking idea what to think about that.
I turn a corner in the truck and suddenly there’s a river on one side of the road, beautiful and blue, rushing through a stone canyon.
That’s why I love Montana, why I’m not sure I could ever really leave: this is just here.
For me to find when I come around a bend in the road.
The whole place is so beautiful that this is nothing special.
At last, I find Goodman’s Hardware. It’s across from a Wendy’s, not a McDonald’s, and I have no idea what it used to be. The guys who work there are pleasant enough, and I’m out of there with what I need in no time at all.
I spend the drive back thinking about Clementine again, no matter how much I try not to.
Phil looks over my handiwork like he’s appraising a diamond ring, not checking over a doorframe in a church basement that was shitty to begin with. Once I had the supplies, it didn’t take too long, and he seems vaguely surprised that I knew what I was doing.
Not that it kept him from checking on me every five minutes.
He lets me go at last with a handshake, a clap on the shoulder, and an offer to call me if they have any other things that need fixing around the church. I laugh and thank him, even though I have no intention whatsoever of actually taking him up on that.
When I get back to the bunk house, I fall onto an ancient armchair in the living room and just stare at the wall in front of me.
For the past ten days at least, I haven’t had a moment of quiet between being in the fire camp, working eighteen-hour days, and then coming back here and being treated to a circus of a spaghetti dinner right away.
That’s not even counting Clementine.
I don’t know where the other guys on my squad are, but they’re not here, so I take the silence as a gift.
I’m not there for three minutes when there’s a thump on the door, like someone’s trying to open it with their hands full. Before I can even sit up, there’s another thump, then another.
I’ve just gotten on my feet when the door creaks open and a yellow-and-white snout pokes through, followed by the rest of a very furry dog.
I guess that door doesn’t latch too well, I think, then walk to the door and pull it open.
There’s no one there. The dog walks into the living room and looks around expectantly, like it owns the place, and I raise my eyebrows.
“Okay, c’mere,” I say, and it turns around obediently, bumping its head into my hands. I scratch it behind the ears, and the dog starts wagging its tail and pushing its body against my legs, tongue lolling.
God, I miss dogs.
Before I know it I’m on the floor, play-wrestling and letting it lick my face, scratching that spot right above the tail that makes it hop a little in the air, it’s so excited. I think it’s a female dog, though I haven’t gotten quite well enough acquainted to check.
Finally, I grab the collar and look at the nametag: TROUT.
“You’re Trout?” I ask.
Trout licks my face.
“Atta girl,” I say.
She licks me again, and I laugh.
“Trout, where are your people?” I ask, but she just pants in my face.
I flip the tag over to find a phone number. Scratching under her chin, I pull out my phone and dial it.
“Someone’s probably worried about you,” I say, and Trout lays on the floor and rolls over, requesting a belly rub.
As I sink my hand into her shaggy fur, I hear something I haven’t heard since cell phones became common: a busy signal. I look at my phone in confusion for a moment, then shrug and put it back.
“Guess you’re mine now,” I say to Trout.