Chapter 5
"You nervous?" I asked.
"About what?"
"The dentist."
She turned from the window. "Why would I be nervous?"
"Some people don't like dentists."
"Some people don't like a lot of things that are perfectly fine.
Dentists, spiders, the dark." She put her feet down and sat up straighter.
"I liked her, Dr. Klein. She explained everything she was doing while she did it.
Most people don't bother explaining things to you when they think you're simple. "
"Nobody thinks you're simple, Scout."
"The receptionist did. The first time we went, she talked to me like I was nine."
"That's just how receptionists talk."
"No it isn't."
She was right. It wasn't.
The emergency dental clinic was in the biggest medical building in Port Angeles. The waiting room was as busy as the last time we were there. Scout picked up a copy of People magazine and studied it with the intensity of an anthropologist examining artifacts from a lost civilization.
"Thomas?" She held up the magazine, open to a photo spread of a celebrity wedding. "Do people actually spend this much money on a single party?"
"Some people do."
"That's obscene."
She shook her head and kept reading. They called her name after ten minutes.
"I can sit with you if you want," I offered.
"I'll be fine."
She disappeared through the door. I sat in the vinyl chair and looked at the fish tank in the corner. An hour later Scout came back through the door with Dr. Klein behind her.
"Everything looks excellent. The seal is good, no sign of infection. She's been keeping it clean, which honestly is the hardest part for most patients." She looked at Scout with something like admiration. "I remember when Scout came in. She has remarkable pain tolerance."
"It's an admirable quality," I said. "Until it gets in the way of staying healthy."
"Agreed. We'll want to see her again in six months for a general cleaning. Other than that, she's free to go."
I shook her hand and followed the receptionist to the front desk. The bill was $300 for the follow-up visit and X-rays. I pulled out my wallet and handed over my credit card.
Scout watched me pay from across the waiting room, her arms folded, her jaw set in that way it got when she was preparing to argue about something.
Outside in the parking lot, she started.
"I'm going to pay you back for that."
"No you're not. We've had this conversation already."
"Thomas. Three hundred dollars? Plus the first visit. That's nearly two thousand dollars total you've spent on my mouth."
"Your father already paid me back. Tenfold."
"How do you reckon that?"
I unlocked the truck and we climbed in. The cab was warm from sitting in the sun.
"That pistol is worth at least nine hundred dollars," I explained. "Add in the custom buckskin holster. Then your father helped me install the generator. And he told me what to get for my solar power and promised to help me set it up when it arrives. I can't do it without him, Scout."
Scout's expression softened. "He's good at that. Solar and electrical."
"He's brilliant at it. And he won't let me pay him for any of it. So the way I see it, your dental work is the only way I've been able to put a dent in what I owe your family. You'd be doing me a disservice by paying me back. You'd be putting me further in the hole."
She looked at me for a long moment. Then she unfolded her arms.
"Fine. But I don't like owing people."
"You don't owe me anything. That's what I just explained."
"I heard you. I just don't like it anyway."
"Understood."
I started the truck.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"Ice cream first."
Her face changed the way it always did when food was involved. Not quite a smile, more like a brightening, the way a room changes when someone pulls open the curtains.
We went to the same place as last time. Scout studied the flavors through the glass case with her hands pressed flat on the counter, her nose almost touching the sneeze guard. The woman behind the counter was maybe sixty, freckled, wearing a paper hat that kept sliding off her head.
"Take your time, sweetie," the woman said. Then she looked at me and smiled. "Your daughter's adorable."
Scout's eyes cut sideways to mine, her lips compressed in a tight grin.
"I will have the huckleberry in a waffle cone. Two scoops. And my father here will have..." She turned to me with those bright blue eyes gleaming. "What do you want... Daddy?"
I felt the blood climb into my face. The woman behind the counter beamed at what she took for ordinary family warmth.
"Vanilla," I managed. "Cup."
We took our ice cream to the bench outside. The afternoon was warm and the sidewalk was full of tourists drifting between shops. Scout attacked her cone with glee, rotating it after every lick to prevent drips.
"Daddy?" I muttered. "You've been spending too much time with Grace."
"You should have seen your face."
She grinned, and a drop of purple ice cream ran down her wrist. She caught it with her tongue. She took another careful lick.
"This is the best thing I've ever eaten. Both times."
"Good. Because I have a surprise for you."
"What kind of surprise?"
"The kind you don't know about until it happens. That's what makes it a surprise."
"I don't like not knowing things."
"I know you don't. Eat your ice cream."
She ate her ice cream. I finished my vanilla and watched the tourists.
"What's next?" Scout asked after she finished her cone. "Is your surprise waiting at home?"
"We're not going home yet," I said.
"Where are we going?"
"Port Townsend."
"That's an hour from here."
"That's correct."
She studied me, trying to read my expression. I gave her nothing.
"Fine," she said. "But I get to pick the music."
She picked the music. Scout had discovered K-pop at the Port Chasten library. Grace had provided her with more music, introducing Scout to the latest groups.
"Phone, play GenZed23," she ordered.
The cab filled with a wall of synthesized sound, layered vocals in Korean, and thumping percussion. She sang along phonetically, matching syllables she didn't understand with startling accuracy, bouncing in her seat, drumming on her knees.
"You don't actually know what they're saying," I teased.
"Music isn't about knowing what they're saying. It's about what it does to your heart. 'Where words fail, music speaks.' Hans Christian Andersen."
She turned it up. The truck's speakers distorted on the high end and neither of us cared.
We drove with the windows down and K-pop rattling the mirrors. The road curved and the light went gold over the landscape. Scout leaned her head out the window and let the wind pull at her braid.
Port Townsend materialized from the dense trees. Victorian storefronts lined Water Street in faded pastels, brick and timber buildings from the 1890s housing bookshops, galleries, and restaurants. Fishing boats bobbed in the marina alongside sailboats.
Port Townsend was very different from Port Angeles, much less Port Chasten.
A man in a kilt played bagpipes on the corner outside a wine bar.
College kids sat on the seawall eating fish tacos.
Tourists mingled with locals and you couldn't tell which was which.
The whole town had the energy of a place that had once expected to become a great city, had been passed over, and had become something stranger and better instead.
Scout leaned her face out the window as we drove down Water Street.
"This is bigger than Port Chasten."
"A little."
"A lot." She watched a woman walk past with a Great Dane on a leash. "Where are we going?"
"Right there."
I pointed to the Begonia Theater, a single-screen movie house in a restored brick building with an honest-to-goodness marquee. The letters spelled out: STELLAR DRIFT: BEYOND THE VEIL. Showtimes at 4:30 and 7:15. I'd already bought tickets online. The 4:30 was in 3D.
Scout stared at the marquee. Then she stared at me.
"A movie theater?"
"A movie theater. A real one, not my trailer. Big screen. Big sound. All in 3-D."
I parked the truck two blocks down and fed the meter. Scout stood on the sidewalk in her patched denim and canvas pants and her single braid. She looked at the Begonia Theater the way other people look at cathedrals.
"I've never been inside one."
"I know."
"How did you know I wanted to?"
"Because you've watched Wuthering Heights on a 27-inch screen in my trailer four times and cried every single time. I figured you might want to see what a real theater feels like."
She didn't say anything, just took my hand and pulled me toward the entrance.
I showed the kid at the booth my QR code. He handed us plastic 3D glasses. Scout held hers up and looked through them at the lobby.
"Everything's dark."
"You put them on when the movie starts."
The lobby smelled like warm butter and that chemical sweetness that only movie theater candy produces. I bought a large popcorn and two drinks. Scout held the popcorn bucket against her chest as we walked into the auditorium.
It was a small theater by modern standards.
Maybe a hundred and fifty seats, all of them the old velvet kind with armrests that folded up.
The screen filled the far wall. There were maybe thirty people scattered through the seats.
Scout walked down the aisle to the middle row and sat dead center.
She put the popcorn in her lap and looked up at the blank screen.
"It's enormous."
"Wait till they turn it on."
The lights dimmed. Previews rolled, loud and bright, and Scout flinched at the first blast of sound from the surround speakers. Her hand found my forearm and gripped it. Then the previews ended, the screen went black, and a title card appeared: PUT ON YOUR 3D GLASSES NOW.
"Here we go," I said.
She put them on. So did I. The studio logo spun out of the darkness in three dimensions, floating past our heads. Scout gasped.
"Thomas! It's coming at me."
"I know. Woohoo!"
Then the movie started.