Chapter 9
The heat was unexpected. Late March on the Olympic Peninsula was supposed to be cool and damp, but the afternoon pushed into the low eighties with a sun that beat down hard and relentless.
I had been on the roof since first light, and by early afternoon the shingles were hot to the touch.
The damage was worse than I had initially thought.
The storm damage had allowed water to cascade directly onto the cabin walls.
Six rows of shingles had rotted through.
Beneath them, the plywood sheathing was soft and spongy.
I had pried up the bad shingles and found mushrooms growing between the layers.
The rot extended down into the fascia board and into the siding below.
I had driven to Forks two days earlier with a list. Three sheets of plywood sheathing, forty square feet of architectural shingles in charcoal gray, a new fascia board, roofing nails, ice and water shield, and enough cedar lap siding to replace the damaged sections below the gutter.
The lumber yard charged my credit card and loaded everything into the truck bed while I drank awful coffee from a Styrofoam cup and watched the clouds build over the mountains to the west.
So the plywood was in. The sheathing was sealed. The new shingles were waiting. Tomorrow I would tackle them and then get to the fascia and the siding.
But for now, I was done. Cooked, as the kids said. My shirt was soaked through with sweat, my hands ached from gripping the pry bar and hammer, and my shoulders felt like someone had been working them over with a baseball bat.
I climbed down the ladder and stood in the yard for a moment, just breathing.
The heat pressed down like a weight on me.
I walked to the porch and grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler and a towel from the railing and drank the entire bottle without stopping. The water was warm, but I did not care.
The pond.
The thought arrived fully formed. Cold water. Shade. Relief.
I walked across the clearing and down to the south end. The sound of the stream grew louder as I approached.
The pond opened before me, half in sunshine, half in the shade. The willows hung low over the water on the far bank, crowded by blackberry bushes. The surface of the pond was rippled, dragonflies dipping and swooping over it.
I looked around. Nobody. Nothing. Just me and the trees and the water.
Why not? I've been wanting to do this for a while now.
I stripped. I pulled off my filthy shirt, stepped out of my boots, peeled off my jeans and underwear and left them in a pile on the bank with the towel. The air and sunlight on my skin felt amazing.
This was all mine. My land. My pond. My home.
I walked into the pond. The bottom was firm under my feet, soft mud with stones beneath. The cold hit me at knee depth and I kept going. At waist depth, I dove forward and came up spluttering and gasping and laughing.
"Goddamn!" I shouted, my voice echoing through the warm air.
The water was still very cold. My skin went numb. I treaded water and let my body adjust, and after a minute, the shock faded into something else, something clean and refreshing.
I floated on my back and looked up at the sky, a cloudless blue. The willows rustled overhead. The accumulated soreness of weeks of physical labor began to release from my muscles. My shoulders loosened. My hands unclenched. The water held me without effort.
My mind drifted to Aimee.
I had seen her again two days after our first night together. She had called me and asked if I wanted to come by after she closed the store. I did.
We drank beer on her couch and talked for twenty minutes before she leaned over and kissed me. We made it to her bedroom. The sex was easy and uncomplicated and enthusiastic. We went raw and I finished inside her mouth, Aimee swallowing my load with a grin. I hadn't had that in a long time.
She told me afterward that this was fun, that she liked me, that we should keep doing this, but that neither of us should expect more than what it was.
I agreed, not knowing why Aimee was emphasizing this so much, but not really caring.
The sex was good. Aimee was a fine woman with a wicked sense of humor and a body she knew how to use.
Besides the actual fucking, the most thrilling thing was the way Aimee looked at my naked body with desire. Not indifference, not the faint disgust that had crept into Sybil's eyes toward the end of our marriage.
Maybe that was not so surprising. All the work I had done these last few weeks had melted pounds off me. My gut was flatter. My arms were harder. I could feel muscles in my back and shoulders that had been dormant for years. I felt strong.
Aimee wanting my cock inside her and telling me she needs me to make her cum? That felt better than I had words for. Life out here was more exciting than I ever anticipated.
I sighed. There was so much work still to be done before the October storm season. The shingles and the fascia. The siding. The woodshed. The floorboards. The septic. The wood stove. The list was endless, but I felt capable of meeting the challenge.
More than capable. I felt alive.
I swam for a while, slow strokes across the pond and back. Then I waded out and lay down on the bank in the shade of the willows. The grass was soft and cool beneath me.
I looked up at the sky through the leaves. Blue and depthless, shifting patterns of light and shadow.
I remembered car camping with Sybil in the years before everything went wrong. We had driven to the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and pitched a tent by a creek and spent three days doing nothing but reading and swimming and having sex.
We had lain together on a blanket and looked up at the clouds passing overhead on lazy summer afternoons. She had put her head on my chest and traced letters on my skin with her fingertips, making me decipher her silly messages.
We had been happy. We had been so goddamn happy.
Thinking of my ex-wife, I drifted into sleep.
When I woke, the angle of the light was wrong. The sounds around me were unfamiliar for one slow moment. It was disorienting.
And I was not alone. I could feel it before I confirmed it. In the half-awake state between sleep and full consciousness, I said a name.
"Sybil?"
A female voice answered from somewhere above and behind me.
"No."
The voice was not Sybil's.
I came fully awake and fully aware of my situation simultaneously. I was naked. I was exposed. Someone was watching me.
I grabbed my shirt and covered myself and sat up.
A young woman was sitting on the bank approximately ten feet away, entirely unselfconscious, watching me with the direct attention of someone observing something mildly interesting.
She looked to be in her early twenties. She wore a denim shirt and canvas pants that had been mended with patches, practical patches, not the fashion kind.
Her long blonde hair was tied back in a simple ponytail.
Her eyes were bright blue and clear. She was young and beautiful in a way that was worlds away from makeup tutorials or glam-up efforts.
My eyes drifted to her waist. She wore the same flapped revolver at her waist that Abner wore, the same deerskin holster and shoulder strap with intricate stitching.
She held my gaze, her face placid and calm. It looked like she had been sitting there for a while.
"I apologize if I startled you," she said.
I blinked, tried to gather my thoughts, failed.
"It's... it's okay. I'm, uh, sorry I was naked."
She cocked her head slightly, genuinely curious.
"Why should you be sorry? The human body is natural and beautiful. Yours seems perfectly healthy." She paused. "Besides, it's your land. You may do as you please on your property. Let Nature and Common Sense be servants of a generous will."
I stared at her. She was right, but the way she said it threw me off-kilter.
"Yeah, uh, I guess that's true."
"My name is Liberty Scout Flint. I'm Abner Flint's daughter."
"Thomas Harmon."
"I know. My father told me about you."
She did not elaborate. She simply sat there, waiting. Not awkward, not embarrassed. Just present.
Her calmness was a little unnerving. I pulled my jeans over my crotch and tried to recover something resembling dignity. It was not going well.
"What were you dreaming about?" she asked. "You called me by someone's name."
The question was so direct that it took me a moment to process.
"I... I thought you were my wife."
"Is your wife dead?"
"No. No, she's alive. She's my ex-wife, I should have said. We're divorced."
"I see." She nodded as if this explained everything. "How do you like living here?"
"There's a lot of work to be done. But I'm loving it. The cabin. The land. All of it."
"I've walked this land since I was a child. I've swum in this pond many times. The James family always allowed it."
She said it simply, a statement of fact. Not a request, not quite.
"You're welcome to keep swimming here," I told her. "You and your father both."
"My father doesn't enjoy swimming the way I do. Though in truth, it's not swimming I like. It's cooling off on a hot day like this."
She looked out across the pond. The water was clear and calm. A green dragonfly hovered over the surface near the far bank.
We were quiet together. The silence was not uncomfortable. I did not feel the need to fill it the way I usually did. Something about this girl told me she was comfortable with silence. More than comfortable, she seemed to prefer it.
"May I swim now?" she asked quietly.
"Of course. You're welcome any time."
I expected her to leave. To come back later, or tomorrow, or in the summer.
Instead, she stood and unhooked the holster and set it on the ground. She sat down and pulled off her boots and set them aside.
I was about to say something-- what, I had no idea-- when she pulled her shirt over her head.
Her breasts swayed in the sunlight. Full and firm, capped by pale pink buds.
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.
She unbuttoned her jeans and pushed them down along with her cotton panties and stepped out of both. She set them on top of her shirt.
She was completely naked. Her body was tanned and strong and healthy. Lush blonde curls covered the mound between her legs, the same fine hair in her armpits and dusting her lower legs. Her body was unshaved and natural. I wondered if a razor had ever touched her skin.
Liberty looked like something out of a myth. A nymph who had wandered out of an enchanted forest and decided to take a swim.
She saw me looking at her. A small smile played on her lips.
"It's a hot day."
She waded into the pond, slowly, her muscular buttocks flexing with each step. The water rose to her knees, then her thighs, then her waist. She submerged herself and came up with her hair slicked back and water streaming down her face and shoulders.
She sank beneath the water again. I heard nothing but the gurgle of the stream feeding the pond, the rustle of wind in the trees, the calling of birds in the distance. My own shallow breathing.
My cock was hardening, my heart racing. I wondered if I was dreaming, still asleep on the bank. None of this could be real.
But it was.
I stood fast and grabbed my jeans, yanking them on with my back to the pond.
My cock was half hard and thickening. I willed it down while I fumbled with the button.
The splashing behind me continued, soft sounds of water disturbed by movement.
I pulled on my boots without tying them and reached for my shirt.
"Are you leaving?" Her voice carried across the water.
"Just getting dressed," I managed.
More splashing, closer now. I heard her wading out.
I grabbed the towel from where I had left it on the grass and held it out behind me without turning around.
"Here. You can use this."
"Thank you. I usually let the sun dry me. Going skyclad, as they said in olden times."
Her hand brushed mine as she took it. Warm fingers. Real. Not a dream.
I heard the towel working over skin. The rustle of fabric. My mind was spinning. I needed to say something, anything to ground myself in normalcy.
"So, uh, have you read To Kill a Mockingbird?" I asked.
A memory from high school. The question came out in a rush.
"Yes." Her voice brightened immediately. "It's one of my favorite books. Why do you ask?"
I turned around. She had the towel wrapped around her torso and was squeezing water from her hair with one hand.
"I read it in high school. One of the few books I finished. Your middle name is Scout, right? I was wondering if you were named after the girl in the book."
She shook her head.
"My father named me after his favorite truck. An International Harvester Scout. He drove one when he was a youngster." She paused, a small smile forming. "But I like to imagine myself as Scout from the book. I love the name Scout. I've always wished someone would call me that."
She pulled on her underwear beneath the towel with unselfconscious efficiency, then her pants. She dropped the towel and reached for her shirt. I looked away again, more from habit than necessity. When I looked back, she was dressed and handing me the damp towel.
"Thank you," she said. "I'll launder it, if you like."
"That won't be necessary."
I took the towel. I watched as she sat down and pulled on her boots. Then she stood and lifted the holster strap, settling it over her shoulder. Her fingers moved with practiced ease as she secured the flapped holster to her belt. The gun sat at her waist like it belonged there.
"Does the shoulder strap help support the weight?" I asked.
"Precisely. I carry a Smith and Wesson 686. It is somewhat lighter than my father's Ruger GP100. The shoulder strap distributes the weight and makes carrying it all day more bearable than on the waist belt alone."
"Well, if anyone looks like a Scout, it's you," I said appreciatively. "I'll call you Scout, if you don't mind."
The words landed on her in a way I did not expect. She went completely still. Not her usual directness. Something else, something almost vulnerable.
"Nobody has ever called me that before," she said quietly.
"Is that okay?"
She nodded. The motion was small, almost shy.
We stood there for a moment in the filtered light through the willows. The air had cooled slightly. The sun was lower now, moving toward late afternoon.
"Would you like me to show you the land?" Scout asked. "The wooded slope behind your cabin. The topography. The places that matter."
"I'd like that, Scout. Uh... let me tie my shoes."
She nodded once and waited. When I had laced my boots up, she turned toward the woods.
I followed.