Chapter Nine
Marcus lives twenty minutes from me, on a two-acre lot at the edge of a national forest parcel. The sun is just clearing the ridgeline when my truck pulls into his driveway.
He’s on the porch in an old rocking chair. His head turns when my headlights sweep his driveway, but he continues drinking his coffee.
I get out of the truck and walk up the gravel to the porch steps. The morning is cold enough that my breath fogs a little. Marcus watches me come and watches my face as I take the steps, and he doesn’t say anything.
I sit down in the other rocker. My hands settle on the arms of it, and I look toward the ridgeline. The light is the pale gold of late summer mornings.
Marcus looks at me for a long moment. He looks at my face. Whatever he sees there, he doesn’t ask about. He nods.
He goes into the house, and the sounds of the kitchen come through the screen door. He comes back out a minute later with a second coffee mug, hands it to me, and sits back down in his rocker. Neither of us speaks.
The coffee is hot, black, and very strong.
The sun clears the ridge. The light hits the top of the pines on the far slope and begins to move down.
A Steller’s jay screams somewhere in the yard.
A hawk passes high overhead. Marcus’s dog, an old yellow lab named Ranger who’s almost as old as my years in the Service, pads out through the screen door and settles at his feet.
I drink my coffee.
The silence isn’t awkward. It’s the silence of two people who have known each other for a long time and don’t need to fill the air. It’s the silence of a thing being understood between us without being named.
After a long time, when the sun is above the ridgeline, I clear my throat.
“You were right,” I say.
Marcus doesn’t look at me.
“I know,” he says.
He takes an unhurried sip of his coffee. Ranger sighs at his feet. The jay screams again, further off. The sun is full on the porch now, warm on my knees.
We sit with it.
◆◆◆
Marcus hugs me when I leave. He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t say anything at all except, “Come for dinner next week. Doreen’s making the ribs.”
“I’ll come,” I say.
“Drive safe.”
“I will.”
The drive back is quiet. The sun is high by the time my cabin comes into view. I park and go inside. Standing in my kitchen with one hand on the counter, my eyes go to the window over the sink and the tree line beyond my yard.
The trees are ordinary trees. Lodgepole pine, a few Douglas firs. The edge of the national forest that climbs the slope behind my cabin. The same trees I’ve seen from this window every day for eight years.
Today it brings a prickle at the back of my neck. A sense of being watched. I smile to myself as I turn away.
Thank you for reading!