12. Blue
blue
We drove back from Billings just after noon. Though the sun was shining like a spotlight, glittering across the snowy landscape, and the air was crystal blue, it was cold. Wolfe had the truck’s heater going full bore, but I still felt the chill coming through the floorboards.
“At least it’s not snowing,” Wolfe said as he pressed on the gas and urged the truck to go faster.
We arrived in Hysham in good time, going past the turnoff for Wolfe’s cabin.
I recognized that much, could see where we were.
In Hysham, Wolfe made a pit stop at a small strip mall that had a coffee shop and a little gift shop.
He went in and came out with a tin of loose tea leaves, which he put in my lap to hold.
Then he went into the little gift shop next to the coffee shop and came out, five minutes later, with a cherry-red teapot.
“A local woman makes them,” he said, handing me the teapot as he got into the truck. He blew on his hands while I adjusted the articles on my lap. “They don’t sell very well. Not much call for teapots in these parts, I guess. So it was on sale.”
The paper tag said five dollars, which was a bit more than the fifty cents he’d paid for his other one.
Which meant that I’d have to make even more lanyards and key rings.
It might take us all winter to make as many as Mabel seemed to want, and as many as it would take to pay Wolfe back.
Which I realized, as Wolfe pulled out of the parking lot and trundled the truck to the market, might not be a bad thing.
Putting the teapot and the tin of tea carefully in the footwell, I went into the market with Wolfe, holding my breath in the cold air, letting it out with a gasp when I stepped inside the warm market.
He kept the truck running, which I saw some others had done, exhaust rising in columns behind each one.
“I’ll grab a buggy,” he said, which turned out to be a cart.
The market wasn’t busy. I stuck close to Wolfe anyway, looking around me, hunched forward as though something might jump out at me from behind the bins of oranges and apples. The overhead lights felt loud on my skin, and my boots made a strange clonk-clonk sound on the shiny floor.
“Anything you want, just add it,” Wolfe said.
I followed close, watching him look at the prices for each loaf of bread, the bagels.
How much for a bag of onions as opposed to a bag of organic onions.
A dozen eggs versus the cost of eighteen.
Just-about-expired steak with a yellow tag versus a pound of fresh ground meat.
He was adding things up in his head; I could tell.
Not wanting to increase his expenses, I didn’t make any suggestions, but he stopped the cart and looked at me. “I mean it.”
“You’re not responsible for me,” I said, rather than what I wanted to say, which was—other things.
About how the dark hairs on the back of his fingers as he gripped the handle of the cart drew my eyes.
How I liked it that he was overheated, and had not only unzipped his blue parka but had pulled his Henley away from his neck, as if he were on a hike and had stopped to catch a breeze on his bare skin.
The curl of dark hair behind his ear. The way his dark hazel eyes turned to me.
The way he seemed set apart from everyone else in the market, gazing over the landscape of it, looking for exits, maybe. A way out if things went bad.
“C’mon,” he said. “Eats and treats. What’s your favorite?
Ice cream? Frozen pizza? We’ll get some cake donuts, if they have them, but how about cookies—” He paused, and that’s when I knew what my answer should be.
This was a man who loved cake donuts with his tea.
I could see him enjoying store-bought cookies, but maybe he’d enjoy homemade ones more.
“Maybe we could make some,” I said. “Chocolate chips with pecans.” I dipped my chin, pretending to think, to remember, but that would be a lie because I had no idea what kind of cookies I liked. “I like those.”
We circled around the market to the bakery and purchased a dozen cake donuts. Then we went up the bakery aisle for chocolate chips and pecans and brown sugar. Which meant that we had to go back and get the carton of eighteen eggs, and also another pound of butter.
As we stood in the short line to get checked out, he looked at me with a wry smile. “This will make me fat,” he said, like he didn’t mind. Then his eyes narrowed as he looked at me. “You certainly could use a few pounds,” he said. “Run back and get another gallon of milk, would you?”
He was adapting his shopping list for me, for what he thought I’d need. We already had a gallon of milk; now we would have two. I raced back to the dairy section and returned with a gallon of milk, just as the cashier was finishing up.
“Friend of yours, Mr. Bramwell?” the cashier asked, jerking her chin at me. “You move here, sir?” she asked me.
“Just visiting,” Wolfe said, handing her his credit card. Then, with a bit of a forced laugh, added, “Everybody knows everybody in this town, right?”
I liked the fact that he wasn’t sharing me with anyone.
Outside, we had to haul the bags from the cart to the truck because there was too much snow and ice humped up just along the curb to push the cart through the snowy parking lot. The air was sharp as knives, and I was glad to get inside the warm, still-running truck.
“I have a heated canvas blanket I’ll put over the truck to keep it warm.” He glanced at me as he checked the weather app on his phone. “The temperature is just about to drop to twenty below, so we'd best get home.”
We passed a long, low building as we drove out of town.
“That’s the feed and grain,” Wolfe said, pointing with one finger, keeping both hands on the wheel.
“It was owned by Oralee Malone. Her nephew inherited the place when she passed, but he doesn’t know a damn lick about what to do with it. Poor bastard.”
He shook his head and slowed the truck down as we went over the railroad crossing, on account of the eggs. Over my shoulder, I saw someone coming out of the feed and grain, headed across the parking lot. He was dressed in black, and the sight of him made me shiver, though I didn’t know why.
“Where’s he going?” Wolfe asked, because he’d seen the figure, too. “Too damn cold to be walking.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
I faced forward again and relaxed into the seat.
I picked up the cherry-red teapot and held it carefully on my lap all the way until Wolfe parked the truck in its spot in front of the cabin.
I carried the teapot inside and watched as Wolfe went into the workshop, coming back with a large piece of canvas that had raised loops inside it and a long plug at the end, plus an extension cord.
“I meant to build a garage,” he said. “For the truck and the snowmobile, but this will do for now.”
Now knowing what the other lump under the snow was, I made myself useful carrying in bags of groceries.
My new boots made me feel steady on the ice, and my ankle didn’t bother me at all.
I helped to carry the other bags of groceries, watched as Wolfe shut the door, and went to the sink to wash his hands.
I heard a clunk and a sputter, and his muttered, “Damn it.”
“What?” I asked. I took my coat off and hung it up, and looked at the plastic bags of items he’d purchased for me at the army thrift store. “What happened?”
I came up to him just as he turned off the faucet and looked at me. A bit of sweat gleamed along his throat, making me want to open all the windows so he could get a breeze of cool air.
“There’s a heat line,” he said. “It keeps the pipe from freezing and goes from the well through the cistern and the pump, and the main pipe juncture.”
None of this made any sense to me, but I nodded.
“Everyone said put a heat line in, so I did.” He ran his fingers through his hair.
“They also said to turn it on around November and you should be all right.” To my puzzled expression, he said, “While we were inside the cabin and ran water, it was fine. Because it’s only October, I thought it would be fine.
But because we weren’t in the cabin using water and I neglected to turn on the heat line, it means we have no water. ”
Life without running water was, somehow, familiar to me.
I saw myself kneeling down to drink water from a standpipe next to an abandoned motel.
I’d used my hands to cup the water, drinking like an animal might.
Nimble and Star had been there. I suddenly saw their faces as clearly as I saw Wolfe’s as he looked at me.
“We could melt snow?” I asked, focusing on where I was and who I was with, and not on half-remembered moments.
“We’ll have to,” he said. “To cook. To clean. To brush our teeth. To wash before bed.” He rolled down his sleeves as he brushed past me.
Not rudely, but he was in a hurry. “I need to turn the switch, and the junction box is beneath three feet of snow. Plus, it’ll take until morning before it thaws. ”
While I put the groceries away, Wolfe grabbed a shovel from the workshop, shrugged on his parka, and went outside into the twenty-below weather.
The sunshine was a lie; the air felt like knives as I stood in the doorway and watched him tamp the ground with his shovel until he found the spot he wanted.
“I’ll build a little hut for this when it warms,” he said, to himself, more than to me, and I sensed that was because he was used to being alone. “Should have done it before.” And he began to dig.
The digging looked like self-punishment for having neglected to build a little hut over the junction box, for having neglected to flip the switch earlier, or at least before we’d left for Billings, which meant that the cabin had stood empty while the temperature dropped as though someone had let go and watched it fall.