29. Wolfe
wolfe
The four of us stood on the sidewalk in front of Mabel’s house, next to the two trucks parked nose to front, engaged in a silent debate as to who should drive whom and in which truck.
Two older ladies dressed in tracksuits and down coats walked past us and went up the steps, barely giving us a glance, though the glance spoke volumes since we were parked, as it were, illegally.
A taxi pulled up and had to park in the middle of the street to let another lady off, this one in a thick cotton dress made of purple velveteen.
She wore striped stockings and clogs. She even had a hat, a wool felt thing with a jaunty red-petaled flower pinned to it.
This one nodded at us and hopped up those steps, where Mabel welcomed her, then waved at us as if to get a move on.
“You fellows want to get lunch?” Morgan asked, which surprised me, at least a little, as he had never seemed the most welcoming of men. But perhaps this had shifted, like everything else in Hysham. Everything in my life. “There’s a great Italian place in town. Has really good garlic bread.”
I was a sucker for anything with garlic on it, and the invitation was tempting. A plateful of hot food that I didn’t have to prepare or clean up after, count me in. The budget could afford it if Blue and I didn’t go crazy with our choices.
But then there was Blue to think of. He stood on that sidewalk, looking a bit wan, as though he too was tired of all the changes in his life. If I had rather headed home, I knew Blue felt it as well. Home was home.
“I think we’re headed back to the cabin,” I said, speaking for both of us.
Jack straightened up as though I had challenged him. He had the key fob to his bright red truck in his hand, and his fingers curled around it.
My fingers curled into a fist around the keys in the pocket of my parka.
He’d startled me before when, watching from the window of the feed and grain, he’d taken Blue’s face in both hands.
The echoes of the feeling I’d had, that I knew how to kill a man by crushing his windpipe, however, were vanishing.
Jack was Blue’s friend, first and foremost. Mabel adored Jack and, if I let myself, it was easy to see why. Besides, Mabel didn’t suffer fools gladly. Also, Mister Rocket favored Jack above all other humans, which said only good things about the kind of person he was.
“What is it, Jack?” I asked.
“We could get food to go,” he said. “And bring it to your place to eat for dinner. I’d love to see where Blue’s been all this while.”
I looked at Morgan and he at me. I had the same sense that I’d had before, at Oralee’s funeral, and the few times I’d been into the feed and grain. That he was like me. Preferred to be alone, to not have to bother with all the people in the world. Someone had let him down; that much was clear.
He probably would have sold the feed and grain eventually if it wasn’t for Jack. Might not even be up and walking around if it wasn’t for Jack.
Because Jack. Who was just about insisting that we all be friends.
He had, it seemed, appointed himself our local friendship curator.
Which was how he must have been in that little group as they stood on top of a boxcar without any railings or handholds, going a zillion miles an hour, ducking when they reached a dark tunnel.
We will be together. We will stick together. That’s what his expression said now.
“That sounds good to me,” I said, with a hard swallow to vanquish my own misgivings at having anyone in the cabin that I didn’t know very well.
Nobody should be in there but me and Blue, but, like everything, this was going to change.
“How about it, Blue?” I asked. “Think we can clean the place up before they get there?”
“Around five?” Jack asked. “We could pick up food around five and be at your place right after that. Any later than that, and they’ll run out of lemon cake.”
“Nothing can beat that lemon cake,” Morgan said, tapping his cane stoutly on the sidewalk. “Unless it’s Mabel’s peach cobbler.”
Blue nodded at me, going quiet, his hands on the edges of his parka, tugging. “Lemon cake gets my vote,” he said.
I wanted to hug him right there in the street. And kiss him and push his fair hair back from his forehead, and take away the darkness in his eyes.
He was thinking about Star. I didn’t want to think about Star, because the way Blue talked about him, Star was a slip of a thing, young and smart, but very small, according to Blue’s descriptions.
Blue hadn’t really been dressed for the bad weather they encountered; I shuddered to think that Star had been even less prepared.
“We’ll see you after five,” I said. That would give us plenty of time.
It was then that a white SUV with the Hysham town logo and the word Sheriff emblazoned on it, pulled up, and out got Young Tommy.
“Is there a reason you fellows are parked so wonky?” he asked, hitching up his big black belt, his eyes shadowed by the brim of his brown hat. “Nose to nose? And who is this?” he asked, looking at Blue.
In under a minute, this silent, taciturn officer of the law had sussed out that Blue was not native to Hysham, that he was an out-of-place individual who might or might not mean harm to its citizens.
I saw this in his eyes as he took off his hat, adjusted the inner band, and put the hat back on his head.
“This is Blue,” I said, leaving it at that, knowing Blue wouldn’t want his family name to be known. But beyond that, due to the fact that after prison, and during it, I’d lost my ability to confront someone with a badge, I didn’t know what to tell him.
“He’s a friend of ours,” said Morgan, somewhat sharply. “He’s new in town. He’s staying with Wolfe.”
Young Tommy looked at me. Then at Blue. “Do you have a license, son? Any ID?”
I knew that Blue didn’t. That he’d ripped it up and thrown it away so that if his body was ever found, cold and lifeless by the tracks, they wouldn’t be able to trace the body back to his family.
Of course, there were DNA tests and dental records that could be used, but I’d not reminded Blue of that because that wasn’t the point.
“He lost it,” I said.
“We’re going to get him another,” said Morgan. He thumped his cane and looked Young Tommy right in the eye, as if daring him to object to this. “Quick as we can.”
After a silent moment, Young Tommy nodded. “See that you do,” he said. And, unspoken as he tapped two fingers to the brim of his brown hat, were the words, Hysham takes care of its own.
I was sweating as he drove off, though I wouldn’t have admitted it, a band of heat along the back of my neck, dampness beneath my arms. We’d done nothing wrong beyond a bad parking job, and nobody was in trouble.
But my body was reacting to the badge, and I needed to give it a grace period before I started getting angry at it doing that.
“We’ll see you at five,” I said. “Do you know the way, Morgan?”
“Frontage Road to Bauer Road,” he said. “Your place is about ten miles out, right?”
“That’s right,” I said. “Turn right on Diamond Willow Lane. I’m the only house there.”
“Sounds good.”
Morgan and Jack got into the red truck and drove off, the thick tires screeching on the dry pavement. I saw Morgan reach for the handle and smiled because Jack drove fast at all times, the way a young man did. The way a young man should, when the spirit took him.
The weight of that hit me. I’d never been young that way, as I’d been tied to the church and to the community, never going fast, the wind in my hair. Maybe Blue hadn’t either, because I watched him watching the truck roar down the street, a pensive darkness in his eyes.
“You okay?” I asked Blue, not moving toward him, not taking him in my arms like I wanted to do.
“Let’s go home,” he said.
I drove us back to the cabin, half my mind on the road, the other half on Blue.
Morgan’s stamp of approval had been unexpected; his fierce Never you mind to Young Tommy an attempt at closing the door to there being any issue. This all assuming that Blue would want to stay. I felt he did.
The other half of my attention was on the way Blue was sitting as close to me as he could on the bench seat without getting in the way of the four on the floor.
His silence. The way he fiddled with the zipper on his parka, pushed his hair back from his face.
Looked out the window at the brown and white landscape as it whooshed past.
At the cabin, I parked, leaving as much room as I could for the big red truck that would soon visit us.
Getting out, I went to Blue’s side of the truck and opened his door, not because I didn’t think he couldn’t do it for himself, but as a welcome to the cabin I considered, now, ours. Not just mine. Ours.
Blue jumped out of the truck and, leaving the door wide open, rushed into my arms, and I hugged him. Buried my face in his hair. Did my best to still his jumpiness with my own stillness, and took a deep breath of the wide, Montana-fresh country air.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said. He shivered and pressed even closer, tucking his head beneath my jaw. “We’re going to find him, and it’ll be okay.”
Inside the cabin, we took off our boots and hung our jackets.
I opened the windows to let in fresh air, since the temperature was a balmy forty degrees.
With my hands on my hips, I looked around, thinking where to start.
That’s when Blue dragged me to the bedroom and began undoing the buttons on my flannel shirt.
I placed my hands on his and looked down at him.
“We’ve got hours yet,” Blue said. “The place is fine. It’ll take ten minutes.”
I wanted to put the sheets in the laundry and sweep the floor and tidy the workshop. Then Blue rose on his toes, his hands on my shoulders, eyelashes dark on his cheeks, his mouth soft, and kissed me. I forgot all about chores.