30. Blue
blue
When the dishes were cleared and stacked in the sink for later, a rarity in the cabin, I took Jack by the hand and led him into the living room.
The cabin was small enough that we weren’t very far from the two men at the kitchen table, huddled over Wolfe’s laptop, as Morgan started a spreadsheet that we could all access.
Together, they planned to research railroad maps to see if they could figure where to look more closely, on the assumption that Star had gotten off the train near Hysham.
That wasn’t likely. The storm had been pretty bad that day, and the train had been going pell-mell down a slope.
The Star I knew would have kept going, ducking his head through tunnels, seeking shelter inside a boxcar.
The plan had been for us to meet Nimble in Santa Monica; even with both of us off the train, Star would have stuck to the plan.
I shuddered inwardly as I pictured what it must have been like for Star, seeing me fall. A fall that could have killed me, which meant that Star didn’t know whether I was alive or dead.
“Where’re you taking me?” asked Jack, obviously half joking because the cabin was small enough that there was almost nowhere to go.
“Here,” I said. “Sit down.” I pointed to the couch, and Jack sat.
I pulled the green duffel from the top of the small shelf against the wall, where it had sat, half flopped over, waiting for its rightful owner like a faithful dog.
Putting the duffel in Jack’s lap, I waited, hovering, hoping he would be pleased, even though it’d taken me this long to give it to him.
Weeks and weeks he’d been without his stuff.
I’d done the best I could.
“Oh.” Jack looked up at me, flickers of softness, of memory, on his face. It was as if he too were reflecting back to the point in time, sharp with snow and cold, as the train pulled away, and he’d thought I’d betrayed him and everything we boxcar boys stood for.
“You can see the ragged edge.” I pointed, my throat dry. “The strap was caught on the metal as I tried to get it from the metal where you’d wrapped it.” Swallowing hard, I added, “I guess I managed to free it in the end.”
“That’s when you fell.”
The cabin grew silent, as if Morgan and Wolfe had become aware of what was going on beyond the warmth of the kitchen. Jack patted the couch cushion next to him, and I sat down. I gestured to Wolfe that it was okay. That I was doing what needed to be done.
Jack spread the duffel over both our laps and opened it.
He pulled out the contents: a pair of grimy underwear and one pair of socks, also filthy.
A t-shirt. A bit of soap in brown paper.
Half-squashed earplugs, the neon pink sponge stained gray with use.
A black bandana. A baggie of money, mostly small bills and some coins.
A little box of matches, the end coming off, the striking surface nearly worn smooth.
A stub of a candle. Playing cards. A Leatherman multi-tool.
A paperback copy of The Talisman that looked new, like it had never been opened.
A blanket roll, the gray and black wool threadbare and thin.
“I was so mad at you,” Jack said, half to himself, half to me. “But look at this stuff. It’s all garbage.”
“The book isn’t,” I said, touching the smooth spine. “And there’s money and your knife.”
But he was right. It was a hopelessly pathetic pile of worn things, which, though so important to Jack while we’d been on the rails, now looked like it should all be thrown away.
“How did we survive like that?” He was looking at me now, eyebrows raised, making his eyes round and young. “All that time? Living like that?”
As I shook my head, it all came back to me.
How it felt, the wind in my hair as I stood in the opening of a boxcar, swaying to the rhythm of the trucks on the tracks, listening to the endless clicking from the Janney couplers, the sounds of Nimble and Star, behind me, laughing between themselves.
Letting me have a multi-layered sulk as I pretended to be soothed because I could smell rain in the air.
My parents had forced my brother Cameron into a corner he could not find his way out of. They’d abandoned me to the cruelest treatment. And then, that day, Nimble had given Star the last of the peanut butter cookies he’d stolen from a small grocery store near the tracks, outside of Vinton, Iowa.
Star had been going on and on about a girl who’d lived there, a girl from some kid’s book, which had irritated me so I turned away, freezing him out. So then he told Nimble about her, and Nimble had given him those cookies I had wanted, as a treat because I’d been mean.
All of which seemed petty and small, as a week later, we’d left Nimble behind in Hysham. Then I’d fallen off. We’d both left Star on his own.
“I don’t know,” I said to him, my jaw working. “We managed to get here. To this life. Now all we need to do is find Star.”
“You think everything will be all right then?” he asked.
I had to look at him. To take in his features, so familiar to me, and yet now so new, seeing him in this light, in this cabin.
Now that he had Morgan and was soon to be married.
Now that I had Wolfe, his warm, centering energy keeping me still, keeping me safe, when the world seemed ablaze with betrayal and hurt.
“I don’t know,” I said, rubbing my palms on my thighs. “At least you've got your stuff now.”
“No.” With quick movements, Jack shoved everything back into the duffle, which, even with everything in it, was only half-full, grimy, and stained.
There was a ragged hole near one end, which must have been there all along, but which I’d never noticed until now.
“This is nothing. Thank you for keeping it for me, because now? My life is so much better. Plus, I found you again. That’s the most important thing. ”
I worked my jaw hard enough to crack it, but I could not keep the tears from coming, hot like acid. Clamping my palms over my eyes, I bent forward, shaking.
Lost in my own darkness, as though I was being sucked down into depths so hard and bleak, there would be no surviving it. But then Jack’s arms came around my shoulders. Warm and heavy. Solid. His breath in my ear. His scent in my lungs. So familiar. Lost for a time. And now, returned to me.
“It’s been bad,” he said, whispering in my ear.
“Bad. But now it’s better. We’re here, you and I.
We made it to this place. This good place.
With these good men. We can make a life now.
And we’ll find Star. With everything I have, I promise you, we will.
Now.” He pulled me close with a good, hard squeeze.
“For the love of all that is holy, do not cry, or I will cry. And nobody wants that. Do you? No?”
“No,” I said with a sound that might have been half a laugh, or an attempt at one. I wiped my face as I straightened up.
Trust Jack to always be so positive. Smiling like he was now, all the love in the world shining through his eyes. That feeling of having betrayed him, always at the back of my mind, had started to melt away, and now Jack was shoving it away.
A better friend I could not have asked for.
“You boys okay?” Wolfe asked, scraping his chair back from the table.
“Yes,” I said as he came over to me.
He held out his hand, and I took it, and he pulled me to my feet and into his arms. Soothing me with his warmth, his solid form, his hand in my hair.
“How about we bundle up and show them the workshop?” Wolfe asked, which shocked me. The workshop was his sanctum sanctorum and, as far as I knew, I was the only other person who’d ever been in there. “Then we can go look at the stars.”
In a flurry of movement, Jack reached for his parka and helped Morgan with his.
Wolfe led the way out the back door, all of us bundled for the short walk between the buildings, the outdoor light snappy and sharp in the cold.
I was close behind Wolfe, and quite soon we were all huddled in the small space formed by the two tables, the smell of leather thick in the air, of paint and of oil.
“Holy cow.” Jack just about whistled as he scanned the room, the shelves on top of the table. At the saddle in the corner and the bridles on the wall. At the tools and scraps of leather. At the samples laid out, as though for inspection. “These are good. They’re for the bazaar, right?”
“Yes,” I said. “The ones on the left are, along with the lanyards. All Christmas themed. The ones on the right, Wolfe says are too fancy and would take too long to make too many.”
“Didn’t say we couldn’t,” Wolfe said. “Just that it would be impractical for the bazaar.”
“We could sell them in the feed and grain, like I said,” Morgan said.
Morgan moved forward and took up one of the key rings I’d done of a red heart, with the stamp painted in with white and silver paint, which I’d meant to represent flakes of snow.
Then he picked up a second one, of a lodgepole pine, again flecked with snow, green and white and brown.
Simple lines, strong colors. I heard Jack sigh, deep in his throat, and remembered his new truck.
“You want this one, Jack?” I asked, pointing at it in Morgan’s hand.
“You mean it?” Jack’s face lit up.
“I do,” I said. “Take that one. Morgan, do you want one? Do you want the heart?”
“Yes, please,” he said, delight in his voice. He clasped it in his fist as he looked at me, as though worried I might take it back. “You should make a ton of these,” he said. “Handmade stuff always sells.”
“Spoken like a true shopkeeper,” Wolfe said. There was a smile in his voice, a relaxed air about him, even as we all stood in the room that Wolfe considered sacred. “Now, let’s get some fresh air down by the river. It’s plenty dark, and the sky is clear. We should get a good view.”
“Can you make it, Morgan?” Jack asked, moving to Morgan’s side, as if he meant to prevent him because the way was snowy, slush melted into hard lumps.
“I’ll make it,” Morgan said stoutly. Then he added, “If we walk slowly.”
Jack hooked his arm in Morgan’s, and Wolfe turned to look at me, up close, his eyes bright.
“Stars,” he said.
“Stars,” I agreed.
Wolfe made sure to turn off all the lights in the workshop, and then went to turn off the back door lights, leaving us in total darkness in the nippy, nighttime-cold air. I heard Morgan’s rumble of protest and could imagine him asking if we should take flashlights, but Wolfe knew better.
After a moment, a few heartbeats, with no lights around, the sky took on a kind of glow. Not from any nearby city or other light source. But because of the stillness and the darkness, the ambient light, sheer, sifting silver, made the sky not quite so dark. But blue, dark blue.
Along the horizon as we slowly marched our way, footsteps crunching beneath us, the cottonwoods appeared, stark leafless branches shadowed against the sky as if they’d been drawn there, the spaces between filled in with black ink.
Overhead, the stars popped against their backgrounds, as though the same artist used a steel punch to create their shapes and applied silver paint to make them stand out.
At the top of the hill, before the ground spread down to the Yellowstone River, we paused. This was the best spot, after all.
“This is beautiful,” Morgan said in a quiet voice. “I had no idea when I first came here how much I would grow to love this place. And now, having seen a view like this makes me love it even more.”
With his arm linked with Morgan’s, Jack eased his arm through mine.
Then he looked at me, starlight glinting in his eyes.
With a nod, I linked my arm through Wolfe’s, and together the four of us stood there, a warm line in the cold dark air, strong against the colder wind coming up from the half-frozen river.
We were still missing one, but we would find him. And in the meantime, we had found each other.