3. Calder
Chapter three
Calder
My jacket hung from the chair beside me, where I left the jacket every Saturday. Heavy canvas, block letters over the pocket facing the room.
brENNAN.
Seven years with the jacket hanging there, yet I’d never sat at the bar reading my own name.
I turned my beer on the zinc, looking elsewhere.
The Breaker was crowded for a Saturday in late October.
Pendant lamps lit the pool tables but left the rest of the room dim.
The woodstove behind the bar had everybody near the taps red-faced.
Outside, frost silvered the truck hoods.
The draft under the back door kept the floor cold enough to remind us winter had arrived, whether the stove agreed or not.
The ice machine dumped a load.
My grip locked around the glass.
Cleo jumped, then laughed. Three people laughed with her. Ridge kept talking to June in the far booth. Nobody glanced toward the brass plaque at the end of the bar. Around here, people had learned where not to look.
The room recovered before I did.
I had my usual stool, nursing one beer that would last most of the evening. My crew occupied the tables behind me. That should have been enough: the last Saturday before the summer hands scattered, all of us under one roof, nobody saying Brennan.
Wes sat at the nearest table with Junie asleep against his shoulder.
Her cheek was mashed into his flannel; one fist held a fold of the fabric.
He shifted her whenever his arm went numb without waking her.
Cleo had her boots hooked over a chair rung across from him. The fries between them had gone limp.
Ridge sat with June beside two coffee mugs in the far booth. He didn’t have to claim the center of a room. People found their places around him anyway.
Bookie occupied the third stool from the end, under the only light that didn’t flicker. He held a paperback folded backward in one hand. Everybody else watched the football game. Bookie had spent ten minutes on the same page, so either the book was good or he’d stopped reading.
“Tell me you’re not driving to Bozeman tonight,” Wes said.
“Tomorrow. First light.”
“In that truck?”
Bookie turned the page. “In that truck.”
“She’s got a hundred ninety thousand miles on her.”
“She’s got character.”
“She’s got rust.”
“You drive a vehicle with cupholders, Stokes. Your opinion’s no good.”
“Cupholders keep a man alive.”
“So does a fan belt.”
That settled the argument. Pool balls cracked behind us. Wes rubbed Junie’s back while Bookie returned to pretending he could read.
The men left gaps in a conversation without rushing to plug them. None of them had ever made me explain myself. I’d appreciated their restraint for seven years without examining the reason too closely.
Tonight I kept examining the people around me.
Since the radio report that morning, a count had been running in my head. Wes with the kid. Cleo. Ridge beside June. Bookie with his thriller, driving a truck that ought to have been stripped for parts two winters ago.
At the far end of the bar, four names were stamped into brass.
I kept my shoulder turned so I couldn’t read them.
The front door opened.
Cold slid across the floor. A couple of conversations faltered while the room inspected whoever had come in.
I watched through the mirror behind the bottles.
A woman stood inside the door, waiting for her eyes to adjust. She had dark hair clipped up with a pen shoved through the plastic. Ink stained the cuticles of her first two fingers. A leather satchel hung open at her hip, with a notebook sticking from the top. The notebook’s corners had worn round.
She surveyed the room once, then started over.
That second look caught me.
A person ordering a drink checks for the bar, then an empty seat. This woman noted faces, groups, exits. She watched who watched her.
Journalist.
The case followed close behind the thought.
I’d read the magazine preview three times, though I had no reason to subscribe, much less leave the issue under the passenger seat of my truck.
Each week brought another story about the firm bearing my family’s name.
Somebody had dug through old records, interviewed former employees, learned which stones to turn over.
Maybe the woman wasn’t the journalist. Maybe she’d come for fries, perhaps whatever passed for live music later.
But I’d spent twelve years making decisions with incomplete information. You didn’t wait for a dead fir to announce the danger before studying the lean.
I noticed her hands again, disliking my attention to them.
“You want another?” Wes asked.
“I’m good.”
“You’re nursing that beer like the glass owes you money.”
“The beer does.”
“Marla’ll cut you off for drinking too slow.”
“She’s tried.”
Wes grinned, smoothing Junie’s hair. While he talked to me, I was still myself: Cal at the Breaker, slow with a beer, worse with conversation.
Then Cleo rose halfway out of her chair, waving.
“Holland. Over here. Come save these fries before Wes kills them twice.”
The name meant nothing to me, which offered no help.
Holland crossed the room without having to search for a path. Cleo pulled out a chair. Whatever Holland said made her laugh. The satchel landed on the chair back with the thump of too much paper.
Once she sat, Holland glanced into the mirror.
She found me there.
Neither of us looked away. Bottles divided our reflections into alternating green-brown strips. Then she raised her chin a fraction before turning back to Cleo.
My hands lay flat on the bar.
Bookie turned a page, slowly this time.
After a while he said, “You’re not reading the room.”
“I’m drinking a beer.”
“Your beer has dropped two inches in an hour.”
“Read your book, Brooks.”
“I am.” He looked down at the page. “You’re guarding the room.”
I gave him nothing. He had the sense to stop.
At the table, Cleo was explaining the end of fire season.
“Wendell went to Reno yesterday. Half the summer crew clears out this week. Gets pretty dead after that.”
“How long have you all worked together?” Holland asked.
She leaned toward Cleo, attentive without making a show of her interest. Her voice was lower than I’d expected.
“Some of us forever. Wes is a lifer. Ridge has been superintendent seven or eight years. Cal’s our lead sawyer. He’s been here longer than the dog.”
Holland looked my way. “Lead sawyer decides where the tree falls?”
“Lead sawyer decides where everybody stands while the tree falls,” Cleo said. She shoved the fries toward Holland. “Cal, tell her about Cutbank.”
“No story.”
“He says that about every fire he’s worked.”
“Was Cutbank bad?” Holland asked.
“The country burned.”
Cleo snorted. “See?”
Holland turned her glass between her palms. “Seven years with one crew is a long run.”
“Depends on the man,” Cleo said.
Wes nodded toward me. “Depends why he stays.”
That earned him a look, though he was busy adjusting Junie’s sock.
Holland’s attention shifted to my jacket. She read the letters over the pocket.
brENNAN.
Her gaze remained there just long enough to answer one question while raising several more.
I left the jacket where the canvas hung. Snatching the jacket down would tell her more than the name had.
For the next hour, Holland mostly ignored me. Once or twice she glanced across the room with the mild interest she showed everybody else. I returned the favor.
The jukebox played a song about a woman leaving Wyoming without explaining why anybody would blame her. Junie slept through the chorus. Cleo ordered fresh fries, mixing them into the cold ones—a practice I considered dishonest.
Holland finished her water, then carried the glass to the bar. She stopped beside my elbow while Marla worked the taps.
“Cleo says you’ve been here longest.”
“Depends who’s counting.”
“I’m off duty tonight.”
“Are you?”
She studied me directly. Up close, the ink around her nails was blue.
“Holland Reese,” she said.
“Cal.”
Marla set down a fresh water before moving to the register.
“Just Cal?” Holland asked.
“That’s enough for most people.”
She picked up the glass.
“You writing about the fire crew?” I asked.
“Tonight I’m eating Cleo’s terrible fries.”
“Tomorrow?”
“I’ll ask people whether they want to talk.”
“I’m around all week. Half this room will talk fire until Marla shuts the lights off.”
“I noticed you’re not in that half.”
She didn’t smile. She looked as if she’d filed the answer somewhere.
Then she returned to the table, where Cleo touched her arm to make room.
I looked toward the plaque but stopped short of the lettering.
I had carried those four names since Marla screwed the brass into the wood. Reading them had never been the problem.
I could have paid my tab, then gone outside. My truck would be rimed with frost, the vinyl seat hard with cold. If I left without a word, nobody would ask about my departure Monday. The crew allowed a man that much.
Instead, I stayed on the stool.
Bookie closed his paperback over his thumb.
“Cleo brings everybody in,” he said.
“I know.”
“Then quit acting like we ought to board up the windows.”
“I’m sitting here.”
“You’re sitting like a dog heard thunder.”
I looked at him.
He opened his book again. “Better.”
A wind change on the line could be small enough to miss if you trusted the forecast more than your own face. First the fine hair at your temple lifted. Then the smoke laid over. By the time the instruments caught up, you should already know where your escape route was.
I knew the balance in the room had changed.
I finished my beer while Holland listened to Cleo’s Cutbank story—a version featuring six lies, not to mention a stolen road grader. Cold air kept slipping beneath the back door. Nobody bothered to seal the gap.