20. Holland
Chapter twenty
Holland
The cold patch in the bed woke me before the truck did. My hand lay palm up where Cal’s had been. The sheet beneath my palm had cooled.
The blanket smelled of cedar smoke mixed with Ivory soap. By the time I heard him below the loft, my pulse had already sped up.
He dressed in the dark without turning on a lamp. A buckle clicked. Denim rasped. His boots struck the floor in two solid thumps.
I sat up, gathering the blanket around me. His composure frightened me more than his words from the night before. Fear announces itself. Cal sounded like a man carrying out a decision already made.
“You don’t have to be there,” he said from the foot of the ladder.
“I know.”
He paused. His hand rested briefly on the back of my neck.
“Okay.”
The door shut behind him. I remained on the bed until the Tacoma turned over on its second try. The tires cracked through the frozen drive, climbed the gravel road, then faded beyond the ridge.
The propane furnace whomped on. I startled hard enough to spill the blanket from my lap.
Above the desk, a clean rectangle beside one thumbtack hole marked the former home of my code of ethics. The paper now lived folded behind the cards in my wallet. Perhaps moving the page qualified as growth. At six in the morning, the change looked more like filing.
Outside, my windshield was clear.
Frost covered every other pane of glass in the valley. The neighbor’s Bronco had gone white. Rime edged the propane tank. Cal had scraped both sides of my windshield, cleaned the wipers, then lowered them into place.
Ten minutes in fifteen-degree weather, before dawn, on the morning he planned to tell nine men his real name.
A thermos waited on the counter. I carried the thermos to the truck, started the engine, then drank with my hands in my lap. For once, I accepted a kindness without searching for the invoice.
Then my pulse misfired.
A flutter started high in my chest. One heavy skip followed, then the familiar drop through my gut. The engine could not cover the blood pounding in my ears.
The app needed eleven seconds. One hundred forty-two, seated, after a single cup of coffee.
Seattle had begun at one thirty-eight when I was twenty-four, parked in a rental car outside a courthouse. Three nights later, I had an IV in my arm. My sister sat beside me in a molded plastic chair at two in the morning, asking what, exactly, I thought I was buying.
Inside the cabin, my laptop waited on the round table. Four file boxes stood against the wall; I had stopped calling them temporary in September. Tess’s email remained unopened. The subject line read Editorial Transparency Note, draft. Due Thursday.
My phone held Cleo’s name three entries down.
“Okay. Wait.”
I have spoken aloud to empty rooms since graduate school. Apologies for the habit ended years ago.
“Call Cleo. Warn her.”
My thumb hovered over her name.
“Then the reporter becomes the first person in this valley to tell that crew what today is.”
The furnace ticked behind me. I lowered my thumb.
“Text Bookie. Same problem, friendlier face. Tell Ridge.”
The screen remained open.
“Ridge knows. If I reach him first, I hand him time to rehearse.”
I rubbed my thumb along the edge of the case, wearing at the finish.
“Sit in the room. Open the notebook. Get the chapter.”
The training room assembled itself in sentences before I had seen the space.
The Blackline base smells of bar oil mixed with scorched coffee.
Going inside would also confirm every suspicion those men had ever entertained about my reasons for coming here.
The phone dimmed. Cleo’s name disappeared.
“God. Listen to me.”
For fifteen years I had fed fear into a machine, selling whatever came out. This morning the machine offered the same product as always: a clean narrative sharpened on another person’s life.
I pressed the heel of my hand to my sternum. Cal had done the same once in this cabin before telling me to breathe by count. I had resented the instruction because the method worked.
Four in. Hold. Four out. Hold.
After twelve rounds, the number on the app began to fall. I resented the decline too.
I dressed for the road in tights, wool socks, two layers, gloves permanently inadequate at the fingertips. At fifteen degrees, the first inhalation drove a wire through my sinuses.
Dry snow squeaked beneath my shoes. Beyond the ridge, the sky had faded from black toward gunmetal.
I followed the gravel to the county road, turning at the cattle guard. Frozen ruts shoved at my ankles. Wind came up the drainage, finding the gap at my collar. A hay truck passed without slowing, spraying my shins with grit.
Running had always been a crude way to think, but the motion worked. Near the second mile, my pulse settled enough for accuracy.
Here is the unflattering version.
My work had put a date on Cal’s decision. Eighteen months of records requests, preview pieces, four boxes of documents, weekly calls to a lawyer in Missoula had narrowed his options. I had not made him a Mallick. I had made January his deadline.
Below the road, the creek cut a black channel through the snow. The current stayed open where the creek ran fastest.
Half a mile later I caught the lie tucked inside my confession. If I claimed responsibility for today, I could claim the power to repair the damage. Arrogance wears well when tailored as guilt.
I reviewed the evidence as I ran.
Our first interview at the Formica table, where he answered my stated question while ignoring the real one.
My hand on his forearm afterward. The storm in the bunk.
The folder I finally placed between us. Rosemary’s letter in the Reserve Street motel.
Cal pinching the bridge of his nose while I kept my mouth shut.
Tess calling the work my best before reminding me the transparency note would run regardless.
At the turnaround, sweat froze beneath my collar.
No document could make nine men forgive Cal faster. I had one useful act available: take a chair, leave the story unwritten.
My eyes watered in the cold. They remained wet for the next quarter mile.
Back at the rental, I stripped off the damp clothes, then stood beneath water hot enough to sting. I put on the wool sweater with the only decent trousers I had brought. At the counter, I ate half a slice of toast because Cal had once pushed a cracker toward me, waiting until I accepted the food.
My phone lit with an unknown 406 number. The phone rang four times, stopped, then left no voicemail.
My mouth dried before I could prohibit speculation.
I turned the phone facedown, leaving the device alone for one minute. Whoever had called could have me tomorrow.
Then I made the call I had promised.
Halliday answered on the second ring while chewing.
“Three names by Friday,” he said. “Cooperating-witness experience. Somebody who won’t be impressed by the surname.”
“Friday’s fine. Look outside Bozeman. Find someone who’s handled a family case without enjoying the assignment.”
The call lasted two minutes. I kept a promise to a twenty-five-year-old who had entered a coffee shop carrying a notebook, more nerve than sense. The work might help him. Too much of my career had been spent confusing usefulness with anesthesia.
I closed the laptop. The recorder stayed on the desk, faceup, where I would have to see the device that evening.
I brought the notebook.
Four trucks occupied a lot built for twenty at the Blackline base. Through the training-room window, I could see yesterday’s spot forecast in grease pencil on the whiteboard. A plaque stood beneath the flagpole, level with the sill. From the driver’s seat, I could read all four names.
The halyard knocked against the pole.
Ridge appeared in the doorway holding a mug he never raised.
“Door’s open,” he said.
He went back inside.
I sat long enough to understand the offer, including the accounting attached to such permission, then left the truck.
Folding chairs filled three rows. Two seat backs held damp Nomex. Nine hard hats occupied the shelf beside the map.
The coffee urn complained in the corner. Its contents smelled boiled past any reasonable use. Bar oil carried in from the engine bay, accompanied by dust, cold steel. A radio barked once beyond the wall. The call went unanswered.
I chose the chair nearest the exit, the practical seat for a guest who might be removed.
Bookie entered with a paperback protruding from his jacket pocket. He stopped in front of me, examining the notebook on my knee. The elastic still held the cover shut. His expression had the professional neutrality of a medic deciding whether a patient was lying.
“You writing this?”
Eighteen months compressed behind my ribs.
“No.”
He waited past the point required by courtesy.
“All right.”
He sat in the second row, removed the paperback, then rested the unopened book on his thigh.
The others arrived as they might have on any Tuesday.
Snow melted off their boots, darkening the floor.
Two men debated the county plow’s habit of berming the driveway.
Both seemed pleased to have the old complaint available.
Wes came in laughing at a story begun outside.
A young man in a beanie asked twice whether they would repair the shed roof before the collapse.
Someone discovered that none of the available coffee lids fit the cups.
I watched Wes’s shoulders. I checked the young man’s hands. The man by the window kept looking toward the door; he had missed at least two mornings with a razor.
Habit turned each observation into possible copy.
I made myself see people instead.
Nine men waited to receive news that would reorder years of memory. For now, they were arguing about a snowplow.
Cleo would be at daycare drop-off. Junie would object to her mittens. Later, someone would tell Cleo what happened in this room. She would work backward, discovering that I had known first.
My friend. Eamon’s wife.
Failing to call her would cost me; I would pay. Warning her would have inserted me into the act Cal had chosen to perform himself. I had taken enough from his mouth already.
The folded page rested against my thigh.
Don’t lie.
Don’t sleep with sources.
Don’t write what you can’t defend.
A fourth rule had begun to form, though I had not found language precise enough to hold the principle. A person owns his voice before anyone owns the account of his words. The wording needed work.
Live an honest life, my daisy chain.
Rosemary had written that to her son. I had carried the sentence for three weeks as if my own name appeared on the envelope.
The outer door closed. Conversation dwindled. One of the men set down his cup without drinking.
Cal walked up the aisle, stopping beside the whiteboard with yesterday’s numbers still visible over his shoulder. He placed one hand on the table. Touching the table before speaking was his way of anchoring himself.
I slipped the elastic from my notebook.
The cover started to open. I shut the notebook again, replaced the band, then laid the pen across the cover. Both palms covered the notebook, as his hand had once covered mine across a motel desk.
The urn clicked in the corner. Outside, the halyard struck the flagpole again.
Wes stopped worrying the loose edge of his coffee lid.