Chapter 9
TREYTON
Bison rolled up the ridge at two-thirty on Friday with road dust on his jeans and a charity-ride patch sewn onto the back of his leather jacket. I heard the bike from inside the workshop and came out to find Biscuit already losing his mind, running circles around the Harley like he was just a pup.
Bison killed the engine, swung off, and pulled me into a hug before I could say anything. The kind Mama Mae had trained back into both of us years ago. The kind that used to feel like work and didn't anymore.
He let me go. He stepped back. He looked at my face for half a second.
“Oh,” he said. “So she's already here, then.”
“Shut up.”
“That bad?”
I didn't answer. I walked back to the porch step and sat down. He followed. Biscuit settled between us with his chin on Bison's boot, which was a betrayal I had been expecting and had decided in advance not to feel.
“I'm gonna need a beer,” Bison said.
“It's two in the afternoon.”
“I rode in from Salina, Kansas at six this morning. It's a beer.”
I went inside and brought him a beer.
He sat on my porch in the early afternoon sun and drank it slow, the way Bison drank everything slow, and he looked out over the meadow and the gravel turnout and Cabin Three with the door shut and the empty boxes I knew were stacked inside it, and he didn't say anything for the first ten minutes. That was Bison. He waited.
“Tell me about the charity ride,” I said.
“Wyoming. Tomorrow. Three hundred miles in two days for the veterans' foundation. I'm riding with two of Mae's church people and a guy from Lubbock who can't shift without grinding it.” He took a long pull on the beer. “I'll tell you about it next time. Talk to me about her.”
“Bison.”
“I said talk. I didn't say apologize. Talk.”
I drank. Set the bottle on the armrest. “She's leaving in a week.”
“The artist.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
I looked at him. “That's it?”
“No.” He scratched Biscuit's ear and took another pull. “What else?”
“There's a thing in Maine. Starts in September and goes for six months.”
“Is she taking it?”
“I don't know.”
“You didn’t ask?”
“No.”
Bison nodded slowly, like he was working through something in his head he didn't need to say out loud yet. “When'd you pull back?”
I didn't answer.
“Berg.”
“Two weeks ago.”
“And you've been not talking about it since.”
It wasn't a question, so I didn't treat it like one.
Bison leaned back in the chair and looked out at the ridge. “You're doing the thing.”
“What thing?”
“The thing you always do. You pulled back and you've been letting the distance get bigger every day since.” He turned his head and looked at me dead-on. “You're going to let it get so big she’ll walk out and you’ll spend the next forty years telling yourself she chose to leave.”
I didn't say anything, but my hand tightened around the bottle.
“Mama Mae's been asking about you every Sunday,” Bison said. “I'm running out of ways to say you’re still hiding out on a mountain.”
“What does she say?”
He thought about it. “Tell Berg his bones know what to do. He's just refusing to listen to them.”
“Tell her I'm fine.”
“I do. She didn't buy it when you were fourteen, and she doesn't buy it now.”
I looked at the valley. The light was golden now, the kind that made everything look like it was already a memory.
“There's a thing tonight,” I said, after a while. “An art unveiling at the lodge. Soleil is showing the book she's been working on.”
“Are you going?”
“No.”
“Berg.”
“I haven't decided.”
“You've decided. You decided you weren't going about an hour ago. I can see it on your face. Decide the other thing.” He looked sideways at me. “Go to that thing tonight. Whatever it is. Show up where she can see you.”
Bison stood, drained the rest of his beer, and set the bottle on the railing. He swung back onto the bike and kicked the engine over. It caught with a growl that sent Biscuit scrambling back a few steps.
“Are you riding through on the way back?” I asked. I’d forgotten what it was like to be around someone who knew who I was underneath the gruff exterior I showed to the world. In the short time he’d been sitting on my porch, Bison had reminded me.
“Not for a while. Got the Texas leg after Wyoming, then Mama Mae wants me through Broken Bend for a Sunday.” He swung a leg over the bike. “Berg. Listen. You're not going to ruin it because she leaves. You're going to ruin it because you made sure she had to.”
He pulled out of the gravel turnout and rode back down the ridge with his elbow up in a wave I could see from the porch, and I sat there with an empty beer bottle on the step between me and where he had been sitting, and Biscuit watched the dust settle, and after a minute he came back over and put his chin on my boot, which was a thing he did when he had decided I needed it.
I told myself I wasn't going to the Bloom Festival.
I told myself that through dinner. Through washing the plate and leaving it in the rack. Through standing in the bedroom staring at the clean shirts hanging in the closet like they had an opinion. I changed into one. Changed back. Put the first one on again.
Then I was in the truck driving down to the lodge.
The festival was set up on the lawn. Paper lanterns strung between the aspens, a bluegrass trio played near the stone firepit, surrounded by a dozen tables with local makers selling soap and honey and hand-thrown mugs.
I parked at the back of the lot and walked up.
People I knew nodded. I nodded back but didn’t stop to make small talk.
Inside the lodge, the big room was full. Chairs set up in rows, standing room only at the back. I stayed there, my shoulder against the doorframe, and looked for Soleil.
She stood at the podium in a green dress with her hair down. She had her sketchbook open in front of her and her hands on either side of it like she needed to hold onto something. She didn't see me. She was looking at the room but not at anyone in it.
Evelyn introduced her. The room clapped. Soleil smiled and started talking.
She told them about the ridge. About the flowers she'd found in the meadow and the ones she'd drawn badly and the ones she'd given names to because they looked like they wanted them.
The room laughed at that. She told them about the stubborn flower on the ridge who pretends he doesn't notice the bees.
The room laughed again. I didn't.
She kept talking, but I stopped hearing the words. I watched her hands instead. The way she turned a page without looking down. The way she touched the corner of the sketchbook like she was making sure it was still there.
Then she stopped talking and stood there for four seconds with a smile I'd never seen before.
It wasn't for the room. It was for her. The smile of someone who had just done the thing they were afraid they couldn't do and was letting themselves feel it before anyone else got to touch it.
Then she reached for the cloth covering the easel beside her and pulled.
The painting underneath was a watercolor of my black walnut side table.
She'd tilted the perspective to show the underside.
The carved paintbrush blooms were there, rendered in detail I didn't know she'd had time to memorize.
The grain of the wood was right. The angle of the cut was right. Everything was right.
She didn't use my name.
She told the room that the artist who made the table didn't carve the flower for anyone to find. He carved it because it deserved to exist. That was what she wanted her work to do.
The room applauded.
I stood at the back with my hand flat against the doorframe and the understanding that I had never been more thoroughly seen in my life than in the four seconds it took her to pull the cloth off that easel.
The presentation ended. People got up. I turned and walked outside before anyone could stop me.
The air was cooler now, the lanterns lit, the bluegrass trio playing something slow. I crossed the lawn and stopped at the edge. My hands were in my pockets. I didn't know what I was doing out here. I didn't know what I was doing anywhere.
“Treyton.”
I turned.
Soleil stood a few feet away. She'd followed me out. Her hair was still down, and the green dress moved a little in the wind. She was looking at me the way she'd looked at me that morning in the miner's cabin before I'd kissed her.
Hopeful. I could see it on her face, and I couldn't stop seeing it.
I wanted to say something. Anything. Stay. Don't go. I see you too. You belong here. Instead, I pulled back even harder. “You shouldn't have shown them that.”
Her face didn't crack. It just closed.
“I didn't show them you,” she said, her voice quiet. “I showed them what you make. I thought you'd know the difference.”
I opened my mouth to fix it. I couldn't. The fix required me to say the thing I had been refusing to say for two weeks. I could feel the shape of it in my chest. It was such a small thing, just three or four words. I want you to stay or even please, stay but the words felt so unfamiliar in my mouth that I couldn’t speak.
She gave me about three seconds. Then she nodded once. It was a small movement, more a closing than an acknowledgment, and she walked past me toward the parking lot where her SUV was parked.
A paper lantern fell off its string and rolled across the gravel. It stopped against my boot. I looked down at it and didn't move.
Bison's voice played through my head the whole way back up the ridge. You're going to make the room big enough that she walks out of it.
I drove past cabin three. Her lights were on. Her SUV was parked at an angle like she'd pulled in fast and hadn't bothered to straighten it. She was packing. I knew she was packing.
She’d been going to ask me if she could stay. I knew that the way I knew the runoff was bad in spring and the way I knew Mae would never give me the day-old rolls for free. She had been going to ask. She’d been waiting for me to give her one reason. Tonight I’d given her the opposite.
Biscuit was on her porch step.
I stopped the truck.
My dog looked at me through the windshield but didn't come. He just sat there and watched me with his ears down and his tail still. I sat there with the engine running and understood that when I’d made a choice, he’d made one too.
I drove the rest of the way up to my cabin and sat on the porch step in the dark. Biscuit was gone. The ridge was quiet. After a long time I got up, crossed the gravel to the workshop, and turned on the light.
I picked up the spokeshave and looked at the piece of mountain ash I'd been avoiding for weeks. I knew what I had to make. Had known it for a while.
I pulled the wood onto the bench and started working.