Chapter Four
HAWK
I'm up before sunrise, down the mountain on my bike in the dark.
Marvin's pies are usually in the oven by five-thirty.
Six, this morning. I tell myself the extra cherry is for the lunch trade and not because a certain gorgeous redhead said the word criminal to me two days ago with a big smile on her face.
By seven I'm back on my porch with coffee as the fog peels up out of the valley.
From my cabin, you can see the whole of High Vale laid out at once.
The winding river glints in the sun where it bends past the town.
Forty miles of ridgeline behind it that I know the way other men know their own houses.
I've been to a lot of places on the government's dime, most of which I don't talk about, and I came back to this one on purpose.
A town like this runs on about two hundred people doing their jobs and looking out for each other.
It's worth keeping this place the way it is.
The way it was, before the fucking Rotmere corporation got its greasy hands on it.
Behind my cabin there's an outbuilding that looks like a woodshed.
Inside is a potter's wheel. Also a kiln, three shelves of bowls and mugs that nobody but me has ever seen. There’s also a workbench with a half-poured epoxy board on it, and my grandfather's fiddle hanging by the door where the damp can't get it.
My grandma taught me pastry and her brother taught me the fiddle.
The pottery I picked up at a VA program years back.
Some men drink; I throw pots. It works out cheaper and I get bowls out of it.
Then I take the mountain road up to High Vale Lodge.
I had the ranger job before the corporation bought the place and they kept me on.
Sometimes I have to take rich assholes on hunting trips, but mainly they leave me alone.
Prez told me to keep it secret that I’m a member of the MC, once he and Doc worked out they were up to no good.
So I don’t wear my patch around town, only at the clubhouse and the bar Striker owns outside of town.
The trail’s washed out below the north overlook, a camper's left a fire ring smoldering that I kick apart and soak, and a yearling bear's been at the trailhead dumpsters again. It’s honest work and usually keeps my brain busy.
But today my mind keeps wandering back to Taryn, as hard as I try not to let it.
By early evening, I'm at the clubhouse with my apron on.
Cooking for the High Vale Outlaws is like feeding a litter of wolves that learned to use forks.
Tonight it's venison chili and cornbread for whoever's around, which with Prez and Doc still out of state is a short table.
I've had the club kitchen to myself for years.
It's the one place nobody bugs me, on account of I control the food and everybody knows it.
There’s a door eight feet from the window, propped open, and the youngest patch in our club comes through the window anyway, lands like a cat, and is in my chili up to the wrist before I can get the spoon up.
I crack his knuckles with it. Savage grew up on the streets and doesn’t have a single shred of manners in his wiry body. I’ve seen him fight, though, and he’s vicious, so no wonder Prez keeps him around.
He hops up on the counter and keeps eating. “Worth it. You hit like an old man, old man. Hey… you trimmed the beard.”
“It needed cutting.”
“It's needed cutting since March." He points at me. “I hear you’ve been down at Marvin's so much that Lila’s teasing you about it. Says you need your name on the back of one of the stools at the counter. Which is why I've got nine entries in the new pool.”
“What new pool?” This little shit is already starting to grate on my nerves.
“Can't tell you, since you’re the subject. It'd compromise the integrity of the pool.” He raises a scar-streaked eyebrow in my direction. “What I can tell you is Wrench says the new cook looks like sunshine in an apron, and that you bought her pie. That's like a wolf buying somebody a sheep."
“That doesn’t even make sense.” I stare at the chili.
“Knew it!” He's delighted. Savage spins all the way around on the counter once, like a kid, boots and all.
“Here's what we do. Saturday, Striker and Bethany’s engagement party.
I fake a medical emergency, nothing big, I fall down by the pool table, you do battlefield first aid on me in front of her.
Women love competence. I've seen it work.”
“You ain’t never seen that work.”
He counts on his fingers. “Option two, there's that young bear in the forest, you said so last week. We bait it, then bring it down Main Street and–”
“No.”
“You haven't heard where the bear goes.”
“Nowhere, Savage. The bear goes nowhere. Get the fuck off my counter.”
The MC’s sergeant-at-arms’ engagement party is a big deal, Viv's bringing some fancy French food like it’s a state dinner.
And Striker’s had a cat living on the bar for a month who’s nameless so far.
There's a pool on the cat's name too, and I'd bet my bike Savage is running that one and has rigged it.
Savage eases down from the counter, eyes still on the chili. “So you’re gonna deny you like her?”
“The man she came here for left her stranded. She doesn't need some forty-year-old grump sniffing around.”
Savage goes quiet for a second. He looks at me sideways, and behind all the mouth, there’s a glimmer of kindness.
“Or she's new in a town where she knows nobody,” he says. “You're real good at deciding what folks need, Hawk. But… you ever try asking them?" Then, because he can't help it, he ruins it. “Also if you don't ask her to come Saturday I'm telling everyone you play the fiddle.”
“You don't know that I play the fiddle.” I point the spoon at him.
“I know everything,” Savage says serenely, and leaves through the window.
The brothers eat at seven. I take my bowl out to the porch rail and don't taste much of it. Then I ride home.
I go out to the shed, unlock it, and sit at the workbench, and the epoxy board I'm partway through stares back at me. I push it away, walk back to the house, and open the fridge.
The backstrap is sitting on the middle shelf, thawing in its white paper, the date in my handwriting. Best cut off the best animal I've taken in five years. I moved it down from the freezer yesterday morning. I didn't let myself think about why at the time, and I'm not going to start now.
A man brings a woman flowers, they die in a week.
But if a man brings a cook fifteen pounds of prime venison he field-dressed himself, that's a different conversation. I take the backstrap, a frozen shoulder for Marvin’s walk-in, and a jar of the huckleberry preserves I put up in August, then walk out to my bike.
The ride down the mountain clears my head.
The diner is closed, chairs up, but there's light spilling out of the kitchen window into the back lot. Through the glass, Taryn’s at the worktable with her sleeves shoved up, flour to the elbows, hair coming out of its knot, working dough.
The radio's on in there. She's talking to the dough, or maybe singing to it. Knowing her, either's possible.
I sit on the bike for a minute watching her, then knock on the back door.
Locks turn, the door opens, and the warm kitchen air rolls out around her. The smile that breaks out of her could run the town's grid for a week. Stupid as it sounds, I want to make her smile like that all the time.
“Hawk!” She leans on the doorframe, takes in the wrapped packages in my arms, and raises an eyebrow. “You brought me presents.”
“I brought Marvin venison,” I say. “You're going to want to cook it.”