Chapter 2 #2
The radio clicks off. She sets it back in the charger and turns to me. Her expression is the expression of a woman who just had a private conversation in front of a stranger and is deciding how much to acknowledge.
“Thank you,” she says. “For the radio.”
“It’s a radio. It sits there whether you use it or not.”
She almost smiles. I don’t know why that bothers me.
I turn to the stove. There’s stew from yesterday in the pot I just pulled out of the fridge.
Elk, potatoes, onion. I made enough for three days because I cook once and eat until it’s gone.
I light the burner and set the pot on it without asking if she’s hungry.
She’s been hiking since morning with a full pack. She’s hungry.
I put a bowl in front of her and a spoon and a piece of bread I baked two days ago that’s still decent.
She sits at the table, which is a table I built from a western larch that came down in a storm three years ago.
The grain has a twist in it that I spent two weeks working with instead of against. It’s the best piece of furniture I’ve ever made.
She runs her fingers along the edge of the wood before she picks up the spoon.
“You built this.”
It’s not a question. I nod.
“The joinery is beautiful. The way you followed the natural curve instead of squaring it off.” She’s looking at the table the way she looked at the clearing. Like she’s seeing the thing underneath the thing. “Most people would have fought the grain. You worked with it.”
I don’t answer. Not because I don’t have one.
Because nobody’s ever said that to me before.
Nobody’s looked at the table I built and seen the decision I made about the grain.
My mother would say it’s nice. Sawyer wouldn’t notice it.
This woman I met once in a bar looked at it for four seconds and saw the choice.
She licks the spoon and her mouth is wide and full and I look at the woodstove because the woodstove has never once made me think something I’d have to deal with later.
“Where should I sleep?” she asks.
I nod toward the bed.
“That’s your bed.”
“I’m aware.”
“I’m not taking your bed.”
“You’re not sleeping on the floor. The porch has a rocker.”
“You’re sleeping on the porch?”
“I sleep on the porch half the time anyway.” This is a lie. I’ve slept on the porch maybe twice. Both times I was too tired to walk inside. I don’t know why I said it. I said it so she’d stop arguing and take the bed. It’s the fastest way to end the conversation.
She looks at me for a second too long. I hold the look because backing down from it would mean something and holding it means nothing. It means nothing.
“Thank you,” she says. “For the stew and the bed and the radio. I’ll be gone before you’re up.”
“I’m up at five.”
“Then I’ll be gone at five.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
She takes her boots off by the bed. Unlaces them slow, deliberate, the way someone does when they’ve been on their feet for fourteen hours and every motion is harder than the one before.
She sets them next to the bed, toes pointed toward the door.
Ready to go. Even her boots are positioned for exit.
She puts her camera bag on the floor beside the bed, close enough to reach from the pillow. Not under the bed. Not across the room. Right there. Where she can touch it.
She asks about a bathroom. I nod toward the door at the back of the cabin.
It’s small, just a shower and a toilet, gravity-fed from the spring uphill.
I added it the second summer. She disappears inside and I hear the water run and I busy myself banking the woodstove because standing in a one-room cabin listening to a woman shower is not something I’m going to do.
I take a blanket from the shelf and go outside.
The rocker is comfortable. I built it to be.
Three months of reworking the curve until it held my weight exactly right, and on summer nights when the air drops cool and the stars are out, I’ve fallen asleep in it more than once.
So when I told her I sleep on the porch half the time, it was only mostly a lie.
The mountain is quiet. The stars are out. The air has dropped fifteen degrees since sunset and I can smell pine and cold rock and the distant mineral edge of the creek.
I should sleep. I close my eyes. I think about the wood I split today and the fence post on the east line that needs replacing and the Morgan mare at the Clearwater ranch that’s due for new shoes next week.
I think about the way she touched my table.
I open my eyes.
I go inside at two in the morning. For water. I go inside for water. That’s the reason.
She’s asleep. On her side, facing the wall, one hand on the camera bag strap.
The window lets in enough moonlight to see her face.
The line of her jaw. The way her breathing is slow and even and completely unconcerned with the fact that she’s sleeping in a stranger’s bed on a mountain she doesn’t know.
She trusted me. She walked into my cabin and ate my food and took my bed and fell asleep.
She’s not afraid of me. I don’t know what to do with that.
People aren’t usually afraid of me, exactly, but they’re careful.
They keep a distance. They read the scowl and they give me space and that system works.
She walked up to my booth in a bar and asked to take my photograph. She climbed through my fence. She’s sleeping in my bed.
I’m standing in a doorway at two in the morning watching a woman sleep.
I’m aware of how this looks. I’m aware that if I were a reasonable person I’d get my water and go back to the porch.
Forget about the curves. Forget the way she said “you worked with it” like she understood something about me that I’ve never explained to anyone.
I am not a reasonable person. I’ve never claimed to be. But this is a new kind of unreasonable and I don’t like it.
I get the water. I go back to the porch. I don’t sleep.
Dawn comes slow. The east ridge goes from black to gray to pale gold. The first birds start up and the air smells like morning on a mountain, which is the best smell in the world. I’ve never needed to tell anyone that because there’s never been anyone to tell.
I hear her stir inside. The creak of the bed frame. The soft sound of someone sitting up and remembering where they are.
She’s leaving today. She said so. I said so. It’s the only thing we agreed on and we agreed on it twice.
The light hits the ridge. I wait. I don’t know what I’m waiting for. I’m a man who always knows what comes next. Right now I’m sitting on a porch I built with my own hands, watching the sun come up over my mountain, and I don’t have a single answer for what happens when she walks out that door.
I hear her boots on the cabin floor. She’s getting ready to leave.
Good.
That’s what I want.