Chapter 3
Chapter Three
HARRISON
Aweek of Paige Thomas, and the woman has rearranged my entire morning without touching a thing.
Seven fifteen. Every day. Hoofbeats through the firs if she's on that buckskin. Engine rattle if she took the ranch truck. Either way, the thermos comes out, the two dented mugs get filled, and she plants herself in my workspace with coffee that's better than mine and a mouth that won't quit.
I've stopped pretending it bothers me. That's the problem.
Somewhere around day four, my body started listening for her.
I caught myself checking the tree line at seven ten.
Seven twelve. Ear protection off before she crested the rise because I didn't want to miss the hoofbeats.
A forty year old man, timing his morning to a woman who's been alive less time than he's been swinging an axe.
Granddad would've laughed himself sick.
Today she's on the tractor. Ball cap backward, braid swinging, sleeves rolled to her elbows, and she brings that brush cutter over the east ridge and puts it into a stand of scrub without hesitating.
Drops the deck, opens the throttle, lays a line straight as a chalk snap across the field.
Gets to the fence, spins the whole rig in its own length, comes back tight enough that there's no daylight between passes.
My saw's idling. Has been for three passes now. Might be four.
She catches me watching on the fifth. Doesn't wave. Just tips the ball cap brim at me, real slow, and grins.
Christ.
Get back to work, old man.
The trees don't care what I want. They come down where I put them.
Four more by mid-morning, clean hinges, good fiber, and every single one I'm thinking about the way she spins that tractor at the fence.
Efficient. Sure-handed. No wasted motion.
Same way she pours coffee, same way she rides.
Like her body's been doing it so long her mind's free to wander wherever it pleases.
I wonder where it wanders.
That's not my business.
Around ten she kills the engine and crosses the stubble with the thermos. My body is already turning toward her before I've told it to.
"Saw a hawk land on that dead fir by the creek." She holds out my mug. "Biggest redtail I've ever seen. You probably didn't notice, cause you definitely weren't watching me."
"I was checking the wind."
"Uh huh." She pours, and that grin tucks into the corner of her mouth. "Wind's been northwest all morning. Hasn't moved."
I take the coffee. Drink. Don't look at her, because when I look at her my brain does something my body shouldn't follow.
"Nacogdoches," I say.
She goes still beside me.
"You asked where I'm from. Couple days back." I keep my eyes on the treeline. "East Texas. Piney woods. My granddad ran a mill outside of it. Had me pulling slabs off the deck at nine."
"He teach you the hinge?"
"Taught me everything worth keeping."
She lets that sit. Doesn't push. Sips her coffee and watches the hawk circle. That's something about her. Most people hear a gap in a conversation and rush to fill it. Paige hears a gap and makes room for it.
"What about you," I hear myself say, and I'm as surprised as she is.
"What about me what?"
"Coos Bay. Your dad's side. You said you spent a summer chasing it down."
Her face does something soft. Unguarded. I look away because I'm not entitled to see that, and also because looking at it directly might kill me.
"Coquille Indian Tribe," she says. "Southwestern Oregon.
My dad was half, never talked about it. Left when I was eleven.
Mama raised me in her diner, never bad-mouthed him, but never explained him either.
So at nineteen, I drove down the coast with a notebook and started asking questions at tribal offices. "
"They let you in?"
"Some did. Some didn't. Can't register if you can't prove direct lineage, and my dad wasn't registered either, so.
" She shrugs. "But an elder woman in Coos Bay sat with me for a whole afternoon.
Told me stories. Showed me how they wove cedar bark baskets.
Taught me the plants her grandmother taught her. "
"That backpack of yours."
Her eyes come to me, surprised. "You noticed that."
"Cedar bark and dogbane. You don't see that at the feed store."
The smile she gives me is different from the one she usually wears. Quieter. Like I just handed her something she didn't expect to receive.
"I made it the summer after that trip." She turns the mug in her hands. "Can't prove I belong anywhere on paper. But my hands know what they know."
I get that. More than she realizes.
We stand there. The hawk circles. The stubble smells like cut earth in the heat, and my arm is close enough to hers that I can feel the warmth coming off her skin without touching it.
"Alright." She drains her cup. "I've got eight more acres of scrub before that stump team gets here next week. And you've got lumber to drop. Better earn that coffee."
"I earned it four trees ago."
"Look at that. He's counting." She turns for the tractor, walking backward so she can keep her eyes on me, and I swear this woman's gonna trip over a root doing that one day and it'll be my fault for not telling her to turn around.
"Hey, Harrison."
"What."
"That northeast corner I'm heading into. Anything under that scrub I should know about?"
My gut drops.
"Old fence line," I say, already pulling my gloves on. "Rotted posts. But the wire'll still be in the ground. Give me twenty minutes, I'll walk it."
"Gabe's maps don't show a fence."
"Gabe's maps are forty years younger than that wire."
She weighs it. Tips her head.
"Fifteen minutes. Then I'm cutting."
She's in that cab before I've got both gloves on.
I'm not fast enough.
I make it maybe forty feet into the northeast section when the engine note drops. Every man who's worked around iron knows that sound. Healthy roar gone, something underneath screaming, metal binding against metal, and the rig lurches once before the whole thing dies.
The ticking of hot metal is the only sound left in that field.
I'm running.
She's out of the seat by the time I reach her. Cap dragged off, hand shaking. A bright line of blood running down her right forearm from where the wire snapped back and caught her through the cab window.
My hands are on her shoulders.
"Where."
"It's a scratch, Harrison."
"Let me see."
"It's a scratch."
"Paige."
She holds her arm out. Four inches of open skin, ragged edges, dirt in the wound. The barbed wire hanging off the cutter shaft is rusted through. My stomach turns over.
"Tetanus?"
"Two years ago."
"You're sure."
"I'm sure. Quit growling at me."
I am growling. I didn't realize.
My truck's fifty yards back. I steer her toward it with a hand on her lower back because she's walking too fast for someone whose arm is bleeding and her boots keep catching on the stubble.
"I can walk, Harrison."
"Then walk faster."
"Wow. Incredible bedside manner. Real tender."
The tailgate drops. My hands find her waist and lift her onto it, and she weighs nothing, and her skin is warm through her shirt, and she makes a noise that might be surprise or might be something else entirely. My palms burn for a full second after I let go.
First aid kit. Water jug. I flush the wound, pick the rust out flake by flake with the tweezers. She doesn't flinch. Not once. Just breathes. My hip's pressed against her knee. Can't remember when that started.
"You're shaking," she says. Quiet.
"I'm fine."
"Okay."
She lets me work. I tape the gauze down, wrap it. My thumb runs across the tape edge to smooth it and I realize I'm touching skin I don't need to be touching. I stop.
When I look up she's right there. Eyes on mine. Green and steady and too close for any thought I ought to be having.
I step back.
"Somebody's driving you to the clinic. That needs proper stitches."
She hops off the tailgate. Lands close. Close enough I can count the freckles across her nose, and I've been counting them for a week, and that should scare me more than it does.
"I'll drive myself. You've got a shaft to clear." She points at my chest without quite touching it. "But you were right about the fence line. I owe you that."
"Don't owe me anything."
"Sure I don't." She walks toward her truck. Stops. Turns around with that half-grin that's been slowly dismantling everything I built around myself for twelve years. "Same time tomorrow?"
"Waste of time."
"You keep saying that."
"You keep showing up."
"Yeah." The grin goes full. "I do."
She drives off. Slow, one-armed, gravel popping under the tires.
I stand at the tailgate and look at the tweezers in my hand. There's a rust flake on the tip. My hands are still shaking, and it's got nothing to do with iron in the ground.
It takes me an hour to clear the wire off that shaft.
Ruined a pair of gloves. Every strand I pull, I think about four inches of ragged skin and how fast my boots moved across that field.
Faster than they needed to. Faster than a man moves for a coworker.
For a manager. For anybody whose business isn't his own.
My phone buzzes in my back pocket.
Gabe
Tractor's down? Paige okay?
Old fence wire. Not on the maps. Shaft's wrapped but I've cleared it. She caught her arm. Driving herself to the clinic now.
Gabe
You check it?
Flushed and wrapped it. She needs stitches. Tell whoever's at the clinic she's coming.
Gabe
Will do. Thanks for looking out.
I pocket the phone. Stare at the cleared field. The stumps. The downed timber stacked neat from a week's worth of mornings that all started the same way. Seven fifteen. Hoofbeats. Coffee. Her.
A week ago I didn't know her name.
Now my hands shake when she bleeds.
That's all I need to know about how much trouble I'm in.