2. The Space Between Answers
The Space Between Answers
The pump began hammering before dawn. Harris woke on the second strike, and by the fourth he was pulling on yesterday’s jeans. He crossed the cabin in the dark, stepped into his boots without socks, and was outside before the pipes hit again. The sound traveled through the ground more than the air.
Pressure problem. Probably the switch.
He cut behind the lodge toward the pump house and found Walt already there, of course, standing in the doorway with one boot half-laced and a hand braced against the frame while he bent to finish it.
“I’ve got it,” Harris said.
Walt straightened. “Could be the line.”
“Line’s holding.”
“It was holdin’ last night. Don’t mean it’s holdin’ now.”
Harris opened the panel and watched the gauge jump. Switch contacts. Dust. Nothing dramatic, which was good. Physical problems remained his favorite kind. They had causes and tools, and they did not improve because anybody talked longer.
“I’ll clean it.”
Walt stayed behind him.
“You can go.”
“I’m already here.”
For two years, his father had been moving slower and pretending he wasn’t. Harris had noticed before Walt did, which was its own problem.
“I’ll holler if I need you.”
Walt’s mouth tightened. “Ain’t dead yet.”
“Didn’t say you were.”
“You were thinkin’ it loud enough.”
He stepped back but remained in the doorway while Harris cleaned the contacts and reset the switch.
Walt had spent most of Harris’s childhood treating the limits of his body as a private disagreement, something that might surrender if he refused to acknowledge it long enough.
Apparently Harris had inherited the habit along with everything else.
The gauge steadied. Only then did Walt leave, his boots dragging slightly over the gravel in a way he would have denied if Harris mentioned it.
By the time Harris reset the pressure, the eastern ridge had begun to pale.
At this hour, before the lodge woke, the ranch was simply itself.
The barns were dark, horses shifted softly in their stalls, and nobody was asking where breakfast was served or whether the trail ride would be scenic enough for photographs.
In another couple hours, guests would begin moving through the lodge, and now there would also be a goddamn film crew among them.
Harris had never wanted the guest business the way the rest of the family did.
He understood why it existed. Cattle didn’t bring in enough anymore, not reliably, and the ranch had bills whether beef prices were good or not.
Cabins brought money. Weddings brought more.
Trail rides and corporate retreats kept roofs repaired and hay coming in.
That didn’t mean he had to enjoy children screaming near the corrals, photographers backing into places they had no right going, or strangers appearing on trails Harris had ridden since he was old enough to sit a saddle.
Given the choice, he would have kept the place mostly to themselves: the horses, the cattle, the land, his family coming and going. That was plenty.
Evan had pushed hardest for the documentary, though Elise and the rest of them agreed the money and attention were too useful to refuse. The ranch needed both badly enough that Harris had eventually run out of objections that mattered.
When he reached the cabin, the production schedule was waiting on the kitchen table beneath the blue ceramic bowl Claire had bought during the first year of their marriage. The bowl still held his keys because it worked, which was reason enough to keep a thing.
His interview had been circled.
4:30 P.M.
HARRISON SHAW — INITIAL INTERVIEW
45 MINUTES
Forty-five minutes was enough time to reset a stretch of fence or clean three stalls. A long damn time to sit under lights and explain himself.
* * *
By four twenty-seven, Harris had run out of legitimate reasons not to enter the lodge.
Della came out of the interview room carrying untouched coffee, the skin around her eyes pink. Harris straightened from the wall before he could stop himself.
She read the question before he asked. “He didn’t do anything wrong. Some things are just hard to talk about.”
Harris looked toward the closed door. “All right.”
She straightened the edge of his collar. “Try not to go in there looking for a reason to dislike him.”
“I already dislike him.”
“Well, that saves time, I suppose.”
“Ma.”
“What?” Her mouth softened. “You know, you’re very handsome when you’re being unreasonable.”
Harris’s eyes went briefly skyward.
Della patted his arm, apparently satisfied with the damage she had done, and headed toward the dining room when one of the kitchen staff called for her.
If Navarro had upset her, she would have protected Harris from that knowledge whether he wanted protecting or not.
But she had not looked like she was protecting him.
She had looked tired and sad and certain Jay was not responsible.
That would do for now.
The interview room had been arranged so it barely looked arranged: one chair near a north-facing window, a bookshelf behind it, soft light from the side. Every cable had been taped neatly along the baseboard instead of crossing the floor.
No tripping hazards. Harris gave them credit for that before he looked at anything else.
Navarro stood near the window with a notebook, wearing a pale blue shirt with the sleeves rolled. His hair had been pushed back except for one piece already falling forward again. When he looked up, the light caught his eyes. Hazel did not quite cover it. Green near the center, amber farther out.
Harris registered the colors because eyes were part of a face. Nothing more complicated than that.
“You’re early,” Jay said.
Harris looked at the clock. “Guess three minutes is early by New York standards.”
One corner of Jay’s mouth moved. “Sit whenever you’re ready.”
He picked up a small microphone. “I’ll need to attach this to your shirt.”
Harris held out his hand, and Jay passed it over without argument. Harris clipped it near the second button.
“The cable runs inside.”
Harris looked at him, brows slightly raised.
“Looks messy on camera otherwise.”
Harris opened another button and pushed the cable beneath his shirt. The clip caught against the fabric, and his fingers were too large to get hold of it properly. He worked at it longer than he should have.
Jay allowed the failure to continue for several seconds before stepping closer. “May I?”
Harris should have handed the whole thing back. Instead, he dropped his hands.
Jay caught the cable between two fingers and drew it free beneath Harris’s collar.
The backs of his fingers brushed the skin below Harris’s throat, barely contact, but the heat remained after his hand moved away.
Harris fixed his attention on the pale scar near the base of Jay’s thumb until the microphone settled into place.
“There.” Jay stepped back. “Comfortable?”
“Fine.”
Jay returned to his chair, one ankle over the opposite knee and the notebook loose in his lap.
Most men relaxed when they sat down. Navarro only stopped moving.
Whatever energy kept him talking with his hands and crossing a yard like he had somewhere urgent to be gathered instead in his attention, and then all of it settled on Harris.
Harris had spent most of his life around people who listened to him while doing something else. Checking a horse. Driving. Fixing equipment. Even Claire had asked the important questions while washing dishes or sorting invoices, leaving both of them somewhere else to put their eyes.
Jay looked at him as though there were nothing else in the room worth studying. Harris did not particularly care for it.
Eli raised one hand behind the camera, and the recording began.
Jay started with the straightforward stuff instead of the traps Harris had expected. How long had he worked the ranch full-time? Since twenty. Before that? Summers, weekends, whenever needed. What had he expected to do instead?
“Nothing useful.”
Jay waited. Harris didn’t elaborate.
The man seemed more interested in the space around an answer than the answer itself, which was worse. At least a direct question gave Harris something solid to push against.
Jay moved on to the guest operation: tourism, income, land, Walt’s insistence that guest revenue remained supplemental when Evan’s books said otherwise.
“Does your father agree that tourism keeps the cattle side of the business going?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“But he knows the numbers?”
“Yup.”
Jay watched him for a second, then moved on without tugging at the answer until it said something Harris had not meant. That should have made him easier to tolerate. It did not.
“What’s changed most in ten years?”
“The water.”
“How?”
“Less snow that stays. Earlier runoff.”
“What does that change here?”
Harris looked toward the window. The lodge lawn remained green because they paid to keep it green; beyond it, the pasture had already started turning.
“We move cattle sooner. Rest ground longer. Buy hay farther out. Haul water where we didn’t used to.”
“What happens if that keeps going?”
“We change.”
Jay’s attention narrowed. “You don’t sound like you mean that as a neutral word.”
Harris looked at him. Jay left the silence where it was instead of rushing to fill it.
“Change costs,” Harris said.
“Money?”
“Everything costs money.”
Jay waited without pushing and without rescuing him from the quiet.
Harris could have stopped. “Not just money.”
There. Enough.
That was how Navarro did it. He did not pull until people gave him something. He left room, and apparently they filled it for him. Disturbing method. Effective, though.
The creek project was easier: fence placement, willow, erosion, cattle access. Years of work reduced to things Harris could point at and explain.
“Eleanor Shaw is listed as the original project lead.”
Hearing her full name aloud stopped the interview cold.
“Yup.”
“Your sister, right?”
Harris nodded.
“Older?”
“One year.”
“What does Eleanor think the ranch needs to become?”