20. My Whole Life Fits on One Little Map
My Whole Life Fits on One Little Map
By Wednesday morning, the forecast had changed twice.
The stronger winds were still expected sometime between that night and Thursday, but the timing kept moving, and nobody seemed entirely sure which direction they would come from.
Harris checked the incident map before breakfast, again while loading the truck, and once more before they left the ranch.
He told himself that was what had him uneasy as they headed east.
It was mostly true.
Jay sat beside him with a travel mug braced between his knees and the regional meeting packet open against one thigh, already underlining something.
Fire coordination. Emergency access. Water allocation.
Land-use permitting. Two sessions that day, dinner somewhere in between, then an early briefing Thursday morning.
Harris glanced over. “You takin’ notes before we get there?”
Jay looked up. “Preparation is the cornerstone of excellence.”
“Damn, Navarro. You had that one locked and loaded.”
“Preparation is my forte.”
“It’s just a regional meeting.”
“Exactly. Multiple counties. Which means I’m entering a hostile environment.”
Harris looked back at the road, smiling despite himself.
The county had booked him a room because the Thursday briefing started early enough that driving home and back made no sense. That had meant nothing until Jay decided to come.
Now they were going to stay in the same hotel.
Separate rooms, but no family nearby to notice where Jay went after dark.
No production crew down the hall. No cabin within sight of the lodge, and no need to calculate whether Evan might come looking for a radio or Della might cross the yard with leftovers.
The privacy should have made everything easier. Instead, Harris had spent most of the previous night thinking about what Jay might expect once they had it.
They had been working toward sex for weeks, whether either of them named it or not. The mountain. Jay in Harris’s cabin. The tack room. Every private hour since. Harris wanted more badly enough that the thought had kept him awake long after the cabin went dark.
He remembered Jay’s hand inside the back of his jeans and the shock of wanting something before he understood whether he was ready for it.
Beside him, Jay closed the agenda. “You okay?”
“Yup.”
“You’ve checked the rearview mirror approximately nine hundred times.”
Harris glanced at him. Jay looked completely relaxed. Of course he did—he had spent the morning reading about easements and emergency-access policy for enjoyment. For Jay, that was practically a meditation.
“Fire weather,” Harris said.
That was true enough.
The humor left Jay’s face. “You know we can turn around if you’re that worried about leaving.”
“We’re fine.”
“You sure?”
“Evan calls if anything changes.”
“And if the forecast gets worse?”
“We go back.”
The truck continued east beneath a sky so clear it felt hostile.
After several miles, Jay pointed toward a road disappearing between two low hills. “Does that lead anywhere?”
“Every road leads somewhere.”
“That sounded unnecessarily philosophical.”
“Goes north to the Keller place.”
“The ranch with the disputed well?”
Harris looked over with some alarm.
Jay shrugged. “I read the briefing packet.”
“Course you did.”
“The county gave me forty-two pages. It would have been rude not to.”
Harris just shook his head.
Jay closed the packet and reached for the glove box.
“What’re you doing?”
“Three hours in your truck has made me curious about what you keep in here.”
“Nothing interesting.”
“That is exactly what someone with something interesting in his glove box would say.”
Harris heard papers shifting, the rattle of a flashlight, then silence.
“Oh,” Jay said triumphantly.
He glanced over. Jay was holding up an Orville Peck CD.
“Don’t.”
“You keep Pony in your glove box.”
“Truck’s got a CD player.”
“That was not the surprising part.”
“Already told you I got two of his albums.”
Jay turned the case over, looking far too pleased with himself. “Knowing you own them and discovering one in its natural habitat are different experiences.”
Before Harris could stop him, Jay slid the disc into the stereo.
The first track filled the cab. Jay settled back against the seat, meeting packet temporarily forgotten. Harris kept his eyes on the road, but made no attempt to turn it off.
The rest of the drive passed easily enough that Harris almost forgot to be nervous.
Almost.
* * *
By four thirty, Harris had considered faking his own death twice.
The first time came during a forty-seven-minute discussion of easement language. The second arrived when a man from county planning said, “I’d like to circle back to subsection C,” and Jay leaned forward with genuine interest.
Harris glared at him from three chairs away.
Jay had been sitting through meetings since nine without any visible decline in function.
He asked questions, took notes, and somehow learned the names of six people Harris had seen at county meetings for years and still privately identified as Dude with Glasses and Other Doug.
At lunch, he cornered someone from emergency management about livestock evacuation routes and returned pleased because he had secured permission to film a map.
Harris ate a sandwich and wondered whether it was possible to drown himself in the decorative fountain outside.
Apparently there were different kinds of endurance. Jay could survive six hours beneath fluorescent lights and emerge energized. Harris could carry a calf half a mile. Everybody had gifts.
The fire-coordination session had at least confirmed what Harris already suspected.
Conditions were bad, but neither incident nearest Shaw Ranch posed an immediate threat.
There were no evacuation recommendations and no relevant road closures.
The wind remained the part nobody could pin down; the forecast had shifted twice since breakfast, and the models still disagreed about timing and direction.
They were planning around possibilities rather than certainty. That, Harris understood.
The land-use session was less useful. When it finally ended, Jay remained near the front talking to a county planner about groundwater restrictions, one hand in his pocket and the other moving as he spoke.
Harris could personally confirm that groundwater restrictions were not sexually exciting. Somehow Jay made them look like they might be.
Jay glanced across the room and caught him watching. His mouth changed slightly—a private smile, there and gone.
Heat rose along Harris’s neck. Ridiculous.
Jay excused himself and crossed the room. “You ready?”
“Been ready since subsection C.”
“That was hours ago.”
“Exactly.”
Jay laughed as Harris opened the door for him. “You hated every second of this, didn’t you?”
“Considered dying.”
“Meanwhile, I had a fantastic time.”
“I noticed.”
“Some of us have intellectual stamina.”
“Some of us got actual jobs.”
Outside, the wind had picked up enough to drive dust in thin sheets across the parking lot.
Harris checked his phone before they reached the truck.
No calls from Evan. No county alerts. The northwestern fire had gained acreage during the afternoon, but the containment line on the relevant side continued to hold.
Nothing had changed enough to require him at home.
He called anyway.
Evan answered on the second ring. “Everything’s fine.”
“Wind?”
“Still holding west. Pete moved the fuel trailer behind the machine shed, and Dad wants the calves brought down.”
“County change the forecast?”
“No. I told him moving them now only gives us nowhere clean to put them if the wind turns east, but apparently my agricultural reasoning lacks authority.”
Walt’s voice sounded in the background. “Ask him where he’d put them.”
“You hear that?” Evan asked.
“Yup.” Harris leaned against the truck. “Leave the calves where they are until the seven-o’clock update. Move the fuel trailer past the gravel cut.”
“That is almost exactly what I said.”
“Was it?”
“Close enough that I resent the question.”
The phone changed hands.
“That far?” Walt asked without greeting.
“Wind turns, you want dirt between the fuel and everything else.”
A pause followed while his father measured the advice against whatever answer he had already preferred. “Pete can put it along the south track.”
“That’s past the gravel cut.”
“I know where the gravel cut is.”
Harris let it go.
“What about the calves?” Walt asked.
“Wait until seven.”
“Could bring them down now and be done with it.”
“Then we’ve got nowhere clean to put them if the wind comes from the east.”
Another pause. “All right. We’ll wait.”
There it was: Harris’s recommendation turned once in Walt’s hands and returned as a decision carrying his father’s authority. Harris had stopped objecting to the ritual years ago. Mostly.
“How was the meeting?” Walt asked.
The question came late enough that Harris nearly missed its significance. “Fine.”
“Anything useful?”
“Some.”
“Good. You staying down there?”
Harris glanced toward Jay. He stood against the passenger side of the truck, studying photographs of the evacuation map with a convincing show of privacy, though Harris knew he could hear most of the conversation.
“Got another session early tomorrow,” Harris said. “Makes the most sense.”
“All right. Keep your phone on.”
“Always do.”
“I know.”
It could have been criticism or gratitude. With Walt, it was frequently both.
The phone returned to Evan. “You two finished establishing which one of you runs the ranch?”
“Nope.”
“That’s what I thought. Have a nice night.”
The call ended.
Even nearly three hours from home, Harris had still been consulted on every decision, while Walt retained the right to make each answer official. The arrangement was inefficient, familiar, and unlikely to change merely because Harris had somewhere else he wanted to be.
Jay put his phone away. “You need to go back?”
“Nope.”
“Everything okay?”
“For now.”