CHAPTER 2 #2
“Hardware store. Ten minutes. You want the callback or you want the guilt trip about calling from your mountain instead of coming down for dinner.”
“Callback.”
“Copy.”
She hung up. Kira is Beau's wife and she does not waste words on me. Metalsmith. Bozeman. She has understood the whole thing from the first hello.
I made a second coffee. Half a cup at the mantel shelf where the Loeb Meditations sits between the short-wave radio and the box of matches. Picked the book up out of old habit. Opened it to the ribbon marker.
Three lines about equanimity. I put the book down.
I have not read that book since the ranch. I own it because a man I used to be owned it. The Loeb Greek-facing edition. There is a signature inside the front cover in fountain pen that would end me on this mountain in one glance from the wrong reader, and I will not look at it today.
The sat phone rang. I picked up on the first tone.
“Brother.”
Beau's voice on a two-second Iridium delay. “How long.”
“Since yesterday afternoon.”
“Where.”
“Main house. Marta has her in the upstairs guest bedroom. Warren's letter is on the great-room desk. She has not been on the property twenty-four hours.”
Two-second beat. “You seen her.”
“From the switchback rise. Three-forty yards, ponderosa shadow. Walked to the line cabin. Stood next to Warren's Ford. Did not know she was on her own land until she was through the mouth.”
Beat.
“Luke.”
“I hear you.”
“Three options are still three options. Take the one you can live with.”
“I know.”
“You want me to fly the plate check on any rental car within ninety miles of Sula.”
“Already ordered it this morning.”
“Sheriff Hollister in on the meeting tomorrow.”
“Nine. Sula general store. Three cattle-owning neighbors who will not vote.”
“Take the marriage route in front of him first. If she says yes he witnesses it right there. If she says no you have him already on the ground for the next move.”
“I know how to do this.”
“You have never done this.”
“I know.”
Two-second beat. He always beats me on the pause.
“You okay.”
“I'm okay. I have to go.”
“Marry her, brother.”
“Beau.”
“Marry her.”
I hung up. Set the phone on the utility-hall shelf. Went back to the porch.
By eight at night the sun was behind the west ridge and the sky over the mountain was the dull-warm color of a tin can left out in the sun all day.
I sat at the porch table with the Winchester Model 70 in front of me. The folded cotton square. The bore rod. The bottle of Rem Oil, cap loose.
I do this same job the same way I have done it for six years.
Pull the bolt. Wipe. Oil. Cycle.
The bolt of a Model 70 cycles under your hand with a specific three-beat sound if the action is oiled correctly.
Click-shhh. Click-shhh. Click-shhh.
The pull of the bolt. The slide of the oiled cloth. The hollow return.
I counted the rhythm against my own breathing without meaning to. Three beats to two breaths. Then three beats to one breath. Then three beats to a breath I held.
A settling metric I have not needed for a stretch of weeks.
Something is coming.
My father cleaned this rifle on a porch in Maine in the fall of 1993 and taught me the count.
He was not a warm man. He was accurate. He said you clean it when the light is going, so you never do it in a hurry.
I have said that sentence in my head every time I have picked up a bore rod since he died.
Click-shhh.
L. C. W. — his initials, his father's before him, mine now. Nobody on this mountain has ever asked what the letters stand for and the two who might have — Marta, Sheriff Hollister — have decided not to.
Click-shhh.
She is at the main house tonight. Eight hundred and fifty yards south of my west window as the crow flies, one mile and a half by the switchback.
The bedroom she is in is the second window from the east on the second floor.
It has a wrought-iron balcony rail Warren put on in the nineties, unused since he died.
I know that window because I know every window on the property.
Thirty minutes older than the deed. Eighteen hours older than the ranch. Eleven months and nine days younger than my worst fear. The arithmetic had not changed.
The meeting is nine tomorrow at the Sula general store. Sheriff Hollister. Three neighbors with cattle and no vote. Celia. Me. I will lay out the three options in the order Beau and I laid them out in the sat call — offer, run, marry.
If she says no I put her on a plane back to Denver by Friday.
Boyd's people already have the fence line.
The tracker goes on her rental if it has not gone on already.
She drives out. They follow. She dies in a Denver parking garage or a Denver hallway or a Denver elevator inside a year, and someone else's death is on me, and I do not survive it.
If she says yes she is inside my perimeter.
Twelve months. Twelve months to keep her breathing.
That is the whole calculus.
Click-shhh.
The bolt returned home. I ran the oiled cloth over the flat of the receiver one last time. Set the cloth on the table. Ran a finger along the bore rod to check it dry.
I carried the Winchester inside. Racked it back into the utility-hall gun rack. Turned the ring once against the pad of my thumb.
Went to the west window.
The single upstairs window at the main house — second from the east, second floor, the one with the wrought-iron balcony rail — was lit.
I stood there and watched. Did not speak. The calculus finished inside my ribs.
If she says no tomorrow, I put her on a plane by Friday and I bury a stranger in her name by Christmas. If she says yes, she is inside my perimeter and I have twelve months to make sure she leaves it breathing.
I killed the porch light.
The mountain closed over the cabin.
The upstairs window at the main house went dark.
She had gone to sleep in my mountain a second night.
Sleep kept its distance another hour.