At the office he picked up the day’s work—three signs to plant and two to pick up. Four of the addresses were in town or nearby, the last address was some forty minutes away, he was told. He recognized the highway, of course, but not the address. That was part of the fun of this job; discovering new country and with a particular kind of access that softened landowners and homeowners alike. Often, if he simply laid on the politeness and courtesy, they’d allow him to explore at least a little of their ranch, and on a few occasions he trailered a horse and made a day of it, just as he had back as a teenager with his beloved uncle Samuel.
Eula finished chatting with a woman she knew, and Loney held the door for her as they walked out into the early-summer morning.
He was glad for her company. It was true he liked the solitude of the job, liked listening to his books and the radio and the podcasts she helpfully loaded onto his phone, but he was grateful that day for her steady monologue of observations and the fact that she held each sign for him as he tamped gravel and dirt around its base. That was actually quite helpful.
After they finished his assignments in town, he drove them out into the mountains, southeast of town, the terrain growing wilder and wilder still.
“You mind punching that address into my phone?” Loney asked.
“Sure thing,” she said, her bare feet suntanning on the dashboard.
He took the phone back from her and peered down at the route.
“Sonuvabitch,” he said very quietly.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“Oh sure—everything’s fine,” he said. “We’re just . . . We’re headed to a place I used to know, back when I was a kid, working for my uncle.”
“You used to talk about that country all the time when we first started up,” she said. “Back when you were a real cowboy.” She swatted his shoulder playfully.
“Long time ago,” he said.
“Doesn’t seem so long ago to me,” she said. “Lord, we were young, though.”
There was no reason for it, he supposed, but his anxiety grew the closer they pushed toward the address, and as he turned off onto that gravel road and parked the truck, he remembered everything, could all but see Gretchen’s family as they unloaded their things from the station wagon and stood there in the sunlight, gawking at the river and mountains, and how he fell in love with her, at first sight, how he lost the ability to breathe, think, or speak. How she reduced him to nothing.
He unloaded the last sign and carried it to a spot beside the road where he began digging a hole. Eula left the truck to help him hold the sign in place, and when it was secure, he dusted off his hands and exhaled deeply.
“Well,” he said, “I suppose we ought to head on back.”
“But we haven’t even eaten our picnic,” she protested, “and I’d love to see this house. If it’s the one I think it is, s’posed to be pretty special.”
“All right,” he said, nodding. “Of course. Yeah, let’s check it out.”
And so, they drove on, up and up and up. It was different, of course, from what he remembered, the road taking a fair amount of the wildness out of the equation. Still, it was gorgeous.
“So beautiful,” she murmured. “Loney, you know who owns this property?” She reached for his paperwork and the property’s listing.
He hadn’t thought of Gretchen in a long, long time, and could not have said for sure whether it was even still her family that owned the property. He hadn’t seen her in almost forty years, and especially in those early decades of estrangement or separation, there had been no Internet, no Facebook or Instagram or Twitter. When a person was gone from your life, they were gone. And even now, with the advent of personal computers and social media, Loney wasn’t the type to post a photograph of himself for all to see. He preferred the world the way it was.
“No idea,” he said, not exactly outright lying but not volunteering any information either.
“Loney,” she said, “they’re listing this place, it says, for fifty million dollars. Can that be right?”
But his mind was elsewhere, where he stood at a fence line in an alpine pasture some forty years earlier, he and his uncle stringing and tightening new barbed wire around a sun-bleached and lichen-decorated cedar post.
Stay away from that girl, Samuel told him. Unless you intend to marry her. And young and dumb as you are, you shouldn’t be marrying anyone anyhow.
We’re just friends, Loney said quietly.
I ain’t stupid, Samuel went on. I seen you two. I know what’s going on. But, Loney, that girl could be president someday. You have to let her go. She don’t belong here. She needs to go her way, go to college, and all the way beyond that.
Loney winced and ran a hand over his jawline, remembering how he’d laughed at his uncle, at that notion of Gretchen being president, that bright, curious, independent girl being president someday. And how his uncle had quit their fencing to stand up and stare right into him, right into that headstrong seventeen-year-old he was then.
I tell you what, his uncle said. I believe in that girl. I never met her equal. And I don’t expect I ever will either.
What his uncle wanted to say, Loney understood, even then, was, I love her.
“Oh,” his wife said quietly, and then, reaching for his hand, “there it is. . . . Would you look at that?”
At the turnaround, they passed over a bridge and proceeded slowly up toward the house.
He parked near those familiar hot springs, feeling an acute sense of cognitive dissonance. This house, the paved driveway, the bridge . . . none of it jibed with his memories of the place, so raw. Gone were the small gravel squares where he and Samuel erected the family’s tents each year to start with. And gone, too, was the wooden cabin that later replaced those platforms. Gone, the horse paths grooved along the creek and river . . .
“I could die a happy woman up here.” Eula laughed. “You know, if we had a spare fifty million dollars. We could skinny-dip right here in our own private springs and have some horses, maybe truck in some black dirt for a little garden.”
He turned slowly around, examining the majestic valley that cupped this house.
“This place is a like a private kingdom,” she said with a laugh. “Totally apart from the world.”
She pointed down to the river. “It even has a moat,” she said.
“No drawbridge,” he countered.
“Yeah, but it does have a bridge, though,” she said, kissing his cheek and patting his biceps. “Now, where’s a good place to eat?” she asked. “Maybe down by the river?”
“All right,” he said. “Yeah, that sounds good.”
They spent the afternoon there, lingering in the generous pine-scented shadows, walking up and down the creek, reclining on an outspread blanket, their eyes closed, the dappled sunlight warming their skin.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked him later in the afternoon. “You’ve been awfully quiet since we got here.”
“Yeah,” he lied for the second time that day, despite the fact he truly never was dishonest to his wife. “I just got a little headache is all.”
“We can go,” she offered. “Maybe you can bring me back to get the sign when it sells.”
“Hold on,” he said. “I have to check on something.”
He hiked back up to the house and, standing near the springs, looked south, out across the valley to the meadow just above the tree line on that far ridge. He could not be sure, but he thought he saw some pale glitter far over there, though he supposed his eyes were not what they once were.
“You do know something about this place, don’t you?” Eula asked, then turned to follow his gaze. “What is that light out there? Is someone signaling us?”
“Naw,” Loney began, “prolly just a piece of mica or quartz, reflecting the sun.”
“It looks li
ke a mirror, though,” she continued, “not some random rock, but like someone’s trying to get our attention.”
He kicked at the gravel, sighed. “It’s a grave,” he said quietly.
“A grave?” she repeated.
“Long story. Can I tell you on the way home?”
“Well, now you’ve really piqued my interest, cowboy.”
“Next time, we’ll bring some horses. It’d take us all afternoon just to get over there,” he said, remembering the last time he’d visited those cairns. “Come to think of it, that’d be a real decent thing to do. We could even bring some flowers.” He meant to go on, to say something to the effect that he might be the last person on earth to know what those cairns meant, but his voice failed him, for somehow, he knew Gretchen was gone, that that was the only possible explanation for why this land, and the house, would be for sale. A coolness swept through his body, and he grimaced, then bit his lower lip, before turning his back to Eula and covering his mouth with a forearm.
They drove back down the valley, the river always on their left, and made their way back on home. Where the gravel road met the highway, Loney Wilkins glanced in the rearview mirror, but there was nothing much to see except the cloud of dust rising into the blue, blue late-afternoon sky. He turned right and eased onto the road as his wife reached for his hand.
True Triangle Construction
Building Heaven on Earth
*
Established—2016
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to thank the following individuals, organizations, and businesses for their support, wisdom, and enthusiasm during the writing and editing of this novel: Beargrass Writing Retreat, Marcus Burke, Alex and Cynthia Butler, Bette Butler, Eleanor Butler, Henry Butler, Regina Butler, Angus Cargill, Patrizia Chendi, Guia Cortassa, Giulio D’Antona, Chris Dombrowski, the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram, Julian Emerson, Peter Geye, Nicholas Gulig, Jim and Lynn Gullicksrud, Crystal Halvorson and Bill Hogseth, the Hempel family, Tracy Hruska, the Jackson office of the Bridger-Teton National Forest, Gary Johnson, Sally Kim, John Larison, the L.E. Phillips Public Library, Raphaëlle Liebaert, Massie McQuilkin, Rob McQuilkin, Chris and Sara Meeks, Nik Novak, Ben Percy, SHIFT Cyclery & Coffee Bar, Luis Solano, Charmaine and Josh Swan, Mike Tiboris, Chiara Tiveron, Volume One, Hilary and Mike Walters, and Jade Wong-Baxter.
The author would also like to thank all the booksellers, journalists, and librarians worldwide who continue to support his career.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nickolas Butler is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Shotgun Lovesongs, The Hearts of Men, and Little Faith, and the story collection Beneath the Bonfire. Butler is the recipient of multiple literary prizes and commendations and has published articles, reviews, short stories, and poetry in publications such as Ploughshares, Narrative, and The New York Times Book Review, among others. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he now lives with his wife and two children on sixteen acres of land in rural Wisconsin.
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