by Summer Wood
“Stay,” Meg said.
He looked from her to the boy. “You’re sure, now?”
“Sure.” It sounded like shore, but it was a miracle that Meg had come so far with her speech.
“I’ll stay with her,” Wrecker promised. “We’ll work on the fort.”
Len looked at him closely and nodded. “You know where we are. Come get me if you need anything,” he said, and he pulled the door softly shut and turned to Willow in the dim light.
There was a rhythm to the work. As they went along they fine-tuned the motions, Len reaching up for a plant with one hand as he fed another through the rollers with the other, Willow adjusting the speed of the crank to match his movements. The beans caromed about, bouncing from the walls, the ceiling, the floor, their bodies. The temperature rose from their body heat. Len paused and fingered the buttons of his shirt. “Getting warm,” he said.
Willow stopped turning the crank and fanned herself. “Hot.”
“We can quit.” Len glanced at her with concern. He reached a hand to lift the collar of his shirt. It was glued to his neck. Large patches of sweat darkened his blue shirt to navy.
“Go ahead, Len,” Willow said. Len looked startled. “It’s too hot to leave it on.” Willow peeled off her sweat-spotted work shirt. Beneath it she wore an opaque camisole. It was modest enough, and the light was low. She stood up. She wanted to try feeding, she said.
Len moved awkwardly around the machine to let her switch places.
They began again. The beans—creamy white, kidney shaped, with maroon splotches that made them look like the coat of an Appaloosa horse—sprung from their pods and covered the floor in shallow drifts. Willow liked the rough scratch of the plants against her skin. There was something satisfying about working in tandem at this. They were making good progress. If they kept at it, they would finish well before dusk.
Len raised a hand to get her to wait. He moved to the high window and grinned. “Meg’s got Wrecker cooking with mud,” he said. With his back turned to Willow, he removed his shirt and folded it and set it on the bench behind him. Stiffly, without looking at her, he returned to his task.
His modesty amused her. As if Willow had never seen a man’s bare chest before. She kept the plants steadily entering the rollers. He had small tight curls that spread beneath his collarbone like decoration, and the hair on his back was a delicate downy stream that followed his spine into the waistband of his jeans. She glanced up at the hanging plants. “Halfway through, you think?”
“Would’ve taken me five times as long, working by myself.” He glanced at her. “I’ll bring you a bag.”
Ruth would like that, Willow said.
Len stopped turning and eased back onto the bench. His eyes were the color of rich dirt, loamy and reliable. He kept his gaze on her.
“What?”
After a moment Len said, “That cap. That you gave the kid.”
Willow cleared herself a spot to sit amid the beans. “I figured you’d notice.”
“Did he?”
“He didn’t seem to.” She flexed and fisted her hands, stretching them. “I don’t know. Do you think he remembers any of that?” And when Len shrugged, “What I guess I mean is,” she said slowly, “don’t you think he ought to?”
Len removed his cap and ran his hand through his thin hair. “If he remembers, that’s one thing.” Willow had shown him the photo Lisa Fay had given her for Wrecker: the boy, barely three, wearing a Giants jersey and cap. Melody hadn’t wanted to see it. They figured it best just to hold it for Wrecker; wait until he got older. Len tilted his head to the side and frowned. “But if he doesn’t? I don’t see how it can help to push him that way. We’re his family, now.”
“It could prepare him for later.”
Len gazed at her steadily. “What later.”
It was dangerous to ignore the truth, Willow thought. “The later,” she said carefully, “when Lisa Fay comes up to get him.”
“If.” Len held her gaze. “Not when.”
But Len hadn’t been to the prison. He hadn’t seen what she saw. The look in Wrecker’s mother’s eyes as she drank in the sight of her son. It was part of Willow, now, the afternoon she sat beside Lisa Fay and handed her the photograph and spoke to her of her son. Willow hadn’t told Len about that photo. She hadn’t told any of them. It might have been—she wasn’t sure, any longer. But maybe she’d made a mistake.
Willow and Len stood and switched places, careful to keep a safe distance from each other as they passed, and went back to work. There was something hypnotic about labor like this; something soothing, unexpectedly sensual, that reminded Willow of the clack and slide of the loom as she worked the shuttle over the yarn. They worked without talking and let the swish and crackle of dry leaves stand in for speech. An hour later, only a few plants remained to be hulled. Willow could feel her body weary with the effort. It was a good kind of tired and she noticed it in him as well, his body slowing slightly. “I can finish,” she said, sinking onto the bench. “Just let me take a break.”
Len nodded. He retrieved the last plants from the rafters and stacked them on the bench. When Willow started to stand, Len waved her away. She eased down the bench a bit and watched him feed them in, one plant at a time, as he turned the handle. Each revolution sent the mildest breeze in Willow’s direction. She tipped her head back and let it play against her skin.
The last plant emerged, its pods exhausted of its beans, and Len sent it to lie with its fellows on a tall stack that covered the opposite bench. He got up and gazed out the tiny window. A smile broke across his face. Willow rose to see. Wrecker and Meg were lying on their backs in the cleared dirt in the front of the house, laughing as the goose waddled in circles around them. When he turned to consider the beans that carpeted the floor, Len’s shoulder brushed hers. He didn’t move away. Tired, she thought. “Look at that,” he said, his voice rich with content. “Not bad.”
“Not bad, nothing,” she said, flushed with accomplishment and the feel of him close. “We did it.”
Len turned toward her and an amused smile tilted the corners of his mouth. He reached forward and brushed away a scrap of bean pod she had stuck above her eyebrow. “There,” he said. “You couldn’t go out in public like that.” But he held her gaze, and Willow saw something unexpected enter his eyes as he smoothed her hair behind her ear and let the palm of his hand glide down her cheek.
Oh, she thought. There was a pang—a pain, almost—of clarity, a sharp note rising through a pool of warm water.
Willow reached up and laid her own hand over his. With the lightest pressure she guided its path over the planes of her face. When his fingers grazed her lips she let them fall open. The rough tip of his first finger fell between her teeth, and her tongue rose to cradle its callused pad. She felt the shock of it surge through them both.
If they didn’t look at each other, Willow thought, it was possible they were imagining this. Imagining that she slid from the bench to kneel on the floor. That when she faced away from him and stretched forward on her knees like a cat to scoop the beans toward her, stretched and scooped, that’s all it was, gathering the shelled beans into a pile before her. That when he dropped to his knees behind her, leaned over her to stretch, to scoop, one arm supporting himself and the other snug around her belly, her ass drawn hard to his hips and his hand reaching toward the warm center of herself, he was helping her collect them, mound them into a hill beneath her.
Willow rolled to face him.
Len looked terrified. She wondered if she looked that way, too. Her legs in the soft wool trousers lay gripped between his. Len’s chest was bare and he was trembling. Willow laid her spread hand against his breastbone and felt his breath swell against it. Slowly she ran her fingers down his chest. When the bottom of her hand rested on the waistband of his jeans, Willow curled her fingers against the tight muscles of his belly.
The muscles pulsed and he drew a sharp breath and tore his gaze from hers.
Willow placed both hands on the knobby bones of Len’s hips and drew him toward her as she lay back into the beans. The pile rustled and gave as they surrendered their weight to it. So they were going into this, Willow thought. They were crossing the line they had stumbled close to and withdrawn from a hundred times since Willow first arrived at Bow Farm. Willow felt Len press against her and wanted him then with something close to fury. She did not give a damn about any line. She reached down for his belt buckle, slid the leather from the keeper. Her fingers fought the button of his jeans as her hips arched hard toward his.
A sound outside startled them.
Len’s head jerked forward. They heard the rapid slap of footfalls approaching.
Len leapt from her, banging his elbow hard against the wringer-washer. Willow felt her body shudder at his sudden absence. She scrambled awkwardly from the floor, her face hot, and reached for her shirt. Len grabbed his own, thrust his arms into the sleeves, and threw open the door.
The late-afternoon sun flooded in. “Len!” Wrecker said. He pulled up short and looked at the man.
“What is it, son?” Len said. His voice shook.
The boy sounded casual. Meg’s foot was stuck, he said. He couldn’t get her loose. He glanced back and forth between them when Willow appeared at the door.
Len stepped down and put a hand on Wrecker’s shoulder. “Let’s go see about that,” he said, and the two of them walked together. Willow waited long enough to catch her breath, waited for the heat to recede from her face, and followed behind.
Meg wasn’t far. She lay on the ground amid blackberry brambles and made small whimpering noises. Willow felt her heart sink. Somehow Meg had crossed into middle age while they’d had their backs turned. Her cardigan was twisted and her dress had a tear Willow knew she would offer to mend. On her feet were sturdy brogans that laced up and tied, and Willow was sure that her socks matched—Len would have seen to that. She sounded like a frightened child. One foot was trapped in a tangle of berry canes. Len squatted beside Meg, and Willow watched the easy way he talked with her, calmed her, gently worked her foot free of the brambles. He reached and adjusted her spectacles to sit comfortably on her nose and smoothed the errant hairs away from her face. He leaned in and whispered something in her ear. She stopped whimpering and Len rocked back on his heels and smiled. He ran his hand expertly down her calf, flexed her ankle, made sure nothing was broken, and then he carefully untied the shoe and removed it and massaged her foot. He said something to her that made her laugh. Then he replaced the shoe and tied it firmly, and the two of them sat there with their knees pulled up to their chests and their arms wrapped around them, their heads inclined toward each other, and on Len’s face that look he reserved for Meg, a look so open and intimate Willow had never seen him turn it to another person.
He didn’t even look back at me, Willow thought, stunned.
Wrecker sidled up beside her. He looked unsettled. Willow reached down and took his hand to stop herself from shaking.
“Let’s go see about that bread,” she said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
They discussed and conferred and argued and flat-out fought and then they broke down and bought him a motorbike. He was thirteen. A kid up at the college in Arcata was selling a 250 Enduro, good on gas, not licensed for the road but then neither was Wrecker. It could get him up and down the mountain. It could get him to the grange hall where the other kids hung out on weekends. It might get him to school on time. Wrecker exulted. The bike was his ticket out. He lay in bed and planned trips to Tierra del Fuego. Okay, he would wear a helmet. They made him. Ruthie made it plain. She would disassemble the bike bolt by bolt and throw all the pieces into the river if he didn’t. Did he understand this? Sure, he understood. Helmet. Okay.
He would mount a coon tail on the handlebars and tear up every trail between here and Fort Bragg.
But he damaged the front fork going over a rugged jump the day he got it and the bike was holed up all that winter in the shed, catching dust, and he was back to riding to school with Melody, who only sometimes let him drive. It rained all winter, anyway. When spring came the rain slowed and Melody said, Kid? Why don’t you see if Len could help you fix that bike? She said maybe Wrecker could work for Len in trade. Like maybe he could—she flicked her hands in that funny way she had—stack firewood or something.
Wrecker found Len in the tool shed. He was swapping out the crankcase oil in the big splitter. Wrecker hovered in the doorway until Len looked up.
“You’re blocking the light,” the man said. His voice was softer than gravel but stiffer than wood chips. “Either come in or go out, but get clear of the sun.”
Wrecker slipped inside. “Listen. You got any work for me?”
Len wiped his oily hands on a rag. “What kind of work?”
“Any kind.” Wrecker rolled his shoulder in a shrug that looked like he was working a kink in the muscle at the same time. “I got to get the fork fixed on the bike and I can’t pay you to do it.”
“What’d you do to the fork?”
“Broke it on a jump last fall.”
“You ought not to be jumping that cycle,” Len said.
“Jumping wasn’t the problem. It was the landing that whacked it.”
Len flashed him a look and fiddled with the oil plug. “I’ve got plenty of work,” he said, lifting his chin and meaning more than Wrecker could figure. “Bring it by. I’ll give it a look. It wheel okay?”
“Wheels fine. I’ll bring it.”
Len nodded and looked down and tried to keep the wobble off his face until the boy disappeared.
Len had him sweep, first. Wrecker was thorough. He didn’t let dust build up in the corners and he hefted the heavy sacks of trash like they were filled with cotton fluff. He was strong for his age.
The next Saturday Len had him move the cement sacks out of the root cellar where they’d hardened and lay them along the cut bank of the ditch for flood control. Thirteen? He was very strong for his age.
Then Len showed him how to cut and nail the wood siding for the tractor shed he was finishing up. “Whoa,” Len said, running the sleeve of his shirt across his sweaty face. The boy stopped the handsaw mid-stroke and looked over at him. Len paused to take it in. His stance, his level of concentration, the strength he exhibited, the way his hands seemed to fall naturally to the task—the boy was a goddamned dynamo. He kept his face turned to Len. It was open and direct.
“Yes?”
Len stumbled. “You don’t want to cut too many boards,” he said. “Might go over what we need. Be a waste.”
Wrecker nodded slightly. “I measured and counted. Six more and I’ll start nailing them up.”
“Oh,” Len said, and Wrecker grinned and went back to the final strokes.
Len shook his head. He thought, God help us when he discovers power tools.
There was nothing for Len to complain about, in how they raised the boy. He was grateful to them for rising to the task, and over the years he offered what he could: money sometimes, all the firewood they could burn, he brought meat and kept the road passable and repaired the gates and ran errands if they asked him to, though they rarely did. He was in a kind of permanent and thus forgotten debt to them. Melody had gone along to the courthouse to finalize the boy’s papers and sat beside him in solidarity when he’d signed his name. She’d trembled all the drive up, but they’d had to wait so damn long in the courthouse hallway that by the time they actually saw the judge they were both exhausted and dulled into terminal boredom. But it was simple and it was done and from then on Melody and the others did the rest. And a good thing. Meg was steering down a steady decline, and it was all he could do to set the brake and lean his weight against the inevitable. Willow was a help. Len blushed. She was more than a help. She was an inspiration.
The boy had his hair pulled back and the face shield covered to beneath his chin. He gestured to a section of the beam they were sawing. He’d been working with Len
for six months now. Wrecker had paid off the bike fix in the first few days but kept coming to work, and Len found he liked his quiet company. Still, Len could not get past the hair. When he turned thirteen Wrecker quit letting Ruthie buzz his head and now, a year later, he resembled the Breck Girl with a dirty lip in a lumberjack’s plaid CPO. Why didn’t they say something to him about that? And this whole messy business with school: they should just make him go and close the door on backtalk. Len didn’t go in for this declaration-of-independence modern method of child rearing. Fourteen years old? You didn’t get to make up your own mind. Your father made it up for you.
Or—whoever.
He looked down at the knot the boy was pointing to. It wasn’t a knot. It was a shiny sliver of metal the saw had just exposed, a dark iris of tannin staining the pale wood. He caught Wrecker’s eye through the scratched plastic, and the boy nodded.
Len walked again to the front of the saw and shut off the motor. It faded to quiet. He’d heard of a man who went down like that, the spike spit backward when the blade caught it, pitched a neat fastball to the strike zone. His mate dug it out of his chest and his blood ran out before he got to the hospital. He watched the boy flip up his shield and look for his reaction. Len turned aside. He despised the activists—their righteousness, their cowardly methods. What kind of fool risks a man’s life to save a tree? But he forced himself to shrug and smile.
“Why don’t we call it a day,” Len said.
Wrecker raised his eyebrows. They were broad and wispy, an undisciplined smudge that softened his steady gaze. “Still light out.”
“What do you say we go to the river?”
Wrecker opened his mouth in a lopsided smile that Len had to look away from. He had a crazy grin. You had to watch out or it was catching.
“I’ll get Meg in the truck. You mind picking up here?” he asked the boy, and it was as good as done.
Len hadn’t even shut the engine when Wrecker was out of the truck bed and halfway to the water, his shirt wrenched off in one fluid motion and flung backward to catch in the blackberry thorns. He paused briefly to yank the boots from his feet and step out of his jeans, left his shorts on in deference to Meg, and used the giant boulder as a springboard into the fat dry August air. It held him suspended. Fourteen. Broad-shouldered. Stringy from sudden growth. And then he raised his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them and made himself a compact bullet, a musket ball swallowed with enormous splash and spray by the shining sheet of river below him—down, down, bubbles of zany laughter escaping—pushed off the soft muck of river bottom to twist and torpedo up and break the surface with a whoop, his sun-bleached hair water slicked and slung sideways with that quick flick of the neck—“Len!” he shouted, his voice lurching up the register, “Get on in here!”