I drove down to the Switchback at seven-thirty.
Mae stood behind the counter. She slid a Magic Latte across to me before I had a chance to order it and pointed her chin toward the corner of the café where the new shelf sat.
“He finished it Tuesday,” she said. “I made him hang it Wednesday. Go look.”
It was a low shelf, wall-mounted at child-eye-height, built from the leftover black walnut from the rocking chair he’d finally finished in August. Picture books on the top. Chapter books on the bottom. A hand-lettered sign above it readSwitchback Reading Corner. Take one. Bring one back when you can.
I crouched down and ran my hand along the underside of the lower shelf. The carving was a stand of aspens. Five trunks, leaves rendered with his patience for detail, the bottom edge of the carving running down to where a kid's knee would press against it if they sat on the floor reading.
He’d put the carving on the underside. He hadn’t been able to give that up. But he’d also signed his name in small letters at the lower right corner of the side panel, where any kid who tilted their head to look would see it.T. Berg.
Seeing his name there turned my insides to jelly. He’d earned the right to claim his work. I stood up and went back to the counter.
Mae was refilling somebody's coffee when I sat down. She didn’t look at me, just set down the coffee pot and slid a cinnamon roll across the counter. “Eat that, Soleil. Don't make me say anything else about it.”
Treyton was teaching a class at the lodge that afternoon covering beginner woodworking. Six adults had signed up along with one teen whose mother had heard about it from her hairdresser. I drove up at three to watch the last half hour. He had a piece of scrap pine on the workbench he’d set up on the lodge porch. The teen was working on a coaster with a small leaf carved into it.
The leaf was a mess. The veins were uneven. One of the lobes had gone deeper than the other. The kid was holding the coaster in both hands, gripping it like he wasn’t sure whether he should be proud or disappointed.
Treyton leaned in next to him. He took the coaster, turned it under the lodge light, and ran his thumb along the leaf the way he had run his thumb along the bench at the lookout the day he took me there.
“That's a good leaf,” he said. “You see how the one lobe came in deeper? That happens when you let the chisel decide. That's not a mistake. That's the leaf telling you what it wanted.”
The kid looked at the leaf for a long beat. Then he looked at Treyton like he wasn’t sure he should believe him. He looked at the leaf again.
“It's a good leaf?”
“Yeah. It's a real one. The ones that look perfect are pretend. Yours has the lobes a real leaf would have. Take it home and show your mom.”
The kid shoved it in his backpack and jumped down from the porch.
Treyton came over and stood next to me with his hands in his pockets while we watched the kid get on his bike and pedal away. After a minute he said, without looking at me, “Don't.”
“I didn't say anything.”
“You're going to.”
“I'm not going to say anything, Treyton. I'm just going to stand here and think about it for a while.”
He let me. He stood next to me with his hands in his pockets and let me think about it for a while.
We drove up to the cabin at sundown. Biscuit waited for us on the porch. He stood up when the truck came up the gravel and did a half-turn the way he did when he was pretending he hadn’t been concerned about how long we’d been gone. Treyton got out and crouched down and let the dog go through the routine, and I went up the porch step and into the cabin to start dinner.
His phone rang while I was draining pasta.
He looked at the screen before answering. “Hey, Mama Mae.”
Then he stood at the kitchen window with his shoulder turned a quarter to the side so I could hear her voice through the speaker. His side of the conversation was filled with “yes, ma'am” and “no, ma'am” and “Soleil's fine, she says hi” and a long pause while Mama Mae said something that made him close his eyes for a second. Then he said “I know. We'll see you in May. Yes. Yes, I will. I love you too.”
He hung up but didn’t move from the window. Then he looked over his shoulder at me. “She says hi back.”
“Did she?”
“She said ‘Tell that sweet girl her mountain man finally figured out how to use his words.’”
“That's an accurate quote?”
“Verbatim.”
