“Goddamn it,” I say.
I get my coat.
The trail down to her cabin takes seven minutes if you take it slow. I make it in five and a half becauseI’vedecided the hammer willnotdrop a third time.
She sees me comingandstraightens up. The hammer isinone hand, a bent nail in the other, and her glasses are a quarter inch off her nose.
“Oh.”Her smile starts, then she catches herself, as ifshe’strying to be cool.“Hi.”
“Move.”
She blinks. “Pardon?”
“Move.” I jerk my chin at the porch step. “Off it. Down. Whichever’s faster.”
She steps down with the careful dignity of a man in a Forces sketch miming his way around a rubber prop minefield. She hascommitted. She will not rush.
She holds the hammer out to me on flat palms, like a sword.“Your hammer.”
“That’s not mine.”
“It’s the hammer that’s here.”
“That’s a tack hammer.”
“Oh.”She looks at it.“That explains the size.”
“Itis small,”I agree gravely as I take it.
Her glove brushes myglove. Brief. Wool against wool. Nothing.
And yetI’mstanding still when I should be moving, the hammer in my hand, facing the porch so shecan’tread my face.
I turn to the porchandcrouch down, readingthedamagedwood the way I read a room, top to bottom, corner to corner, fail point to fail point. The whole front section isrotten. The middle stringer is shot. Somebody put a piece of lumber-yard pine across the failed step at some point and never went back.Anailisbent at an impossible angle near the top, and that nail is hers.Her effort is… endearing,butI’lldie before I tell her that.
“You have any wood?”I ask, eyes on the step.
“Define wood.”
“Dimensional. Two-by-something. Pressure-treated would be nice. Cedar, ideal.”
“Oh.”She thinks.“I have a kitchen chair?”
“I can hear you smiling.”
“I am smiling.”
“Stop.”
“Made you look.”
I don’t look. I’m specifically not looking.
“There’s no wood inside?”I ask the porch step.“None left over from your aunt?”
“There’sa stack of something behind the woodshed. Ihaven’tgone back there yet becausethere’sa frozen thing back there that might be a deer. Or a wheelbarrow.”
A laugh punches out of me.
