Beckett clears his throat. "I may have read some books."
Earl stops writing. Looks up. Then he looks at me. I give him nothing. He looks back at Beckett and says, with complete gravity, "Son, I've got a book in the back room about brain surgery. Doesn't mean I'd operate on you."
Beckett goes silent for a second. "That's a fair point."
"Usually is." Earl goes back to his book. "What do you need?"
I run through the supply list while Beckett wanders the store with his hands in his pockets, looking at everything with that focused attention he brings to things he's trying to understand. He picks up a pair of leather work gloves and examines them. Puts them back. Picks up a different pair.
"Those are good gloves," Earl says without looking up. "Better than what you've been using, I'd guess."
Beckett looks at his hands. The blisters from the irrigation cleanup are still visible. "That obvious?"
"City hands," Earl says simply. Not unkind. Just accurate.
Beckett sets the gloves on the counter without being told to.
Earl rings everything up and slides the total across. Beckett reaches for his card and Earl waves a hand. "We run accounts here. Pay at the end of the month."
"I can pay now."
"I know you can." Earl puts the card reader away. "We still run accounts."
Beckett puts his card back in his pocket.
He's learning.
Oddly enough, I'm a little pleased he didn't try arguing with Earl about any of it.
Copper Ridge Hardware is three doors down from Ridge Line and run by Harvey Miller, who is sixty-seven years old, gruff by nature, and considers small talk a personal imposition.
He and Earl have been friendly rivals for as long as anyone in Silver Ridge can remember, which mostly expresses itself through each of them pretending the other's store doesn't exist while secretly knowing exactly what the other one charges for everything.
Harvey is reorganizing a shelf of drill bits when we walk in. He looks up, looks at Beckett, and goes back to his drill bits.
"Harvey," I say. "This is Beckett Wilder. Silver Mesa Ranch."
"I know who he is." Harvey doesn't look up. "East field flood."
Beckett exhales slowly beside me. "Is that going to follow me forever?"
"Probably," Harvey says. "You need something?"
I pull out the second half of my list. Fencing staples, a replacement gate latch for the north pasture, two new post hole digger handles because Remy broke both of the old ones in a single afternoon through a sequence of events nobody has fully explained.
Harvey listens to the list, pulls half of it from memory off the shelves without writing anything down, and disappears into the back for the rest.
Beckett wanders.
This is apparently what Beckett does in hardware stores. He moves through the aisles with his hands clasped behind his back like he's touring a museum, reading labels and examining things and stopping occasionally to pick something up and turn it over.
I keep half an eye on him because I have learned that Beckett unsupervised around equipment has a deeply concerning track record.
He appears at my elbow ten minutes later with a basket.
I look at the basket.
I already know I'm going to hate whatever is inside.
