Aweek of Paige Thomas, and the woman has rearranged my entire morning without touching a thing.
Seven fifteen. Every day. Hoofbeats through the firs if she's on that buckskin. Engine rattle if she took the ranch truck. Either way, the thermos comes out, the two dented mugs get filled, and she plants herself in my workspace with coffee that's better than mine and a mouth that won't quit.
I've stopped pretending it bothers me. That's the problem.
Somewhere around day four, my body started listening for her. I caught myself checking the tree line at seven ten. Seven twelve. Ear protection off before she crested the rise because I didn't want to miss the hoofbeats. A forty year old man, timing his morning to a woman who's been alive less time than he's been swinging an axe.
Granddad would've laughed himself sick.
Today she's on the tractor. Ball cap backward, braid swinging, sleeves rolled to her elbows, and she brings that brush cutter over the east ridge and puts it into a stand of scrubwithout hesitating. Drops the deck, opens the throttle, lays a line straight as a chalk snap across the field. Gets to the fence, spins the whole rig in its own length, comes back tight enough that there's no daylight between passes.
My saw's idling. Has been for three passes now. Might be four.
She catches me watching on the fifth. Doesn't wave. Just tips the ball cap brim at me, real slow, and grins.
Christ.
Get back to work, old man.
The trees don't care what I want. They come down where I put them. Four more by mid-morning, clean hinges, good fiber, and every single one I'm thinking about the way she spins that tractor at the fence. Efficient. Sure-handed. No wasted motion. Same way she pours coffee, same way she rides. Like her body's been doing it so long her mind's free to wander wherever it pleases.
I wonder where it wanders.
That's not my business.
Around ten she kills the engine and crosses the stubble with the thermos. My body is already turning toward her before I've told it to.
"Saw a hawk land on that dead fir by the creek." She holds out my mug. "Biggest redtail I've ever seen. You probably didn't notice, cause you definitely weren't watching me."
"I was checking the wind."
"Uh huh." She pours, and that grin tucks into the corner of her mouth. "Wind's been northwest all morning. Hasn't moved."
I take the coffee. Drink. Don't look at her, because when I look at her my brain does something my body shouldn't follow.
"Nacogdoches," I say.
She goes still beside me.
"You asked where I'm from. Couple days back." I keep my eyes on the treeline. "East Texas. Piney woods. My granddad ran a mill outside of it. Had me pulling slabs off the deck at nine."
"He teach you the hinge?"
"Taught me everything worth keeping."
She lets that sit. Doesn't push. Sips her coffee and watches the hawk circle. That's something about her. Most people hear a gap in a conversation and rush to fill it. Paige hears a gap and makes room for it.
"What about you," I hear myself say, and I'm as surprised as she is.
"What about me what?"
"Coos Bay. Your dad's side. You said you spent a summer chasing it down."
Her face does something soft. Unguarded. I look away because I'm not entitled to see that, and also because looking at it directly might kill me.
"Coquille Indian Tribe," she says. "Southwestern Oregon. My dad was half, never talked about it. Left when I was eleven. Mama raised me in her diner, never bad-mouthed him, but never explained him either. So at nineteen, I drove down the coast with a notebook and started asking questions at tribal offices."
"They let you in?"
