"Some did. Some didn't. Can't register if you can't prove direct lineage, and my dad wasn't registered either, so." She shrugs. "But an elder woman in Coos Bay sat with me for a whole afternoon. Told me stories. Showed me how they wove cedar bark baskets. Taught me the plants her grandmother taught her."
"That backpack of yours."
Her eyes come to me, surprised. "You noticed that."
"Cedar bark and dogbane. You don't see that at the feed store."
The smile she gives me is different from the one she usually wears. Quieter. Like I just handed her something she didn't expect to receive.
"I made it the summer after that trip." She turns the mug in her hands. "Can't prove I belong anywhere on paper. But my hands know what they know."
I get that. More than she realizes.
We stand there. The hawk circles. The stubble smells like cut earth in the heat, and my arm is close enough to hers that I can feel the warmth coming off her skin without touching it.
"Alright." She drains her cup. "I've got eight more acres of scrub before that stump team gets here next week. And you've got lumber to drop. Better earn that coffee."
"I earned it four trees ago."
"Look at that. He's counting." She turns for the tractor, walking backward so she can keep her eyes on me, and I swear this woman's gonna trip over a root doing that one day and it'll be my fault for not telling her to turn around.
"Hey, Harrison."
"What."
"That northeast corner I'm heading into. Anything under that scrub I should know about?"
My gut drops.
"Old fence line," I say, already pulling my gloves on. "Rotted posts. But the wire'll still be in the ground. Give me twenty minutes, I'll walk it."
"Gabe's maps don't show a fence."
"Gabe's maps are forty years younger than that wire."
She weighs it. Tips her head.
"Fifteen minutes. Then I'm cutting."
She's in that cab before I've got both gloves on.
I'm not fast enough.
I make it maybe forty feet into the northeast section when the engine note drops. Every man who's worked around iron knows that sound. Healthy roar gone, something underneath screaming, metal binding against metal, and the rig lurches once before the whole thing dies.
The ticking of hot metal is the only sound left in that field.
I'm running.
She's out of the seat by the time I reach her. Cap dragged off, hand shaking. A bright line of blood running down her right forearm from where the wire snapped back and caught her through the cab window.
My hands are on her shoulders.
"Where."
"It's a scratch, Harrison."
"Let me see."
