It took her both hands to lift up the brown box to me. The number 12 was written across the top in red grease pencil, next to the wordCake.
“Oh.” My breath just about left me as I took the box.
I’d been in Hysham a little over half a year, and I was still taken aback by the most common of kindnesses. Like someone in a truck waving to me as they passed me, even though I didn’t know them. Ambrose and Neville and Maurice taking me under their collective wing. Gus making that call to Mr. Tate. The two baristas, Shane and Julian, going out of their way to introduce me to new coffee blends, even though I was a dyed-in-the-wool tea drinker.
Then there was the one time, back in August, that Young Tommy (who was not young), and the energetic Deputy Hartland had taken it upon themselves to drive out to my place to warn me about the grass fire headed my way from the low hills beyond the Hysham Canal.
“We sent out a text message to everyone,” Young Tommy had said. “Did you receive it?”
From the look on his face, I knew that if I admitted I usually turned my phone off, I’d get a round scolding. He had Watchful Dad written all over him.
“No, sir,” I said. Puzzled, the sheriff and deputy looked at each other as if wondering how I had missed the text. Which meant that I had to admit that my phone had been off. “I think my phone was off,” I said. “Old habit. I’ll keep it on from now on.”
“See that you do, young man,” Young Tommy said. To which Deputy Hartland added, “The fire probably won’t cross the Yellowstone River, but do be prepared to evacuate.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
It was that kind of kindness that had softened me from the hardness I’d built up around me during my time in prison. Nobody but nobody could have survived the onslaught of care and concern and the reachings out the town of Hysham had given me. Nobody but Morgan Malone, who was now stomping out of the store as though somebody had offended him.
Ambrose and Neville, and Maurice ambled in his wake because they obviously had more advice to give. Advice and bundles of wood which Morgan would surely need in that feed and grain, a great cave of a building with windows that were too thin and a furnace that, as I recall from my few visits there, gasped in effort to stave off even the slightest drop in temperature.
Oralee Malone, Morgan’s aunt, now sadly passed, had done the best she could with her place, at least the way I saw it. The feed and grain was ancient, but it had been a cornerstone of the town since the beginning. A bit of living history.
Morgan didn’t seem to appreciate any of that. Well, that was fine. I avoided him. He hadn’t been in town long and, according to the grapevine, was set on leaving as soon as he could. Except there was the blizzard coming, which would lock everyone down.
Including me. I needed to get back home before that happened.
“Thank you, Mabel,” I said. “I need to get moving to get back before the storm hits. I’ll have the sketches for that collar soon as I can.”
“No rush, sweet Wolfe,” she said. “His gotcha day isn’t until December first.”
“Sounds good,” I said to her, then ambled along the aisles, enjoying the hubbub without really talking to anyone.
Being among people gave me a sense of connection, even if I didn’t talk to anyone as I shopped. I selected chuck roast for stew, and the veggies, bread, milk, and eggs. The shelves were starting to look thin, but that only made sense.
Hauling everything out to my truck, I tucked the plastic carry bags into the truck bed, tightened some rope over them, got in, started the engine, and drove out of town the way I came in.
Which was the back way, as I thought of it, along the frontage road that went past the truck scale on the west side of town. I seldom encountered anyone along that road, so it would be a straight shot as I raced to beat the blizzard to my place.
As I crossed the railroad tracks, the freight train had gotten moving, headed west, the tail end of it just going over the rise in a swirl of thickening snowfall. I noticed someone walking across the gated yard of the feed and grain through a thick curtain of falling snow. Was it someone Morgan Malone knew?
With a shrug, I put my foot on the gas pedal and sped up. The road, dark beneath the swirling snow snakes, was plenty clear of ice. Which would not be the case come nightfall. I needed to be home before the blizzard really hit. As I drove, I planned dinner in my head, thought about making sure my workshop was locked up tightly, and that I had enough dry wood to make it cozy inside the cabin as I watched the storm swirl outside.
CHAPTER 2
wolfe
Typically, when I drove west toward my cabin, I could see the Rocky Mountains with my bare eyes even though they were over seventy miles away. That was not true today.
Beyond the craggy, gray-black branches of bare-limbed cottonwood trees, the sky was the texture of pale eggshell. The horizon was being erased by a flurry of fluffy snow as I sped down the frontage road, chasing the three-engine freight train. Or maybe it was chasing me. Certainly, it fell behind as the ground rose up, but then as it reached the peak of the small hill just south of my cabin, it sped up on the other side, and was soon out of sight in a swirl of snow.
I steered my truck over the crossing with a thump and a bump, glanced down the tracks, just to look at the train, as a train in daylight was such a rare occasion in these parts, and turned onto Diamond Willow Lane.
This was the last leg of my journey home, which was a good thing because the snow was now coming down in a thick curtain of white. Visibility had dropped to maybe fifty feet, so I slowed way down, even though there was never anyone on this dirt road but me.
The air was white all around, then inside of a moment, as if some angelic hand had pulled the curtain aside, the wind blew the snow sideways and I saw a figure walking toward me.
Odd. There was no place for anyone to come from except my small cabin, and that couldn’t be because I was the only one who lived there. I blinked but hadn’t imagined it and put on the brakes.
