Page 31 of Where the Fields Don’t Reach

“No.” Hadley leaned against the counter rather than take the lone empty stool. “I was hoping you’d set me up with some wings and fries. And a Shirley Temple.”

He kept regarding her carefully, as if weighing whether there was any truth in her response. They hadn’t spoken at length since Reed’s funeral, when she’d cornered him on the sidewalk and pried loose the very thing he’d carried for twenty years. Maybe that confrontation was best left where it lay. He’d kept quiet about what he’d seen in those woods the night Emily Esten disappeared, a second figure he’d never named, and Hadley still didn’t know whether his speaking up would have changed a single thing for Mason back then. She suspected Sam didn’t, either. Unfortunately, the not knowing was its own slow kind of poison.

“Dirty Shirley?”

“Not tonight.” She turned down the offer to spike her drink. “I’ve got somewhere to be first thing in the morning.”

Sam seemed on the verge of saying something more, but he only tapped the counter and crossed to the small opening that fed into the kitchen. He clipped a ticket where the cook would see it and called the order through, then lingered there a moment with his back half to her. His hesitation to start up a conversation landed somewhere under her ribs. She should have started coming in here a long time ago.

“I stopped by Mason’s place last night,” Hadley said, reaching for one of the cherries from the garnish tray. Her brother had mentioned once or twice that Sam came around often, though he was never there when she dropped by. “I don’t know if he’s told you, but he’s replacing all the furniture in the house. He’s already started on a dining room table.”

“I was out there this past weekend.” Sam began to make her Shirley Temple. “We drank to the settlement money coming in early. He can buy all the wood needed for that furniture and start on the porch. Did he show you the plan for a wraparound?”

Hadley wasn’t sure how she kept her expression from revealing her shock. Mason hadn’t said a word to her about the settlement, or the porch, or whatever celebration he’d had with Sam over the weekend. A deep ache started up behind her sternum, and there it was again, the very thing that had taught her to keep her distance in the first place. She pulled the cherry off its stem with her teeth, chewed, and made herself swallow the remnants before she answered.

“I know he really appreciates your visits, Sam.” Hadley glanced down toward the end of the bar and lifted a hand in greeting. “Would you mind running that Shirley Temple down there? I haven’t seen Gus in a while. I’d love to say hi.”

“Sure thing.”

He hadn’t caught the deflection, because Gus Jenkins was already waving her over. The older man sat in his usual spot, the corner stool at the end. As she rounded the bar, she nodded to the patrons she passed, and their surprise at the sight of her was plain on every face.

“There she is.” Gus rolled the toothpick to the other side of his mouth, his greyish-blue eyes lit with mischief. There was a warmth in his voice that none of the other residents ever managed when they spoke to her. “Sit with me.”

Gus had owned the Watering Hole for the past sixty years. He’d outlived two wives, a daughter, and nearly everyone left who could recall what the building had been before he bought it. At ninety-nine, he was the oldest soul in Whistlerun, all knuckle and scarred, swollen joints, but his back held straight as a fence post. The medals in the case were his, the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart anchoring the rest, though he rarely spoke of them.

“How’s the heart, Gus?” Hadley asked, nodding her thanks to the men who slid down the row of stools to open a place beside him.

She wouldn’t stay long, but that hardly mattered. Gus wanted her next to him, which meant the whole bar would accommodate him. He’d turn a hundred come spring. If his heart held, the entire town would turn out for it. They’d have Hadley shut down Main, string the lights, wheel out a cake big enough to outdo a church social, and every soul who’d ever been poured a drink or talked down off a hard night in this very building would come to lay a hand on his shoulder.

“Still arguing with me.” Gus patted his own chest once with a knotted hand. “Doctors keep acting surprised every time I turn up for the next appointment. I keep telling them the Lord will take me when it’s my time and not a second sooner.”

“He knows we need you here.” Hadley meant every word of it. She couldn’t picture Whistlerun without him, and the town had buried enough bodies this past year. They were owed a little mercy. “Which is exactly why you’ll keep those appointments. You hear me?”

“Sam sees that I get there and back.” Gus worked the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other, his attention never once leaving her. “Ask your question, Chief.”

Sam was already crossing the floor with her Shirley Temple. He’d given her extra cherries, and she smiled her thanks. He seemed to sense there was more to her sitting down than supper, and he drifted back the way he’d come. She honestly hadn’t planned on asking Gus anything tonight, but if anyone in this county carried the whole of the Threshing Man in his head, it was him.

“They say the Threshing Man comes when the fields go quiet,” Hadley recited, dredging up the piece of folklore, half expecting him to answer with some scrap of his own wisdom. “When the air smells like rot, and the sky goes copper. He doesn’t reap what’s sown. He takes what’s owed.”

“The Threshing Man doesn’t chase you into the field. He waits for you to walk in on your own. He’s patient. He was there when your people were born here, and he’ll be there when they put you in the ground.” Gus set the verses down slow, each word in its place, and it gave her pause. She’d heard the additional details before. Some would hear a threat folded into it. It could just as easily be heard another way. “Folks around here tell most of those old verses wrong, though. Take the trench coat. There was never any trench coat. Corn husks for clothes, sure, if you go back to the oldest tellings. But a trench coat?”

The humor thinned out of his face.

“We both know who the real monsters turned out to be, don’t we?”

Gus let out a low, rattling laugh with a good deal of disappointment buried in it. She’d always known Gus didn’t believe in the urban legend, though he’d never once mocked those who did.

He reached over and patted the back of her hand.

“Don’t go giving credence to something beyond our control, Hadley.” Gus tipped his head toward the rear of the bar. “Elijah’s back there in his booth. You go careful with him, you hear me? That man loved this town so hard for so long he forgot somewhere along the way that dedication can cross lines. You don’t want to make that same mistake.”

Gus settled back, the toothpick rolling in between his thumb and index finger.

“Go on, then. Get what you came for. Sam will bring your dinner.”

Gus held more secrets than he let on, and she didn’t like leaving the thread where it lay. She made a private note to come back to him when the room wasn’t this full, to find out what else he might recall about the Threshing Man tales, and whether the Mercer family had ever crossed his bar. But those were conversations for fewer ears.

Hadley gave him a small smile and slid off the stool, collecting her drink as she went. She’d spotted Elijah Garber on her way in, alone in the back booth with his bourbon and a cleaned-off plate. The years had finally gotten their hooks into him, thinning him at the shoulders, graying down what was left of his hair. He motioned her toward the seat across from him.