Page 37 of Into the Fire

The cabin sat back from the road in a stand of larches, untended. A pile of needles lay drifted against the front steps. Squirrels or raccoons had pulled insulation out from under the eave on the south corner and left it hanging.

Dutch would have been up a ladder to fix that eave instantly.

Boone had the key on his ring. He put it in the lock, turned, and the door swung open. The first things that met us were mouse shit and a musty smell.

Boone crossed the room and started raising the blinds and opening the windows. The sashes had swollen, and he had to hit the frames with the heel of his hand.

Daylight changed the space. Dutch was everywhere.

Old gear hung from nails: a harness that should have been retired, a rain jacket gone stiff as sheet metal, and two hard hats, one cracked. Maps were spread across the coffee table. He had a corkboard with photos pinned to it, including a younger Nash squatting next to a cargo box.

On a shelf by the stove, holding down a stack of unopened mail, was a headlamp that belonged to me. It had D.V. in my handwriting on blue tape. It had disappeared out of my locker, and Dutch told me, with a straight face, that a man who couldn’t keep track of his own gear had no business jumping out of planes.

“That son of a bitch.” I held it up, running my thumb over my initials. “He told me I left it at the Bitterroot fire.”

Boone looked at it for a second. Then he laughed, and I joined him.

“He knew,” Boone said. “He’d have looked at those initials on the tape every night.”

“I bet he used my headlamp to read in bed.”

“For sure. He didn’t buy things when he could acquire them.” Boone opened a cupboard and stopped. “Oh, hell.”

On the bottom shelf was an unopened can of the coffee Dutch used to brew at Silvertip. The same stuff that sat in the kitchen until somebody—Fellhauer swore it wasn’t him—buried the last can in the bottom of a cargo box headed for Boise.

“He had a private reserve,” I said.

“You could mark timber with that stuff. It stained the pot.”

Boone investigated the camp burner on the counter, with the little propane bottle beside it. “There’s water at the wellhead.”

“Boone, no.”

“There’s a kettle right there.”

I couldn’t stop him. He left the cabin with the kettle in one hand and a mug in the other. I heard the spigot cough and run.

I continued discovering things. There was a calendar on the wall from the year Dutch died, flipped to June. A note marked a dentist appointment he never kept.

Boone came back and lit the burner. The water took its time. When the coffee was made, he offered me a taste. It was worse than I remembered. I took one swallow and set the cup down with respect for the dead.

“No responsible federal agency would let human beings drink this,” I said.

“It’s not that bad.”

“You’ve gone pale.”

“It’s fine.” He took another swallow to prove it, and he needed a second to get it down. Then he looked at me, daring me to say something. That was Boone Hatcher, through and through. He’d rather suffer than concede.

We shared Dutch stories. Boone talked about the Bitterroot bet, which Dutch lost and paid off in pennies. The pennies led to the time he backed the crew truck into the only tree in an empty parking lot and told everyone for three days that he’d done it on purpose, for shade.

Eventually, I ended up sitting on the arm of Dutch’s chair, and Boone was leaning against the sideboard. I was laughing hard enough that I had to put the terrible coffee down.

For the first time since Carson Ridge, I was talking about Dutch without hurt underneath. He was just Dutch, cheap, larcenous and vain about his driving.

Boone found the whiskey. It was in the cupboard over the stove, behind a coffee can full of chimney bolts, the perfect place where Dutch would keep the one valuable thing he owned.

“Well, shit,” he said.