Page 6 of The Fire Line

“Harris at four thirty?” Priya looked doubtful. “We’ll see.”

“He’ll show.”

“You sound confident.”

“He agreed.”

“So did half the people who’ve ghosted us in three countries.”

“He wants to know what we’re doing too badly not to show.”

Priya studied him a fraction longer than the schedule required.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

She returned to the page. Jay had been on the ranch less than a day. There could not possibly be anything for her to have noticed.

Near midnight, he opened his window before getting into bed. The ranch had disappeared into darkness except for low barn lights and a porch lamp through the cottonwoods south of the lodge.

Harris’s cabin.

A figure sat beneath the light, too far away for detail beyond broad shoulders and one boot propped along the porch rail. Then a small flame appeared as Harris bent toward a cigarette, one hand cupped around it.

Of course he smoked. Someone had clearly assembled the man from every Western image Jay distrusted and then made him inconveniently attractive inside all of them.

The ember moved through the darkness once, then again. Jay drew the curtain and told himself he had only been learning the geography.

2

The Space Between Answers

The pump began hammering before dawn. Harris woke on the second strike, and by the fourth he was pulling on yesterday’s jeans. He crossed the cabin in the dark, stepped into his boots without socks, and was outside before the pipes hit again. The sound traveled through the ground more than the air.

Pressure problem. Probably the switch.

He cut behind the lodge toward the pump house and found Walt already there, of course, standing in the doorway with one boot half-laced and a hand braced against the frame while he bent to finish it.

“I’ve got it,” Harris said.

Walt straightened. “Could be the line.”

“Line’s holding.”

“It was holdin’ last night. Don’t mean it’s holdin’ now.”

Harris opened the panel and watched the gauge jump. Switch contacts. Dust. Nothing dramatic, which was good. Physical problems remained his favorite kind. They had causes and tools, and they did not improve because anybody talked longer.

“I’ll clean it.”

Walt stayed behind him.

“You can go.”

“I’m already here.”

For two years, his father had been moving slower and pretending he wasn’t. Harris had noticed before Walt did, which was its own problem.