Page 23 of This Orc’s Got Rizz

Their camp is a mess. The tarp is fine. The camp around it is a debris field of half-finished projects, and there is a fish trap in the creek made of about four hours of work that would catch a fish if the creek had fish in it at that depth.

"OSTVEK." Rooney comes down the bank with his arms out. "Big man. Big, big man."

"Rooney."

"We're doing a deal, we're doing a great deal, sit down, we don't have chairs."

Junie has stopped four feet back with her hands in her armpits and her head slightly tilted, and she is doing the thing she does, which I have started to catch.

The deal is with the Farrows, and the Farrows are already here. Margaux Farrow, who is enormous and cheerful, and Kit Farrow, who is unhappy about everything and correct about most of it, and there is a tarp on the ground between the two teams with things laid on it.

"So the Farrows have got the fishing line and the hooks," Rooney says, "which is their whole kit item, right, and we've got the cord, which is our whole kit item. And Margaux's saying she'll take the cord for the line and eleven feet of the line comes back to us."

"All of the line," Kit Farrow says.

"Eleven feet comes back."

"That was not the deal."

"That was absolutely the deal."

Ovid Cassabon has his eyes closed.

I open my mouth to say the plain thing, which is that a hundred feet of paracord is worth more than a fishing kit on a creek nobody has taken a fish out of, and that Rooney is about to trade his shelter for a hobby.

Junie steps on my boot.

Barely any weight in it. Just enough.

"Can I ask a boring question," she says, and she has changed something about how she stands, and she has come in three feet, and she is smiling. "Rooney, what's your tarp doing right now? Like, at night."

"It's a tarp. It tarps."

"Is it staked, or is it on cord?"

Rooney opens his mouth. Closes it.

"Because that's a twelve by ten," Junie says, "and mine's a twelve by ten, and there is no way on God's earth you're holding that in this wind on stakes alone. What's your ridgeline made of?"

Silence.

"Rooney."

"It's the cord," Ovid says, without opening his eyes.

"So the deal is you give Margaux your roof, and in exchange, at some point, possibly, a fish."

"Eleven feet comes back," Rooney says, weakly.

"Eleven feet of fishing line will not hold a tarp, my love, it'll hold about four pounds and then it'll cut your hand open on the way through." She turns to Margaux Farrow, still smiling, absolutely warm. "And you don't want this deal either."

"I very much want this deal."

"You want it tonight. Kit doesn't want it on day eleven when the east bench has no shelter and production moves them into a windbreak forty yards from your site and now there's four of you on one water source." She lifts a shoulder. "That's a whole thing. That's your season."

Margaux Farrow's face does something.

Kit Farrow says, "Thank you."