Page 6 of Autumn With The Grumpy Mountain Man

She looked up at me. I could feel it without turning around.

“So you make something beautiful,” she said slowly, “knowing it’ll be gone.”

“That’s the point.”

She didn’t say anything else. She went back to stirring, slower now, and I knew she was thinking about it. I stapled the same strip twice.

That was the most I’d said to anybody in a month. I didn’t know why I’d said it to her.

On Wednesday, I gave her the worst job I had. There was a mountain of scrap wood against the back wall, years of offcuts I’d been meaning to deal with and never had. I told her to sort it by length.

I figured that would be the one to break her.

When I came back from the lumberyard that afternoon, the mountain of wood was gone. She’d lined up six bins along the wall and sorted the scrap into them, not just by length but by type of wood. She’d labeled every bin with a strip of masking tape and a marker, and next to each label she’d drawn a tiny sketch of the grain. Each drawing was the size of my thumbnail, and each one was right.

She was sitting on an upturned bucket, eating an apple.

“I hope that’s okay,” she said. “I couldn’t help myself.”

“It’s fine.”

“You say that a lot.”

“It’s usually true.”

She laughed, quick and surprised. I hadn’t meant to be funny.

I went back to work. So did she.

On Friday morning she said good morning at the bottom of the stairs at seven, the same as every day, whether I answered or not. She hummed while she sanded. When she was concentrating, she went quiet and caught her bottom lip in her teeth. And she smiled at everything, including me, every single time I grunted at her.

I’d started looking forward to the smiles. I didn’t decide to. I just realized late Friday afternoon that I’d started trying to predict what would make her lips turn up and her eyes sparkle.

I worked the staple gun harder than I needed to.

She looked up from her paste bucket. “Everything okay?”

“Fine.”

She smiled.

I went outside and started on the winter woodpile. I'd been putting it off for weeks. I split until it was too dark to see the wedge, and I was still thinking about her smile when I quit. It wasn't her I was mad at.

Chapter Three

Hazel

There was a mug of coffee on the top step.

I almost kicked it on my way down the stairs. It sat on the top landing in a chipped blue mug, still steaming in the cool September air. I picked it up and smelled vanilla.

I’d run out of creamer two days ago and hadn’t had a chance to head into town for more.

Shepherd was at the workbench when I came down, measuring a strip of wire.

“Did you leave this?”

“I was at the store.”