“Yes, please,” the guest verified.
“Yeah—gets cold up there where the good trees are,” Deke said. “Although this winter ain’t gonna be so bad. The worst winter I ever saw was the winter of ’99. Nearly froze my fingers off for some kindlin’. Look here,” he said, extending his arm and showing the pinky finger of his right hand. “See that fingernail? Black as coal. That was ten minutes outside without gloves.”
“Oh, that’s nothin’,” Saul replied. He stepped over and sat down in the chair where Chad had been and started to untie his left boot. “The worst winter was 1921. I was up on Tanner’s Ledge huntin’ with my daddy.” He slipped off his boot, then his ratty sock. “Had a worn spot on the bottom of my boot that broke through. Lost my fourth toe.”
“Nope, I got both ya beat,” Chad said, turning his back and yanking up his long-sleeved shirt. “Look above the beltline. See that scar? That’s ice burn from the winter of ’38. My jacket and shirt got hiked up from carrying a calf across the grazing pasture.”
“Naw, the worst was ’35,” Paul said. “I was up about ten thousand feet, trackin’ a mountain lion that killed one of our horses. I had to relieve myself…” He started to unbuckle his belt. “The wind was really whippin’ that day and?—”
“Whoa!”Clair, Goldie, and Chad all yelled simultaneously.
Just then, Peter Banyan came into the store, dressed for going into the mountains.
“Morning, everyone,” he smiled. He looked at Goldie. “Just came from the hotel, and Maddie said you might be down here suiting up with the boys.” He looked at the McCaws. “Paul, Saul, how’s your mother, Moll?”
“Moll?” Goldie asked.
“Short for Molly,” Clara explained.
“Of course,” Goldie said, rolling her eyes.
“Good,” Paul nodded, unemotional.
“Dandy,” Saul verified, equally somber.
Goldie looked at Peter’s attire. “Are-areyoucoming to the mountains, too?”
“Yeah. Thought I might. Got my car and camera right outside and thought I’d drive you up. Getting the town Christmas tree is a big deal, and my paper should cover it.”
“Yes!” Goldie said, relieved. “Good!”
“Sorry that neither my dad nor I mentioned it last night. Guess we were too busy agreeing to disagree.”
“No, it’s fine,” Goldie said. “It’s really fine. Let me just pick out a few things, change, then we’ll be off.”
She selected an ensemble of heavy woolen pants, a long underwear top, and a plaid shirt to go over that. Next, she selected black rubber boots that clipped shut, gloves, a burnt-orange stocking cap, and a blue jacket. They left the store and climbed into Peter’s 1941 Ford Super Deluxe Station Wagon. It had chains on the tires and sandbags in the back to give it more weight to plow through the snow. They followed the McCaw brothers out of town, got onto Highway 70 for less than a quarter mile, then went up a steep dirt mountain road that bent and turned its way past boulders, fallen trees, and hand-lettered “No Trespassing” signs. There wasn’t any snow for the first twenty minutes of the journey, but then they seemed to go around a corner, and suddenly, the landscape changed from limestone brown to dazzling white. Goldie was wide-eyed and impressed, never having seen anything like it.
“I’m very glad you showed up, Peter,” she admitted, turning from the view back to him. “Without you, I was afraid of steppin’ into a winter version ofDeliverance.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“The McCaw brothers. They’re, they’re—I don’t know what the hell they are.”
“They’re mountain people,” he shrugged. “A little rough around the edges, maybe, but if you asked, they’d give the shirts off their backs.”
“And the ticks that went with ‘em,” she added.
He smiled good-naturedly. “Oh, coming originally from New York, I bet you’ve seen your share of rough characters.”
“You have no idea.”
“What part of the city are you originally from?”
“The Bronx.”
“I thought with that cute accent of yours, it was maybe the Bronx. Sounds a lot like someone I used to know.”
“Cute accent?” she asked.
