“You want to sit the rest of the afternoon out?” asked Gabe. “Or do you want to help stack wood?”
“Stack,” said Blaze without even pausing to think. In Gabe’s eyes, he saw approval for his choice, and a flicker of something else that darkened the blue to midnight.
“You’ll need a new shirt,” said Gabe.
“Why?” Surely an ex-con like himself could work in a torn and bloodied t-shirt.
“You don’t want to work with wood with bare arms,” said Gabe. “Or in a bloody shirt. It might attract bears.”
With a nod, Gabe straightened up, though his hand remained on Blaze’s shoulder for another long, warm minute.
“Go and change and meet us near the wood chipper. We’ll stack our wood there and cover it with a tarp, and let it season.”
Gabe started clearing away the used supplies, throwing away the cotton swabs he’d used, dark red with dried blood, and cleaned off the scissors he’d used to cut Blaze’s shirt.
Standing in the open doorway, Blaze realized Gabe’s broad back was to him, as if he’d not the slightest concern that Blaze would jump him unawares.
“Okay.”
Maybe two years in prison had taught him never to expect kindness or to be treated decently, though he knew, deep in his heart, that being a member of the Butterworth family had already taught him that, years before.
Today, though. Today. Blaze had been treated like he mattered. Like his wounds deserved tending. Like concern and caring were simply what Gabe had inside of him in abundance. Enough to share. Enough to give to Blaze.
“Okay,” he said again. “And thanks.”
Gabe looked over his shoulder at Blaze, drying the scissors with a paper towel at the same time.
“For what?”
“For everything,” said Blaze, and then he turned and hurried along the path to his tent, where not one, but two other brand new shirts waited for him. It was so different to live this way, and though he didn’t really believe it would continue as it was, part of him wanted it to, oh, so very badly.
Chapter10
Gabe
Aquick call to Leland in the evening told Gabe exactly what he’d been expecting. That Kurt wanted no part of playing lumberjack, as he put it, and preferred to serve out his parole in the usual way. In a halfway house, checking in with his PO every week, and taking state-scheduled drug tests, though Gabe imagined Kurt had put it more stridently.
Maybe for Kurt, the known pattern of this kind of parole made him more comfortable. And maybe, as Gabe’s training had warned him, some ex-cons simply weren’t interested in taking advantage of any opportunities to start a new life, even if they’d been shoved into a wholesome situation like the valley presented.
It won’t matter, the instructor at Wyoming Correction had told them.No matter how frustrating, these men are grown adults and are allowed to make mistakes. We can teach them, and demonstrate to them, and do everything that would encourage anyone else to take a different road this time, but for some men, it simply won’t matter. And you have to be willing to walk away from it.
So Gabe had come to the point where he needed to walk away from caring too much, though it was hard. His intention had always been to make himself useful, to help others adjust to a different kind of life, just as he had when he’d come out of the army.
No change was stress free, even good ones. But, at that moment, as he sat in the middle of the ten-person table, with three freshly showered ex-cons huddled around him like he was the single guiding light in their existence, maybe he was making a little bit of difference.
Tom, as though freed from any reticence by the violence of the afternoon, was talking a blue streak about his girlfriend and his little baby, whom he had never seen, as she’d been born while he was behind bars.
“Joanna wouldn’t bring my little girl to the prison because she didn’t want her to be around all of that.” Tom shrugged as if the price he’d paid with having no visits would all be worth it in the end. “But I’m going to talk to her again tonight and ask her to visit on Sunday. That’s all right, isn’t it, sir?” Tom looked up from his dinner.
“Gabe,” said Gabe, smiling into his cup of coffee. Maybe Tom was messing with him, or maybe he honestly forgot. “Just Gabe, please.”
“How aboutboss?” asked Wayne, snickering, but in the way of a man who knew he could tease the man in charge, just a little bit, which was the kind of trust Gabe knew he’d enjoy cultivating. “Can we call you that?”
“What do you guys think?” asked Gabe, putting his coffee mug down and looking at each one in turn.
All three of them, Tom, Wayne, and Blaze, looked at him with those wideWho, me?andI-didn’t-do-iteyes, which he’d realized from the first were expressions they’d learned to wear in prison, to keep from being someone the guards might pick out from the crowd, simply to have someone to lay the blame on. Or maybe they simply didn’t know what he was asking them.
“I prefer it if you call me Gabe,” he said. “Since we’re all working on the same team and doing the same work,sirsounds too formal.” He gestured at them. “And, in my view, calling mebossmakes it sound like we’re in a chain gang, and I’m standing on the sidelines with my vicious bloodhound or something while you guys are digging ditches.”
