"I can walk him to the gap," the man says. "Or you can. He's your dog."
"Right now, that’s debatable."
This time he does smile.
I don't know why I do it, but my words come flying out. "I've got a fire going. And most of a bottle of wine I'm not going to finish by myself. If you want a glass. For catching him."
He considers it. He actually considers it, like it's a real question and not just a thing people say, and I appreciate that more than I can account for.
"Yeah," he says. "All right."
He follows me back across his yard and through the gate, and the dog trots between us like he's been hosting this party all along.
He sits across the fire from me in the second Adirondack chair, the one nobody ever uses, and Hoagie collapses between us like he's brokered peace.
I pour him a glass and hand it across. Our fingers come close but don't touch, and my face goes warm for no reason I'd admit to out loud.
He takes a sip. A small one. Sets the glass on the arm of the chair and mostly leaves it there.
We don't talk much at first, and the strange thing is it doesn't itch.
All week people have been talkingatme, full to the brim with concern, every sentence a hook with something on the end of it.
This man says nothing and asks nothing, and for the first time in days, my shoulders come down out of my ears.
"You moved in," I say finally. "The rental's been empty since spring."
"Couple weeks ago."
"Just you?"
"Just me."
The fire works at a knot of pine and spits a spark toward the dark. He watches it go.
My eyes keep going to the thing folded over his shoulders—leather, heavy, with a patch stitched into it.
I've seen vests like it on men at gas stations off the interstate, the kind of men my mother would steer me away from with a hand on my elbow.
"What’s on your vest?" I ask, and nod at it.
Something flickers across his face—not offense, more like he's heard it before and decided a long time ago not to mind it.
"It's a cut," he says.
"A cut." I turn the word over, and the fire pops between us like it's weighing in.
"Vest is what they're called by people who don't wear them, or people who don’t know any better." He reaches back and touches it, just rests two fingers on the leather the way he rested his hand on my dog. "This is a cut. There's a difference."
"In what?"
"A club." He watches me when he says it, like he's gauging which way I'll jump. "Motorcycle club. Out of Tallahassee. My family's in it. My father. My brother—my twin. Cousins. Most of the men I grew up with." A pause. "It's a thing you're born into, in my case."
I think about that.
Everything I know about motorcycle clubs I learned from the news, watchingSons of Anarchywhen I was far too young for it, and from my mother's warnings and from one documentary I half watched.
None of it fits the man sitting across from me being gentle with my idiot dog and declining to drink the wine I poured him.
