BecauseJack. Who was just about insisting that we all be friends. He had, it seemed, appointed himself our local friendship curator. Which was how he must have been in that little group as they stood on top of a boxcar without any railings or handholds, going a zillion miles an hour, ducking when they reached a dark tunnel.We will be together.We will stick together.That’s what his expression said now.
“That sounds good to me,” I said, with a hard swallow to vanquish my own misgivings at having anyone in the cabin that I didn’t know very well. Nobody should be in there but me and Blue, but, like everything, this was going to change. “How about it, Blue?” I asked. “Think we can clean the place up before they get there?”
“Around five?” Jack asked. “We could pick up food around five and be at your place right after that. Any later than that, and they’ll run out of lemon cake.”
“Nothing can beat that lemon cake,” Morgan said, tapping his cane stoutly on the sidewalk. “Unless it’s Mabel’s peach cobbler.”
Blue nodded at me, going quiet, his hands on the edges of his parka, tugging. “Lemon cake gets my vote,” he said.
I wanted to hug him right there in the street. And kiss him and push his fair hair back from his forehead, and take away the darkness in his eyes.
He was thinking about Star. I didn’t want to think about Star, because the way Blue talked about him, Star was a slip of a thing, young and smart, but very small, according to Blue’s descriptions. Blue hadn’t really been dressed for the bad weather they encountered; I shuddered to think that Star had been even less prepared.
“We’ll see you after five,” I said. That would give us plenty of time.
It was then that a white SUV with the Hysham town logo and the word Sheriff emblazoned on it, pulled up, and out got Young Tommy.
“Is there a reason you fellows are parked so wonky?” he asked, hitching up his big black belt, his eyes shadowed by the brim of his brown hat. “Nose to nose? And who is this?” he asked, looking at Blue.
In under a minute, this silent, taciturn officer of the law had sussed out that Blue was not native to Hysham, that he was an out-of-place individual who might or might not mean harm to its citizens. I saw this in his eyes as he took off his hat, adjusted the inner band, and put the hat back on his head.
“This is Blue,” I said, leaving it at that, knowing Blue wouldn’t want his family name to be known. But beyond that, due to the fact that after prison, and during it, I’d lost my ability to confront someone with a badge, I didn’t know what to tell him.
“He’s a friend of ours,” said Morgan, somewhat sharply. “He’s new in town. He’s staying with Wolfe.”
Young Tommy looked at me. Then at Blue. “Do you have a license, son? Any ID?”
I knew that Blue didn’t. That he’d ripped it up and thrown it away so that if his body was ever found, cold and lifeless by the tracks, they wouldn’t be able to trace the body back to his family. Of course, there were DNA tests and dental records that could be used, but I’d not reminded Blue of that because that wasn’t the point.
“He lost it,” I said.
“We’re going to get him another,” said Morgan. He thumped his cane and looked Young Tommy right in the eye, as if daring him to object to this. “Quick as we can.”
After a silent moment, Young Tommy nodded. “See that you do,” he said. And, unspoken as he tapped two fingers to the brim of his brown hat, were the words,Hysham takes care of its own.
I was sweating as he drove off, though I wouldn’t have admitted it, a band of heat along the back of my neck, dampness beneath my arms. We’d done nothing wrong beyond a bad parking job, and nobody was in trouble. But my body was reacting to the badge, and I needed to give it a grace period before I started getting angry at it doing that.
“We’ll see you at five,” I said. “Do you know the way, Morgan?”
“Frontage Road to Bauer Road,” he said. “Your place is about ten miles out, right?”
“That’s right,” I said. “Turn right on Diamond Willow Lane. I’m the only house there.”
“Sounds good.”
Morgan and Jack got into the red truck and drove off, the thick tires screeching on the dry pavement. I saw Morgan reach for the handle and smiled because Jack drove fast at all times, the way a young man did. The way a young man should, when the spirit took him.
The weight of that hit me. I’d never been young that way, as I’d been tied to the church and to the community, never going fast, the wind in my hair. Maybe Blue hadn’t either, because I watched him watching the truck roar down the street, a pensive darkness in his eyes.
“You okay?” I asked Blue, not moving toward him, not taking him in my arms like I wanted to do.
“Let’s go home,” he said.
I drove us back to the cabin, half my mind on the road, the other half on Blue.
Morgan’s stamp of approval had been unexpected; his fierceNever you mindto Young Tommy an attempt at closing the doorto there being any issue. This all assuming that Blue would want to stay. I felt he did.
The other half of my attention was on the way Blue was sitting as close to me as he could on the bench seat without getting in the way of the four on the floor. His silence. The way he fiddled with the zipper on his parka, pushed his hair back from his face. Looked out the window at the brown and white landscape as it whooshed past.
