Page 9 of Bonfire with the Mountain Man

“It ran. Fine’s a stretch.” I straighten up. “I know a guy. Best in the valley, and he owes me. Let me make a call.”

She wipes her hands on her jeans. “I can deal with my own truck.”

“I know you can.” I keep my voice casual. “I’m not offering because you can’t. I’m offering because he’s ten minutes out, and you have fruit to finish. I’d rather you spend the morning on the brandy than under the hood. That’s all.”

She looks at me a long moment. Something works behind her eyes—the same wariness from last night, the reflex to refuse before she can be refused. But she’s tired and the fruit’s waiting. Finally, she nods.

I make the call. Beck answers on the second ring, and twenty minutes later, his truck rolls up the alley with the shop logo on the door.

He already has a wrench out when he climbs down. The man doesn’t waste words. He listens to me describe the grind, grunts, and leans in over the engine.

“Yep. You called it.” He wipes his hands. “Solenoid’s shot. Starter’ll go by spring too, but I can get you through the season. Part’s in the truck.” He straightens and looks at Maggie. “This your rig?”

“It’s mine,” she says.

“Good old truck. Somebody’s kept the engine clean. Give me forty minutes.”

He gets into it. I bring him coffee. Maggie stands at the edge of the alley a minute, arms crossed, watching a man fix the thing she was braced to fix alone, and I can’t read what’s on her face. Then she goes back inside to the fruit, and I follow her, because I’d follow her about anywhere at this point, and I’ve stopped pretending otherwise.

We finish the last crate together. The mash is in, the fermenter’s sealed, the carboys are capped and labeled in her blocky handwriting because she insisted on marking the varieties. She’s flushed from the work and half-smiling, standing in my barrel room like she’s grown into the space overnight. I’m thinking I’m not going to let her drive back up that pass and disappear for another year. I’m going to say so. I’m working up to it.

Then the front bell rings.

It’s Billy from the historical society, in for his standing Tuesday jar. He leans on the bar while I pour.

“Place has come a long way,” he says. “Remember when the city had the wrecking permit drawn up? Whole block nearly went to a shuttle lot.”

“I remember.”

“Takes a certain kind of man to look at a condemned building and write a check.” He lifts his jar at me. “What made you do it?”

“Same thing I always do,” I say. “I take what everybody else has given up on. Nobody fights you for it. The stuff the world throws away is the stuff I get to keep.”

Billy laughs and drinks. It’s nothing. It’s the truest and least remarkable thing about me, and I’ve said it in this room a hundred times.

Then I look up.

Maggie’s stopped in the doorway. The rag’s gone still in her hand. She’s not looking at me anymore. She’s looking at a spot on the floor between us, and the color’s drained from her face. I run back what I just said, and everything in me goes cold.

The stuff the world throws away is the stuff I get to keep.

“Maggie.”

“I should get the truck,” she says. Her voice is level and that’s worse than if it shook. “Beck’s probably done.”

“Maggie, that’s not⁠—”

“It’s fine.” She sets the rag down on the press. “You paid for the fruit. Fair and square. I’m not going to hold you up.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

“I know exactly what you meant.” She’s already reaching for her flannel on the hook, pulling it on over the T-shirt, and she won’t look at me. “You collect things nobody wanted. You said so. You’ve been saying so since two in the morning, and I just wasn’t listening right.”

“I was talking about a building.”

“You were talking about all of it.” She gets the flannel buttoned with hands that aren’t quite steady, and finally she looks at me, and there’s something in her face that isn’t even anger. It’s recognition. Like I’ve confirmed a thing she’s known her whole life and hoped, for about eight hours, might not be true. “It’s okay, Boone. Really. I’m good at being the thing somebody takes in. I’ve had a lot of practice.”

She goes out through the bay. I hear Beck’s truck door, low voices, the flatbed’s engine turning over clean on the first try.