Black River Part 11

"You need something to play," Wes said. "You're talented, no doubt about it. But you've still got to practice, and a few minutes here and there when you're at the house ain't gonna do it."

"I can't."

"I don't know if this is gonna make sense to you or not," Wes said after a minute, "but that fiddle's got a particular voice I don't hear from it all the time. It sounded a certain way when I played it . . . before . . . and it doesn't ever seem to sound that way when other folks try it. Not bad, understand? But not the way I remember it." Scott was watching him closely, but Wes couldn't tell what the kid thought of what he was saying. He looked away, squinted through the pocked windshield. Those d.a.m.ned mountains blocking out everything else. "When you started to play . . . my tune . . ." Wes closed his eyes, couldn't keep the notes from his mind, couldn't stop them from p.r.i.c.kling in his fingertips. "I heard its voice today," he said finally. "I heard it when you played." He looked back at Scott, and he felt so weary. No energy left to hide what he felt. No effort to guard his features.

Scott looked back for a long moment-a brightness in his eyes Wes had seen only in flashes before, a dark and thoughtful sort of intelligence-and then he put his hands back on top of the fiddle case, one over the other. "I'll take very good care of it," he said.

Wes nodded, felt an ease over his shoulders. "I know you will."

He was having nightmares again. Didn't much remember them after he woke, but Wes knew he'd spent his slumbering hours back in that control room with Williams. What else could jolt him awake this way, pulse running away with itself, T-shirt clinging to his back and chest? By midweek, he was the sort of tired that made itself known in muscle and bone. He doubled up on coffee in the mornings and rode the caffeine as long as he could. Truth was, he didn't entirely mind the exhaustion. Made everything seem just a little less real. A little less immediate. Didn't change the fact that the hearing was less than two weeks away. Didn't change the fact that Wes had no idea what he would say, how he'd face down Williams. But it did make it harder to think about those things.

Wednesday morning was his appointment at the donation clinic, and he didn't want to go. The chair was too like the one in the dreams he didn't remember, too like the one in his memory. But Wes got in the truck and drove, because this was something he was good at. Keeping his word. Following through. Doing what needed to be done. He felt a bit better when he got to Elk Fork and the mountains backed off. The light was different here than in the canyon. Found its way to earth more easily. Wes thought, not for the first time, that maybe he should've moved the family here when he was still working at the prison, found a little house on one of the oak-lined streets, something with a wide porch for summer evenings, and flowerbeds for Claire. Would've meant a fair commute, of course-that much harder come winter, especially in those predawn hours before day watch, or the postdusk ones after evening watch-but he could've managed. Maybe such a simple decision-live here, not there-would've changed something.

Wes sat in the truck in the hospital parking lot for a long time. He'd arrived ten minutes early, and he sat in the cab for fifteen. Thought about not going inside. Might've done it-started the engine, driven away-had it not been Molly waiting for him. Molly, who he'd looked in the eye, who had invited him into her home. No. A comb through his hair, a tug on his collar. Then he was outside, across the parking lot, through the doors that drew themselves wide for him. He took the stairs to the second floor. (He couldn't remember what floor he'd stayed on those days after the riot. Third? Fifth?) In the donation center, he had to wait despite his tardiness, and he ignored the chairs, paced the perimeter of the reception area. He slowed when he pa.s.sed the door. Still time to walk out. Probably wouldn't be the first time someone had done it.

Molly smiled broadly when she came into the waiting room. "Good morning, Mr. Carver."

"Wes," he corrected, doing his best to match her expression.

"Wes," she agreed. Pink scrubs today. Nametag still had that glittery sticker on it. Molly led him back to one of the donation chairs and drew the curtain around the cubicle without his having to ask. "Sun still shining out there?"

"Yeah." He perched uneasily on the edge of the chair, didn't yield to its curves and angles. "Plenty bright."

"Good," she said. "I get so edgy this time of year knowing winter's on its way, and when it comes I won't see the sun for ages. That little flurry the other day gave me a scare." She stepped toward him, and Wes felt his breath catch in his lungs. Only the blood pressure cuff. He let her position it on his arm, tried not to notice it tightening. Wes half hoped this might be one of those days they told him, Thanks, but not today. Come back some other time. "Perfect," Molly announced, pulling the cuff off.

He forced another smile.

"Can I give you a hand with those b.u.t.tons?"

His very words from that first visit, back at him. "I got it today, if you give me a minute."

Molly turned her attention to her tray of instruments. Courteous as ever. "Wes," Molly said, and her tone was different this time, not unfriendly, but not overlaid with that professional cheer. "I can't say how much I appreciate your giving Scott your fiddle to use, but-"

"I don't want to hear the 'but,'" Wes said. The b.u.t.ton on his right cuff came free. Two round scars showing in the sudden gap. "He can't get all the practice he needs during lessons." The left b.u.t.ton always so much harder. No grip at all with his right hand. "My father built that fiddle," he said. "I ain't gonna try to convince you it don't mean a lot to me. It does. But it deserves to be played. And Scott deserves to play it."

Molly glanced back at him like she might argue, but something she saw in his face changed her mind. He checked himself immediately, tried to soften his eyes, relax his jaw. "He's been playing one song I really like," she said after a moment, and hummed the first few phrases, tentative and quiet. The notes came out lower than Wes would've guessed from her speaking voice.

"'Weaving Way,'" Wes said. He gave up on his fingers, brought his cuff to his mouth and tugged the b.u.t.ton free with his teeth. Molly came to his side, drawing the cart close. She took his right wrist in her hand, and Wes couldn't stop himself pulling back for a second. She didn't seem to notice, just turned his wrist until his arm was positioned the way she liked. Wes hadn't realized till this moment how much he'd been counting on Molly to see through his veil of false composure to the unease beneath. How much he'd been counting on her to suggest-maybe even insist-that he go on home today, try again another time. But now she was swabbing his elbow with the alcohol, and he let the slightest flinch show itself, and still she said nothing. You done this a hundred times, Wes told himself. You can do it again.

"I got a call this morning." Molly was beside him now, tourniquet in one hand, needle in the other, but she stood very still and cast her eyes down. "There was a fight at the prison," she said. "I don't know exactly what happened. But Connor-my husband-was involved. A guard was hurt." She glanced at his face, quick, down at his bared arm, at the floor. "Minor injuries, they said." Footsteps on the linoleum beyond the curtain. Molly lowered her voice. "He's in segregation now," she said. "There's no chance they'll release him next month."

"You're not leaving, then," Wes said, barely aware of the words as they left his lips. He couldn't concentrate on this, could think only of how easily violence sprang into being in that place, how quickly an ordinary situation could turn bad. How it had come to him in a single moment when the riot began, a sudden awareness that what he had first thought to be a minor scuffle-nearly routine-was something else entirely, something it was too late to extricate himself from, something that was about to engulf him totally.

"No," Molly said. The word like a sigh. "We're going to have to stay. And I know how hard that's going to be on Scott. So I'm glad-so glad-that he can spend time with you, and with Dennis. With men who are . . . better . . . than his father."

It cost Molly something deep to say that. Wes knew that in some part of himself, knew he ought to offer her grat.i.tude or rea.s.surance or condolences, but he hesitated, and now she was asking him if he was ready and he lied and said yes, and there was a needle in his arm, seeking his vein. And he knew he'd granted permission, knew that in a moment the needle would be in place and the small pain would end, and it would be fine, it would all be fine. But something else inside him knew only that he did not want to be sitting here, did not want his skin exposed this way, did not want to feel any more pain than he already did, and that something was stronger, that visceral response sharper than the rational one, and then he was standing, the needle on the floor, the tourniquet limp beside it, and Wes was stammering what he meant to be an apology, but all that came out was "I can't." He looked at Molly, saw confusion cede to compa.s.sion in her eyes-he didn't need her pity-and he pushed his sleeves down, saw the right one bloom red where it touched the single drop of blood sliding toward his wrist, and then he was past the curtain and out the door.

He woke again that night. He lay on the narrow bed, listening to Dennis's light snore across the hall, to the absence of Claire's gentle breaths beside him. Sometimes she had woken with him when he'd had a nightmare, but more often she didn't. He'd found that comforting, somehow. Proof that what troubled him was in the past. That it was safe again.

No more sleep tonight. Wes rose slowly, easing out of bed so the creaking springs wouldn't disturb Dennis. He pulled on his jeans and padded barefoot down the hall. He fumbled blindly on the kitchen table for Dennis's cigarettes and lighter, then let himself out onto the porch. Cold outside, too cold for just a T-shirt, but Wes sat down on the steps anyway. There was smoke in the air again, not from wildfire but from fireplaces and woodstoves. It would gather and linger in the canyon over the next weeks and months, the scent growing sharper and heavier until the air became chill enough to sear the nostrils. Until all a person could smell was the cold itself.

Autumn had been Claire's favorite season. His, too, once. He'd never quite got over the schoolboy way of thinking of fall as the start of a new year. For a long time that was a good thing, the thought of an entire year stretched out before him, waiting to be lived. When Wes's life was easy, it meant the promise of more good things to come. When it wasn't, it meant hope that the new seasons would be better than the last. But now, without Claire, he couldn't muster the optimism.

He hadn't thought of her today, at the clinic. Not once, not even there. Spent the better part of the past two years in one hospital or another, at her side, and today he'd been so full of memory and fear, so full of G.o.dd.a.m.ned Bobby Williams, that he hadn't thought of her until he was in his truck, halfway back to Black River. Wes just wanted this over, wanted Williams out of his life. He wanted to get back to grieving, because hard as it was to bear, there was something pure in his grief for Claire. What he felt in those days after her death so filled him, so commanded every moment, he knew it was just a hairsbreadth from love itself. Like the same note played an octave apart, at the same time, ringing and resonating together.

Wes watched his breath appear faintly before him with each exhalation. He squinted into the dark but couldn't see the horses. He could hear them, though, beyond the circle of light cast by the security lamp mounted on the side of the workshop. A shifting of weight over frosting gra.s.s, a clink of steel shoe against hoof sole, a long, trembling sigh.

He tapped the cigarette pack against his thigh, set one between his lips and managed the lighter in only a few tries. A greater plume of breath into the air now. He had to decide what to say at the hearing. He had to have a plan. Otherwise he might end up in that room with Williams and freeze up. Stammer. Bolt the way he did at the clinic today. Worse. But what to say . . . The parole board would have the files, the records. They'd know what Williams had done in that farmhouse out on the eastern plains, and they'd know what he'd done in that control room during the riot. Those things alone wouldn't stop them from letting him out. There had to be more, something he could say, something he could make them see.

The security lamp lent a greenish cast to his skin. Wes held his right hand out before him, turned it palm-up. He liked the way the light made the skin seem not quite his own, the scars a little less real. The one in the middle of his forearm, third from his palm, that had come first. He remembered the smoke blown in his face, the laughter in his ear, the first touch of burning ash to flesh. But he wasn't sure he remembered the pain. Not well enough to put it into words that might let someone else think they could understand it.

Williams had found Wes's cigarettes in the desk drawer almost immediately, tossed his own aside in favor of the more expensive brand. Wes remembered watching from the corner of his eye, afraid to look directly at Williams. Seemed like looking a wild animal in the eye, better avoided. He hadn't hurt much yet. The crack over his head, the boot to his ribs, a fist to his face when he hadn't immediately responded to the sole question Williams had asked so far. (Why had he finally answered "Wesley" rather than "Wes"? Why the name Claire used?) Williams had a reckless way of moving, entirely without caution, and he smoked the cigarette with a certain brashness. He wore Wes's uniform shirt over his own T-shirt, and it was too big for him, the cuffs falling over his knuckles, close to the cigarette's lit tip. He seemed to be paying attention mostly to what was going on outside the control room-to the shouts and occasional screams, the ringing of metal on metal, the sickly scent of something burning-and Wes was glad. He was relieved that electric attention wasn't on him, hopeful he might be simply warehoused here, bound and uncomfortable but otherwise more or less unharmed.

"You must think I'm awful rude," Williams had said suddenly. Hadn't looked at Wes when he spoke, and Wes seized that, pretended-childishly, pointlessly-that he didn't realize Williams was talking to him. Williams had walked slowly around the small room, to what would come to be his customary place behind Wes. Knelt behind the chair, leaned around to speak into Wes's ear. "I smoke this in front of you and don't share." Blew a lungful of smoke across Wes's face. The cigarette appeared in front of him, still one or two drags left before the filter, tip smoldering gently. "Finish it off?" Williams pushed it toward his face, and Wes had tilted his head away, eyes on the far wall, lips pressed shut. Not yet knowing what was coming, exactly, not with certainty, but it was there, pushing at the edges of his consciousness, refusing to be kept at bay. He couldn't look, couldn't respond, because his eyes would betray his fear, and even his voice, ever trustworthy, might not protect him.

That laugh. That laugh he had never forgotten, low and languid. "Better put it out, then."

Wes held his cigarette out in front of him now. It glowed hard in the dark, brighter for the absence of strong light nearby. He remembered the heat just before the cigarette had touched his skin. The moment before the pain. He remembered the scent of it, the smaller, closer acrid burn twinning with the stench outside the control room. He remembered the sound, the breathy hiss and crackle. But he didn't remember the pain itself. Not in his waking hours, anyway. There was a haziness cast over the memory of the worst pains, the details surrounding them sharp enough that the missing core went almost unnoticed. Maybe that was some gift of G.o.d, a gentle hand shielding the eyes of his memory from the harshest moments. But he needed those moments. Needed the worst of it, bright and present.

Claire didn't believe in an afterlife. Didn't believe she would be somewhere out there in the blackness, above in the stars, watching over him.

Wes pressed the tip of the cigarette to the unmarked flesh above his right elbow. Oh, yes. Yes. Now he remembered. The searing he'd tried to jerk away from even before feeling the brunt of the pain, the way Williams had followed his movements so smoothly, the strain of muscle against steel, the way the burning built and heightened and still Williams didn't lift the cigarette from his skin. Now he remembered the bracing, the way it had taken every physical effort, all the strength and discipline he could muster, just to stay silent. G.o.d, that such a small sc.r.a.p of fire could cause such pain!

"Jesus, Wes!" A hand on his wrist, the cigarette no longer pressed to flesh, the glowing embers tumbling to the ground. Dennis was barefoot, too, and remembered it just as he went to grind the b.u.t.t out, kicked gravel over it instead and buried the orange flame. "What the f.u.c.k are you doing?"

Now he remembered. Now he might put this into words. Now he had found the clarity he had sought. The man who had done this to him had done it not once, but six times. And when he tired of that, he'd tried a different sort of pain, and then another. Over and over and over. Laughing and laughing and laughing. The man who had done this to him was not deserving of parole. He was not deserving of forgiveness, or G.o.d's grace. He had not become someone else. The man who had done this to him could not have become anyone else.

"What the f.u.c.k, Wes?" Dennis's voice too loud in the night air. "What's wrong with you?"

"I couldn't remember what it felt like."

Dennis knelt in front of him, looked into his eyes a long time. He'd sounded angry, but Wes saw now that he was scared. Sorry for that. Hadn't meant anyone else to know. Dennis took Wes's hand in his, turned it so the greenish light hit the new wound. Bare arms. T-shirt. Wes realized it at once, tried to stand, to pull his hand back, but Dennis held his wrist, then both his wrists. "Jesus," he whispered.

"Give me back my hands," Wes growled. Enough himself to make it sound like the order it was, to drive enough authority into the words to command obedience. Dennis dropped his own hands to his sides, took a step back, gravel grinding beneath his feet. Wes stood, crossed his arms over his chest. Sc.r.a.ped his knuckles against the fresh burn, but hid the grimace.

"I had no idea," Dennis said.

"You know what he did," Wes said. "I know you do."

"Yeah, but I've never seen . . ."

"You were a kid," Wes said. "I didn't want you to have to see that stuff."

Dennis turned a slow circle, hands over his face. When he came around to face Wes again, he lowered his hands and dropped to a crouch in front of the porch. The gravel must've been sharp beneath his feet, but he didn't show it. "Don't hurt yourself anymore, Wes." He looked up. "Okay? Please."

Wes glanced down, finally nodded, so slightly. Dennis sighed, and Wes reluctantly sat again. Starting to feel the cold now. After a minute Dennis came to sit next to him. Easier that way. Didn't have to look right at each other. They stared together into the dark, listening to the horses, to the occasional crescendoing rumble of a tractor-trailer on the interstate.

"I don't understand," Dennis said after a while.

"I ain't gonna be able to explain it so you do."

He ought to go run some cold water over his arm. The pain was still bright, the way it stayed with burns. But Williams hadn't exactly given him ointment and Band-Aids, and he'd healed okay back then.

"Maybe you shouldn't go to this hearing." It was as hesitant a tone as Wes had ever heard Dennis take. He knew he was treading into territory that was none of his business.

"Got to. No one else is gonna be there. I don't go, you can bet Williams walks."

"So let him walk!" There was the arrogance Wes was used to. Something under it, though, something almost desperate. Wes glanced sideways, expecting to see Dennis's eyes on his scars, but his stepson was looking at him, waiting to meet his gaze. "Maybe they'll parole him and maybe they won't, Wes, but so what if they do? Let the b.a.s.t.a.r.d go back to East Jesus wherever. Let him live his miserable little life and die, and don't give him another thought."

"You don't understand."

"I understand enough," Dennis insisted. He touched Wes's wrist, thought better of it and pulled his hand away, the touch of his fingers so brief it was almost imagined. "I remember Mom taking me to visit you in the hospital, right after. You gave me the strangest look. Like you'd never expected to lay eyes on me again."

Across the yard, Rio stepped gingerly into the barest wash of light that reached the pasture, sidled up to the hot wire and raised his head over it. Drawn by the sound of voices, Wes supposed. His white eye glinted across the distance.

It'd be easier if night never lifted. If all Wes had to do was sit on this porch and watch the darkness while the world slept. He'd have liked that, liked to ignore the business of life, the troubles that demanded attention, action, during daylight hours. Here, now, the burn of cold on his bare arms had almost equaled the round point of pain above his elbow. Here, now, he could speak almost freely with the stepson he seemed unable to coexist with at any other time. Here, now, he could pretend that there was only this porch, this yard, these animals, the invisible river and road, the world the limit of his senses. No prison. No parole.

Long minutes of quiet. Dennis shifted beside him, and Wes heard the click of his teeth as he opened his mouth, shut it again. At last his stepson risked another touch, awkward, his hand hesitating, hovering just above Wes's shoulder, so close Wes could feel the warmth of Dennis's palm even before it finally settled.

He slept afterward, and woke late. It was darker than he expected in the bedroom, and a glance through the slats of the blinds confirmed that the sun had already pa.s.sed its peak and crossed to the western half of the sky. Whole morning wasted. Wes couldn't bring himself to be sorry about it. First time he'd rested like that in days. Before dressing he pa.s.sed his thumb over the fresh burn above his elbow. Still sharp. Soon it'd fade to a lesser hurt, reduced to something milder than the bone ache he lived with every day. Gone entirely, given enough time. He wondered if that'd happen before the hearing.

Wes skipped the coffee-didn't seem right to drink it when it was already afternoon-and settled for dry toast and the pulpy dregs of a carton of orange juice. He ate in the kitchen and listened to the metallic tapping he'd come to recognize as hammer and anvil. It was early for Dennis to be home, and Wes guessed he'd canceled appointments, found excuses to linger near the house.

He went out to the porch, leaned over the railing. Dennis had parked his truck near the hitching rack; the canopy was up, the small gas forge blowing. The anvil stood on its stand a couple feet away, the hammer resting-for the moment-beside it. Rio was tied to the hitching rack, ears flicked backward, posture stiff, and Dennis was bent almost double near one of his hind hooves. It wasn't the way Wes had seen him work on horses before, the animal's leg propped over his own. Instead, Rio's hoof rested with the toe grazing the ground, and Dennis worked his knife from there. As Wes watched, Dennis stifled a grunt and slid down to one knee. Rio shifted, putting his weight back onto the hoof Dennis was trying to work on. Dennis stayed on the ground but straightened, pressed his palm to the small of his back.

"One more time," he said a few seconds later, cupping his hand beneath Rio's fetlock. The horse pivoted his hoof back onto the toe, and Dennis hunched over again, his knife switched out for a rasp. Got only a few seconds' work in before Rio put his foot back down.

"That don't look very comfortable," Wes called.

Dennis stood, tried not to show how much it strained him. "Yeah, well," he said, "working like this is a little harder on me and a lot easier on him." He crossed to the anvil but didn't pick up the hammer.

Wes stepped off the porch, walked cautiously across the gravel. Dennis was watching him, but Wes went to the horse instead, stopped on the other side of the hitching rack and brushed the back of his hand down the side of Rio's neck. "How long it take you to do his shoes?"

Dennis shrugged. "Couple hours, give or take."

"And that red horse," Wes said. "How long it take you to do him?"

"Hour." The word came out sideways, like it hoped not to be noticed.

"Less?" Wes asked.

Dennis looked away. "Sometimes."

Wes patted Rio one more time. Dennis was firmer with him, Wes knew, his pats more like slaps, but Wes couldn't help but feel there was something fragile about this black horse, something that made him want to touch him only gingerly. "You're patient with him."

"Ain't his fault he hurts."

Wes turned to look at Dennis. "How long till he hurts enough it don't matter how patient you are?"

Dennis's mouth tightened. So hard, Wes thought, to see his mother in him. In almost every way he looked nothing like her. Different hair, different skin, different eyes. The lines of his body hard and angular where Claire's had been soft. But the slight wariness Wes saw in him now, the fine veil of caution over his features . . . that he shared with his mother. "Not long," he said finally. "But not now."

It didn't look like anyone was home when Wes pulled up to the trailer Scott shared with his mother-blinds drawn, no light showing in the gaps-but Scott's hatchback was parked out front, and Wes had cruised Main Street from end to end twice, scanning the crowds of kids just out from school, with no sighting of Scott's familiar slouch. (And he needed to find the kid-any thoughts of Scott's hurt on finding out about his father's revoked release had, like Claire's memory, succ.u.mbed to his panic at the donation clinic yesterday, just one more thing he'd had no time to notice among thoughts of the hearing and the riot and Williams.) The frost had lingered here in the deep shade of the mountains, and the patchy lawn outside the trailer sank stiffly beneath Wes's feet. He rapped twice on the door, waited. Heard footsteps approach. He looked right at the peephole, but said nothing. Wasn't gonna beg the kid to open up.

Scott opened the door but left the screen shut. He hadn't made his hair stick up the way it usually did, and it fell in a soft spray across his forehead. He looked hard at Wes, but didn't seem able to muster the energy needed for the glare Wes guessed he was trying for. "What do you want?"

"You skip school today?"

Scott snorted. "Are you a truant officer now or something? Would that be a step up from prison guard, or a step down?"

"I was looking for you in town is all. Didn't see you." Wes took a step toward the screen door, and Scott closed his hand over the inside handle.

"Yeah, well," he said. "That's 'cause I was here. Being delinquent."

Wes sighed. "Let's start over, all right? I didn't come to fight."

"What the h.e.l.l did you come for?"

"I want to teach you that song. The one you like. The one I wrote."

It shut the kid up, anyway. He blinked a couple times, took his hand off the door handle. "You said I wasn't ready."

"You're not. I ain't gonna teach you the whole thing yet. And you gotta promise not to try to play more than I teach you, got that?" He waited for Scott to offer the barest hint of a nod. "All right, then. Go get that fiddle."

"Don't you want to come in?"

Wes shook his head. "Bring it out here."

Scott looked like he thought Wes was nuts, but he disappeared down the hall. Wes stepped back onto the crisp gra.s.s. Breathed deeply of the sharpening air, scanned the overlapping swells of the mountains. Maybe he was nuts. Maybe what he could offer Scott wasn't enough, maybe it was pathetic next to the darker elements of the kid's life. But the music had always been there for him. It had always called him back to himself. Every afternoon, walking out that gate feeling like everything good in him had been drained away, or wound up tight inside, too deep to reach. During the darkest days of his own adolescence, after his father's suicide. Music had been his saving grace: that fiddle, perfect and polished, waiting in the workshop, waiting on the mantel. Could be the fiddle and its music held that sort of power only for Wes. But maybe he could share a little of it.

Scott kicked the screen door open and came into the yard, fiddle in one hand, bow in the other. There were two lawn chairs set up around the side of the trailer, and Wes nodded to them. "Ready to do this?"

Scott started toward the chairs, stopped. He turned halfway, so Wes saw his profile. "Did you already hear about my dad?"

Wes put his hands in his pockets, took one small step toward Scott, almost sideways, the way he might approach a skittish animal. "Your momma told me."

"You know they might add like a whole year to his sentence?"

"I'm sorry," Wes said, and it was only half a lie. He wasn't sorry Connor Bannon's release was being revoked, not if he'd hurt an officer. But Wes knew it'd be hard on Scott, and he was sorry for that. The boy already rode pretty close to desperation.

"I can't stay here another year. I cannot." Scott looked away, at the mountains that loomed high over his home, and Wes tried to remember what it was to feel that a single year was so very long. "I told my mom I wanted to leave anyway. Go back to Miles City."

"Yeah?"

"She says I can't go on my own. That I'm too young."

"I know it ain't what you want to hear, but she's probably not wrong."

"Dennis was on his own when he was my age," Scott said, and it sounded like an accusation.