Montana Creeds: Logan

She and Jim parted, and she headed for the lounge, went straight to the pay phone. She needed a cell, but it wasn’t in the budget.

Josh answered on the third ring. “Alec is a buttface,” he said, without preamble.

“Be that as it may,” Briana answered, used to the running battle between her sons, “he’s your brother. What are you two up to?”

“Alec is doing his math, and I was on the Internet until you called. Wanda ate a woodchuck or something, and her farts are, like, gross.”

“I feel your pain,” Briana said cheerfully. “And how could Wanda have eaten a woodchuck?”

“I said ‘or something,’” Josh pointed out.

Briana smiled. “Joshua?”

“Okay, it was the bratwurst left over from night before last,” Josh said. “It wasn’t my idea to give it to her. Alec did that.”

Situation normal.

“Will you come and get us?” he asked. “It’s boring around here, when we can’t even go outside.”

“No time,” Briana said. “You’ll have to tough it out until I get home. I’m stopping off at the supermarket after work, so I might be a few minutes late.”

“Alec really thinks Dad’s coming on Saturday.”

Briana closed her eyes. “Maybe,” she said evenly. “Maybe he’s coming on Saturday.”

“With Dad, it’s always ‘maybe,’”

Josh replied.

“True enough. Do me a favor, though, and hold the remarks. It really upsets Alec.”

“He’s living in a fantasy world.”

“You’re Alec’s big brother,” Briana said. “Be nice to him.”

Josh sighed dramatically. “Okay, but only until you get home,” he said. “Then all bets are off.”

“Fair enough,” Briana said, with a smile.

Josh responded with a disgusted wail.

“What?” Briana asked anxiously, thinking the house had caught fire or a serial killer was trying to break down the back door.

“Wanda just cut one,” Josh lamented. “Again!” In the background, Alec whooped with manic delight.

“Butt-face!” Josh yelled.

“No name-calling, Josh,” Briana said. “You promised.”

“All right,” Josh countered, “but if you’re not here by five-thirty, I’m going to have to kill him.”

“I’ve only got one word for you, Joshua Grant.”

“What?”

“Babysitter,” Briana replied. Then she said goodbye and hung up.

CHAPTER FOUR

THERE WERE TWO CARS parked in front of Cassie’s ramshackle place at the edge of town, and she’d scrawled With a client on the whiteboard nailed up beside the front door. Logan took the marker, dangling from a piece of tattered baling twine, and added I was here. Logan.

That done, he turned and swung his gaze across the property.

Sidekick was sniffing around the edge of the teepee, the closest thing to a tourist attraction that Stillwater Springs, Montana, had to offer. It was authentic, built in the old way, by Cassie’s father, of tree branches and buckskin, and she charged fifty cents per visit.

Logan approached, dropped two quarters into the rusty coffee can that served as a till—Cassie believed in the honor system and so did he—and ducked into the cool, semidarkness where he and Dylan and Tyler had played as boys.

Except for the long-cold fire circle in the center, rimmed by sooty stones, the teepee was empty. Gone were the ratty blankets he remembered, the gourd ladle and wooden bucket, the clay cooking pots. No sign of the mangy bearskins, either.

He sat down, cross-legged, facing the fire pit, and imagined the flames leaping before him. Sidekick took an uncertain seat beside him, leaned into his shoulder a little.

Maybe the animal knew that in the old times, he might have been on the supper menu.

Logan wrapped an arm around the dog, gave him a reassuring squeeze. “It’s okay, boy,” he said. “Nobody’s going to boil you up with beans.”

Sidekick stuck close, just the same.

As Logan sat, he drifted into a sort of meditation, recalling other visits, sometimes alone, sometimes with his brothers. They’d always built a fire, filling the place with hide-scented smoke, and taken off their shirts. Sometimes, they’d even painted their chests and faces with cosmetics left behind by one or the other of their mothers.

Jake never threw anything away.

Except, of course, for three wives and three sons.

Something tightened inside Logan, and Sidekick seemed to feel it, as though the two of them were tethered together by some intangible cord. The dog gave a low, throaty whine.

The warp and woof of time itself seemed to shift as Logan sat there, waiting. It stretched and then contracted, until, finally, he could no longer measure the passing of seconds or minutes or even hours.

Outside, car doors slammed.

Engines started.

Sidekick eased away from his side, restless, and headed for the opening to look out.

And still Logan didn’t move.

He knew the bulky shadow at the entrance was Cassie, but he didn’t look up or speak.

“You’ll have to make peace with him, you know,” she said quietly.