Shelter Mountain

“Not anymore. I was an only child. And my folks were older, anyway—they didn’t think they were going to have kids. Then I surprised ‘em. Boy, did I surprise ‘em. My dad died when I was about six—a construction accident. And then my mom when I was seventeen, right before my senior year.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, thanks. It’s okay. I’ve had a good life.”

“What did you do when you lost your mother? Go live with aunts or something?”

“No aunts,” he said, shaking his head. “My football coach took me in. It was good—he had a nice wife, good bunch of little kids. Might as well have lived with him. He acted like he owned me during football, anyway,” he said with a laugh. “Nah, kidding aside, that was a good thing he did. Good guy. We used to write—now we e-mail.”

“What happened to your mom?”

“Heart attack.” After a moment of respectful silence, looking into his lap, he laughed softly. “You won’t believe this—she died at confession. That really tore me up at first. I thought maybe she had some deep, dark secret that threw her into a heart attack—but I was tight with the priest—I was his altar boy. And it was hard for him, but finally he leveled with me. See, my mom was the parish secretary and real… how should I say this? Kind of a church lady. Father Damien finally told me, my mom’s confessions were so boring, he used to nod off. He thought they’d both just fallen asleep, but she was dead.” He lifted his eyebrows. “My mom, good woman, not a lot of excitement going on there. She lived for that job, loved the clergy, loved the church. She’d have made a great nun. But you know what? She was happy. I don’t think she had any idea she was boring and straitlaced.”

“You must miss her so much,” Paige said, sipping her tea in front of the fire, trying to remember when she last had a conversation like this. Unhurried, nonthreatening, warm in front of a friendly fire.

“I do. This is going to sound stupid, especially since I’m no kid—sometimes I pretend she’s back there, in that little house we lived in, and that I’m just getting my stuff together to go see her.”

“That doesn’t sound stupid….”

“There anybody you really miss?” he asked her.

The question caused her to suddenly go still, her cup frozen in midair. Not her dad, so scrappy and short-tempered. Not her mom who, without knowing or meaning to, had trained her to be a battered wife. Not Bud, her brother, a mean little bastard who had failed to help her in her darkest hour. “I had a couple of really close girlfriends. Roommates. We lost touch. I miss them sometimes.”

“You know where they are?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “Both got married and moved,” she said. “I wrote a couple of times… Then my letters came back.” They didn’t want to be in touch with her; they knew things were bad. They hated Wes; Wes hated them. They had tried to help, briefly, but he ran them off and she rejected their help out of pure shame. What were they supposed to do? “How’d you get so close to Jack?” she asked him.

“Marines,” he said with a shrug.

“Did you go into the military together?”

“Nah.” He laughed. “Jack’s older than me—by about eight years. I’ve always looked older than I was—even when I was twelve. And Jack—I bet he’s always looked younger. He was my first sergeant in combat, back in Desert Storm.” And for a split second he was back there. Changing a tire on a truck when the tire exploded and the rim knocked him back six feet and he couldn’t get up. He remembered it like it was yesterday—he had always been so huge, so rock hard, so strong, and he couldn’t move. He might’ve been unconscious for a little while because he saw his mother leaning over him, looking right into his eyes and saying, “John, get up. Get up, John.” Right there in that paisley, high-collared dress, graying hair pulled back.

But he couldn’t move, so he started to cry. And cry. Mom! he’d cried out.

Yeah, you have a lot of pain, buddy? Jack asked, leaning over him.

And Preacher said, It’s my mom. I want my mom. I miss my mom.

We’re gonna get you back to her, pal. Take a few deep breaths.

She’s dead, Preacher said. She died.

She’s been dead a couple years at least, one of his squad members told Jack.

I’m sorry, Sarge, I couldn’t help it. I’ve never done this before. Cried like this. We ‘re not supposed to cry…. I never did before, I swear. But he cried helplessly even as he said that.

We cry over people we lose, buddy. It’s okay.

Father Damien said, remember she’s with God and she’s happy and don’t soil her memory with crying about it.

Priests are usually smarter than that, Jack had said with a disapproving snort. You don’t cry over something like that and the tears turn into snakes that eat you from the inside out. The crying part—it’s required.

I’m sorry….

You get it out, buddy, or you’ll be worse off. Call her, call out to your mom, get her attention, cry for her. It’s damn past time!

And he had. Sobbed like a baby, Jack’s arms under his shoulders, holding him up a little. Jack rocked him and said, Yeah, there you go. There you go…

Jack sat with him for a while, talking to him about his mother, and Preacher told him that he made it through that last year of school, tough and silent. Then, with no idea where to go or what to do, he joined up. So he could have brothers, which he had now, but it wasn’t enough to take away the need for his mother. And that goddamn tire rim almost cut him in half and it was like the pain of losing her came pouring out. It was humiliating, to be six four and two-fifty, sobbing for your five-foot, three-inch mommy. Jack said, Nah, it’s just what you need. Get it out.

After a little while, Jack pulled him up, hoisted him over his shoulder and carried him about a mile down the road to meet their convoy. And Jack had said, Let it out, buddy. After you get it all out, you stick to me like duct tape—I’m your mother now.

“It’s no good to lose touch with people who mean a lot,” Preacher said to Paige. “Ever think of trying to find those girlfriends again?”

“I haven’t thought about that in a while,” she told him.

“If you ever want to try, I could maybe help.”

“How could you do that?”

“On the computer. I like to look things up. It’s kind of slow, but it works. Think about it.”

She said she would. Then she said she was awful tired and had to get some sleep, so they said good-night. She went up the stairs and he went to his apartment out back.

That’s when she decided she’d better get moving. She couldn’t afford to get comfortable here. No more cozy little chats, no more late-night questions. Attachments were completely out of the question.

Four

Paige got the suitcase ready. She pulled the covers back from her sleeping son to search for Bear, but he wasn’t there. She nearly stripped the bed around him, looking. Then down on her knees to look under the bed, in the bathroom, in every empty drawer of the bureau—nowhere. She’d check in the kitchen before leaving, but if Bear was lost, he would have to be left behind.

She pulled two hundred dollars out of her billfold and put it on the bureau, then sat, still as stone, on the edge of the bed next to Christopher. Palms together, hands pressed between her knees, she waited. At midnight, she put on her jacket and crept quietly down the stairs. The cabin was so solid, not even a board squeaked.

He’d left a light on in the kitchen for her. This was the only time she’d come down after bedtime since that first night, but she suspected John left that light on for her every night. She tiptoed stealthily toward the door to his apartment and listened. No sound, no light under the door.

She’d located a flashlight in the kitchen when she’d been helping John clean up, a stroke of luck. Up to that point, the best idea she could come up with was a book of matches to light the night while she dealt with the license plates. Once the plates were switched, she’d fetch the suit-case, then Chris. She took a butter knife from the drawer and slipped quietly out the back kitchen door.

Once behind the bar, she was relieved to see no lights on in John’s little apartment. She crouched to the task of removing her plates, easily done even though her hands were shaking. Then she got to work on John’s, taking the license plate off his truck and replacing it with hers. Then back to the Honda, bending down to fix the new plate in place.

“Getting back on the road again, Paige?” Preacher asked.

She jumped, dropped the plate, flashlight and knife, straightening, her breath cut off and her heart hammering. The flashlight lit a path along the ground that illuminated his feet. Then he took a couple of steps toward her and came into complete view.

“That isn’t going to do the trick,” he said, nodding toward her car. “They’re truck plates, Paige. Anyone, like the sheriff or CHP sees your little car with truck plates—they’re gonna know right off.”

She felt her eyes well up with tears. Something like that would never have occurred to her. She shivered in the cold night, her hands shaking worse. Inside, her stomach was gripped in a tight, hard knot.

“Don’t panic,” he said. “I don’t think you need different plates, not yet, but we can get it done. Connie’s got a little car right across the street. She’d never miss ‘em.”