Part 2
Caleb unclipped Flint’s lead and handed it back to Walter.
“All three,” he said.
Walter studied him. “You certain?”
“No.”
“That’s a more useful answer than certain.”
The price removed a painful portion of Caleb’s repair budget. Walter reduced it once, explaining that the large outdoor kennels and several bags of food had already been purchased for whoever took the dogs. Caleb did not bargain further.
They secured all three crates to the pickup’s anchor points with heavy straps. A fitted cover protected them from the cold wind without blocking airflow, and Walter clipped water bowls inside before checking every latch.
When he reached Maple, he rested his hand against her neck. The movement was brief, but his shoulders lowered beneath it.
“You can change your mind,” Caleb said.
“About the farm? Every morning.” Walter closed Maple’s crate. “Doesn’t change my hip.”
Caleb placed the records behind the driver’s seat. “I’ll call.”
“You don’t owe me reports.”
“I didn’t say I owed you.”
That earned the smallest movement beneath Walter’s mustache.
Before Caleb left, Walter tapped the truck door with two knuckles. “Don’t expect gratitude. Food buys attention. Repetition buys trust, if you’re lucky.”
“I’m not asking them to trust me.”
Walter looked past him toward the three crates. “That may be the first thing they notice.”
The road into north Idaho narrowed as the afternoon faded. Caleb drove more slowly than usual, stopping twice to check the straps and offer water.
Flint remained upright, facing the cab. Maple stayed near the back of her crate. Scout shifted so often that his collar tag became a second, irregular rhythm beneath the tires.
Caleb had lived alone long enough to know the acoustics of an empty life. A refrigerator humming against a bare wall. A leaking faucet. The television in another apartment because his own remained dark.
Now there were claws against crate floors and three separate breaths behind him. The sound unsettled him. It also kept him from drifting into the familiar silence where old memories waited.
The turnoff to Mercer Hill appeared shortly before dusk. A rusted mailbox leaned beside two tracks disappearing beneath wet leaves.
MERCER remained visible under the moss.
Caleb stopped with the engine running. His grandfather had left the cabin after a fall made living alone impossible, but he had refused to sell the land. During his last years in assisted living, he had asked Caleb twice whether he intended to visit.
Caleb had answered both questions without committing himself to a date.
Now Edwin Mercer was dead, and the hill had become Caleb’s through paperwork neither man had expected to matter.
The cabin stood less than two miles up the old logging road. Fallen limbs forced Caleb to stop repeatedly, and brush scraped both doors. By the time he reached the clearing, only a gray strip of light remained above the trees.
The house was smaller than childhood had allowed him to remember. The porch sagged at one corner. Shingles were missing beside the stone chimney, and vines covered half the livestock shed.
Caleb left the dogs in their secured crates while he inspected the structure. The front lock required oil, but the larger key turned. Inside, dust covered a scarred table, two mismatched chairs, and the narrow bed where his grandfather had once slept.
The rear room had water damage. Caleb tied its door shut, covered a broken window with plywood, and tested every section of floor he intended to cross.
Beside the bedroom doorway, his flashlight found a series of pencil marks.
The lowest bore his father’s initials. Higher up, beside a line slightly more than five feet from the floor, his grandfather had written C.M.—12.
Caleb touched it with two fingers. He remembered rising onto his toes while Edwin balanced a carpenter’s level on his head.
“Fraud,” his grandfather had declared. “I will not have the Mercer family records corrupted.”
The memory arrived so completely that Caleb could smell wet wool drying beside the stove. He lowered his hand and went outside.
Four portable fence panels lay behind the shed. He dragged the strongest ones beside the porch, wired them together, and covered the gaps with sound boards removed from the old fence.
Only then did he lower the crates.
Flint emerged first and inspected every joint in the enclosure. Maple descended slowly, keeping the pickup within reach. Scout bounded down the ramp, discovered a rusted bucket, struck it with one paw, and jumped backward when it rolled.
He barked at the bucket.
The bucket failed to apologize.
Scout hit it again. A laugh escaped Caleb before he could prevent it. The sound felt rough from lack of use.
Inside the cabin, Flint chose a place near the front door. Maple lay several feet from Caleb’s bedroll, where she could watch him without being touched. Scout crawled beneath the table carrying one of Caleb’s gloves.
Rain began after midnight. Water found two gaps in the roof and tapped into the metal pans Caleb had placed beneath them.
A dream woke him before dawn. His body moved before the room returned: one hand toward the floor, shoulders braced, breath held against a sound that existed years away.
His fingers met bare boards.
Flint had lifted his head. Maple watched from the darkness but did not approach. Scout slept under the table, his stolen glove beneath his chin.
Caleb sat until the rain became rain again.
“Nothing happening,” he said.
Maple’s ears moved at his voice. She remained where she was.
No bond had formed because money changed hands. The dogs owed him nothing.
At sunrise, Caleb opened the enclosure gate while keeping all three leads loose in his hands. The truck and transport crates stood downhill. The cabin door remained open behind him, with food bowls visible inside.
“You can make this difficult,” he told them. “I’m prepared for that.”
Flint looked toward the road, then walked into the cabin.
Scout seized the second glove and followed him.
Maple remained outside. She watched the truck, the woods, and Caleb. He moved away from the doorway so she would not have to pass close to him.
After nearly a minute, Maple crossed the threshold. She did not go to the food. She lay beside Flint, her body touching his.
Caleb closed the door until only a narrow gap remained.
That afternoon, an old green pickup climbed the southern trail. Its passenger door was cream-colored, as if borrowed from another truck. The driver was a broad man in brown overalls and a waxed jacket.
He stopped beyond the enclosure and waited for Caleb to approach.
“Edwin’s grandson,” he said.
“That obvious?”
“You’re standing where he always blocked the road.”
The man introduced himself as Eli Dawson, owner of the lower farm. He knew which cabin boards were sound, where the original well line ran, and how often Edwin had nearly injured himself rather than request help.
“Twice,” Eli said. “The third time he ruined an axle.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“You will. Half the town does.”
Eli looked toward the cabin. The wooden records box sat unopened on the table, visible through the door.
“Your grandfather leave papers?”
“Some.”
“Read them before you turn animals loose north of the house.”
Caleb followed his gaze. Flint stood inside the enclosure, staring toward a broken fence line among the trees.
“What’s north of it?”
Eli shifted both hands onto the handle of the shovel he had brought from his truck.
“Old mine ground. Some of it was never properly mapped…”
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