Beginnings by Elizabeth Sullivan

PART ONE

The clouds were cotton against the teal sky as Chris Larabee headed his truck into Red Lodge. Late afternoon and he was just getting back home from Billings. As he neared the town limits, he came upon a pick up and trailer parked by the side of the road. It was one of those silver trailers that always reminded Chris of a toaster. It'd been unhitched and pushed back. A pair of legs stuck out from under the old truck and a man stood next to them, hands on his hips, watching. Chris parked behind the trailer and approached them. The man standing and watching turned. He was Native American, barrel-chested, about sixty, with gray hair that hung down to his shoulders, dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt.

"You fellas need some help?" Chris asked. As he spoke, he made sure his jacket casually flapped open to reveal his Sheriff's badge.

"Ahh, damn muffler's hanging down." The man said. "Got my boy under there, tying it back up with some wire." He indicated the legs under the truck. "Thought we'd make it to town, started throwing sparks."

Something in the way the man spoke reminded Chris of someone. "Jake?" he asked, hesitantly. "Jake Parker?"

"Yeah?" Then the man's eyes sparked. "Chris? Chris Larabee? It can't be!"

"Well it is!" They shook hands warmly, both grinning. "What the hell are you doing up here Jake? Last I heard from you, you were - where? Colorado? Nebraska?"

"Ahh - we get around. Haven't been to Montana though, not since ‘70. Thought I'd show my boy Bear Tooth Pass, thought I'd look you up while I was at it." Jake lightly kicked at the legs still sticking out from under the truck. "Get up here, say hello."

"I'm busy old man..." A rough voice challenged, so he kicked him a little harder. "Hey! I'm working here! You want this muffler tied up or not?"

"Just hurry up and get out from under there. Got an old friend here I want you to meet." Jake turned to Chris and shrugged. "Stubborn." he said.

"Just like his ‘old man'." Chris had to laugh. He'd never met the kid, but Jake had written lots about him over the years.

"All right, all right. I'm comin'." The legs turned into a body, then into a person as the young man twisted himself out from underneath. As he stood, it was obvious that he was Anglo. Thin kid, in his late 20's, Chris figured. Light brown hair he wore almost as long as Jake did, and clear blue eyes. Jake had never mentioned in all his letters that the boy wasn't his natural son.

"Vin, I'd like you to meet Chris Larabee."

"The ‘Letter Guy;" Vin said, offering his hand as he smiled. He was dressed similarly to Jake, jeans, flannel shirt untucked. His hand was dirty from the muffler, but Chris took it anyway.

"Letter guy, post card guy, Email, Instant Message...whatever Jake could get his hands on." Chris said. "Everything but actually see each other in person in twenty-five years."

"Twenty-seven."

"I'd have answered you more often you know Jake, if you'd just stayed in one place longer than a week."

"Ahhh." Jake shrugged that away. "Can't stay too long in one place, kills the grass. There somewhere around here we can park Ol' Ethel for a couple nights?" He indicated the shiny silver trailer.

" ‘Course there is." Chris told him. "My place is just a few miles from here, in the foothills. You can park your Ethel there, but you'll be staying in my house. No camping out while your here."

"Ain't campin'." Vin said. He sounded a little defensive. "It's home."

"So, when did you get made Sheriff?" Jake nodded to the badge. Vin dropped his eyes to the ground and shoved his hands into his jeans.

"Couple years ago. They seem to think that just ‘cause I was a law dog up in Billings, I'd be the perfect Sheriff. So I obliged them by accepting the election." Chris eyed Vin a bit then looked back at Jake. "I need a deputy...you still bounty hunting?"

"No and yes." Jake answered him. "No, I'm too old to be a deputy and yes, we're still bounty hunting. Vin here's better than I ever was. He can find and follow a trail that's deader'n Custer. Crack shot too." Vin looked up at Jake and smiled shyly, then dropped his eyes again.

Late twenties but kind of skittish, Chris thought. "Well Vin, maybe I'll have you fill out an application."

Vin looked up in surprise, almost shock, then shook his head. "I'll stay with Jake."

"That's my boy." Jake said, putting his hand on Vin's shoulder. "Just give us a minute to get re-hitched and we'll follow you to your place. I'm awful anxious to finally meet Mary."

+ + + + + + +

Vin sat next to Jake at dinner, with his chair pushed back enough that the older man was closer to the table than he was. The table with filled out with the three men, and Chris' wife Mary, and their six year old son Billy. Vin ate mostly in silence as the two old friends caught up on 25 years of missing times. Every once in a while Billy would fire a question at him from across the table.

"You ever been shot?"

"Ain't been shot, broke my shoulder once." Clearly not extreme enough for the young boy.

"Ever been stabbed?"

"No, ain't ever been stabbed."

"How come you talk that way?" the boy asked. His mother was horrified at his manners.

"Billy!"

But Vin just looked level at him. "I'm from Texas."

"Oh..." This took a crooked path through Billy's mind. "You ever shot anybody?" That prospect cheered him up.

"Billy." This time it was his father from the end of the table. "You know we don't talk work at dinner."

"All right..." Openly disappointed, Billy went back to stuffing forkfuls of mashed potatoes into his mouth. One more question lurked.

"You ever stabbed anybody?"

Chris cleared his throat which Billy immediately understood and finished his potatoes in record time.

+ + + + + + +

"Dinner was real good ma'am." Vin said as he carried plates from the table to the sink. "Appreciate you having us to stay. Ain't often we get real food, from a real kitchen. And none never as good as what you made."

"You're welcome Vin. Please, call me Mary."

He blushed slightly as his eyes went to the floor. "I'll work on it."

Mary watched him as he gathered the silverware for her. For all her insisting that he didn't have to help, he'd just as firmly, if quietly, insisted on helping anyway. "You travel around a lot?" She asked him.

"Oh yeah. Jake, he likes to travel. And me, I go with Jake." He put the knives and forks in her hands awkwardly, like he was trying not to touch her. "Seen most of this country so far. Jake says next we'll go on up through Canada and hit Alaska. He says it stays daylight there all summer. He says maybe we should go to Oregon an' Washington State, see if we can find Sasquatch. He says he don't rightly believe in the thing, but that since lots of folks do, wouldn't hurt to check it out." As he talked, he wiped down the table with a damp dish cloth. "He says, Jake says, it's just bounty huntin' something big an' ugly, and we done that plenty of times already."

Well, get him on a topic he's interested in and he talks, Mary thought. And that topic apparently is Jake.

+ + + + + + +

Jake, Chris, and Billy took a walk around the ranch grounds toward the barns and corral. "You're doin' pretty good for yourself Chris." Jake told him. "This is a nice spread." Off to the West, the sun was just setting below the hills, the teal sky and cotton clouds glowed orange and pink.

"Most of it came with Mary." Chris said.

"That isn't the only thing that came with her." Jake nodded to Billy who had run ahead to the corral.

"Yeah, Billy's a good kid. He calls me Dad, haven't adopted him though. That's kind of a hard point for Mary. She wants him to keep Steven's name. I'd just like something legal in case anything happens to me."

"I can understand that. I had a lawyer go up one side and down the other, make sure everything went to Vin if anything happened to me while he was still a kid." Jake nodded to the house.

"So, he ain't yours?" Chris asked. "I mean, I know he's not your blood, I just thought..." He let the sentence hang there.

"Well, I had myself appointed his ‘guardian', that was a legal step. His Mom and I hooked up at a commune down near Brownsville, back in ‘73 - ‘74. Just after I left Carbon County. Vin wasn't more than a shoot then. She died a couple years later. We've been together ever since."

They leaned their arms on the railing of the corral and looked across the prairie to the Bear Tooth Mountains, just on the edge of the land. Billy climbed up next to Chris and sat on the top rail, pulling Chris' arm around him and leaning against him.

"Vin seems like a good man." Chris said.

"He is. A little shy, always has been. Smart though. Knows his stuff. He'd make you a good deputy."

"I offered." Chris reminded him.

"I know...it'll be time to move on anyway pretty soon. Hate to have you go to all the trouble just to lose him in a month or two..."

They were quiet awhile, Chris holding Billy, all three watching the sun set fire and rainbows into the mountains.

"How'd his mother die?" Chris asked after awhile.

"Drug OD. Choked on her own vomit. I came home, back to the little cabin we shared, found her there on the floor. Three of her ‘friends' were there, so high they didn't know anything was wrong, and Vin so scared he'd crawled under the mattress on the bed to keep away from it. I picked him up, right then and there, packed a bag and we were gone." He seemed to think about it.

"Maybe I shouldn't have done it that way. Maybe I should've waited until after the police were there, but I was afraid they'd put Vin away in some kind of home or facility somewhere. He was so traumatized, I knew it'd kill him. I just wanted to protect him. We've done good together all these years. He's turned out fine."

Chris smiled at his friend. "Just like his ‘old man'."

PART TWO

Despite Chris and Mary both insisting that Jake and Vin sleep in the house, they declined. "Naah, we're both a couple of sun-beaten old buzzards." Jake said. "Got our habits. We'll do fine out in Ol' Ethel..." So they left the house and walked down the driveway the quarter mile to where the trailer sat waiting in the darkness under a couple of sparse pine trees.

"They're real nice folk." Vin said.

"Yeah they are..."

"Chris musta changed a lot in twenty-five years..."

"Twenty-seven."

"...he musta been just a kid when you seen him last."

"Guess he was fifteen when I pulled up stakes. I wasn't much older than you are now. We kept in touch though...we helped each other through some rough times..." They went into the trailer and Vin switched on the battery-powered lamp.

"You mean he told you about his wife and son dying a few years ago, and you told him all about me being a teenager..."

Jake laughed. "You got that right! You goin' to bed? I'm going to sit out a while, I forgot what Montana nighttime smells like."

"Yeah, I'm turnin' in. Montana nighttime smell's same to me as nighttime in Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska AND both the Dakotas...whatta you reckon it smells like in Alaska?"

"It smells free..." Jake said, which satisfied Vin.

+ + + + + + +

Jake sat out awhile in a tattered lawn chair, counting stars and listening to the prairie stir around him. After twenty-seven years, he was home. He had a feeling that it was for good. When he went back in, Vin was sound asleep in his top bunk, laying on his stomach, face turned to the wall. Jake pulled the blankets higher around his shoulders and lightly touched him.

"Good night son."

+ + + + + + +

The next morning, after a breakfast punctuated with Billy's abortive attempts to ask Vin if he'd ever done bodily harm to another person, Jake took Vin up Beartooth Pass. It was a steep, narrow mountain road full of switchbacks and hairpin turns. Vin stared out the passenger window at the view of the world below him.

"Not saying much over there." Jake said after awhile. "What do you think?"

"I didn't know there was so much space in the whole world." Vin answered without taking his eyes off the view.

"That's why they call it ‘Big Sky Country'."

"How come you never came back?" Vin asked. Jake took so long to answer, Vin finally looked at him.

"There wasn't anything here for me Vin. My family was all gone, our land was gone. Too many people standing around telling me how and who I should I be. I wanted something else..."

"Did you want a snot-nosed kid, scared of the dark, and terrified of strangers?"

Jake grinned, looking at his son. "You know I did."

Vin grinned back at him. But then his expression changed. "Dad?"

"Yeah?" Jake knew to be worried when Vin called him ‘Dad'...it meant something was weighing on him.

"Who was all those people Chris was telling you about last night at dinner? They all his friends?"

"Yeah." Jake wondered what could be bothering Vin about that.

"Am I gonna have to meet ‘em?"

"Well, Chris did mention something about having us meet them." Vin made a face and Jake wanted to sigh - it exasperated him sometimes how withdrawn Vin liked to keep himself. "You know darn well if they were a group of people with a lead on a suspect we were after, you'd have no trouble talking to them at all."

"Yeah, I know. This is different. This is - me."

"There's nothing wrong with you."

"It's just real hard for me." His voice was quiet.

"I know it is." Jake reached across and put his hand on Vin's shoulder. "Chris wrote me about some of ‘em, the letters I've gotten anyway. And he was telling me about them last night and this morning. They all sound like good people. His minister, his doctor, his deputy. One of his friends is a lawyer, and then there's his best friend Buck, he's a teacher at the local high school."

"Hmm..." Vin considered this. They sounded OK. "Don't suppose any of ‘em is wanted for bail jumping?"

"You did all right meeting Chris." Jake reminded him.

"Sure, I had all the way through Wyoming to think of something..."

+ + + + + + +

They finally pulled off the side of the road when they were at the top of the world and got out to just look around. "I'm surprised you stayed away so long from somewhere that has this much space." Vin said. "You could stay up here forever and nobody'd ever find you."

"I know a good bounty hunter who'd find me..." Jake said as he turned to sit on the hood of the truck. Vin followed him.

"So, what else did he tell you about his friends? Do I have to meet them?" It always come back to that.

Jake thought back to the times he'd tried to get Vin to join in something when he was younger, a local boy scout troop, or a summer arts and crafts day camp, or just talking to another kid whose trailer was parked alongside theirs. What he remembered most was Vin, thirteen years old, walking fifteen miles from the boy scout camp back home to the trailer. He was exhausted, thirsty, his feet were raw in his sneakers and all Jake could get out of him was that it was ‘stupid'.

He wanted to drive Vin back to the camp and get it sorted out, but Vin refused. When Jake insisted, Vin became violent, and Jake had to lock him in a bear hug on the floor of the trailer until it all came out. Shaking, crying, holding onto his father's arms around him, Vin told Jake everything. Some of the other boys made fun of him because he talked different, because he didn't have a scout uniform, because his sneakers were old and his jeans were Wranglers and not Levis, and mostly because ‘his old man was a dirty redskin who drank too much, beat his wife, and lived off welfare...' and nobody would make them stop.

No matter how much Jake shushed him and reassured him that he didn't have to go back, Vin kept begging not to be sent back, until his voice wore out and his crying sputtered into coughing. Then Jake lifted him onto the little couch, pulled the garage-sale afghan over him, and held him till he fell asleep, and held him for a long while after that.

+ + + + + + +

"No Vin, you don't have to meet them."

"Okay..." The wind was cold blowing in from Wyoming and Vin crossed his arms over his chest. "Or, if I meet ‘em, I don't gotta hang around and talk to ‘em, do I?"

"No, once you say hello, you don't have to hang around if you don't want to."

"Okay...or if I was to talk to one of ‘em, it wouldn't have to be the teacher would it? I don't ‘spect there's nothing I got to say to a teacher. The minister maybe, I'd talk to him."

Jake put his arm around Vin's shoulders. "You can talk to anybody you want..."

"Okay..."

PART THREE

By the time Jake and Vin drove over Bear Tooth Pass into Cooke City, then back to Red Lodge, it was early afternoon. Vin dreaded the sight of the little town, dreaded the prospect of meeting new people. It made his stomach tie up in knots so bad sometimes he felt physically sick. He felt that way now, so when Jake asked if he was hungry, Vin shook his head.

"No."

Jake smiled. He knew what Vin was fretting over. "Why don't we try anyway. Haven't had lunch yet, eating might actually make you feel better..." Vin only grumbled. "Then we'll find a church and stop in for a visit, OK?"

"Okay."

+ + + + + + +

They pulled up near the Mountain Top Restaurant and went inside, a little place with a counter and booths, and only a few patrons inside. Country music played softly and full of static from the little radio perched on the wooden counter. They took the table closest to the front and were greeted by a girl in her early twenties with long brown hair pulled into a pony tail, and a butcher's apron covering her jeans and red check shirt. "Hi, my name's Casey." She handed over photocopied menus. "We have bean soup today, but we're out of curly fries. Can I get you something to drink before I take your order?"

They both asked for Coke, and as the waitress walked away to get them, Jake remarked: "Pretty girl."

"Yeah." Vin barely looked up from the menu he was scanning intently. She was pretty, but it would hurt too much to think anything more.

"Do you see what you want?"

"No..." Vin continued to scan the page till finally: "Yep. Cheeseburger."

"Always the same thing." Jake complained.

"I like cheeseburgers."

"You ever hear of something called ‘vegetables'?"

Vin was about to give him a smart answer when Casey brought their Cokes to the table. "You fellas know what you'd like?"

"Well, if I was thirty years younger..." Jake teased. "I'd say a dance with you." The young lady smiled but blushed and looked down. Vin muttered to himself:

"More like forty years..." and Jake kicked him under the table. "Hey, old man...I'm tryin' to read here..."

Trying to overcome her embarassment, Casey asked: "You fellas aren't from around here, are you?"

"Not in a long time." Jake told her.

"I'm from Texas." Vin stated, making his first eye contact with her.

"Texas? Really? My fiance wants to go to Texas, down to San Antonio. He wants to see the Alamo. Davy Crockett, Sam Houston - JD just loves history like that. He's real smart. I think it'd be kinda spooky to be there, at the Alamo, probably lots of ghosts, hunh?"

Normally, Vin would've looked to Jake to answer her, but he found himself saying: "Well I was there the one time, real late. I don't suppose I shoulda been, y'know? After hours and such. I just stood there, outside the walls, tryin' to imagine all the guns and the blood and the people just knowin' they's gonna die no matter what. And I started feelin' real sorry for the ones to die, y'know? How bad it must've been for them, to die so young most of ‘em, wonderin' where they were now, if dyin' like that kept ‘em from findin' peace afterwards. And I was walkin' away and I thought I heard somebody call behind me. When I turned, I saw a fella, top of the wall, in buckskin and homespun. He had an old musket by his side. He shimmered, y'know? Like he weren't really there, but he was? Y'know? And he just lifted his hand to me. Like he knew me. Like he's tryin' to tell me that it's all OK now. It's OK bein' dead now, ‘cause now it's peaceful. And they're all back together."

Vin hadn't meant to say so much, and as his story ended he became aware that Casey was staring at him, tears glinting in her wide eyes, so absorbed in his story she didn't even realize she was staring. Even Jake had to stare at his unexpectedly eloquent son. It embarassed Vin to have said so much and he returned his gaze to the menu.

"So, no. There ain't no ghosts there I guess..."

+ + + + + + +

Vin was characteristically quiet after that. He kept his eyes down and answered as briefly as possible whenever Casey stopped by their table to refill their drinks and check if everything was OK. He went outside to wait while Jake paid at the cash register at the end of the counter. Casey was pretty and friendly, and didn't seem to mind talking to him at all. But it only made him realize again that he didn't have anybody to call his own and he knew that he never would. His mind made a rush to memories that were too painful to relive and Vin was glad when Jake stood beside him. Anything to stop the memories.

"Casey said there's a church around the block that'll be open, she said it's open all the time." Jake told him. "You want to have a look?"

"Sure..." It was a short block around and they found the church, a white clapboard structure with steeple, the kind you find on postcards of quaint towns.

"St. Anthony's Community Parish." Jake read off the sign posted on the narrow front lawn.

"Sounds Catholic." Vin said. "...'cept there ain't no ‘Bingo' sign." The door was open so they went up the few steps and inside. Concentric semicircles of pews faced the plain altar. A large wooden cross, with an unpainted wooden body of Christ, hung on the wall behind. "This is nice." Vin said. He kept his voice a whisper.

"Yes, very peaceful." Jake agreed, in the same whisper.

Suddenly, from behind a door off the side of the altar came the unmistakeable sound of several heavy things crashing to the floor all at once. Both men were startled, then hurried to the door to offer their help. Opening the door, they found a man standing at the top of basement steps, staring down at the mess of ladder, paint brushes, drop cloths and full cans of paint scattered unopened at the bottom of the steps. He turned to the visitors.

"Tell me, who's more lazy, the man who makes two trips, or the man who tries to do it all in one?" He shook his head once more at the devastation then addressed them again. "Were you gentleman looking for me, or were you here to talk to the Boss?" He was a tall man, with wavy hair, obviously dressed in painting clothes - jeans, shirt, and work boots all spattered with a variety of color.

Not knowing who this man was, or who "the boss" might be, Jake explained. "We just came to sit a spell. The Good Lord is an old friend of ours, we always try to stop in and say hello to Him whenever we pull into a town."

"We'll give you a hand though." Vin offered, his eyes taking in the location of every bit of wayward painting supplies laying on the basement floor.

"Thank you - that'd be mighty nice of you. Don't want to take away from your visit with the Boss though."

"I expect this is why the He sent us here." Jake said. "C'mon, show us where we're headed."

So they gathered it all up and went back up the stairs to the door outside. As the door slammed shut behind Vin and they walked around to the back of the church, the man turned again. He had his arms full of drop cloths and most of the paint cans. "I'm Josiah, I'm minister of this church."

Jake had the ladder. "My name's Jake Parker, this is my son Vin..." who was carrying all the paint brushes, scrapers and the rest of the cans of paint.

"Jake Parker? You'd be friends of Chris Larabee's then?" Josiah asked and Vin's stomach took another twist. He couldn't get away from these people, could he?

"That's us." They finally set their burdens down and shook hands.

"Chris was just telling me this morning that you'd come into town." Josiah said. "I can't tell you how happy he is to see you two." Vin was surprised to be included in that remark. Just as he was feeling a sense of warmth at someone considering him a friend, Josiah added. "He says he wants to have a barbecue, get all his friends together." and the warmth died, replaced by the dread.

A phone rang then, somewhere inside the church, and Josiah excused himself to get it. Jake saw the sour look on his son's face. "It'll be all right Vin..." he tried to ease Vin's dread. "These are all grown men, friends of a friend. It's not like the scouts..."

"I know it ain't like the scouts." Vin snapped. "And all women ain't like Charlotte." He added his father's usual follow up remark. "I know. I still got the right to not like it, don't I?"

"Yes, you do." Jake told him patiently.

"I got the right to not meet anybody I don't want to. Not talk to anybody I don't want to." The conversation ended abruptly as Josiah came back out.

"That was Chris on the phone, told him you were here. He said he'll check with you first, but since it's Friday, he thought he'd have that party for you tonight. He's mighty anxious for us all to meet his old friends."

This time, Vin only felt bitterness at being included in the word friends.

PART FOUR

The ride back to Ethel was stonily quiet, Vin's guts even more twisted than before. He hated it when Jake pushed him to ‘make friends', ‘talk to people', when all he wanted to do was to be away, on his own, nowhere anybody else was. He didn't understand why Jake pushed him. Didn't understand why Jake didn't understand. Vin could never think of anything to say to other people, and what he did say always sounded stupid anyway. He never found anybody he had anything in common with except Jake. Other people he met had computers and satellite TV, pets and backyards, and houses that didn't move. Other people didn't make their living chasing criminals. Other people weren't him, and didn't know what being him was like.

"You still talking to me?" Jake asked as they came in sight of Chris' land and the trailer.

"Yeah." But Vin didn't say it with much life, didn't even turn to look at his father.

"I meant more than one syllable."

" Yeah - I guess."

Jake let it go at that for the moment. He knew it was hard for Vin to talk to people, but he didn't know why. Of course he was prejudiced in his son's favor, still he knew Vin was intelligent, quick on his mental feet on subjects he was interested in, considerate, generous, and with a good sense of humor. But around strangers, law abiding strangers anyway, he sealed shut tighter than the results for the Academy Awards. They'd lived a life that was most people's dream - travelling back and forth across the country, free to go where they wanted, when they wanted, do what they wanted. If Vin would just open up and tell a tenth of all the experiences he'd had, he'd do fine.

They parked and went into the trailer. Vin stood at his bed, and pulled an old coffee can out from under the mattress. He took the plastic lid off and emptied stones from his jeans pocket into it. He did it slowly, buying himself time before he had to turn around. Jake would want to talk about it, and Vin didn't want to. He hated it.

+ + + + + + +

Up at the house, Chris saw out the front window that Jake and Vin were back. "Hey!" he called to Buck who was in the kitchen trying to wheedle a fresh biscuit out of Mary. "They're back. C'mon down and I'll introduce you." Buck managed to snitch a biscuit just as Mary turned away from the table, and he took a bite out of it as he headed out the front door with Chris.

"Don't see how you can be friends with somebody you haven't laid eyes on in nearly thirty years." he said.

"Oh, we kept up a pretty good correspondence. I would've gone to see them if they'd ever stayed in one place long enough for me to get there. Jake said he'd never come back here."

"I guess I can't blame him, from what you told me, he had a rough time here before he left...how's his boy?" Buck asked.

"Vin? Quiet, that's about all I can tell you."

"Well, I'll see if I can't open him up a little."

"Good luck."

+ + + + + + +

Jake didn't wait for Vin to turn back around. He took a bottle of water out of the little refrigerator and sat on the couch. "Vin, you'll give these fellas a chance won't you? Don't just cut them off without trying." He saw Vin's shoulders sag and took it as a sign that he was weakening. "It's good to have friends. Can't just hang around with your old man all the time. If we end up staying here -"

"Staying here?" Vin turned around, shouting, his anger suddenly blazing. "I don't want to stay here. I want to get out of this town as soon as I can. They're your friends, they ain't mine. I don't need friends. Don't need ‘em, don't want ‘em. You go ahead and stay if you want to - I ain't." He slammed the can away from himself, spilling the rocks across his bunk, and stormed out of the trailer. He ran almost slam into Chris and Buck who'd arrived at just the wrong moment. Vin glared at them a second, snarled something they didn't quite catch, then threw himself into the truck and tore out of the driveway, heading toward town.

"You said he was quiet?" Buck asked. He and Chris turned to Jake who came to stand in the doorway of Ethel. "Well..." Jake said, clearly not perturbed by his son's actions. "If it doesn't have horns, thorns, or venom, it's not from Texas."

+ + + + + + +

Vin sped through town, minding the speed limit just barely, and kept going, away from Larabee's ranch. He was twenty miles out before he stopped, hands gripping the wheel, breathing hard trying to beat back the anger and frustration. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. It was supposed to be different this time. These were Jake's friends, he told Vin he didn't have to meet them if he didn't want to. He said that just today up on top of the world, when it was just them, like it was always just them and nobody else. No matter what, just them. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Shouldn't have come to Montana. Shouldn't have come where Jake had friends, old friends, friends he'd known longer than he'd known Vin. Now Vin was supposed to meet them and talk to them and try to think of something to say that would matter to a teacher or a lawyer or a doctor that sounded halfway intelligent and not stammer like he couldn't fit three words together in a row. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He turned the truck around back to town, found a bar, and stayed there till it was dark.

+ + + + + + +

"Hey Mike, what's up?"

"Thanks for coming so fast JD." The bartender told the deputy. "Got a fella over there, don't know that he can walk and he's talking about driving over the Pass in the dark. Won't give up his keys. Been nursing a cup of coffee awhile, still..."

"I'll have a talk with him."

The topic of their conversation stood up unsteadily from a lonely corner of the bar and cautiously made his way to the door. He kept his eyes fixed on the floor and regularly put his hand out to steady himself on the furniture. JD intercepted him.

"Sir - can I talk to you?"

"What?" Vin demanded. Lord, the whiskey on his breath alone could give you a hangover.

"You aren't planning to drive tonight are you, sir?"

"S'what if I wanna? Gotta license."

"Sir, I can't let you drive in this condition. Give me your keys and I'll drive you wherever you're going."

"Lemme alone. Drive if I wanna..." Vin tried to get past the deputy. He wasn't going back to Larabee's place. He was going to drive up to the Pass and...

"Sir, if you attempt to drive in this condition, I'll have to place you under arrest. Wouldn't you rather I drove you home than spend the night in jail?" JD put his hand on Vin's arm to stop him, but Vin roughly pulled away. This deputy weren't more than a kid, seemed like. Still it bothered Vin the way he was talking to him.

"Don't wanna go home." he shouted. "And I ain't no ‘sir'."

"Then what the hell are you?" JD asked back. This took Vin by surprise. He lowered his eyes and his voice.

"I'm Vin." he said quietly. "Vin Tanner. I'm from Texas." As if that might matter to anybody else. It was all Vin thought he had left at this moment.

"Well Vin, why don't we get some more coffee and we'll sit down and talk about it." JD stayed where he was, blocking the door.

"Talk ‘bout what?" Why he was drunk? Why he was shouting? Why he wanted to drive over the pass in the dark.

"Talk about why you don't want to go home." JD said. Lot of reasons a man might not want to go home, he knew. If this guy was from out of town, maybe he didn't even have a home to go to. "Mike..." he asked without taking his eyes off Vin. "You bring us some coffee back to Mr. Tanner's table?"

"Sure." Mike said.

"Vin, folks call me Vin."

"Okay...Vin."

"Can we go outside?" Vin hadn't taken his eyes off the floor. He knew the assorted patrons of the bar were staring at him. "Won't try to drive. Jus' need some fresh air."

"Sounds like a good idea." JD agreed and got their coffees to go. It was colder outside than Vin expected. The thought briefly crossed his mind to get his jacket out of the truck, parked just down the street, but he decided he'd better not. It might look like he was going to drive and he didn't want to get arrested just for being cold. There was nowhere to sit outside so they stood. holding their coffee in the paper cups but not drinking.

"So why don't you want to go home Vin?" JD asked. He got no answer. "Where do you live? Where are you staying in town?"

Vin was about to say when it hit him - this was the deputy. Damn, another friend of Larabee's. "Staying outside a'town. Larabee's place." He said it bitterly, wondering what new misery that comment would bring down on him. "Him and my Dad are friends." Instead he was surprised by the Deputy's answer.

"Yeah, Chris ain't ever the easiest man to get along with." though JD said it nearly under his breath. "You got somewhere else to stay if you don't want to go back there?" Vin thought about lying, but shook his head.

"No. Got our trailer parked on his driveway. Ain't Larabee I don't wanna see anyway..." he took a sip of the coffee. "Just wanna avoid my Dad awhile is all. Just wanna go t'sleep."

"Will your Dad be hard on you?" JD asked. Vin was a grown man, didn't mean he couldn't get beat on by a parent same as a kid.

Vin seemed to understand what he was being asked. "Worse." he said. "He's gonna wanna talk about it. Don't wanna talk about it. Just wanna go to sleep." He looked up and down the dark street. He couldn't remember which way was back to Ethel. His truck was pointed in one direction, but did he park coming back into town or did he have to turn around for the parking spot?

"I'll take you home Vin. Chris and I can have a talk with your Dad - -"

"No, don't do that. He ain't gonna be mad or nothin'. We just see things different y' know? He thinks I gotta have friends, I don't want friends. Just wanna go to bed." Vin's drunkenness was shifting into numbness and if he didn't sit soon he'd fall. "Just want to have to not be around anybody anymore..."

"Allright then. Give me your keys, I'll take you home."

+ + + + + + +

Jake and Chris sat outside Ethel at the campfire. Billy sat on Chris' lap, his presence kept the talk about Vin to a minimum. They were mostly quiet, Billy occasionally asked a question about the stars or the sounds around them. Jake stared into the fire, he didn't seem worried, but he was visibly relieved when they heard the car. He stood up from the lawn chair and walked closer to the driveway.

"Is Vin coming back?" Billy asked Chris.

"Hope so." he answered. When he saw that it was JD's cruiser, he set Billy down and went to stand next to Jake. JD got out first and handed a set of keys over to Jake.

"Found him at Mike's Bar." He told them. Vin got out a little more slowly, stumbling just a little as he tried to shut the car door without the sound exploding in his brain. With that accomplished, his next purpose in life was to get into the trailer without making eye contact with his Dad.

"Where've you been?" Jake asked him, walking the few steps to meet Vin as he made his way around the car, leaning his hand on the hood. He wasn't angry, his voice didn't even register worry. It was just a question. But Vin was tired, drunk, starting to feel really sick, and didn't care that three relative strangers were staring at them both.

"What'd I do?" he asked.

"What?" Jake wondered briefly if Vin had done something while he was drinking.

"What'd I do that you keep pushin' me away?" Vin wasn't steady on his feet, his voice was even less so.

"Vin - what - ?" "I'm sorry I ain't got friends. I'm sorry I can't make people like me. If I knew what was wrong with me that nobody wants to be friends with me, don't you think I'd change it? Tell me what I do that you can't stand to be around me and I'll change it Jake. I promise I will." His voice was breaking and Chris tried to get Billy's attention so they could leave the father and son in private. But Billy - and JD - stared at the scene.

Jake knew that Vin'd be embarrassed in the morning to be acting this way in front of the others. He put his hand on Vin's arm, intending to gently urge him inside the trailer. "Vin, come on. You're tired. We'll talk about it tomorrow."

"No!" Vin threw off his hand. "Tell me now what I gotta do that you'll let me stay with you."

"Vin - I'm not pushing you away." If he wouldn't go into Ethel, they'd have the conversation in public.

"Well it feels like it. It always feels like it when you tell me I gotta have friends. It's like you're trying not to spend anymore time with me than you have to. Like if I could find somebody who could stand being around me you wouldn't have to anymore." Tired, drunk, and at the end of what little strength he had left, Vin cried. "I don't have anybody else Jake. I'd have friends if I knew what was wrong with me that I don't have any. But I can't figure it out. Don't push me away, I don't have anybody else. Please Jake, please don't push me away. I don't have anywhere else to go."

"All right, all right Vin." Jake wrapped his arms around his son. Tears shone in his eyes as well. "I'm not pushing you away. I never meant to push you away. I never meant to hurt you." He rubbed Vin's back. "I'm right here Vin. I'm not going anywhere. You're stuck with me. Me and Ethel."

PART FIVE

Jake had finally got Vin into the trailer and shut the door. As soon as that was done, Chris, Billy, and JD lit out as fast and as silent as they could. Now Chris wandered back down when he saw the campfire flashing in the darkness. Jake was in the lawn chair, whittling down the end of a stick, staring at the fire. He looked up as Chris' boots crunched on the driveway. He waved Chris to the empty chair.

"Never did apologize for interfering with your party tonight." Jake said. Behind him the door to the trailer was open.

"Don't matter, those plans are mighty flexible...how is he?"

"Asleep...passed out I think."

"He have a problem with drinking?" Chris thought a moment or two before asking.

"No, this is only the second time I've seen him like this. The last time - well, it was a long time ago." Jake whittled a few more strokes. "I hurt him Chris. I never meant to, but I hurt him."

"Of course you hurt him Jake, you're his father. You ever get hurt by someone who meant nothing to you?"

"No, I guess not..."

The fire popped and whispered in front of them and the two men stared at it awhile. This time it wasn't Billy that kep them from discussing Vin, it was neither of them knowing how to address the subject. The night was chilly around them, and alive with sound.

"So, what was the last time?" Chris finally asked. "The last time you saw him like this?"

Jake wasn't going to tell him. It was painful for Vin - probably the most painful thing he'd experienced, and Jake'd never even once written to Chris about it. But Vin was asleep, or passed out, and wouldn't hear the conversation, and Chris was asking, and Jake just wanted to tell somebody else about it.

"It was ‘bout five years ago. We were out in San Diego, working with a bail bondsman. Some guy he'd gone good for ten thousand had skipped and left him with a deed on a house that wasn't even safe for rats. Vin was a kid, barely in his twenties and this guy's secretary took a shine to him. She was older, near thirty back then I reckon. I could tell right away that she was no good for him. At least, once it all went to hell, I told myself I'd seen it right off.

"She was married, complaining that her husband didn't understand her, was cold to her, wouldn't talk to her...y'know..." he said to Chris. "...all those things a married man will say to a woman he wants to sleep with...anyway, we were in town awhile because that bail jumper wasn't smart enough to actually leave San Diego, and they started seeing each other. Oh, it wasn't actual ‘dating' I suppose. More often her husband was out of town and could Vin come over and fix a lamp, or change her tire, or anything she could think of that he was naive enough to believe."

"What happened?" Chris asked, though he thought he had a pretty good idea.

"Vin fell hard for her. Told me they were going to get married, and they both wanted a lot of kids, and she was just the sweetest thing he'd ever met... you have to remember now, Vin was only twenty-two and hadn't really dated anybody. So he believed her, really believed her. He was so excited it broke my heart. I kept praying that it'd turn out allright, that things would come to a natural, painless conclusion. He kept talking about settling down, buying a house, having roots, giving me grandchildren. He was so excited. I knew if I told him she was no good and it worked out, he might forgive me. But if I told him she was no good and it didn't work out, I knew he'd never forgive me."

"So you had to watch while he crashed and burned."

"Exactly." Jake nodded. "One day he got all spiffed up, bought a ring at a pawn shop. Not a great ring, but a good ring. A ring that any woman in love would've appreciated. I told him, I tried to tell him that he should take it slow, they'd only known each other a few weeks, five maybe. A woman in her situation might need some time to think things over. Needin' to get divorced and all. He said he knew all that, that they'd talked all about it. Then he just plowed ahead into disaster." Jake stalled there a minute, deciding what he should be telling Chris.

"I never did get the full story out of him. All he told me was she said ‘no'. But I had a cop show up at Ethel that night, told me Vin'd been in an accident and I'd find him at the Emergency Room. When I checked it out later, seems he showed up at her house to take her to dinner but her husband had come home unexpectedly. He asked who Vin was and she said he was some trailer trash kid who'd been harassing her.

"I talked to the husband, he wasn't a bad guy, he knew what was going on. Said he told Vin he was sorry for the misunderstanding and if Vin'd spent any money on her, he pay it back. But Vin acted like he didn't understand, which I'm sure he didn't, and he tried to talk or argue with her and she got mad and shoved him away. He fell down their front stairs and broke his shoulder. The husband drove him to the ER in the truck and begged us not to press charges against her. We didn't. A few days later our bounty suspect got arrested when he ran a stop sign, so we pulled up stakes and lit out of town."

"When did he get drunk?" Chris asked, since Jake hadn't mentioned it.

"Later, a year later maybe. We were back in San Diego, same stupid bondsman, not checking out his collateral. Vin was nervous but determined to meet her again square, show her that she hadn't touched him, much less destroyed him, but she wasn't there." He couldn't stop an ironic smile. "Seems she tried that routine on the wrong guy and his fiancee took a dim view of it. Cut her up three ways from Sunday...she died." The smile died as well. "That's when Vin got drunk. Stayed that way three days. Spent another four days sick as a dog inside and out, and another three months in such a bad depression I was afraid to leave him alone, afraid he'd do himself a harm. But eventually, he came out of it. I'm not saying it's completely gone, but the worst is gone."

"I'm sorry to hear he went through that." Chris said. "It's tough at any age to think you've found the one person who'll make you happy the rest of your life, then see them slip away, for whatever reason. It's tough."

Then they sat in silence again for awhile.

"What was her name anyway?" Chris asked

"Charlotte."

PART SIX

Vin woke up with a headache that threatened to split his skull all the way from the base of his neck to his eyes. His mouth was dry and tasted like burned rubber. He wasn't in his bed, he must've fallen asleep on the little couch. Collapsed maybe. He could hear the pop and sizzle of the campfire outside the open door and felt the old afghan covering him. His head was pillowed on his Dad's denim jacket, bundled under his head. He didn't move for a minute or two, he wasn't even sure he'd get to sit upright without his head snapping off. But the headache proved too much to bear lying down. He got up, unsteady and dangerous, and felt his way to the trailer's bathroom where he managed, with his eyes closed out of painful necessity, to change into his pajama bottoms and T-shirt without knocking himself out or collapsing once again.

+ + + + + + +

Out at the campfire, Jake and Chris heard Vin moving around inside the trailer. "I'm surprised." Jake said. "I thought he'd be dead until morning."

"He must have a better constitution than you or I ever did..." They turned their eyes to the faint light shining through the trailer and out the open door. In a few minutes, Vin appeared in the doorway, ashen, unsteady, eyes narrowed with pain or disorientation. Chris had once seen a dead body that looked healthier than Jake's son did at this moment.

"Dad -" Then Vin stopped when he saw Chris, surprised - and embarrassed - to see him there.

"How're you doing Sprout?" Jake asked. His voice was gentle and his eyes carried a warm affection for his boy, the term of endearment used only when the soul was more battered than the body.

"Can't find the aspirin?" Vin's articulation was deliberate, trying to pronounce the words correctly around his contrary tongue.

"I'll get it..." Jake started to get up, but Vin waved him back.

"Just - isn't it in the medicine chest?"

"It was - there's Excedrin Migraine in the cupboard over the stove."

"Okay." And the apparition disappeared once more.

"He's going to be real sick tomorrow." Chris offered.

"Well, it'll teach him a lesson then." But Jake didn't mean it. "Maybe it'll keep him in one spot long enough to find out what's going on anyway."

"I'll bring him something down tomorrow that's good for a hangover, something Mary told me about. Maybe it'll keep him from being sick four days this time."

+ + + + + + +

Vin found the Excedrin. Moving precisely for fear of his head exploding all over the inside of the trailer, he wrangled with the child safety cap, spilled three tablets into his hand, spilled two more onto the floor, got the cap back on crooked, then let the small green bottle fall into the sink. Next he had to get water. There was bottled water in the fridge. They weren't hooked up to electricity, at least as far as he could remember they weren't, so the water wouldn't be cold. But it'd be wet and that's all he wanted to make him mouth stop feeling like a drag strip. Bending down was entirely out of the question if he wanted his eyes to stay in his head and not be squeezed out by the ponderous weight his brain had recently acquired. So he crouched down, got out a bottle of generic water, then had to use all the strength in his arms to be standing upright again.

It wasn't until he was fully upright again that Vin noticed he'd dropped his Excedrin on the floor.

+ + + + + + +

"Dad?" If the door to Ethel hadn't been open, Jake wouldn't have heard the voice. "Can you help me?"

"Sure Vin." Jake stood up and Chris did likewise.

"I should be heading back, I'll drive you in tomorrow to get your truck."

"Thanks, hope he didn't park it in a tow away zone."

"Naah, I know the Sheriff, he'll look the other way."

They said their goodnights. Chris headed back to his house and Jake went into the trailer, shutting the door behind himself. "How're you doing?" Vin was standing stiffly still, the unopened bottle of water clenched in his hand. His eyes were squeezed shut.

"I think my eyes are melting."

"Okay..." Vin was going to be REAL sick tomorrow. "Did you take the Excedrin?" Jake put his hands on Vin's shoulders and gently guided him backwards the few steps to the couch and had him sit down.

"Dropped ‘em on the floor. Couldn't bend down to pick ‘em up again."

"I'll get ‘em for you Vin. Here let me open this." In a few minutes, Jake opened the bottle of water, got fresh tablets, helped Vin take the medicine with a few good swallows of water, put the cap back on the Excedrin straight and tucked the bottle back up in the cupboard. Then he got Vin laying down on the couch again - didn't want him accidentally rolling out of the top bunk in the middle of the night - with his head on the bundled denim jacket. He covered him with the afghan and a blanket, then took his corduroy jacket off and laid it over Vin as well.

"Dad?"

"Yeah?" As Jake made sure Vin's bare feet were covered.

"...sorry.."

Jake sat on the edge of the couch and patted Vin's shoulder. "When you do something you need to be sorry for Sprout, I'll let you know."

PART SEVEN

Morning came and Vin didn't feel any better. His splitting headache had mutated into global warfare inside his head, the couch danced underneath him, and the thought of even the word ‘food' was dangerous. He heard Jake moving around, straightening up, shuffling papers, making the beds. Vin heard the dull metallic thunk that meant his horde of shiny pebbles was being scooped back into the old coffee can from where they'd scattered across his bunk. He stayed still, just grateful to be with his Dad; he'd get ‘talked to' when he was one hundred percent again, but while he was sick - whenever he was sick - Jake was never far away, never mentioned the cause of Vin's distress, even when it was his own fault like now. Vin settled into the couch and the comfort of knowing, just knowing, that his Dad would always be there.

+ + + + + + +

"Hey Sprout, you back amongst the living?" It wasn't until he heard Jake's voice that Vin realized he was awake again, with his eyes open.

"Just visiting." he managed to say around all the cotton in his mouth. Global warfare still raged, but he no longer felt in danger of losing his lunch.

"Here, take these. Chris sent ‘em over, said it's the best thing for a hangover. He'd know I guess...can you sit up?"

Sitting up was entirely out of the question, even propping himself up on one arm took patience and every last ounce of his strength. "These legal?" Vin asked, looking at the two caplets Jake put into his hand.

"As far as I know. Chris didn't tell me what they are, just that he found out about ‘em from Mary." Jake said. Vin swallowed the pills, handed the bottle of water to Jake, and collapsed back onto the couch.

"She's real nice...Mary..." Vin stumbled over her name, not knowing if he could call her by her first name, or Mrs. Larabee.

"Yeah, she's been real good for Chris, and he's been real good for her and her boy. You know it's the Lord's hand when two people can guide each other through a common misery like that." Jake sat on the edge of the couch felt Vin's forehead. No fever. "You doing okay? You'll survive while I go into town and get the truck? Maybe do a little food shopping?"

"Guess I won't be dancin'...how'd her husband die?"

"Car went off the road. Official word was an accident, but he'd been stirring up a lot of hornets with some editorials and investigations in his newspaper. Happened a few years ago, before Chris was sheriff I guess."

"And Chris' wife and son died in a fire?"

"Yeah, about five years now I guess. Nearly. House burned down while Chris was on duty..."

"That's terrible, not to get to say goodbye." Vin said.

"Yes it is terrible. But you think, it happens most of the time that way...well, I'm on my way out to get the truck, won't take me too long. Try to keep your brain cells all in one place and we'll see if you can eat anything when I get back, OK?"

"OK Dad."

As Jake stood up from the couch, Vin put his hand out enough that his fingertips brushed the back of his Dad's hand. Jake smiled down at him. "I'll be back."

+ + + + + + +

After thirty minutes or three quarters of an hour, Vin felt recovered enough to get up and dressed. He took a bottle of water and went out to sit in one of the lawn chairs in the shade of Ethel. He wanted fresh air. His headache was dwindling, his eyes seemed content to stay in his head, and he just felt better. He thought Jake'd be happy to see him at least upright when he got back from town. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the breeze for awhile, breathing in the good, like Jake'd taught him, breathing out the bad. He wished he'd remembered to do it yesterday instead of inhaling the alcohol. He could be a semi-conscious person now if he had.

He heard footsteps on the gravel, someone came to the edge of Ethel, stopped a few seconds, then went on. Vin figured it was Jake, then thought Jake hadn't come back yet and opened his eyes to see who it was. Apparently, Chris had come down, seen Vin with his eyes closed and turned away thinking he was asleep. He was walking away from the trailer, down the driveway.

"Chris?" Again the hesitation, call him Chris, or Mr. Larabee, or Sheriff - or anything at all. Whichever he should call him, Chris turned back.

"Didn't mean to disturb you..." But he seemed glad to see Vin.

"Jake's not here." Vin made sure Chris knew that as soon as possible. He sounded wary.

"Mary took him into town, get the truck, said they were going to stop at the grocery store too. I was just going down to get the mail, thought I might check on you while I was here...that medicine help you?"

"Yeah, I ‘preciate you giving it to me - feel a whole lot better than I expected to..."

"Good, that's stuff seen me through more hangovers than I care to remember." Chris didn't seem happy with this memory. Then he shook it off. "I'm going to get the mail - you let me know if you need anything. I'll be up at the house."

"Okay..." Still wary. "Thanks."

"Sure." Chris grinned. The mailbox was ninety or a hundred more feet down the driveway from the trailer. Vin watched Chris head that way, then caught sight of a mare and her foal in the corral just across the driveway from him. The horse caught sight of him too, and pushed her head over the railing expectantly. The foal stood by its mother's side, curious about the creature she was so intent on. The horse didn't move, kept staring, and stamped her hoof impatiently. Chris was down at the mailbox reading a letter while standing there, so Vin pushed up unsteadily from the lawn chair and walked over the corral.

+ + + + + + +

Down at the mailbox, Chris kept track of Vin out of the corner of his eye. He'd purposely put his most nosy mare into the corral because he knew she'd demand Vin's attention, and he hoped Vin would respond. It'd give the two men an opening to start a conversation anyway, maybe help Vin feel comfortable around him. He kept an eye on Vin till he was stroking the mare's muzzle with one hand and reaching out the other to the foal's bashfully inquisitive nose. Then, reading that he'd been pre-approved for one more credit card he didn't want, as deeply as if it was the only thing that mattered, Chris headed back toward the house.

+ + + + + + +

Vin knew that Chris was coming back toward him, but the Sheriff seemed pretty involved in whatever he was reading, so Vin kept his hands and attention on the horses.

"You like horses?" Chris asked as he came even.

"Yeah."

"You ride much?"

"Yeah, Jake ‘n me, whenever we get a chance. There's a place just outside Aspen we like to go to whenever we get that way. They got trail rides up into the mountains, up to the Maroon Bells. That's real nice." Vin shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. He looked like he was trying to keep himself upright. He stared at the ground.

"I remember Jake was a pretty good horseman before he left Red Lodge." Chris tried.

"Yeah, he said he was." A faint grin crossed Vin's face. He met Chris' eyes but didn't hold it. "First time we went on a trail ride there, they was asking people how much experience they had riding. There was a bunch of people with us, all going out. Most of ‘en didn't have any experience ridin', or much. Turns out Jake had the most. So they started gettin' us all in line to head out, and the people with no experience got put at the end of the line, ‘n Jake, he got put at the head of the line, right behind the trail boss. So he told me, it was ‘cause he had so much experience." Vin's grin increased and he briefly met Chris' eyes again. "But come to find out, it was just the horse got into the grain and had the runs." Vin genuinely laughed. "Trail boss just wanted to keep an eye on him."

Chris laughed as well. "Oh, I'm going to have to remember that the next time he starts telling me his exploits...we got a nice trail up into the mountains here Vin. Maybe when you're feeling better, we could get our own trail ride together. Got a lake up there it'd be real nice to have a picnic by."

"Sure..." Vin nodded, eyes on the ground, wishing Jake would come back and save him from making conversation, wondering how long he was going to be gone.

"Why don't you come on up to the house and have some lunch with me?" Chris asked. "I know you probably don't feel like eating much, but I'm sure we could find something..."

"No, thanks... I'll wait for Jake."

PART EIGHT

Getting some more rest in the top bunk, Vin heard Jake come into the trailer. He walked to his son and lightly shook his arm, then...nothing. Vin wondered what Jake was doing, just standing there. Probably going to complain that Vin was sleeping the day away, before tucking the blanket under the mattress and telling Vin to close his eyes and get some more rest while he got lunch ready. Vin opened his eyes.

The trailer was empty.

"Dad?" He sat up in the bunk and listened for any sound. He heard voices outside, and none of them Jake's. "Dad?" The silence inside the trailer unnerved him. "You home?"

Nothing.

Vin jumped off the bunk and regretted it as his brain corkscrewed on impact. He held onto the edge of the mattress a little while, trying to keep his balance. The voices outside were coming closer, and none of them were Jake's. They were the quiet, insistent voices of men determined to accomplish an unpleasant task. In a minute or so, Vin felt steady enough to let go and head outside.

No truck.

No Jake.

The deputy's cruiser was parked off the driveway near the corral, two more cars parked behind it, and the mare stared at the group of men who didn't notice her at all. Chris, JD, Josiah, that fella he hadn't actually met yesterday - Buck, Jake had told him later - and two other men he hadn't met, a black man with a large first aid kit at his feet, and another man who rolled a quarter over and under his fingers as he listened to the conversation.

No Jake.

Vin's mind didn't consciously repeat this, but it echoed anyway.

No truck.

No Jake.

The Sheriff and his Deputy, the preacher, a first aide kit...Vin felt sicker than the hangover had left him. Desperate to know what was going on, and afraid of what he'd be told, Vin approached the six men. Chris saw him first. His face was grim.

"Vin - we got a problem. Can you ride?"

"Yeah - what - ?" What happened to Jake? Where's my Dad?

"Got a kid lost up over the Pass. Wandered off from his Mom at one of the rest stops. Went off into shale and they lost him. Jake said you can track - you up to it?" Yes or no?his voice insisted.

"Yeah..." A moment's blur before his brain focused. "Snowing up there, ain't it?" Vin's voice took on a deeper quality, not the hesitant kid who'd come looking for his Dad. "We still got a ways before dark. Got dogs? What about a helicopter? Got a map of the area? What about any other cars? Kid didn't get swiped did he? Pretty flat ground up there once you're past the tree line, don't seem a lotta places a kid could hide. Somebody still up there, ‘case he shows up? What about the parents? I feel for ‘em, don't mean we need hysterics..."

Chris answered his questions, - yeah it's snowing, could get below freezing, dogs coming from Billings, too windy up top for a helicopter - showed him the map - got lost into a wooded area, parents are still there with men from Cooke City searching and keeping in touch by radio, you know most of the men here, Doctor Jackson, Ezra... Then the hesitant kid made a reappearance.

"Where's my Dad?" Vin asked, in the shy voice Chris was used to. Chris frowned, not realizing he hadn't already said. He gestured back toward his house.

"He's got the horse trailer hooked to your truck, got the horses and gear we're taking with. Get your warmest jacket and gloves Vin, and we'll hit the trail...grab your Dad's too..." Chris added as the group dispersed to their cars.

The news that Jake was safe and only a quarter mile away lifted a darkness off of Vin that he didn't know had settled on him. He hurried back into Ethel, took another dose of the anonymous drug Chris had given him, grabbed jackets and gloves and ran down the driveway to meet Jake as he headed the truck and trailer toward the road and the ‘posse'. Jake slowed to a stop and Vin jumped in. He grinned at his Dad, relieved and glad to be with him.

"Hey looks like you're feelin' better." Jake said, grinning too at Vin's sudden change in health and outlook. "That medicine of Chris' must've kicked in?"

"Yeah, stuff works great...hope the kid is okay. Hope they find him before we get there...who're the guys I didn't meet? Dr. Jackson? The other guy?"

"Ezra. He's a lawyer. Not Chris' lawyer, mind you. Which may be it's own recommendation... Nathan - Dr. Jackson. He and his wife run the clinic in town."

"Well, I can see having a doctor on a search - - how come a lawyer?"

"This is Chris' gang, the first wave of search and rescue in Red Lodge. Got other people on the way to help, but this is Chris' hand picked bunch. Men he trusts, men he knows he can delegate to and know it'll be taken care of. He asked for you specific you know." Hoping Vin would be understand the significance. "Didn't think you were goin' to make it though. I tried to wake you up...you didn't budge."

"Couldn't have tried real hard old man...losin' your touch?"

"Aaaahhh." Jake reached over and lightly cuffed his son. He decided to find out what those drugs were that were making Vin so cheerful and lay in a lifetime supply.

PART NINE

"Tell me again how quiet this kid is?" Buck asked. He rode in the passenger seat of Chris' old Ford Ranger. They were fast approaching the rest stop where the search would radiate from. Chris had more important things on his mind, but he answered his friend.

"I swear Buck, the first time I met him, he only said seven or eight words to me. And that took two whole sentences."

"Well, he does seem to have overcome that. He's near as bossy as you are."

"Long as he gets the job done...that's all I ask." Chris glanced into his sideview mirror. Following close behind he saw the cruiser with JD and Ezra, Josiah and Nathan, and behind them, as fast as they could safely negotiate the turns with a horse trailer, Jake and Vin. It took twenty minutes from Chris' driveway to the rest stop, but the difference in altitude and weather was severe. A think blanket of wet snow already covered the ground, muddy footprints beaten into it all around the little brick building. Several cars were already there, and a shifting group of men and women waited their marching orders. Larabee's gang parked along the other side of the road.

Chris and Buck got out and immediately went to the man in charge. Jake and Vin went around to start unloading the horses. Some of the other men came back to help them. Ezra - the lawyer, Vin reminded himself - came up to Vin and offered his hand. "Vin isn't it? We haven't been formally introduced. I'm Ezra Standish." Vin wiped his hand on his denim jacket before taking Ezra's.

"It's nice to meet you." He'd mentally practiced that all during the short drive up here, just in case this exact thing happened.

"You'll find Mr. Larabee tends to forget the finer points of etiquette when occupied by more important matters..." Ezra smiled. "I look forward to working with you." With that, he took his horse, already saddled and bridled, and headed to the command post set up near the breezeway of the rest stop.

"How come only four horses?" Vin asked his Dad. Before Jake could answer, another voice spoke up.

"I'll be staying here, so whenever they find the boy, they'll know exactly where I am." It was the doctor, Nathan. He offered Vin his hand as well. "Wish we'd met under a little happier circumstances..."

"This'll be happier." Vin heard himself say as he shook hands, still counting horses in his head. Nathan seemed to realize it.

"Josiah'll be staying here to give the parents strength." He nodded to the preacher, who stood in front of two people sitting together on the hood of a car with out of state plates. Their arms were wrapped around each other and their faces turned up to Josiah with expectant fear. "Chris stays here to coordinate, and Buck'll be in on the ground search." Nathan picked up his first aide kit and went to Josiah and the parents.

JD helped Jake lead the last of the horses out of the trailer. He smiled at Vin in passing as he guided the horse down the ramp. Drunk as he'd been, Vin remembered the Deputy and the prolonged circumstances of their first meeting. "Real glad you're with us Vin." JD said. "We need all the eyes we can get, and your Dad says yours are real sharp." He swung to his saddle. "Casey told me you're from Texas. When we're all done here, when we're back in town, maybe you'd tell me about it?"

"Sure." Vin's amazement sounded in his voice, and when JD had trotted off to join the others, he turned to his Dad. "He wants to talk to me about Texas." As though Jake might not have heard.

"I bet he'll want to hear all about those ghosts they don't have at the Alamo...you eat today?"

"I had a banana..."

"Here, take these." Jake pulled some individually wrapped granola bars out his jacket pocket and stuffed them into Vin's. "And button that jacket up." He proceeded to do it for him, knowing it would annoy Vin.

"Daaaaaad." Vin was embarrassed. Jake might as well have wiped dirt off his face. "I can do it, you know." Jake grinned and Vin knew he'd been kidding and grinned back.

"C'mon, before they leave without us...got your gloves?" This time Jake was serious and Vin had to produce the gloves before they headed to the group.

+ + + + + + +

With a map of the area tacked up on the wall, going by who had already searched where, and what they'd found, Chris divided the search party, on foot and on horseback, and sent them out. He sent Vin and Ezra down a trail that led away from the woods and along a rocky ridge. It'd been reasonably warm down by Ethel, up here the air blew bitter, and fat snowflakes splattered onto the two men.

"Chris tells me that you and your father are bounty hunters?" Ezra spoke without taking his eyes off the ground.

"Yeah..." Vin couldn't tell from his voice if Ezra was leading up to a compliment or a condemnation.

"Tell me, have you pursued some notorious felon here to God's country, or are you - were you - here purely for personal gratification?" When all he got was a puzzled look, Ezra tried again. "Business or pleasure?"

"Oh. Pleasure, I guess. Not mine. Jake and Chris known each other a long time."

+ + + + + + +

Farther down the trail, Vin stopped his horse to stare at an irregularity at the edge of the ridge. He got an uneasy feeling looking at the recently disturbed earth, the falling snow staining brown from the mud. Ezra reined in beside him. "Do you see something?" and Vin nodded to the area.

"Think maybe we found him." They dismounted and cautiously approached the edge. "See here, think he must've fallen here."

"Fallen? Good Lord."

They peered over the edge of gravel and mud, down the jagged side of the mountain. There, thirty feet down, laying on his back on a flat outcropping, they saw the little boy. Bundled in a white snow suit, he couldn't have been more than three years old. "God, he's just a baby." Vin said. Ezra was on his radio in an instant, giving their location and the relative condition of the boy. Below, hearing the voices, the little boy began to stir. If he moved a foot or two in any of three different directions, he'd be gone.

"Ezra - I'm goin' down there to keep him quiet." Vin immediately uncoiled the rope from his saddle, tied one end around the saddle horn, and knotted the other end under his arms. He kept a tight grip on the rope, letting a little at a time slide through his hand as he carefully backed himself to the edge, a few feet away from where the boy had gone down. "Hate to come this far and have him - - - ." The ground gave way beneath Vin, just as he got to the edge. He lost ten feet of rope through his hands, burning a path into his leather gloves as he desperately tried to hang on.

But that ten feet of rope cost him. He flew off the mountainside toward eternity, then reverse momentum brought him abruptly and excruciatingly back into contact with it. The impact forced all the air from his body, and the stunning pain of his head, ribs, shoulder and arm brought a veil of bright stars on a blood red backdrop before his eyes.

"Vin! Can you hear me?" Ezra called down. Dropping onto his stomach, he made his way even more cautiously to the edge. "Are you all right?"

Finally, forcing air into his lungs just as painfully as it had been forced out, Vin managed a breathless "NO!" - thinking to himself ‘I just fell off a mountain.' He looked up and saw Ezra looking over the edge, relaying the sudden change in circumstance over the radio. When he could draw another breath, he called up again. "I'm OK. Gotta keep the baby quiet."

"Vin -you're hurt." Ezra called, seeing the wide bloody scrape across the side of Vin's face, and the way he pressed his left arm to his side.

"It'll keep." The little boy was wriggling like he wanted to sit up. "He moves an inch and we'll lose him." The stones jutting from the mountain were slick with snow and hard to hold onto. Vin's left arm moved unwillingly, pain shooting from his shoulder to his fingertips. He kept his right hand gripped like death on the rope and lowered himself steadily, cautiously, toward the outcropping, still another twenty feet below and three feet to the left of him.

The little boy was scraped and bloody as well, mud smeared all down the back of his snowsuit as rolled onto his side. "M-m-m-m-ommy..." spluttered out of him dully. He didn't know where he was or how much danger he was in. "M-m-m-m-m-ommy..."

"Hang on baby, hang on. Help's comin'." Vin said, and prayed ‘God, please let him hang on. If I lose it, don't let me take him with me...' He didn't look out at the world behind him. He kept his eyes on his destination, and the route he had to take to get there. Finally he was even with the little boy and he put his left hand on him to keep him still. "M-m-m-ommy, M-m-m-ommy..." There was no secure spot to put his feet, so Vin wrapped his right arm in the rope and hung on. The slack dangled below him.

"She's comin', your Mom's comin' baby. Hang on." Overhead he could already hear the voices and footsteps of help on its way. No surprise, Chris was the first one to look down over the edge. He pulled out his radio and Vin heard him bark into it that one of his men was hurt too, and Vin prayed he wasn't talking about Jake.

"Vin - I'm coming down." he called then. "You all right till I get there?"

"Yeah - if you don't mind hurrying...watch out for the edge..."

Harnessed in his rope different than Vin, so he could control his descent better, Chris tested the edge. It crumbled under his weight. He was ready for it though and it didn't take him down by surprise like it had Vin. He came down on the opposite side of the boy, where there were solid rocks he could get a foothold on. "You allright?" he asked with some concern. The left side of Vin's face was bloody, and his eye was fast swelling shut.

"Afraid the baby was gonna crawl off, started moving around..."

"You did good, Nathan said to keep him still until he gets a back brace on him. He could've injured his spine taking that fall. You allright?"

Vin shrugged as best he could under the circumstances. "Been better, been worse. Who's hurt?"

"What?"

"Heard you say one of your men was hurt. Ain't Jake is it?" He was serious. Chris was amazed to realize that Vin was dead serious in his question.

"You." Chris emphasized. "I was talking about you. You look exactly like a man who fought with a mountain and lost." And Vin was amazed to realize that Chris was serious. He'd called Vin one of ‘his' men. When Chris asked one more time "You allright?" Vin answered.

"Arm's goin' numb." Indicating his right arm tangled in the rope. "Think I mighta busted a rib."

"We'll get you outta here." Chris pulled out his radio again. "We need help down here. Vin's hurt, he's gonna need help getting out." Scarce moments later, Buck was at Vin's side. He put his arm around him.

"All right, I gotcha...take up his slack..." He called up. "This is gonna hurt I bet...I gotcha, let's get your arm outta here..." With the rope taut, and Buck's arm secure around him - and with Chris guarding the restless baby on the other side - Vin released his right arm. Men and horses on the top pulled the ropes of both men and they climbed back to safety.

Lord God it hurt. Vin's ribs and shoulder burned, and the two times he tried gripping a handhold with his left hand, the pain surprised him and he nearly lost his footing. "Hang on there Vin. Nearly to the top." Buck told him. "I don't think you should try that arm." When they reached the top, Ezra and JD grabbed Vin first and hauled him up. The blood red curtain of stars danced in his eyes again from the pain, and his feet no sooner made contact with solid ground than he collapsed to his knees.

"Let's get him away from the edge." He heard someone say, and when they attempted to lift him to his feet, the curtain of stairs went completely black.

PART TEN

"Hey Sprout, back amongst the living?" Jake's voice brought Vin back to consciousness a few minutes later. The clouds had broken apart in the sky. Snowflakes still fell, but they were light, and drifted instead of spattered.

"Just...visiting..." Vin said. He felt himself laid out on the rocky ground, Jake's corduroy jacket placed on top of him. His headache was back full force. "Baby? What...happened...?"

"It's okay, lie still...the boy's fine. They're taking him down to his parents now. Once they get him to town, he'll be choppered to the hospital in Billings...your turn."

"Hunh?"

"Time to get you back to town, Dr. Jackson here wants a look at you before we move you."

"Stay..." Vin reached blindly for his Dad's hand, or sleeve, or anything he could hold onto. Jake took his hand

"I'm stayin'. It's okay. Doctor needs to look at you though. You got yourself pretty well banged up." Jake smiled down on him. "I'm proud of you. You kept that child safe. Risked your life to do it, and I'm proud of you."

Despite the feeling that the skin on his face was splitting even farther in two, Vin grinned.

+ + + + + + +

Vin passed Nathan's exam. He could move his arms and his legs, though his left arm ached. He knew his name, where he was, what day it was. He got through ‘how many fingers' by counting how many hands he saw with his good eye, and dividing the number of fingers by that. First they sat him up, then got him to his feet. His head swam but he wouldn't admit it. He saw the horses and Chris standing near them, watching the scene with concern. Jake had Vin put his arms into the corduroy jacket as he guided him to the horses.

"Can you ride?" Chris asked.

"Yeah."

"The rest headed back to the cars. We'll get you to the clinic, let Nathan get a good look at you. Get that eye looked at."

"Okay."

Jake helped Vin mount his horse, then kept an eye on him once he was on his own. He took the reins from Vin to lead his horse. Chris took a quick look around, made sure everybody was ready before setting off. He stopped himself from shaking his head at the sight of Vin - the kid looked like road kill. "You let me know if we're riding too hard for you, Vin. About a mile back to the cars."

"I can make it."

"Stubborn like his old man." Chris knew though that both Jake and Nathan would keep an eye on Vin, and let Chris know if he was wearing down. Just before setting off, Chris gave Jake's horse a once over. "Hope that horse hasn't had too much grain." he said. Jake didn't know what he meant, but Vin snickered beside him, so he figured it was something at his expense. But since it seemed to mean that Chris and Vin had a private joke going, it didn't matter.

+ + + + + + +

Every step the horse took jolted through Vin's body. He gritted his teeth and held on to the saddle horn with his right hand. A mile back to the road. How many steps would a horse take in a mile? He knew if wanted, he could count them - he felt every single one of them. He knew the procession was going slow on his account. He didn't know if he'd rather have the increased pain that going faster would bring, as long as he got the truck sooner, or if he'd rather get to the truck later and hang on through the pain he had now.

Jake slowed his horse to get in step beside his son. Vin's good eye was squeezed shut just as tight as the one turning three shades of purple surrounded by the painfully bright red abrasion his face sported. The muscles in his jaw worked against the pain.

"Sprout? You need a rest? We're about halfway there."

Chris slowed his horse immediately and turned back to them. "How is he? We can get a litter up here if we need to..."

"I can do it." Vin insisted, through shut eyes and gritted teeth. Chris studied him a minute, as Nathan pulled in closer.

"Vin, your headache getting worse?" The doctor asked.

"No, still real bad, but it ain't gettin' worse."

"Can you look at me Vin? I want to check your pupils..." Both eyes were checked and found acceptable. "You feel nauseous?"

"No." Surprisingly, this was true.

"You sure you can make it?" Chris asked. Vin looked at him out of his right eye. Larabee, his Dad's oldest friend, who'd called Vin one of ‘his' men. His voice held concern, genuine concern. For just an instant, Vin felt what was like to belong in this circle of friends. He wanted to prove to himself that he could belong.

"I can make it."

"All right then." and the procession moved on.

+ + + + + + +

The rest stop was deserted except for the cruiser, truck and horse trailer, and JD and Buck waiting for these last four to be safe and sound. Buck went to Vin, even before the horses had completely halted. "Let me give you a hand here." He said, waiting to be sure he had Vin's attention before helping him dismount.

JD went to Chris and filled him in on the latest details. The boy and his mother had been airlifted to Billings, Josiah was driving the father in. Ezra was in town giving appropriate sound bites to all interested media. The rest of the search party had been dismissed with thanks, and Larabee's gang was invited to dinner on the house at Nettie Wells' restaurant whenever they wanted. Chris nodded his understanding, and watched Vin stiffly dismount, Jake and Buck each taking an arm to help him toward the truck.

"Buck?" Chris called to him. "We'll take Vin to the clinic in the cruiser. You and JD get the horses back to my place?"

"Sure thing."

+ + + + + + +

Once Vin was in the back seat of the police car, leaning heavily against Jake, he was only dimly aware that the car was moving; or that once in town, Chris punched the siren a couple of times to get through intersections without stopping; or that to get him up the few steps into Nathan's clinic, his Dad just lifted him in his arms and carried him in.

+ + + + + + +

The next thing he was clearly aware of was a beautiful woman sitting next him, as he slept, dressed in scrubs and covered with a white thermal blanket, on a gurney in the exam room. She had long dark hair in spiral curls and whatever she was reading off the photocopied pages in her hands made her frown. She was a black woman, but Vin thought he saw Native American in her features too. He was so intent on figuring out what nation might be in her blood, that when she saw that he was awake and said ‘hello', his immediate response was: "Seminole?" She smiled and nodded.

"I have Seminole in my background. I see from your files that you have in your background impetigo, mumps, and an allergy to Darvocet." She read his puzzled expression and explained. "I'm Rain Jackson, one of the physicians on staff here, with my husband. Your father supplied me with copies of your medical files so that we could start a chart on you while you were being repaired...do you remember anything that we did to you while you've been here?"

Vin shook his head. "Last thing I remember is...snow...gettin' down off the horse... my head feels better though...did you take care of the baby? He gonna be okay?"

"He should be fine, I stabilized him here before they took him to Billings. No broken bones, mild hypothermia, a few scrapes but nothing like the abrasion you've managed for yourself." She stood up from the chair and walked to the side of the gurney. "You have no broken bones, but some very bruised ribs, and a bruised shoulder which I'd like immobilized for a few day. The abrasion on your face should be kept clean and dry, I'm giving you a prescription for antibiotics to prevent infection, and pain killers for your bones."

"Where's my Dad?"

"Just in the other room."

"Can I go home now?"

"Yes, but I'll want to see you in a few days to check on you." Rain saw the hesitation in his face. "If you do not come Vincent, I know where you live." She said it solemnly but with laughter in her eyes, and Vin agreed. "Then I'll get your father for you."

Jake was there in less than a minute. "Hey Sprout, doctor says I can take you home."

"I'm ready. Just let me get dressed." Unsteady but determined, and with Jake's help, Vin got off the gurney and walked to the little bathroom to change back into his jeans and flannel shirt. He took a long time. Jake waited outside the half open door, and finally called in.

"You need help getting dressed?"

"Not since I was two, old man." and Jake laughed.

"You just let me know if you do anyway."

It ended up that Vin needed help lacing up his boots, getting his arm in the sling Rain had left, and putting his jacket on over his good arm. Then Jake led the way out of the exam room and down the hallway that ended at the clinic waiting room. Vin heard voices - Rain, Chris, Nathan - and he walked so that he was mostly hidden behind his Dad. He hadn't had time to practice saying thanks: ‘thanks Chris for saving my life' or ‘thanks Dr. Jackson, (both of you) for patching me up'. He hurriedly ran over those a few times till they sounded pretty reasonable. Jake stopped once they were in the waiting room. Vin screwed up his courage and took the few steps out from behind him, all ready to recite his thanks.

The practiced words died on his lips. Not just the doctors and Chris - Buck, JD, Ezra were all there. Even Casey was there, standing close to JD - ‘fiancee' Vin's mind registered - and when they saw Vin, all seven greeted him with applause and a loud cheer. Vin blushed so hard his angry brushburn was lost in the competing color, and he ducked behind his Dad again, embarrassed and proud.

PART ELEVEN

The group slowly filtered out of the clinic, to wait on the sidewalk. Jake and Vin were the last ones out before Nathan and Rain, who closed up shop and locked the door. The sun was setting and the cold wind had found its way down the pass and through the town. "Jake, we're heading to get some supper." Chris said. "Mary and Billy are going to meet us there, Josiah's on his way back from Billings. Why don't you and Vin join us?"

Jake looked to Vin who stayed mostly behind him still, right hand shoved into his jeans pocket, eyes fixed on the sidewalk. Jake figured Vin had been through enough today, he shouldn't have to bear company he didn't want.

"You want to head home Vin? Get some rest? Had a hard day."

Vin looked down and up at his Dad a few times. He WANTED to go have dinner, he wanted to be part of this group of friends a little longer, and spend time with Chris who'd called him one of 'his' men. Vin still couldn't believe that. But he didn't want to seem too eager. "Well, I only had just a banana today, I guess I could eat some dinner...long as we're in town anyway." he said without taking his eyes off the concrete. Make Jake think Vin was doing him the favor. But Jake was his Dad, and Jake knew better. He was pleasantly surprised that Vin wanted to stay.

"OK Vin, as long as we're in town..."

"Great." Chris said. "It's just down this way." The group moved off in that direction.

"It's my Aunt's restaurant." Casey told them. She walked with JD's arm wrapped around her. "Where you ate yesterday. She's real anxious to meet you both."

Buck looked around. "Vin, I hope you're willing to withstand a little mother-henning. When Nettie gets a look at our wounded hero..."

"Nettie?" Jake interrupted and Chris gave him a questioning glance.

"That's right - I forgot. You and Nettie."

"You and Nettie what?" JD asked.

"Do you know my Aunt, Mr. Parker?"

"I did know her, a long time ago...back when she was just as young and pretty as you..." Jake told her, and Casey blushed and looked embarassed. Vin was intrigued.

"That don't answer the question - you and Nettie WHAT?"

Jake shook his head. "I'll tell you when you're old enough." he said, and wouldn't say any more.

+ + + + + + +

Jake stared at the ground while he walked. Twenty seven years and another half a block and he'd see Nettie again. He didn't even notice that he'd fallen out of step with the group, and now Chris was walking with Vin.

"Didn't get a chance to tell you what a good job you did today." Chris told Vin. "You got good instincts and you think fast."

"Fall pretty fast too." Vin had to say, but he gave a half smile into the brush burn. "I ‘preciate you asked me to help..." Especially after seeing me last night. "Who's Nettie? Jake never mentioned her. Jake almost never talked about Montana at all." Chris glanced back once to see if Jake was paying attention, but he wasn't. Still, he shook his head.

"Better to let your Dad tell you."

+ + + + + + +

They got to the restaurant. Buck held the door for Casey and pretended to shut it on JD. Nathan and Rain went in next, followed by Ezra. Then Buck went in and Chris held the door for Vin who stopped and waited for Jake. "You comin' old man, or what?" Jake was only a dozen paces behind. He caught up, but was still the last one in.

Nettie stood next to the counter. She was not quite Jake's age, a small woman with gray hair and a tough disposition. The group had graciously moved immediately to the row of tables strung together off to one side of the dining room, but stood - not so graciously - waiting for the scene to unfold. Chris and Vin stood off to the side as Jake came in.

He stopped momentarily, staring at the young girl who stood where Nettie was standing. Neither smiled, neither moved, till Jake grinned and held out his arms as he crossed the floor in a few strides. They met in a hug that gathered the years and swept them away and after a few long moments, Chris leaned over to Vin.

"Better get our seats now, doesn't look like this is gonna break up soon."

Vin nodded in agreement, completely astounded at what he was seeing. His Dad, with a secret love, holding onto this woman as though he thought he'd never see her again But as they moved to the table, Nettie pulled away from Jake.

"Well my word..." She sounded a little breathless. "Jake Parker after all this time... don't even have the decency to look an old friend up..." She was flustered and Jake was grinning down at her.

"Nettie, you haven't changed a bit.Just as pretty as the first time I saw you behind the counter at the five and ten cent store."

"Go on you old charmer. Take a seat and let me get to work." But she took a couple of tugs on the sleeve of his jacket before they turned away. "Lord, it's good to see you again Jake..." and her voice caught in her throat.

Vin sat at the corner of the table, mostly because it was the closest chair and he didn't want to walk another inch. It also left a chair between him and everybody else and he knew Jake would sit there. Jake took off his jacket and hung it on the back of the chair before he sat down. He looked a little flushed. Chris took the seat across from Vin. Casey insisted on helping Aunt Nettie with getting the guys' orders of Pepsi and beer, and distributing the menus. Vin stared at his paper menu, but nothing made sense.

"That eye bothering you?" Jake asked. "You got the menu upside down."

"Oh..." Vin turned it up and around, then set it down. "Just want some soup or something like that...something I can eat with one hand."

"Well, let's see what they got..." Jake looked at the menu, but kept track of Nettie out of the corner of his eye.

Down the length of the table, the other men discussed the days' events. Vin was too tired to join in, even if he'd had something to say. He figured Chris' anonymous medicine had worn off and the remnants of his hangover were back. Even his interest in this new side to Jake couldn't fight the weariness that was overtaking him. He rested his head in his hand and watched his Dad out of his good eye.

"This sounds good." Jake said. "Chili served with corn muffins..."

"If you like chili," Chris said. "They've got chili poppers - hot peppers stuffed with cheese and chili, and fried. Those are good."

"That sounds good too. I might try those." Jake said. Vin didn't think his stomach could take it. "Where are they listed?"

"Near the top - they're called chili bandits."

Casey took their orders, and Nettie delivered the drinks. Jake patted her hand as she set the Pepsi in front of him. She smiled and gave his shoulder a quick, hard press, before heading back for more glasses. Jake stood up to follow her. "I'll be right back Vin."

"Okay....uh, Dad?" and Jake turned back to his son, who motioned him to come closer so he could whisper. "It's a little late to give me that kid brother I always wanted..."

"Wise guy." Jake lightly cuffed him.

"Hey! Watch it old man. I'm an injured hero."

PART TWELVE

"Vin?"

"Hmm?" Vin responded without opening his eyes. His head still rested on his hand.

"Food's here." It was Chris, quietly trying to wake him up.

"Ohh - thanks..." Vin rubbed the sleep out of his good eye with the heel of his hand. The brushburn felt tight. "Didn't know I fell asleep... Jake ain't back yet?" The chair next to him was empty.

"He's helping Nettie serve the food. Said the chili's hot, you should let it cool down some."

"Okay...thanks..."

Buck was on the other side of Jake's chair. "How you doin' down there Vin? Guess Chris must be borin' as all get out, put you right to sleep. Why don't you come down here, got us a real conversation going." Vin smiled, but didn't answer. He stirred his chili, hoping it would cool down soon. Eating it would give him something to do.

"Yeah Vin. You should move down here, you said you'd tell me all about Texas." JD reminded him. Vin puzzled, trying to remember when he'd said that. The memory was flecked with snow, so it must've been up top.

"Don't pay them any mind, Vin." Nathan said. "You just sit and get some rest. Any jawin' they want to do can wait."

"Okay..." Vin's eyes took a quick sweep of the table. Everyone had been served their food; chili, salad, hamburgers, french fries. Down at the end, on the other side of the table from Vin, Rain sat tucked into the circle of Nathan's arm, they spoke quietly with each other and shared a private joke. Casey was sitting next to JD again, with Buck on the other side of the deputy. Ezra had an empty chair on either side of him between Rain and Chris, who was right across from Vin.

Who sat next to Jake's empty chair.

"And how are you surviving this afternoon's adventure?" Ezra asked Vin.

"I ‘spect I'll ache some for a few days...guess I've had worse."

Nettie and Jake came out of the kitchen, laughing, almost giggling, carrying baskets of biscuits and rolls. "Well you're awake." Jake said when he saw Vin. "I didn't introduce you before. Nettie, this is my boy Vin. Vin, this is Nettie." They set the baskets on the table.

"Ma'am..." As Vin turned to get a better look at her, Nettie saw the damage that'd been done to his face, and his arm in a sling.

"Lord son, what on earth happened to you?" Too busy preparing to meet Jake again, Nettie hadn't heard the whole story of the rescue. Vin let a couple of beats pass.

"Jake beat on me for gettin' drunk last night." He said it so seriously, with a little quiver of embarrassment, turning his eyes down to the table, that even Ezra was tempted to believe him - and he'd seen Vin hit the mountain. Nettie turned a ferocious look on Jake, who sputtered, surprised as much at what Vin had said, as that he had said it.

"Nettie - you know I'd never - Vin - I - don't tell her that..." till finally Vin started laughing and it carried around the table and Jake was off the hook.

"Wise guy." Jake said and Vin grinned at his Dad, before he turned to Nettie again.

"Ma'am, you want to sit here? Next to Jake? Let me move..."

Chris saw what Vin intended, and stood up to pull a chair to the end of the table for him, as Nettie declined his offer. "No, honey. You shouldn't be moving at all, the way you look. I can..." But by then the chair was in place, and Vin had switched. "Well, thank you honey. That's very sweet of you."

When they were all sat down at the table, Ezra asked. "Tell me, Mrs. Wells, have you truly not heard the remarkable story of our stalwart young hero, veritably leaping into the jaws of death, incurring the grievous wounds to his person as you see here, with no thought for his personal safety, only caring about the welfare of the little boy so precariously perched a dozen yards beyond the reach of safety?"

Vin looked at Ezra, wondering what he'd just said, and Nettie looked at Vin, understanding what he'd said. "My word, Vin - is that true?" Vin didn't know if it was true, because he really didn't know what Ezra had said. He looked to Jake for help. Just then the front door opened and Josiah, Mary and Billy walked in. Billy ran to Chris, who stood up to greet his wife; Nettie and Casey jumped up to provide food for the newcomers. Josiah approached the table and stopped next to Vin. He rested his hand on Vin's good shoulder.

"That boy's folks wanted me to tell you, there's no way they can ever thank you for saving their son's life. If you asked ‘em for the moon, the wind, and the stars right now, they'd find some way of getting it for you."

"I didn't do anything." Vin countered, honestly believing what he was saying. "No call for them to thank me."

"I beg to differ." Ezra said. "That child was a breath away from everlasting glory. If you hadn't intervened when you did..."

"I have just got to hear this story." Nettie said, coming back to the table with more plates and glasses.

"So have I." Mary added. "I've already got most of the paper set up for tomorrow, I just need the finer details to finish the story."

"Paper?" Vin asked.

"Mary runs the local paper." Josiah informed Vin. He moved around the table to take the empty seat at the opposite end from Vin. "You're gonna be big news around here tomorrow."

"I didn't do anything." Vin said again, sounding like a child trying to get out of something he'd done wrong. Chris let Mary in to take the chair next to Ezra, and pulled another one over for Billy to sit next to him. "Chris just asked me to help, ‘n I did. That's all."

"WOW." Billy saw Vin's face. "Who did that to you?" Obviously excited by the possibility that Vin had been done harm by another human being.

"Little Bear." Vin told him, not happy with the prospect of being newsworthy. "Fought with the mountain and lost."

"Wow...does it hurt?" Nothing less than excruciating pain would satisfy.

"Yeah, it hurts..."

"Vin, really..." Mary interrupted her son. "I'd like you to tell me what happened. It'll make a great story for the paper." Vin looked to Jake again for help.

"Just tell her what happened Vin..." his father said.

"Well..." and Vin became aware that the entire table was quiet and watching him. Everyone in their seats, watching down the long island of tables, listening to him. "Me ‘n Ezra, we saw where'd he'd gone over." Vin spoke quietly. "Ezra radioed in for help, ‘n I got a rope to go down to keep the baby still. He coulda rolled off if he didn't know where he was. But I didn't pay attention to the drop off and it crumbled when I didn't expect it. I fell ‘n hit the rocks ‘n was hanging on. I had to keep the baby still ‘cause he was alone ‘n he was hurt..." if possible, Vin's voice became even softer, and he stared harder at the table. "...'n he needed somebody to look out for him. Ezra was there. Then Chris ‘n Buck ‘n JD was there, ‘n Jake. Then Nathan, ‘n Josiah with the parents. All of us. It weren't me doin' nothin' heroic. It was all of us..." His voice caught a little. "All of you, and all the other searchers. Weren't just me. Weren't hardly me at all. If it was any one of us, it was all of us."

They continued to stare another moment or two, at the intensely shy yet eloquent young man, blushing hard, determinedly stirring his chili, wishing somebody would say something to end the silence. Finally it was Chris. Lightly thumping the edge of the table with his fist, he told Vin: "Real glad to have you on our team." and the rest of the group broke out into noisy agreement.

PART THIRTEEN

"Tell me about his mother." Nettie asked. She stood next to Jake in the kitchen, putting the dishes into the dishwasher.

"She died when he was real young. Four or five." He handed the plates and glasses to her. "Vin doesn't remember her very well...which isn't a bad thing."

Nettie stopped what she was doing and looked out the door of the kitchen to the long row of tables. Vin still sat at the end. Chris was tracing something on his placemat like a map, Vin was paying close attention to him. "He should've been mine." she said.

"Yes, he should have."

"You never wrote me, you never called. I waited for you Jake. I waited a long time." She finally turned back to look at him. "Too long for anymore kids, once I did settle down...he should've been mine."

"He still can be Nettie. Just say the word." Jake told her. But Nettie gave him a look, not believing what she was hearing. "I waited for you too Nettie. I know it seems I didn't...Vin...I only took up with his mother so I could have Vin. I'll tell you all about it Nettie. Please - just tell me you'll give me a second chance."

"The old Jake doesn't get a second chance...but I'm willing to start fresh with you."

+ + + + + + +

"It's just a little farther down from our spread." Chris was saying to Vin, tracing the location of the land he was talking about on his place mat. He held Billy on his lap, sleepy against his shoulder, too tired to interrogate Vin anymore on his injuries. "You mighta seen it when you went over the Pass yesterday or today. It's gotta nice cabin, wired already, well water. You and Jake decide to stay, you might want to think about it. I don't know how winter-hardy old Ethel is." Vin followed the invisible map as Chris talked. Josiah had moved to sit next to him. Mary was gone back to the paper to finish the story of the rescue, JD was helping Casey set up the restaurant for the morning crowd, and Ezra and Rain were playing cards against Buck and Nathan.

"I seen it, set back a ways? Porch is flush to the ground? I seen it on the way up - -" Vin stopped talking suddenly as he glanced into the kitchen and caught sight of Jake kissing Nettie. Despite the difference in their heights, they fit together so completely and perfectly, Vin knew it was a kiss with experience behind it. After a couple of seconds, Vin looked away, feeling like he'd been peeping. Chris saw what Vin saw, but didn't comment on it. He went on as though nothing happened.

"It's the cabin I stayed in - when I moved to Red Lodge." He hesitated over his words and Vin figured he was talking about when he lost his family. "Until Mary and I got married. You decide to stay, it'll do you for the winter."

"I'll tell Jake...he was talkin' about stayin'. Guess he's gotta reason to now."

"How about you?" Josiah asked. Vin shrugged.

"I go with Jake." He twirled his straw paper in his fingers and stared at the table, thinking about what he'd seen in the kitchen. Maybe he wouldn't be going with Jake much longer.

"You look tired." Chris said.

"Yeah...guess I had a long day...hate to move Jake along though. He ain't been away from Nettie all night."

"I'll give you a ride home." Josiah said.

"Oh, thanks. I ‘preciate it." Vin was surprised by the offer.

"Well, hold on till I check with Jake." Chris said. He stood up, Billy sagging asleep in his arm. "If Nettie'll give him a ride later, I'll take you home in your truck."

"...'kay..." Vin said. Chris headed for the kitchen, Vin continued to twirl the strawpaper, trying to think of something to say to Josiah. "That baby seem like he's gonna be okay?" he asked.

"Oh yeah. Doctor's keeping him overnight for observation, said he'll be fine. Real lucky little boy."

"Yeah. He fell on just the right spot. God was looking out for him."

"Amen."

Chris came back from the kitchen. Billy walked beside him, holding his hand, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Jake and Nettie followed. "You gonna be okay on your own?" Jake asked.

"Yeah, just goin' home, goin' to bed. I been doin' that by myself for awhile you know." Vin pushed away from the table and stood up. His whole body hurt. Jake saw it.

"If you can't get up into your own bunk, sleep in mine. Don't try to climb up there with that arm."

"Well, if you'd stop beatin' on me every chance you got old man..."

"Hey Vin, you leaving?" Buck asked. He set his cards down and came over to say goodbye. "Real nice piece of work you did today. It's good to have you on the team." He offered his hand and Vin took it. A smile he wasn't intending crossed his face - he was amazed and proud that Buck would say that. The others gathered too, to say goodbye. Nettie was the last. She gave Vin a gentle hug, mindful of his arm in the sling.

"It's real good to meet you Vin." She held on. Vin liked the feeling. He hadn't been hugged by a woman since -. "I want to see you again, real soon. Y'hear?"

"Yes ma'am."

She finally let go and stood back. "Call me Nettie...you should go home and get some rest. Sounds like you've had an eventful day."

"Yes ma'am." He couldn't bring himself to call her by her first name, and he wasn't too sure what her last name was.

"We should be headin' out." Chris said. He patted his pockets, trying to remember. "Ezra? You still got the keys to my truck?"

"Oh yes I do. Forgive me for not handing them back." Ezra took the keys out of his back pocket. "I returned your truck to it's customary spot in front of your garage."

"Thanks Ez'. You ready Vin?"

"Yeah."

"I'll see you later Vin."

"Okay, Dad."

+ + + + + + +

The truck was down a block in front of the clinic. Chris walked slow, leading Billy by the hand. Vin walked along beside, lost in remembering how Chris and Buck had said it was good to have him on their team. How the other men had so readily agreed. He found that he was smiling still, remembering it, glad that it was dark outside now so that no one would see. When they got to the truck, Chris opened the door and and lifted Billy inside. He waited till Vin got in, then shut the door for him.

"Thanks."

"Sure."

The ride to Ethel was short and quiet. Vin absently rubbed his bad shoulder, and adjusted the strap of the sling to put his arm in a more comfortable position.

"How's it feel?" Chris asked.

"Aches some. Be better in the morning."

"How about your eye?"

"Swelling's gone down seems like. I can open it a little." They pulled into the driveway and Chris parked the truck next to Ethel. "I ‘preciate the ride." They all got out and Chris handed the keys over to Vin. "I'll tell Jake about that cabin." He didn't go into the trailer, he seemed to be waiting for something, or maybe wanted to say something else.

"Hey Vin, why don't you grab some clean clothes, come on up to the house and have a shower? You'll feel better, take some of the ache outta that shoulder."

"Okay" Vin didn't have a chance to suppress the enthusiasm in his voice. A hot shower on his poor old body would be heaven. Chris smiled at him.

"Great, I'll wait for you, we can walk on up."

PART FOURTEEN

The shower was better than heaven. Vin brushed his teeth, shaved what skin was still intact on his face, then stood under the hot water as long as it lasted. He felt worlds better as he got dressed and bundled his shaving kit into his laundry. His aches had washed away with the sweat and grime, even his headache was finally gone, and his shoulder only twinged a little as he slid the sling back on. He headed out of the bathroom and downstairs in his stocking feet; his boots waited for him by the front door.

"I think I used all your hot water." he said apologetically to Chris as he walked into the kitchen. "Felt real good though, thanks for lettin' me."

"Anytime you want...you got time for a cup of tea, before you head back to Ethel?"

"Yeah...I guess..." Vin wondered what Chris wanted with him with tea.

"Unless you're too tired. Just thought it'd be nice to have a chance to talk."

"Sure." This time, Vin managed to conceal his enthusiasm.

"Great." Chris motioned him to a chair at the table in the little dining room attached to the kitchen. Vin sat down and put his bundle of laundry on the floor next to him. Chris set the tea pot, two cups, and a carton of milk on the table. He had changed into clean clothes as well, faded blue jeans and a blue chambray shirt untucked, also in his stocking feet. The house was dully silent, except for the kitchen clocking tick-ticking over the window over the sink. Chris sank into a chair with a sigh. "Been a long day."

"Yeah." Vin agreed. "Considerin' I was half dead already when I woke up." He wanted to broach the topic of his drinking, have a chance to clear it up with Chris.

"I came home so drunk one night, I guess I tripped getting out of my truck. I woke up the next morning laying in the driveway. Damn lucky I didn't freeze to death." Chris said it casually as he poured two cups of tea. "Milk?" he asked.

"Yeah, thanks..." Vin was surprised by how calmly and openly Chris told him that. "Was that when you lived in that cabin?"

"Yeah, I was driving back and forth to Billings, bringing in truck loads of my stuff. Lucky I didn't kill anybody. Lucky I never even got a DWI."

"I was gonna drive over the Pass last night..." Vin offered. "Your deputy wouldn't let me."

"What were you gonna do up there, drunk?"

‘Get lost' Vin thought, but shrugged. "Never got past the idea stage." He took a sip of tea. "Probably woulda got as far as your driveway and been too darn tired to go anywheres but bed anyway." He felt mildly uncomfortable sitting here with Chris, he was expecting to say or do something wrong. "Slept on the couch anyway. Least ways, that's where Jake put me...what was that stuff you gave me? It worked real well."

Chris gave him a funny look. "Something Mary told me about. She never needed it for a hangover." He quickly added. "But I tried it and it does work well."

"But what is it?" Vin asked again, wondering why Chris wasn't saying.

"Uhh - - it's Midol?" Chris said, not sure what Vin's reaction would be. Vin's eyes got a little wider, wondering if there was some way to un-take the medicine, and he took a big gulp of hot tea.

"Yeah, that was my reaction the first time Mary told me what it was. It works though. God help women if what they need it for feels as bad as a hangover every time." Chris drank some tea, then spun his cup around with his finger.

"How long you been married?" Vin asked. His mind was on overdrive, trying to think of what to say.

"Eight months now, nearly. Got married New Years Day."

"She's real nice."

"Yes, she is." A warm look crossed Chris' face. "She saved my life."

A thought occurred to Vin, and it started out of his mouth before he could think whether or not he should be saying it. "You know I - when Jake told me - just..." Chris waited, puzzled what Vin was trying to say. Vin took a breath and tried again. "I just wanted to tell you how sorry I was when Jake told me about your family." His voice rose at the end, like a question. Was it OK to be talking about this? "I thought about having Jake put it in one of his letters, but then I wasn't sure." He couldn't keep hold of Chris' gaze. "But I was real sorry when he told me." He waited, holding his tea cup in his good hand. Shouldn't be talking about it. Shouldn't go there.

But Chris reached over and patted his good shoulder. "Thanks. That means a lot to me." His voice was just above a whisper. "Jake really helped me through that."

"That was the longest we stayed anywhere. It was in New York State. We just come from California - I had a busted shoulder - and we drove to New York and got ourselves a nice spot in a campground in the Adirondacks. Stayed there, gosh, April till September? That was the longest we ever stayed anywhere." Vin realized, again after the fact, maybe this wasn't something he should be talking about. "He said he wanted to be sure he got all your letters. Wanted to be sure you could get in touch with him whenever you needed to. He was real worried about you."

"Guess he had a right to be...I spent three years, or a little more, sinking further and further into alcohol. Buck tried everything he knew to help me, I got counseling, but it didn't help. I got suspended from the force, got into stupid fights, seemed to spend most of my time drinking...anything I could do to keep people away from me."

Vin was amazed to be hearing this from Chris, who'd done nothing but make him feel welcome right from the first. "I keep people away from me all the time...don't even have to drink to do it. Always figure, ‘you ain't gonna like me anyway. You mise well stay away from me now'"

"Exactly..." Chris sounded just as amazed to hear the words from someone else. "I just kept thinking ‘you don't know what I'm going through, so don't tell me that you do'..." He smiled then and shook his head. "Guess I was a real idiot until I realized everybody has lost somebody, in one way or another. I wasn't alone in it, and I didn't need to keep myself alone in it."

"Feels alone though, don't it?" Vin asked. "Feels like nobody else got any idea." Then he caught himself edging too close to what he never talked about. He changed the subject. "Jake was real worried about you." He took another swallow of tea.

"He really helped me get through it, through all of it. I couldn't have done it if he hadn't been on the other end of that mailbox." They heard a car pull up to the house then. "Mary must be home." Chris said. When the front door opened, Mary came in, followed by Jake.

"There you are!" Jake said to Vin, he sounded clearly relieved. "I was worried when you weren't down at Ethel."

"I'm sorry...wasn't Nettie gonna bring you home?" Vin wouldn't have minded seeing her again.

Mary came around the table to give Chris a hello kiss. He took her hand and held it lingeringly as she continued walking into the kitchen to toss her travel mug into the sink. "I told Jake you and Chris were probably up here talking..."

"Yeah." Jake agreed. "And Nettie still had to get ready for tomorrow, so Mary gave me a ride back...you took a shower?" He indicated Vin's still-damp hair

"Yeah, feel a whole better...used all the hot water I think."

"Well, maybe tomorrow Chris, you'll let me grab a shower before services?" Jake asked.

" ‘Course, anytime. Just come on up."

"Thanks. What do you think Sprout? Time to head home?"

"Yeah..." But for the first time he could remember, Vin wished his Dad wouldn't call him that in front of other people. Not in front of Chris anyway. "Thanks for the tea, and the shower and...talking." Vin stood up from the table, and started to walk out of the little dining room. Chris did likewise.

"Thanks for all your good work today. Sorry you got so busted up doing me a favor."

"I'm just glad the baby's OK." Vin sat on the bottom step of the staircase leading to the second floor to put his boots on. He let his arm out of the sling long enough to tie the laces, not wanting Jake to help him, not in front of Chris. He squinted a little at the pain. "I ‘preciate you asking my help."

"See, that's why I never came back all these years." Jake said as he watched Vin stiffly push himself up to his feet. He wanted to help his son but could tell by the determination on Vin's face that he was doing it alone. "Hardly back one day and we're expected to make you look like a hero...okay?" That last was directed to Vin who had stopped breathing a moment or two against the pain in his ribs.

"Yeah..."

+ + + + + + +

The short walk down the driveway and into the trailer passed quietly. Vin sat on Jake's bunk to kick off his shoes, then changed into his pajamas and T-shirt in the little bathroom. He got himself into his own bunk without asking help, though Jake watched him closely around the newspaper he was pretending to read as he sat on the sofa. "...'night Dad..." Vin settled under the blankets, laying on his right side to keep pressure off his injuries.

"Good night Vin."

After a few minutes, Vin propped himself up on his good arm. "Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry about last night...I'm sorry I embarrassed you in front of your friends."

Jake shook his head. "I don't know JD well enough to be embarrassed in front of him. Billy had no idea what was going on. And you didn't do anything that I should be embarrassed in front of Chris." He spoke gently.

"Okay." Vin laid back down. Another few minutes, "Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"They seem like real good people. I never expected ‘em to be so friendly toward me, somebody they never met before."

Saying ‘I told you so.' never occurred to Jake. "They do seem like really good people." He agreed.

"I really like Nettie." Vin offered.

"I'm glad Vin...I'd really like the two of you to become friends." Jake came over to Vin, he was just a little taller than eye level of the bunk. "I know I never told you about her, but she's important to me...tomorrow, or the next day when you're good and rested, I'll tell you everything, I promise. OK?"

"Okay Dad...Dad?" as Jake turned away.

"Yeah?" Real curiosity now.

"I'm sorry I made such a stink about meetin' them. They seem like real good people."

Jake smiled and reached up to gently pat Vin's bad arm. "When you do something you need to be sorry for Sprout, I'll let you know."

PART FIFTEEN

The next morning, Vin was only dimly aware that Jake was moving around Ethel. He was so worn out he didn't think he could even lift his head off the pillow. As far as he could tell, he hadn't moved an inch all night. He shifted slightly now, turning onto his back.

"Vin?"

"Hmm?"

"You awake?"

"No..." mumbled more than spoken.

"Okay."

And Vin drifted off again.

+ + + + + + +

Jake made coffee and biscuits in the campfire outside of Ethel, in an old coffee pot and Dutch oven. He enjoyed being in the mountains, especially in the morning, when everything seemed fresh and welcoming. They'd stayed in cities when they had to, but mountains were home. He was sorry now that he'd stayed away so long, and grateful for whatever had pulled him back.

"Jake?" Chris' voice startled him. "Sorry - guess you were somewhere else?" He came around Ethel and took the offered lawn chair. He had something tucked under his arm.

"Actually, I was right here, only about forty years ago..."

"Thinking about Nettie?"

"Thinking about a lot of things..." Jake let his voice drift off. Chris decided to change the subject.

"How's Vin?"

"Sound asleep. I think the pain killers put him out. Not a bad thing considering I expected him to have nightmares about falling off of Little Bear..."

"He's a good man, I can see why you're proud of him. Thinks on his feet, willing to take a risk to help others..."

"Shy though." Jake said. An old worry of his. Chris disagreed.

"Shy when he wants to be. I told him about that missing kid, I thought he was gonna take over the whole operation. He'd make a good deputy."

Jake shrugged as he reached to put some more wood into the fire. "I spoiled him, I know. Never pushed him to break away, make his own life. Spoiled myself, maybe. Keeping him around. He coulda been anything he wanted, ‘stead of just following his old man around..."

"He's young yet." Chris said. "He still has time...but I can tell he's real happy with you and it has nothing to do with being shy." Jake smiled. "That reminds me..." Chris handed the little bundle over. "Vin left his shaving kit at my house last night. Left his clothes too, Mary threw them in the wash. You must have more laundry, bring it on up with you."

"Thanks Chris, I may just do that. You've been real good to us, letting us stay here, use all your hot water, feeding us. I think you've been real good for Vin too, I appreciate that."

Chris shook his head. "Jake, you saw me through more bad times than one person should go through. Times when I couldn't talk to anybody else, you were the one person I could turn to...you're family Jake. You and Vin. No matter how far or how long." Jake was a touched by this.

"Thanks Chris."

"Sure..." Chris stood up from the squeaking lawn chair. "You come on up whenever you're ready, bring your laundry. You two want to come to services with us? Josiah's?"

"I'll see if I can get Vin woke up. If not, I might just tag along by myself."

"Good...see you in a bit."

Chris walked back to the house, and Jake thought a while about what he'd said. All those years of travelling, from nowhere and back, just him and Vin keeping each other company most of the time. To finally come back home, find Nettie just as pretty and lively as ever, Chris grown into a fine man and a good friend. Jake thanked God for bringing him home.

He carried the coffee pot and biscuits into the trailer and quietly set them on the counter, then pulled the small bag of laundry out from under the bathroom sink. Vin was still asleep, near the edge of his bunk, one hand hanging over the edge. Jake stood a moment, and just listened to him breathe. He remembered the first nights they'd lived together with Vin's mother, and all the years alone together after that, Vin could sleep so sound and still, Jake would keep checking on him, to make sure he was still breathing. Even now, the sound was reassuring. He figured Vin wouldn't be making it to services, so he didn't even think about waking him up. He tucked Vin's hand back under the blanket, and tucked the blanket back under the mattress.

"Lemme sleep old man..." Vin sleepily complained and mumbled something else about being a wounded hero.

"There's cold coffee and biscuits if you wake up Vin. I'm going up to take a shower, then go to church with Chris and Mary."

"...'kay..." Vin answered so absently, Jake wondered if he knew what they were talking about.

"I'll see you later." Jake promised, but Vin didn't answer, so he walked out of Ethel and shut the door behind him.

+ + + + + + +

The sound of a truck driving past Ethel and out onto the road woke Vin up. "Dad?" But there was only empty stillness. "I didn't say goodbye."

PART SIXTEEN

After awhile, Vin got up and dressed. The shower last night had helped, but his body felt stiff. The damage didn't seem so bad this morning, the bruises were less vivid and he could actually open his eye. The brushburn was still tight and sore, but his shoulder and ribs felt better, and he didn't put the sling on. He poured himself a cup of the cold coffee and took a couple of biscuits outside to eat. He didn't sit down but instead walked up and down the driveway to ease the stiffness out of his legs.

The mare and her foal weren't in the corral this morning and he wandered alone. The world seemed unusually quiet, but Vin told himself, "...everybody's at church probably..." Still, a high pitched wind trembled through the ranch yard and sent shivers down Vin's spine. "Wisht I'da gone with Jake." he said. He wondered how long services would be and if Jake would be coming right back. Probably be spending some time with Nettie. Maybe today Jake would tell him about Nettie.

When the biscuits were gone, he got some more coffee and went to stir the campfire up. He tried to keep from thinking about yesterday, Chris calling him one of ‘his' men, how the others seemed to accept him, how they congratulated him and thanked him for helping save the little boy. He didn't want to go there because he was afraid it wouldn't last. They were just being nice because he was Jake's son.

Another shiver went down his spine "I am his son." he insisted to a dozen different people who were nowhere around. "Jake says there's a lot more to family than blood and paperwork. I am his son..."

He drank his coffee and stared at the fire. For his entire life, too many people told him Jake wasn't his father - teachers, other kids and their parents, doctors and nurses. Saying Jake wasn't his ‘real' father. "What's more real than what Jake done for me?" He loved being with his Dad. There was never anybody more patient with him, teaching Vin - trying to teach him - everything he could. Answering every little question a kid could come up with. Jake never lied to him, never demanded ‘because I said so'. No matter what Vin went through, or put himself through, Jake was always there.

"What's more real than that?" Vin asked no one again, and looked down the long stretch of road to the town, wishing Jake would hurry up and come home.

+ + + + + + +

Vin watched the two trucks heading down the road to Larabee's ranch and let out a breath of relief when he was sure the second one was Jake. Chris, Mary and Billy pulled in first, waving to Vin as they drove past Ethel. Jake parked at the trailer and got out. He was glad to see Vin up and around. "How're you feeling? You have anything to eat?"

"I feel lots better, I had some biscuits, they're real good...I know -" he cut off Jake's standard reply. "Secret recipe handed down from your great-grandmother who was a French princess captured by one of the chiefs of the tribe who fell in love with her cooking skills...you ever gonna update that story old man? Seein's as you left the box of Bisquick on the counter? I made fresh coffee..."

"Wise guy...coffee sounds good. Got some preserves in there too, go with the biscuits...I'm glad you feel better. Take your antibiotics?"

"Yeah..."

"How come you're not wearing your sling?" Jake asked but Vin pretended not to hear him as he went into the trailer for cups, biscuits and preserves. "If Dr. Jackson sees that, I don't think she'll be happy." he added when Vin came back out.

"I'm not supposed to see her till Tuesday."

"She's coming today. Chris invited everybody over for a picnic..." Jake waited for Vin's reaction. "I expect she'll expect you to be wearing the sling."

Vin hesitated only slightly. "Picnic sounds nice. I'll put it on before she gets here."

+ + + + + + +

By 2pm, the troops had gathered. Rain and Nathan, JD and Casey. Buck and Ezra came alone, Josiah brought Gloria Potter who owned one of the stores in town, and her two children who were just a little older than Billy. And Nettie came. Jake greeted her with a hug after she parked her Suburban in Chris and Mary's yard with the rest of the vehicles. Vin stood a little ways off, wanting to say hi to her, but not wanting to intrude. She turned to him next and gave him another gentle, friendly hug.

"How are you honey? You healing up allright? Jake taking care of you?"

Vin looked at Jake briefly, his eyes threatened another fib at Jake's expense but instead he nodded to Nettie. "Jake always takes care of me."

+ + + + + + +

The food was laid out on a couple of picnic tables in the backyard, and a ball game got underway near the house and barn. Vin sat out the game on the back steps. He was glad of the excuse to have to put his sling back on because his shoulder had begun to ache after a while. He didn't mention that to Rain though, as she briefly checked his shoulder and how his arm was positioned in the sling.

Everyone played except Gloria and Nettie who sat in chairs near the sidelines and Ezra who came to sit on the steps with Vin. "How are you today?" he asked, offering Vin a can of rootbeer. "Surviving your injuries with close ministrations by the lovely Dr. Jackson?"

Vin wasn't quite sure what Ezra was saying, so he answered seriously: "Naah, it was Rain lookin' after me..."

Ezra began to answer a couple of times then looked at Vin, remembering how he'd gotten Jake into trouble last night, sounding so sincere while telling a boldface lie. "Indeed." He grinned though. "It is regrettable that your injuries keep you from participating in the game."

"How come you ain't playing?"

"Well, not meaning to impugn your own career, or the impact that your physical well being has on that vocation, but as a lawyer I find it ill-advised to risk any injury to my person that might in anyway adversely affect the outcome of any number of my clients'..."

Vin didn't follow the words, but he read Ezra's face. "No good at baseball, are you?"

"Not to save my life." Ezra readily agreed.

"I ain't all that much good either." Vin admitted. "I could do OK here I guess. But I'se never in Little League or anything like that. Played usually just with what other kids was staying in whatever park we was in."

"Park?"

"Trailer park." Vin motioned with his head in the direction of Ethel. "We was always traveling around a lot."

"On purpose?" Ezra asked. Vin was puzzled by the question.

"Yeah, on purpose. Jake never liked to set too long. We been pretty much in every state, not Alaska or Hawaii. Been up through Canada too. Ontario mostly. Jake likes to travel and I go with Jake...why ‘on purpose'?"

"Oh no reason really. My mother is also touched with wanderlust, we traveled extensively when I was a child. I just thought I was the only child so blessed. However, Mother always insisted on the best accommodations, in the most expensive hotels. I think I would have far preferred touring the country the way you do."

"We had a lotta fun." Vin wasn't sure if Ezra was envying him or insulting him.

"Are you and your father planning to stay in Red Lodge, or do you think you'll be moving on soon?"

"Seems Jake's thinkin' a' stayin' awhile. Him ‘n Nettie got some history seems like...who's that Gloria that Nettie's sittin' next to? She seems real nice."

"Ah, Mrs. Potter. She runs ‘The Mercantile' in town, a tourist/souvenir sort of place. Plus many things that prove most beneficial to us locals. Her husband died several years ago, before I even came to this town. She and Josiah are as yet unaware of it, but unless I miss my guess the two of them with be celebrating their nuptials before another twelve months have passed." But Vin gave him a squinty look, so Ezra amended. "They're sweet on each other, though I think they're both too shy to say. It wouldn't surprise me to see them get married."

They watched the game awhile. Mary pitched to Buck, who was hitting for Billy. He hit a long one and Billy ran all the way to home plate to be caught up in Chris's arms and cheered by the group.

"Chris and Billy seem to get along real well." Vin observed.

"I think young Mr. Travis is half the reason Chris courted Mary. For the longest time the odds were three to one that one of them would inflict frostbite on the other before coming to their senses..." Ezra didn't think Vin was fishing for information, but he offered more. "Mr. Larabee is a much nicer person since remarrying. Mary, too, has lost some of her hardness, now that she's no longer on her own, raising a son and attempting to run a business..."

The game wasn't divided up into sides, everybody just took a turn at bat. JD and Casey wore baseball caps. JD was guarding Buck at first base and as Josiah's bat connected with a pitch, Buck tugged JD's hat down over his eyes and lit out for second base.

"Now those two have an interesting history..." Ezra indicate Buck and JD. "Buck came to Red Lodge from the same police force that Chris once belonged to. He teaches now at the high school. JD's mother was a housekeeper at one of the ski lodges here, but unfortunately she succumbed to a terminal illness while JD was still in high school. He was supposed to move back East with an aunt, which he was violently opposed to, so Buck arranged with the aunt to be guardian of JD until his majority. I do believe that Mr. Wilmington saved the young man's life. They are as close as brothers now."

"And him and Casey are engaged?"

"Yes, they are. No date has been set at present. JD is determined to save enough money to purchase Miss Wells a suitable engagement ring, and Miss Wells is determined that they should save every possible cent to purchase their own land...my money is on Miss Wells..."

They drank their rootbeer and watched some more in silence. Vin wanted to ask what Ezra knew about Nettie, but was afraid that if she overheard, it'd hurt her feelings. So he just watched her, watch the way her face lit up whenever she looked at Jake. Watched the soft look Jake got whenever he looked at her.

"Yeah, I think Jake is gonna stay put." Vin said.

PART SEVENTEEN

Interest in the ballgame dwindled as interest in the food picked up. Nettie offered to bring a plate of food over for Vin, for which he was grateful, then proceeded to fill it up with vegetables, for which he was not. He smiled though and thanked her for the Chinet plate of baked beans, corn, baked potato wedges, broccoli salad, and watermelon slices. He wondered if there was a hole under the back porch where he could ditch most of it, until Nettie sat next to him, in the spot Ezra had vacated.

"I had a little boy once..." she said. She shook a paper napkin out and awkwardly tucked a corner of it between two buttons on his flannel shirt. "I lost him though...right after he was born..." Her eyes teared up, and she didn't meet Vin's astonished stare. "I know I'm not your Mom, but you're Jake's boy and that's all that matters." She patted the napkin to smooth it out, and stuck a plastic fork into a potato wedge. "You ever need anything honey, you ever need a Mom, you come find me. Allright?"

All Vin could do was nod, blinking hard. Nettie smiled and leaned close and kissed him near the corner of his eye, the one spot on the left side of his face that wasn't injured. Then she got up and walked to stand next Jake. He put his arm around her shoulders, and she put hers around his waist, and they stood talking with Gloria and Josiah, and Vin figured he didn't have to ask who the little boy's father was. He watched them, and ate all the vegetables on his plate.

+ + + + + + +

Buck came to sit next to him. He carried two plates. "For a woman who runs a restaurant, Nettie just doesn't get the idea that the purpose of a picnic is to eat as much food that's bad for you as possible..." and he set a Chinet plate with two cheeseburgers on it next to Vin. He smiled. "Your Dad told me how you like ‘em. Hope I got it right."

"Thanks...that's real nice of you." Vin was surprised and grateful. A plateful of vegetables just wasn't didn't cut it. "So what's Ezra's story?" he asked after awhile. Vin figured he'd gotten a lot of information out of Ezra, mights as well get some on him.

"Ezra? Oh, nobody knows for sure. He'll tell you half a dozen stories one day and deny ‘em all up and down the next. He practices law, and nobody ever told him to stop, so I figure that's a truth. He's got a mother, real pretty too, young. She lives - well, wherever Ezra hears from seems most like. Other than that, nobody knows for sure."

"And the doctors?"

"Well, now that is as sweet as they come." Buck got involved in this story, animating with his hands. "Little tiny Rain there, always knew, always knew that she was gonna be a doctor one day, what folks told me. From the time she could walk she was picking up and patching up any creature two footed or more that she could find. Said she'd never get married, she'd be married to her doctorin'. The town paid for her to go to medical school, on the condition she'd come back here and run the clinic for four years once she had her degree. Well, don't Rain come on back here with a degree - and a husband! She met Nathan at med school, they fell in love and he decided to move back with her. He's a good man. Glad to have him here."

Vin took a chance. "And Nettie?" but Buck's expression went flat.

"Best you ask your Dad..." Buck said. Vin nodded.

"Ask your Dad what?" Jake asked, thankfully too far away to have heard the question.

"Whether or not you'll be staying in Red Lodge." Buck seamlessly provided.

Jake was too happy to be answering the question to think it odd that Buck was supposedly prompting Vin to ask it. "Well, it sure is pretty country around here, isn't it?" He looked around and his gaze took in the Beartooth Mountains, the sky, their friends, and Nettie.

"Yeah, but Chris seems to have everything under control." Vin said. "Don't see a lotta need for bounty hunters around here."

"We've worked other jobs." Jake shrugged.

"You know it's a tourist town." Buck said. "Skiing, Yellowstone over the Pass. Always something to be had for a man that don't mind work...I know they're looking for a handyman at the high school...don't know if you've got any interest in that..." He was looking at Vin, and Vin was about to ask more about it when Jake interrupted.

"You're not working at the high school." His voice was so unnaturally stern that it didn't even sound like him.

"Why not?" Vin asked. "I done that kinda work before. Why can't I work at the high school?"

"Because I said so."

Vin couldn't remember the last time he'd seen his father mad. And he sure couldn't remember the last time Jake had been mad at him. He was mad now, but Vin didn't know at what. "What the hell you talkin' about ‘because you said so'?" But Jake turned and walked off. Vin stood up to follow. Jake always explained everything. He thought Jake was just walking away so he could explain things in private.

Jake had only gone a dozen feet and he turned back. "No son of mine is going to work as a handyman at the high school." He snapped.

"Why not?" Vin demanded. He was angry now too. Jake wasn't making sense and he was yelling at him in front of all these people. "Who're you to say I can't work where I want?" The rest of the picnic had lapsed into an embarrassed silence.

"I'm your father that's who." and Vin thought of another son, one that he had only replaced.

"You ain't my father." he hurled at Jake for the first time in his life and turned to hurry out of the yard, away from them all. He didn't look at anyone, and he didn't answer when Nettie quietly said his name as he stomped past her. He kept going down the driveway to Ethel, and beyond Ethel, down the road toward the Pass.

+ + + + + + +

Back in the yard, in the silence, Chris approached Jake. "What was that all about?" he asked calmly, walking a few steps so that Jake turned with him, and they faced away from the group. Behind them then, conversation started up again. Jake wasn't angry at Chris, he wasn't even really angry at Vin.

"Buck was telling Vin there's a job open at the high school...for a handyman."

Chris knew immediately what the problem was. "Don't blame Buck any. He doesn't know."

"I know...I never told Vin either...I should go after him. It's gettin' cold, he needs his jacket."

"Let me go talk to him Jake. Sometimes it's a lot easier to talk to someone who isn't your Dad. I speak from experience."

+ + + + + + +

Vin was standing at the old cabin when he heard the truck. Chris. Vin didn't want to talk to anybody. He wanted to nurse his hurt and his anger for a good while longer. He didn't want anybody coming to tell him he had to respect his elders, shouldn't yell at Jake, come back to the picnic, nobody noticed, or anything like that. He wanted to stay good and mad and for a long time too.

But Chris didn't say anything at first as he got out of the truck. He had Vin's jacket tucked under his arm and he walked up to stand next to him, looking at the cabin, a small structure sided with barn wood and cedar shake shingles. "What do you think of it?" he asked.

"Looks good, good roof, chimney's straight, no broken windows, got no cellar though, sittin' on a concrete pad must make it cold in the winter."

"I raised the floor inside, insulated it. Made it a lot better...speaking of cold, thought you might want this." He handed over the jacket.

"Thanks." but Vin didn't put it on.

"Want to go inside?"

"Okay..."

Chris unlocked the door and led the way in. "Electricity isn't on...but it's wired. I come down every once in awhile, make sure the plumbing still works, no raccoons down the chimney...be nice to have somebody living in it again, the place needs people." It was a small cabin, with a fireplace on the wall just opposite the door. "Coupla bedrooms on this side, bathroom in between. Kitchen over there...got one of them stacked washer and dryer...refrigerator's a little musty..."

As Chris talked, Vin pictured living here with Jake, pictured having a home, a real house that didn't move and the television reception was always the same and you didn't have to get used to what channel was what network everytime you stopped. This house came with a yard and maybe they could get a dog. He pictured a fire in the fireplace and falling asleep in an overstuffed chair in front of it. He pictured Christmas - and maybe finally they could get a real tree, taller than Jake, not just a little one, real or not, that only fit on the cupboard next to the sink.

"...this'd do you and Jake good for the winter I think." Chris finished saying.

"Jake's mad at me." Vin said. He slipped the sling off to pull his jacket on.

"No he's not. He's mad at himself forty years ago." Chris didn't know how Jake would take it, but he told Vin: "Your Dad was handyman at the high school, a long time ago. When he went through one of the darkest times of his life. All that job represents to him is failure. He's not mad at you. He's mad at everybody back then who told him he'd never amount to more than that, that he shouldn't even try."

"How come he never told me about it?"

"Because you're his son, and he only wants you to think the best about him..." Chris could see that Vin was working on this. "Come on, you want to head back? Don't have to come back to the picnic if you don't want to. I'll drop you off at Ethel if you want, send Jake down to talk to you, OK?"

Vin sighed and stuck his hand in his jacket pocket - - and felt the slightly smushed granola bars that Jake had tucked in there yesterday. His Dad watching out for him. "Yeah, let's go back."

"Okay." They walked out and locked the door. Close down the road, a siren split the silence, and the radio in Chris' truck crackled to life.

"Chris - you there?" It was JD. They could hear the siren echoed behind him, he was calling from the cruiser, heading away from the ranch.

"I'm here JD, what's goin' on?"

"You got Vin with you?"

"Yeah." Chris said. Vin stood next to his truck. When JD didn't answer right away, Chris repeated: "Yeah..." Still a pause. "You better get him to town, as quick as you can..."

PART EIGHTEEN

Vin stood with his back pressed against the wall farthest away from the hallway that led to the exam room in the clinic. He stared hard down the hallway, every nerve focused on deciphering the sounds and muffled voices that floated back to the waiting room. The four of them, Vin, Nettie, Chris, and Buck faced the same direction, counting the passing seconds.

‘You ain't my father.' God, could he please take those words back? If Jake died, please - when was the last time he said ‘thanks Dad'? What was the last nice thing he'd done for Jake? How could the last thing he said to him be ‘you ain't my father'?

What was the last nice thing they'd done together? Before the picnic - after they had coffee and biscuits and preserves, Jake helped Vin put his sling back on, and he said ‘thanks Dad.' Didn't he? He'd thanked Jake, hadn't he? Why couldn't he remember? Why was the only thing he could remember the fight they had just before he never got to see Jake again?

Vin crossed his arms over himself and bent his head down to hide his face. Please Lord, let my Dad be allright...please...don't take him away...I don't have anybody else. His breath came faster as he tried to control his emotions. Let me say goodbye...

"Get him a chair." Vin heard Buck say, then he was at Vin's side, one hand on his shoulder, trying to get a look into his face. "How're you doin' Vin? We'll getcha a chair, you can sit down. You want some water?" Vin shook his head, surprised.

"I'm okay." Why were they looking at him? It should be Chris, he was Jake's oldest friend. Or Nettie, they'd had a child together. Why were they looking at him when he was nothing but an ungrateful snot who couldn't even remember the last nice thing he'd done for Jake. "You don't gotta bother." But Chris set a straight backed chair next to him and Vin gratefully sank onto it. Nettie was next with a paper cup of water.

"Honey, here, drink this. Don't know how long we're gonna be."

Vin took it, but didn't want to drink it. He didn't want them watching him when he was set to break down any second. "I'm okay." He didn't know what else to say. "I'm okay."

The front door opened and a cold wind blew Josiah in. He carried a brown folder of papers in his hand. Vin recognized the folder and Josiah saw it. "Vin, I hope you don't mind. Mary got the copies of Jake's medical files and gave them to me to bring in."

"How - how did she know where - ?"

"Jake asked her to get yours, when they brought you in here yesterday..."

Was it only yesterday that Vin fell off of Little Bear, off the side of the mountain? Only yesterday? Josiah let the silence hang and he carried the papers down the hall. Vin watched him go, wanting to go with him, to look through the door, and catch a sight of Jake. Just something, one thing to hold onto. But he stayed in the chair and tried to remember standing at the top of the world, leaning against the hood of the truck, and Jake had his arm around him.

He just wanted his Dad.

+ + + + + + +

There was very little talking among the five of them. An uncomfortable silence. Till finally Josiah pulled another chair next to Vin.

"Vin, do you have any other family who should be notified?" He asked.

"Got Aunt Judy and Aunt Ronnie...Jake's sisters. They're down in South Dakota, on the Rosebud...but I don't know - I ain't got - I never..." Vin stumbled over not saying ‘I don't know the numbers ‘cause I never called ‘em ‘cause their husbands don't like me ‘cause I'm white.'

"It's allright Vin, we can get the numbers..." Josiah said.

Vin nodded. "Got his lawyer too, looks after his stuff, forwards his mail ‘n stuff. He's down in Texas. Jake's got his number - -" Another stumble over the words and saying his father's name. "- - in his wallet, got his business card in there..." He gave a quick glance around the room. Nettie, Chris, and Buck were listening to him. Chris probably knew the lawyer's number. All his mail got forwarded from there.

"Okay..." Josiah was saying "...how're you holding up?"

"I'm okay." Vin said into the collar of his shirt. Was he okay? Jake never got sick, never even hardly got a cold. Jake was superman and wasn't supposed to get sick. Wasn't supposed to collapse in Chris' yard and be rushed to the clinic unresponsive. Jake was just supposed to be there. The last time he got sick, the last time Jake had to go to the hospital, he wouldn't. He wouldn't admit himself to the hospital till Aunt Ronnie came to stay with Vin so that he wouldn't have to go to strangers for those few days. But these people were strangers, these people in the waiting room with him. Vin'd only known them three days. Jake was going away and Vin was sitting with strangers.

Vin stood up abruptly and headed for the door to the outside. "Just need some air..." he said, desperate to be alone. He didn't want to go too far from Jake, so he sat himself on the top step and let the door softly thump shut behind him. It was still daylight. How could it still be daylight when everything around him was so dark?

The door thumped open again and Chris took a seat next to Vin on the concrete step. He sat away, to give Vin space, and to have a better look at him. "I can't remember the last time Jake told me he was sick."

"Jake don't get sick." Vin kept his arms pressed close to himself, staring at his feet.

"How's your arm?"

"It's okay."

"Think you left the sling in my truck...I'll get it, if you need it." Chris offered, but Vin shook his head. Chris watched him a little while, and a list of things that needed - or might need - doing, constructed itself in his mind. Get Ezra to help communicating with Jake's lawyer. That would be a start.If Jake dies or even gets laid up awhile, might be a problem with bank accounts and insurance.

Chris knew too well the overflowing details that swamped any death. Concentrate on the details. If he concentrated on the details, he wouldn't have to think about one of his oldest friends maybe dying while he sat and could do nothing to stop it. He might not want to stay by himself tonight, we'll get him up to the house he thought of Vin. Nettie - poor Nettie. Had Jake back one day, to lose him like this...

"He's all I got." Vin's soft distress brought Chris back to the steps they were sitting on. "He's all the family I got. He's the only friend I got. I yelled at him and now he's dyin' and I got no way to tell him I'm sorry and ask him not to be mad at me anymore."

"He's not mad at you Vin. He wasn't mad at you when you left the picnic. He was gonna bring you your jacket, but I told him I'd do it..." Chris said. Vin turned to look at him and Chris realized what he just said. He'd prevented Vin having that last minute with his Dad to make everything all better. But Vin saw it differently.

"If he'd brought my jacket to me -" and Chris waited for the condemnation he deserved. "I wouldna had any truck or anyway to call for help. Maybe you bought him some time, not letting come after me?" It was asked with such fragile hope.

"Maybe I did." Chris hoped too. Vin pulled his arms tighter around himself as a long, cold wind poured down the street, and he shivered in his flannel shirt. The bruises and scratches on his face looked painful and his eye still seemed a swollen. Chris figured there was one more thing on Vin's mind. "You know Jake's your Dad, Vin. You know and he knows it, whatever you said in anger. Words don't change what's true, and there's a lot more to family than blood and paperwork Jake always told me."

"He told you that?" Vin asked, surprised.

"Yeah, back when I was in college, my freshman year, I found out I'd been adopted. I was real angry at my parents when I found out. Jake started writing me just about then. Telling me about you, how great it was to be a parent and that I shouldn't stay mad at my Mom and Dad...he never mentioned that you weren't his blood though. Right from the first letter, you were his son. Period."

"Really?"

"Really. Right from the first Jake loved you and was proud of you. No matter what, he is your Dad." Chris stood up to go back inside. The wind was cold and he hoped Vin would come back in too. "But he's not your only friend."

The door thumped softly closed behind him, Vin watched it bounce lightly once or twice. He tried to think what ‘friend' meant to him, and if it meant the same thing to Chris, and to the others. He thought of Nettie, who'd lost a child, and now was losing her love. Vin realized he'd been the one to have those twenty five years with Jake, that he'd been envying these people for what was his alone. He was Jake's son.

He got up and went back inside. Nettie was standing off by herself, close to the hallway. Vin walked over and put his arm around her shoulders. She smiled up at him and took his free hand in hers. Vin felt better, standing there with her, with Chris and Buck and Josiah.

Whatever happened...whatever happened...Vin realized he was home.

PART NINETEEN

Vin still stood with him arm around Nettie when Nathan finally came out to the waiting room, and he found himself acutely aware of everything going on around them. The soft ticking of the clock over the reception desk, the smell of antibacterial soap, the way the cold wind outside pressed against the unyielding front door. Behind Vin, nobody seemed to be breathing.

Nathan took one or two steps forward, taking a breath before speaking, and Vin felt himself begin to tremble with the fear and anticipation. From this moment on, no matter what Nathan said, from this moment on Vin's life would never be the same way again. The insistent wind at the door seemed to mutter at him alone, trying to get him to listen to things he didn't want to hear. But he had to hear.

Five people stared at Nathan, waiting, fearing, what he was about to say: "Vin..." his voice was heavy with weariness. "Your Dad had a stroke."

A stroke? Vin thought he'd said the word out loud, but no sound came out.

"It came on him real sudden..." Nathan walked up to Vin and put his hand on his shoulder. "We got him to town as fast as we could..." Vin felt tears burning his eyes. Jake was gone, he was alone. He'd never get to say he was sorry. He closed his eyes and barely paid attention to whatever else Nathan was saying. "Rain and I have done everything we can..."

Nettie caught her breath and felt Vin tremble beside her. Chris folded his arms and bent his head down, and Buck put a comforting arm around him. Josiah said a silent prayer. When JD burst through the front door, everyone jumped.

"Nathan -" Out of breath, the deputy barely set foot in the clinic. "ETA 37 minutes, I gotta run..." and he was gone again before the doctor could even thank him. No one else hardly paid him any mind.

"Can I see him?" Vin asked.

"Of course...Rain's still there, you just go on in." Nathan began to show him down the hallway, but Vin stopped.

"Nettie, you want to come with?"

"No, honey, you go on back first."

"Chris?" and Chris tried to say something, but ended up just shaking his head. So Vin walked the few dozen steps to the treatment room alone. He couldn't believe he'd lost his Dad. A gaping hole opened up in his life, and Vin was sliding fast down into it. In the waiting room, he could hear Nathan still saying something, then a clamor of shock from the others. Vin got to the door, took a breath and wiped his eyes, then pushed the door open.

The hum and beep of the assorted medical machinery bothered him. It should be quiet where Jake was. It should be quiet so his soul wouldn't be distracted as it began it's journey. Rain stood next to the table, she had her hand resting on Jake's. She gave Vin a tired smile.

"Did Nathan tell you all that occurred?" she asked and Vin nodded. He couldn't bring himself to look at Jake.

"I ‘preciate all that you did." His voice sounded odd to his own ears, hoarse almost. "I know you did everything you could."

Rain shook her head. "Some things are just better taken care of in a hospital."

"No - I know he wouldna got no better care in a hospital than he did right here by his friends." Vin didn't want Rain or Nathan blaming themselves. It was just time, that was all. Jake would've said, it was just my time. Tears rolled down Vin's face then and he scrubbed them away, not caring how bad it hurt the brushburn. He muttered "I'm sorry..." Rain came to him and offered him a clean handkerchief.

"No, it's allright. Don't be ashamed. These past few days have been very hard on you..." She put the handkerchief into Vin's hand. He nodded his thanks. "I'll let you have some time with him, until the ambulance comes. Once we get your father to the hospital in Billings, they'll be able to tell us more."

Vin was confused. "You mean, you're gonna do an autopsy?" He wasn't sure what he thought of that. Rain stared at him, then broke out into a grin when she understood that Vin didn't.

"Your father is alive, we've stabilized him. We called JD to radio for an ambulance to take him to the hospital." Vin stared hard at her a few seconds, letting it sink in. "He's just resting now...you can go talk to him. He'll be able to hear you. He's not able to speak very well, but he is awake." And in his relief, Vin grabbed Rain in hug that physically took her breath away.

PART TWENTY

The few moments between realizing Jake was alive and taking the few steps to be at his side seemed to stretch days. Vin let go of Rain and turned to his Dad, looking at him for the first time since he came into the room. Jake's eyes were open and he followed Vin as he walked to his side.

"Hey Dad - they takin' care of you?" Vin reached out to touch Jake's arm, then pulled back and shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. He'd been so sure that he'd lost Jake, Vin was afraid to say anything for fear his voice wouldn't hold. Jake didn't respond, his eyes wandered a little over Vin, like he was trying to figure out who he was. "Dr. Jackson says they're gonna take you to the hospital in Billings...you want I should call Aunt Ronnie?" Still no answer, still Jake's eyes scrutinized him. Maybe he's rememberin' what I said. Vin thought. Maybe he don't want me here... He turned to Rain.

"Maybe Chris ‘r Nettie oughtta be here, ‘stead? Maybe Jake'll recognize them?" Vin would rather that Jake didn't remember him, than remember their last words together. But Rain shook her head as she walked to Vin.

"No, he recognizes you. He asked for you." She smiled down at Jake and spoke just a little more loudly and distinctly when he met her eyes. "You remember who this is, don't you Jake? You remember your son."

Still no answer. But one pale, unsteady hand came up and Jake pointed his finger at Vin. His expression was angry and Vin's heart broke. Rain sensed too that something was coming and she wrapped a gentle arm around Vin who stood, head down, hands shoved into his jeans. "Ssssllll...gggg" Whatever he was saying, Jake was adamant. Vin was confused. It didn't sound like any curse word he'd ever heard his Dad use.

"What?" But Jake wasn't looking at Vin's face, he continued to point to his jacket.

"Ssss...lll...nnn..ggg...sssllliiinnnggg...." he snarled.

"Sling?" In his surprise, Vin said it louder than he meant to. "You almost die, and you're yellin' at me for not wearing the sling? I don't think so old man...just remember who's gonna be standing behind you at the hospital, making sure your gown stays zipped..."

Jake lowered his hand and puzzled on this for a moment or two. Then he laughed. It was a short laugh but it sounded just the way it always did and Vin finally did reach over and lay his hand on Jake's.

"You're gonna be okay, okay? I ain't learned how to back up Ethel yet, and I don't think Chris'd be happy with the results if I ever had to try. Okay? Dad?" He wanted to be able to still call Jake that. "Dr. Jackson says we'll get you to the hospital and they can tell us what all is wrong and how we're gonna take care of it...okay?" He watched for any response and after a little while, Jake nodded and shifted his hand to give Vin's hand as hard a squeeze as he could. Vin smiled down at Jake, and his mind turned over what needed to be done.

"Dr. Jackson? Would you mind? Would you ask Chris ‘n Nettie if they'd like to come back? Reckon there ain't that much time ‘fore the ambulance gets here, then it'll be a while ‘fore we get the chance again."

"Of course Vin - I'll send them right back."

As she left the room, Vin sat on the little stool nex to the table to be closer to Jake, who still had a hard grip on his hand. "Dad, you know the ambulance is gonna be here soon to take you to Billings..." he waited a moment, but there was no response. "I'll get a hold of Aunt Judy and Aunt Ronnie okay? Let ‘em knows what's what. When we see how long they think you'll be there, I'll pack up some a' your stuff to bring in. That old switchblade y'call a razor and stuff..." He wanted to say ‘I'm sorry what I said Dad, I never meant it, you're the only Dad I ever had and the only one I ever want and if I could take back what I said I take it back no matter what I had to do... But he didn't say it. He just held onto Jake until the door opened and Chris and Nettie came in.

As they came over, Vin leaned down a little so he'd be sure Jake heard him. "Chris ‘n Nettie are here to see you Dad. I'm gonna go talk to the doctor a minute, OK? I'll be back ‘fore the ambulance gets here. OK?" He waited a few seconds till Jake squeezed his hand then Vin moved aside. Nettie touched his arm in passing before reaching for Jake's hand and bending down to give him a kiss.

"How're you doing?" Chris asked him. He put his hand on Vin's shoulder to keep him from rushing out of the room.

"Okay...just wanna talk to the doctors, get a feel for what's goin' on...what we can expect...I'll be right back."

"Okay..." Chris dropped his hand and Vin left the exam room, pulling the door shut behind himself. He walked down the hallway a few paces then just stopped and leaned back against the wall, tilting his head back and shutting his eyes.

"Thank you Lord for keeping my Dad alive..." He stood there a few minutes, praying his thanks and overwhelmed with relief. He didn't even know anyone was beside him until he felt a hand on his shoulder. Chris had come into the hallway.

"You okay?"

It took some breath and a couple of swallows for Vin to answer. "Ain't often you get a second chance..." he whispered.

"You got that right..."

"I thought he was dead. The way the doctors was talkin', I was downright convinced Jake was dead..."

"We all were...wasn't till you were out of the room that we figured it out...you want to go back in?" Chris indicated the exam room.

"No, not yet. Give Nettie some time till the ambulance comes...might go sit in the waiting room though..."

"Come on." Chris led the way and Vin followed, setting down in his mind a list of things that needed doing. As they made their way into the waiting room, Vin saw that the little crowd of concerned friends had grown - Ezra, Mary, Billy, JD and Casey had joined Buck, Josiah, and the doctors. To the instant chorus of questions - how is he, how's he doing - Vin had one answer, the only answer that mattered.

"He's alive." Then the first item on the list in his head: "Chris - would you mind takin' me back to get my truck, so's I can drive to the hospital? Reckon Nettie'll go in the ambulance."

"I'll drive you to the hospital." Chris assured him.

"Don't know how long it'll be - if you get called back to town for any reason, don't want you worryin' how I'll get back."

"I'd be happy to drive you, and stay as long as necessary." Ezra offered. "At a time like this, it would in no way be in your best interests to attempt a solo navigation of an unfamiliar city."

Well, Vin got the first part anyway and was grateful. "I ‘preciate it. You might - maybe - you could help me go over them papers I'll likely have to sign? Don't knows as I could concentrate on ‘em well as I should just now..."

"Of course." Ezra sounded happy to be able to assist. "I am at your service."

"...'preciate it...." Surrounded by friends, and his Dad would be OK, but Vin felt alone, with a burden he wasn't sure he could carry. He'd always had Jake to depend on - had he lost hat now? He knew how bad a stroke could devastate a person. He'd known most of his adult life that there'd come a time when their roles would be reversed, and Vin would be the one to be depended on. He just never thought it would come so soon.

Nettie came down the hallway and into the waiting room. "Vin, I'm to tell you that unless you get that sling back on your arm this instant, your Dad ‘isn't going to any damn hosptial no matter what.' Not an exact quote but as near as I could come." Vin let out a breath of relief, and laughed that he'd just been thinking Jake might not be looking out for him anymore.

"I'm gettin' now Nettie, I'll go get it right now."

PART TWENTY-ONE

"No Ma'am, I'm not with the motorcycle accident." Vin told the fourth nurse in an hour and a half. "I'm waitin' on my Dad, he got brought in for a stroke...I'm fine, honest. Just waitin' on my Dad..." The nurse left and Vin turned back into the waiting room, absently running his hand over the brushburn. "Guess I gotta keep outta their sights..." he said to himself.

The waiting room was filled with people waiting on Jake - Chris, Nettie, Josiah, Buck, and Ezra all kept vigil with Vin, while Nathan and Rain continued to work on their patient just beyond the swinging double doors. Buck and Ezra had magazines in their hands, Nettie worked on some crocheting it looked like to Vin, Chris sat with his head back and his eyes closed, and Josiah silently read out of a small book. Vin pondered the fact that a week ago - even four days ago - he didn't know these people, and they didn't know him. He couldn't say he was exactly easeful around them, but they were here, and he wasn't alone. But Vin had nothing to occupy his time or his mind. He felt too jumpy to sit quietly or even open a magazine. He ran his hand through his hair for the thousandth time and turned to pace back out of the waiting room almost as soon as he was in it.

"Vin." Chris stood up and walked over to him. "Come on, let's hit the cafeteria. I'll buy you some tea."

"No, thanks. I don't want to leave Jake. I don't want to get too far away."

"It's okay Vin. It's just down the hall on the other side of the ER. You won't be any farther away..."

Nettie agreed over her crocheting. "Honey, we'll have them page you if we have to...you go on with Chris."

So Vin followed Chris down the hall to the cafeteria, hoping no one else would assume he was with the motorcycle accident. It was late in the afternoon, and the rush of employees and visitors having their dinner had thinned out. They bought tea and found a booth to sit in. Vin stared at his tea, untouched, and Chris watched him awhile.

"First time Jake's been sick on you?" he asked. Vin shook his head without raising his eyes.

"Back, twelve years now I guess, had to have his appendix taken out. He was in the hospital nearly a week then."

"I remember him writing me about that." Chris calculated how old Vin must've been. "Who took care of you?"

"Aunt Ronnie. She came out from the Rosebud. Stayed in Ethel with me. Stayed till Jake was home and had the stitches out...her husband don't like me." Vin tugged off the lid of his tea and absently dunked the tea bag a few times.

"How come?"

"I'm white." Vin said, as though Chris should've known. "Him and Aunt Judy's husband. Even Aunt Judy some. Don't see as Jake should've tied himself down with some boy ain't his own, ‘specially not a white boy. We went out there for Christmas couple times when I'se little. Heard ‘em arguin' about it the one time. Jake and Fred. Christmas morning. Guess I was just six or so then. Heard Fred saying that Jake was welcome anytime, but not as long as he had ‘that bastard' with him..." Vin looked up finally. "I was out in another room. I heard this sound, didn't know what it was. Found out later than Jake knocked him flat for saying that. Only Aunt Ronnie stood up for Jake. For us. We left that day. Never went back."

"That is a terrible thing to say about a child." Chris said. "Any child. And they cheated themselves out of knowing you. They lost out." Vin shook his head though. "Anyway, Jake and his sisters are half white themselves." Chris added. "Their Dad was - German I think. Maybe had some Polish in him."

"Yeah, Jake told me. He says he gets his looks from his Mom, and his whiskers from his Dad." This at least raised a smile from Vin, but it didn't last. "He don't really talk about them much though. Seems a touchy subject. Most of his past does..." Vin kept his eyes on Chris then, silently asking him for even the smallest bit of information on his Dad. Chris closed his eyes, took a breath and said a prayer, and began.

"Jake's Dad was a good man. He worked hard to raise his family. Jake's Mom was full blood. I guess they met during the Depression. Got married, lived in a little house off by itself not far up the Pass...Jake was the oldest, Judy came next -"

"Y'ain't said whether his Mom was a good woman or not..." Vin said. Chris paused significantly. He decided not to lie.

"She tried Vin, I'm sure she tried. But, after her youngest was born, I guess something changed. Jake's Dad was gone a lot, working anywhere he could. His Mom - - she took to drinking. Not that I'm condemning her." Chris hastened to add. "Lord knows, I got my own history with that...but I guess it got really bad. One winter, middle of January my Dad told me, Mrs. Parker took off drunk into a snowstorm. No coat, only slippers on her feet. Jake was only thirteen. He tried to keep her in the house, tried to pull her back inside. His Dad was three days away working in Wyoming. Jake went back into the house to telephone for help, and when he got back outside, the snow was so bad he couldn't find her." Chris paused, and looked down. "They didn't find her till Spring, face down in a ditch...they thought maybe a plow got her...never did find out really."

Vin stared at him. "Jake never told me anything. Just that his folks died when he was young." Chris nodded.

"His Dad held on another five years or so, the year Jake shoulda gone to college. He was all set to go, and his Dad was proud to send him, to have his son go to college. But he died. Went to bed one night, never woke up. Massive heart attack they said. So, Jake gave up college to support his sisters...he worked as the handyman at the high school." Chris watched for Vin's reaction.

"Why'd he get so mad though? That I might work there? What so all-fired bad happened to him there?" Then Vin stopped to think, and had to ask: "Was it ‘cause of the baby?" Chris scowled at him.

"What baby?"

"Nettie - she told me..." Vin wondered how big a mistake he'd made. "...today at the picnic, she told me she had a baby boy once, but he died right after she had him. Ain't exactly rocket science figurin' whose baby it was..." Chris continued to scowl a long few moments. Vin figured either he knew something he wasn't supposed to, or he knew something Chris didn't.

"My Dad worked for County Social Service - he was assigned to go out and keep tabs on Jake and his sisters after their Dad died." Chris went on. "They got to be friends, my Dad's ten years older than Jake, fifteen maybe. He helped Jake keep his family together those first few years...Jake was handyman at the high school when he'd talked up so much how he was gonna go to college and make something out of his life. He drank a lot, got into trouble a lot. My Dad bailed him out a lot. Finally after ten or twelve years of hell, when your Aunt Judy I guess was old enough to support herself, Jake lit out of town. My Dad heard rumors of him still being in Montana. Finally Jake started writing my Dad, that he'd dried out and was working steady down in Texas. A few years later, Jake started writing to me too. Telling me about you...helping me through some hard times."

There, in one long paragraph, hung everything Vin never knew that he never knew about his Dad. He wanted to ask again about the baby and Nettie, but since Chris had sidestepped it, Vin let it pass. "You let me know what it'll take to move into your cabin? Reckon Ethel won't be the place for Jake, not if he comes outta here with a cane...or a wheelchair...Ezra said he'd help me get the bank accounts squared away. You let me know - the sooner we get it figured out, the sooner I can start gettin' us moved in. Doctors don't seem to think Jake'll be in here all that long, like to get started soon as I can..."

"You can start tomorrow if you want Vin." Chris told him. Vin shook his head.

"Won't know maybe for a coupla days ‘bout the money -" But Chris cut him off.

"We can start tomorrow Vin...everything else can wait." He said it seriously and Vin stared at him a second or two, completely taken off guard by the kindness. He dropped his eyes to his barely touched tea.

"I ‘preciate it." he said again. Then Buck was there, near the table.

"Vin? They're gettin' ready to send Jake up to ICU."

PART TWENTY-TWO

It seemed to take forever for the nurses to get Jake squared away in ICU. They were brisk and efficient, but still took their own sweet time. Vin stared through the glass at his Dad; he also used the reflections in the glass to track what went on behind him and his instincts as a bounty hunter tried to isolate the muffled sounds and voices around him. This place was too clean, too sterile, too much not what he was used to. Vin felt out of place in his untucked flannel shirt, tattered jeans, and worn boots. All he wanted was to be near his Dad again.

Still, when the nurse in charge said they were done and he could go in, Vin walked into the little room hesitantly. "Dad?" Jake's eyes were closed, and he was a pale shade of gray. He had an IV in one arm, an oxygen mask, and trails of EKG leads running out from under the sheet to an overhead machine. "You awake?" Jake's eyes flickered open and he smiled when he saw his son. He moved his hand, wanting Vin to come closer.

The distance to the stretcher loomed too short and too long as Vin got his feet to move across the linoleum. Jake wasn't supposed to get sick. Jake wasn't supposed to be lying in Intensive Care, in a city they'd never been to together before.

"Hey Dad..." Vin took Jake's hand. Should he tell Jake now that he was sorry for yelling at him? They said he was out of danger now, but Vin didn't want to take the chance of never getting to tell him. "They taking care of you?" Jake nodded.

"Do-in...oh-kay." he said behind the O2 mask, reminding Vin of how he'd sounded trying to talk to Jake when he had that hangover. "You...oh-kay?"

"Yeah, I'm okay...they'll be gettin' you set for the night now. Ezra's gonna help me get you all signed in ‘n everything...Chris ‘n Nettie are here..." He tried to sound casual, but Jake was his Dad, and even having a stroke, he knew there was something more on Vin's mind. He squeezed Vin's hand hard, and gave him a puzzled look.

"Wh-at? Look...sad..."

"No Dad, just tired..." But Jake shook his head, he wasn't buying it. "I'se just - thinkin' - what I said to you at the picnic today. When I said you ain't my Dad..." Even now the words burned as he said them. He'd worked on a whole speech to apologize to Jake, but only one thing mattered, and only one thing came out, choked in a hoarse whisper. "I'm sorry Dad. I'm so sorry."

Jake lifted his other arm and hugged Vin down to him. "Do...thing...sorry...for... Sprout...let...you...know..."

+ + + + + + +

The sun had set when Chris drove Vin back home. The hour or so trip passed mostly in silence. Vin absently rubbed his arm in the sling and stared out the window, tracking the route they took so he could drive back here on his own.

"Why don't you stay up at the house tonight?" Chris asked, as they came in sight of the lights of the town.

"No, thanks...thanks."

"Y'ever been this far away from him?"

"I never been an hour, one security guard and three scary nurses away from him." Vin said. "Told him tomorrow I'd bring his gear up to him..."

"Let me know what time, I'll drive you up." Chris offered. Vin was about to decline, but he liked being around Chris. Being around Chris was familiar somehow, probably from Jake reading all those letters, or parts of letters, to Vin. Chris was just an old friend he'd never met before.

"Okay."

+ + + + + + +

Chris dropped Vin off at Ethel, inviting him again to sleep up at the house. "Hate to leave you down here by yourself."

"I'll be okay...might not sleep anyway. Need to be in my own place..."

"Allright." Chris finally agreed. "But come up to the house if you need anything. Don't matter what time it is."

"Okay Chris. Thanks."

Ethel had never felt so empty as the truck pulled away and Vin opened the door, pulling off his sling as he stepped inside. The first thing he saw when he switched on the little battery lamp was Jake's heavy jacket, laying across the couch. Jake'd had that thing for years. Vin couldn't count all the times he had that coat tucked across him in the front seat of the truck as he slept through long nights of driving. He felt tears fill his eyes.

"Jake's gonna be allright." he insisted to no one but himself. "He'll be home soon." But Ethel was crowded with memories so Vin went out to stir up the fire. When it caught and was blazing, he curled himself into a lawn chair, close to the fire to keep warm.

His mind turned with everything Chris had told him at the hospital - Jake's mother dying in the snow, probably not far from where Vin sat now. Jake giving up his chance at college and bettering himself to raise his sisters. Drinking and getting into trouble. Finally pulling out of Montana completely, staying away twenty-five years.

Twenty-seven he heard Jake's voice say. What could keep a man away from his home that long?

Vin's mind also turned on the one thing Chris hadn't talked about at all. The baby. "I woulda had a big brother." he murmured absently, then realized that was foolish. If things had happened different, if the baby hadn't died, Jake and Vin never would've hooked up. Vin never thought of Jake's Mom and Dad as his grandparents. But he wondered if it would be okay if he thought of that baby as his brother? He sorta woulda been, right?

He lifted his eyes to the starry heaven. "Sorry I didn't know about you before." he said, believing he was heard. "Hope y'don't mind I'm talkin' to you. Always been me ‘n Jake. Wouldn't mind havin' y'along from now on. Wouldn't mind havin' a big brother look out for me..."

Just then, Vin heard Chris' footsteps down the gravel drive. He appeared around Ethel, carrying two big travel mugs in one hand and a plastic grocery bag in the other. "Mind if I join you?" Chris had heard Vin talking, but wasn't close enough to make out the words.

"Sure..." Vin hadn't expected Chris to come back. He was grateful that he had. Chris handed over a mug and offered the plastic bag to Vin, as he sat in the other aluminum chair. "Mary sent me down with some food, seein's neither of us had dinner..."

"Thanks." Vin fished out a sandwich wrapped in wax paper and handed the bag back to Chris who took a sandwich out for himself. The tea went down hot and wonderful, and the plain ham and cheese on white bread was better than anything Vin ever remembered eating. He hadn't realized how hungry he was. "Y'ain't got any vegetables in there, have you?" he finally asked, more for something to say than anything else.

"No, no vegetables..." Chris told him. "If you really want some though, we got lots of ‘em up in fridge..." he joked.

"And up in the fridge is where they can stay...none too partial to vegetables." Vin turned a thought over. "Jake eats ‘em all the time. Didn't do him no good...'spose once we're settled down in your cabin there, he'll expect me to eat decent somethin' regular." Chris smiled.

"The things parents put their children through...you know, seems you'll be stayin' awhile, you should think about applying for that deputy job I got. Winter comin' on, ski lodges and such, I'll need the help."

"No, I couldn't." Vin shook his head. "I ‘preciate you askin'. I know you ain't askin' lightly. I just couldn't."

"Why not?" Chris had to ask. "Jake says you're a good tracker, a good shot. Legal stuff you can learn on the job. I know Jake's prejudiced, he also don't exaggerate..." Vin took a long swallow of tea and decided to just say it.

"I don't read so good...can recognize my name, an' I know the signs for drivin'... there's some words I can track...other than that..." he shook his head again. Chris didn't know what to say at first. It'd never occurred to him that Jake Parker's son wouldn't know how to read.

"How'd you get through school?"

"Moved around so much..." Vin shrugged. "Time anybody noticed, we'd be headin' off somewhere's else. Finally Jake just took to sayin' he's teachin' me hisself. He tried, don't fault him none for not tryin' --- I just never could learn. It got so's I'd get sick anytime Jake tried. He never yelled at me, never made me feel stupid or nothin'. I just can't do it."

Chris thought at first to ask if Vin had ever had his eyes checked, or been tested for dyslexia. Maybe there was an emotional block, or maybe Jake just hadn't tried hard enough to get Vin to live his own life. But he couldn't suggest that to Vin.

When Chris didn't answer, Vin went on. "Reckon I'll put in for that job at the school Buck was tellin' me about. I done work like that plenty before..."

"You should know how to read." Chris said, a little more sternly than he'd intended. It irked him that Vin would give so easy on something so basic. "A man as smart as you are should know how to read." Vin was set back at first by Chris' tone, then caught off guard by the compliment.

"I ain't -" he started to say, but Chris cut him off.

"I'll help you, or Buck will. But you'll learn how."

"Okay." Vin felt a little shy of arguing with Chris. He had that set look Jake would get, when Vin would never get anything past him. He took another bite of sandwich and swallow of tea.

Chris regretted his tone, but not the sentiment behind it. He softened his voice. "Adam - my son - was just startin' to know how to read when - - he died. He'd just learned to print his name so's he could get his first library card. Whenever my parents visited, my Dad would bring Adam books and they'd just sit and read together for the longest time." Chris' eyes shone in the firelight and he dipped his head to run his hand across them. Vin's mind struggled desperately for something to say.

"You musta been proud of him." he tried.

"Oh yeah..." he wiped his eyes one more time, and amended his previous remark. "Anyway, you want to try again learnin' to read, you let me know. Me or Buck, we'd be glad to help you."

"Okay." and this time Vin meant it.

PART TWENTY-THREE

C - H - R - I - S

Chris spelled his name out on a flat rock in the fireplace using the burned end of a long stick. "See, that's my name." Vin nodded, staring hard at the scrawly writing. Chris knew he was committing the ‘tracks' to memory.

L - A - R - A - B - E - E

"What is it about learning to read that bothers you the most?" Chris asked as he wrote. He could see that the question bothered Vin - his face drew in to a scowl and he ducked his head. Chris pushed on, offering choices. "I mean, maybe bigger print would help? Or maybe - do the words and letters sit up okay in your memory, but don't come out through a pen just right?" Vin listened, running the possibilities over. "Anybody ever mentioned ‘dyslexia'?"

"Ain't got that." Vin finally said. "Tested me for that. Lotsa other things too, one time or another. I'se lazy, or depressed, or angry, or backward, or any other whole mouthful a'words, dependin' on who you was talkin' to. That's when Jake finally took me outta school altogether...I ain't stupid..." he added, feeling he had to say it to Chris.

"No, you definitely are not stupid." Chris agreed. He offered Vin the stick. "Here, write your name out, next to mine..."

Vin uncurled himself from his chair to slowly reach for it. Chris' voice implied that Vin could do it, and he wanted to prove Chris right. He held the stick tightly in his fist and ever so carefully wrote his name on the flat rock next to Chris'. Even allowing for the primitive instruments, Vin could see that his printing was rough. The size of the letters was unequal, they ran downhill, one of his ‘N's was backward...it looked terrible. Just nine letters, but he was nearly wore out by the end of it. He turned to Chris, his eyes dark with worry at what Larabee's reaction would be.

"Hey, you did that pretty good!" Chris told him, as he leaned in closer to get a good look. "That's great!" Vin warmed at the compliment, and he grinned.

"I can write Jake's name too..."

"Let me see." Chris encouraged him. A little more confidently, Vin spelled out his Dad's name. But as he got to Parker, his expression darkened.

"I wisht he'd adopted me." he said softly, as he wrote out the name that was different from his own.

"Did he ever say why he didn't?" Chris asked. Vin shook his head.

"Never asked. Figured it had to be a really good reason. Maybe a really bad one..." He finished writing. "You was adopted?"

"Yeah, I didn't find out though till I was graduated from high school."

"Y'ever meet your born folks?"

Chris thought about his answer before he said it. "Yeah, I've met ‘em. They're good people. Had me when they were too young, and wanted a better life for me." He was about to ask Vin about his own ‘born folks' when they heard a vehicle pulling up the driveway. Nettie's suburban came into view in the firelight. Chris stood up to open the door for her and give her a hand out. Vin stood too.

"Came to see how you're holdin' up." Nettie told him, then demanded of Chris "You're not lettin' him spend the night down here alone are you?"

"I tried Nettie..."

"I'll be okay." Vin assured her. "I need to be in my own place..." Nettie gave him a ‘we'll see' look, then ran her eyes over the campsite.

"You had some supper then?" she asked when she saw the plastic bag and travel mugs. Vin hadn't known her very long, still he guessed that most of the answers he could give her right now weren't going to make her happy.

"Mary sent it down." Chris told her.

"All right then." Apparently if a woman's hand was involved, it had to be okay.

"Vin, I'm gonna head back to the house..." Chris picked up the bag and cups. "I'll check on you before I turn in for the night."

"Okay Chris, thanks..."

"Night Nettie."

"Good night Chris." Nettie took the empty chair as Chris walked back home. She looked at Vin. "How you holding up honey? You've had a rough couple of days, haven't you?"

"A week ago we was in Reno." Vin said, for no apparent reason. "Jake knows a guy runs a junk shop on Fourth Street. We stayed in real hotel there, with a real bathroom and everything." Nettie listened to him talk, wondering where he was going. "We was pullin' out one mornin', early. It was real bright out, and warm. Jake was sittin' in the truck, starin' out at the mountains. Then he just looked at me and said ‘what d'you say we head for Montana?'" He searched Nettie with his eyes a minute before asking: "What'd he come back for Nettie? What'd he run away from? What was it he left behind?"

He thought for a long moment that Nettie might just get up and leave, and leave his questions unanswered. She held his gaze steady though, and settled herself more comfortably in the uncomfortable lawn chair. "Me." she said evenly. "At least it's me he ran away from. I don't know what he came back for, and I don't think he rightly knows either." Vin still held the writing stick in his hand and he tapped it on the ground a few times, gathering his courage.

"Tell me about the baby?"

Nettie looked like maybe she was regretting stopping here after all. "He was Jake's, if that's what you're asking." Vin nodded. "I was fifteen and Jake was seventeen." She smiled finally, then. "Lord, my mother nearly busted a gut when I told her. Jake's Dad though, he was strong and steady throughout. Said he'd support whatever we decided. Said if we chose to be married, I'd be welcome in his home. But..." she let out a long sigh. "It woulda been foolishness at that age to take on that much responsibility. Jake was gettin' set to go to college, I had to finish high school...so I was shipped off to Billings for the summer to live with an uncle who was a lawyer. He took care of the adoption."

"Adoption?" Vin was confused. "You said the baby died."

"No..." Nettie shook her head.

"You said you lost him right after he was born."

"I did - they took him away from me while I was still under the anesthetic. He was placed with a family in Billings and I never saw him." Her eyes teared up but she made no move to brush them away. "Jake and I tried to hang on, but after his father died, Jake had to go to work and give up on school. He started drinking, and we started fighting. Finally we stopped speaking to each other entirely. I waited I guess, kept hoping Jake'd sober up and settle down. But he never did. Then I went away to college back East and when I came back, Jake was a total stranger. A few years after that he moved out of Montana and I didn't see him again until yesterday."

"He never wrote you?" Vin asked, thinking maybe Jake had kept it secret from him.

"Never a word. I didn't think I'd ever see him again." She said. "I don't know what brought him back to Montana, but I'm grateful he's here. And I'm glad you came with him honey. All these years I wondered what he was doing, how he was doing. I'm glad he's got himself such a fine son."

Vin felt himself blush in the firelight, and he leaned forward to throw more wood on the fire to hide it. Sitting back, he asked: "Y'ever see him? Y'ever meet your little boy?" She nodded.

"A few years back. He's not so little anymore." She looked at Vin a while longer. "Will you be all right here by yourself? Hate to leave you here alone."

"I'll be okay. Chris said he'd check on me, ‘n said I could come up to the house anytime iffen I need to." He gestured to Ethel. "This is my home, has been better'n twenty years. I'll be fine."

"Allright honey, I'll let you get some sleep then." Nettie stood up. Vin followed her to her truck and opened the door for her. Before climbing in, she gave Vin a hug and a kiss. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Thanks for telling me everything." Vin said before he shut the truck door. "Reckon it couldna been easy for you." She touched his face and didn't say anything. Then she shut the truck door and Vin watched her back down the driveway and head into town.

"A week ago we was in Reno..." he said again.

PART TWENTY-FOUR

Vin sat and stared at the dwindling fire until he heard Chris coming back down the driveway. Then he pushed his whirling thoughts aside to stand up and make like he was getting ready for bed, so Chris wouldn't think he needed to sit with him any longer. He broke the fire apart and picked up some stray litter.

"You gettin' set for the night?" Chris asked when he came around Ethel.

"Yeah..." and Vin did feel the weariness finally. "Been a long day. Been a long weekend. Can't remember when so many good and bad things happened to me in such a short space of time."

"Sounds like a first date." Chris said, then - thinking of Vin's experience with that Charlotte - wished maybe he hadn't said it. But Vin laughed.

"Ain't that the truth...this is already better than my last first date though -" he indicated the fading brush burn and bruises. "No broken bones..." A high whistling wind blew past them suddenly, and Vin turned his head as though trying to watch it in the darkness. It was a mournful sound and Chris made a decision.

"I don't like you being so close to the road at night. You come up to the house." He watched down the road too. The black night made even the mountains invisible.

"I can take care a'myself Chris. Got our guns..."

Chris abruptly bit off his Sheriff's instinct to ask to see the registration of those guns - and anyway, he was pretty sure he wasn't worried about Vin's physical safety.

"It's warmer in the house, can take another shower if you want..." Chris felt bad about this next part, but it was the truth. "And the hospital has my phone number if they need to reach you. You'd be closer if they call." Even in the fading light of the fire, he could seen Vin frown. He added: "I'm sure they won't, Jake looked set for the night. I'd just feel better with you under my roof."

Vin's refusal was set on automatic pilot and he heard himself saying again: "No, thanks. I'm fine down here -" just as his brain was sending him the picture of sleeping in an actual house, where it was probably warm all night, and it didn't matter what you heard outside because whatever it was couldn't get in. And thank God Chris got that scowl on his face like Jake did whenever you told him something he didn't like hearing.

"You're spending the night at my house, now grab your gear and let's go."

And Vin nodded and said "Okay..." He bundled some things together inside Ethel, clothes, shaving kit, antibiotics and painkillers, and the two headed up the long driveway to the house. They walked mostly in silence, Chris mostly because his mission was accomplished - get Vin to the house - so nothing more had to be said. Vin mostly kept quiet because he found he was actually comfortable walking with Chris with no words between them. He never liked talking to people that much, and to be able to not have to do it was a relief.

He'd never had a friend, not really. There'd been kids at some of the schools that he'd hang around with, misfits like him. But nobody who'd come to Ethel, nobody who invited Vin to their house. Never a birthday party, or a pool party, and sure never any graduation parties. So he'd clung to Jake as the one person in the world who wanted him around, and gradually stopped trying, stopped even wanting friends.

But here he was, walking alongside this man who was insistent that Vin stay in his home overnight. And Vin found that he just couldn't get it straight in his mind how this had happened. One week he'd been driving along the Sierra mountains, just him and Jake and Ethel. Now here he was, his world suddenly expanded with a dozen or more people, each one who seemed happy to know him and want him around. It was more than he could figure out.

As they came within the circle of light from the porch of Chris' house, Vin turned to him. "Y'know, I ain't this good-lookin' in the mornin'."

Chris laughed. "Oh yeah? For our month anniversary, Mary got me a coffee cup that says ‘good morning grumpy'."

It wasn't a guest room as much as a family office with a very comfortable couch. Mary settled Vin in with pillows and blankets, Chris stood in the doorway and watched her try to make up a bed all the while Vin insisted he could do it and don't go to any trouble and please, and it was that last word that finally got to her and she relented. She wished him goodnight, and Chris said he'd be right up as she walked past him out of the room.

"If you need anything y'know, help yourself. Fridge, coffee, more blankets in the closet across the hall." Chris thought that Vin was looking a little lost in strange surroundings, clutching a pillow in his arms. Missing his Dad, missing the one person who made his life make sense somehow. "I'll take you to the hospital tomorrow." Chris said it again so Vin wouldn't head out on his own and end up God-knew-where lost in Billings.

"...'kay. I'se gonna hit the store first, get him a get-well card, a balloon ‘r somethin'. Was gonna see Ezra ‘bout...things..." he didn't want to mention the money again, didn't want Chris to think he was frettin' about it.

"Okay, we'll get it worked out tomorrow at breakfast. Get some sleep now."

"I will...thanks Chris." and Chris shut the door over and Vin kicked off his boots to lay down, still in his clothes. And one unending day finally did end as Vin instantly fell asleep.

+ + + + + + +

He woke up to unfamiliar sights, sounds, and smells. Jake ain't makin' the coffee, there's other people talkin', ain't in Ethel. Then he heard a little boy's voice - Billy - shouting a question, followed by Chris - "shh, Vin's sleeping in there." and a too gleeful:

"Did he get hurt again?"

"No, just spent the night since his Dad's in the hospital..." which obviously disappointed the child. Vin rolled himself off the couch and stretched as he stood, feeling the start of a headache. One more ache to add to the list. He wondered if Billy would feel better to know that Vin still felt like he'd been hit by a truck.

Vin pulled his boots on, used the bathroom, and headed downstairs. He wished now that he'd brought his sling with him. Have to stop at Ethel and get it ‘fore he went to the hospital. He listened to the voices again, he'd go to whichever room Chris was in.

+ + + + + + +

When Chris heard Vin up and moving around, he put on a pot of water for tea and popped some toaster waffles in the oven while calling to Billy to put his dishes in the sink if he was done with his breakfast.

"Mornin'..." Vin said shyly as he walked through the little dining room and stopped in the archway to the kitchen. He had his hands shoved in his jeans pockets and he stared at the floor.

"Hey Vin - how'd you sleep?" Chris watched one shoulder shrug.

"...'kay. Slept all night." His eyes didn't leave the floor.

"I got tea on..." Chris said, taking cups out of the dish rack and milk out of the fridge. Vin still looked a little lost. He'd obviously slept in his clothes, and he obviously was not comfortable standing there. "You like waffles?"

"Yeah..." Vin sounded as though he had no idea why Chris might be asking.

"Good, they'll be ready in a minute or so. Mary'll be headin' off to work pretty soon, taking Billy to daycare." He walked past Vin to put the cups and milk on the table and called out "Billy, I'm not kidding about those dishes."

"Okay." an uhappy voice answered from upstairs, followed by footsteps and a blur of small child appeared, grabbed dishes, and made for the kitchen sink.

"Don't - you - dare." Chris growled as Billy got set to fling the plate, silverware and glass to their destination. Instead he stopped moving long enough to place them carefully then tore off again upstairs. "Kids..." Chris said. He opened the oven to check on the waffles. Vin hadn't moved from his spot in the archway.

"Vin - you wanna get the syrup out of the cupboard there -" He gestured over his shoulder. "And the butter's in the door in the fridge..."

"Sure..." Vin did as he was asked. He'd rather be down at Ethel, drinking cold coffee and day old biscuits than standing here about to have breakfast with Chris. Well, he wantedto have breakfast with Chris, but what was he gonna talk about? What was he supposed to do? Why were simple things always so hard?

"And a couple plates out of the dishwasher?" Normally, Chris wouldn't ask a friend to help get breakfast ready, but Vin looked so darn uncomfortable standing there, he hoped it'd ease him a little to have something to do.

"Sure..." Vin was surprised, and a little proud, that Chris treated him like an old friend in his house. Letting him help, acting like it was the most natural thing in the world that Vin would be puttering in his kitchen. He got the plates and screwed up his courage to take a couple knives and forks too and went to set the table.

Another minute or so later Chris set a plate overloaded with waffles on the table. "You go ahead and start Vin." he told him. "I'm gonna say goodbye to Mary and Billy." Vin could hear Billy roaring down the stairs and out the front door, and the quieter voices of Mary and Chris as they walked out onto the porch together, Mary calling goodbye to Vin.

"Bye..." Vin called back, not wanting to just tack her name onto the farewell. Chris was back in a few minutes.

"Sometimes I think I should apologize to his teachers before I leave him for the day..." he said as he began his own breakfast.

"He don't like school?" Vin asked. Nothin' worse for a kid than to hate school seein's they force you to go.

"No, he loves it. He's non-stop questions, boundless energy, everything is ‘why?' ‘how come?' ‘are you sure?' It'll be starting up again soon. Few weeks."

"In August?"

"Yep, make up for all the snow days..."

"We was drivin' to Indiana once, from Buffalo..." Vin said, grateful for a snow-related incident he could offer. "Meet up with a friend of Jake's, said he needed us to come out there fast as we could. Well, there was a blizzard all the way from the New York/Pennsylvania border to Cleveland, jack-knifed tractor trailers, cars in the ditch. Then when we got to Cleveland the front axle broke. So we got that fixed then the heater shut down. Which wouldn't have been so bad except the driver's window decided to jam halfway up. By the time we got to Valparaiso, we was freezing, wet, and un-happy." He shook his head. "When we got to his friend's place, there was a note on the door: ‘sorry, had to go out of town...' Didn't know whether to laugh or slash his tires."

"I woulda slashed his tires." Chris said.

"Yeah, that was pretty high on my list too. We finally laughed about it."

"Not for awhile I bet."

Vin let out an amused sigh. "No, not for awhile...y'know I can take myself to the hospital. I hate to put y'out anymore'n I have."

"You haven't put me out any, and Jake'd never forgive me if I let you get lost in Billings - besides, I want to see him again too." That last was added quietly, and Vin saw in his eyes that Chris was worried about Jake too.

"Okay...he'll be glad to see you."

PART TWENTY-FIVE

Vin parked his truck in front of the grocery store in town and headed inside to get a get-well card for Jake. He'd stopped by Ethel for his sling and put it on now as he passed through the swinging doors. Scanning the signs over the aisles wouldn't be any help to direct him and he wandered up and down, until he wandered into the aisle that had greeting cards tucked in between housewares and school supplies. He looked for the tell-tale graphics of bandages, bedpans or nurses that would indicate he was looking in the right spot. There were a few, and Vin looked them over, trying to make out what they said, but put them back.

He scanned the rack again, and his eyes caught one that had a picture of the road up to Beartooth Pass. The caption inside was brief, one line, and Vin couldn't read it, but Jake would know that Vin hadn't picked it out for what it said. In a burst of pride at Chris telling him how well he'd written his name out the night before, Vin decided he'd buy a pen and write his own little note. It wouldn't be long, but it'd be his own. That'd make Jake real happy.

The school supplies were just a few steps away from the greeting cards. Vin picked out a cheap pen and went to check out. There was a lady ahead of him, and Vin waited in line, trying to think of what he wanted to say to Jake. ‘git wel soon' didn't seem like enough, but what he really wanted to say was more than he'd ever be able to write by himself. Maybe Chris would help him - tell him how it should be wrote out, all the letters and such. That'd surprise Jake.

As he memorized snatches of words he wanted to write Jake, Vin became aware of whispering near him. Turning his head down as though reading the card he held in his good hand, he turned his attention to the sound. He caught some words here and there. He couldn't say for positive that they were whispering about him, but he'd been whispered about enough in his life that even the sound of it hit a nerve in him.

His turn came at the register. The cashier smiled at him and said ‘hi' a little more enthusiastically than she needed to, and asked if he'd found everything. Vin nodded silently, conjured a smile, and dug the money out of his jeans pocket. He could still hear whispers, and when he took the change and small paper bag from the cashier, Vin took a mental look at himself. The whorls in his fingers had engine grease imbedded in them, the kind that no amount of soap or scrubbing would take out. His shirt was wrinkled and untucked, his boots were old, worn, and cracked. He had his arm in a sling, and his face was still five shades of purple, yellow, and raw.

He couldn't say for positive they were whispering about him, but it hit a nerve.

The next stop on his foray into town was supposed to be to find Ezra's office and see if he had time to discuss money matters, then meet Chris at the Sheriff's office to drive to the hospital. Instead, Vin got into the truck, tossed the sling and paper bag into the passenger seat, and headed out of town. He'd had enough times in his life when the difference between him and regular people caught him by surprise and it hurt. When it was just him and Jake it never mattered if his clothes were wrinkled or faded, and having engine dirt under your fingernails just meant that you could fix your truck when you had to. But when it was him and other people, dirt was dirt, and stood you out as somehow not as good as regular people.

Not three miles out of town, Vin heard the familiar sound of his dragging muffler. He cursed and slammed the truck to a stop at the side of the road. One more stupid thing to go wrong that he didn't have time for. He crouched behind the truck bed to have a look, and he didn't like what he saw. The wire he'd used the other day to tie the muffler was broken and half missing, and he knew he had nothing else with him. He tried using the piece that still hung there but the muffler was hot and he burned his hand. Then he really cursed, stood up and kicked the side of the truck in anger and frustration.

He sank down onto the shoulder of the road beside the back wheel of the truck and buried his head in his arms.

+ + + + + + +

Ezra was headed back into Red Lodge from a police station in Billings after a long night of convincing the son of a friend of a friend of an ex-client that he ought to just admit he'd taken his neighbor's car out for a joyride and throw himself on her mercy before she threw him to the mercy of the courts. Phone calls in the middle of the night were never a pleasant experience in Ezra's lifetime, but the sound of an anxious mother desperate on her son's behalf struck him hard. So he'd given up a good night's sleep for no pay but happy results. Now here he was, at a time of the morning when he ought to be just getting settled in behind his desk at work, wanting nothing more than a hot shower and a comfortable bed.

That plan fell away as he came upon Jake and Vin's truck parked by the side of the road. It wasn't until he was past the truck that he saw Vin in the sideview mirror, all but hidden at the side of the road. Ezra slowed his car down and turned to park behind the truck. Vin lifted his head to see who was stopping, then stood as Ezra got out of his car, and brushed the dust off the back of his jeans.

"Mr. Tanner, what misfortune seems to have befallen you today?"

The word misfortune Vin knew all too well. "Muffler fell off, ran outta wire to tie it back up...burned my hand...gotta get back to the Sheriff's office so's Chris ‘n me can get to the hospital for visitin' hours..." he sounded tired and annoyed.

"Well, this is indeed your lucky day." Ezra said, enjoying the scowl Vin flashed him. "I happen to be exceedingly talented in the area of automotive repair. You will no doubt be amazed at the speed with which I am able to restore your means of transportation to its former glory..." With that he brought out of his jacket pocket a small object that Vin would've thought was a black Pez dispenser until Ezra pulled the antenna and dialed a number on impossibly small buttons.

"Hello - Yosemite? This is Ezra Standish. I'm standing with a friend, oh shall we say three miles outside of town, and he is in immediate need of assistance with his truck...his muffler has attempted to go AWOL...that would be most kind of you sir. We shall await your arrival." Another teeny button was pushed, the antenna tucked back into place, and the phone restored to the jacket pocket. Ezra smiled at Vin's slightly bemused expression. "Surely Mr Tanner, life has taught you this one truth - it is rarely what you know, it is almost always who you know...Yosemite is our local automotive pedagogue. He assured me that he will be here within the half hour."

"Thanks Ezra. Wasn't lookin' forward to the walk back t'town." Vin shoved his hands in his jeans pockets and kicked at the pebbles at his feet. If he'd been by himself, he woulda picked a few of the shiny ones up to add to his collection in the coffee can.

"I'm grateful that I was able to be of assistance...how bad is the burn on your hand?"

"Ahh, not bad." Vin pulled that hand out of his pocket and looked at it. "Got no blister, more exasperatin' than anythin' else...y'don't gotta wait, y'know. Iffen y'don't want."

"I'd be honored if you'd allow me to keep you company." Ezra said, without so much as a mental glance at his hot shower and comfortable bed. The surprised but grateful smile that Vin rewarded him with was worth the extra hour it would take Ezra to recover his lost sleep.

"Appreciate it Ezra. I'se sittin' on the ground over there..." then he considered his offer. "Reckon y'ain't the kind to sit on the ground though..." Vin figured he was too dusty to sit in Ezra's snappy little Miata and decided to offer taking down the tailgate of the truck. But Ezra beat him to it.

"I assure you Mr. Tanner that while I may present myself as a gentleman who comes no closer to terra firma than is absolutely necessary, I can - when the need arises - adapt myself to a more earthen milieu..." As he spoke, they turned to settle themselves next to the side of the truck.

Vin squinted his bad eye near shut and gave Ezra a look. He had a headache, his shoulder ached, his muffler was dead, the burn on his hand throbbed, and he was just too tired to ask for a polite translation of what he'd just heard. "Ezra - I bet, if you was to try real hard, you'd find at least a coupla teeny little words got shuffled to the bottom a'that pile of big ones you's always usin'...ain't heard so many words I can't get my hands around since we was huntin' that big fella in Iowa claimed he was incarnatin' Julius Caesar ‘r some old dead guy like that. Jake finally shut him up by recitin' him the Lord's Prayer in Latin..."

The long sentence caught Ezra at a loss. He stopped talking, attempting to form in his mind all of the images that Vin's sentence evoked. "Well, I congratulate you Mr. Tanner." he said as he attempted to get comfortable on the rocky ground. "It isn't often that I'm rendered speechless."

"Y'can call me Vin...most folks do..." Vin thought of the whispers in the grocery store, and the words he hadn't been able to make out. "Lessen they're callin' me something I can't repeat in front of other folks."

"Perhaps calling into question your mother's marital status at the time of your birth?" Ezra offered from his own past.

"Don't know - what's ‘tran-zint' mean?"

"Transient? It means someone who moves around a lot. Someone with no fixed address." Ezra watched Vin's shoulders sag and guessed that the word had been used against him. "It is in the same family as the words transfer, transit, traffic, trapeze, trajectory - implying movement."

"Y'mean like ‘bum'?" Vin asked, his eyes on the pebbles.

"More like ‘hobo' I daresay...has someone used this word in your hearing?" Ezra asked gently.

"Not today, not here in town. Coupla months ago I guess. Got bit by a dog, down in North Platte. Heard ‘em talkin' about me in the Emergency Room, when I had to get a tetanus shot. They seemed real embarassed when they figured I heard ‘em. Just wondered what they was sayin'." He ran his fingers through the pebbles and picked out the shiniest ones to roll between his hands.

"Why didn't you ask your father?"

"Jake tells me I shouldn't let stuff like that get to me. ‘Sides, I thought it meant - y'know - a funny cowboy."

Ezra smiled and held back a chuckle at the deep blush that crossed Vin's face as he furiously rolled the pebbles in his hands.

"No Vin, that would not be the word for funny cowboy...I can understand words like that getting to you though...I have been on the receiving end of many such ignominious appellations in my lifetime." and Vin squinted at him again, making a "tiny" gesture with his thumb and forefinger.

"Little words Ezra, I know they're apt to slip by you, they're so small, but you must gotta couple in there."

"I shall try to remember that..." Ezra offered a smile that didn't last and took a deep breath as he gazed down the long road back to town. "Did you enjoy traveling so much when you were a child?"

"Usually, I reckon. Sometimes I wished we had a real house, so's we didn't move around all the time, so's I'd know the same kids from one birthday to the next."

"And what did Jake ever say when you told him?"

"Oh - I'd never tell him that." Vin said, almost desperate. "He took me in ‘n kept me when he didn't have to. Went through a lotta hard times with me - ‘n most was what I put him through. As long as he takes me with him, I go with Jake...not much else in my life that matter more'n that."

"I myself was not so fortunate in my youthful peregrinations - travels -" Ezra amended. "When circumstances became too onerous - troublesome - my mother would leave me on the doorstep of whichever aunt, uncle, cousin, friend, or government establishment she could find."

"Oh -ner - us." Vin committed the word to memory. "Too bad we didn't cross paths some time ‘r other Ezra. You coulda come with me ‘n Jake...real sorry though that your Mom did that to you. Jake coulda dumped me anytime he wanted, never even threatened me with it."

"Well..." Ezra didn't want to sound quite so harsh on his mother. "Perhaps, it was harder for single mother at that time than it was for a single father...I'm sure she did her best with me. As best as she knew how in any event." A dozen painful images played out in his mind, and he pushed them away, and said brightly: "And I survived, even prospered."

"...'prosper' ain't the same as ‘thrive' though, is it?" Vin asked. Ezra was nearly rendered speechless a second time by Vin's observation.

"No, it is definitely not the same."

"I ain't sayin' y'ain't done well for yourself...can see that..." he nodded to Ezra's car. "...just hope you're doin' as well inside as y'are outside." Vin was afraid then that he'd been rude. "I just know what it's like, makin' like everythin's okay on the outside, when inside your just as hollow as a loaf a'bread raised up too fast...I know what that feels like, hate to think a' anybody else feelin' that way...like everybody else is runnin', tellin' you you gotta run too, only they don't know how it takes all you got just to not lose ground, much less make gain on it..."

Something in the feeling of what Vin said sounded familiar to Ezra. He stood up silently and went to his car, leaving Vin to wonder if he'd said too much and drove the lawyer away. But Ezra leaned in through his open driver's window, and came back to sit next to Vin. He handed over a medicine bottle.

"What's this?" .

"Prozac." Ezra told him. "I ‘don't leave home without it'. You might want to have a little chat with one of the Doctors Jackson about it's appropriateness for your own depression."

"I ain't depressed." Vin said, confused. "Mighta been once, a few years ago...ain't as bad as it was..." He shook the bottle and watched the little green and yellow caplets dance. "What's it like though, takin' it?"

"It is as though the tide is suddenly with you." Ezra said, and Vin gave him a wide-eyed look.

"Yeah..." Couldn't be just a little pill'd make that happen. "That's it exactly."

"Well..." Ezra took the bottle back and dropped it into his shirt pocket. "It would appear that we have more in common than our transient backgrounds." He smiled, then turned his head slightly to the sound of a large truck heading down the road. "If I'm not mistaken, Yosemite is fast approaching us. If he feels it necessary to remove your conveyance to his establishment for repairs, I'll be happy to escort you wherever you were initially bound." At the first sign of another squint from Vin, Ezra translated: "Let me drop you off at the Mr. Larabee's office?"

"Oh, no thanks Ezra. Sittin' on this ground, I'd be too dusty, don't wanna get your car all grimed up."

"I daresay you can't be a particle more begrimed than I am at this moment - and anyway, I have a client who pays me by detailing my car whenever necessary. You would be doing me a favor."

"Well, okay then. ‘Preciate it. Reckon Chris'll be wonderin' where I got to."

+ + + + + + +

Sure enough, when Vin walked into the Sheriff's office, carrying his sling and paper bag,and the little canvas bag of Jake's gear, Chris looked concerned and relieved. "Thought maybe you headed off without me...was about to go haul you back in for not waiting."

"Naah..." Vin took a second to recall exactly what Ezra had coached him to say. "I was unavoidably delayed by a not-unexpected set-back in my previous attempts at automotive repair..."

And Chris squinted at him.

PART TWENTY SIX

Chris wasn't ready to leave for the hospital yet, still had work to do at his desk, and Vin wandered the lobby of the Sheriff's Office, looking at the wanted posters. "Don't have to worry about this one no more." he called over his shoulder to where JD sat behind his computer. "Washed up outta Lake Ontario last Memorial Day."

"Really?" JD came over to look at the poster Vin pointed out.

"Well, most of him anyway. Enough to identify...poor kid who found him probably still got nightmares..." Vin wandered some more, checking faces, and JD took the poster over to his desk to make some calls and confirm what Vin said.

As Vin walked, he absently tapped the little paper bag against his leg. After awhile, he remembered what he had in there and why, and he sat in one of the heavy wood captains chairs that lined the walls. Chris was busy and there might not be time to write the card out before they got to the hospital, and anyway, Vin sure wasn't going to ask for help in front of JD. He ripped open the cardboard and plastic box the pen was in and set the card on his knee.

What did he want to say? What did he want to say that he could set down in unsteady letters. He loved Jake - but he hadn't committed that to paper since he was about eight. Jake was his hero and his friend and his teacher. He knew Jake was the reason he was still alive at all. Jake was his Dad...Vin didn't know - even if he knew writing like he knew tracking - he didn't know how he'd ever get all of what that meant down on a little piece of paper.

"Hey, you're right." JD called over, hanging up the phone. "That guy is dead...I'm glad you spotted that." He came over to rearrange the remaining wanted posters. "What have you got there?" he asked, indicating the card.

"Get Well card for Jake." Vin told him. "Tryin' t'think of what to say..." JD's face darkened a little.

"I used to give cards to my Mom when she was sick - you can kinda run out of things to say... she died..." he added.

"Real sorry..." Vin told him. "My Mom died when I'se five..."

"My Mom had leukemia. She hung on a long time, nearly two years..." JD shook his head.

"Mine OD'd on heroin..." Vin hoped he didn't sound like he was trying to one-up JD or anything. "Been with Jake ever since..."

"You're lucky..." JD took a chair near Vin, adjusting his holster to sit comfortably. "I was lucky too, Buck took me in. Woulda had to move East, ‘Bahston'" He mocked the pronunciation. "Y'ever been to Boston? They got streets that go north south east and west, and all headed in exactly the same direction."

Vin nodded. "Yeah, we been there a few times. Jake said somebody told him the streets was laid out by followin' a cow - and the cow was on fire..." They laughed and Vin felt comfortable enough to ask. "What about Framingham? What the hell's with that fence all the down the middle of the road? We had t'drive about five miles just to get to the gas station right next to the motel. Then we was drivin' to Hingham, ‘bout a hour away - got so lost took us four hours...just what the hell is that?"

JD laughed harder. "My aunt in Boston always says ‘If you don't know where you are, you don't belong here.'" "Yeah, well no shit Sherlock!" and they laughed together some more.

+ + + + + + +

Chris came to the door of his office when he heard the laughter. He was glad to see Vin and JD getting along. He still intended to get Vin to be a Deputy. It'd take a while, till he got his GED at least, but it was good to know that the two young men got along already. He was just about ready to head to the hospital, but he went back into his office and waited awhile, letting Vin and JD have their laugh.

+ + + + + + +

When he thought the coast was clear, Chris went out to Vin, who still sat in the chair along the wall. "About ready?"

"Yep..." Vin looked up from the card. He hadn't written anything yet.

"Card for Jake?" Chris asked.

"Yeah, just...havin' trouble with what I wanna say...y'know...how to put it down..."

"Let me help you?" Chris knew exactly what Vin meant. He also knew what it meant when Vin's eyes went toward JD.

"Umm...."

"C'mon back in my office, we can get it figured out."

"Thanks..." Vin stood up and followed Chris into his office. Chris shut the door behind them and motioned Vin to a small round table in the corner.

"You want me to write it for you?" he asked then.

"Well...I just thought...maybe y'could spell me the letters? I'd sure like to write it out for myself."

Chris knew he didn't deserve it, but he felt kinda proud of Vin for wanting to write it out himself, and for maybe the tiniest possibility that it was because of their conversation last night at the fireplace. "That'd be great. Jake'll really like that." They sat at the table together. "What card did you get?" and Vin held it out to him.

"Don't know what it says for sure...but I like the picture of the road...what DOES it say?" Chris took it from him and had a look. It was the road up to Beartooth Pass, taken in winter. Off to one side a figure could be seen on snowshoes, headed up the Pass. He smiled and read the caption out loud.

"It's not the circumstances that matter, but what's in your heart..." he turned his smile up to Vin. "You picked a real good card there..." and Vin smiled too, embarrassed but proud, the blush taking some of the color out of his bruises. He looked down again, and when he didn't say anything else, Chris prompted: "So, what do you want to say in the card?"

"Not sure. All kinds a' stuff I reckon. I mean - it ain't like it took nearly losin' him to make me think on all the good stuff I had with him. Just thinkin' - - how close I came to missin' out sayin' goodbye to him..." He shook his head and readjusted the pen in his hand. "Reckon that'd just be the worst..." then it hit him who he was talking to and what Chris had suffered. "Sorry - didn't mean to go on like that...ain't often my mouth works faster than my brain..." He set the card on the table and smoothed it out unnecessarily just for something to do.

"It's okay." Chris said, and meant it. "Most folks don't get to say goodbye..."

Vin wanted to get past the moment as fast as possible. "So anyway, I don't know what t'say...don't want t'get too sappy. Y'know? Don't want to not say enough neither..." Chris pondered the problem.

"When you thought you lost him, was there anything in particular you wished you could've said to him? Something you figured you'd never get the chance to?" and it was Vin's turn to ponder. Those moments in the clinic, when he was sure Jake was gone, came rushing back, frighteningly real.

"Just wanted him to know that I'm glad he's my Dad, never had no other, never wanted no other Dad...don't matter if he adopted me or not. He's my Dad..."

Chris saw the love and pride in Vin. "Jake's real lucky he's got you. I can see why he's real proud of you..." Vin ducked his head again.

"I ain't always somethin' t'be proud of..."

"Nobody is Vin...long as the good outnumbers the bad...Jake's got a right to be proud of you." But he didn't want to embarrass Vin so much that he couldn't get another word out of him, so he said "Jake sent me a card when Adam was born, I think that might do fine for you..." he told Vin what he had in mind and when Vin said he liked it, Chris wrote it out on a piece of paper for him to copy onto the card.

While Vin worked on that, Chris went back to his desk to get a little more of his own work done. He glanced at Vin every once in a while to gauge his progress. Part of him wanted to smile for the concentration and seriousness in Vin's face as he painstakingly copied each individual letter - a bomb could go off in the next office, and Vin probably wouldn't even notice. But another part of Chris felt bad for Vin, that somehow he'd missed out on what should've been just a basic part of his education, what should be the simplest thing in the world for such an intelligent man to do. He couldn't begin to imagine what Vin must've suffered in his life for not knowing how to read.

Finally Vin sat back, rubbing his aching hand. "Well...it's done." he said it as though reporting that an execution had taken place.

"How's it look?" Chris asked.

"Like a ransom note..."

Chris looked at it over his shoulder. "You did real good." he said, with honest enthusiasm. "Jake's gonna love that. C'mon, you ready?"

"Yeah, just remind me to put the sling back on, ‘fore we get to Jake's room. Don't need him gettin' in a huff over that..."

"Allright..." they left Chris' office, heading for the front door. "JD, we'll be back in awhile, hold the fort."

"OK Chris. Vin - say hi to Jake for me."

"I will..."

And they got in Chris' truck and drove to the hospital.

PART TWENTY-SEVEN

Vin watched out the window of the truck, the trip from Red Lodge to Billings looked different in the daylight, different when he wasn't desperate to get to the hospital and watching the lights of the ambulance disappear into the darkness. He held Jake's bundle of necessities tucked under his bad arm, keeping it safe as much as using it for a rest. His eyes noted the buildings and landmarks they passed, hoping he wouldn't need to remember them more than another few days.

"When we get back home, I'll give you a key to the cabin." Chris told him, when they were about halfway to the city. "Getcha some firewood too, till y'get the heat and electricity turned on."

"That'd be good." Vin said. He tugged at a button on his shirt and looked out the window again before turning to Chris. "Never lived in a house, not so's I remember anyway. Lived in cabin Jake said. That was where my Mom died. She choked to death, maybe Jake told you anyway..."

"He told me about it the other day...hard way to lose somebody..."

"Don't recollect it being so nice as your cabin." Vin hurried past talking about his mother. "Guess it was one room, coupla beds...stupid commune..." Chris wondered what was behind that last remark

"Do you remember it at all?" Chris asked.

"I remember walkin' on stones, hurt my feet. Didn't have no shoes, not till Jake come n'he got me some. Traded somebody for ‘em I think. Never was barefoot after that." and his eyes turned back outside, and Chris' mind produced the sudden image of a young Jake wrangling socks and shoes onto the small feet of a small child. He remembered the times Adam had given him grief, wanting to be barefoot in all weather and situations, curling his toes and squealing his disapproval. Chris let out a chuckle of amusement and Vin turned to him. "What?"

"Oh - I was just thinking of Adam. We made the mistake of not putting shoes on him till he started walking. You woulda thought we were torturing him the way he acted every time we put shoes on his feet. Finally got used to ‘em though."

"I liked havin' shoes when I was a kid. Shoes meant something, y'know?" Vin frowned and tried to form the feeling into words. A lotta places he'd been to, shoes meant you were somebody, and had somebody to watch out for you. Shoes on your feet meant you weren't just another ragged, nameless kid with no hope. "Don't know how to explain it..."

"Yeah, I know what you mean." Chris said. For Vin, he figured it meant somebody - Jake - cared about him the way no one else did.

Chris urged his truck just a little faster down the highway toward the hospital and Jake.

+ + + + + + +

Walking through the doors of the hospital, Vin was reminded again of the difference between himself and the people around him. The other people in the hallways and behind the desks wore clean uniforms and business suits, hair combed and faces shaved. Clean fingernails. He thought about tucking his shirt in, but figured it wouldn't make much of a difference. With Jake's bundle and the card tucked under his right arm, Vin curled his left hand into the sling, and tucked his right hand into his jeans pocket to hide his stained fingers. He kept his head down to avoid looking at the people they walked past. Just get to Jake's room. That's all he wanted.

Vin felt Chris keep pace beside him, heading for the elevators and ICU. He wondered how Jake would look this morning. The image of him gray and helpless last night still hung on Vin's memory. The last look back to see him lying in the hospital bed, surrounded by tubes and wires and blinking, beeping machinery before Chris gently led him away. God please, don't let him look like that this morning.

+ + + + + + +

They stopped outside of ICU and Chris pressed the intercom to be admitted. Vin followed a step or two behind Chris, gearing himself up for whatever waited him in room #3. As it was, it didn't prepare him for what he did see - Jake sitting up in chair beside the bed, alert and in good color, and his face lit up when he saw his son.

"Vin!"

"Dad -" Vin was surprised, relieved, confused, and grateful all at once. "You're all better..."

"Naah - arm..." Jake indicated his left arm, laying across his chest. "Numb." He lifted his right arm to Vin. "C'mere..." and Vin went to him and got a hug in greeting. "Hey Chris." he said as Vin stood up again. His words came out stiffly.

"Hey Jake. Good to see you upright again."

"No choice. Damn nurses. Doin' better?" the last was aimed at Vin.

"Yeah Dad, I'm OK...got somethin' for you..." Vin set the bundle on the bed and started to hand the card to his Dad. He took stock though of Jake's one-handedness and slid the card out of the envelope. "I wrote it myself and everything...Chris helped me..." Jake flashed Chris a look of gratitude before looking at the card.

"Hey - home..." he said of the mountains then opened it to read what had taken Vin nearly twenty minutes to write: ‘Any man can be a father , it takes a special man t0 be a Dad' Tears came to Jake's eyes and he looked up to find Vin watching him, worried what his reaction would be.

"I know it's kinda scratchy." Vin said. "Took my time, tried real hard...you like it?"

"I'm proud of you Vin." The words came out slow and measured. "Real proud...best present I ever got...lucky you're my son..." and Vin was so proud and relieved he leaned down to give Jake another hug. "Love you Vin..." Jake whispered, and over Vin's head, he nodded his thanks to Chris. "Best present I ever got." he said to them both.

+ + + + + + +

The fifteen minutes they were allowed - and the thirty minutes they took - went by too fast for Vin. He sat on the one other chair in the room close to Vin and filled him in on pretty much everything that he'd done since leaving the hospital the night before. "Then Chris said I should write my name out next to his and he said I did a real good job so then I wrote out yours too and he said that was real good too, too, and he said he'd help me learn to read if I wanted, or Buck too, ‘cause he's a teacher, or maybe you n' me could try again, I think maybe I could really do it now... Then Nettie came by to see how I was doin' and she stayed a little while and she was tellin' me --" here Vin's train of thought stalled as he quickly edited the conversation. " -- I should take care a'myself and maybe stay up at Chris' house for the night and then when she went back home Chris said I should come up to his house to be closer to the phone in case the hospital called, then this morning after me and Chris had waffles for breakfast and I was tellin' him about us goin' to Valparaiso, I was in town gettin' the card only the muffler fell off and Ezra was drivin' by and he called the garage for me and then we was talkin' and he traveled around a lot when he was a kid only I don't think he really liked it and I think he's tryin' real hard to still love his Mom even though it seems like she dumped him off a lot..."

Jake kept his eyes and his attention fixed firmly on his son, but the card slipped out of his fingers and as Vin bent down to pick it up for him - still talking - Jake smiled again at Chris.

+ + + + + + +

Finally a nurse came who was neither impressed nor intimidated by Chris' Sheriff's badge, and firmly shooed the two visitors out. Vin crouched down for one more hug, and Jake held him close and kissed the top of his head. "Come back." he said.

"I will Dad - I'll bring Nettie, okay?"

"Oh-kay." Jake said. Vin stood up and turned away, pretending he wasn't wiping his eyes, and Chris stepped closer to shake Jake's hand.

"Don't give the nurses too much trouble Jake...do what they say and come home soon..."

"Thanks Chris." Jake's eyes went from Chris to Vin and back. "For everything."

PART TWENTY-EIGHT

It was harder for Vin to leave Jake this time than it had been the night before. He kept his eyes on his Dad through the glass until he couldn't see him anymore as he followed Chris through the double doors and down the hall to the elevators.

"You must be looking better." Chris said. "Not one nurse has tried to drag you off to the Emergency Room."

"Yeah..." though Vin paid scarce attention to what was said. He ran his hand over his healing brushburn and regarded his reflection in the polished elevator doors. Shaggy hair, needed a shave, wrinkled clothes, dirty hands, shirt untucked, old scuffed boots - and nearly illiterate. That part at least would be changing. He glanced at Chris' reflection, as the Sheriff looked up, counting the floors the elevator was advancing. Vin knew he'd learn how to read now. Whatever had challenged his ability before seemed to have withered under Larabee's glare and Vin knew he'd learn how now.

He stared at his reflection again. What about the rest? His mind started flying with possibilities. These weren't his best or his worst clothes, just his most comfortable. He had better clothes stashed in the drawer under the beds. Nearly new blue jeans, a white shirt, and a wool jacket he wore when he went to church. He could get a new pair of boots maybe, and maybe Nettie'd know about getting the grease stains out of his fingers. Now that they'd be moving into a real home, he could take a shower every day and do laundry whenever he needed to, not just when he could. He'd get a job and maybe finally put down roots, have friends. Finally be somebody.

"Mr. Tanner?" a voice disrupted Vin's thoughts. Both men turned to a doctor approaching them. "The nurse told me you were here...I'm Dr. Keelaghan, the neurologist. I wonder if I might have a word with you?" He offered his hand to Vin.

"I'm glad to meet you." Vin said as he shook hands, noting the difference between his own constantly dirty fingers, and the extreme cleaniless of the doctor's. "Umm...this is Chris..." and his mind blanked on how to further explain who Chris was. But the doctor and Sheriff shook hands and the doctor suggested they go to a quiet room just down the hall. Vin hung back a second, automatically waiting for Chris to go first, and followed down the bright and sterile hallway to a little room set up with uncomfortable chairs, and a phone and fake plant on a flakeboard end table. The doctor shut the door, and each man took a seat.

"I just wanted to give you an update on your Dad." Dr. Keelaghan started. "He's doing much better than we would've thought last night..." as he spoke, Vin took in an opinion of the doctor. He looked young, maybe even younger than Vin. Tall as Chris maybe, with dark neatly trimmed hair. Under his white jacket and stethoscope, he wore a clean light blue shirt, with a conservatively striped tie, dress pants and really shiny shoes. He used words that would put Ezra to shame - and he was talking as though he expected Vin to understand what he was saying.

"So, the CVA is resolving, and the only residual I expect him to have is the paraperesis of his left upper extremity. His speech has come back almost 100% and while I do want him evaluated by a Speech Therapist as well as a Physical and Occupational Therapist, I don't believe he'll be requiring extensive Rehab, and certainly no stay in a Rehab facility..." Vin nodded like he understood, figuring he'd ask Chris later on what exactly got said. "...so if you have any questions, feel free to call me..." then the brief discussion was over. They shook hands again, Vin and Chris thanked the doctor and went back to catch the elevator. Chris was saying something about how good Jake was doing as he pressed the lobby button, and Vin nodded and agreed with him. But he stared at his reflection again.

Even if he learned to read, it wouldn't change the rest. He was just a ragged, illiterate bounty hunter who'd never amount to anything more. He'd never be a doctor like the kid taking care of Jake. He'd never be a teacher or a lawyer or a Sheriff. Why try to change anything in his life? Why even bother trying to learn to read? Vin was ashamed for thinking just a few minutes ago that he might make his life into something better. He should just be happy with the life he had and not try to change it.

"Vin?"

"What?" he hadn't noticed that Chris was talking to him.

"Lunch? Since we're here, why don't we stop in the cafeteria for lunch?"

"Oh - sure. Yeah."

+ + + + + + +

Chris wondered if he was only imagining the sudden change in Vin. Something seemed to happen after they talked with the neurologist. Everything he'd said had been positive. Though maybe Vin hadn't been able to figure that out. Then Chris berated himself for thinking that. He might have trouble reading - but Vin wasn't a stupid man. He would understand what the doctor was saying. Still, as they entered the cafeteria and picked out their lunches from the nicely displayed sandwiches and sidedishes, the expression in Vin's eyes made Chris realize that he was looking at something entirely inside of himself.

"I've got it." Chris said as Vin started pulling out his wallet at the cashier's station.

"You drove." Vin pointed out.

"I'm older." Chris countered. He could see that Vin had no idea what difference that made, but he tucked his wallet away again and let Chris pay. He carried the tray and followed Chris to a table near the windows.

"Got something on your mind?" Chris finally asked after they'd both started eating.

"No." But the word dragged out hesitantly, weighing the question even as it was answered.

"Worried about Jake?"

"Yeah - but - that ain't what's chewin' on me..."

Chris waited, but Vin offered no more.

+ + + + + + +

Vin appreciated that Chris showed an interest in what was bothering him, but he didn't feel up to telling the Sheriff that he'd just about decided to forget learning to read. Didn't know if he was up to arguing all the little reasons why it didn't matter anyway. Better anyway, he'd only fail again like he did all those times before. Better to forget it now than to see the disappointment again in Jake's eyes, and Larabee's. Better to not want to be anybody other than who he already was.

As they ate in silence, Vin became aware of a lady watching him across the cafeteria. Her clothes told of money, said that she was upscale and probably not used to sharing her world with scruffy transients. Vin felt her stare on him and ignored it. He was used to it. Nearly used to it. Just like the women at the store this morning. Whispered questions, mistaken opinions. Being with the Sheriff, maybe she even thought he was under arrest or something.

Vin searched his mind for something to start a conversation with Chris, wanting to not pay attention to the stare. Just as he was about to ask Chris about his horses, he heard a voice, the woman's voice. "Excuse me? Are you - ?" The lady had come over to their table. Chris stood up, and Vin followed him a second later. "Are you Vin Tanner?"

Quickly searching his mind again, this time for anything he might not want to admit to, Vin nodded. "Yes ma'am." and found himself wrapped in a hug that took his breath away, as much from the surprise as the physical force behind it. "Uhh - ma'am?" His bruised ribs complained and his left arm bent in a way his shoulder didn't appreciate. "I think maybe you got me confused with somebody else..."

She finally pulled back, tears in her eyes. "We were going to drive into Red Lodge today, as soon the doctor said we could take Taylor out of here..." She spoke quickly, breathlessly. "We just couldn't leave without - there's just isn't anyway we can ever - you have no idea, until you have children of your own - and we waited so long - then to turn around have him not there - oh Mr. Tanner, anything at all that you want, you just ask...my husband and I both agree, there isn't anything..."

Four hospital volunteers walked past then, older ladies, with gray hair and matching mint green smocks. The lady grabbed them. "This is him!" She said, excited and still breathless. "Can you believe it? Right here! We were going to drive to Red Lodge..." Vin began to feel even more uneasy. This woman had him confused with somebody, though he couldn't figure who. As soon as she stopped to draw breath he'd try to explain it to her.

The volunteers added their admiration to this woman's. Vin looked to Chris for help, but the smile on Larabee's face said he understood what was going on - and knew that Vin didn't. "Ma'am - honest I don't know that you -"

"Here..." the lady pulled a newspaper out of her large purse. "Reverend Sanchez brought a copy of this to us yesterday. The doctor thought we could take Taylor home yesterday but he got a little fever and they said it would be better to keep him another night so we stayed here and we were going to come into Red Lodge as soon as..."

As she hurried on, offering him a folded newspaper, Vin heard the other women talking amongst themselves. Snatches of "baby" "mountain" "saved" "risked his own life" and it began to dawn on Vin what they were talking about. He took the newspaper and opened it to the front page.

There under a headline he couldn't make out, Vin saw a picture of himself from a few years before, a picture Jake had taken at the Badlands in North Dakota. He held the paper out to Chris.

"It was all of us..." Chris read the headline out loud. "Little boy rescued by visiting hero..." and he grinned at Vin.

"That was my son Mr. Tanner..." the lady explained, taking more breath with her sentences, maybe finally seeing that Vin hadn't been following her. "We can never thank you enough. My husband is upstairs with Taylor while I had some lunch...please come up and meet him. Or let me have him called down here. Please Mr. Tanner..." she took his hand - his stained, work-roughened hand - in her own. "We owe you more than we can ever repay." Vin stared at his shoes, embarassed that she was thinking he was more than he was. "Two of the volunteers here are from Red Lodge. They told me they saw you in the store this morning, but they didn't want to bother you...I'm sorry I don't mean to be bothering you either...but my son is everything to me..."

Vin looked up then, surprised that she might be thinking she was "bothering" him. "No Ma'am, y'ain't botherin' me." he wanted to reassure her. "I'd be proud to meet your husband. I'm just glad I'se part of the team that saved your little boy."

She hugged him again, just as hard, but this time, it didn't hurt.

PART TWENTY-NINE

Vin sat perched on the washing machine in the laundry room of Nettie's apartment above the restaurant. He held his left hand in a bowl of warm, soapy water, laced with bleach. His right hand Nettie held over the stationary tub, scrubbing his fingers with a worn brush.

"This oughta work honey. Bleach and Borax and a little elbow grease'll take out most anything..." She tried not to scrub too hard, but sometimes her determination got the best of her and she'd feel Vin's hand twitch "Sorry, honey. I'll try to be more careful."

"Don't mind, long as it comes off...they's real nice folks." Vin continued his story about meeting the little boy's parents at the hospital. "Treated me real nice..." his voice trailed off in wonder.

"Of course they treated you nice Vin..."

"...just like I was real folks..." Nettie stopped scrubbing his fingers then and Vin looked up at her to see what was going on. She scowled at him.

"Of course you're ‘real folks'. Just like everybody else." But his shook his head.

"I ain't like everybody else. Been a long time since I was..."

"And what's so different about you?" she asked. Her tone held an edge to it.

"I'se different is all..." he dropped his eyes to the bowl on his lap. Nettie took up her scrubbing again.

"Honey, I reckon there ain't so much different about you that you wouldn't find a half dozen people in this town, walkin' around carryin' the self-same affliction. Whatever it may be... You're a fine young man Vin Tanner, but you don't seem so all-fired important to me that the Good Lord mighta seen fit to afflict you like nobody else." She turned her head slightly to get a look at his face and intentions. "And don't even think about telling me your troubles without having at least one thing one your mind about how you aim to improve ‘em. Jake and me never got to raise our boy together, but it don't surprise me to see that he's been coddlin' you all this time..." She turned for another look at Vin's face, and she finally smiled.

"Told you y'could come to me if you needed a Mom, reckon I forgot to tell you I'd step into the post if it seemed like you needed it..." Her voice was softer now. "Reckon y'are different from a lotta folks Vin, the way gentle is different from tame, or the way free is different from lost. You got friends now and you know it. Still free, but y'aint lost."

Vin nodded, too moved to smile. "Yes Ma'am."

+ + + + + + +

It took awhile, and Vin's fingers didn't come as clean as the doctor's, but he was satisfied with the job Nettie did on them. He followed her down the stairs to the back hallway of the restaurant, through the pantry where she kept her bulk supplies, and out into the dining area. Buck sat at the counter, saying something to Casey that was making her blush and duck her head. Finally she swatted him on the arm and turned away.

"Hey Vin! How'd it turn out?" she called over. Nettie smiled at Vin, and patted his shoulder, giving him a unmistakable push in that direction as she headed behind the counter to begin her own work.

"Okay..." Vin held his hands up. "Reckon they ain't been so clean since I can remember."

"Our wounded hero." Buck greeted Vin. "C'mon, sit down." He patted the counter next to him. "I'll buy you a beer. Y'can help me convince Casey here not to pay JD any mind..."

"Well..." Vin crossed the floor to them, wondering what Buck was talking about. "If they's engaged, shouldn't she be payin' him some mind?" He took the swivel seat next to Buck. "I'd like a Pepsi, though."

"JD's dead-set on buying me an engagement ring." Casey explained, as she set a glass of soda pop in front of Vin. "I want to buy land. I don't need a ring to know we're engaged."

"And I'm tellin' her - that boy has got a

"Must be a way a'doin' both." Vin offered. "Land and a ring. There's plenty a' cheap rings out there...not cheap tacky, but y'know...thrift store, estate sales...pawn shops..." he popped his straw paper and took a long swallow of his drink. "Long as the feelin' is there...shouldn't matter what the ring costs..." Then he twirled his straw paper between his fingers, staring hard at his work.

"Thanks Vin." Casey leaned in a little to put her hand on Vin's, and he looked up in surprise. "I needed somebody on my side..." He nodded to her.

"Time'll come when JD appreciates a woman sensible about money..." Vin said. Casey smiled and blushed, and went to wait on another customer. Buck stared at him with undisguised admiration.

"Son - you must have women swooning at your feet..." but Vin shook his head and took another long sip of soda pop. "Chris said you might be needin' some help gettin' your GED?" Vin froze at the remark, but Buck went on as though it was nothing unusual. "Got a night class at the high school, won't start up till September again, usually got a couple three folks in it every semester...or if that don't work for you, depending on what Jake needs, I'll be glad to help you whenever we can get together. Fella smart as you are, won't take you long at all..."

"I ‘preciate it." Vin told him, guessing that Chris hadn't told him Vin couldn't read.

"Hey - maybe you could come give a talk to my Social Studies class sometime this year? Talk to ‘em about bounty hunting - give ‘em an idea that crime ain't all it's cracked up to be?"

"Ohh - I don't know. Talkin' in front a'folks I ain't all that good at." Vin said. "Coupla times I had t'testify in court - I'se so nervous, seemed like I did it all on one breath. ‘Sides, you were a cop - seems you could tell ‘em a sight more'n I could."

"Naah..." Buck shook his head. "You're closer to their age, they'll believe you. Teachers, cops, and anybody as old as their parents can't be trusted..." He took a quick look to see if Nettie or Casey were watching, then leaned over the bar to fill his beer mug again.

"So, why'd you leave off being a cop anyway?" Vin asked, and Buck let out a long breath.

"I got tired of getting there too late to do anything but sweep up the mess. Decided I'd do more good if I got there at the beginning, rather than the end of the line." He took Vin's glass then and refilled it with Pepsi from over the counter.

"Real good example you're settin' there Buck, stealin' refreshments and all..." Vin said it loud enough to reach Nettie down at the end of the counter.

"Now Miss Nettie -" Buck hastened to assure her. " - you knowI'm only trying to help you and Casey out, and I always tell you..." then he swatted Vin's shoulder. "What're you trying to do - get me in trouble?" he grinned and Vin gave him an answering smile. "How's your Dad doing anyway?"

"Good." Vin said. "Doctor says he's doin' better'n he expected." About the only thing Vin accurately recalled from the conversation. "Seems like he oughta be home soon. Nettie ‘n me'll be going up later, round about five or so, visiting hours open up again. Gonna have a look at Chris' cabin ‘fore that."

"Well, you let me know just as soon as Jake can have regular visitors. Be good to see him again."

"Thanks Buck, I'll tell him."

PART THIRTY

Vin made plans with Nettie to drive back to the hospital when visiting hours came around again, then Buck drove him to Yosemite's. Seeing the truck sitting in the parking lot of the garage sent a shiver through Vin, but he shrugged it off and followed Buck into the 30's era station.

"Hey Yosemite!" Buck greeted the mechanic as he came from the bays to the counter. "How's that sister of yours?"

"Still married Buck, I keep telling you...looks to stay that way too." Yosemite grinned and wiped his hands clean of grease on a rag. "Got her all set for you." he said to Vin, nodding out to the truck. "Not a lick a'trouble." He pulled a couple of sheets of paper from a clipboard on the counter and handed them to Vin. "Here's what we did, and this is what it came to..."

Vin scanned the papers, looking for numbers. He found the total and calculated how much money he had in his wallet. "I got this back at Ethel - back at our trailer. I can be back in fifteen minutes..."

"Don't worry about it." Yosemite waved him off. "Keys are inside. Whenever you get back - I'm here all day."

"Okay - thanks..." Vin stuffed the papers into his jeans pocket and led the way back out to his truck. Buck followed him, and handed Vin over his sling from the front seat of his own truck.

"Y'oughtta make up your mind about wearing that thing." he said, teasing. "You're bound to lose it, the way y'keep it off and on."

"Can't drive with it...put it on when my arm hurts is all...'preciate the ride. And the...help with...school n'all..." Vin felt his face grow hot. "I'll let you know."

"You bet...see you later..."

They parted company, Buck headed back to town, Vin headed to Ethel. Chris was going to meet him there in awhile to give him the keys to the cabin. It was good to be in the truck again, though it'd only been a few hours, Vin could feel Jake around him. He whistled a little, driving toward Larabee's ranch. Jake was okay, he'd be coming home soon. To a real home, Vin thought. His mind flew on to the task ahead of getting the cabin ready for Jake to come home to, pictured the first night they'd spend there. Have dinner, a real dinner. Get a fire going in the fireplace. Do some laundry and throw it in the dryer with that really good fabric softener, and go to sleep under warm blankets fresh from the dryer.

Maybe get a dog, Vin was thinking as he pulled in the driveway to park next to Ethel. The trailer sat dark and neglected, one aluminum lawn chair tossed on its side by the wind.

Home.

This was home.

Vin felt tears rush to his eyes as the situation fell down on him. No more travelling just anywhere for any reason. No more long winter nights, laying in his bunk, listening to the wind stir up the snow outside Ethel, listening to Jake read the paper while the scratchy radio played whatever station came in clearest. No more running from the difficult. No more just him and Jake.

Every good and bad thing in his life, at least as far back as Vin could remember, had its completion here in Ethel. If it was good, they'd splurge on some fancy pastry, and sit and drink tea and marvel at how good life was. If it was bad, they'd sit and drink tea, and Jake'd put his arm around Vin and tell him everything would be okay, he'd always be there for him.

Sometimes the close quarters irked Vin, but he never said. Never wanted Jake to think he wasn't grateful. Now, he couldn't see giving up those close quarters, even for something as pined for as a real home. This was home.

+ + + + + + +

Chris parked behind Vin's truck and went to Ethel calling for him. "Vin? You here?" The door was open and he saw Vin sitting on the bottom bunk holding Jake's old corduroy jacket. "Sorry I'm late..."

"That's OK, just been sittin'..." Vin looked around the trailer. "Lived here a long time. Hard to give it up."

"I can understand that." Chris said, gently. "Had a hard time moving into that cabin myself."

"After y'lost your family?" Vin asked. Chris nodded. He came in and sat on the built in sofa.

"Stayed with Buck awhile. He lived in Red Lodge by then. But driving back and forth to work was too much, so I got a crappy little apartment in Billings. I lived tryin' to get through the nightmare of the investigation, the insurance, cleaning the house out then having it torn down because of the structural damage, selling the lot off... Finally got suspended from the force and had no reason to stay in the city anymore. So I bought the cabin and moved out here." He stopped talking, and by his eyes he was in a painful place, somewhere else.

"How'd you get through it?" Vin had to ask. "I know - y'said - you were still drinkin' when you moved here. How'd y'ever stop?" and Chris heard another question in his voice. how do you get past your life not ever being the same again?

"My Dad." Chris said simply. "My parents came up from Arizona and stayed with me for months. At first I was real angry, told him to go home, said I didn't need a babysitter. He told me if I was gonna act like a child, he'd treat me like one." Chris smiled. "He did, too. Made me eat when I wasn't hungry, made me go to bed when I wasn't tired. Smashed every last bottle of liquor I had and dragged my sorry ass outta more'n one bar in town." The smile changed into a fondness and tenderness that Vin hadn't seen before on Larabee's face.

"He was there for me though." Chris went on. His voice was soft. "Lord, he was always there. Whatever time of the day or night the demons came howling down on me, he was there." He shook his head. "Couldn't ask for a better Dad..." then added almost to himself. "I forgot to tell Jake that Dad and Mom are coming up to visit him this week..."

"Sounds like you got a real great Dad." Vin said.

"I do." Chris agreed. "I think we both lucked out on that." Vin nodded, and didn't say anything. "Well, you ready to head over? Got the key, had a coupla copies made in town. We'll have a look around the place, see what needs doin' before you move in."

"Okay." Vin laid Jake's coat down on the bed, and smoothed it out with his hand a time or two before he followed Chris back outside. Chris absently and automatically straightened the fallen lawn chair.

"Wind is gettin' colder." he said. "You stay up at the house tonight...if you want." he added when Vin's eyes went back to Ethel.

"I'll think on it." Vin allowed.

+ + + + + + +

They drove to the cabin in Chris' truck. But Vin couldn't help turning to watch Ethel as they pulled away. He wondered if he'd ever spend even one more night in her with Jake. It was just a minute down the road to the cabin and Chris parked near the porch. He didn't get out right away though. He stared at the little building a minute and finally said:

"I thought my life was over when I moved to this cabin. Part of it *was* over, and I'll never get it back. But I moved on. It hurt like hell most of the time, and once or twice I swore it was driving me to the edge of insanity. But I had a good man to stand beside me, and so do you. And you'll be there for Jake too." Chris turned to look at Vin.

"Don't know how long Jake'll want to stay in Red Lodge, once he's on his feet. I'm hopin' his wandering is over. You're family now, you and Jake, and I've lost enough family in my lifetime. Hope you stay." With that, Chris got out of the truck and went to open the cabin door. And a very stunned Vin had to remind himself to get out of the truck and follow him in.

PART THIRTY ONE

The tour of the cabin didn't take very long. Vin wasn't really sure what he was looking for, but he followed behind Chris, looking at what Chris looked at, nodding when Chris'd say the cupboard door hinges needed to be tightened, and that sometimes the kitchen drawers stuck in wet weather, and he'd have somebody come by and give the chimney a cleaning before they moved in.

All Vin could think was that he and Jake would be able to both walk through the house at the same time and have room to spare.

They checked the bedrooms last. In the bigger room, the one that Vin decided immediately would be Jake's, Chris opened the closet door and pulled out a step stool. "This is the crawl space..." he pointed to a recessed door in the closet ceiling. "It locks from this side, so if a racoon or squirrel gets under the roof, you don't have to worry about it getting in the house..."

"Y'ain't lived till you've had a skunk argue with a dog under your trailer." Vin said, and Chris laughed.

"I can imagine...happened at 2am I bet."

" ‘Course. In the pourin' rain too. We was...I don't remember where..." Vin looked down, puzzling out where they might've been. "Outside Chicago? ‘Bout four years ago. We'd been out to San Diego again..." But the memory didn't form clearly. "Had to hook up Ethel and drive till we found an all-night do-it-yourself car wash." He shook his head and came back to the present. "I'll tell you - skunk ain't a smell comes out easy."

"Powdered douche will take it out." Chris said casually, as he put the step stool back and shut the closet door. Vin was stunned.

"Well, you're just plumb full of information that it scares me to know you know, aren't ya?" he asked.

Chris thought a moment what he was talking about. "You live with my wife long enough, you get used to words like that..." he shrugged and went on with the inspection. "Only the one bed here...I got most of my stuff at the Salvation Army in Billings when I moved in here...I can show you where it is if you want. I expect that once Nettie hears you're moving in, she'll organize us all into a cleaning and decorating crew, get everything done nice and fast and perfect."

"She cares a lot about Jake."

"She cares a lot about you too Vin." Chris told him. "I've seen the look on her face." But Vin shook his head to keep Chris from saying any more.

"Her and Jake got the history. She's only known me a coupla days. Y'can't grow a friendship in a coupla days."

Chris looked at Vin steady for minute. "Yeah, you can." he said.

+ + + + + + +

With the cabin squared away for the moment, Chris drove Vin back to Ethel, and headed back to work. Vin changed into his good jeans and white shirt, then drove to the garage to pay Yosemite. It wasn't quite time to meet with Nettie, and he couldn't see going back to sit at Ethel alone. He didn't need to see Dr. Jackson till the next day and Ezra's car wasn't out front of his office. So Vin drove to Josiah's church to go in and sit for awhile.

+ + + + + + +

Josiah came back to his church from Nettie's. He saw Vin's truck and went in through the front door. He stopped at the back pew, and watched Vin, who didn't know Josiah was there.

Vin sat in the very first pew. For a moment, his head was down and he rested his hands on either side of himself on the pew. Then he let out a sigh and raised his head to the crucifix hanging on the back wall. He gazed on it awhile, staring intently. A couple of times he turned his head to the side slightly, as though weighing a bit of information. He sighed again and lifted his hands into his lap, dropping his head down only to lift it again a moment later. After another moment of studying the crucifix, he nodded and stood up.

When he turned and saw Josiah, he seemed a little embarassed. "Didn't know you were back there..."

"Didn't want to interrupt your conversation." Josiah nodded to the cross. Vin glanced back over his shoulder.

"Ohh - we talk every now and again. Sometimes I need t'get somethin' straight in my mind...church is usually a real peaceful place to do that...guess I don't have to tell you that..."

"Well, did you get it all worked out between you? Anything I can help you with?"

"Oh I don't know..." Vin lightly touched his face with the back of his hand. His brush burn was healing up and the bruises didn't hurt nearly as much. "Just a lot goin' on the past few days..." He decided to tell Josiah. "Got a lot more people in my life now than I ever had...don't rightly know what to do with y'all. Was always just me n'Jake. I ever had friends, well..." he shrugged. "Never more'n a few months we was movin' on again anyway."

"You'll get used to us after awhile Vin. I promise."

"I know...reckon y'all gotta get used to me too...I'm real glad we came here though, and not just ‘cause Jake got sick n' all."

"We're proud to have you Vin."

+ + + + + + +

Vin drove Miss Nettie to the hospital. He remembered the route pretty well on his own and only had to ask her for help a couple of times. He told her about the cabin, and just as Chris had predicted, she had the whole thing clean, decorated, and furnished before they'd even gotten to the city.

"Chris is right about the Salvation Army store." She was saying. "You can get perfectly good mattresses there, brand new and a whole lot cheaper than a big store. You got a kitchen table in there?"

"Yes ma'am. Table and four chairs. Washer and dryer. Refrigerator."

"That'll probably need a good cleanin' and air it out some before you turn it on. I'll stock your kitchen for you too." and Vin cringed, thinking of all the vegetables she'd likely bring.

He found a close parking spot at the hospital and Nettie took his arm as they walked in and up to ICU. Nettie didn't announce them at the intercom, she merely pushed open one of the doors and led them both in. Vin pointed out Jake's room. A nurse was just getting Jake set back in the bed, adjusting his IV and making sure the blankets were tucked in good and sound.

"There they are." Jake told her. His voice was better, his words didn't come out as stilted. He still held his left arm against his chest. "Knew you'd be here right on time."

"Oh Jake - you're doin' so well." Nettie took him into a hug and held on. "Vin told me you were doin' better. Guess I just needed to see for myself..." She stood back and gave him a quick kiss. She held onto his hand.

"This is Nettie." Jake introduced her to the nurse. "And my boy Vin...got hurt saving that little boy...this is Alison. Takin' care of me this shift..."

"You ring if you need anything Mr. Parker." Alison said, smiling a greeting at Nettie and Vin. "Otherwise, I'll be back in an hour with your medication."

"Okay...I'll be here..." Jake said, and the nurse left. "Hey -" he suddenly noticed the clothes Vin was wearing. "Gotta testify?" he asked. He let go of Nettie's hand to pull Vin into a hug.

"Naah. Was pokin' around Chris' cabin, needed to change ‘fore I came here...how you doin' Dad?"

"Missed you." Jake said. "Doin' better with you here."

"Talked with your doctor today, said you're doin' real well. Should be outta here soon..." Vin stepped back from the bed to let Nettie be closest to Jake, but his Dad held onto his arm, his left arm, and Vin let out a surprised gasp of pain.

"That's right." Jake said firmly. "Wear your sling..." and he shook his finger at him.

"All right Dad...It's in the car. I'll get it." But he grinned at Jake as he walked out of the little room. He turned back to watch a minute through the glass. Nettie was straightening the blankets and fluffing the pillows and - if Vin could read her lips - telling Jake all about her plans for the cabin.

Alison was passing by and she stopped next to Vin. "Your Mom and Dad sure are sweet together." she said.

And Vin nodded. "Yeah, they are."

PART THIRTY-TWO

Vin stretched his legs out a little in front of himself. The chair was hard, flat, and umcompromising. He would've stood next to the bed, next to his Dad, but Nettie seemed to be planted there. He didn't blame her, or wish her away. Jake looked happy to be talking to her, to have her close by and holding his hand. They talked on about the cabin and the restaurant and old friends Jake might want to see again. Occasionally one or the other of them would explain a name or circumstance to Vin, but mostly they talked with each other. He didn't blame them. But his backside was getting numb.

"Dad?" he pushed himself up at a break in conversation, feeling the pins and needles start down his legs. "Nettie? I'm gonna hit the cafeteria, get some tea...OK? I'll be right back."

"Got money?" Jake asked.

"Yep...you want anything? Tea ‘r ice cream ‘r anything? I'll bring it back."

Jake shook his head and Nettie said "No thank you honey." and Vin nodded and found his way to the elevators. Like earlier today, he stared at his reflection. He thought he looked okay, dressed neat in clean, pressed clothes. Still no doctor, lawyer, teacher or Sheriff - but okay.

An elevator behind him pinged and opened. "Hey Vin!" Buck's voice spun him. "Where y'headed?"

"Tea. Cafeteria." He gestured back to the ICU. "Nettie n' Dad - talkin' some old times. Got kinda boring."

"I'll come with you, Chris is about twenty minutes behind me." They caught the next elevator and Buck led the way to the cafeteria almost without looking as he talked with Vin. "So, how's your Dad doing?"

"Better. Lots better. He's talkin' real good. Almost normal. Just his left arm is stuck."

"Well, if that's the worst he's got to deal with, count your blessings...hey, you're lookin' pretty sharp there...gotta date?"

"Not in this half a' the decade." Vin sighed. "Got my other clothes dirty pokin' around the cabin there. Chris was showin' me around. Decided I might not look so much like a transient if I was to clean up some..."

+ + + + + + +

They got tea and Buck paid over Vin's protests, and they chose a table near the windows. Aside from the middle-aged cashier, they were alone in the cafeteria. "Chris is real excited to have you movin' into the cabin." Buck told him. Vin shrugged as he blew on his tea.

"Him n'Jake go way back, ‘spect he's lookin' forward t'talkin' to Jake face t'face, not waitin' for mail or email or phone calls."

"You y'idjit." Buck clarified. "He's excited about you movin' in, stayin' in town." This openly surprised Vin.

"What'd he say?" he asked, a little suspiciously, but wanting to know.

"Said ‘be nice to have Vin next door, he's a good man.'" Buck was grinning, but serious. "I'll tell you Tanner, I don't remember the last time I seen Larabee so talkative."

"Y'known him a long while?" Vin asked. "Chris?"

"Twelve years I reckon. Chris went through the Academy a few years before me, we partnered all the while I stayed on the force."

"He seems like a nice guy. Been real nice to me."

"He likes you Vin. If he don't like you, he's got a stare that'll set fire to ice."

"He get that way being a cop, or did he come that way?"

"Naah, guess he was always that way." Buck took a sip of his tea. "That's what Sarah told me anyway. Think maybe he gets it from his Dad. Real cut and dried sense of right and wrong." He thought a bit. "Reckon it got worse though, after Sarah died. Seemed to lose what little flexibility he did have."

"Jake said Chris was on duty the night his family died?" But a black cloud settled on Buck, and Vin hurried to add: "None a'my business. Sorry."

"No...you're bound to hear anyway." But the black cloud stayed on Buck. "Chris was just getting off duty, I stopped by the station to talk with him, he invited me home to dinner...we got there just before the fire trucks...they think somebody fire bombed the house. Somebody, or friends of somebody, Chris helped put away. Sarah was upstairs with Adam tight in her arms, at the window screaming for help. Chris was yellin' at her to drop the boy and he'd catch him. Yellin' at her to jump and save herself. And she wouldn't do it. Don't know if she couldn't hear or was just too scared. The flames were right behind her, could see ‘em catching on her dress, dripping onto her from the ceiling. She just kept screaming, Adam was screaming. Chris was screaming at her to jump, to throw Adam out. He tried to climb up to her, but there was nothing to hold onto. In just a few minutes, before the firefighters could even get a ladder up to her - the floor collapsed under her like hell itself had opened up." He swirled his cup. "Guess it did at that..."

Vin stared at Buck, horrified and ashamed. "I've never suffered anything at all." he said. "How the hell d'you not get destroyed by that? How did you survive that Buck?"

"I talked to somebody." Buck said. "I talked to a counselor, a grief therapist for a long while. Chris tried his best to crucify himself on it. Nearly succeeded a whole lotta times."

"Till his Dad came."

Buck nodded. "Yep."

+ + + + + + +

When they were done with their tea, they took the elevator back to ICU. Vin sent Buck in to see Jake first. He wanted to wait for Chris. He wasn't sure why though, just wanted to see him again, now that he'd heard what Buck had to say. Just wanted to have another look at a man who could survive that. Nothing that Vin had ever been through seemed to matter now. All the terrible things that had haunted him forever - his mother, Boy Scouts, Charlotte, school, having no friends, not being able to read - compared to what Chris had been through, that was nothing.

+ + + + + + +

Chris did arrive about twenty minutes after Buck. He smiled when he saw Vin in the ICU waiting room. "Hey - they throw you outta Jake's room?"

"No - Buck n'Nettie are in there. I'se waitin' - just waitin' - thinkin' about stuff..."

"Jake's still OK, isn't he?" Chris asked, losing his smile.

"Oh yeah - no, he's still fine." Vin stumbled over his words in his hurry to reassure Chris. "That ain't what's got stuck in my brain...you okay?" It was a stupid question, and Vin knew it. He didn't even know why he asked it, except he really wanted to know.

"Tired..." Chris answered like he wasn't surprised at the question, but grateful rather that it'd been asked. He set himself into the couch next to Vin.

"Been a coupla long days." Vin said.

"Not as long for me as they've been for you...I remember when my Dad was in a really bad car accident, the summer before my senior year in college. Severed his popliteal artery, nearly bled to death before they got him to the hospital. I didn't sleep more than a few hours at a time for almost a month. Worried about him so much, even though he was okay, home and everything." He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I think that's when I really grew up."

Vin nodded. That was sorta some of what he'd been sitting here ponderin'. Thinkin' how he'd be takin' care of Jake now, at least a little, at least for a little while. "Reckon I'm growin' up now." Chris laughed softly.

"I reckon you've been grown up for quite some time. In some ways anyway. Independent like nobody I've seen." He sounded tired too.

"Except for needin' Jake." Vin pointed out. But Chris disagreed.

"That's different. ‘Course you need your Dad. I still need my Dad. It's all the other people y'got in your life now that you might want to let in..."

"I'm workin' on it...Chris? Did your born folks ever get to meet Sarah and Adam?" Vin wondered if he was asking a dangerous question. Chris looked down and shook his head. "My ‘born' mother did, not my father..." Just then Buck tapped on the door to make his presence known.

"You might want to get in there Vin, Nettie's got your bedroom decorated with all kinds of fussy things. You don't put your two cents in soon, you'll likely never set foot in that room without cringing..."

"Oh no..." Vin stood up and turned to Chris. "Comin'?"

"Just as soon as I can drag this poor old body outta this couch..." Chris told him. "You go on, I'll be right there."

"Okay..."

By the time Chris did stand up and walk to the waiting room door, Vin had disappeared beyond the ICU automatic doors.

"Does Vin know that Jake is your ‘born' father?" Buck asked. Chris shook his head.

"He don't need to know..."

PART THIRTY-THREE

When Vin got back to Jake's room, Nettie was in the chair at the foot of the bed, crocheting. Vin went to the side of the bed, and Jake reached for his good hand. "So, what're y'all planning t'do with my room?" he asked.

"Nothin'." Jake insisted, but grinned. "Just make it nice. Dust ruffle. Fancy pillow cases. Vase of flowers. You know."

"As long as I'll finally be able to hang up all those posters a'naked women you get me every birthday." Vin turned to see Nettie gasp and scowl at Jake, then turn that scowl onto Vin as she remembered his prank at the restaurant.

"Don't think you're so big I can't wash your mouth out with soap young man - or you either." she settled it back on Jake when he laughed.

"Me?" Jake asked.

"You Jake Parker. He's your son. He gets it from somewhere. Naked women, my word." She resumed her crocheting with a vengeance. "Got some real pretty sachets I can throw into your dresser drawers when you're not looking, and don't think I won't!"

"Yes Ma'am!" Vin said, mostly kidding, and Nettie's eyes twinkled when she smiled up at him again. He felt Jake tighten his grip, and he returned the gesture, relieved to feel the warm and calloused hand around his own. "Chris is here, down in the waitin' room. Said he'd come on in soon's he could get his poor old body off the couch."

And in a minute, Chris appeared in the doorway. "Hey Jake! Nettie -" he laid a gentle hand on her shoulder as he walked past. "Figured they woulda thrown you out by now, use the bed for somebody who's sick."

"And have the nurses give up such a good-lookin' fella?" The words came out slower than normal, and little clipped. And when Nettie scowled at him again, Jake pointed to Vin. "I meant him."

"Billy sent this for you." Chris pulled a construction paper get-well card from his inside jacket pocket. "He told me about seven times to be sure you knew he did it all by himself and that he's gonna make one for you everyday until you come home." He stood on the opposite side of the bed from Vin.

"Hey, that's great!" Jake let go of Vin's hand to reach for the card. It was stiff with crayon and stickers and a little wrinkled. He grinned as he read the inside. "Horses and dogs and fishin' and eagles - boy after my own heart - tell him I love it."

"I will. They say anymore about when you can get outta here?"

"Ah - a few days." Jake set the card in his lap and reached for Vin's hand again. "It's like they're afraid to say, like I'll take it for gospel. That boy they got takin' care of me can't be any older than JD. Met him on the street, don't think I'd ask him to check my oil..."

"Well, you'll listen to him and you'll do what he says." Nettie announced.

"Now Nettie -"

"Don't ‘now Nettie' me Jake Parker. You want to get out of this hospital, you'll do as your told..." They wrangled with each other affectionately and Vin grinned. It'd been ages since anybody'd told Jake what to do, longer even probably since he'd done something he didn't want to, but their quarrel had a warm, familiar tone to it, and it gave Vin a thrill to think that he'd have an honest-to-goodness family maybe. He'd have a real house just like other people, and a whole family, just like other people. He'd learn to read and get a dog and he'd have friends -.

Vin stopped himself at that and looked at Chris. He had friends. Had ‘em right now, right here in front of himself, and more even, back home, in Red Lodge. Chris met his eyes then and grinned at the exchange being held, that ended with a soft "Yes Nettie..."

+ + + + + + +

The following Saturday saw Jake discharged from the hospital. By now, Vin knew the trip by heart and he brought his Dad back to their new home. "Yosemite's nephew sells firewood and he brought over a cord last night. Nettie cleaned the whole place, up one side and down the other, brought in a mess of food too. Some of it not even vegetables. Chris helped me get the other bed and dresser in here. Got the chairs in the front room from Josiah, said they were in his attic. And Buck had the end tables, and JD had the coffee table." Vin filled Jake in on every conceivable bit of information as they pulled up the driveway and got out of the truck.

"Nathan and Rain and Nettie got together and bought the braided rug for the front room, and Mary had sheets and blankets for the beds she said she didn't need anymore." Vin carried Jake's bag, offering his arm for the short walk to the porch and inside. "Ezra said he had the lamps just stored away, but they sure look like new lamps to me so I think he's trying to not let on that he's a nice guy. Gloria let me pick out pictures for the walls in the frontroom too, wouldn't even let me pay for ‘em. Nettie and Casey gave us a whole set a'dishes and glasses too, pots and pans. They set up the kitchen."

Jake listened to Vin spin his news, loosely holding onto his left arm. Rain'd finally let Vin ditch the sling, and the brushburn on his face was healing up. Jake didn't need the support really, but he figured Vin needed the contact as much as he did. The last few days in the hospital were the longest they'd ever spent apart. Vin'd been there every day, paying close attention to the Physical Therapist, and Speech Therapist. Helping Jake with the exercises to loosen up his left arm. Helping Jake with any little thing he needed help with. It was good to be home with him again.

"Monday I'm goin' to apply for that job at the high school. Buck said he'd help me with the application. Said he'd put in a real good word for me. I invited everybody over for dinner later, well I guess I told you that on the way home..." Vin let go of Jake to unlock the door and flick the inside light switch. "Nettie said she'd be over early to get dinner started, said she'd let me help her. I figured maybe you'd want to rest first, ‘fore everybody showed up." Vin let Jake in first, then shut the door behind them. His voice dropped. "Figured - I figured I wanted to spend some time with you ‘fore everybody showed up too."

Jake gave Vin a quick squeeze with his good arm and looked around the cabin. Two overstuffed chairs sat on a muted oval braided rug, one on either side of the fireplace. Each with a sturdy end table and impressive lamp next to it. A good sized coffee table was set in between.

"What d'you think?" Vin asked after he set Jake's bag down next to the washing machine in the kitchen.

"It's good." Jake said, and grinned. "It's a real good place."

"Can y'imagine a week ago we'd only just pulled into town? Seems like forever ago. Awful lot has happened in just a few days seems like..." Then Vin seemed to be running out of words. "Y'tired? I can make tea. Casey made Cowboy Coffee Cake. It's really good."

"You been staying here?" Jake asked instead. Vin shook his head.

"Been staying up at Chris' place. Didn't want - couldn't - I never been that alone ‘fore. Got a real funny feeling tryin' t'stay in Ethel too. Don't know what exactly - - just felt easier stayin' with Chris. He's been real nice t'me. Takin' care a'me. If you'da got sick anywhere else Dad, I don't think I coulda -" His voice caught. "It just woulda been a lot for me to get through alone."

Jake crossed the space to be next to Vin. "You did good Vin. I'm real proud of you." He put both arms around Vin and gave him as hard a hug as he could with one bum arm. "I'm proud that you're my son." Vin hugged back hard, closed his eyes and let his head rest against his Dad. "I love you Vin."

"I love you too Dad."

PART THIRTY-FOUR: CONCLUSION

"Dad?" Vin found Jake around the back of the cabin, studying a path that led to the mountains behind. "Whatcha doin'?"

"C'mon, let's see where this trail goes. Think there's a creek up there."

"You supposed to be up, walkin' around this much?"

"Supposed to get exercise." Jake pointed out. "C'mon. If I get tired, we'll find a nice place to sit." So they walked, following the narrow, broken path to a stand of trees and a sluggish trickle of water that on it's best day couldn't be called a creek They crossed over and went a little ways farther, till Jake said: "Well, I think I better stop here for a minute." and they sat on a large rock.

"Looks like a nice place t'go trail ridin'." Vin said. "Maybe even nicer than the Maroon Bells."

"It'd be a nice day for it too." Jake agreed. "Soon as I can ride, we'll get Chris to loan us some horses, take off for a day. How's that sound?"

"Sounds great..." They sat silently for awhile, side by side, with a cool breeze rolling down off the mountain. From where he sat, Vin could see the back of the cabin, the stone chimney and the two windows, one at Jake's bedroom, one at the kitchen. Nettie was already there, getting dinner started before the rest showed up.

Best to just get it over with, Vin thought.

"Dad - when you was in the hospital that first night - Chris brought me back to Ethel, then Nettie came by t'see if was I all right." Best to just get it over with. "Dad? Nettie told me about your baby. Your little boy y'gave up for adoption. She told me about your son." He felt the change in Jake's body next to him, tensing up, and Vin had the urge to stand up and away from him.

"He's not my son." Jake said. Before Vin could insist what Nettie'd told him, Jake went on. "He was my child - no question about that. But he's not my son Vin. He's another man's son and there hasn't been a day gone by that I haven't thanked the Lord for that." He turned more toward Vin. "What all did she tell you?"

"Just that you were both kids, and your Dad stood behind you no matter what, but the baby went to a family in Billings and you met him." Vin waited a moment, but Jake didn't answer. "You shoulda had a son." he whispered.

"I have a son." Jake reminded him. "And there hasn't been a day gone by I haven't thanked God for that either." Vin swallowed hard.

"Never adopted me."

Not once, in over twenty years of being together, had Vin ever brought that up. Jake was about to say again how there was more to family than blood and paperwork, but he stopped himself. Time for the truth, he supposed.

"Vin." and the tone of his voice made Vin lift his head to look at him. "They wouldn't have let me adopt you Vin. Your father was still out there, knew us, knew me. He let me have custody of you, but he never terminated his rights, and the State of Texas never did much about terminating them for him. I hired a lawyer and had him look into it. Had him try off and on for years, but your father wouldn't budge. I was afraid if I tried too hard, or pissed him off somehow, that he'd have you taken away from me. And he could have Vin, he had the right to take you away from me whenever he wanted. That's why we traveled around so much, but never left Texas till you were old enough. I hated thinking he knew where we were and might just show up one day and take you. I always let the lawyer know where we were, but never him directly. I didn't want to lose you Vin, and if keeping you meant not adopting you - well, that's what I did."

Vin stared at him a bit, then dropped his head again without answering.

"I'm sorry I never told you that Vin. I didn't want to frighten you when you were little with thinking you might be taken away. Once you got older, I didn't realize it made a difference to you. I'm sorry." Vin still didn't answer and Jake put his good arm around him. "I chose to have you, take you, and keep you in my life Vin. Not because I thought I had to, or somebody was telling me I had to. Love is a choice Vin and I choose to love you. I never needed anything but that to know you're my son."

"I used t'think maybe you was just keepin' it easier to get rid a'me if you wanted."

"I'm sorry Vin." Jake felt the years of worry and fear Vin must've suffered go through him like an icy accusing finger. He pulled Vin as close as he could, and felt him lean into his shoulder. "I'm sorry, I thought I was protecting you. If you want a paper, we'll get one. I'll do whatever it takes to make you understand you're my son."

"I know I am..." Vin said. "I know I'm your son. I just -" Just what? Needed to hear it, needed to feel it? "I know it Dad. I don't need anything, honest. I never did."

"All right..." Jake hugged him hard, and kissed the top of his head. "Think we should head back before Nettie comes lookin' for us?" and Vin nodded against him and they headed back down to the cabin.

Just as they got to the edge of the clearing, Vin stopped. "Dad -" he shook his head slightly.

"What?"

"Am I seein' things or is that two Chris Larabees walkin' toward us?"

Jake looked. Just coming around the side of the cabin were two men. They walked the same, carried themselves the same. The younger one was a little shorter, but they even had the same hair cut.

"Chris?" Jake asked. He sounded amazed.

"Dad?" but Vin got no answer. Jake started walking again, toward the two men. Vin followed him. As they got closer, Vin could see it was Chris walking next to a man who could only be his father - they had the same squint.

"Chris!" but Jake went right by Chris, holding his hand out to the other man. "Chris! I can't believe it!"

"Well Jake, somebody's got to keep you outta trouble!" The two men shook hands warmly. The elder Larabee was fifteen years older than Jake it seemed. Tough as rawhide by the look of him.

Chris - the Chris that Vin knew - came over to him. "That's my Dad." he told Vin, pride shining in his eyes. Vin knew it wasn't blood or paperwork talking. It was love, it was choice.

"Have you seen Nettie?" Jake was asking. "She's in the house."

"Not yet, Chris saw you back here, we came right around."

"Mom went inside." Chris said. "Told her we'd be right in. Dad - this is my friend Vin. Jake's son."

"It's good to finally meet you son." Mr. Larabee had an iron handshake and a firm gaze. "Been hearing all about you since you were little."

"It's nice to meet you." Vin pulled out his standard line. "Jake and Chris been telling me a lot about you."

"Hope you only believed the good things." He smiled a whole lot more than Chris did.

"Only good things." Jake said. "C'mon inside, see Nettie."

"Not yet, Jake. We've got a lot of time to catch up on, won't be able to do that with those two old women in there using up all the words. Besides, I want to get acquainted with the other lady in your life..." and when all three of the other men looked at him, he explained: "Ethel." They laughed and Chris Sr. put his hand on Jake's back as they walked toward the silver trailer parked at the edge of the driveway. Chris and Vin held back as the two old friends moved away.

"Your Dad seems like a real nice guy." Vin said.

"He's the greatest."

"Seems t'care a lot about Jake."

"Yeah, he does." Chris agreed. "He says Jake is the brother he never had." They watched their fathers disappear into Ethel. "Well c'mon. I want to introduce you to Mom."

"Okay."

Chris put his hand on Vin's back as they headed for the cabin.

END