Free Bone Fire by Mark Spragg Page A

said.
    Her smile had a certain ease, a coziness that reminded him of an apartment they’d rented in their twenties.
    “Will you turn off the hose on your way out?”
    “Sure I will.”
    “It was good to see you.”
    “You too.”
    “Tell the sprinkler guy I’ll be out in a minute.”
    “All right.”
    She turned, circling his neck with her bare arms, and pulled him against her. Her chin just cleared his shoulder, the wind catching in her hair, fanning it into his face. It smelled like he remembered, like when they were just kids, in high school.
    “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Truly I am.”
    He raised his arms like he might embrace her, then let them drop to his sides. “Thank you,” he said.
    She stepped back and the dog got to its feet, its lips bunched in a soundless snarl.
    “At least you didn’t get bitten.”
    She had her sunglasses on again, and he could see his reflection in their lenses. He looked worn out.

Nine
    G RIFF HAD PROMISED to help stack the first cutting of alfalfa at the Rocking M and got up in the dark, and when Einar heard her in the kitchen he dressed and went out and sat under the overhead light at the table. He could feel the warmth of it on his head, the muffled agitation of the miller moths circling against the bright globe.
    They listened to the weather and the ranch report on the radio, having a breakfast of toast and jam and coffee, and then he became anxious she might leave without speaking to him.
    “I like it that McEban still square-bales his hay,” he said.
    “What?”
    “I said, I like it that—”
    “You mean, that he didn’t go to those big round bales like everybody else?”
    “That’s exactly what I mean.”
    “Me too,” she said. “I like how the square bales look when they’re stacked.”
    “The shadows they throw.” He felt better now that they’d spoken. “In the winter.”
    She fixed him a plate of leftover ham and green beans for his supper, stretching plastic wrap over the plate, then sliced a tomato, a cucumber and onion into a shallow Tupperware container,drizzling olive oil and vinegar over the raw vegetables. She showed him where she’d grouped it all together in the refrigerator.
    “I’ve still got time to make you something for lunch.” She turned the radio off. “In case you change your mind.”
    “You’d better not,” he said. “If I eat in the middle of the day I’ll need to lie down.” He hadn’t moved from the table.
    “I’m not going to be home until late.” She was in the mudroom getting her jacket and workgloves and cap.
    “You can stay all night if you like.”
    “I might.”
    “I think you should,” he said.
    She came back, kissed him and looked around the kitchen, and when there was nothing left to do she kissed him again. He thought she smelled like wet coins, like stripped copper wiring mixed with something sweet, and wondered if she ate candy in bed. If it helped her sleep.
    She stopped at the door. “You won’t forget to smoke your cigarette?”
    “Not hardly,” he said.
    He heard her on the porch and then the truck starting up in the workyard. Her kiss had tasted fruity from the lip balm she used, and now he had the whole day to himself. An old man with a single task he expected to accomplish before she returned, every part of which he’d rehearsed a dozen times in his imagination.
    He washed his face and shaved, working his tongue over his bottom lip to see if he could still taste her, and he could.
    Before it got any hotter he started up through the sage and the paintbrush and yarrow, turning back and forth on the ascending grades of the switchbacks, keeping to the trail his nearly forty years of diligence has worn into the hillside just opposite the house.
    When he became short of breath he stopped until he regained it, and when a cloud passed before the sun he didn’t move at all, allowing the breeze to cool him thoroughly. He was in no hurry.
    He simply meant to gain the top of the rise one