Free The Obsidian Blade by Pete Hautman Page A

of the room. The center of the space, an area about fifty feet long, was open and empty.
    “You could have a bowling alley here,” Tucker said.
    “I don’t bowl.”
    “You got a computer?” Tucker asked.
    “Nope.”
    “My dad never wanted one either.”
    “Probably the only thing me and your old man got in common,” said Kosh.
    “TV?”
    “Sorry,” Kosh said, not sounding in the least bit sorry.
    Tucker walked to the windows and looked out over the valley.
    “Nice view,” he said.
    “This way,” said Kosh.
    The spiral staircase continued up through the second-floor ceiling. The third floor was unfinished. It had the musty, sour smell of old wood, new wood, and gypsum dust. One end was full of stacked two-by-fours, drywall, and plywood. Barn swallows sailed in and out the open windows at the peaks. Bits of rotting straw were scattered across a rough wooden floor. The other end of the space was framed in with two-by-fours and sheets of drywall.
    “Under construction,” Kosh said. “Your room’s over here.”
    Tucker followed him through an open doorway into the maze of studs and unfinished walls. Kosh led him down a short hallway to a corner room that was nearly finished. A futon mattress lay on the carpeted floor, along with a small chest of drawers, a desk, a chair, and a crookneck reading lamp. A large window looked out over the valley.
    Kosh dropped the suitcases on the floor. “No AC, but you got plenty of ventilation.”
    “Where do
you
sleep?”
    “Wherever I happen to be when I get tired. Cot in the workshop, sofa, wherever. I don’t sleep much.”
    “I’m not taking over your bedroom, am I?”
    Kosh snorted. “I’m not
that
nice of a guy.”
    Except for the frequent sputters and roars from gasoline engines, life in the black barn was peaceful . . . and a little boring. Tucker could do what he wanted, as long as he cleaned up his own messes.
    For the first few days, Tucker explored Kosh’s property and the surrounding woods and tried to avoid thinking about his parents or about Hopewell. But every time he stopped moving, his thoughts turned to home, to life as it had been, long ago, before everything changed. His father standing in his pulpit at church, preaching with God’s light in his eyes. His mother in the garden, her red hair tied back, a hoe in her hands, smiling and joking with him. He wondered if he would ever see them that way again — or see them again at all.
    It was too hard to think about. Even his more recent memories — Tom and Will, the rope swing, Lahlia — left him feeling hollow and lost. Especially Lahlia, who kept popping into his thoughts: holding the gray kitten, looking down at him when he’d fallen from the rope swing. Lahlia as she had appeared that day with his father, wide eyed and mute in her tattered silver shift and blue plastic booties, staring at him with those dark eyes.
    Tucker wondered if Kosh was haunted by memories, too — maybe that was why he worked so hard. He never stopped doing stuff. His various projects included engine repair, mowing his field, working in his vegetable garden, putting a fresh coat of black paint on the barn with his power sprayer, remodeling the third floor, and cooking. Kosh worked as hard on his cooking skills as he did on all his other projects. One night it was lamb chops with wild rice, sweet corn and zucchini from the garden, and a salad of watercress gathered from the creek that ran through the property. The next day Kosh made individual chicken potpies and roasted potatoes, along with a salad composed from baby lettuce plants and nasturtium blossoms from his garden. Tucker watched the scowling, leather-clad biker arranging the blossoms on a china salad plate with his thick, permanently grease-stained fingers. It was like watching a gorilla assemble a watch.
    “How did you learn to cook?” he asked.
    “I used to cook for Adrian and me. And I worked at the Drop for a while.”
    “The Drop? You mean the Pigeon Drop