Ruthie Fear by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

RUTHIE PACKED HER SUITCASE and dragged it to the bus station in the dawn. She used the man’s forty dollars to buy a ticket. From the pay phone, she called Pip and told her she was coming home.

20.

Rutherford stood waiting for her on the dock. It had been three months since Ruthie had returned from Las Vegas, but he still waited for her outside whenever they met, as if he were afraid she might decide to leave again. Lake Como was empty, swept clean of the boats, tubes, and Jet Skis that littered its surface during the summer. A stinging wind gusted off the water—gray now, in late November. His hands were dug into the fleece-lined pockets of his jacket.

The sun sank into the snowy teeth of the Bitterroots. It lit the treetops and revealed a galaxy of silver minnows circling the pylon under the dock. “Sorry I’m late,” Ruthie said. “The diner . . .”

Rutherford shook his head. “Happy birthday.”

Ruthie was twenty-one. The milestone meant little to her. Rutherford raised his chin at the frozen sheets on the far, shaded shore. At forty, there was resignation in his eyes, but below it the old ice-crawling stubbornness still lingered. “Might get real snow this year.”

Marshall Mountain to the northeast had shuttered after a series of warming winters, and other ski areas nearby were close to doing the same.

“When I was a kid we’d skate across. The whole lake froze solid. We used to drill through and fish. Kent stuck his dick in the hole once. Only way he could get a bite.” Rutherford smiled, half wolfish, half shy. “I reckon it’s still shrunk.”

Gray hairs flecked his beard. They made Ruthie want to hug him. “That’s about the last thing I want to think about,” she said.

“You get enough in tips to buy me a beer?”

“It’s in the truck.”

“How’d it feel to buy now that you’re legal?”

“About the same.”

He nodded, and together they walked up to the cabin. It was the A-frame they’d come to when she was a girl, after the earthquake. It belonged to a young lawyer from Seattle now. Rutherford’s old boss at the mill had died. His children sold it off. The lawyer had hired Rutherford to make repairs and watch over it for the winter, giving him permission to stay when he wanted as part of the deal. Ruthie wondered if the lawyer knew her father was liable to move in. Even though it was run-down from years of neglect, it was about a thousand times nicer than his trailer.

The familiar deck still stood over the creek. Ruthie saw where she’d sat on the edge, her legs dangling, searching for otters in the rushing water. The deck’s shadow slanted over the remains of a vegetable garden. The wire fence was rusted and bent; the beds crumbled. Ruthie carried the case of Busch Light and her overnight bag inside. Rutherford was waiting in the kitchen. All the appliances and fixtures had fallen into disrepair. They smelled of mildew and gas.

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