Mountain Time by Ivan Doig

Author:Ivan Doig
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

Five

SO WHY DID I DO it?

In the time after, Lexa would work back at the puzzle of those weeks of the three of them and Mariah’s nibbling camera keeping Lyle company as he gradually left life, frame by frame.

It’s not pretty to have to admit, but I started at it all thinking that Lyle was a hopeless case in more ways than one. For Mitch’s sake, I took on caring for his father as if I was pitching in on, oh, a sputtering tractor out there in the backyard mess. After all, that congregation of old odds and ends, at rest and yet somehow restless, was a lot like what comes with letting yourself love somebody. The debris field of the other person’s family stuff. You can tell yourself until you are blue in the face that none of their history with one another concerns you, you don’t care who put whose nose out of joint, way back when. But those are the things that make people the ones they are. That made Mitch, for better or worse. And Lord only knows, the makings of somebody like Lyle. So you do have to let yourself in for some of their weird family junk. Otherwise, you might as well go off by yourself in life and take up street mime.

• • •

The unknown weeks were still ahead of them when Mitch stepped out of the house yawning, rubbing his head and wondering why his hair was stiff. Then a remembering smile came, and he kissed at the air in the direction of the upstairs bedroom where Lexa was still under the covers. No sooner had he done so than he heard the instep of a boot come to rest on a nearby bottom pole of the jackstay fence.

“Mitch. I hope I can call you that?”

“Why not, it’s my name. What’s foremost on your mind this morning, Donald?”

“I wondered if you could give me any timeline yet on cleaning up your father’s place. I have some clients I want to bring in to stay with me for some fly-fishing.”

Mitch shook his head. “The flies in this country are pretty hard to catch, even with those little hooks. They don’t fry up very good anyway.”

Brainerd evidently was not to be dissuaded. “Your father has been telling me that the disposing”—Mitch shot him a look—“of his items in his yard is going to have to be up to you.”

“He and I have been holding discussions about the place,” Mitch confided. “We think we might turn it into a hog farm.”

Brainerd tried that tight little smile of his. “I hate to have to bring this up again, really. But I’ve been here next door for some time now, and I haven’t seen any improvement on your side of—”

The bunkhouse door banged open, and Mariah came out at full velocity, mane of hair richly red in the morning sun, well-filled lavender shirt with pearl snap buttons, blue jeans built for her. She threw a wave toward

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