Nicola Griffith - Stay

“Where?”

I wasn’t sure what she was getting at. “Well, right here. The grass is comfortable, and it’ll be warm all day.”

“But—out in the open, all exposed?”

She was genuinely frightened. I opened my mouth to tell her she could always lock herself in the hogpen if she was afraid of bears, but I doubted she had even considered that possibility. I shrugged. “Well, come with me if you’d rather, but don’t expect to be an idle passenger. There’ll be time for you to take a shower.”

I banked the fire and cut more firewood but was still done before Tammy emerged, hair wet, smelling clean and young.

“Come help me get the rig ready for traveling. I don’t want a single loose item by the time we leave. Start with your bed.”

It always took longer than I thought. Everything that was on an open shelf or countertop had to be stowed and secured, a rubber band snapped around the roll of toilet paper, the water heater turned off, food in the fridge and cupboards cushioned against breakage, rugs rolled and furniture moved to pull in the living area and wardrobe slide-outs, awning stowed, and all the carefully reconnected propane appliances disconnected again.

I used a hitch with an adjustable quick-slide base, so it didn’t take too long to hook up the truck, but then there was the rig’s tire pressure check, a last check to make sure all doors, interior and exterior, were dogged and/or locked, and, finally, unchocking the rig’s wheels. I threw the chocks onto the rear seat of the truck and Tammy got into the passenger seat. I looked around the clearing.

I had no memory of getting here, all those months ago, and it was a minor miracle I hadn’t ended up in the natural ditch that ran along the northern edge of the track. I’d have to fill that ditch sometime soon. Meanwhile, I wasn’t alone.

I leaned in to the open window. “How are you at guiding drivers?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Why?”

“I need the truck and trailer to be lined up dead straight before I hit the top of the track, otherwise the trailer wheels might cut across and end up in the ditch. And I’d rather not flatten the well pump while I’m backing and filling.”

“I could try, I guess.”

She did an excellent job, and after ten minutes we were creeping down the mountain. I kept an eye on the dash readouts; engine compression holdback was excellent, even on the steeper grade halfway down, and I began to relax. It’s a forty-minute drive down Highway 25 to Naples. We kept our thoughts to ourselves.

The service station was empty except for two coverall-clad workers: a tall, soft-faced boy who could not have been more than eighteen, and a wizened, bowlegged man who came up to his shoulder and had probably been born before cars were invented.

I pulled in and leaned out of the window. “Hey there.”

A nod and “Ma’am” from Bowlegs, just a blush and a bob of the head from the boy. In my peripheral vision Tammy began to rearrange herself subtly in her seat, sitting up straight, tilting her face so her dimples showed, pulling back her shoulders to push her breasts up tight against her shirt—and then her pupils irised down to points and her focus turned inward and something in her sagged. She slumped and pulled herself in and down.

“I need to empty her out, hose her down. If you’d point me in the right direction I’d be grateful.”

“Empty her out, is it?” Eee- yut. He cocked his head at the RV bay. “Just had everything topped up Thursday.” Thur- us-day. “Should suit. Need some help?”

Tammy slid a bit further down in her seat.

“Just about got it covered.”

“You sing out now if you change your mind.”

I parked, got out, and chocked the wheels, just in case. Then I showed Tammy how to hook the power cable up to the converter so the batteries could start charging. “There should be two pairs of rubber gloves in the undercarriage storage bay. Get them.”

We drained with the red hose and rinsed with the green, opened and closed, connected and disconnected for a while, then washed the whole place down—including the truck and trailer—before rinsing and filling the freshwater tanks a final time. It was tedious, messy, and foul-smelling, but once all the hoses were stowed and all the valves, cocks, and caps firmly closed, I felt the usual satisfaction of an unpleasant job well done. I told her to check the tires while I squeegeed the windows. She finished first. When I’d dried the windscreen wipers and snapped them back in place, I walked slowly past the glistening tires. They looked fine and fat and all the dust caps were in place.

“You’re dying to check, aren’t you?” Julia said, sitting cross-legged on the roof of the truck.

I was.

“Don’t do it.”

“Aud?”

I hadn’t heard Tammy approach.

“Aud?” A curious glance at the truck, then at me. “Are we done?”

“Yes. We’ll fill up on gas and pay on the way out.” I remembered her reaction to the men. “Or I can walk over and pay while you stay here.”

She steeled herself. “On the way out works.”

She sat stiff as a ramrod as I chatted to Bowlegs and he scratched his chin and wrote a few smudged figures on an invoice while his young assistant filled the gas tanks and money changed hands. She didn’t say anything as I pulled out, or as we drove back up Highway 25.

“New York,” I said, and her head made a slow, unwilling turn. “You don’t have to talk to me about it if you don’t want to, but if you do, I don’t have to tell Dornan.”

She said nothing for a while and I thought she was going to go back to that unnatural, unreachable place, but then she breathed in and out, fast, twice, the way you do before you dive through a doorway not knowing who or what is on the other side, and said, “It’s not a pretty story.”

“No.”

“I mean, it doesn’t make me look good.”

We didn’t say any more for five miles, but she began to fiddle with her window button, then her air vent, then the seam of her pants. She tucked her hair behind one ear, then the other, then pulled it forward again.

“I want to tell someone.”

“Yes.”

“It—I just can’t.”

“Okay.”

“Stop being so fucking agreeable!” Her face worked as she tried not to cry, paling at the creases like a stretched and twisted pencil eraser.

“Tissues in the glove box,” I said.

After she had finished, and had wiped her swollen face clean of mucus, she stared out of the window. “This is the road back to the cabin,” she said suddenly.

“Just about there,” I agreed.

“Maybe we should get everything set up and back in place, first.”

“If you like.”

We worked for two hours putting everything back together, and when that was done it was time for a late lunch. In the clearing, Tammy talked brightly of the food, of the road, of the rig, and her eyes shone like spinning coins. When she stopped talking, the clearing was silent but for the wind hissing in the treetops. A blood red maple leaf spiraled down from a branch and landed tip first in the grass.

“Aud?”

“Mmm?”

“What was it like, being here on your own, with everything so quiet?”

“Peaceful.”

“You didn’t get… nervous?”

“No.”

“This morning, when I was making the fire, I felt jumpy, exposed.”

Exposed. Second time she’d used that word. “But you don’t feel that way now.”

“No. Because you’re here. And there’s the trailer, somewhere I can go.”

I looked at the massive tulip tree, the trillium growing at its base, at the maple leaf. This made no sense whatsoever to me. “But it doesn’t worry you if I’m here?”