LAUREN HEARD ROSIE’S engine a microsecond before Durango started barking, which didn’t even seem possible for a human being to do. But then, she was listening pretty hard. Alex had texted last night, Be at bunkhouse tomorrow a.m. Special delivery. He’d refused to say more.
What could it be? They’d already installed the refurbished doors with their hardware, and the new windows Alex had built. The ornate sconce and other light fixtures wouldn’t go up until Lauren had made a decision on walls. What else was there, at least that Alex would be involved in? And why the secrecy?
He backed the truck close to the bunkhouse. Tony had cleared the area just that morning with the brush hog; the old chopped-up weed stalks were still lying on the ground.
When Alex stepped out of the truck, she was waiting for him. “Well? What is it?”
He smiled loftily. “You’ll see.”
He went around to the back and lowered the tailgate. Something was lying in the bed of the truck, covered with a blanket. Alex pulled back the blanket to reveal...
A pile of lumber.
A big sort of beam, maybe ten inches in width and depth, and five or six feet long. Two plank sections with wavy edges. Several smaller pieces roughly the size of floorboards, already cut in tongue and groove.
But it was the color that caught her attention: deep reddish-brown heartwood, dark and rich against pale yellow sapwood.
Lauren touched the beam. Its grain was wildly irregular, with several sworling knots; the surface felt silky smooth beneath her hand. “Is this...mesquite?”
Alex’s face shone, and his words came out in a rush. “It’s the mesquite that fell on the fence. I took it to this guy I know that runs a sawmill. He specializes in this kind of thing—milling lumber out of trees that have fallen down or have to be taken out. I couldn’t be sure what we’d end up with until he took a look, but I thought we could probably count on a nice character piece, at least. So I just lopped off the branches, loaded it up, took it to the mill and told him to use his own judgment. He cut it up, and then he put all the pieces in the dryer for two weeks to kill bugs. I just picked it all up this morning. Do you like it?”
“I love it! Alex, you’re a genius!”
He made a sort of modest face, not very convincing. “It’s a little punky in spots, and it has some bug holes,” he said, putting his finger into one small hole. “But I thought it turned out pretty nice, overall.”
“The punky spots are part of what makes it great. It’s perfect for the bunkhouse. This beam looks just the right size for the mantel. And we can use these plank sections for counters.”
“That’s just what I was thinking. I don’t know about the flooring, though. There’s not a lot of it, but it might do for an entry.”
“Or even a small wall space, like at the back of the hallway. I think there might be just enough. Let’s get it all inside.”
“Hold on. There’s one more thing. And this one isn’t for the bunkhouse. It’s for you.”
He picked up a small piece wrapped separately in a towel and handed it to her.
“You’ll have to excuse my gift-wrapping,” he said. “I was in a hurry.”
It was a little end-grain section, eight inches or so in diameter, organically roundish. The surface was glassy smooth, and the underside had little rubber feet.
“This is the only piece I requested special,” Alex said. “It’s a cutting board. The guy removed the sap wood and filled in all the checks in the surface with bar-top epoxy. The sides and bottom are coated with urethane, and the top is finished with butcher-block mineral oil. I thought it’d be a nice size for the kitchen in your van. I know you’re not big on possessions, but I wanted you to have something from the bunkhouse renovation, to remember it by.”
Tears welled up in her eyes. Pregnancy hormones again, no doubt.
“It’s beautiful. Thank you.”
“Are you crying?” Alex asked. He sounded alarmed.
“Just a little bit. I love it so much. Look at these growth rings. They’re like a little cross section of time. One of them might be from the year Alejandro Ramirez went off to fight in the Texas Revolution.”
“It’s old enough. And did you know you can actually track years of drought and such in tree rings, if you know how? The rings from low-growth years are smaller.”
“Are they really? I love that.”
Alex smiled. “Tony would say I should have made it Texas-shaped, but I figured this was more your style.”
They carried the wood to the bunkhouse, their voices and footsteps echoing in the empty, clean-smelling space. Chester the cat took the opportunity to slip inside with them.
“The place begins to look habitable,” Alex said.
“I know, isn’t it great? Doors and windows are all up, so varmints can’t get in anymore, and the plumbers and electricians have come and gone. From this point on it’ll all be pretty much play—at least until it’s time to refinish the floors, but that’ll have to wait for last.”
“Good thing there’s no central air, otherwise you would have raccoon-infested air ducts to deal with.”
“True. I think Dalia would like to install central heat and air down the line, but that’ll be a big expense. For now we have the fireplace, and we can set up window units.”
They took the beam to the fireplace and hefted it into place above the brick facade.
It fit the space perfectly.
“Did you give the dimensions to the wood-milling guy?” Lauren asked.
“No! I didn’t even measure.”
They both stared a moment.
“That’s almost spooky,” Alex said.
“It’s destiny. This beam was meant to go here. I’m going to have to figure out what to do about this brick before it goes up, though.”
The brick was unbelievably ugly—bland in color, with harsh, razor-sharp edges that looked out of character with the rest of the house. They set down the beam, and Chester immediately hopped on top of it.
“It’s pretty hideous, all right,” Alex said. “Probably added in the sixties.”
“I wonder what it’s even doing here,” said Lauren. “Whose idea was it? Why didn’t they use the same stone they used on the exterior of the house?”
Alex got a dreamy look on his face. “Oh, Lauren, you should see the fireplace at my grandparents’ house. It’s faced in limestone taken from the property. The limestone has fossils in it. I used to just sit and stare at it when I was a kid.”
“Oh, I love that. I wish we could do something like that in here. But I’m already cutting things close budget-wise. I can’t afford to hire a mason. I’ll just have to work with what’s on hand. I guess I could paint the brick, but that might look too modern. Whitewash would be better, but it wouldn’t solve the problem of those sharp lines and corners.”
Alex rubbed his chin. “What if you did a German smear?”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a little like whitewash, but instead of dilute paint, you cover the bricks with a layer of wet mortar. You smear it on to get an irregular look and let some of the brick show through. It would give a nice rough texture and soften those harsh lines.”
“Is it hard to do? Expensive?”
“Nah, total DIY job, very affordable. A little labor-intensive, but doesn’t take much skill. All you need is a bag of premixed mortar, a five-gallon bucket, a grout sponge and a trowel.”
“Is it a one-day job?”
“For a surface this size? Not even half a day.”
Lauren stared at the ugly fireplace. She imagined it coated with the German smear, with the mantel installed.
She looked at Alex. He was looking at her.
“You want to?” he asked. “We could go to the hardware store right now, get it done today.”
“Do you have any place you have to be?”
“Not ’til this evening, when I go to the garage.”
“You sure you want to spend your day this way?”
“What am I gonna do, sit around sipping mimosas? I like doing stuff like this.”
“Then let’s get going.”
“I DO HAVE one concern,” Lauren said on the way into town.
They had Rosie’s windows down. It was a clear, sunny November day—the sort of Texas day, Alex said, that made up for the harsh summers.
“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”
“Would a German smear be appropriate period-and place-wise?”
Usually Alex was the one who raised questions about historical correctness, and Lauren who tried to come up with a justification. But this time Alex had a comeback ready.
“Oh, that’s easy. There were lots of German settlers in Texas. There are whole communities where you can see a strong German influence even today in the culture and architecture. Our cowboy could have a German mother, or he might have known some Germans growing up. Or maybe he just saw features of German architecture out and about, and always admired them. Or he might have hired a German mason.”
The shopping trip felt like other trips she’d made over the years with her father. The whole process was familiar: puzzling together over how to solve some house problem, brainstorming solutions, weighing pros and cons. The eureka moment of the idea they both instinctively knew was right.
Walking with Alex in the hardware store was a lot like walking with Alex at the festival, a constant stream of greetings and pleasantries.
“Do you know everyone in this town?” Lauren asked.
“Pretty much.”
Back at the bunkhouse, they mixed the mortar slurry in a bucket, then smeared the slurry over the brick with grout sponges. Almost as soon as they’d covered the whole area, it was time to start removing the excess with the trowel.
Sooner than seemed possible, they were done, standing side by side with their hands on their hips, gloating.
“Oh, yeah,” Alex said. “This was the right choice.”
It really was.
Alex fetched another camp chair out of Vincent’s garage while Lauren grabbed two bottles of kombucha. Back at the bunkhouse, Chester was waiting at the front door. They’d shut him out during the actual work, lest he dip a paw in the slurry. Now he bounded confidently inside, then stopped short with a surprised chirrup when he saw the refurbished hearth.
They set the camp chairs in front of the fireplace and drank their kombucha. Chester alternated between laps, purring and rubbing with all his might.
“This place is gonna be really special,” Alex said. “You’ve put a lot of yourself into it.”
He had his legs stretched out toward the hearth and crossed at the ankles, and he was smiling his half smile at Lauren with his head tilted back lazily in his chair and his eyes half-shut.
“So have you,” Lauren said. “You did all the windows and the front door. And the German smear was your idea. I never would have thought of it without you.”
“True. It’s a pretty good feeling, isn’t it?”
“It is. There are a whole lot of houses where I grew up that my dad and I left our mark on.”
“I would think it’d be hard to walk away from that. A house is so personal. Once you put so much of yourself into it, how do you leave it?”
“It was hard, especially with our first house. I was still pretty little when we left it. That was the house where my mother had lived, and leaving it felt like giving her up, not just the work we’d done on the place. But it was the right thing to do. We’d increased the value substantially, and we needed the money. The whole point of flipping houses was that it was something my dad could do at home, staying close to me. So when we left that first house, he gave me one of the original corner blocks from the window casement in the master bedroom. It was too cracked and chipped to reuse, but still beautiful. And it’s tied to the only clear memory I have of my mother. After she got sick, she ended up confined to bed, and I had my little Playskool desk set up in the corner of the room, right by that window. I’d sit there and color while she rested and watched me. I still have that corner block now, and whenever I see it I remember the feeling of being in that room with her. And ever since then, with every house my dad and I have lived in and fixed up, we took something along when we left. So now I can look at those things, and remember.”
“I’ve seen that corner-block thing. It’s in your van, isn’t it? Up on the shelf above the bed?”
“It is. That’s where I keep all my old house keepsakes. Oh, I can’t wait until Tony and Dalia get to see this place! But I will wait. I’m not giving them any peeks. They won’t see a thing until the whole project is finished. They’re gonna freak.”
“Dalia doesn’t freak very often. She’s pretty chill.”
“Well, I would defy even Dalia’s chill to hold out against the awesomeness that will be the finished bunkhouse.”
Alex looked at his watch. “I’d better head to the garage. Someone brought in a tractor that needs its carburetor overhauled.”
“Sounds like a fun evening for you.”
They put Chester out of the bunkhouse and locked the door.
“Hey, listen,” Alex said. “There’s going to be a reenactment of the Battle of Béxar in downtown San Antonio in December. Would you like to go with me?”
This wasn’t much like how they’d ended up going to the other event together. Tony had set that up, and Alex had agreed with great reluctance. It also wasn’t like how she would have imagined Alex asking her to another one. That whole would-you-like-to-go-with-me thing sounded...well, almost like a date.
And before she could stop herself, she felt a bright flare of hope and pleasure at the prospect.
Oh, get over yourself, Lauren. Not every guy is into you. Alex is just being a good friend—and that’s all you want him to be.
“All right,” she said. “That sounds like a good time.”
“It is. I really think you’ll enjoy it.”
“What is Béxar? You say it’s in San Antonio?”
“Yeah, near the Alamo. But this isn’t the actual Battle of the Alamo, where all the defenders died—Travis and Bowie and Crockett and those guys. This is the battle where the Texians first took the Alamo, and the town, San Antonio de Béxar. Before that, the Mexicans had it. What a lot of people don’t know is that after the Texians won, Sam Houston ordered them to take the artillery and blow up the Alamo and get out of there. San Antonio de Béxar was strategically insignificant, and too close to Mexico to be defensible. Trying to hold on to it was a waste of resources.”
“I never knew that. Why didn’t they do it?”
“Because they were a bunch of stubborn daredevils who didn’t like being told what to do. That’s the kind of man who went to Texas—brave, determined, ornery and arrogant. It’s a good personality type for settling a wild and dangerous country, but it doesn’t make for a very cohesive army. They fought together when and where they wanted to, and left when they got bored or disagreed with the plan. They basically took orders as suggestions. They did have some impressive victories with that fighting style, but they also wasted a lot of effort and life. It’s amazing the army held together as well as it did.”
“So you’re saying the whole Alamo disaster never should have happened?”
“That’s right. But at the same time, it ended up being a rallying cry for the revolution. It unified Houston’s army like nothing else could have done. In the long run, it was more powerful as a symbol than as a stronghold.”
“That’s...sad, but cool.”
He drove off, and Lauren went back to Vincent. Over a cup of motherhood tea, she started browsing the internet for travel destinations. December was creeping up fast, and she had no idea where she wanted to go after leaving La Escarpa. The whole point of being here was to regroup and figure out where to go next, but for almost the first time since she’d started traveling, there really wasn’t anyplace she had a burning desire to see. Where should she go? East coast, west coast? North, south? Midwest? Canada? Mountains? Desert? Ocean? Forest? Nothing sounded appealing, and she was having trouble concentrating.
Maybe she was trying too hard. Maybe she should give the subject a rest and wait for inspiration to strike. It had never failed her yet.
In the meantime, she’d allow herself to daydream about what color of plaster to use in the bunkhouse, and whether the wavy-edged mesquite planks would work better as counters or kitchen shelves.