FIREWOOD WARMS YOU twice. Once when you’re cutting it, and again when you’re burning it. That’s what Lauren’s dad had said every single time he’d cut firewood, always with the exact same goofy, self-satisfied smile on his face.
Now Lauren realized that firewood could warm her a third time, when she was watching an exceptionally strong and well-made man do the work, and shed layers of clothing one by one, down to what looked like a many-times-washed, slightly-too-tight, athletic-fit T-shirt.
She and Alex hadn’t spoken much since their epic clash of life philosophies. Gathering the firewood had been awkward, to say the least. Lauren almost wished she’d let him stalk off and finish the work himself, instead of forcing her company on someone who clearly didn’t want it anymore.
But she had her own reasons for wanting to make herself useful on La Escarpa, and not all of them were selfless ones.
Alex straightened, stretched and gave her a quick nod.
“Nice job with the stacking,” he said.
He was being terse, which was what she’d intended to be with him today before settling on cordial. So far she hadn’t succeeded very well with either one, but if things between them were terse now, she could keep them that way.
She’d transformed Tony’s haphazard woodpile into a neat wall of wood, and she’d done it without supports. The wall looked like a bunch of Jenga stacks all pressed together.
“Thanks,” she said. “Nice job with the splitting.”
His expression thawed a bit. “Thanks. You know, they say firewood warms you twice—once when you’re cutting it, and again when you’re burning it.”
Lauren choked down a laugh that turned into a snort.
“What?” said Alex. “Haven’t you ever heard that before?”
“Yeah, a time or two.”
Then she pulled out her phone and took a picture of the stacked wood.
“What’s that for?” Alex asked.
“Instagram.”
She could actually hear him rolling his eyes behind her back, and for a moment she thought he was going to make a snide remark, but all he said was “It’s been four hours. Time to restring the fence.”
Terse or not, they worked together like old partners. They fastened the fencing back at the previous post, overlapping the last of the old wire, then pulled the new fencing tight with the come-along, attached it at the newly set post and tied it off at the next post. One section of old fencing had some sag in some of the wires. Lauren took the pliers to it, kinking the wire every two inches or so until it was tight again.
Once the job was done, Durango flopped down with a sigh in a patch of sunlight.
“Look at him,” Alex said. “He knows we’re finished. He looks like he’s ready to kick his boots off and open a beer.”
The chill was gone from his voice, and he was smiling. Lauren felt her commitment to terseness melting away.
ALEX PUT THE tools back in the bucket, loaded the scrap wood onto the tractor and drove back to the tractor’s lean-to. Lauren showed up on foot not long after and started unloading the tools and putting them away. He came over to help, and to make sure she did it right.
“You’re a tidy workman,” Lauren said.
“Yeah, my grandfather always said you’re not done until you’ve cleaned up and put away all your tools where they belong. He was supermeticulous, way more than me. I’m a backsliding hedonist compared to him.”
“I think your grandfather and my dad would get along famously.”
Alex hung the come-along from its metal peg. “My grandfather died last year.”
“Oh, Alex, I’m so sorry. He was such a sweet old man.”
He looked at her, surprised, and then remembered. Of course, she’d met him at the wedding.
“You’re right, he was. But not many people saw that. Most folks would call him a real crank.”
“Like who?”
She actually sounded indignant, and that made Alex smile.
“My dad, mostly. Used to make my blood boil. All the things my grandfather taught me, all the things I admired about him—stuff he’d say, the hours he worked, the way he reused materials and made do and had a precise spot for every tool. My dad mocked it all, made him sound like a mean old ignorant skinflint, and I had to sit there and listen. Took everything I had to keep from punching him in the mouth.”
“That’s rough.”
“Yeah.”
There was an awkward pause, and then Alex asked, “So, uh, are you okay on firewood at the house?”
It was a dumb question; there was no way Lauren could have gone through the big porch stack, or even made much of a dent, in one night.
“I didn’t stay in the house. I slept in my van.”
“What? Why would you do that when you have a perfectly good house available?”
“I sleep better in Vincent. It’s cozy there, and I’m used to it.”
“Cozy? It was cold last night. And doesn’t that seat kill your back?”
She laughed. “Wow. You think I’m basically a hobo in a freight car, don’t you? Come on. You’re about to see what van life is really like. I’m giving you the full tour.”
He followed her without protest. There were about a million and one things he needed to do out at his grandparents’ ranch, but he could afford to spend a few minutes checking out Lauren’s van. Truth be told, he was curious.
It looked nondescript enough on the outside. Taller than usual for a van, but not weird.
“So this is your hippie van,” he said. “What, no mural spray-painted on the outside?”
“Ha! I wanted to, but my dad said no.”
“Because of resale?”
“No, for safety. He said I should keep the outside as low-key as possible so no one would guess this was a van that someone lived in. I could knock myself out on the inside, artistically speaking, but I had to keep the outside plain.”
“That’s smart.”
Lauren slid open the side door and held out her arm in a welcoming flourish.
Alex stepped inside—
And froze in his tracks.
He didn’t know what he’d been expecting. Bead curtains, maybe. A reek of marijuana, probably. Terrible disorder, definitely.
He sure hadn’t expected this.
It was like a magical gypsy caravan. Color flooded the space: a rich turquoise on the walls, ceiling and cabinetry, red and gold prints on the bed. It was bright, but not jarring, and somehow deeply restful.
The bed took up the back half or so of the van. A red shelf ran along the three walls high above it, about a foot from the ceiling. It held a variety of objects, most of which looked like small pieces of architectural salvage: an old wrought-iron fence finial, a scrap of Victorian millwork. At the opposite end, the driver’s and passenger’s seats, both wearing slipcovers in a red print fabric, were swiveled around to face into the van’s interior. Along both walls in between was a galley kitchen, with a sink and stove on one side and a little retro fridge on the other.
Alex touched the countertop. It had a mottled patina in varying shades of red, green, gold and blue. “Is this copper?”
“Copper foil, wrapped around a plywood base. Beautiful, durable and surprisingly affordable.”
Lauren squeezed past him, took a couple of glass bottles out of the little fridge and handed him one. “Take a load off,” she said, pointing to the driver’s seat. “Best seat in the house. You can even put your feet up, if you take your boots off first.”
He pulled off his Ropers and rested his feet on a sort of wooden box with a cushioned top. Then he unscrewed the lid of his bottle and took a swig of the amber-colored liquid. It was fizzy and sweet and a little tart, like hard cider.
“What is this that I’m drinking?”
Lauren had clambered onto the bed and was arranging blankets and cushions into a fluffy nest.
“Kombucha,” she said. “Nonalcoholic, probiotic, lacto-fermented. Very good for you.”
“That sounds awful.” He took another swig. “But it tastes good. And who am I to talk? My ancestors fermented cocoa beans and cactus juice.”
He pointed to the kitchen. “Where’d all this cabinetry come from?”
“I salvaged the drawers and door fronts from an old seventies sideboard. It was a truly hideous piece of furniture, all that heavy carving in a fake-looking dark finish, but once I got it painted, it looked gorgeous.”
“What is that covering the walls and ceiling?”
“Quarter-inch birch plywood, nice and bendy for going over contours. There’s a layer of insulation underneath. I made cardboard templates, cut out the panels, sanded the edges and painted the pieces before installing them. Then I hid the seams with upholstery trim.”
“What’s that little fruit-crate-looking-thing mounted to the wall above the sink?”
“A little fruit crate. It holds my supplements.”
She sure did take a lot of supplements. He could see labels for folic acid, vitamin D, omega 3 something-or-other and more.
“How do you heat and cool this thing?”
“That’s the biggest challenge. The best place to start is with good insulation and window shades. I have custom window covers with magnets to keep them in place. They’re not very aesthetically exciting, but I covered the insides with hand-block linen, and ran some curtains along in front to soften the look. Without them I’d broil in summer, and lose heat through the glass in the winter. With them, my climate control has a lot less to do. I have a rooftop air conditioner that works great, and a propane heater for when things really get cold. But most of the time I can get by with my mattress and seat heaters.”
“How do you power all that?”
“I have solar panels on the roof, and a battery in one of the upper cabinets, along with a converter for the twelve-volt stuff. But most of the time I’m parked someplace where I can plug into an outlet.”
“What about showering?”
“Propane, on-demand. I set it up out back with a curtain that runs between the two open doors. That’s just for remote places. When I’m staying in the city, I use my gym membership.”
“What about a toilet?”
“Composting.”
“No kidding? Where?”
She smiled. “You’re using it as a footrest.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep. I built that box to house it, plus the little lift-off section that holds the cushion.”
Alex looked at the wood-framed box with new respect. “Man, you really thought of everything. Where’d you learn carpentry?”
“My dad. He flipped houses while I was growing up. It was just the two of us, and I learned to help him.”
“Must have been nice, learning something useful from your dad. The most useful thing my dad ever taught me was not to chase tequila with beer.”
“Really? That’s surprising.”
“No, seriously. If the tequila is good, then you should drink it straight like a man. And if it’s not good, you shouldn’t be drinking it to begin with.”
“I mean about that being the only useful thing he ever taught you. Obviously you learned a lot of useful skills somewhere down the road.”
“All that was from my grandparents. I spent a lot of time with them growing up, on their ranch north of town. Tony, not so much. He had football. I just had the ranch.”
The words came out sounding a lot more pitiful than he’d intended, and he didn’t want to dwell on the subject, so he asked, “Where do you keep all your stuff?”
“The big drawers under the bed are my pantry. I keep my nonrefrigerated items in there, plus pots and pans and dishes. Then behind that is my garage. There’s a sort of sliding sled thing that I can access from the back doors. That’s where I keep big items, tools, rock-climbing gear, that sort of thing. But really I don’t have a lot of stuff. I consciously keep my belongings pared down. I want to collect experiences, not possessions.”
Alex made a scoffing sound.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why’d you go like—” She imitated his scoffing sound.
“No reason.”
“Liar.”
“Forget it. Let’s not fight again.”
“Who’s fighting? You’re the one making sarcastic grunts.”
He didn’t reply. She imitated the sound again, and again.
“I did not sound like that.”
“Yes, you did. Tell me why.”
“Okay, okay, but don’t get mad.”
“What’s there to get mad about? Obviously you and I have very different modes of living, but that doesn’t mean we can’t discuss those differences like civilized human beings.”
“Well, it’s just that it’s easy to say that thing that you said, about collecting experiences and not possessions, when you’ve always had plenty of possessions.”
“Who says I’ve always had plenty of possessions?”
He shrugged. “You say your dad flipped houses for a living. I’m guessing he was good at it and made a good living. Solar panels aren’t cheap, or composting toilets, or any of this stuff. This is a late-model van. It must have cost a good bit, even before you started ripping stuff out and reupholstering and refitting everything.”
“My dad and I did the work ourselves.”
“But you didn’t go into the woods and hew your own birch panels, or make your own battery. There’s a limit to what hard work and ingenuity can do. Somebody had to pay for all this stuff. And the whole idea of living this way—I mean, you’re not like a person who lives out of a van because they’re homeless. This thing is like a miniature apartment.” Nicer than my apartment, by a long shot. “You have to already be well off to even think of a thing like this, much less pull it off. It’s easy to talk about not being bound by possessions, and run around the continent in your van, when you know the bills are all going to be paid no matter what you do.”
“I never claimed to be poor or homeless, but that doesn’t mean I’m a trust-fund baby. I fixed up Vincent’s interior with materials I bought, with money I earned. I change his oil and do routine maintenance myself. And I pay my way. I make decent money working front-end development, I sell photos and articles and sometimes I hire out as a photographer. I do manual labor, too. I’ve harvested strawberries in Oregon and done ranch work in Wyoming and Mexico. I work on my own terms, but I still work.”
He drank some more of the fermented whatever-it-was. “Yeah, well, I don’t know if I believe you did all that.”
The thought of her small fragile-looking body changing the oil on her van, or doing field labor, or working cattle, did seem ridiculous, or would have if he hadn’t already seen her in action. As it was, he could easily imagine her doing all those things, and he liked imagining it. And he didn’t want that. He didn’t want to want her. He didn’t even want to like her.
Because as beautiful as she was, and as competent as she might be with engines and agriculture, she was still a rootless nomad who would not stay. There was no room in Alex’s life for someone who traveled around having “experiences” instead of building something that would last.
She smiled. “Clearly you don’t follow me on Instagram.”
“Clearly I don’t. I don’t have time for all that stuff. I live in the real world.”
“Says the man who dresses in nineteenth-century clothing.”
“Real as in not digital. My historical clothes are real. The past is real, and we shouldn’t forget it. If that makes me weird in some people’s eyes, so be it.”
“So you refuse to live your life kowtowing to other people’s false values and arbitrary standards.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Well, so do I. I live according to my own vision. It just happens to be different from yours. And, yes, the past is real. But it can be a snare. The present is all we really have. Life is short, and you never know how much time you have left. I’ve chosen to make the most of it in my own way, following my own vision. You and I aren’t that different. We both question conventions and refuse to be boxed in.”
“Huh. I guess you’re right.”
She chuckled. “But your way is better?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You were thinking it, though. It was written all over your face.”
He actually had been thinking it, in exactly those words. If she could read him as well as that, he’d have to be more careful. Some of his thoughts would not be so easy to laugh off.
“So your dad sounds cool,” he said. “How did he feel about you taking off to travel?”
“Oh, he was incredibly supportive. My mom died young, and I think it was a real wake-up call for him, and a defining thing for me. He taught me to seize the moment and not take anything for granted.”
“I didn’t know that, about your mom. How old were you?”
“I was four. Old enough to remember, but just barely, and not clearly. Sometimes I don’t know whether my memories of her are real, or just imagined from things my dad told me, or things I saw in photos. She always wanted to travel, but she never did. When she and my dad got married, they had big plans for all the places they would visit, but it never happened. There was always something else to spend the money on—a deposit on an apartment, a car repair, a deposit on a bigger apartment after she got pregnant, doctor’s and hospital bills, baby stuff, a house with a yard, on and on. Between one thing and another, she never made it outside the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. Then she got sick, and she didn’t even leave the bedroom except for doctor’s visits. And then it was all over. It happened so fast, you know? She had unfinished paintings when she died, and sewing projects with the pins still in the fabric. My dad kept them all in this box in the closet, and I used to go in there and look at them and feel this sadness that I didn’t even have a name for. And when I grew up, I knew what it was—lost opportunities. And I vowed that I wouldn’t let that happen to me.”
Alex kept silent. He didn’t know what to say. He sure couldn’t say what he was thinking, because what he was thinking is how secure it sounded—not the illness and death part, but the part about having two financially responsible parents who paid their bills and took care of their kid and didn’t do crazy stuff they couldn’t afford. He’d never understood what the big deal was about travel, anyway. People in his generation talked about it like it was the be-all and end-all, but all it was, really, was leaving the place you were at to go to another place, and who cared? At the end of the day what you needed was a roof over your head and food in the cupboard and money in the bank, and it was just as easy to have that at home as someplace else. Easier, because you didn’t spend your resources going to the other place.
Her mother died, he reminded himself sternly. He forced himself to imagine a little motherless four-year-old Lauren, and the widowed dad, who sounded like a good guy, and tried to ignore the memory of how he used to wish his dad would...not die, exactly, but go away and not cause problems anymore.
“I’m sorry you lost your mother,” he said. “I’m sure she’d be proud of you.”
That much, he could trust himself to say.
She smiled. “Thank you.”
“And your van is amazing. I admit it, I was wrong about the place. I’m blown away by the work you’ve done, the scale of the planning, how everything is functional and beautiful at the same time. The skill, the artistry, the attention to detail—it’s impressive.”
“Thank you, again. That’s very kind of you to say.”
“Yeah, I’m a kind guy.”
He finished his drink. “Do you recycle?”
“Yep. The little green bin is recycling, and the white one is trash.”
The two bins were standing side by side. Alex got up, dropped his bottle in the green bin...and saw his own name looking up at him from the trash.
Lauren had thrown away his card, along with the esperanza spray he’d given her.
He was surprised by the intensity of the pang he felt. Okay, maybe it was silly, but he was proud of those cards, proud of the research he’d done into nineteenth-century typefaces and the appearance of his name on the finished product. It had been a small, inexpensive indulgence, and it made him happy every time he gave one away and saw the person’s reaction.
But why should he be hurt, or even surprised? Of course Lauren threw it away. It wasn’t like he meant anything to her. Experiences, not possessions—that was her whole value system. No reason why she should make an exception for him.
“Well, I’ll be on my way now,” he said. “Got to check on the cattle at my grandparents’ place. Thanks for the drink and the labor. I don’t suppose I’ll see you again, so be safe on the road.”
“Oh, okay. ’Bye. Thanks for your help last night.”
It was good that she’d thrown his card away, he told himself as he walked out to his truck, and good that he saw it when he did. Best thing that could have happened. He was starting to relax too much around her. He needed a reminder, a concrete example of the huge gulf between them.
Let go. That’s what people kept telling him. And they were mostly wrong. When something was worth holding on to, he held on. That wasn’t being emotionally stunted. That was being a man.
But if something wasn’t worth holding on to—when it was nothing but a distraction messing with his head and slowing him down—well then, in that case he could let go with the best of them.