I had meant to do all my talking from up there. I had planned it that way, lying awake in bed. But I looked down at that boy standing in the frost with his sack lunch and his cheeks red from the cold, and I knew I was not going to ask a child to climb up a ladder and sit next to a strange old woman. And I was not going to talk down to his father from a tree like some kind of judge.
So I buttoned the thermos inside Wes’s coat and climbed down the eleven rungs to them.
There’s an oak stump at the foot of that tree where Wes used to sit to lace up his boots. I set three cups on it in a row.
“Lean your rifles against that cottonwood,” I said. “I brought coffee.”
The man didn’t move.
“Ma’am,” he said. “Who are you?”
“My name is Marlene. The man who built this stand was my husband. He died a year ago last March, and he left this eighty to me. I pay the taxes on it. Cody is my nephew.”
I poured the first cup.
“He does not own one foot of it. And until Thursday afternoon, I did not know there was a single soul hunting out here.”
Nobody said anything. The creek ran on below us.
The man took his glasses off and wiped them on his sleeve and put them back on. I could see his jaw working.
“Ben,” he said quietly. “Open your action.”
The boy unslung his rifle and worked the bolt back. The man did the same with his own rifle, and he leaned them both against the cottonwood, a good long ways from the ladder.
“Ma’am, I am sorry,” he said. “My name is Mark. I would never have set foot out here. I want you to know that. I’ve hunted thirty years, and I have never once been on a man’s ground without his say-so.”
“I believe you.”
“We’ll go. We’ll go right now.”
“You’ll have a cup of coffee first,” I said. “It’s twenty-two degrees and I carried three cups all this way.”
He looked at me a long moment. Then he nodded. And the three of us stood around that stump in the gray light like people at a church coffee hour after the early service.
I handed the cups around. The boy held his in both hands, his fingers wrapped all the way around it for the warmth.
“Do you drink coffee, Ben?”
“No, ma’am,” he said. “But I’m going to.”
I laughed. Out loud. Right there in the cold. And I realized it was the first time I had laughed out loud in I could not tell you how long. Maybe since before the shop. Maybe since before the bucket.
Mark didn’t laugh. Mark was getting angrier by the minute, in the quiet way of a man doing arithmetic in his head.
“How long has he been doing this?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I was hoping you could tell me.”
“He told me he had a fella from Fremont coming Monday. And two brothers out of Lincoln the back half of the week. He told me he ran bowhunters in October.” Mark set his cup down on the stump harder than he needed to. “He told me he had people out here last year too. I found him through a man I work with. I handed him my boy’s lawn mowing money in a parking lot in Columbus. And he shook Ben’s hand and told him his uncle would have liked him.”
I looked out at the timber for a while after that. I couldn’t look at either one of them.
Specialty: Quiet Comebacks & Personal Justice
David Reynolds focuses on stories where underestimated individuals regain control of their lives. His writing centers on measured decisions rather than dramatic outbursts — emphasizing preparation, patience, and the long game. His characters don’t shout; they act.