Shelter Mountain

“I have no idea. I’m not sharing this with him, but you need to know what’s going on if she’s under your roof.”

“Our roof,” he said. Mel and the baby—they were his life. He couldn’t imagine laying anything but a loving hand on her. “You know anything about her? Because I don’t want Preacher getting used. Or hurt.”

Mel shrugged. “I don’t even know where she came from. But I don’t think Preacher’s the one you have to worry about at the moment.”

“He’s already caught up in this. Taking it on.”

“Well, good for him. She needs someone to take this on. And Preacher can take care of himself.”

“Yeah, we just went over that.”

Mel leaned against Jack and he put his arm around her. “I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ve seen a lot,” she said in a breath. “This is one dangerous son of a bitch.”

“I don’t want you in over your head, either,” he said.

“Save it. I have a job to do.”

“This is really bad, Mel,” he said.

“Even more reason why I’d better do my job.”

Preacher was surprised that Paige came back from Mel deciding to stay a couple of days. She seemed so hell-bent to take off. She took Christopher upstairs in the morning and there hadn’t been a sound from up there. They missed lunch altogether. But, he reasoned, if the kid didn’t feel good, maybe he’d sleep extra long, which would give his banged-up mother a needed rest.

During the quiet of the afternoon was when he usually got dinner ready, but today he got out one of his older cookbooks. He had great admiration for Martha Stewart, even though most of her recipes were too fussy for a bar. But he liked the real old-fashioned ones—old Betty Crocker, Julia Child—before everyone started eating light and watching their cholesterol.

He looked up cookies.

Preacher didn’t know a lot about kids, and there wasn’t much call for cookies in a bar, but he had tender memories of his mother making cookies. She had been a little tiny thing. Tiny, high-principled, soft-spoken but stern, and real shy—he’d inherited the shy part, probably. His dad had died when he was young, but he hadn’t been a big guy, either—just average. And here came Preacher. More than nine pounds at birth, almost six feet by the seventh grade.

He didn’t have cookie stuff on hand. But he had flour, sugar, butter and peanut butter—a good thing. Those ingredients would make the soft, sweet kind of cookies, anyway. While he was mixing the dough and rolling little brown balls he found himself thinking about the sight of his mother and him sitting together in mass—her narrow shoulders, high-buttoned dress, graying hair pulled into a proper bun at the nape of her neck. And he, beside her, taking two spaces in the pew by the time he was fifteen. While he was gently pressing the little balls flat with a fork, he chuckled to himself, remembering when she taught him to drive. It was one of the only times he heard her raise her voice, get all flustered and upset. His feet were so big and his legs so long, he was rugged on the accelerator, the brakes. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, John! You have to be gentler! Slower, more graceful! I should have sent you to ballet lessons instead of football! It was a surprise she didn’t die of a heart attack, riding with him.

She did die of a heart attack a little while later, the summer before Preacher’s senior year in high school. She didn’t look like the kind of woman with a weak heart, but how would anyone know? She never went to the doctor.

Preacher was working on his second tray when he glanced up and saw that little blond head, peeking at him from the bottom of the stairs. “Hi,” Preacher said. “You sleep?” Christopher nodded. “Good,” he said. “Feel better?” Chris nodded again.

Watching the boy’s face, Preacher slowly pushed a fresh-baked cookie across the counter with one finger until it was at the edge. It was a good minute before Chris took one step toward the cookie. Almost another full minute before his little hand touched it, but he didn’t take it. Just touched it, looking up at Preacher. “Go ahead. Tell me if it’s any good.”

Chris slowly pulled the cookie off the counter and to his mouth, taking a very small, careful bite.

“Good?” Preacher asked. And he nodded.

So Preacher set him up a glass of milk right where the cookie had been. The boy nibbled that cookie in tiny bites; it took him so long to finish it that Preacher was pulling out the second cookie sheet and taking off the cookies before he was done. There was a stool on the other side of the counter near the milk and eventually Chris started trying to get up. But he had some stuffed toy in his grip and couldn’t make the climb, so Preacher went around and lifted him up. Then he went back to his side of the counter and pushed another cookie toward him. “Don’t pick it up yet,” Preacher said. “It’s kind of hot. Try the milk.”

Preacher started rolling peanut butter dough into balls, placing them on the cookie sheet. “Who you got there?” he asked, nodding toward the stuffed toy.

“Bear,” Christopher said. He reached his hand toward the cookie.

Preacher said, “Make sure it’s not too hot for your mouth. So—his name’s just Bear?” Christopher nodded. “Seems like maybe he’s missing a leg, there.”

Again the boy nodded. “Doesn’t hurt him, though.”

“That’s a break. He ought to have one, anyway. I mean, it wouldn’t be the same as his own, but it would help him get by. When he has to go for a long walk.”

The kid laughed. “He don’t walk. I walk.”

“He doesn’t, huh? He should have one for looks, then.” He lifted one of his bushy black brows. “Think so?”

Christopher lifted the small, worn brown bear. “Hmm,” he replied thoughtfully. He bit the cookie and immediately opened his mouth wide and let the sloppy mouthful fall onto the counter. For a second his look was stricken. Maybe terrified.

“Hot, huh?” Preacher asked, not reacting. He reached behind him, ripped off a paper towel and whisked away the spit-out. “Might want to give it about one more minute. Have a drink of milk there. Cool down the mouth.”

They communed in silence for a while—Preacher, Chris, the three-legged bear. When Preacher had all his little balls rolled, he began mashing them with his fork, perfect lines left, then right.

“What’s that yer doing?” Christopher asked him.

“Making cookies. First you mix the dough, then you roll the balls, then you smash them with the fork, nice and easy. Then they go in the oven.” He peered at Chris from underneath the heavy brows. “I bet you could do this part. If you were careful and went nice and slow.”

“I could.”

“You’d have to come around here, let me lift you up.”

“’Kay,” he said, putting his bear on the counter, getting off his stool and coming to Preacher.

Preacher lifted him up to sit on the edge of the counter. He helped him hold the fork and showed him how to press down. His first solo attempt was a little messy, so Preacher helped him again. Then he did it pretty well. Preacher let him finish the tray, then put it in the oven.

“John?” the boy asked. “How many of them we gotta do?”

Preacher smiled. “Tell you what, pardner. We’ll do as many as you want,” he said.

Christopher smiled. “’Kay,” he said.

Paige came slowly awake, her first realization being that she’d slept so hard, she’d drooled on the pillow. She sleepily wiped her mouth and turned her head to look at Christopher, only to find his side of the bed empty. She sat up with a sudden start that jolted her bruised and sore body. She got up and looked around the bedroom quickly, but he wasn’t there. She went down the stairs in her stocking feet. When she got to the bottom, she stopped suddenly.

Chris was sitting up on the counter, John standing beside him. They were both rolling brown dough into small balls. She crossed her arms over her chest and watched. John had heard her come down and smiled at her. He gave Chris a nudge and inclined his head toward Paige, so Chris turned.

“Mom,” he said. “We’re makin’ cookies.”

“I see that,” she said.

“John said Bear needs a leg—”

“He’s been getting along fine—”

“For looks,” Christopher said.

Paige thought that Bear had been looking pretty awful for a long time now. But for the first time in too long, Christopher looked okay.

When Rick came to work after school, it was just Preacher in the kitchen, working on dinner. Rick, now seventeen, had been Jack’s shadow since Jack first came to town. Preacher came not long after and it was a threesome. Rick lived with his widowed grandmother, his parents long dead, and the guys took him on, let him help in the bar, taught him to hunt and fish, helped him buy his first rifle. Sometimes he was a pain—talked too much. But he’d only been a kid in puberty then—zits trying to beat out freckles—and a little hyper. He’d grown taller in the years since, filled out, quieted down. After about a year of building, the bar opened and they put him to work there.