Down In The Holler

Casual Wanderer © 2025 All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and specific other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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"17 Seconds"

The last pass before sleep found Jackson wedged between both lovers, his head pillowed on Cash's bicep while one leg draped lazily over Blake's thigh. Their hands were a puzzle of interlaced fingers spread across his chest, each touch grounding him in ways words never could.  

"This is what I wanted," Jackson admitted into the dark, his voice hoarse but steady. "This exact stupid miracle."  

Cash turned his head slightly, pressing a kiss to Jackson's temple with a certainty that surprised even him, while Blake's lips brushed over Jackson's hair as if sealing a promise.

Their breathing slowed, their bodies softened against one another, and they let themselves be carried away on the quiet waves of sleep.

Hours later, dawn found him first.

Jackson surfacing to the soft prickle of new light on his eyelids, the room cooled to a hum. Cash lay beside him, naked and boneless, mouth slack in sleep, lashes sticky, a smear of a smile there like the dream had ended kind. The carpenter had surrendered to the day the way only men who've spent themselves can. Jackson watched his chest rise and fall, wanted to weep for how right it felt to have that proof.

Movement ghosted beyond the sheer curtain. A shape on the balcony, the hush of glass slid an inch open, that whisper of morning air finding sweat-damp skin. Jackson slid out of bed, quiet and careful, sheet skimming his thigh and toes soft on the carpet. He padded toward the light, eyes bright, heart steady, and set his palm to the cool door, opening it enough to step out.

He crossed into the blue edge of morning.

The balcony held the last cool of night like a secret cupped in two hands. Blake sat in one of the cheap metal chairs, bare feet hooked at the rungs, a cigar burning to a stubborn ember between his fingers. Smoke drifted up and unraveled in the blue, a slow ribbon that made the air smell like cedar, molasses, and something older than both of them.

Jackson paused in the doorway, naked, hair sleep-tangled and kinked where Cash's hand had dried it crooked. Blake's profile was a cut-out against the lightening sky, jaw unshaved, mouth soft, the short crop of his hair damp from the shower. He looked younger in that exact way Jackson had seen happen only twice before: when he let himself be seen.

Jackson's smile arrived before his voice. He crossed the threshold and leaned back against the rail facing him, hands at either side like he might hold the world steady. For a long beat, they just looked. Whatever had been loud in the night went quiet, and the morning stood up around their silence like a church learning when to listen.

"You want me to scoot?" Jackson said finally, mouth hitching, the joke gentle as a palm. "Feel like I'm cuttin' your light."

Blake took a slow pull on the cigar, the cherry carving its own small sunrise in the ash. When he lifted his head to exhale, Jackson felt the world tilt. That look, God help him, that look: all the armor set down without ceremony, the heat and the home in it both. It put something sweet and painful right under Jackson's breastbone.

"You are my light," Blake said, easy as breath. Not a line. A fact.

Tears came up so fast they surprised Jackson. He laughed at himself and wiped one with the heel of his wrist. It made a clean track through the salt left from sleep. Then he crossed the two steps and climbed into Blake's lap as if there'd never been a time when he didn't. Blake startled, then settled, one arm going around Jackson's middle like it had been built for exactly that circumference. Jackson set his weight without apology, knees bracketing Blake's hips, sheet slanting to expose a long golden line of thigh the sun had not yet claimed. He tucked his face against Blake's temple and breathed him in, smoke, the copper note of clean skin cooling, the ghost of sweat that told on the night without bragging.

Blake's nose found the notch under Jackson's ear and stayed there, a man memorizing. His free hand smoothed absently along Jackson's spine, up and back, up and back, the rhythm of a good horse calming in a stall.

They rocked nothing, just the old porch sway their bodies fell into whenever they stopped pretending they weren't tired. Jackson lay there and thought about the boy Blake had been in that small room in Bogalusa, about the man he'd had to assemble out of exits and hunger and hard-won rules. It made him want to hold tighter and looser, both at once.

Blake's breath came in deeper, then steadied. "There's a rodeo up the road," he said, the words colored with that particular mix of dread and delight he only used for one thing. "Little town. Fairgrounds ain't much. They got a bull nobody's sat past six."

Jackson lifted his head enough to see his eyes. "You're thinkin' of tryin' him."

Blake's mouth tugged. "I'm thinkin' I ain't got that many harder mornings left to waste." He flicked ash neat into the hotel's ceramic saucer, the gesture so careful it made Jackson's chest ache. "Feels like...I don't know. Feels like the end of this run's been out there waitin' a while, tappin' its foot. Might be I want to choose where it meets me."

Concern rose sharp and clean. Jackson set a hand to Blake's jaw, thumb finding the place it always found. "You don't have to prove anything to anybody."

"I know." Blake touched the wrist at his face, kissed the heel of Jackson's hand without drama. "Ain't proof. It's... it's how I know to say thank you and goodbye at the same time. I don't want to sneak out on my own life. I want to tip my hat and leave the gate right."

The cigarette ember dimmed to a dot. He let it go cold in the saucer and turned both hands to Jackson's hips, holding him like a man will hold a thing he's learned could leave and learned he won't chain. "I'd like you there," he said. "If you'll come."

Something deeper than fear answered. Jackson nodded before the words could tangle. "I'll be there."

They didn't fill the next beat with plans. They had been men of plans for too long. Instead they let the answer stand up and walk around in the dawn, try the chairs, look out at the road like it belonged to them for once.

Smoke drifted its last, and the sun began to lift like a coin out of a jar. It poured a first line of gold across Blake's shoulder, found the fragile hairs at Jackson's nape, turned them into a halo no preacher could have blessed better. Jackson tipped his forehead to Blake's. Their noses bumped, a small boyish accident neither apologized for. He could feel Blake's mouth shape the following sentence before it arrived and knew it didn't need to be said. Recognition passed between them, quieter than comfort.

They kissed like men who had already done the hardest parts in the dark and were now willing to show the morning how it was done.

No grab in it.
No hurry.

Just the slow, steady press of mouths that knew their way and still acted surprised. Jackson's hand slid to the back of Blake's neck and held, fingers in the short crop, the newness of it making the old feeling stranger and more beloved. Blake's hands spread against Jackson's spine, thumbs moving in lazy, unconscious circles that would quiet a colt and could quiet a heart.

Behind them, the sun cleared a low roof and set the whole cheap rail on fire. For a moment, the light made everything simple, and in that simplicity, they sat, one man on the other's lap, kissing softly, not asking for terms, letting the world's heat arrive and not looking away.

*

Blake backed the truck in with two fingers and that old, infuriating grace, the ball hitch finding the trailer's coupler like it had been taught to kiss. He dropped the latch, slid the pin, checked the chains, left and right, palmed the jack up, and gave the wheel a little kick to hear it sing. The white gelding shifted inside with a soft thud and a breath that smelled like hay and patience.

Jackson stood a few paces off with his hands in his back pockets, trying to play it cool and failing, eyes skimming Blake like he could memorize a man by inventory.

The motel door banged and here came Cash, two steps at a time, bag slung careless, Daisy's borrowed label-maker peeking from a pocket like a stowaway. "We good?" he called, high on coffee and victory. "I told the desk clerk y'all were responsible adults and to call me if the room burst back into flames."

Jackson smirked. "And how'd that go?"

"She asked for a second form of ID," Cash said, deadpan, then clapped his hands once and rubbed. "Load up. We're headed home."

"Small stop first," Jackson said, sliding open the cooler to check the water bottles, casual as a cat on a fence.

Cash blinked. "Small what now."

"Rodeo up the road," Jackson said, and the look he sent Blake's way put a little gold fringe around the syllables. "Quick look-see."

Cash squinted between them, read the air like weather. He shrugged, easy enough. "Fine. Long as somebody feeds me somethin' fried that comes on a stick."

Blake swung the tailgate shut and rapped it twice, then glanced at Cash over the hood. "Ride with me," he said, not making a big thing of it.

Cash slid a look to Jackson. Jackson tipped him a wink. Cash rolled his eyes like this was an inconvenience he'd chosen and sauntered to the passenger door of Blake's truck. He climbed in and immediately made a face, squinting like the seat was a math problem. "Hnh."

Blake buckled his belt, glanced over with saintly innocence. "Seat a little firm for you, carpenter?"

"Seat's fine," Cash said, shifting gingerly.

Blake's grin came slow, wicked. "Reckon I could whittle you a cushion. Maybe carve 'Hurt Like Hell, Five Stars' on the bottom."

"Reckon I could throw you out of this here moving vehicle," Cash shot back, but the corner of his mouth was betraying him. He settled anyway, one hand braced on the dash like the truck might launch into orbit. "Don't hit any potholes as big as your ego."

"I'll do my level best," Blake said, dead earnest, which somehow made it funnier.

Jackson slid into Cash's truck behind them and gave a quick, two-note chirp of the horn. Blake answered with a lazy tap-tap. He put the truck in gear. The trailer creaked. Cash rolled the window down an inch, let the morning in, and adjusted himself with the dignity of a man claiming new territory.

"Quit squirming," Blake said, easing them out of the slot. "Folks'll think I broke you in."

"Folks'll think you talk too much," Cash said, then, quieter, "Easy on the bumps."

"Yes, sir," Blake drawled, too pleased with himself not to savor it.

They pulled out of the lot like a small parade, Blake and Cash in the lead, Jackson behind with a saint and a horse, the road opening its mouth for them like it had been practicing all along.

*

The parish fairgrounds were trying to be bigger than they were, string lights and sponsor banners straining at their clips, generators grumbling like old men at a cookout, the smell of fryer oil and wet hay. Trucks nosed into ruts two deep. Trailers gleamed. A vendor hollered about miracle rosin while a twelve-year-old in a starched shirt tried a hat on three different heads and liked it best on his own.

"Looks like the Hydrangea Social fell in love with a swap meet," Cash said, shouldering through a thicket of belts big as hubcaps.

Jackson let the noise take the top inch off his hearing and felt the old hum anyway, the low metal talk of gates, the bull pen breathing like weather behind the chutes, that particular tension that means once in a while somebody will be brave and it'll cost what it costs. The buzz carried a name over and over in pockets and huddles, half-swallowed and half-sung: "Crosscut Halo."

"That him?" Cash asked, even though the answer had already settled.

"That's him," Blake said, mouth going wry. "Six seconds and the clock goes shy. Boys swear he can count to five and then he decides you don't get a birthday."

They cut down the alley by the practice pen, calves blinking patiently, a paint flicking flies like an old woman dismissing gossip, and came up at the sheet of plywood that was serving as a sign-up. Names chalked in quick hands, sponsors scrawled in the margins like prayers. For "CROSSCUT HALO" there were only two in a tight column.

"You sure," Jackson asked, plain, as Blake reached for the stub of chalk. The question wasn't a dare. It was a hand on a back before the steps got steep.

Blake rolled the chalk between finger and thumb, the way he rolled a cigarette he wasn't going to smoke. He didn't answer with a speech. He wrote "B. BUCKLEY" in a steady, modest hand and set the nub down like a man who'd just put his name on work he meant to stand by.

"That him?" said a voice from beneath the tent noise, dry as unlit tobacco, shaped by time.

They turned. Off the alley, near a booth selling kettle corn and bad insurance, an old man sat in a folding chair like a king on a throne he didn't owe rent on. He had a face like a carved pecan, full of rivers and sun, and a jaw that had learned how to set before some of the boys in this place had learned to shave. His hat had been expensive once and then honest for a long time. On his belt, the buckle wasn't gaudy. It was old and right, an oval of worn silver with a hammered-in star and a little hand-scratched with a number that looked like it got added one night with a pocketknife.

"Ask'n if you got the parts for that sermon," he told Blake. "Crosscut's a hymn with hooves. Most men lose the tune around six."

Boys nearby leaned in the polite way. Men pretended not to listen and listened.

The old man's eyes went to the chutes, then back through something only he could see, and began, not loud, not showy, just that cadence men get when the past comes in on its own feet.

"Once," he said, "there was a bull moved like God changin' His mind. Name wasn't Crosscut Halo. This'un was called Kingdom Come. Big shoulders like two doors shoulderin' weather, eyes that knew math. Whole circuit talked like he was a myth somebody forgot to make up. Boys would draw him and get right with the Lord. Eight was a joke. Ten was a lie somebody told to sleep better."

He thumbed a bit of kettle corn and didn't eat it. "Crowd was mean that night, hot and lookin' for spectacle. They'd just pulled a boy out with a shoulder shaped wrong and a promise to his mama shaped worse. Kingdom Come headed for the chute the way a storm heads for roofs. And then this kid...skinny as fence wire, hands like he'd been born holdin' on, slid in that well without hurries. Didn't nod quick, didn't spit, didn't point to the people who pretend they ain't superstitious. Just put his hand where it needed to be, found his rope, breathed like he'd learned it from a horse that taught slow. Gate banged."

The old man's fingers twitched once, ghosting a rope pull. "They sunfished him mean. Swapped ends like regret. He laid his free arm out like a preacher blessin' water. Four seconds, he was still pretty. Five, he wasn't. Six, he shoulda been on the ground and the clowns shoulda been earnin' their pay. But that boy weren't done. Seven, the bull found a new trick. Eight, the boy lied back and told the dust it didn't own him. Nine, that animal went up and came down like the earth had to give permission. Ten, eleven...somebody at the clock forgot how. Twelve and the crowd quit hootin' and got quiet, real quiet, like maybe they were watchin' a man go somewhere important without them. At sixteen," he smiled a little, as if at a bad dog he loved, "horn blew because somebody slapped the box out of mercy. That boy stepped off like he'd been gettin' off beds his whole life and put his hand on that bull like gratitude. And the bull, I swear to you, put his head down like he'd been seen."

The tent's noise had narrowed, the way beehives go still at odd times. The old man leaned back, chair creaking, eyes gone to that elsewhere, then home again. He nodded at the board where "B. BUCKLEY" still shone fresh. "Some folks spend the rest of their years tryin' to make every day be that day again. That's a kind of hunger. I ain't judgin' it. But..." he said, pausing to face Blake straight on, his eyes drilling into him. "...you better learn to leave what you love with grace when it's time. Leave it standin' up. And leave with your hat in your hand, not your tail between your legs."

If he'd been aim­ing to throw shade at a man looking to write his last chapter in a small-town chute, it didn't land hard. His voice had love in it, of bulls, of boys, of a clock that sometimes told truer time than judges could. Still, Blake felt the sentence go right through the thick of him and hit something else entirely, a truth that wasn't about the chute at all. He didn't let it show. He just tipped his chin.

The boys around them found their noise again. An emcee somewhere hollered about discount beer. A calf bawled like somebody had hurt its feelings.

They turned to go.

"Son," the old man called, catching Jackson by the sleeve of his attention. Jackson looked back. Up close, the old man's eyes were the kind that had learned softness the hard way. "You remind me of that rider," he said. "Build like a prayer you ain't sure you're allowed to say. Hands that look like they were born to tell the truth."

Jackson felt his mouth go dry and his smile turn real. He tipped his head, just once, like a nod to an altar on his way past, and went after his men.

Behind them, the old man watched him go with a grin that pulled younger across his old bones. He tucked his thumb under that worn buckle and rubbed a little hand-scratched "16" with the pad of it.

The fairgrounds tightened down like a jar lid. Heat stacked under the canvas, trapped in breath and fry smoke and the tinny cheer of a speaker that had been asked to do too much. Folks pressed shoulder to shoulder along the rail, hats tipped low, nerves showing in small ways, men rolling their day's last cigarette thinner than they meant, women twisting the fringe on their purses as if it could hold a prayer. Somewhere a toddler howled, then hiccuped himself quiet against a grandmother's bosom. The sky went that iron color evening turns when it's fixing to watch.

"Crosscut Halo!" the emcee hollered, voice already hoarse, and the name turned like a fish under the crowd, bright for a second and gone.

In the pens, the bull made the metal talk. You could hear steel braces chiming and hinges complaining like old men. The animal's breath came hard enough to fog the slats. His hide flashed dark and wet, the white slash at his shoulder catching light like a knife. He slammed the gate with a hip and the whole world rang. Boys laughed a little too big to prove to themselves they felt brave.

The first rider made the walk of it, hat down, jaw set because he knew somebody from back home was watching. He slid in neat, roped quick, nodded like a man getting a shot he didn't want to think about, and was gone before you could count to three, yard-saled under a spray of dirt, hat spinning like a coin on a tabletop. The crowd hooted and groaned in the same breath, relief and appetite rattling together.

The second climbed like a prayer: careful, low, thighs tight. He settled deeper, shook his hand once to feel the rope's lay, looked skyward as if to mark what he was leaving, and nodded. Crosscut blew out of the chute like a curse took shape. He sunfished hard, back arched mean, front end up, back feet high and wrong, body drawn into a question mark a man's spine wasn't meant to answer. The boy held four seconds by charity and landed on his shoulder so hard the air left him like money leaves a fool. He sat up with his mouth open, no sound, and the clown slapped his back.

It worked on the crowd like a match. The noise went jagged. Sponsors leaned in, smelling blood and headlines. Old-timers lifted their chins to see whether the day would make a story they respected. The whisper went slick, mean, and admiring. 

The bull was unrideable.

Back under the awning where the names were chalked, Blake rolled his wrists, knuckles popping one by one, quiet as a church that had stopped pretending God needed noise to feel welcome. Jackson eased in front of him, blue eyes bright, mouth set like a man who knew the cost of this particular gospel.

“Coachin’?” Blake said, half a grin there to hide the ghosts.

Jackson lifted a hand and set it on Blake's jaw, thumb finding the hinge the way it always did. "Count your breaths. Keep your free arm honest. Lie to him 'til the lie turns true, then tell the truth quick. And, Blake?" He leaned closer, heat honest between them, voice just for his ear. "Please don't die."

Blake's laugh was scratched up and lovely. "Not in front of you."

They knocked foreheads once, boys on a porch before the game, and Jackson stepped away, letting the air close again.

He found Cash at the grid, the last stretch of fence before the chute, where the metal went from rail to teeth. Cash had his forearms braced on the bars, hands white at the knuckles, eyes locked on the dark animal. The bull's hooves scissored and skidded. He hit the panel with his shoulder again and again, like a door he meant to go through, and each slam traveled up the fence into bone.

Up close, Crosscut Halo wasn't just big. He was built, neck like a downed oak, shoulders winged with muscle that shifted under hide like the river under wind, hip scarred with a healed gash that told its own story. He made a sound low in his barrel that didn't belong to cattle so much as thunder that learned to live in a chest. Saliva foamed at the bit of his own rage. White rim showed around black eyes that didn't spook, they judged.

Jackson leaned next to Cash, elbow finding the exact place his found. "You alright?"

"No," Cash said, simple as a nail. "He's crazy." He didn't look away from the bull. "Y'all are crazy."

Jackson blinked, a quick flicker of humor and fear and love, and then his eyes slid back to the alley just in time to see Blake swing up into the well. One boot in, one out, thigh across the bull's back like a dare. He reached down, found his rope, set his hand just so, settled the wrap, flexed once to feel where his own center lived tonight.

Crosscut Halo blew a breath that made dust lift from the boards. The chute man leaned in to ask with his eyes, you ready? Blake's free hand floated out, palm open to nothing, to everything, a prayer a boy might make without admitting it.

The alley narrowed to a tunnel. The crowd pulled itself tight. The clock waited, hungry. And Jackson, breath gone thin, watched as Blake set his jaw and slid his weight home.

The horn split the air, sharp and metallic. Then the gate banged, and Crosscut Halo blew out like a curse took shape.

One second.

Blake's shoulders went soft, hips doing the cruel math, free arm painting that clean arc like he was blessing water. Jackson's own arm lifted without permission, mirroring him at the grid. "Breathe...find the lie," he murmured, barely sound.

Two seconds.

Crosscut swapped ends, front high, back feet violent and wrong, sunfishing mean, and Blake lied with him, hips forward, chin tucked, the rope hand low and stubborn. Dirt came up in a dry roar. Somebody behind Jackson yelled something like a prayer or a bet.

Three seconds.

The crowd got loud in waves, whoops rolling down the rail like thunder hitting fenceposts. Jackson heard none of it clean. "Keep your feet," he whispered, "keep that spur talkin'... don't let the bubble run." Cash's forearm pressed hot to Jackson's through the grid, both men welded to the metal, breath held like a sacrament.

Four seconds.

Crosscut hit and twisted, shoulders left, hips right, all broken rhythm. Blake rode the off-tempo like he'd invented it, free arm true, core tight, the whole man a hinge that refused to catch. The clock lights blinked, red beads stepping forward. A woman near the chute covered her mouth and forgot to breathe.

Five seconds.

Blake was still pretty. Hat low, jaw set, thighs locked and talking. The crowd tipped toward belief. Jackson felt the town's whole gossip machine lean in at once. "Yes," he hissed, not to anyone in particular. Cash's voice cracked into his ear, unbelieving and sure at the same time: "He's gonna make it."

Six...

...something wrong. Jackson saw it where other eyes wouldn't: the tiniest drift of Blake's rope hand, a half-inch high, a hair out from his hip. Crosscut's head feinted left like he always did, but the shoulder dropped later than the feint, a dirty change-up, and Blake's spur missed the beat by a heartbeat. The lie didn't turn true in time.

"Don't," Jackson breathed, too late.

Crosscut threw a mean, short hook mid-spin. Blake lost center by a finger-width, just enough. He came off ugly, foot catching in the stir just long enough to wrench, crack, that sick, hollow sound you feel in the teeth. He rolled, training doing its dumb mercy, but his boot hit dirt wrong and the leg went with it. His hat skittered like a coin. His mouth opened on a sound no man rehearses.

The bull hit, bounced, planted, and turned on him, all the rage of a storm finding a house with the porch light on. The crowd went from roar to knife-quiet, then exploded, high and broken. The clown cut across the angle with his arms wide, shouting, taking the hook on bright cloth. It bought a breath. But it didn't buy enough.

Jackson didn't think. 

He was over the fence before Cash got his hands up, boots finding the rail, nothing, then dirt. He ran bent, fast, a bad idea written in bone and love. Staff came in from both sides, men with tabs in their mouths and death in their job description, slapping, whistling, waving, turning all that hate toward themselves.

Blake was down, grabbing for his leg, eyes blown, a raw, unshaped sound tearing loose. Jackson hit his knees and slid the last yards, grit burning skin, a prayer running wild under his ribs. He threw himself over Blake, chest to chest, arms bracketing, turned his back to the animal like a man who'd finally chosen what he was for.

The bull's breath hit hot across his shoulders. The ground shook. The clock kept counting like it didn't know what it was measuring anymore.

Cash's voice ripped across the ring. "HEY! GET HIM OUT!" He was half up the fence, knuckles white on the grid, hollering at the bullfighters like he could push the bull himself by will and cuss, eyes wide and wet, every inch of him ready to jump and not caring how bad an idea it was.

Jackson put his mouth to Blake's temple, breath ragged, grit stuck to his lips. "I'm here," he said, steadying the word with his whole body. "I got you. You did good. You did so good." Blake's eyes blew and then found him, blue into burnt-amber, shock dialing down a notch because the one thing he trusted had shown up on the right side of pain.

"Leg," Blake gasped, jaw clenched against the white flare that came every time he shifted. "Jackson..."

"I got it," Jackson said, palm pressing to Blake's chest to keep him still, his other hand cupping the sweat-slick side of Blake's face. "Breathe. Look at me. Stay with me."

Ten feet away a bullfighter ate dirt and came up grinning, mean, slapping his bright rag, cutting across the bull's sightline. Crosscut Halo lunged, hooked at air, spun on hate. Another man stepped in and stole the temper to his side. It was ugly and it was beautiful: professionals taking a storm by the horns and insisting it blow the other way.

"Come on, you bastard!" someone yelled from the chutes, and the panel banged open like a door finally giving. The fighters feathered the angle, clapped, and hollered. Crosscut hammered toward the mouth, last second, last swerve, then crashed through the gap into the alley. The gate kissed shut behind him with a heavy, beloved clang. The whole arena exhaled in one broken, grateful sound.

"Make a hole...MEDICS!" a man in a vest roared, and the red bag was already thumping across the dirt. Two paramedics in dusty polos dropped to their knees at Blake's side. "Hey, big man, don't move," one said, voice too calm to be new at this. "What's your name?"

"Blake," Jackson answered for him, thumb on Blake's cheek, eyes not leaving his. "Right foot...heard it crack."

"Copy," the medic said, hands on the joint, careful as prayer. "Sir, squeeze my hand. Pain here?" Blake's fingers dug in hard enough to make the man grunt. "Right. Splint. On my count."

Jackson slid his hand down until he could lace their fingers, felt the tremor in Blake's grip, squeezed back like a man tying a knot that had to hold. "You're okay," he said, eyes steady. Blake's breath hitched, then matched Jackson's, in-out, in-out, the way you teach a spooked animal that the world hasn't ended yet.

They lifted on three, the board sliding under with a soft scrape and a hard swear. Blake cursed once, honest and violent, and then went quiet, jaw locked, eyes on Jackson like that was the only thing keeping the ceiling where it belonged.

Applause rose and spilled over, ragged, real, the kind you give a man for standing in the right place even when the ground wasn't kind. Hats tipped. A kid pressed his palms together like he'd seen in church. Cash dropped off the fence and ran along the rail to meet them at the gap.

The PA cracked and hissed, the emcee finding his mean footing. "Well, folks," he drawled, too bright, too pleased with his own voice, "that might be the last time we see Blake Buckley astride..."

"BOOO!" The sound hit him like a thrown bucket. It wasn't polite. It wasn't theatrical. It was a wall. Men who'd been boys when Blake taught them how to breathe at a chute booed. Women who'd never liked him much booed too, because decency has rules. Someone shouted, "Show some respect!" A chorus picked it up.

The emcee coughed and backpedaled. "...Uh, sending our thoughts and prayers to Blake Buckley, ladies and gentlemen..."

The stretcher jostled through the gate, swallowed by the shadow under the awning. Jackson kept hold of Blake's hand until the medic made him let go.

Blake's eyes fluttered, found him one more time, and, through clenched teeth and dirty breath, gave him back a small, blazing smile. Then the crowd closed behind them, uneasy and hushed, the dirt settling slowly like ash after weather.

*

Blake lay on the narrow table, boot cut off, his foot trussed in an air-cast that breathed when the doctor squeezed it.

The doctor, lean and sunburnt, rodeo-competent, not unkind, tugged the cuff, checked the swell and the bone-line with thumbs that knew where trouble lives. "Not a clean break," he said, eyes on the joint, voice flat enough not to invite argument. "Probable fracture. Worse for time, better for healing. You stay off it, keep weight to a lie, you'll be right." He glanced up, measuring the patient and the man on his mouth. "Six months. No bulls. No broncs. No 'just one.'"

From the corner, Jackson's voice slipped out like a hand at a back. "Good luck with that."

The doctor pretended not to hear. He strapped the Velcro home with a sound like bad manners, scribbled an order, handed it to the nurse. "Ice. Elevation. Ibuprofen. If you can't be good, be stubborn on a couch." He nodded at the men, at the cast, at God, and left, the flap whispering shut behind him.

Silence came in hot. 

Blake stared at the tent roof like it owed him money. Something gathered in him, old, fast, then snapped. He brought his palm down on the metal tray hard, a whipcrack in a small room, instruments leaping like quail. Gauze and tape cones pitched off the edge and skittered to the floor. A pair of scissors slid, clattered, went still. Heads turned. A nurse made a face that had both care and contempt in it and went back to stacking.

Cash didn't flinch. He stood with his arms folded, eyes steady, jaw set to the old setting, letting the storm blow through the tent skin and find him unmoved. Jackson moved slowly, palms out, like approaching a colt you've already ridden and still respect.

"I had him," Blake said, voice torn up and low. He wasn't shouting now. That somehow made it harder to hear. "One. Fuckin’. Second."

"It doesn't matter," Jackson began, automatic as a prayer you say because you don't know what else to do with your mouth.

It hung there.

Jackson swallowed, let the false comfort die like a fish on a dock, and caught Blake's gaze with both hands. No more half-truths between men who've bled on each other's boots.

He didn't say sorry. 
He didn't say someday. 

He just stood in the blast of Blake's hurt and didn't hide. For a heartbeat the old armor came flying back up Blake's face, jaw, cheek, eyes narrowed against daylight. And then tears just happened. No sound. No theatrics. Clean tracks cutting through dust on his cheekbones, catching at the corner of his mouth like rain finding the seam in a window.

Jackson knew what they were. He knew the shape of that corner, the wild thing of a man who's been driven to the boards one too many times, seeing the end of his trick and hating that the trick had ever saved him. 

A wolf with nowhere to run will eat the trap and his own foot to be free. You don't corner a wolf. You open a door.

So Jackson did the one thing that would not spook him. He smiled, soft, proud, a little foolish, and checked the tent with a quick glance like a thief choosing his pocket. Nobody watching. He leaned in and put his mouth to Blake's, a kiss with no grab in it, just home and hands and I'm here. He said, plain as a name, "I love you."

It landed. 

You could feel Blake's breath change under it, one hitch, one surrender, one small mercy. Jackson drew back before anybody could turn and make it a spectacle. He touched Blake's cheek where the tear had run and then slid past Cash, every inch of him on purpose.

"Stay with him," he said, low.

Cash nodded once, already there, already squared up between Blake and any fresh hurt that didn't know the rules. Jackson pushed through the flap into the fairground noise and bright, and the tent breathed behind him.

Blake and Cash sat in the hum and iodine for a full minute. Blake stared at the canvas roof as if he could make it be sky. Cash studied his boots like they were proof of a decent life.

"Tell you what," Cash said finally, voice dry as a fence post, "if it makes you feel any better, I can let the nurses out and let you fuck me again."

Blake turned his head, slow, eyes narrow as if reading the fine print. A breath hung. Then the corner of his mouth made a stubborn little lilt. "Generous," he said, small chuckle catching like a match. 

It wasn't much. 
But it was something.

Then, something else hit the tent. Commotion from outside, a ripple like fish under water. Footsteps slapped canvas, a nurse hustled past with a clipboard. "New entry..." someone hissed, not keeping it quiet. "... goin' in now..."

Cash's gaze snapped to Blake just as Blake's whole body said the word he didn't finish. "Mother f..." He was already levering up, air-cast hissing, one good foot skidding to the floor. The table squealed. The metal tray he'd scattered earlier chimed and died.

"Sit," a nurse yelped from the flap. "Mr. Buckley, sit back down!"

Blake bared his teeth without smiling. "Get the fuck away from me."

Cash was there, shoulder under Blake's arm, hand to his back, anchoring him not to keep him but to help him aim. "Best do what he says," he told the nurse with a lazy smirk. "He bites."

They moved fast for men who'd run out of luck, Blake hopping, grim-mouthed. Cash balancing him like a beam. The tent parting like a bad idea finding daylight. The fairground threw heat and noise at them. A chant built toward the chutes like lightning walks toward a church bell.

At the mouth of the alley, the emcee found a pitch he'd been saving for funerals and miracles. "Ladies and gentlemen," he called, milking it, "steppin' in for the one and only Blake Buckley, give it up for the boy you've all been whisperin' about since he put his hand on a rope five years ago...short but bright run on the road, pretty as a picture and apparently out of his mind, JACKSON… BELL!"

The bleachers didn't just roar, they stood. 

Hats flew, kids climbed laps, a woman shrieked like she'd seen Elvis and salvation. The noise hit Blake like a shove. He growled and tried to cut across the backs of people and elbows and old women with cameras, but bodies closed tight, a human wall that loved spectacle and wanted to keep it.

"He must really love you," came a voice from knee-height in the ruckus, amused and tender as a razor strop.

Blake and Cash jerked their heads. The old man from the kettle corn was there, threaded through the crowd like he'd been born to it, cane in one hand, eyes sharp as a boy's behind all that age. He gave Blake a look that took inventory and kept none of it. "Pretty sure we're fixin' to see something worth rememberin'," he said, tipping his hat. "Might even make the bull honest for a minute." He ghosted off, cane ticking, done preaching.

Blake hit the fence like he meant to run through it, chest and forearms banging steel. He hauled himself two rungs up, breath hot, ignoring the leg that made everything throw sparks. Cash got an arm around his waist from behind, bracing, both of them glued to the grid as if metal could turn into a prayer on command.

The chute crew moved like a throat swallowing. Jackson was a flash of gold and dust and calm at the gate, rope hand sure, free arm already drawing a slow blessing in the air. The crowd counted down without being asked, a thousand voices grabbing at the clock's throat and shaking: "THREE...TWO...ONE..."

The horn didn't so much sound as open a door in the air, and the world stepped out. The gate banged. Crosscut Halo came up like weather, and then, silence. 

Not the kind you hear. 
The kind that lives under bone.

One second.

The bull sunfished clean and mean, back arched, front hooves bright with dirt, and Jackson let his shoulders go soft the way Daisy taught him to loosen a jar without making it a fight. He breathed to the bottom of himself. His rope hand sat low and stubborn. His free arm opened like blessing.

Two seconds.

Crosscut swapped ends, hips kicking late. Jackson lied with him, hips forward, chin tucked. A porch light blinked on in his head, Cash barefoot, scabby-kneed, crawling up the window to his room in the middle of the night, grinning out a dare only Jackson ever landed right. He gave the bull a little truth wrapped in the prettiest lie he'd ever told.

Three seconds.

The bull twisted left-to-right dirty. Jackson countered with the same quiet math he'd used on that green colt on his second year on the road, letting the bubble find center, not chasing it. In the quiet, he saw the Spur neon flicker, Betsy bucking harmlessly, the first time his hands shook at fun that felt like fate. He smiled without meaning to and let his heels talk soft.

Four seconds.

Crosscut ducked a shoulder late. Jackson let his free arm lengthen, slow, a painter's stroke, and felt the rope bite sweet in his palm. He saw Weston laughing a brave laugh that had to be refilled every day. The world could be cruel and still hold kindness. He rode both, one in each hip.

Five seconds.

The bull hit the ground wrong and came out of it right, mean as rumor. Jackson rolled his hips to meet the wrong and kept his chin home. He saw Cash in the shop, the lamp's coin of gold kissing a hinge leaf, their bodies learning to love each other for the first time. Jackson's thighs burned and he welcomed the ache like work.

Six seconds.

Crosscut chopped the rhythm into bad pieces. Jackson refused to swallow them. He breathed out through his teeth, loosened his jaw, and lied again.

Seven seconds.

The bull went up and came down like a door slamming. Jackson let the slam pass through him the way a frame passes sound when it's been set true. He saw a willow shushing the river, his eight-year-old self crying into Daisy's shoulder. He kept his rope hand honest, kept his free arm singing a narrow hymn. The clock's red beads walked forward. He didn't look.

Eight seconds.

Crosscut tried a short hook. Jackson lifted, opened his ribs, took the g-forces in the soft parts he'd spent five years teaching himself to keep soft. He saw a barn kiss that left him lit for days, the way home had tasted like sawdust and clean sweat. Cash's mouth. He curled his heels and told the animal yes in a language that meant no, you don't own me.

Nine seconds. 

The bull quit being a bull and turned into problem, and Jackson turned into answer. He sat deeper, low through the hips, weight in the sweet of the seat. Tom Earl's ghost nodded from a grease-dark shop in Bogalusa. Kingdom Come ghosted the rail and tipped his hat to a boy who hadn't known he was praying. Jackson kept time and let time keep him.

Ten seconds. 

The noise around the pen thinned to a far cotton gin hiss. The bull's withers punched. Jackson answered with his belly, the place where a man keeps hunger and courage in separate jars. He realized he was smiling and forgot to stop.

Eleven seconds. 

Crosscut snapped his head and faked left, dropping his shoulder late. Jackson had already moved, his hips stealing an inch from tomorrow. He saw the white horse's pink muzzle breathe warm into his palm. He saw Blake leaning on a stall door, hat dripping rain, eyes soft. He let his free arm float quiet, quiet.

Twelve seconds. 

The bull blew and the rope sang. Jackson rode the song. Daisy's kitchen clattering with casseroles and plans. Marla and the Gals laughing with teeth. He felt the town's hands on him. He leaned into the line and let gravity turn ally.

Thirteen seconds. 

The animal tried to count him out. Jackson stopped obeying numbers. He remembered a rooftop, Cassidy's cackle, Weston's cane carved "Still. Here.", four friends with their legs dangling over tomorrow. He found the part of his back that didn't lock anymore. His breath feathered. He tasted dust and joy.

Fourteen seconds. 

Crosscut pulled his meanest trick, a double-switch with a late kick, beautiful as a lie, deadly as one, too. Jackson's body moved before his mind could label it. He gave the beast that inch and took two. He heard Daisy's voice turning a mob into a church by reminding God what love is for. He let go of fear.

Fifteen seconds.

He was past pretty now, into right. Sweat burned his eyes and he watched Blake anyway, just a picture in his head of that first night. Inside that trailer, when everything changed, mouths and bodies soft at the edges because love had gotten in. Jackson set his heels lower, let the spur whisper instead of shout.

Sixteen seconds. 

The horn should have blown once for mercy. He heard nothing. He felt only the bull's heart under his seat, and behind that, all the hearts that had taught his. Daisy's steel, Cash's sawdust, Weston's glittering grit, Cassidy's wit, Blake's old dog hunger turned gentle. One more second asked for itself like a door asking to swing and catch.

Seventeen seconds. 

He chose. He let the last violence pass through him, rode the crest, then made the kind of decision a man waits a lifetime to get right. He opened his hand and let go of the rope like a sacrament, jumped off with his knees bent and his shoulders loose, didn't fall, stepped, and the ground took him like a mother, even when it hit hard. His boots bit dirt. His hands found air and turned as he landed.

Sound came back like a flood breaking an old dam. 

The arena turned Roman, stone and dust and human throat, men beating rails with hats, women crying, somebody lifting a child so he could see the story he'd tell when the world grew mean again. "JACK-SON! JACK-SON!" rolled through heat and smoke and spent fear until it felt like a river hitting a levee. The emcee tried a word. The crowd swallowed it, then fed him back his own awe.

Crosscut Halo skidded, planted, and turned, huge and bright-eyed, steam off his back like a saint you don't paint. He snorted, a sound that said a thousand old things, and in it there was the smallest nod, animal to animal, trouble to trouble. He swung his massive head away and walked toward the alley as if the gate had been his idea.

Jackson spun slow, breath coming like he'd borrowed somebody else's lungs and given them back. He searched the grid. Cash was there at the fence, mouth open in a shout that didn't choose words, eyes shining with pride. Jackson smiled, clean, boyish, home. Then he found Blake over Cash's shoulder, white-knuckled on the rail, pain making his jaw a hard line and love undoing it anyway. 

Jackson didn't bow. 

He raised one hand, palm open, not triumphant so much as true, and started across the dirt with the step of a man who'd come to do a single, impossible thing and had done it. Dust lifted around his boots like breath. The chant lay over him in warm sheets, JACK-SON, JACK-SON, bleachers turned to a thousand open mouths, the arena a heartbeat he could have walked on water.

At the grid, Cash had his forehead pressed to the metal like it could take more devotion if he gave it. He was shouting nonsense and prayer, both fists thumping the rail, spent and lit and absolutely gone. "That's my boy! That's my..." He didn't finish it because the word felt too small in his mouth. He just screamed again, laughing, crying, the way boys scream when the thing they believed in finally shows up in daylight.

But there was a stillness beside him that tugged like a loose nail in a floorboard. 

Cash turned, squinting through dust and sun. Blake was there two rungs up, jaw bruised and tight, air-cast bumping the fence, his knuckles bone-white on the grid. 

He wasn't moving. 
He wasn't nothing. 

He was absent the way a man goes absent when the past and the present climb the same ladder and meet eyes. Calm as a pond and not calm at all.

"What's wrong with you," Cash gasped, half laughing, half scolding, surprised by the quiet. "Look at him..."

Blake didn't look away. The light off the arena found the flecks in his eyes that only show when a storm has taught itself manners. He watched Jackson walk with that long, easy stride, watched the rope burn on his palm shining like new stigmata, watched the dust catch in the gold hair at his nape. His face was a roof that had decided to hold through the night, come what did.

Cash turned back to the fence, still breathing like he'd outrun a train, speaking sideways, the words more for the metal than the man, because some truths only come plain if you don't look at them head-on. 

And then he spoke again, this time softly, truth and realization sinking slowly into every word. "He didn't come here to get you, did he"?

Blake stayed very still. Somewhere in the ring a hat hit dirt and didn't matter. The chant swelled and fell, waves on pilings. He let one breath out slow. "No," he said, the syllable sanded soft by love. "He came here to say goodbye."

It landed in Cash like a hammer on a hinge he'd hoped was set. He felt the soft weight of Daisy's hand on his shoulder, the way she'd said go with him without ever saying bring him back. 

Daisy had known. 
Jackson had known. 

Cash had been the ticket home from the minute they left Willow Creek, and there wasn't a matching stub for Blake. This wasn't a rescue. It was a wake that ended in daylight, a hard mercy thrown in the middle of a crowd.

The chant braided itself around them, made them smaller than they were.

Blake leaned into the fence as if it could keep him standing and looked at the boy in the dirt like a man fixes his eyes on a distant tree to steady a saw. "Love him, Cash," he said, not loud, not dramatic, just the right size for the space between slats. "Love him with all you got." He swallowed around the hurt and managed a smile that didn't ask for anything back. "He's...one of a kind."

"JACK-SON! JACK-SON!" rolled over them, big, foolish, beautiful. 

Out in the ring, the man they both loved kept walking, hand lifted, face wet and shining, River light in his eyes, the crowd rising and falling like water that would never quite agree to be still ever again.

*

The gravel lot was a compass with two needles, Blake's rig pointed one way, Cash's the other, white horse shifting in his box, snorting a soft punctuation now and then. There wasn't any silence left in the morning, only words trying to do what hands couldn't.

Cash stepped up first, shoulders set like he was reporting to work. "You swing through Willow Creek, you hear," he said, chin up, "don't be a stranger."

Blake smiled, all the way to his eyes, and didn't answer that with language. He hooked an arm with the crutch, pulled Cash in one-armed and hard. Cash's face went stubborn against Blake's chest and then softened, the way fences do after rain.

"You a good man, Buckley..." Cash muttered into him, like the words had rough edges he refused to sand.

Blake bent, mouth to his ear. "Remember to breathe," he whispered, the same way he'd said it in the field. Then, wicked and fond: "And let Jackson fuck your ass every once in a while. It's a good ass."

"Yeah, yeah," Cash said, shoving him off, laughter fighting for daylight and winning. He stalked for the driver's side, climbed in, and shut the door with a grin he didn't try to hide, leaving the space between trucks open on purpose.

Jackson took one step. Blake answered it with one of his own, the rubber tip of a crutch sinking a little into gravel. 

They smiled, tired, wrecked, alive.

Blake swallowed and set his jaw where truth sits square. "I been hungry my whole damn life," he said, voice low enough the parking lot had to lean in. "Started out hungry for safety, then money, then miles. Counted exits like they were psalms. Thought devotion meant motion...protect, provide, keep goin'. Then you sat down in my road and made the map look wrong. You and that mama of yours. Daisy put a spine in kindness and called it a door. You..." he huffed, half laugh, half awe. "You got a heart I envy, Jackson. It don't hide. It don't hoard. It opens and keeps opening."

Blake's eyes shone, unashamed. 

"Ain't another person gonna set up house in the spot you take up in me. That's built and blessed...and it ain't for sale. But because you live there...I gotta do the brave. The right thing...and not follow you now. If I go limpin' behind your truck, I turn into shadow again. I make your porch smaller. I gotta stand still and learn how to leave the thing I love with grace. Heal this," he touched the cast. "And this," he touched his chest. "And face the road without lyin' to it or to you."

Jackson nodded. 

"I know," he replied. And the answer said I hear it, I hate it. But I honor it. "Wait," he said, turning on his heel and loping to Cash's truck. He dug under the seat, came up with Blake's beat-up diary he'd tucked there, and jogged back. He pressed it into Blake's palm.

"Open it."

Blake thumbed the cover back. Nestled in the gutter, looped through with twine, lay Jackson's Saint Christopher, chain unclasped, medal dulled by a thousand good thumbings.

"If you can't take all of me," Jackson said, voice steady as a plumb line, "take a piece. Keep writin' where you go. Maybe folks'll want to read how you made peace with the miles. Maybe turn it into a book."

Blake's hands shook, just enough to tell the truth. He smiled, small and ruinous. "Maybe."

"No goodbyes," Jackson said, sudden and firm, as if the word itself could hex them.

"No," Blake agreed. "Just a 'see you later.'"

Jackson turned, made it three steps, stopped like a hound called back by an old whistle, and came running. The crutches clattered against the trailer. Blake barely got an arm free before Jackson was in him, up on his toes, hands at Blake's jaw.

The kiss was everything they'd ever done wrong and right at once, desire hot as August asphalt, tenderness soft as Daisy's lemon oilcloth, a flash of rage at time for being short, the long sigh of relief at being known. Blake tasted like smoke and Gatorade and man. Jackson tasted like dust and daylight and home. Their mouths fit like a hinge that had fought and finally caught. 

It wasn't careful. 
It wasn't cruel. 
It was the exact pressure that turns two boards into one door.

They broke on a shared breath, foreheads touching, noses bumping, a string of laughs they couldn't quite push down. Lips a breath apart, Jackson whispered, "Once a week. At nine. Call me, and I promise I'll pick up."

Blake smiled, wrecked and grateful, medal cold in his fist. "Yes, sir."

Jackson stepped back slow, let his fingers slide away, then turned and climbed into the passenger seat. Cash reached across the bench without looking and found Jackson's hand. Jackson took it, turned, and gave him a smile that put the whole stupid, beautiful plan back together.

Blake stood on the gravel with his crutches and watched the taillights ease out, the white horse's box following like a small, bright punctuation. The Saint lay warm now in his palm, the diary tucked to his side. 

Engines dwindled, and the day lifted its heat. 

He was about to shoulder the door to his trailer when a voice like sweet tea over crushed ice curled out of the dusk. 

"Well, butter my biscuit and call me breakfast...if it ain't south's finest tragedy with a jawline."

Blake turned, crutches scissoring, and there was Evan: hat cocked wrong on purpose, T-shirt that had given up halfway down his ribs, jeans painted on, boots too clean to be honest. He sparkled at the corners, earring, belt buckle, the unapologetic gleam in his eye.

"Evenin', Evan," Blake said, already tired and almost smiling. "You lost?"

"Sugar, I stay found," Evan grinned, sashaying closer. "Heard you got ditched by your pretty blonde saint and got your suspension busted in the same hour. Hate to see a classic truck sag like that. You need somebody who can, you know...share the load." He did a scandalous little lift of his eyebrows on "load."

"Pass," Blake said. "Doctor's orders."

"Doctor didn't see me," Evan sing-songed. "I'm more of a...specialist. Full-service. I rotate tires, top off fluids, and I'm real good with a stick shift."

Blake stared. "Boy."

"What? I mean it all responsibly." He sidled up to the fender, drumming his nails on gleaming paint. "Besides, you look like you could use a driver and a… rear differential."

"Try that pun again and I'll leave you in the corn dog line."

"Oh, I love a corndog," Evan said, hand to chest. "Portable protein? Sign me up."

Blake fought a grin and lost a corner of it. "You are a menace."

"Mm-hm. Public safety hazard." Evan leaned a shoulder to the trailer like he owned the axle. "Admit it. You need a hand hitchin', a soft seat for that hard day, and a companion who can keep you from over-torquin' your heart. I'm basically roadside assistance with dimples."

"Dimples ain't DOT certified," Blake said, but softer.

Evan glanced at the air-cast. "How's the...undercarriage?"

"Fractured," Blake said. "Heal in six months. If I behave."

"So never," Evan chirped. "Lucky for you I'm available evenings, weekends, and moral crises."

Blake rolled his eyes up to where God keeps patience. "Don't you have somebody to torment?"

"Not since my daddy found me gettin' reared behind the hat stand at Round-Up West," Evan said, flippant voice turning flat for one beat. "Pulled me out by the ear like a bad rabbit, cut me off, cut me loose. Been drivin' solo since."

Blake went very still. "He put you out."

"Mm." Evan shrugged. "He figured I'd learn to stand up straight if the world knocked me down enough. Joke's on him... 'cause I bend like bamboo, baby." He smiled too big, then let it fall just enough to show the seam. The slightest crack of humanity. "Road gets...loud. Wind talks ugly, then quiet. Could use...less quiet."

The lot hummed. Out past the highway, a horn leaned on itself and gave up. Blake looked down the road where Cash's taillights had already become story. He looked back at Evan, shiny and shameless and, for a breath, human as a bruise.

"You know your way around a hitch?" Blake asked.

"Darlin', I wrote a dissertation on couplers," Evan said, hope sprinting in behind the sass. "I can back a trailer in tighter than a church budget."

"You drive?" 

Evan blinked like he'd just been handed the last slice of cake. "Stick. Automatic. Tractor. Mule if you got carrots."

Blake huffed, turned toward the truck, and wrestled himself half-in with the crutches clattering. He came back with the keys, weighed them once, then tossed. Evan snatched them midair without looking, grinning like daylight.

"Move that pretty ass," Blake said, dry as a shot of rye.

"Oh, honey, this ass has many uses," Evan called, sprinting to the driver's door. "Cushion, motivator, conversation starter, emergency pillow..."

"...shut up," Blake groaned, wrestling himself into the passenger seat.

"See? Already improving your mood," Evan chirped, sliding behind the wheel like he'd been born there. He adjusted the mirror, clocked the saint on the glass, clocked the diary in Blake's lap, didn't say a word about either, just reached over, buckled Blake in gentle, and put the truck in gear. "Where to, Boss?"

"Outta here," Blake said. "Follow the smell of cheap coffee and bad decisions."

"My signature fragrance," Evan said, easing them out, trailer groaning into motion. "Also, house rules: I DJ, you hydrate, and if you say 'ten-four' unironically I will kiss you on the mouth to reset your brain chemistry."

"Just...drive," Blake warned, but without teeth.

They rolled toward the road, sodium lamps strobing gold on the hood. Evan chattered, shameless and sweet. "Okay, mile one: we name your cast. I vote Bessie. Mile two: we establish snack doctrine, sweet, salty, or chaotic neutral. Mile three: you teach me how to read a map like a man and not like a raccoon."

"Evan," Blake said, eyes on the dark where the highway opens, voice gone almost gentle, "shut up."

Evan beamed at the windshield. "Yes, sir."

The truck caught the blacktop and smoothed out. Crickets took over the soundtrack, punctuated by Evan's soft hum as he tuned the radio to a station that wasn't good but felt right. 

Blake tilted his head to the window, diary warm under his palm, saint ticking when the road got rough. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Evan drive, hands at ten-and-two, shoulders loose, grin aimed at tomorrow.

Company, he thought.

Maybe a man to split the distance, talk over the wind, make the quiet less sharp. 

"Snack doctrine's chaotic neutral," Blake said finally, deadpan.

Evan slapped the wheel, triumphant. "Knew it. First joint decision. Look at us...already in a relationship."

Blake snorted despite himself. "Don't get ahead of your headlights."

"Too late," Evan sang, but softened it, eyes on the lane. "I'll keep it between the lines."

They drove on, taillights stitching a new story into the dark. 

Two silhouettes in an old truck, one wound wrapping itself in time, one boy laughing too loud on purpose. 

Both of them headed nowhere in particular together for a while. 

*

(Five Years Later)

Five summers turned like a lazy fan. 

Folks in Willow Creek learned to tell time by the hydrangeas showing out, by the Willow House bell, by the kids' laughter coming down from the riding ring that wasn't there before.

Jackson and Cash turned twenty-eight without fanfare, then with it, because people still drove two states to stand in the dust where the church door catches true and ask the boy from the legend to sign a hat. Jackson would take the picture, sign the brim, say "thank you kindly," and walk them straight to Willow House where Marla's donation basket sat fat and unashamed. Sponsors kept sniffing at his heels like hounds that forgot their manners; he sent every one of them home. "Road had its turn," he'd say. "This one's mine."

Cassidy never did take up with a man, not for lack of petitioners and not for lack of a mouth on her. She said she wouldn't be splitting French fries with anybody till the Senate got its act together, which in Mississippi meant eternity. 

Weston and Levi got married properly, with paper signed, rings on, and a cardinal red tie that made the church ladies fan themselves with bulletins and whisper. Levi kept showing up to service with a smile and a casserole. Weston sang harmony under his breath till even Miss Alma had to admit the boy could carry a tune. The fuss wore itself out like summer lightning on a far ridge.

Daisy and the gals ran Willow House like God's sensible aunties, grants renewed, pantry stacked tight, pegboard bright as ever, the HOT LEADS tag curling under the AC duct. Hydrangea Social became an institution. Men in boots tied ribbons without dying from it. 

Cash's shop, DOOR & LIGHT, grew a shipping bench and a calendar crowded with out-of-state orders. The hand-painted ampersand got fatter, friendlier. His joinery crossed county lines like gossip.

Jackson opened Catches True Riding School out on the fairground's quiet side, the white gelding at his hip like a benediction. The rules were Daisy's: doors, not locks. No child made smaller to keep anybody else big. Kids who'd never been listened to learned how to sit deep and lie just enough to make a nervous animal believe in them. Parents cried behind sunglasses. The little ones ran their hands through the gelding's mane and swore they knew what the river smelled like now.

On this particular afternoon, the gals were on the Willow House porch. 

Daisy in the queen chair with the blue cushion, Marla and Becky shoulder to shoulder with plastic cups sweating, Carla cross-legged on the rail like a rafter sprite, Cassidy sprawled in a lawn chair with one boot heel balanced on the cooler, phone facedown as a sermon. Every now and then a car eased by slow, tourists pretending they weren't lost.

"There go the McCrays," Becky said, squinting down the street. "He still walks like he owes back rent on those knees."

"Bless him," Marla said, not sounding particularly blessy. "That man done tried to fix a hip with prayer and WD-40."

Carla waved at a pair of teenagers creeping by with matching hair dye. "Y'all look wonderful!" she called. "Don't let the sun steal your glory!"

Cassidy peered over her shades. "The sun can have mine. I'm on strike 'til October." She took a sip, pointed with the cup. "There's your boy from Memphis, Aunt Daisy. The one with the mullet that's convinced it's a ministry."

"That child's hair is a cry for help and a hedge against UV," Daisy said, amused, ladle tucked under her arm like a scepter even out of the kitchen. She lifted her chin at the slow-rolling minivan. "Y'all visiting? Come on in and put your money where your mouth is," she sang out, cheerful as a cash register. The van stopped, a hopeful couple leaned out: "Ma'am, is this where the Jackson Bell lives?" Daisy smiled sweetly. "No, baby. This is where he feeds people. You can meet him later. Put your five in the basket and let's start you on something useful."

"Tell it," Marla murmured, pleased. "How's our golden boy today?"

"Same as yesterday," Daisy said, settling back, "shiny on the outside, useful on the inside." She took a long look at Main Street. "He turned half the county's children into horse whisperers and the other half into decent spectators."

Cassidy snorted. "And he won't take so much as a free jacket for it. Man turns down checks like he's allergic to zeros."

"He ain't hungry for the wrong thing," Daisy said. "I won't have to unteach it later."

"And Cash?" Becky asked, pretending not to preen when she said his name. "He ship that walnut credenza to Baton Rouge?"

"Shipped yesterday," Carla said, proud as if she'd made it with her own hands. "Insurance lady said she tracked it like a hawk. I told her you can trust an ampersand that friendly."

"Mm," Daisy said, soft, pleased. "He's got orders stacked to Thanksgiving. Somebody in Asheville cried on the phone about a rocking chair like he'd carved their granddaddy back to life."

"Talented and moody," Cassidy said. "We keep breeding that in this county?"

"We don't breed it, sugar," Daisy said dry. "We just refuse to kill it."

They lapsed into a companionable cackle at a man whose dog was walking him. Marla elbowed Becky and nodded at a pair of church ladies trundling by. "Look there. Sister Birdie finally quit givin' Weston the evil eye and started givin' it to that azalea that won't thrive."

"Weston signed her hymnbook at Easter," Becky whispered. "Boy turned a corner when he started signing hymnbooks."

"Weston and Levi been married a year and change," Carla said, dreamy. "The world didn't end, the fried chicken didn't curdle, and Sister Birdie's azalea still looks like tax season."

"Ain't love a discipline," Daisy said, pleased. "Sometimes you just keep showin' up 'til the resistance runs out of casserole."

Cassidy tipped her head toward the street. "Where are our housewives, anyway? Thought we'd get the full parade, golden boy and the carpenter with his shirt sleeves rolled."

Daisy's mouth did a private smile. "He went by the house."

Cassidy barked a laugh. "That ain't a house yet, that's a barn with aspirations. Did he cut power to somebody else's meter to make his little lamp coin shine?"

"Mine," Daisy said, simple and absolute, a benediction disguised as a penalty.

Cassidy shoved her sunglasses up into her hair. "Come on then, give me a ride," she said, already standing, already pocketing her phone. "I wanna see what kind of not-house I'm supposed to ooh and ahh over before it's got walls."

"You'll ooh," Daisy said, reaching for her keys. "You'll ahh. And you'll keep your mouth off his square when he's scribing his stair stringers."

Cassidy grinned wicked. "I'll only put my mouth where invited."

"Lord," Becky said, fanning herself with a grocery circular. "Take the wheel."

"The wheel is at DOOR & LIGHT," Marla sniffed. "And it's sanded smooth."

"Y'all hold the fort," Daisy told them, standing. "If the Memphis mullet comes back, tell him a donation receipt is as good as a selfie."

She and Cassidy stepped off the porch into the shade, the willow's long fingers combing a breeze through their hair. 

They rolled past Daisy's mailbox and the bend where the willow shushed the road, and there it was, rising out of pasture like a ribcage turned toward heaven. Two stories of timber frame catching light, no sheathing yet, just beams and posts and the cross-ties between, fresh pine pale as bread, pencil lines still ghosting across the faces where the square had kissed them. It looked like a hymn stopped mid-verse, waiting on breath.

"Lord have mercy," Cassidy said, halfway out the window already, hair whipping, one hand braced on the dash. "Cash Dalton! You buildin' a house or a question mark?"

Up on a second-story sill, barefoot and shirtless, Cash dangled from a post with a framing hammer hooked in his back pocket, the ropey muscle at his ribs working under sawdust and sun. He turned his head slow, squinting down the line of one eye like a cat getting ready to make a choice, then drove three nails in a clean cadence, tack-tack-THUNK, and set the hammer's claw without looking.

"Keep that head inside the vehicle, menace," he called down, grin crooked as a road. "And if you can't tell plumb from pretty, close your eyes so you don't get confused."

Cassidy hung farther out, cupped a hand to her mouth. "I can see that back wall leanin' toward Jackson's side of the bed from here, carpenter. All that yearning put a tilt on it."

Cash planted a foot, leaned off the post to eyeball his own work with exaggerated seriousness. "What you're seein' is romance, not racking. She'll be straight once I sheath and let her brace." He pointed the hammer at her. "And it's our bed wall, Miss Never-Gonna-Share-Fries."

"Uh-huh," she said, delighted. "You got a permit for that mouth?"

Daisy parked on the turnout, smile tucked small in one corner, the kind she saved for when joy and pride were the same flavor. The whole place smelled of cut pine and hot iron and river breath riding up the slope. 

"Hey there, Daisy," Cash called, softening without meaning to, and the way the beam under him took that sound said the house approved. He followed her gaze past the skeleton, down the meadow where the grass gave up to cane and then to sand, and tipped his chin. "He went for a ride. Creek."

Daisy nodded, the kind of nod that holds thanks and marching orders both. She laid a palm to one of the posts, warm, alive, and patted it like a flank before stepping off the clay lip of the homesite, down the slope where deer prints pocked the damp places and wild mint brushed her ankles.

The world cooled under sycamores, and the creek did what creeks do, talked to itself like there was no one else worth telling. 

There at the bend, where the bank shelved into a small beach of pale sand, she saw him: Jackson seated with his boots off, toes in the current, elbows on knees, head turned like he was listening for the one true thing water says if you sit still long enough.

She stopped where the shade buttoned to the light and let herself look. Golden hair gone darker at the nape where sweat had slicked it, shirt stuck at the shoulder blades from the ride. He was all the ages she knew at once: the boy she'd caught climbing the pantry shelves for cookies, the teenager who'd outgrown his sorrow one porch swing at a time, the man who could sit a storm and choose his own ground. 

Daisy stood there a beat longer, hands easy at her sides, pride and ache and love making the same bright ache in her chest, and just watched her son in the place he'd finally made for breath.

He didn't turn, just lifted his chin the slightest shade like a hound catching a known scent, and said, "Hey, Mama."

"Hey, baby," Daisy answered, stepping from shade to sun, then back, letting the creek's bright lay a ribbon across her shoes. "You sittin' with the river or the river sittin' with you?"

"Both," he said, toes making little half-moons in the current. "She talks better than most folks. Don't argue as much."

"Mm," Daisy allowed, hands slipping into her apron pockets like they'd found home. "River'll say the same thing ten thousand ways and let you choose the one you can stand."

They were quiet long enough to hear the water do exactly that. Up where the meadow began, Cash's hammer thocked a steady heart. Dragonflies stitched blue commas in the air. Somewhere a kingfisher laughed at a joke he'd made about fish.

"How's my house-without-a-dress?" Daisy asked, chin toward the frame on the rise.

"Straight," Jackson said. "Plumb's plumb. He's fussin' the stair stringers like they're scripture. I swear he's courted that top tread more tender than he ever courted me."

Daisy snorted. "Don't you lie. That boy courted you the way a man sands a dining table...long strokes, patience, and an eye on the feast." She nudged him with her knee. "You done good, pickin' a man who can build what he means."

"I didn't pick him," Jackson said, soft as a confession. "I just finally quit walkin' past the door he was holdin'."

"That's pickin'," Daisy said. "Brave kind. Hard kind." She studied his profile, the cut his jaw made where sunlight left off. "You ready to be borin'?"

He looked over, half a smile. "You mean happy."

"I mean chores," Daisy said, pleased with herself. "I mean a grocery list with onions on it. I mean payin' a light bill and arguin' about where the good scissors live. I mean wakin' up in February when the creek's mean and the floor's cold and not mistakin' restlessness for prophecy." Her voice went softer. "You ready to stay and let stayin' make you."

He breathed, long and even, the way she'd taught him before he ever climbed a thing that could throw him. "I am," he said. "I want the hammer sound and the coffee sound and the door catchin' true sound. I want to know which floorboard squeaks and leave it."

"Leave one on purpose," Daisy advised. "So when you two fight, and you will, you can stomp down it and feel clever instead of foolish." She tilted her head. "Y'all gonna fight kind?"

"Fix, don't fight," he said, grinning. "He wrote it on the first page of his book like a dare. We get sharp, we go find a hinge and tune it 'til one of us remembers to apologize. Sometimes that's me." He glanced away, toward the slope, toward the skeleton of the house. "Most times that's me."

"Good," Daisy said, satisfied. "Couple who knows who they are saves on light bulbs and sorrow."

They let the creek braid around them again. A leaf went spinning past like a little boat with nowhere particular to be.

"Talk to me about the other thing," Daisy said, not reaching for it, just setting it between them like a bowl of saints. "You ain't said the word, but it's been walkin' 'round your shoulders since the day you rode back."

Jackson's jaw worked once. "Blake."

"Mm," Daisy said, not smiling, not frowning. "That man taught you exit routes and how to keep a boy on a rope long enough to let him choose the ground. He's part of you."

Jackson nodded, eyes on the riffle where sunlight shattered and mended in the same heartbeat. "He is. You know we talk." He swallowed. "Every Sunday. Nine. I don't make home there no more. But...I won't pretend he ain't a room in me."

Daisy made a small, approving sound. "Some loves are rooms you visit and keep swept. Some loves are the kitchen table. You can eat in one and live in the other and not be a liar about either." She tipped her head. "You gave him grace. He gave you the road to the porch. That's a fair trade and a hard one."

He turned his palm up in the water, let the current press into it like a hand. "Mama, do you ever think..."

"Yes," she said, before he could hand her a question he'd bruise himself with. "You can wonder without wishin'. You can remember without goin' back. That's grown."

He nodded, the boy in him quieted by that mother's voice he'd known since fever nights. "He's different," Jackson said. "Softer in the voice when it ain't performin'. Hard where he ought to be hard, healed bone kind of hard, not the brittleness he had. He found a way to be useful on the road that don't eat him up. He sends me stories like postcards. I send him pictures of the kids and the gelding like prayer cards. That seems...righteous."

"It is," Daisy said. "He finally learned to leave what he loves with grace. Took him a while to find the leaving that wasn't abandonin'." She put a hand on his hair, smoothed it back once. "I'm proud of both of you for learnin' to love a thing without ownin' it."

He breathed out a laugh that turned to a sigh. "You always got the right words."

"No, baby," she said. "You always got the right heart. I just point it where the door is."

He grinned at that, turned to say something else, and then patted his pockets, looked down at his bare feet, then at the bank like a man just remembered a train schedule. "Aw, hell."

"Language, boy," Daisy said automatically. "What?"

"My phone." His eyes went wide with an almost-boyish panic. "I left it at the house. Mama, what time is it?"

Daisy slid her watch around on her wrist with a flourish like pulling a coin from behind a child's ear. "Close to nine," she said, amused, already stepping back as he came up out of the sand in one motion.

Jackson was on his feet, half-pants rolled, face lit with guilt and determination. "I gotta..." He whistled low through his teeth. Up the slope the white gelding lifted his head like he'd been waiting on the note all day.

"Hey! You and Cash showin' up at my house for supper?" Daisy called as he trotted for the lead line looped over a willow twig.

"Course!" he yelled back, already swinging onto the gelding's bare back with the ease of the man those tourists came to see. "We ain't got a kitchen yet!"

"Bring that boy an appetite and don't bring me any sponsors," Daisy hollered, laughter in it, as the horse gathered itself and slid into that liquid trot that eats distance. Jackson leaned forward, hand in the mane, hair catching river light, and the two of them threaded between sycamores and up toward the ribcage of the house that would soon take on skin and weather.

Daisy stood at the seam of shade and gold and watched, one palm warm with pride, the other empty on purpose, listening to hooves fade and the creek keep talking, the old song of water over stone saying the same true thing it always had.

Jackson came in a streak of white and dust, the gelding eating the last stretch like it was downhill. He slid off before the horse had finished stopping, tossed the lead over the porch post they hadn't built yet, and ran for the frame.

"Where'd I leave my phone?" he hollered, 
thudding up onto the subfloor, the whole skeleton answering with a pleased little hum.

"Bedroom!" Cash called back from high on the second-story sill. "Front corner..." He paused, grin sneaking. "...you know, the one with no dang walls."

Jackson stopped mid-stride like a hound skidding on tile, spun on his heel, and tore back under the stair. Cash was there, shirtless and sawdusted, one hand on a post, the other still holding the hammer he'd been sweet-talking stringers with. Jackson grabbed him around the waist hard enough to make the level rattle, kissed him quick and sure, mouth smiling against Cash's, then put his lips to Cash's ear and said it plain, "I love you."

He pivoted and, without waiting for an answer, tossed, "Hey, Cass," and took the stairs two at a time, no railing, no caution, body knowing the rise and run because he'd cut them with Cash two nights back by lantern and laughter.

Up in the "bedroom", a rectangle of clean plywood and wind, his phone sat on a sawhorse like a saint waiting to be noticed. He grabbed it, thumbed the screen, and started pacing the length of the platform, heel-to-toe, testing the wood the way nervous men test jokes, gently at first, then with more trust.

Outside, Cassidy shaded her eyes and watched him ghost past the windowless frame, back and forth like a pretty argument. "He still do this?"

"Every freakin' Sunday," Cash said, setting the hammer down on the sill and climbing off with that easy monkey grace that made Daisy cross herself and grin. He wiped his hands on his jeans and came to stand beside his sister, both of them looking up like they were watching weather build.

"That don't weird you out?" Cassidy asked, voice light, fishing because big sisters fish.

"Used to," Cash admitted, eyes never leaving the man pacing their future floor. A beat. He chuckled, small and real. "Don't anymore."

"Why not?"

He took his time, then huffed a breath that might've been a laugh and might've been something else and smiled at himself for learning the difference. "'Cause he needs it," he said. "It makes him happy. And I want Jacks to be happy."

Upstairs, the phone buzzed, then rang, once, twice. Jackson froze mid-step and answered on the first clean breath, turning so the river wind could find his face.

Cassidy tipped her head. "That simple, huh?"

Cash's smile didn't break. He nodded, easy as a door catching true. "Yeah."

The line clicked and the world fell away the way it always did on Sundays at nine. 

"Hey, angel."

Jackson smiled before his mouth did. "Hey, old dog."

"Rude," Blake said, pleased. "I am young at heart and creaky at useful places. Where you at?"

"Second floor that ain't real yet," Jackson said, dropping to his back on clean plywood, one arm flung out, the other keeping the phone where it belonged. The sky was a shallow bowl turning from pewter to ink. First star stubborn as a dandelion. "I'm usin' your old trick, lyin' on a truck bed that ain't a truck bed."

"I approve," Blake said. "I can hear the sky."

"What's she sound like tonight?"

"Like I owe her money," Blake said, then softer, "and like she forgot."

Jackson laughed. "Tell me your week."

Blake took a deep breath, and then did as told, same as always. "We finished Amarillo on Tuesday. Halo's cousin tried to take a kid's arrogance off...succeeded. I taped his shoulder like a burrito and told him to stop bouncin' the inside of the gate like he's got something to prove. He said, 'You did.' I told him I had the knees to show for it, take it from a man who knows, there's ways to be brave that don't make you limp in the rain."

"You get rain?" Jackson asked, eyes on that first star until it doubled, then steadied.

"Got a squall east of Childress that cleaned the windshield of my soul," Blake said. "After that, we hit a truck stop served catfish that tasted like God had a fryer. Saw a flock of grackles bully a diesel into movin'. Evan made three puns before coffee, two after, none of them legal."

"How's he doin'?" Jackson asked, easing the heel of one foot to the beam so he could feel the house hum.

"Peacockin' and pitbullin' in equal measure," Blake said, fondness sneaking in. "Got himself a new pair of boots he calls his 'work husbands.' Other day, he backed the trailer blind into a space that was criminal and left a note on the dash that said 'tip me.' He is..." Blake let the word turn in his mouth, "...good company. Smarter than he lets himself seem. He bought a plant for the dash and apologized to it when we hit a pothole. He also told a sponsor to shove a conditional contract up their press release. Used nicer words."

Jackson grinned up at the unfinished heavens. "Road softens him."

"Maybe." A beat. "Maybe he's softenin' the road."

Silence that wasn't empty. 
The kind you can set a drink on.

"Your turn," Blake said. "Tell me home."

"Cash cussed a joist into behavior and kissed me between curses," Jackson said, happy just reporting it. "Kids at the ring...got a little girl named May who refuses to 'sit pretty.' I said, 'Sit true, then.' She did. White gelding's teachin' better than I can. Daisy turned a corporate volunteer day into a can drive without bloodshed. Weston sang 'I'll Fly Away' in the aisle of Piggly Wiggly and made Sister Birdie drop her beans. Cassidy told a traveling preacher to 'go argue with a stop sign' and he thanked her for her ministry."

Blake's laugh came warm. "And Cash?"

"Built me a stair I ain't worthy of," Jackson said, pride burning the good kind, low and steady. "Scribed the skirt board like he was signin' his name. Wrote 'Fix, don't fight' inside the closet header like a little creed where nobody but us will see it. I find his pencil tucked behind his ear after dark, and I can't stand it, I gotta put my mouth in the place all that thinkin' lives."

"Show-off," Blake said, but the tenderness in it made Jackson blink at the sky. "He's sellin' out of state still?"

"Lady in Vermont cried on the phone about a chair. He sent her a picture of the ampersand and she said she felt included by punctuation. I think we're evangelizin' grammar now."

"Daisy always said you were missionary-minded," Blake deadpanned.

"Daisy said you were a hazard," Jackson countered.

"She ain't wrong." A click of a lighter through the receiver. "You ridin' much?"

"Enough," Jackson said. "Mostly for little eyes. Sometimes for me." He exhaled. "I still dream the seventeen. Sometimes I dream it backwards."

"How's it go backwards?"

"I step on, then the gate shuts," Jackson said. "Bull turns quiet as a dog under a table. Crowd hushes like we're about to pray, but...we forgot the words. Then I'm back on dirt, rope in my hand, and the whistle hasn't been invented yet. It feels like bein' forgiven."

"Sounds like you quit bein' chased," Blake said, and let it sit, a man who'd learned to leave a door cracked but not pry it open.

They went quiet long enough for the creek to float up into the speaker and fold itself into the hum of I-40 in the background. 

Two different rivers, same old water.

"What'd you write this week?" Jackson asked.

"Don't you make me read," Blake warned, embarrassed because he was proud. "I been puttin' words down like studs. Got a chapter about a bullfighter named Two-Bit who taught me to plan for ugly and count on mercy. Wrote a page on a truck stop waitress who slipped me a roll when I didn't have the quarters and told me to 'keep movin' that pretty.' Evan keeps addin' footnotes with puns like a raccoon with a Sharpie. I'll send you the clean pages."

"Send me the dirty ones," Jackson said, smiling. "I like your mess. It's honest."

"Mess likes you back."

"Blake," Jackson said, voice going down to the floor of himself. "You breathin' steady tonight?"

"On you?" Blake asked, like it was password and benediction both. "Yeah."

"Good." Jackson let the arm with the phone fall to his chest so he could listen to the sky with both ears. "I'm lookin' up at where our roof's gonna be. It's almost real enough to keep the stars from fallin' in."

"Leave one place where they can sneak through," Blake said. "You never did like a house that forgot the outside."

"I'll tell Cash we need a leaky star joint," Jackson said. "He'll have an issue with the phrase."

"Tell him it's an aesthetic," Blake said, then quieter: "Tell him I'm proud of him. Tell him...hell, he knows."

"He knows," Jackson said. "He tells me to tell you to keep your knees outta trouble."

"My knees are a lost cause," Blake said. "I'm teachin' boys to be less like who I was and more like who you are."

"Don't do that," Jackson said, soft heat. "Teach 'em to be less scared. That's enough."

"It is." A rustle. Blake shifting, probably out under a sodium light behind a motel, or sitting on a cooler, or on the tailgate ghost of some old truck. "I saw a kid today...soft little thing with a glow to him...stand at the fence and look at the chutes like they were the ocean. I told him oceans are beautiful 'til you make 'em prove it. He asked me what to love instead. I said, 'Anything that builds. A song. A chair. A boy who wants to learn to breathe.' Felt like Daisy had her hand up my back making my mouth say somethin' useful."

"She's got range," Jackson said, eyes stinging, because it was funny and because it was true.

On the other end of the line, highway hum turned to nothing, the way it does when you've been listening long enough that it becomes you.

"You still wearin' that hole in your thumb where the medal used to sit?" Jackson asked, teasing the ache.

Blake huffed. "I keep rubbin' a ghost. Medal's in the console. I take it out when the weather looks dumb or I forget who I'm tryin' to be."

"You remember more now," Jackson said.

"I do." Blake let the admission out like a slow animal. "Still... Sundays at nine help."

"Me too," Jackson said. "I don't..." He stopped, because there wasn't a need to finish a sentence that always finished itself between them.

"I know," Blake said, and it sat right where it belonged.

"Tell Evan I said hey," Jackson added, mischief putting a dimple back where ache had been. "And that if he keeps punning at minors I'll put him in a volunteer vest and make him staple flyers at the Social."

"He'd rhinestone the vest and pretend it was his idea," Blake said, warm. "I'll tell him."

"You eat?" Jackson asked, defaulting to Daisy in his bones.

"Catfish," Blake said. "You?"

"Daisy'll fix that in a minute," Jackson said. "House ain't got a kitchen but my mama does."

"World's safest sentence," Blake murmured.

Jackson turned his head and looked through the rafters to the very first few stars, the ones you only ever see on purpose. He stretched his free hand out to the platform's edge and felt the night air rinse his fingers. He could hear Cash outside laughing at something Cassidy said, could picture the tilt of his head, the way his shoulders filled a doorway that wasn't there yet. He could feel the phone warm against his chest, and on the other end of it, could hear Blake being.

Just being.

"You layin' down?" Blake asked.

"On my back," Jackson said. "My ceiling's the whole sky. Roof'll go here." He tapped the plank twice so the sound traveled. "And here."

"Leave that star joint," Blake said, smiling in it.

"Always."

A small quiet gathered, good quiet, the kind that doesn't demand proof. Then the liturgy they'd taught themselves.

"See you later," Blake said, steady as a plumb bob.

"See you later," Jackson answered, and they let the line breathe a beat longer, not clinging, not hurrying, just setting it down where it would wait.

He clicked off and the night returned in full: crickets sawing, the creek keeping its old promise, a lone whip-poor-will turning a syllable in its mouth like it wanted to remember it forever. 

Jackson lay there another heartbeat on the bare upstairs floor, palm spread to the breeze where the roof would be, and felt the house answer him, a faint, living hum in the joists, the skeleton of a life catching true.

He was home. 

Home.

THE END

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