Page 1 of The Leaving Kind
Spent firecrackers littered the gravel lot outside Shepard’s Tree Farm. Brightly colored plastic cones and cardboard rings. Scorched and ragged boxes. Dozens of slender lengths of wire, one end blackened. Cameron steered his niece’s car around the largest clumps of debris and parked near the gate. He hopped out, key in hand for the padlock, and jumped about a mile in the air as a lost popper detonated beneath his shoe sole.
“Jesus. Fuck!”
Seven in the a.m. was way too early for that kind of startlement.
Cam stood still a moment, as he waited for his breath to slow. Then he made for the gate, eyes glued to the ground. The next popper, hidden under a curl of paper, jacked his pulse back up, but he didn’t jump.
“Damn kids.” That it could have been him thirty years ago—no, make that thirty-five—wasn’t lost on him. He’d done his share of sneaking out on a holiday weekend. Setting off firecrackers in empty lots. Tossing the odd cherry bomb in a dumpster and running like a rabid dog was biting at his heels to make the corner of the Dollar General where Gerry and Nate had been crouched low, waiting for him.
God, that boom. Always sounded like a bomb going off. To them, it might have been a real bomb.
Cam winced at the memory. If only they’d known. The sound a real bomb made? It varied. But the feeling of it ... The nanosecond of surprise, the punch of air. The way the earth kicked and bucked. The screams.
He squeezed his eyes shut. Breathe. In and out.
July Fourth was not his favorite holiday. The detritus strewn across the parking lot put him on edge. Back on edge. Shading his eyes against the rising sun, Cam gazed across the highway toward the housing development on the other side. Rows of houses nestled beneath low trees. Siding mostly the same color, the pitches of the roofs almost soothingly even. Beneath those eaves rested the punk-ass kids who’d left him all this extra work.
They weren’t the same folks who’d terrorized his own neighborhood last night and the night before, but Cam scowled at them anyway. Then he dropped his hand, dropped his shoulders, unlocked the gate, and got back in the car.
The drive to the farm wound down a long slope, through a quarter mile of fledgling trees. Spruce and pine on one side, sweet gum, honey locust, and dogwoods on the other. Apples and pears too. Small parking bays lay off to each side, spaces for customers who liked to wander the rows and pick their trees right out of the ground. A popular pastime late in November and early December.
Cam drove past the collection of small buildings at the bottom of the slope—the store and indoor plant nursery—and pulled around to the rear of the premises to park beside a pair of green pickup trucks, both printed with Shepard’s Tree Farm and the unimaginative Christmas tree logo. It was what it was.
His boss’s car was already there. Sometimes he thought Luisa Narvaez slept on the couch in her office. But she did have a shorter commute than him, living only five minutes away on the other side of Dingmans Ferry. Cam had to drive down from Milford. Took him about seventeen minutes on a quiet morning.
Well, sixteen minutes and forty-three seconds, on average. If he wanted to be precise, which he did not. That was his brother Nick’s thing. Cam preferred a life with rounder edges.
Pocketing his keys, he ducked into the rear of the shop and stopped at the coffee station. He helped himself to a cup from the pot Luisa had already started. Judging by the volume, she hadn’t gotten herself any yet. He grabbed an extra mug, poured it half full, topped it up with cream, and added three sugars. After giving it a stir, he carried both mugs into the back office and set one on Luisa’s desk.
She looked up with a smile that quickly faded. “Caray! Did you pull an all-nighter?”
Cam snorted. “No, the kids in my neighborhood did.” He slumped onto the couch, setting his mug on the armrest. “Plenty of adults out there too. All yelling and screaming, as if setting off fireworks until one in the morning wasn’t enough noise.”
Luisa studied him closely for a moment, and Cam met her gaze with a lift of his chin, meaning, I’m cool. Don’t worry about me. If he weren’t so tired, he’d add a wink and a playful smile. She’d see through the ruse, though.
Luisa would know what the Fourth must feel like to him. She’d lost a husband to war. She knew all about the scars war could leave on a person’s body and soul. Her eyes were slightly glassy as she turned toward the computer monitor. The ache of loss never ceased.
She hit a few keys.
“Only two deliveries this morning.” Business had slowed a little after the large chain hardware store opened in Dingmans Ferry earlier that spring. Lately, though, it seemed to have ground to a halt.
She lifted her gaze, briefly. Cam kept his features as far from wince territory as possible.
Attention back on the computer, she tapped another key. The printer on the credenza chuffed to life. “More might come in. I’ll text you.”
“It’s always quiet the week after a holiday,” he noted.
Luisa met his gaze again. “Not this quiet. At this rate, I’m not sure whether I should be reordering mulch and soil. We might have sold all we’re going to sell for the season.”
Cam reached for the smile Luisa would definitely need now, and a yawn cracked his jaw open. Man, he was tired. Still, his deficit of sleep over the weekend had one thread of silver on the underside: tonight, he’d crash out as though a train had hit him.
He could not wait. Deep, dreamless slumber was addictive. The more he got, the more he craved. Mother Nature seemed disinterested in letting him have his fair share, though. Like she thought it wasn’t good for him.
Outside, gravel crunched under tires as another car pulled into the lot. That’d be Jorge, the large, quiet man who did a lot of the heavy lifting around the farm. A car door squeaked open and squawked closed. Jorge drove a Mercury Cougar that had probably graduated from high school the same year as Cam. Jorge’s somber step paused by the coffee maker a moment later, then his shadow darkened the doorway to Luisa’s office.
Cam lifted his mug in a morning salute.
“Good morning,” Luisa said.