“It was one of those things that happens so fast, nobody can really be—”
“In Mark’s case, everyone has to be.”
Man, those eyes are cold.
“I know. She told me. Guess that’s why it scared me more than it scared him.” He smiled at Mark, sending out you and me, we’re good vibes. “But nobody got hurt, and we found the cat, and it was all good training.”
“Training? She calls that training?”
“I call it good training.” Cougar’s keys chinked in his restive right hand. “Ever been in the army? If nobody gets killed, it’s called good training.”
“No, I haven’t served in the military.” Again he touched the brim of his cap. “But, you know… thanks for your service. Cougar, you said?”
“That’s right.”
“Could I get some contact information from you? I might want to get a few more details.”
“About what?”
Not that it mattered. Cougar was all done with the pleasantries. He would have walked right through the guy and out the door if the boy hadn’t been looking up at him the whole time, asking him for something. He didn’t want to know what it was. He didn’t have it to give.
“Mark is what they call special needs,” Red Beard said slowly, as though he was using a technical term. “I’m his father, and I have rights. Not to mention a responsibility to make sure he’s getting all the services and care he’s got coming. You never know what you’ll be able to use to back up your case.”
“Case against who?”
“Not against anybody. For Mark. Proof that his needs are special.”
“His mother knows how to reach me,” Cougar said. He only had eyes for the boy as he stepped around the two. “Look both ways, Mark. I’ll see you around.”
Cougar smelled bacon. Damn, he loved that smell. He didn’t miss much about being deployed in the Middle East, but food in camp was surprisingly good, and breakfast in “the sandbox” had been the best meal of the day. Unless you were manning an outpost, in which case every meal came with a side of sand.
Logan had gotten the jump on Cougar’s plan to prepare breakfast. He stowed most of his purchases in the fridge, set the bread on the table—gave the plastic Bread and Butter Bakery bag a second look and decided he wasn’t in the mood for toast—and helped himself to coffee.
“I ran into that kid I told you about over at the Jack and Jill. He was with his dad.”
Logan turned from the stove and the bacon he was lifting from the pan and raised an eyebrow. “When you say ran into…”
“I was on foot.” Cougar watched the grease drip from bacon to pan. “His mother said he lost his eye in an accident. You know anything about that?”
“Not much. Happened on some kind of construction site, the way I heard it. Before she came here to teach. Her ex-husband started showing up a few months ago.” Logan turned the stove off. “About all I know for sure is she’s a good teacher.”
“He wanted to know how to get in touch with me in case he needed some kind of witness or something. I don’t know what he was talking about. It was a close call, but the boy wasn’t hurt.” Cougar drew a deep breath and glanced out the patio door toward the buttes that buttressed the blue horizon. “I’m sure he wasn’t hurt.”
“His mom checked him over?”
“Skinned his knee, but that’s…” The image of the boy pushing himself up to his hands and knees brought back the wrecking ball swing—boom! panic, boom! relief. Even now his heart was racing again. “He doesn’t talk. He can’t really say what’s…”
“At that age, they get hurt, most kids let you know with everything they’ve got except the kind of words that make sense. You get blood, bellowing, slobber, maybe the silent treatment, but you don’t get the story until you’ve already assessed the damage.”
“They break easy,” Cougar said quietly.
“After they’re grown, you look back at all the close calls and you figure somebody besides you had to be lookin’ out for them.” Logan handed Cougar a plate. “Go to the head of the line.”
Cougar followed orders. Logan added finishing touches to Cougar’s meal—the toast he didn’t want and the coffee he couldn’t get enough of—playing host or dad, Cougar wasn’t sure which.
“My older son, Trace, he’s a rodeo cowboy.” Logan’s plate joined Cougar’s on the table. “He’s broken a lot of bones riding rough stock. You gotta learn to bend, I tell him. Look at the trees that survive in the wind around here. We’re survivors.”
“Learn to bend,” Cougar echoed.
He hadn’t known Logan long, but he knew him pretty well. They’d worn some of the same boots—cowboy boots with riding heels, round-toed G.I. boots, worn-out high tops stashed under an Indian boarding school bed at night, beaded baby shoes. He knew the lessons, figured they’d both felt the same kind of pinching, done their share of resisting.
Considering all that, Cougar sipped his coffee and gave Logan a look over the rim of the cup.
“Pretty deep, huh?” Logan chuckled. “Spend a few years in tribal politics, you learn how to command respect with a few well-placed words of wisdom.
Everybody around the table says Ohan, so you know when it comes time to vote, you’ve gotten the ones who were on the fence to jump down on your side.”
“So that’s the way it works.” Cougar set the cup down with exaggerated care. “Whatever passes for wisdom.”
“It helps if it’s true.”
“I’m having a hard time with that lately. I thought it would all come clear to me as soon as I got back to the States, back home. It hasn’t happened yet. Truth, justice and the American Way.” Cougar’s turn to chuckle. “What the hell is that?”
“Superman,” Logan said with a smile. “I heard he died. Never learned to bend, they said.”
“Superheroes ain’t what they used to be.”
“No, but that cottonwood tree keeps right on spittin’ seed into the wind.” Logan nodded toward the glass door that opened onto a deck dappled by the scant shade of a young tree. “I don’t know about you Shoshone, but the Lakota hold the cottonwood in high esteem. Adaptable as hell, that tree.”
“Where I come from, we don’t have many trees.” Cougar finished off his eggs and stacked his utensils. “I could listen to you throw the bull all day long, Logan, but that won’t get me into the wild horse training competition. Are we heading over to meet this Mustang Sally I’ve heard so much about, or not?”
Logan slid his chair back from the table. “My friend, let’s go get you a horse.”
Through
