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Page 22 of Small Town Hero

“But why?” she asked, now walking behind him as he strode purposefully ahead. “I don’t get it. You don’t even like me. Is this some kind of good guy complex? A hero thing? I don’t need you to be a hero. Much less my hero. Do you know what, Gunnar? I’m my own hero. I always have been.”

“I’m not trying to be your hero. I’m just trying to not be an asshole.”

“Does that take a concerted effort?”

“Sometimes,” he said.

“Not as far as I can tell. You’re just so good. You always have been. I found that annoying even when we were kids. One time I jumped out of a tree in front of the school and scared Ethan Mobley half to death, and you picked him up and said that I was mean. And it was mean. But it was funny.”

“Is it really funny if somebody else is afraid?”

“I was a tiny girl—it’s not like I was going to actually hurt him.”

“Well, he didn’t know that. And in the moment, he was scared.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t feel bad about it. Still. My point stands. You’re just a natural do-gooder. It’s in your DNA. And I guess I’m naturally bad. It’s just in mine.”

“I don’t believe in any such thing,” he said. “I don’t believe that people are born good or born bad.” He shrugged. “Hell. I figure the call on whether or not you’re good or bad isn’t even set until you’re dead.”

“Disagree. I think if you’re a serial killer, you’re a bad person.”

“Well, what if you are, and then you experience a change and you save more people than you ever killed?”

She shrugged. “I still think you’re bad.”

“So if a person makes a mistake, they’re just human garbage?”

“To be fair, Gunnar, a mistake is accidentally washing your white socks with the colored socks and making them dingy. Being a serial killer isn’t really a mistake.”

“So you think there’s a certain point that no one can come back from?”

“I’m not getting into religion or philosophy here. Maybe there’s a chance for you to redeem your eternal soul. But on earth, you’re a piece of garbage.”

“That’s interesting. Not what I expected from somebody with your rather elastic version of morality.”

She shrugged. “Many people would argue that I’m a piece of garbage.”

“I would never say that about you.”

“Of course not. Because you’re a good guy. I rest my case.”

“There’s no resting your case. If I stopped being decent now, I would think that none of the good I did before would matter. You have to think it can go the other way.”

“Is this a roundabout way of trying to tell me that I can still see the light?”

He shook his head. “No. I wouldn’t dream of telling you that.”

Truthfully, she didn’t know whether or not to be offended.

She opted for offended, because otherwise she was beginning to feel a little bit warm toward him, and she didn’t like that at all.

When they arrived at the truck, she got inside quickly and immediately grabbed her things back from him.

He didn’t say anything but just started the truck and began the return drive to the Parsons ranch.

He pulled up in front of the barn, and she got out, making her way to her temporary bedroom, where she took her things upstairs.

Thankfully, there was a very small bathroom in the apartment, and also a shower.

She would be able to get clean later, which she very much appreciated. But for now, there was work.

She went back down the stairs and found him still waiting in his truck. She got back inside. “What are we doing today?”

“I’ve got to hitch the excavator up to the back of the truck, and then I’m towing it out to one of the far fields.

We’re going to be doing a little bit of leveling.

And I need you to shovel the dirt into the back of the truck.

Because we’re going to be using it to fill in some low places.

That’s basically the job. Shaving off the high places, filling up the low ones. ”

“Very technical,” she said.

She had no idea what he meant by hitching the excavator up but soon learned when they pulled up to a small tractor that sat on a flatbed trailer. He backed the truck up to it with great skill, then got out of the vehicle and attached the flatbed to the ball hitch.

She clapped when he got back in, and he treated her to a scathing look.

She grinned.

She was no longer grinning when they arrived at the field and she caught a glimpse of how big a job it was going to be.

“Why can’t I drive the tractor?”

“Because you’re a menace.”

“Well. Well.” She was going to say something argumentative, because again, she was very good at that. But he wasn’t wrong.

“Do you know how to drive a tractor?”

She laughed. “No. But it can’t be that difficult. I taught myself how to do everything I know how to do. Why couldn’t I teach myself to drive a tractor? I drive other things.”

He shook his head. “You have an outsized sense of self-confidence—has anyone ever told you that?”

She laughed. “I have to. Nobody else has any confidence in me. I have to believe in myself. Otherwise, I wouldn’t do anything.”

He looked at her for a long moment. “It’s true,” she continued.

“I know you don’t approve of all the things I’ve done to survive.

Particularly the whole stealing from you thing.

Fair. I get it. But . . . I have to live.

I’m not going to have a terrible life just because my dad sucks.

Can you think of anything dumber than that?

He doesn’t get to decide how happy I’m going to be. ”

“That’s fair. But you still aren’t driving the tractor.” He reached into the back of the truck and grabbed hold of a shovel, thrusting it toward her. “Pretty soon you’re going to have a whole lot of dirt to move. You’ll probably want to drive the truck up to the pile and then shovel it in.”

“This seems inefficient.”

“Oh well,” he said.

Then he got into the really cool tractor and started moving dirt around.

Soon enough there was a pile large enough for her to begin loading up the truck. She got inside, grabbed the keys and started up the engine, driving it over to the dirt pile before getting out and taking up her shovel again.

She began to make small inroads, lifting one shovelful at a time into the back of the truck.

Her shoulders were aching. And it took a couple of hours for her to fill the truck. But by the time it was ready, he came back over, shut the tailgate and nodded. “Great work. Now we can take the dirt and spread it out down below.”

“Can’t I just give you a blow job?” She was sweaty and unhappy. This was taking a lot longer than sexual favors would.

He frowned. “Do men really treat you like that?”

“Like what?”

“This isn’t the first time you’ve acted like it would be just as reasonable for me to ask you to . . . to do something like that.” He was trying to be delicate. It was almost sweet. Except nothing about Gunnar really read sweet .

“Yes. Of course they do. That’s what makes the world go round. That’s what men want.” She felt ridiculous standing there, looking up at a man and trying to explain to him what men wanted. Surely, he already knew.

“That’s what terrible men want. No real man would ever put a woman in that position. Where she felt she had to trade her body for anything.”

She felt dumbfounded by that.

“It’s just the way things are,” she said.

“You don’t get anything for nothing. And I’m not talking about, I don’t know, official sex workers, not that there’s anything wrong with that, I don’t judge anyone for doing anything they need to do to get by.

But I just mean every relationship is a transaction. ”

“I guess you could think of it that way if you want. But that’s not the case. Sometimes someone gives more; sometimes they get more. Relationships are ecosystems, they aren’t cash registers.”

She scrunched up her nose. “What the hell does that mean?”

“I mean . . .” He gestured around them, to the craggy blue mountains, the dark green pines, the green and yellow grass, and scattered patches of black and red lava rock.

“A long time ago, the mountains here erupted. That lava flow took out a whole lot of nature. Animals, plants. But what happened later? It formed all this mineral-rich soil. All the stuff that’s good for growing.

So now the trees are strong and tall, and the animals have a lot of food.

It’s not a system of trading. It’s the way one piece supports the other.

Without one, the other doesn’t exist. They each contribute essential pieces of themselves to the land.

The animals eat the grass, and then they die and become part of it. ”

“And that,” she said, holding her arms out dramatically, “is the circle of life.”

He sighed heavily, and she felt a little bit guilty for deliberately brushing past his point. “I just mean, it’s not . . . You give your body, a guy gives you . . . what?”

“Bacon and eggs? Coffee? A place to stay for a while. Honestly, there are worse things. It’s not as if I didn’t like them.” But the truth was, she’d never been with a man and imagined herself having a future with him. She hadn’t loved any of them.

But sometimes, it was nice to have a soft place to land. Some arms to hold you.

“Well, I don’t think that’s right. That’s not how men should treat you.”

“I treat myself that way.” The minute the words left her mouth, they made her feel sad. She didn’t like that. The only thing she hated more than other people pitying her, was her pitying herself. Because it was pointless, and it didn’t gain her anything.

“That’s not what we’re doing here, okay?”

Maybe he wasn’t attracted to her.

A small pang hit her in the stomach. Why did that matter? Sure, he was basically the most beautiful man she’d ever seen, but he was also a pain in the butt. She didn’t need him to find her attractive. Not in the least.

“So how do your relationships work then? You are the mountains, and she is the river?”

“No,” he said, snorting. “I’ve never had a . . . very functional long-term relationship, to be honest.”

“Then what makes you so sure about how they work?”

He cleared his throat and rested his hand on the rail of the truck bed.

“Because when my mom died, it was obvious to me my dad lost something essential. I think she was the river. And after that, he was just a mountain, standing alone. Unable to move, unable to bend. There was plenty he couldn’t do for himself.

And . . . yeah. I’ve just seen it. What it’s like when an essential piece gets taken away.

You never find your way back to yourself after that. ”

She felt as if she’d been struck. She knew, of course, that his mother had died. That his younger sister had died then too. She just didn’t remember it. But it was something people talked about. Still, for her, just the two of them living over at the Parsons ranch was . . . normal.

And then his dad had died a year ago.

Gunnar was alone.

Was he the mountain? Maybe a pine. Left standing out there all alone, with nothing to support him. She had always believed that he had things easy, but now she had to wonder if her vision was a little bit blurry when it came to him.

“Sorry,” she said. “That . . . that’s rough.

About your dad, I mean. I don’t know what that’s like.

Seeing someone change like that. My dad never changes.

He’s just the same. Always. No person ever made him better or worse.

Not a wife, and certainly not me. I’ve just never seen people be so important to each other. ”

“I like to think they can be. And until I find something like that, I don’t want it.” He let out a harsh breath. “Mostly, though, I don’t want it. It just looks like it hurts.”

She nodded slowly. “I get why you think some of the decisions I’ve made seem sad, or maybe like somebody was taking advantage of me.

Maybe they were, but I’ve never felt that way.

It’s been all right. And I don’t get hurt.

I never want to love someone more than they love me, right?

So . . . stuff like that, it’s fine. It’s companionship, anyway. ”

“Well, I don’t require that kind of companionship from you. Okay? This isn’t charity, anyway. I’m not being that nice to you.”

She blinked. “You fed me.”

“That’s the bare minimum, Birdie. People should feed you.”

And with that, the conversation was sort of over. They drove down to the other side of the field, and he helped her get the dirt out and spread it over the lower parts of the field.

She kept thinking about what he’d said. That he wasn’t being nice to her.

She was listing all the things he had done, and every one of them seemed pretty nice.

She thought maybe he didn’t know how nice.

They got back into the truck and drove back toward the excavator, because they were going to do another round of this nonsense. “You are nice,” she insisted.

“I didn’t think you liked me.”

“I don’t,” she said, though the denial felt a little bit less authentic than it had yesterday. “But whether or not I like you has nothing to do with whether or not you’re being nice.”

“I just think people ought to take care of each other. Okay? Especially when they’re your neighbor.

And I guess I didn’t realize how . . . I didn’t realize you were living in a barn.

I didn’t realize you were that desperate.

Yeah, I was mad when you came and stole my horse.

I’m not going to make you pay anything back now.

I’m just going to pay you. For all the work you’re doing here. ”

She was stunned. “But I . . .”

“My dad held on to a lot of resentment against your dad. But you’re not him. And I’m not going to hold what he did against you.”

“Well, that’s . . .”

“It’s just decent. Okay, tonight you’re eating dinner with me too, and you’re not going to argue about it.”

She snorted. “I’ve never turned down a free meal in my life.”

But privately, she felt this was all a little bit much, and she wondered when the other hay-filled sock was going to drop.