got weary,” Cal says. “Bone-weary.” He did. Every morning got to be like waking up with the flu, knowing he had to trek miles up a mountain.
“So you retired.”
“Yeah.”
The kid runs his finger along the wood, checking, and goes back to sanding. “Why’d you come here?”
“Why not?”
“No one ever moves here,” Trey says, like he’s pointing out the obvious to a moron. “Only away.”
Cal jiggles the shelf a quarter-inch farther in; it’s a tight fit, which is good. “I was sick of shitty weather. You guys don’t get snow or heat, not what we’d call, anyway. And I’d had enough of cities. Round here is cheap. And good fishing.”
Trey watches him, unblinking gray eyes, skeptical. “I heard you got fired ’cause you shot someone. On the job, like. And you were going to get arrested. So you ran.”
Cal did not see this one coming. “Who said that?”
Shrug.
Cal considers his options. “I never shot anyone,” he says, truthfully, in the end.
“Ever?”
“Ever. You watch too much TV.”
Trey keeps watching him. The kid doesn’t blink enough. Cal is starting to fear for his corneal health.
“You don’t believe me, Google me. Something like that, it’d be all over the internet.”
“Don’t have a computer.”
“Phone?”
The corner of Trey’s mouth twists: nah.
Cal takes his phone out of his pocket, unlocks it and tosses it onto the grass in front of Trey. “Here. Calvin John Hooper. The signal is shit, but it’ll get there in the end.”
Trey doesn’t pick up the phone.
“What?”
“Might not be your real name.”
“Jesus, kid,” Cal says. He leans over for the phone and puts it back in his pocket. “Believe what you want. You gonna sand that, or not?”
Trey goes back to sanding, but Cal can tell from the rhythm that he’s not done. Sure enough, after a minute he asks, “Were you any good?”
“Pretty good. I got the job done.”
“Were you a detective?”
“Yeah. The last while.”
“What kind?”
“Property crime. Burglary, mostly.” He gets the sense, from Trey’s look, that this is a letdown. “And fugitive apprehension, for a while. Tracking down people who were trying to hide from us.”
That gets a swift flash of a glance. Apparently Cal’s stock has gone back up. “How?”
“Bunch of ways. Talk to their relatives, buddies, girlfriends, boyfriends, whatever they’ve got. Watch their homes, the places they like to hang out. Check if their bank cards get used anywhere. Tap some phones, maybe. Depends.”
Trey is still watching him intently. His hand has stopped moving.
It’s occurred to Cal that he may have found his explanation for what the kid is doing here. “You want to be a detective?”
Trey gives him the moron look. Cal gets a kick out of this look, which is the kind you would give the idiot kid in your class who just fell for the rubber cookie yet again. “Me?”
“No, your great-gramma. Yeah, you.”
Trey says, “What time is it?”
Cal checks his watch. “Almost one.” And when the kid keeps looking at him: “You hungry?”
Trey nods. “Lemme see what I’ve got,” Cal says, putting down the hammer and getting to his feet. His knees crack. He feels like forty-eight shouldn’t be old enough for your body to make noises at you. “You allergic to anything?”
The kid gives him a blank look, like he was speaking Spanish, and shrugs.
“You eat peanut butter sandwiches?”
Nod.
“Good,” Cal says. “That’s about as fancy as I get. Finish that off meanwhile.”
He half-expects the kid to be gone when he comes back out with the food, but he’s still there. He glances up and holds out the piece of wood for Cal’s inspection.
“Looking good,” Cal says. He passes the kid a plate, and pulls a carton of orange juice from under his arm and his mugs from the pockets of his hoodie. Probably he should be giving a growing kid milk, but he drinks his coffee black, so he doesn’t have any.
They sit on the grass and eat in silence. The sky is a dense cool blue; yellow leaves are starting to come off the trees, lying lightly on the grass. Off over Dumbo Gannon’s farm, a cloud of birds swoops through impossible, shifting geometries.
Trey eats in big wolfish bites, with an intentness that makes Cal glad he fixed him two sandwiches. When he’s done, he downs his juice without pausing for breath.
“You want some more?” Cal asks.
Trey shakes his head. “I have to go,” he says. He puts down the glass and wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “Can I come back tomorrow?”
Cal says, “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“Nah.”
“Yeah you should. How old