Stebbs shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Well, here’s the part I’m not so proud of, kiddo. Your dad, he said good-bye to your mom, even though her belly was as big as the world with you inside, and he took a bunch of the men up north to the lake, armed to the teeth. Not a one of ’em came back. Not long after I got set up, your mom came walking across that field, gun in one hand, your tiny body in the crook of the other elbow. She said she didn’t much see the point in me living in a shack when she had a whole house to offer, and two guns was better than one anyway.
“I could tell she had thought a lot about what she was going to say ahead of time, and made it all come out right so that it sounded like it would be the best thing for both of us, and not like she was asking for my help. I took one look at you, with your eyes so big they filled up most of your face, and your little bare feet so small it looked like they’d fall right through a crack in the ground and I told her I didn’t need no more work than I already had, and that responsibility for one was all I had left in me. Your mom, she walked away without asking twice, and I didn’t talk to her again until I stuck my foot in a trap.”
Stebbs swirled the now-cold coffee in his cup and threw the dregs in the fire, where they sputtered into steam. “I turned my back on her same as her family had done, and the same as your daddy did once there was work involved along with the play. Your mother raised you right, but she raised you hard, and I can’t help but think if I’d been around maybe you’d have some softer edges. Maybe you could’ve actually had a life, and not just survived if I’d been here. But here you are, and it seems you don’t need any help.”
Lynn snapped the stock back onto her rife. “Nope, I don’t.”
“So that’s why I give it elsewhere, I guess. Making amends.”
“I remember you being here, after your foot,” Lynn said. “I think I might’ve liked it, if you’d stayed.”
“I think I might’ve liked that too,” Stebbs said quietly. “I tried, Lynn. I promise you I tried after I got hurt. I wanted that woman to see sense so bad . . .” He trailed off, lost in memories made in the very room he was sitting in.
“So why not?” Lynn asked, her voice small. “Why couldn’t it happen?”
“She wouldn’t have me. It’d taken more out of her than I could’ve known to ask the first time, and when I shot her down I think it killed everything that was left in her but pride in herself and love for you. She wasn’t always a hard woman, you know. It’s what she became. You told me once not to speak of her unless you asked—”
“And I’m asking,” Lynn said.
“So I guess I’ll go ahead and tell you—don’t be making the same mistakes she did. Or hell, the ones I did either. Don’t be afraid to care for that little one, and don’t be too proud to let that boy know what you feel. Otherwise you might end up with neither of ’em.”
Lynn propped her rifle in the corner and tossed her own coffee onto the coals. “Seeing how it’s pretty late now, you might as well stay here, I guess.”
“That’s all you got to say after that?”
Lynn gave her rifle a last rubdown with a cloth, hands moving slowly while she thought out her sentence. “I don’t know that there’s anything to say. I can’t change it if some of Father’s wrongness found its way into me, and I can’t change the way Mother raised me.”
“I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to be more than they were. Be strong, and be good. Be loved, and be thankful for it. No regrets.”
Lynn sat quietly for a moment, watching the firelight flicker on her oiled rifle barrel.
“‘It’s not for sins committed
My heart is full of rue,
but gentle acts omitted,
Kind deeds I did not do.’”
Stebbs watched her carefully. “That’s not you talking, I take it?”
“No, that’s Robert Service. Mother always said the winters are long, but poetry anthologies are longer.”
Stebbs shot a glance at the bookshelf, where some of the spines were thicker than his hand. “Ain’t that the truth. Your mother had something else she said—‘It is what it is.’”
A smile spread across Lynn’s face at the words, dissipating the sadness. “That’s familiar, all right.”
“You know well enough what it means, then?”
“Mother always said it when something happened that couldn’t be undone, like when I lost that bucket in the pond, or broke a canning jar. Means you can’t change it.”
“Like the past. You can’t change the things you’ve done. It’s now and the here on out you’ve got control of.”
Lynn stood up, cracking her back. “All this talking is wearing me out, old man. You gonna stay or not?”
Stebbs got up and stretched as well. “I’ll stay, and thank you.”