Maybe Sheriff Gray reminded me of someone. Maybe it was the way he talked to me that made me feel his interest wasn’t rote, wasn’t sexual, but of the kind that indicates a true connection. I told him some things about my past, how I’d erased as much of my background as I could.

“You won’t tell on me?” I’d asked.

He’d shaken his head. “Hell no. We’re all running from something or someone.”

It was like that. He found a few things about me on the police database and deleted them. He told me that when I graduated, he’d have a job for me.

“You are right for this job,” he said on my first day. “Uniquely right.”

He reminds me daily—even when he says nothing—that good can come from evil.

Two

My ancient tan Taurus, windows rolled up, suddenly smells of wintergreen. I lean slightly toward Ruth and sniff. Yes, it’s her. It’s not unpleasant, but a little curious. She’s not chewing gum. Eating candy. As we drive from town, up toward the hills behind Snow Creek, she seems to notice that I’m breathing her in.

Not in a weird way, just a curious one.

“Deodorant,” she announces. “I make my own for traveling. Otherwise I don’t wear it. Hope it isn’t too strong.”

“No,” I say. “It’s nice.”

I don’t tell her that it smells a bit like a truck stop urinal cake. Naturally, I think, she makes her own deodorant. Soap too, I bet. Butchers hogs. Has a loom. Ruth is a pioneer woman living in the modern world and she’s making everything herself. She was Etsy before there was such a thing.

“Look for the white-painted post of a mailbox,” she says. “No box. Just the post,” she tells me as I round a curve up a hill. “It’s the first marker to get there.”

The pavement recedes from cracked and tarred asphalt to compacted gravel. I follow the road up an incline and pass a dilapidated cabin draped in a patchwork quilt of brown and blue tarps. Then another with the same leaky roof issue. It rains a lot here in the Pacific Northwest. Some newcomers can’t take the constant dousing from a soft sprinkle to a hard driving deluge.

We call them Californians.

A quarter mile or so further, we pass two mobile homes stacked on top of each other. I do a double take. Ruth does too.

“That’s one way of getting a two-story,” I say.

Ruth, in all her wintergreen glory, smiles. “Some people,” she says.

A young doe appears at the edge of the road. I tap the brake.

“Ida made me a pair of deerskin moccasins when we were kids. Too small for me now, but I still have them. Our father said she was the best hunter of the ten of us.”