D is for Deacon (Men of ALPHAbet Mountain)

1

DEACON

New roof, for sure. Replace the railings on the back porch. Probably best to replace the whole damn thing, actually. New tile in the kitchen. Maybe vinyl. Absolutely replace the showerhead in my bathroom. If Everett wanted his things replaced, he could do that himself. New windows before next winter. Rebuild the top of the chimney.

The list was long, at least longer than I thought it would be when I bought the place. I was just glad Everett hadn’t put any money into it and just agreed to move with me. As much as I probably needed the company and the camaraderie of my old Army buddy, the last thing I needed was someone to have to argue and haggle with when I chose upgrades to the cabin.

Everett Westin was my best friend. There was no doubt about that. He had been my best friend since we met in basic, and we had been inseparable ever since. We even almost died together, barely escaping with our lives, thanks to our buddy Carter Jamison. After Carter left the sandbox, he moved back home and called one day, asking if we were serious about the ideas that we had discussed when we were half-stoned on painkillers, recovering from nearly being blown to bits.

Turned out, we were.

Carter’s family had done logging before, and he knew a fair bit about it. I had a business degree and was good with management when I wasn’t working for Uncle Sam. Everett’s rich uncle was willing to invest if Everett was doing something he believed in, and he was the one with all the big ideas. It was a perfect team. Just like in the desert, the three of us could do anything.

So, Everett and I picked up everything we had that we wanted to keep and moved sight unseen to a cabin in the mountains outside Ashford, Tennessee, which I’d bought entirely online. Carter had helped by going by and taking pictures of the outside, but it was still a little bit of a risk. With the list in my lap and pen in my hand, I was beginning to realize how big of a risk this was.

The back deck of the cabin looked out over the mountains in a truly gorgeous view. The tree line stopped just short of where the sun rose over the distant purple peaks and gave me a wonderful place to sip my morning coffee and watch the world wake up. There was a small place where I planned to put a garden, mostly so I could grow the flowers my mother grew at her home. She had given me seeds to grow at my own. She said it would remind me of home.

Unlike Everett, I was usually up before the sun, though now that I was no longer carrying a rucksack, I would keep my sweatpants on while I made coffee and toast and went outside to bask in the beginning of a new dawn. I gave Everett a tremendous amount of shit over how late he slept, but the truth was he was still up early by most people’s standards. Most of the time he was up and dressed by six thirty. I just usually had him beat by an hour.

Such as it was that morning as I sipped on the dark, hot coffee and set the mug down, flicking the pen against the paper and trying to think of what else I needed to put on the list. We’d been there long enough to have done a few of the more pressing repairs immediately, but there was going to be a never-ending number of fixes I would need to bring the cabin to a place where I was happy with it.

I set the pen down and picked up the toast that was still left on the plate beside me. I always left the crusts for last. Not because I disliked them, but precisely the opposite. They were my favorite part. I could swirl them through the remnants of the runny egg and enjoy them at the end of the meal. For me, it had been a ritual since I got out of uniform, and it helped me make sense of my day. Little treats. They kept the memories that I didn’t want to think about away.

And there were a lot of them.

The door opened behind me, almost on cue. I glanced at my watch, but I didn’t really need to. I knew it was six thirty. I had been up for an hour, and in another one, I would be standing in a mountain forest, preparing to do a hard day’s work. Everett came up to the table and poured the remnants of the coffeepot into my mug, refilling it.

“Thanks,” I said. “Got another one brewing?”

“As usual. Looks like it’s going to be pretty warm today.”