Del was in his recliner with a bowl of ice cream in his lap. Tonight it was mocha almond fudge with a pour of chocolate syrup running over the scoops to pool at the rim of the bowl. Cynthia had vanilla with jimmies sprinkled over, the colors running a little. Chocolate kept her up at night. The picture window suddenly reflected headlights in a scatter prism. A vehicle crested the drive to approach the farm house. Del looked away from the Bulls game to consider them.

“Looks like that fool, Roman,” he said. Those square jeep lights were a dead giveaway.

Karen was at the kitchen island and looked up from her phone. She had got her height from her father but had Cynthia’s steady eyes. “I don’t want to see him,” she said.

“Then call him and tell him to go away. He’s got a phone.”

“She can’t,” Cynthia answered from her chair. “You un-Friended him, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Plus I block his calls.”

“Think he’d get a hint,” Del said. He watched the jeep approach, the boxy shape of it visible in flashed through the trees. Nobody drove a jeep anymore. It was all SUVs or pickups. He looked back to the television screen.

They all heard the jeep stop and the engine go quiet. No one stood to go to the door, even as they heard steps on the porch, followed after a pause by a knock on the door.

“You going to let him in?” Cynthia asked. Her dog, Maxine, broke its stare at her ice cream bowl to glance to the door. Growled.

Karen sighed. Looked again at her parents, neither who returned her glance or made any indication of getting up. “No,” she said. “I’ll talk to him on the porch.” Karen rose and went to the door. Maxine leapt from Cynthia’s chair to follow. Her tags jingled as she trotted.

Karen opened the door just wide enough to sidle through. Out of habit she plucked a jacket from a hook.  “Stay,” she said to Maxine. The dog liked Roman and whined.

“Hey, Maxie,” Roman said.

Karen closed the door. Roman had been an all-conference second baseman in high school and had kept his rangy build the three years since graduating. Karen had watched him play, saw how he stood in the center of the game, watching for the angles of play, base runners sliding off base, all the while waiting for the crack of bat. It was a slow moving game, she thought, and had wondered at his concentration. If he noticed her, a freshman yet to earn her driver’s license, he made no sign. Then as a junior she had glanced right from the volleyball net to the home crowd to meet his gaze. It was clear he was watching only her. She had looked away, then looked back. He nodded just once like he would to a pitcher before a pickoff. After the game he met her outside the lockers and gave her a ride home like it was planned all along.

She was nearly as tall as him and he raised his brows at her glance. He needed a haircut, she thought. His face was shiny from the razor and he wore a new flannel shirt under his corduroy jacket.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

“Nice jacket,” he said. She realized she had taken Kyle’s letter jacket. It was wool with leather sleeves in the school colors. Over the right pocket was a patch stenciled “Kyle”. As if there would be any question. Most of the jacket tinkled with medals and pins. State Champion, 160 pounds. Badger Invitational. Conference Champion 152 pounds. She shrugged into it.

“It’s warm,” she said.

“Uh-huh. What does he wear to keep warm?”

“Shut up.” She jammed her hands into the pockets and leaned against a post. Leant away from him. “What do you want, anyway?”

“Nothing. I was just passing by. Thought I’d say hello.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I was driving past the Wildlife Refuge the other day. You should have heard the spring peepers.”

Karen shrugged. “I could hear them here, too. It could snow again any time. You think they’d learn.” For a week the snowmelt had been running non-stop. In all the roadside ditches the water ran, filling ponds and rising over the ice that lingered on the river. Any day now it would begin to move, in cakes and wheeling slabs, toward Pepin and the faraway Mississippi. Ice fishermen like Roman would have pulled their shacks and now had to wait for ice out to fish again.

“But something else,” Roman said. “You’ll never guess what I saw.”

Our past, Karen almost said. Ghosts. “What?” she chose to say.

“An eagle,” he said. “A bald eagle.”

“No way.”

“I’m serious. It was perched on a spruce overlooking the reservoir.”

“Not a hawk? You sure it wasn’t a rough-legged? They have almost white heads sometimes.”

“I know hawks. This thing was huge.” Roman had hunter’s eyes and yet didn’t own a rifle. He fished most of the year but during deer season was nowhere to be found. “Let’s go find it.”

“I don’t know.” Karen glanced toward the windows.

“Come on. It’s only three miles. We go now we can shine my spotlight up there from the parking lot.” He walked toward his jeep so she followed.

“I don’t know.”

“It’ll be fun. You ought to see this thing.” He went to the driver’s side and she opened the passenger door. It was like always, the console between the seats cluttered with binoculars, a flashlight, pack of gum and a massive clutch of keys. He worked at numerous golf courses and landscaped properties all over the county so he had keys for so many sheds and gates. For once the footwell of the passenger side was empty of lunch cooler or tackle box. It gave her pause.

“Let’s go,” he said.

She climbed in and fastened her seat belt. The jeep engine growled to life and Roman stomped on the clutch and levered the stick shift. Nobody drove manual anymore. Karen glanced back at the backseat. Empty. Only the red-checked Pendleton blanket.

Roman popped the clutch and cranked the wheel. He turned in the width of the drive, his front bumper narrowly missing her father’s fence. She saw a grin spread across Roman’s face and knew he had cut it close. She reached for the pack of gum and freed a stick. “I can’t believe you got Beeman’s,” she said.

“You better believe it. I sent away. I got a lifetime’s supply in my house.”

They entered the county road and Roman gunned it. The jeep tended to ride rough and he kept the four wheel drive engaged from November through March. Karen could feel the rear wheels scrabble at the road. Roman bought a new set of tires every year. He fisted the stickshift and shot through the gears. Cold drafts sneaked through the canvas top and she wrapped the jacket around her. The road whirred beneath the jeep tires. Roman didn’t play the radio when he drove. 

She looked at him. In the dashlights his face took on a sickly color, greenish. His brown hair took on a swampy hue. Mouse colored, she teased him.

“Auburn,” he had said.

“Auburn is red. You are brown, like a mouse.”

“A mouse is gray. Beavers are brown.”

“Like you know what a beaver looks like.”

“I know one.” Roman had flushed red and dropped his chin. Karen had looked at him, puzzled, and then got it.

“Oh shut up.”

“Sorry.”

“You should be. That’s not nice.”

He had nodded. It was the only time he had said anything racy. Kyle like to exchange ribald jokes with his wrestling buddies. Blonde jokes. Puns. Fart jokes. Stories they told when in tight groups with no women in earshot. It was just the guys, he said.

The headlights illuminated the sign for the Refuge so Roman stepped on the clutch. He stopped at the gate. “I got it,” he said. He grabbed the keys and was fishing through them as he approached the padlock. Karen watched him open the gate and swing it open. She was pretty sure he had not done landscaping here since the budget cuts a year ago. Kept the key, though.

He returned to the jeep and drove in. She thought he would be driving toward the boat ramp but he drove past the ramp and past the campground.

“I thought you saw the eagle by the lake.”

“Trust me,” he said.

Then he turned hard left and onto the trail. She knew it at once.

“Where are you going?”

“Just here.” He stopped at a spot they had been at before. The parking spot hedged in by low pines and a thicket of blackberry bushes. Even now the canes held enough leaves and sticks to hide them. He switched off the engine.

“This isn’t funny,” she said. “You lied about the eagle.”

“No, I saw an eagle. But it was over by the bluffs. Not here.”

“Then why are we here?”

“I just want to talk.”

She saw his glance toward the back seat, the blanket. “If you think,” she said.

“I just want to talk.”

Karen wrapped herself, pulled the jacket close to her chest. “This is a bad idea,” she said.

“Don’t marry him,” Roman said,

“You said that before.”

“I meant it before. You should get out of this town. Play volleyball for the college.”

He had been Landscape, Plant and Turf Management courses at the technical school. Roman was a big believer in education.

“They said it isn’t certain I’d get a scholarship.”

“Still. Rather than this.” He waved out into the dark.

“Give it up, Roman.”

“Never. I’ll never give up on you.”

He won’t give up on the past, she thought. One time out here, one night wrestling in the back seat on that Pendleton blanket. One time feeling the wool scratch the next day on her buttocks like a rash of sin. One time.

“Stop,” she said. “Stop coming around.”

“Don’t marry him.”

Karen let out a breath. She let her shoulders slump.

“What?” Roman saw her posture change.

“That’s the problem,” she said. “You never asked me to marry you. Just not to marry him.”

Roman blinked. “What?” She heard the hurt in his voice where she expected anger. Then, a second surprise, he began to cry. He slooped into himself, and she saw his shoulders shake, and a quiet sobbing. She couldn’t help herself and stared.

Finally he sniffed. Sat up, wiped his face with one stabbing swipe. “Sorry,” he said.

“Yes,” Karen said. “Now take me home.”

Travis Stephens is a tugboat captain who resides with his family in California. A University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire alumni, recent fiction credits include: Dime Show Review, 101 Words, Good Life Review, Waxing and Waning, The Stillwater Review, and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature.