“You’re welcome,” he smiles, “I never understood why you liked them so much. It’s like drinking sand.”
“I like the grit,” I take a sip from the shaker, “and it guaranteed you’d never drink it.”
“Fucking hater,” Colson sneers and bites another pretzel in half.
“So, do you still have the Bronco?” I start with something benign, instead of a question that involves attempted murder or his neurological issues.
“Of course, I still have the Bronco,” Colson scoffs, “but I don’t drive it all the time. The suspension really sucks compared to anything that’s made now.”
I peel the foil off my yogurt, “What do you drive now?”
He looks over his shoulder and nods to the second row of cars, “That blue STI. I need to clean out the inside, though. It’s covered in dog hair.”
“What kind of dog to you have?” I ask, taking the opportunity to find out anything I can.
Colson reaches into his back pocket for his phone. A moment later, he rotates the screen toward me with a photo of a black German Shepherd sitting next to some rocks with a gorgeous backdrop of jagged mountains. I let out a chuckle when I realize it’s holding its own leash in its mouth.
“His name is Pony. He’s four. I picked him up as a pup when I drove through Colorado.”
“Pony?” I scoff, nearly spitting out my sip of mango smoothie.
“I let Dallas name him,” Colson shoots me a sideways glance. “Don’t ever let her name anything.”
“But you kept the name,” I point out, “you didn’t change it.”
Colson shakes his head, “No, I promised her I wouldn’t even though I thought it was ridiculous. Scariest dog in the neighborhood—” he tucks his phone back into his pocket, “until you call his name.”
I glance back at his car, “I used to have a blue Subaru.”
“I know you used to have a blue Subaru,” he replies without missing a beat.
“You remember that?”
Colson takes a drink from his black Nalgene water bottle, “I remember a lot more than you think.”
I flash my eyes at him, “Like my favorite smoothie?”
“That, and you like the book, Carrie, better than the movie.”
It feels like he was never gone, as if we picked up where we left off in the middle of a conversation that abruptly paused three years ago.
“Where did you go…” I stir my yogurt around in its container, “after?”
“I still went to Colorado,” he nods, “but halfway through Missouri, my friend I worked with at Katmai called and said I should come up there because he could get me a job. So, I did. Then I spent the next three years in Alaska and Canada.”
“Did you become a ranger, after all?”
“I did,” Colson smiles, “but I was in the backcountry more than anything, tracking and tagging bears and wolves with biologists. Then I started working Search and Rescue and I loved it. I did that at Katmai and then went up to Canada for one year.”
“Doing what?”
Colson tosses another pretzel in his mouth and chews it slowly, like he’s deciding what to say next, “I was a bear guard.”
I blink, “A what?”
He smiles and shifts in his seat, “If you’re a scientist or someone who works in the Arctic, or if you go backpacking with a group, a lot of times you have to hire an armed guard who stays with you and watches for polar bears.”
I stare at Colson with both shock and fascination, “How?”
“You scan the snow all day, every day, looking for bears. And you have to be on all the time, or else you’ll make a mistake. It’s always about non-lethal deterrence,” he explains, “but if you kill a bear, there’s an investigation because unless it’s sick or something, it means you screwed up. I loved it, but after a year, I couldn’t do it anymore.”
“Why?”
“It’s a lot of inactivity followed by bursts of adrenaline. One guy I worked with was in Iraq and said this job was a lot like that—waiting around, constantly on alert, and then suddenly everything goes off.”
I lick the yogurt off my spoon and shake my head, “Just thinking about it stresses me out.”
“Yeah,” Colson leans forward and lowers his voice, “which is why I can’t do it anymore.”
“OK,” I chuckle as I scrape the bottom of my yogurt container, “so, why are you here?”
He cocks his head in confusion, “Why?”
“Yeah. You were living out there doing the whole outdoor adventure thing. What are you doing back here?”
Colson rubs his fingers together, “Private companies pay a lot more than the government. But park rangers are federal law enforcement, so it’s not hard to transition to something like this. And,” he shrugs, “my sister works here.”
I shake my head, still in disbelief, “I can’t believe Dallas is your sister.”
