The Honey Trap
Copyright© 2026 by Komiko Yakamura
Chapter 7
She arrived at seven and he was already at the creek bend with the gray and a bundle of willow whips tied with baling twine, the coffee thermos in the saddlebag where it always was. The morning was cold and the creek was running high from two days of rain and the undercut bank had lost another three inches since Wednesday, the raw soil dark and wet at the waterline.
She crouched at the bank edge and looked at it. “It went further.”
“Rain.” He set the willow bundle down beside her. “How bad?”
“The post is going in the water by August if we don’t get this stabilized.” She stood and picked up a whip and tested its flex. Good and green, cut recently enough that it hadn’t begun to dry. “These are good. Where did you cut them?”
“North pasture bend. There’s a stand that’s been there as long as I can remember.”
“Your grandfather’s beavers probably planted it.” She looked at the bundle. “How many?”
“Thirty whips. I cut more than you asked for.”
She looked at him. He shrugged with the particular economy of a man who didn’t explain himself much. She pulled out six whips and laid them parallel in the grass, selecting for diameter, not too thin to hold but not so thick they wouldn’t root. He watched her select without commenting.
“You know what you’re looking for,” he said.
“Pencil diameter or close to it. Too thin and they dry out before they root. Too thick and they don’t take up water fast enough.” She handed him three. “Drive these on the downstream side. Angle is about forty-five degrees into the bank face, not straight down. You want the tip pointing into the soil horizontally, not vertically.”
He took off his jacket and laid it on the grass and crouched at the bank edge. She watched him drive the first stake, his technique off slightly, the angle too steep.
“Shallower,” she said.
He adjusted without comment and drove it again, better. She crouched beside him and drove the second stake on her side and he watched her do it and drove his third at the right angle without being told.
They worked down the bank in the cold morning, their breath visible, the creek running hard six inches below the bank edge. Somewhere in the middle of it their shoulders were close enough that she could feel the warmth off his arm through her jacket.
She drove the last stake and sat back on her heels and looked at the line of whips along the bank face, green and clean against the dark soil.
“They’ll show new growth in three weeks if the weather holds,” she said. “By midsummer they’ll be holding that bank.”
He looked at the stakes and then at her. There was mud on her hands and probably on her face and she didn’t particularly care. “You want to do this for a living,” he said.
It wasn’t a question. She looked at him. “I do do this for a living.”
“Writing comments on federal reports nobody reads.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Mostly.”
“That’s not what I meant.” He stood and offered her a hand up. She took it, his grip dry and steady, and he pulled her to her feet and let go. “I mean this. Field work. Actual restoration.”
She brushed the mud off her knees. “There’s not a lot of funding for actual restoration on reservation land. There’s a lot of funding for reports.”
“That seems like a waste.”
“Yes.” She looked at the creek. “It does.”
He handed her the coffee and she drank while he put the remaining willow whips in the water to keep them green, weighing them down with a flat rock. The gray horse had found a patch of new grass near the fence line and was working it with focused intent.
“My wife left because of this ranch,” he said.
She looked at him. He was looking at the willow whips in the water, not at her.
“I was gone six years. When I came back to help with my mother she said she’d come with me for a year and after that she was going home.” He paused. “The year ended.”
“When?”
“Three years ago.” He picked up a stone and turned it in his hand. “She wasn’t wrong. She knew what she wanted and this wasn’t it. I don’t hold it against her.”
“Do you hold it against the ranch?”
He considered this with the same unhurried attention he gave everything. “No. But I understand what it costs.” He threw the stone into the creek. “I’m telling you because you should know that before this goes further.”
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