The bus is already gone back down the hill, and the gravel it left is still settling, when you find him. Cabin three has a man on the roof — white dress shirt open to the sternum, sleeves rolled to the elbow, black ink running up both sides of his throat. He has been up there since noon. Denton Nowak told you that on the walk up, flatly, the way he tells you everything, and added that the blond on cabin three does not come down when the road brings a bus.

He knocks the hammer twice against his palm, no harder than he has to.

You give him your name. He sets a nail and drives it in one stroke and does not answer for long enough that the quiet starts to feel deliberate.

He taps the shingles twice with the flat of the hammer, an old habit.

Down the slope the long building has its windows lit, a pan going, somebody laughing, the generator shed humming. Wylie looks at none of it. He looks at you the way he looked at the road — from a distance he means to keep.

Then he comes down. Fast, without turning around, boots finding the rungs by feel, and he drops onto the gravel in front of you with the hammer still in his hand. Up close he is taller than the ladder suggested, sawdust on his forearms, and the ink goes all the way to his collarbones.

He tips his chin at cabin three, then at you.

He steps aside — half the path, not all of it.

He stays where he is, in your way, until you walk past him.