"Thanks," I said. "For training me."
At fourteen, I hated him for it. My friends were playing video games. I was learning to tie bowline knots and figure-eight follow-throughs. My mom worked night shifts as a nurse, so it was just us in the house—the quiet, the smell of woodsmoke and gun oil, his steady voice correcting my grip on a screwdriver.
That was his way.
"You don't rush things that can kill you if they fail," he said. That was his mantra.
The training didn’t start with lectures or punishment. It started with chores. Not the "take out the trash" kind. The kind that required patience. He taught me to sharpen kitchen knives—the correct angle, the steady pull across the stone. He taught me to start a fire without lighter fluid, using only a ferro rod and dryer lint. He taught me to change a tire, to read a topo map, to check the oil and the air pressure and the alignment with a level of care that felt obsessive. my stepdaddy trained me well
He patted my back once, gruffly. "You trained yourself. I just held the ladder."
I looked at the knife, then at him. "So what's next?" "Thanks," I said
When I got home, Marcus was in the garage, sanding a canoe he was building. I told him what happened. He didn't say "good job" or "I'm proud of you." He just nodded and handed me a sanding block.