“Come here,” he said.
I went.
He took my hands in his and pulled me onto the bed with him, making me straddle him. For a long time he still didn't say anything, and I had to fight to keep from squirming. I started to worry that he would say something serious, because he had that look about him. Which was dumb, because I'd read him an essay about fucking. I felt like instead of a joke, I'd somehow made everything really serious.
But all he said when he finally spoke was, “Are you heading anywhere for Thanksgiving?”
That made me blink and draw back a little, but he held me fast. I shook my head.
He kept his eyes on the center of my T-shirt. “Because I was hoping I could talk you into cooking. That maybe we could ask Tory and his family to come over.” He cleared his throat. “But it's just an idea.”
“It's a good idea,” I said. “Haley's kind of been hinting at it, telling me how they have some turkey loaf thing her mom buys in the freezer and cooks until it's a brick, and how she bets I make a mean turkey.”
“Do you?” He looked hopeful.
“I haven't ever made one,” I confessed. “But I always wanted to try.”
“Get me a list of what you need, and we'll do it.” His hands skimmed up my arms. He still wasn't looking me in the eye. “Didn't realize you were so fixated on fisting.”
The way he was stroking my sides was starting to make me horny. “Well, you can only play so much pony.”
He nodded. “True. It's just that your ass looks so good with a tail.”
A tail and cane stripes lately. He enjoyed watching me make up excuses why I couldn't ride to Tory. But honestly, even that had been a month ago now. We had been so busy we'd mostly been doing quick fucks, between my GED lessons and Tory hanging on for dinner and the actual ranching.
I leaned forward, making his hands slide up my body. “Course, my ass might look even better with your hand shoved up inside.”
He pulled me down against him and held me tight, so tight I almost couldn't breathe. He kissed my neck, nuzzling it, pressing his lips with a tenderness that almost made me break.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered, and he shook a little.
It felt like a thousand butterflies blew up inside me, but I shoved them down and shut my eyes, pressing my forehead against the side of his head. When I was able, I whispered. “Roe. Just call me Roe.”
That, finally, made him laugh. His hands relaxed, and he pushed me back onto the mattress and fought with my clothes.
That wasn't the night he fisted me. But I was plenty sore in the morning, I'll tell you that.
It was shortly after that when I stopped caring that everyone else pretty much knew what was going on. I mean, I cared, but I didn't let it rule me. It was just too hard to hide how happy I felt when I saw him crossing the yard and he stopped to wave at me. I couldn't hide my grin when I headed toward my car to run an errand and he stuck his head out of his office and told me to go get my damn hat. I got tired of trying to make sure nobody heard me talking to him about groceries or asking him if he would print off my homework for Haley. Nobody else seemed to care. Three days before Thanksgiving, Tory hired a new hand, and I heard him asking Paul what was the deal with me and Travis.
“He's the boss's man,” Paul had said, like he was reporting the weather. The new hand had been surprised, but he hadn't pushed it, and he didn't look at me any different either, outside of minding his p's and q's around me, like I might report him.
I decided I kind of liked it. I was the boss's man, making Thanksgiving dinner for him and the ranch manager and his family. Why the fuck not.
I was really happy right then. I was happy all the way up until the day before Thanksgiving, the happiest I'd ever been, each day better than the one before. Then the second letter came and reminded me that I didn't have any fucking business being happy, not now and not ever.
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* * *
Chapter Seven
This time the letter wasn't from Kayla but from Bill. Never in ten thousand years did I expect to get a letter from my brother, and when I saw his name in the return address, everything inside me went still.
I only have the one brother. Mom had six miscarriages, two before Bill, two between us, and two after me. Eventually the doctor said there was just no way she would ever carry again. She cried when they told her, because she really wanted a girl. I remember still how much she hurt over it. I was seven, and I stood in the shadow of the hall, trying to listen as my dad comforted her. “I'll never get my girl,” she kept whispering, like her heart was breaking. She rocked back and forth on the edge of the couch, keening. I didn't realizing I was crying with her until Bill came and took me back to bed.
We shared a room, and I remember lying in bed staring at the ceiling a long time. My chest hurt a lot, and I remember my stomach feeling extra empty, like I hadn't eaten in three days, even though I had polished off two pork chops and a mountain of potatoes at supper. It was like I'd sucked up my mom's sorrow, and I couldn't seem to let it go.
Finally I said, “I wish I had been a girl for mom.”
Bill, who hadn't gone to sleep either, said, “She'll be all right.” Then he'd added, “Go to sleep, Roe.”
I'd lain there all night, though, praying to God. I asked him to make me a girl for my mom. I prayed harder than I had ever prayed. I tried to explain to him that it wasn't fair for my mom to want a girl so much and not get one. I asked for a miracle birth. I asked for him to change me. I asked for a baby to be left on our doorstep in a basket—a girl baby. I tried everything I could think of.
When I finally went to sleep that night, I dreamed that I walked up to heaven and met God himself. I couldn't see him for all the clouds, but I could tell he was there. I knew I was supposed to ask him about my mom, but I was so overwhelmed I just sort of stood there. And somehow that was enough. Standing there before God, it all felt okay. I knew then it would all be fine, that everything would be. It was beautiful. So beautiful.
And then the clouds parted and a man stepped out. At first I thought he must be Jesus, but he didn't look like the paintings at church. But—beautiful? That wasn't enough of a word. Looking at him made me ache, and it was the opposite of the feeling I'd had listening to my mom cry. It hollowed me out, but it filled me up too. I cried out and ran to him, needing him, wanting him, knowing that once I held him everything would be okay, always, forever. The light got bright, he took me in his arms—and then the dream was gone and Bill was shaking me, telling me it was time for chores.
Bill was always the good brother. He had no trouble in school. He did sports and dated the right girls, and the farm was going to be his as soon as Dad retired. Before they kicked me out, everybody figured I'd work for him, and I was fine with that. The only thing Bill hadn't done by the time I'd left Iowa was get married.
And now here was a letter from him. For twenty years I talked to him every day, and then I never spoke a word to him for five. Now here was an envelope full of words. My brother's words.
My mail comes to Travis in the office. Normally I don't get anything but my cell phone bill and an occasional catalog. Since I started hanging out for dinner, he has taken to leaving my mail on the kitchen counter where I will find it, and that's how I got the letter from Bill. I was actually coming into the kitchen to lay out my battle plan for the next day when I saw it, and so I read the letter in Travis's kitchen.
Dear Roe,
Kayla has been after me to write you this letter for a month now, and I decided since it was coming on Thanksgiving, I should sit down and do it.
I hear you are in Nebraska. You don't know how good it feels to actually know where you are. I hope it is in a good place with friends. I hope you are on your way to healed and ready to come home to us.
Mom is good, but it's getting hard for her to get around the house because her arthritis is so bad now. Except they aren't sure if it's arthritis exactly. She has all this pain a
ll the time, and they say it might be nerves. Sometimes I catch her crying at the sink. At first I thought something had upset her, but honestly I think it's just the pain. We've taken her to the Mayo Clinic twice, but they don't seem to know anything.
My wife Sarah is helping. I guess you don't know about her, do you? She's a real pistol. You'd like her. I hope someday soon you get to meet her. We're moving in with Mom and Dad. Sarah got laid off last week, so it works out. She hasn't been a farm wife, and I'm a little nervous about my two women in the same place. I have the feeling Dad and I will be hiding out in the barn a lot finding things to fix.
I guess I have to tell you about Dad. Last year they told us he has Parkinson's. He wasn't shaking so much, but he shuffled a lot, and sometimes he had trouble with his coffee cup. Now it's pretty much full-blown. It's coming on faster than it really should. And it's bothering Mom, because she did all that carrying on about no stem cell research, but now they say the only thing that could really give a cure is that, and it's never going to come in time for him. It's hard to see him break down like this. Every day there is more he can't do. And I looked it up, and they say the next step is dementia. I honestly don't know how I will face watching Dad lose his mind. The hardest days are when I have to tell him he can't do something. It just seems so wrong to do that to Dad, but if I don't, he'll hurt himself or worse.
As long as I am giving you bad news, I might as well give you all of it. This is actually something I haven't told anyone, though Sarah has told her mother and her sisters. The fact is Sarah and I can't have kids. And the problem is me. I guess I shoot blanks. That's been hard to swallow. It's hard to write. Sarah wants to tell Mom and Dad, but I don't want to. I don't want to tell them I can't give them the grandkids they want, that they'll never get them. Mom has been knitting pink baby hats. She has ten of them. She wants to knit them now while her hands still work. She asks me every other day when I will give her a granddaughter to put one on. I just can't bear to tell her there won't be one. We're looking into adoption, but I know it won't be the same.
I hope you will write back. Hell, I hope you will come back. I hope you get this and come home. I really want you back. I probably should have said so when you were still in town. Sometimes I wanted to, but I wasn't sure how.
I'm asking you to come home now. To come home and help with the family. There will probably be some rough edges, but I promise I'll fix them. I hope you are all healed. I hope this time away has eased things within you. I hope this can be okay. I hope you have turned away from bad sexual choices. I need my brother, Roe. I need you like I have never needed you before.
Call any time. Any time at all. Or just come home. We're all still here, just like when you left.
Love from your brother,
Bill
When I quit reading and looked up, it was like everything had changed around me. I put the letter in my pocket, but it was thick and heavy there, and no matter what I did, I could feel it like it was burning me. I kept working because I had to, because I was making food for everyone and they were counting on me, but my hands were shaking.
Like my dad, who had Parkinson's. Like my mom, whose hands hurt, but who was knitting hats for granddaughters she was never going to have.
Ten minutes ago everything had been good, but now it was all wrong. I had never wanted to run more in my life, but it was like this was hell, because there was nowhere to run. The stuff chasing me was in my head. Home—he wanted me to go home. On the one hand, I wanted to get in my car and go now. I wanted to drive all night until I got there. The fact that he'd asked me made my chest so tight that every few minutes I had to stop and put my head down on the counter just to gather enough strength to stand again. But even as it hurt to hear about the trouble at home, and as it moved me more than I thought it could to hear Bill ask me to come home, I could feel the shadows on that letter. Hope you are healed. Hope you have turned away from bad sexual choices.
What upset me was that even as the letter made me want to go, those shadows made me want to stay. Those shadows made me want to turn my back on my brother. And that chilled me to the bone, because what kind of bastard lets hurt feelings get in the way of family? But mine were in the way. And I knew, much as it tore me up, I couldn't go back.
But I couldn't cook, either. I had come to the kitchen to lay things out for the next day, to rinse and brine the bird with the recipe Haley and I had found on the Internet. Now I was having a hard time telling my left from my right. Run, goddamn it, I needed to run so bad it was a knife in me. But I couldn't. Couldn't go home. Couldn't run. Couldn't cook. Could just stand there, bleeding out but never dying.
It was the pot that did it. Travis had bought me this big-assed stockpot to soak the turkey in, and I was trying to take it to the sink when I dropped it because I was shaking so bad. It made this huge clatter on the floor, and when I reached down to pick it up, it was dented in on the side. Fifty fucking dollars that thing had cost, and I'd ruined it. After that I really don't remember what I did. Travis says when he came in I was making this funny howling sound and smashing the bottom of the pot onto the tile like I was trying to break it in half, that he had to wrestle it out of my hand. I'm kind of embarrassed about that. All I know is that I felt like my insides and outsides were rotten. There is this kind of sick scum you get on the bottom of a horse trough, and I felt like that, body and soul. I wanted to die, I really did. If I'd been all on my own, it might've been bad.
But Travis dragged the pot out of my hands and hauled me to the table and put me in a chair. He tried to call the doctor, that I remember, and I told him no and swore a blue streak at him. He yelled back, asking what the fuck did I think I was doing, scaring the shit out of him, and if I didn't calm down right now he was either calling the hospital or the cops. I could take my pick.
Well I didn't want anything more to do with jail, and hospitals scare the crap out of me, so I shut up. But of course he kept asking what had happened, and what the hell was I supposed to say? I'd have ducked out, but he'd have followed.
It was the hardest thing I'd ever done, but I reached into my pocket, and I gave him Bill's letter.
If I'd thought I'd felt rotten before, it was nothing on sitting there waiting for Travis to read. I wanted to get up and do something, to make coffee or fuss, but when I tried to get up, he just held me in place with a hand on my arm, and so I stayed put. I watched his eyes moving across the page, and I tried to guess what he was thinking, but he has a pretty good poker face, and anyway, I was too nervous to really read him. There was this nasty voice in the back of my head whispering that he was going to tell me to get out, that he was going to hate me. It said he was going to think I was a real asshole, that he'd ask what the fuck I was thinking, leaving my family like that, and then he'd ask why I hadn't left already, and I'd have to tell him I didn't think I could go—
The world got black for a second, and the next thing I knew Travis was shaking me and shouting. Except he wasn't mad. He was scared shitless. I guess I had forgotten to breathe there for a few minutes and had passed out.
So after that we moved to the couch. He put a glass of water in my hand and made me drink it, but he kept a hand on my knee as he finished reading. I don't know why that hand helped so much, but it did. The water made me want to throw up, but his hand was warm and strong, and it was like all his strength was coming into me.
He put the letter down in his lap, stared ahead of him for a few seconds, then laid it on the coffee table and turned to look at me. The world got fuzzy and dark again.
“Roe,” he said, sounding tired and sad, “stop holding your breath.”
I let the air out and sucked more in. Things got instantly a lot better. But I looked at him sideways. “Are you mad?”
I felt my face go hot as he blinked and looked at me oddly. “Mad? Why would I be mad at you?”
“Because of the letter!” I pointed at it and glared at him. “What else?”
Now he was looking at me wa
ry and careful. “Roe, I'm not sure why you'd think I'd be angry at you because of that letter. Clearly it was very upsetting, but why would I be—” He paused, then spoke as if the thought had just occurred to him. “Are you thinking I'll be angry if you need to go back home?”
I shook my head and stared at the carpet beneath my feet. “I can't. I can't go home.”
I waited for him to hate me.
But all that happened was that we sat there for a few awkward minutes, and then he groaned and sank back in the couch. “Shit.” He sighed and rubbed at the side of his face. “Roe, I'm sorry. But I'm going to tell you right now that I really, really don't do this sort of thing well.”
I turned and frowned at him. “What thing?”
He looked almost green. He gestured vaguely at the letter. “This. Talking about stuff.”
“I don't want to talk about anything,” I snapped. The anger carried me all the way to my feet, and even though I still felt wobbly, I paced back and forth between the couch and the TV. “Jesus Christ. You think I want to talk about this letter? Did I ask you to talk about it? No, I did not. I shouldn't have even fucking showed it to you, but the hell I was going back to jail!”
“Roe, that was a joke,” he said, and then I really lost it.
“Prison ain't a joke!” I shouted. “And neither is the fucking hospital! I don't want to see either again, ever! I don't want to see you either, if this is the shit you are going to do to me!”
That seemed like a good exit line, so I headed for the door. Fuck it, I would leave. This was all a joke anyway. All the happiness I had been feeling was just a lie. I would just go. I had a pile of money from staying so long in one place and Travis buying all the food, and I'd just go. Go and get drunk and fuck. Go as far as I could, and I'd get another job, and this time I wouldn't let there be any way anybody could find me ever again. I would go. I'd go right now.
Nowhere Ranch Page 11
