RED HOT RANCH

by Swale, Lizzie

  We understand that it may be hard for you to keep the contents of this letter a secret, and know that finding it taped to the inside of your screen door may seem less than secure, but please know that you and your house are under constant surveillance and protection by various agencies. If you have any questions, please contact the number at the bottom of this page.

  Thank You

  Jane couldn’t tell if it was some kind of sick joke or not. Who would go to all the trouble of creating this document and then be audacious enough to tape it to the inside of her screen door? Why not just mail it to her? It just didn’t make any sense. And why would the DOD mail her such a cold hearted letter? Didn’t they know that she was still grieving?

  Not knowing what else to do, she dialed the number at the bottom of the page with shaking hands. When someone picked up on the other end of the line, Jane held her breath, waiting for them to speak. Finally, they spoke.

  “Is this Jane?” the voice asked.

  “Yes! Who the hell is this?”

  “This is Agent Wyoming with the DOD,” the voice said. “I just saw you walk into your house, and judging from your voice, I did a bad job of wording that letter.”

  Jane sobbed into the phone, not knowing what to say. What was she to say to people like this, who had so little consideration for her feelings? What kind of people sat around her house all day and watched what she was doing? This seemed like something out of a B-flick, not a well-oiled government operation. The only thing Jane could think to do was call Brad and tell him what was going on.

  “Don’t say anything else,” Brad said. “I’ll be over soon.”

  That was all of his response before he cut the line. When he arrived, he looked badly shaken as well.

  “I received something similar today,” he said. “But the message wasn’t taped to the inside of my screen door like a secret admirer was trying to send me love letters or something.”

  Brad let out a long sigh.

  “This whole thing just seems so crazy. The way that they contacted us; what they contacted us about—all of it. I’m not usually one to start speculating wildly about things, but seriously, what the fuck is going on?” Brad asked.

  Jane didn’t have an answer. Still reeling from the news that someone that could be Kyle was seen in the United States, she felt numb, as if she’d decided to be a kid again and go play in the snow without putting any winter clothes on. She looked at how agitated Brad was as he leaned against the kitchen counter. He kept muttering to himself and rubbing the bridge of his nose as if someone had punched him playfully while he was wearing sturdy glasses.

  “What should we do?” Jane asked. “Is there anything we can do?”

  Brad coughed and looked around warily at his surroundings.

  “There really isn’t anything we can do if they are openly watching us. I figure they told us so that if we found out, we couldn’t go to the media and start a shit storm. If we tried to do that, they could say, ‘We told them! And it was all for their own good!’ That kind of thing,” Brad said. “They have probably bugged the house. I know that sounds super paranoid or whatever, but if you really think about it, there is no way they haven’t. And if they’ve done that, then they’ve tapped our phones too.”

  Jane started crying again. Brad didn’t move to hold her, but instead went back to rubbing the bridge of his nose.

  “This is hard, Jane. I’m going through it just like you are and I know how hard it is,” he said. “We need to stick together, and keep our wits about us from now on. We probably spooked them pretty good when we went down to the island to hang out. I’m sure they thought we were either trying to do something stupid like go to the Middle East or—well, I guess I really don’t know.”

  Jane stopped herself from crying and sat straight up in her chair. She needed to be strong for both their sakes, and for Kyle. She didn’t know what was going on with Kyle; it sounded like no one did. But she knew that if he was still alive, she had a duty to him to not be a wreck about it. And if what the Department of Defense people were telling them was true, even if Kyle was alive, he was most likely a very changed person, and probably not for the better.

  “What did they tell you about Kyle?” Jane asked, as she stood up suddenly from the table.

  “They gave me some song and dance about how he might have been captured and turned against the U.S. or something,” he said. “I found the letter in the center of my dining room table. When I opened and read it, I was super pissed, as you can imagine. So I ended up calling the phone number at the bottom of the page, like you did, and when I talked to them they pretty much just rehashed what I’d just read in their letter.”

  Jane started to pace the kitchen. Brad crossed his arms and stared at the floor. They were both in a bad spot when it came to how this was affecting them. There just wasn’t much they could do to improve the situation, or at least there wasn’t anything they had thought of yet. Not that they had really been able to think straight after the day’s events. Maybe that was the real purpose of the DOD leaving them letters in intrusive places—to shake them up, so that if news of Kyle still being alive ever got to them, they wouldn’t even so much as think about going to the press.

  “Do you think we should go to the press?” Jane asked as her pacing brought her back around to face Brad. “Do you think that would help at all? I know it isn’t what they want us to do, but it isn’t like they could really do anything if we did.”

  Brad didn’t look up at her as she spoke, but his facial expression changed enough that she knew that the wheels in his head were turning. She hadn’t really thought that he would be on board with the idea, but figured there was no point in not throwing it out there.

  “I don’t know,” Brad said softly. “As much as I’d like to think that they would play nice with us if we tried to do something like that, there really isn’t any way to know for sure until we try to contact the media.”

  “What do you think would happen?” Jane asked, pacing over to where Brad stood. She stopped in front of him for a moment before letting her entire body sag, leaning up against the counter beside him.

  Jane had never seen Brad this shaken up before. He wasn’t crying like she had been, but he certainly wasn’t his normal self at all. The luster was gone, washed out by the stress of learning that Kyle might still be alive and perhaps even helping ISIS. The whole thing was just more than surreal.

  “I don’t know,” Brad said. “They could have us arrested for disobeying a lawful order from a peace officer pretty easily, and then when we get to court over it, we could find ourselves hit with a gag order. Although it isn’t quite that simple, it nearly is. There are a lot of things they could do, and none of them are going to be things we appreciate. And although both of us would like to think that in the end justice, or something like it, would prevail, I think that would be pretty optimistic thinking at this point.”

  Jane started pacing again, but this time Brad stopped her.

  “I’m going to head home and sleep on this. I’m not saying that there will magically be answers when I wake up, but I would like to think that there won’t be as much confusion. I think you should do the same.”

  “Brad,” Jane said. “I know it’s a little selfish for me to ask this of you, but I’d really like you to stay here. I don’t feel like being alone tonight, especially not with what has been going on.”

  Brad nodded, but something about the way he set his jaw told Jane that he wasn’t agreeing to stay the night.

  “I know this is hard,” he said. “Believe me, there is no way that I don’t know. But I need some alone time. I’m sorry if that’s hard to understand, and I know that I owe you more than just slinking off to my place to hole up for the night. But I really need to figure some of this out for myself as well.”

  Jane ducked her head so that Brad couldn’t see the big tears that began to well up in her eyes. She didn’t like it when her emotions made other people feel uncomfortable, and she esp
ecially didn’t like it that she was making Brad feel uncomfortable right now. So she stepped aside to let him pass. After grabbing his jacket, Brad headed toward the door. Before he walked through it, he looked back at Jane with a sad frown. He wanted to say something, Jane could tell, but he couldn’t figure out the right words. That was something that happened to a lot of people during grief. Jane remembered hearing as much, watching Oprah one day. So she didn’t blame Brad when he turned and left without saying anything else at all.

  That night, Jane had a hard time sleeping, so she drank a bottle of wine to try and even out her nerves from the day. She didn’t like how it made her feel—drinking alone at her house, but sometimes that was just the way the cookie crumbled. She knew she had to get some sleep, so she started drinking earlier rather than later. By about nine, she was pretty buzzed and well on her way to what she was sure would be a pretty fitful sleep. She hoped it wasn’t too bad, though, because her work was demanding and she didn’t want to be the one that slowed everyone down. Not that any of them would say anything about it, but she had been able to tell on other days that some of her coworkers hadn’t really been that impressed by her job performance.

  Jane was so sick of the way everyone just let her suffer in silence at her work. Her boss hadn’t said anything else about what was going on to her, and she got the feeling he’d instructed everyone else not to mention it as well. That was all well and good until she was breaking down crying at work in the ladies room, and everyone pretended not to be able to hear. Maybe they thought they were just being polite, but at the same time wouldn’t it have been better to acknowledge her suffering in some way? Wouldn’t that have been the more humane thing to do?

  It wasn’t like they would have to do anything more than put an arm around her shoulder to help calm her down, and they had to know that. Jane was starting to wonder if her downer attitude was going to cost her her job. They most likely wouldn’t paint a picture that looked like they were firing her for not coping well, but in the end, that was exactly what would happen. And as they did it, they would reference some pay chart and talk about how she could make more money somewhere else, and essentially they were doing her a big favor because they would all give her a great reference.

  Chapter 3

  The next morning, Jane woke from a dreamless sleep that had been bleak and seemed to further sap her of energy rather than recharge her. She was starting to wonder how much longer she could go on like this, and at what point. If she continued to rely on alcohol, she would create some kind of dependency that she didn’t want to have to deal with.

  So on the way to work, Jane called up a doctor that one of her friends had seen when she was going through a divorce. She spoke with him briefly while she sat in the parking lot before going in, explaining how she just wanted to be a normal person again and didn’t want to feel like the weight of the world was dragging her down by the neck.

  “Jane, let me tell you,” the doctor said. “There is absolutely no reason to be going through this like you are. And I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be feeling some kind of emotions, but what I am saying is that when they start to affect your work, that’s when it’s time to do something about it. You’re a smart lady, Jane—smarter than most of the people that call in here after they have already spent the last eight months of their life slipping into alcoholism. I’m glad you don’t want to do that, because everyone that I see that has done that, has to spend even more time fixing that problem—precious time that they could have spent on themselves. So come in today and we’ll talk a little bit.”

  Jane felt hopeful walking into work. Maybe there really was some kind of solution to a problem that just seemed to keep getting worse and worse. Maybe she could get some kind of help that would allow her to function like a normal adult instead of someone suffering from a combination of grief, loss, heartache, and growing pains. As she walked into the office, it was with more pep in her step than she’d had in months.

  After work, at her new doctor’s office, she spoke briefly with Dr. Wong about how he would be one of her primary care doctors. It wasn’t the conversation that she’d expected.

  “What I’m suggesting is simply this,” Dr. Wong said. “I prescribe you some meds—nothing crazy, just some chill pills and maybe something to take on a regular basis to help you out mentally—and we see how it goes. Now, you can’t just take the pills and expect everything to be all right; and also, you can’t overuse the pills! Remember that you need to meditate and exercise, and it would also probably do you well to keep a journal. Maybe even see a therapist if that seems worthwhile to you.”

  Jane thanked him and left with a bag of pills that she hoped would help her. The doctor had been very friendly, and her insurance had covered everything. When she got home she looked at the pill bottles, checking their names and amounts. Some of them she’d heard of before, and although she didn’t really know that much about drugs, she knew that they were heavy hitters. She hoped that none of the drugs would make her act weird, or maybe even cause her some kind of dependency. But at this point she really didn’t have that many options.

  That night she took a couple of the less serious chill pills with a glass of wine. The bottles had a bunch of signage on them that practically screamed to everyone in the world that they shouldn’t be mixing drugs and booze, but Jane just didn’t care. It was her grief to deal with, and if she wanted to have a God damn cocktail with her medicine, then she would. But then, after about forty-five minutes, Jane forgot if she’d ever taken the pills. So she went to the bottles, tucked away safely in an unused drawer by the fridge, and opened them back up. There were too many of the little things for her to count and figure out if she’d taken a dose. She tried to think back but her memory was as slippery as black ice, and she wasn’t getting any traction with her thoughts. So Jane took another dose and sat on the couch with the television on, not really watching it, and not wanting to.

  She wasn’t sure if she felt better as much as she didn’t feel anything. She didn’t want to feel anything. Jane liked this new feeling of unfeeling—she liked the way the medicines seemed to suspend her mind in a mason jar filled with soothing balms and salves. She felt nothing, and it felt great. She hoped that the drugs wouldn’t wear off anytime soon, and they didn’t. So she spent the rest of the night sitting in the same place on her couch and absolutely loving every second of it.

  When it was time to go to bed, Jane got off the couch as if she was already in a dream state. She headed to her bed and sat on it for a long time as if she wasn’t sure what to do. She’d forgotten to take the pill that would ensure there would be no dreams, and she slipped under the sheets without a clear understanding of what it would be like to dream while on the “chill pills” her new doctor had prescribed to her in their brief meeting earlier today.

  Jane dreamed she was standing on the tip of a great peak that overlooked a long mountain range that stretched out away from her both to the north and south. The view was so beautiful, and it was as if the mountains, clad in trees and snow, were breathing onto the nearby villages. It reminded her a great deal of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, and how the beauty of that range was accessible but at the same time extremely remote.

  Jane looked around her for some way to get off the peak, but found none. She didn’t want to be stuck up where she was forever, so close to God that she felt naked and judged. She wanted to slide down the side of the mountain to one of the villages and see how the people lived; how they dealt with sorrow and loss. Maybe somewhere in the shadows of some distant crag there would be a healer of sorts that would be able to lay hands on her mind somehow, and straighten it all out. This was what Jane really wanted, so she started to climb down the mountain, hand hold by hand hold, toe hold by toe hold. She tired of climbing quickly, and although it had seemed like she’d only been descending for maybe twenty minutes, when she looked up the edge of the peak where she’d been standing was so far above her it appeared to be miles away. The
same scene greeted her when she looked down, except instead of the peak being so high above her it was the foot of the hills being so far beneath. What was she to do?

  Jane held on to the side of the mountain for as long as she could. She realized she was dreaming when her arms didn’t tire and burn, and then tried to wake herself up, but it wouldn’t work. Jane realized that the entire dream had to have something to do with the wine and drugs she’d taken; somehow they had taken her mind to this place instead of actually helping her. The wind started blow, and Jane had to hold on with the tips of her fingers to the mountainside. Soon it was too windy for her to clutch to the broken rock face anymore, so she let go.

  She fell for hours, tumbling end over end. When she saw the ground rushing to meet her, she woke up in a cold sweat. She sat upright in her bed trying not to cry. Her whole body was shaking with fright, and she desperately wished she didn’t feel so strangely about calling Brad, but after he had left the other day he had done little to speak with her save for sending a few texts that were short and to the point. It seemed he didn’t want to be bothered for a few days while he tried to pull himself together as well.

  So Jane sat in bed shaking and crying, wishing she didn’t feel caught up in this horrible cycle from which she couldn’t break free. When she looked at the clock she saw that it was only two in the morning. She needed to get back to sleep so she could wake up ready for work the next day. So Jane slipped from between the sheets and poured herself another small glass of wine in the kitchen. Placing one of the chill pills in a spoon, she crushed it up with the blunt end of a Sharpie, and then poured the dust into the wine.

  Jane threw her head back and downed the wine in one gulp, hoping that by morning all of this would be something she couldn’t really remember. That was the point, wasn’t it? To allow her to forget some of the tortures the tragedy of Kyle’s loss was bringing into her life.