Paint My Body Red

by Heidi R. Kling

  That night, we have to sleep in tents. It’s too cold for open air. We only have one. Even though I catch him watching me like he wants to come closer, he rolls his bedroll far away from mine, so I roll mine out beside Anna’s.

  I take care of the horses before turning in. Like Jake prophesized long ago, they’ve grown used to me. They are so beautiful in the moonlight that’s reflecting off the newly fallen snow.

  When I return, the tent is filled with an awkward, nervous tension. It’s clear Jake and Anna have been talking, but the conversation ends the second I slip inside. Jake’s antsy, like he’s spent the day bottling up all his never-ending energy and doesn’t have an outlet. I get it. I can’t begin to relax with Jake so close, with so much unsaid, never mind freezing temperatures so cold we can see our breath. Eventually, Jake slips out of the tent. Once Anna falls asleep, I jump out of my sack, pull on my tall winter boots and heavy, faux-fur thick winter coat, and stumble out in the deep snow to find him.

  Enough of this.

  I find him standing on the edge of our cliff looking out. His thick brown coat is slick with snow. His cowboy hat keeps the moon’s glow off his face. His long legs look like they are made for dusty, snow-crusted jeans.

  “Jake?” I call out tentatively.

  He turns around, not at all startled to see me. There are tears on his face and he doesn’t wipe them away. Expressionless, he turns back toward the wide expanse of valley.

  This isn’t going to be easy. Nothing worth having ever is. My dad’s words echo in my head. “Jake?”

  He doesn’t turn around.

  I close the distance between us. I want to put my hand on his shoulder but don’t dare.

  “Did your daddy ever tell you about Crazy Horse?” Jake asks in an even voice. “He asked his warrior cousins to, after his death, paint his body red and plunge it into fresh water to be restored back to life. He said otherwise his bones would be turned to stone and his joints to flint in his grave, and this way, his spirit would rise.”

  He stares out at the snow-capped mountains, the deep canyon of the frozen Snake River. “But when Crazy Horse was killed, the warriors were in such a state of mourning that nobody remembered his request. I used to worry about that all the time as a kid. That Crazy Horse’s spirit was stuck somewhere because those who loved him were so busy with their own pain that they forgot to do what he asked.”

  Reaching out tentatively, I touch his forearm with my mitten-covered hand. “This is what he wanted, Jake. His ashes spread here. By us. Exactly this.”

  “It’s not enough.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m so sorry, Paige.” His voice cracks into the distance. “He was a great man. As good as they get. Better, even.”

  I wipe a tear off my cheek. “I feel like…this sounds morbid, but it might be better for him now, you know? He hated living like that, trapped in that broken body when his spirit was so strong.”

  “Shouldn’t have happened.”

  “I know.”

  Jake nods. His Adam’s apple bobs. He turns his face away from me because a cowboy like Jake would never want me to see him crying.

  We stay like that, Jake and I, quietly mourning both individually and together, until the sun rises over the horizon.

  I open and close my lips several times, trying to get up the courage to say what I need to. What I’ve been rehearsing for when I finally had him alone, if I ever had him alone again.

  The timing couldn’t be worse.

  “Jake, I know this isn’t the best time, but I need to talk to you before you run off again. Or before I do. Did you…did you read the journal I left you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why didn’t you…try to get in touch with me?”

  The five seconds between my question and his answer last a lifetime.

  “I was doing something Gus wanted.”

  “My dad?” I blink. “It wasn’t because you were disgusted by me?”

  “Disgusted?” He wrinkles his nose. “No. Why would I be disgusted? I felt awful for you. The guy—I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but I’ll make an exception in this case—sounded like a real asshole. I would’ve kicked his ass from here to infinity if he was still alive.”

  My eyes freeze open. “He was just screwed up.”

  “Well, I didn’t know him, but I know you. You were the girl who felt badly tying a calf’s legs up. I don’t think you’d hurt a fly, Paige. Whatever you did to keep this guy away from you was done as self-preservation only. And where was your mom in all this? If your daddy had any idea… He owns several rifles, as you know.”

  Jake doesn’t hate me.

  Still I feel the need to explain. “It just happened. It was stupid, and we were desperate. All these kids at school kept dying, kept standing on the tracks—kids we knew, kids I grew up with. Our parents were so weird and never talked about anything, and it’s just… Jake, it’s so different there. Nothing felt real. All I wanted was to feel real and alive. We wanted to matter to someone, so we decided to matter to each other. It was only a few times and I knew it was wrong so I put a stop to it, but he couldn’t accept that it was over and when I finally ended it…”

  “I know. I read your story. The whole thing.” He finally looks at me. His watery red eyes are almost too much to bear and I feel like I swallowed a stone keeping myself still. “Shit, Paige, things happen. It’s not like I’ve been a monk my whole life. What you did before you came back here is your business. What I don’t get is why you didn’t tell me about the mess back home? I could’ve helped you. Or helped you find someone who could.”

  “You’re not mad?”

  “How could I be?” His eyes are furious passion. “You are a beautiful, strong, challenging girl—no, woman. You deserve this.” His arms spread out at the expansion of the valley—wild and free and lit with morning. “You deserve everything.”

  “Do I?” I’m not sure I do.

  His eyes are hard. I know he’s waiting for me to change my answer.

  “I do,” I amend. “I do now.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where were you, Jake?”

  He sighs and looks at the ground. “After you left town, I ended up in North Dakota working on an oil rig. Cash job. I wanted to save up for when you came back for the holidays. I wanted to surprise you.”

  “You were working on an oil rig…to surprise me?” That is not the answer I expected.

  “Yeah,” he says, looking shy. “A buddy of mine was heading up there and asked if I wanted to go along. It was right after you left, and I just…couldn’t stick around anymore with you gone. It was just…” He lets his voice trail off.

  Jake missed me. It was as hard on him as it was on me. My heart swells.

  “It was hard work,” he continues. “Good work, though.” He grinned. “And I made out with a lot of cash.”

  “I thought you didn’t care anymore.” My voice cracks.

  “Didn’t care? Of course I cared! I told Anna I was leaving to find work, and I’d be back for Christmas.”

  “Jesus, Jake.” I crouch down. Hug my cold knees. My butt touches the soft snow.

  He reaches for my elbow and pulls me back up. “I couldn’t be in touch. There was nothing. Just a shanty of a town. Men everywhere. Oil. It was crazy. But I promised your daddy I’d watch out for you. And I needed something of my own to get us started.”

  I’m pretty sure my jaw falls to the ground. It takes me a few seconds to recover. I’m happy and sad. Elated and confused. I feel everything. “Get us started? As in, you and a pathetic city slicker?” It’s a poor attempt at a joke, and sure enough, his face is still. He won’t let me berate myself even if I’m joking.

  “Pathetic? Yeah, right Ms. Straight A’s at Wesleyan. Congratulations by the way. I hear you’re killing it, Cowgirl.”

  I choke out a laugh. Anna and her gossip. But more importantly, “What did my dad say? After I left?”

  Jake smiles. “He s
aid, ‘Find your way. Learn all you can. Be someone my daughter deserves.’”

  “He did not.” I’m part proud, part embarrassed.

  “He did. You know Gus.” The corner of his mouth starts to rise, remembering.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said okay, though you’re perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, on the condition he not tell you what I was up to. When he agreed, I skipped town with my buddy, made a shitload of dough, and then signed up for fifteen units over a full load at the community college next semester.”

  I scrub my face with my mittens, just to make sure I’m not dreaming. “I’m speechless. This whole time I thought…I thought you weren’t even thinking about me.”

  “You nuts?” He cups my face in his big, strong hands, looks me right in the eyes, and tells me exactly what I want to hear. Tells me what I’ve been dying to hear all these months apart. “I think about you all the time, Paige.”

  He pulls me into his arms, holds me for a long time and then, still holding my hands, lets me go a little so he can tell me something else face-to-face. “I’ve been thinking…this is terrible, but has to be said. Your dad’s life insurance policy was a good chunk of money. If we work hard all year, we can open her up next summer after you finish up your school year. You can come back for summers, right? I mean, if you want to? Eight Hands Ranch. You, me, your dad, Anna. I want to honor his death, really honor it. He’d want this. What do you say?”

  Sparkly rainbow-colored unicorns have nothing on the joy I’m feeling. “I say yes.”

  “Yes?” His eyes brighten. “Truly, yes?”

  “I love you, Jake.” The truth tumbles out, and even if I wanted to, it’s too late to take it back in so I just go for it. “I love you. I want to be with you. Forever.”

  I exhale a frosty breath into the dawn and wait.

  He doesn’t make me wait long.

  “I love you, too, Paige Mason.”

  “You do?”

  “Hell yeah.” He grins broadly. “I’ve loved you since you showed up in those pigtails calling me a ballerina fisherman. And when you showed up again in that sparkly cowgirl shirt, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. It’s always been you.”

  When Jake wraps me in his warm, strong arms, his kiss is as real and true as the mountain air that lightens my heavy head and stitches my broken heart.

  Epilogue

  The following June, under a wide, blue sky, a gathering of fifty or so crowd around stretched yellow tape at the base of our new sign.

  Healing Hands Ranch

  I’m holding a pair of Dad’s old scissors, the ones he’d opened envelopes with in his study for as long as I can remember. I’m using them to cut the tape. I glance up at the sign.

  We transposed our handprints from the yellow stone mosaics leading up to the porch, and Jake carved us a new one out of some fallen wood from our favorite spot on the mountain. With my mom and stepdad’s help, we got venture capital funding from California to turn this place into my dream. Anna runs an organic kitchen. We have two counselors on staff. We built handicapped-equipped bunkhouses and have a physician and psychiatrist on staff, as well as rehabilitation folks.

  Our ranch isn’t just a vacation destination anymore. It’s a place where we help lost kids get found. A place where sick adults seek refuge on our wide, welcoming porch, where the sweet tea never runs out. A place where miracles aren’t in the form of tumors disappearing overnight, or a mental illness dissipating into the air—none of us are naïve and that’s just bullshit—but it is a reprieve, a mental rest. And we see progress.

  Freshman year, I earned mostly A’s at Wesleyan, and a couple B’s. I volunteered my time at the counseling office shadowing therapists who helped depressed freshmen, about half of whom had eating disorders. The counselor, Dr. Scott, a lovely lady who wore all black, said I was a natural. I filled her in on why.

  I didn’t have to miss any school helping set up the ranch program. I even got Dr. Scott to commit to helping us out in June and July. Turns out I’m pretty persuasive when I have an idea I want to bring to fruition.

  It turns out Mr. T from high school was right. I am the only one who knows how my story will end, and for the moment, the ending is here where healing isn’t always visible on the outside, it’s something we catch a glimpse of and hope it makes a difference. It’s a depressed girl’s eyes as she watches the birth of a newborn foal, an abused kid catching his first fish, a teenage girl with scars up and down her arms learning to cut horses, rodeo style, instead of herself.

  We don’t always succeed. I’m not going to lie—that’s hard. It’s like losing them all over again. Slicing open bandages, re-exposing wounds. But when we do succeed, we gather those moments like precious stones, and save them, each one, for when it becomes too much.

  At the end of that first summer, Jake and I parked down by the airport and, under tossed blankets in the back of his truck, we looked up at the stars and watched the planes fly away and I wondered if I should leave, too. If I should go back to school or stay with Jake for the winter. We watched the planes fly in and out, we stared at the infinite stars, and at the end of the night, we drove back to the ranch. I slipped into his bed beside him, and wrapped my arms around his sleeping chest, feeling full of everything that matters.

  The summer sky is wide and blue as we work, as we try, as we fail and try again. As summer leaves burst into reds and yellows and fall from trees, and I know my time is running out. Though leaving is hard, I love my life at Wesleyan, hanging out at the coffee shops, listening to live music, and writing. Always writing. I even attempt a short-story reading at Open Mic night. My piece is about Scout and everyone said it was awesome.

  Jake comes out to visit in early fall and gets a kick out of it, and my friends get a kick out of him. You’d think he’d be so out of place, but Jake manages to fit in wherever he goes, even in a crowded café full of college hipsters in their beatnik wools and college colors.

  When heavy snow begins to fall outside my classrooms’ tall glass windows, I know soon enough, I’ll be back home. We’ll be watching it snow together outside Jake’s cabin window under thick blankets, brainstorming plans for next summer and making stew from scratch. We’ll cut down a tree off our property and haul it into the big house. We’ll hang Dad’s stocking along with ours, and celebrate. That first anniversary winter, Mom and Phil joined us, too. Anna and Mom cooked together in the big strawberry themed kitchen, and it was the best Christmas I’d had since I was a little girl.

  Then one April day, I’m home for spring break, and, after filling in Jake and Anna about my spring classes, Jake runs me up the slushy mountain on our snowmobile across snow so high it feels like we’re floating on marshmallow. He’s in front of me, driving, and my arms are wrapped tight around his stomach, my cold cheek buried into his back, and he drives crazy on purpose to make me laugh, to remind me I’m alive, or maybe just so I’ll hold onto him tighter. On the top of the hill he points out hoof prints and in the meadow I think I’m hallucinating when we see her, we see Scout, back with her herd. “I knew eventually she’d find her way back,” Jake says, kissing a snowflake off my nose. “I can’t believe it.”

  I take a closer look, shielding my eyes from the glaring sun. “That’s not Scout, Jake.”

  He takes a closer look. “You know you’re right. Damned if she doesn’t look just like her though.”

  He sounds so disappointed. I squeeze his forearm and say what I believe is true. “She is here. She never left this valley, not in the way that matters.”

  “I’m going to get her back for you one day.”

  “She’s a star now. What would she want with us boring old ranchers?” I tease him but the moment is richer than my joke. It might sound cheesy, but I do feel them with us—in the fading patches of snow that will soon give way to spring blooms—Dad and Ty and the others we lost. The ones we loved so much, but lost anyway. I feel them in the breeze. I hear them in the eagles’ cries.
I see them in every hard-earned smile when our guests return summer after summer, when I go back to school in the fall and say goodbye to Jake and my heart breaks all over again, and then, when I see him next, the pieces melt back together.

  Most importantly we live. We live like crazy.

  And I know my story is far from over: My story’s just begun.

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  Author’s Note

  When I first had the idea for a novel inspired by a series of horrific, “contagious” teen suicides in my hometown of Palo Alto five years ago, I wasn’t sure I could write it. The topic sickened and disheartened me. I had two young children at home. Why was I raising them in this suddenly dangerous town? Furthermore, what would make a kid—a healthy, affluent, brilliant, talented kid with seemingly everything going for them (this was the word on the street; I never researched specifics about the victims in order to keep the story purely fictional)—step in front of a train and end it all?

  I had to find out why. Or at least hypothesize as to why. So I could help. So I could try and protect my own children and my students from bleak futures. So I created the character of Paige, with her semi fish-out-of-water backstory, who barely escapes the fate of her peers. I created the character of Gus, a hardass cowboy trapped in his own shell of a body suffering from ALS, to honor my Uncle Mike who died after gracefully suffering from symptoms of the terrible disease for years. Gus, like my uncle, would do anything to live: to walk, to talk, to hug his family, while five kids in one of the richest cities in America, students at one of the best high schools in the nation, wanted to die. Why? I wanted to understand. I needed to understand. I had to do something…because doing nothing felt like I was on those tracks with a train rumbling toward me, too. So I did what I do: I wrote. It broke my heart. It frustrated and scared the crap out of me, but I wrote this story.