23. Wolfe
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The surface along Bauer Road and then Frontage Road into Hysham was clear and dry, a welcome sight because even if my hands knew how to drive the way and the truck wheels knew the route, my mind was scattered.
I had no doubt, none, as to what I would discover when I got to the feed and grain.
But strategic conversation was not my strong suit.
I was going to have to do a lot of pretending, but after prison, maybe I wasn’t as bad at that as I wanted to be.
Sunshine glinted off the snow; Russian olive trees poked their scrubby branches above the surface like bony hands, and beyond, toward the river, a scattering of gray-edged cottonwood trees were sleeping until spring.
I steered past the Hysham Scale and kept going until I reached the crossing near the feed and grain.
When I pulled to a stop in the cleared parking lot, I was the only person there. Maybe it was too early. Maybe they were closed. The only thing I could do was knock and inquire about the oh-so-necessary tin of leather balm.
The air was sharp on my face when I got out of the truck, a breeze coming from the west. I turned to scan the mountains and, yes, there was a thin line of clouds that might very well spell bad weather in a day or two.
I’d keep an eye out, and in the meanwhile, I had a task set before me.
Going up, the door was open, so I went in, shook the cold from my shoulders, and unzipped my parka.
And there, behind the cash register, was the young man with dark hair. When he looked at me, his eyes were green. His name was Jack. It might also be Nimble.
“Can I help you, Mr. Bramwell?” Jack asked, coming over to me, wiping his hands on the back of his jeans.
He was even more sleek and well-cared for than when I’d last seen him, not a ragged, train-grease speckled hobo at all. He had broad shoulders and a ready smile and an easy way about him. As though he trusted that the world would be good to him.
“Yes,” I said, tugging at the sturdy zipper of my parka. I took off my toque and ran my fingers through my hair. Already overheated, I saw the ring on his finger, just as I had during my last visit, and for a dreadful second, I forgot the substance of the lie that had brought me here.
Drawing my eyes back to his face, I said, “I’m looking for a tin of leather wax, if you have any.”
“Doesn’t sound familiar,” Jack-Maybe-Nimble said. “Let me ask. Give me a sec.”
Jack went into the office across the landing. I heard murmured voices and the thump of a cane.
Morgan came out, followed by Jack, and he looked so much better than even the last time I’d seen him, two weeks prior, just like Jack.
He was happy. His eyes sparkled with health, and the cane looked like it was being used just-in-case, and not for whole-body support.
He was a happy man and, maybe, if I let myself see it, a truly changed man.
“You’re looking for leather wax?” he asked, perfectly polite, a far cry from the first time I’d seen him at Oralee Malone’s funeral. He’d snarled at me. At everyone. That man was long gone.
“I am,” I said.
“Sadly, we don’t,” Morgan said, looking like he truly meant it. “Can we put in a special order for you?”
Of course, I could order the leather wax online for myself. But ordering it from the feed and grain would put more money into the local economy, of which the feed and grain was the cornerstone.
“Yes, please,” I said. “Any brand will do.” But only because I didn’t actually need any. “Something good.”
“We can do that for you,” Morgan said, with a nod and a slight tap of his cane. “I’ll let you know when it comes in.”
Nothing was written on paper. No money exchanged hands. Which, as I’d learned in the past, was how Oralee had done it. All business on good faith.
“Thank you,” I said, matching his polite tone. Then I forged ahead, girding my loins to find out information I didn’t really want to know, and all because Blue deserved the truth. “Say, Jack,” I said, utterly casual, as though it didn’t really matter, when it did. “Where are you from, anyway?”
“Uh, Lawndale, outside of Philly,” Jack replied. “Why do you ask?”
“You have an East Coast accent,” I said with a shrug. “Not like you hear from folks around here, so I figured you must be a long way from home.”
“You don’t have a local accent either,” Jack said, frowning at me as though I’d insulted him. “You must be a long way from home, too.”
“Cape Girardeau,” I said. “But I don’t miss it. Folks are nicer here.”
“That’s good to hear,” Morgan said. “Though sometimes folks are too nice.”
“No such thing,” I said, and I meant it.
Inside my head, everything went still and quiet. I wanted to ask more, to pin down specifics about the young man that might be Blue’s fellow boxcar boy, but that would get me odd looks, besides, I needed to get back and tell Blue what I’d learned and let him decide what came next.
I tipped my fingers to my forehead and went back out to the truck. I didn’t have any leather wax to carry home with me, but some would be on the way. It’d cost ten dollars. I would pay Morgan in cash.
The drive to the cabin was quick, the truck barreling along the road hell-bent on returning me to the cabin so I could learn whether Blue would want to see Jack and make sure for himself as to Jack’s identity.
Then maybe he’d want to leave, so as to not have to be in the same town as the person who he was sure hated him.
I didn’t know. I would find out. Duty pulled me all the way home without dawdling.
When I got there, Blue was waiting in the open doorway, in socked feet, his arms wrapped around his own waist. The sun was directly overhead and blinding as it bounced off the snow.
I couldn’t see his expression. It wasn’t hidden by his fair hair in his eyes, but rather that he’d lowered his chin, and the shadows of the narrow eve shadowed his face.
He waited for me as though I’d been gone a long time, driving through chancy weather, which wasn’t the case at all.
My steps to the front door after I’d parked the truck were slow.
When I reached him, he reached for me, lacing his arms around my neck, pulling me to him, like someone long lost and precious to him.
“They didn’t have leather wax,” I said. My tongue was thick in my mouth. I took off my parka and unlaced my boots. Stuffed my gloves into the pockets of the parka. “It’s on special order.”
“Did we need leather wax?”
“No.” It was time for honesty. I dragged my fingers through my hair and took a sharp breath. “Maybe you had better sit down.”
Guiding him to sit at the kitchen table was the easy part. When he sat down, I dragged the other chair close and sat myself on it, thighs spread wide as I leaned forward to take his hands in mine.
“So,” I said, feeling the slender bones of his fingers beneath my thicker ones. Faint callouses. Bitten fingernails.
I looked up at his sweet face, that dark furrow between his eyebrows. Pink mouth drawn in a frown.
I knew the taste of that mouth. The softness of that skin. The feel of corn-silk hair against my cheek. I might not lose it all, but what came after the next step I needed to take was a vast unknown.
“I didn’t go to the store for leather wax.”
“No,” he said. “We already have some.”
“I went because.” I stopped. Then started.
“There’s a young man staying at the feed and grain with Morgan, the owner.
His name is Jack. I met him two weeks ago when I went into town on my snowmobile.
” I paused so Blue would understand which day I meant.
“He has dark hair and green eyes. Broad shoulders that he will grow into.” I made myself go on.
“He said he was from Lawndale, a place just outside of Philly.”
Blue’s eyes went wide, and his hands went still inside my grasp. I saw the movement of his throat, the flutter of eyelashes. The faraway look in his eyes as he turned his head away.
“It must be him,” I said. “Mustn’t it.” This was not a question.
“I saw three young where the train had stopped. This was the day the blizzard started. One of them was you, who I found in the snow.” I squeezed his hands to reassure him, though maybe I was reassuring myself.
“One of them was Star and one of them was Jack. Was Nimble. Am I right?”
That was a question, the answer to which needed to come from Blue. But I could already see it in his eyes as he stood up and drew his hands from mine. I went to him where he stood in the middle of the small cabin.
His shoulders were stiff, but I didn’t touch him, though my hands came up and curved in the air over his shoulders.
“I think you’re right,” he said, low, as though he were the only person in the room and he was talking to himself. “He couldn’t go anywhere with that blizzard coming. He sheltered from the storm.”
“With Morgan.” My throat was dry. I was at a loss.
“I need a minute,” he said. His arms were wrapped around his waist once more.
“Okay,” I said, because I understood what a minute could mean.
One more minute of patience with the bullies in the bowling alley and I never would have gone to jail.
One more minute resisting the pull of the touch of another human hand, and I would not have started stocking up ramen noodles to trade for kisses in the dark, and would not feel like jaded goods next to Blue’s sweetness.
Blue sat to lace up his new boots and borrowed my parka, which swamped his slender frame, the dark blue even darker against his fair hair.
And my gloves, which were right there in the pockets.
He zipped up, left the hood back, pushing the dark blue fake fur back with a black-gloved hand.
Then he went out into the sunshiny day, balmy at ten degrees compared to what we’d been having.
I wanted to go with him, but he deserved his minute. I would wait and watch and make a pot of tea in the cherry-red teapot. Watch the steam rising from the spout as the pot sat on the counter in front of the kitchen window. We’d figure it out, but he needed his minute. I intended to give it to him.