Chapter 2
Chapter Two
PRESENT
At some point in life, someone comes around who is so very empty but so worth filling up. And in doing so, they spill over into you.
Spending time with Owen from the San Jose charity, placing young teens with mentors, is the highlight of my week. We don’t hang out with the fancy thoroughbreds when we’re together. My time with Owen is reminiscent of when I was a kid on our ranch back in New Mexico. Simple times.
It’s not nostalgia. No. Nostalgia is a longing. Owen brings me the impossible gift of living the best of my past all over again. Shit, it’s even better the second time around. Not that it’s easy with him or without effort. Being in a position of guidance has been a challenge; I’ve had to reach into the depths of myself. There’s an honesty that happens when dealing with children. It’s a beautiful thing.
Though today is one of our tougher times. “What’s wrong, O?”
Owen shoves his pitchfork into the hay bale like he’s mad at it. “You know what’s wrong. Why ask?” Angry, pained eyes glare up at me. “Is this fun for you? Asking if I’m all right when you know damn well I’m not?”
He whips his gaze back to the hay bale and mumbles under his breath, something about me being a sicko. I know he doesn’t mean it. This boy and I have bonded. I recognize the inability to express your feelings, the hurt. The anger. I didn’t go through anything nearly as tough as this young man, but I had a chip on my shoulder, too, once upon a time. And a chip, left to fester, grows slowly into a great big boulder that makes it impossible to fly. I’ve seen it in many men who grow old, grumpy, and regretful.
If not for a chance meeting in my past, a woman who broke me as much as she made me, I might not have become anything but a horror story, dead in the dust at a rodeo. A story for people to tell over dinner when they have nothing else to talk about.
I’m determined to be this boy’s chance meeting. Though, unlike mine, this one I intend to end happily.
I grab a hay bale from the pyramid that was left outside by the delivery guys and hoist it next to Owen. He continues to break up the bales to make hay nets for the week.
“You’re right.” I put my boot on the bale I just threw down and lean over on my hand, attention focused in Owen’s direction. “I should just ask directly and not beat around the bush. So… how’s Sandy?”
Herein lies Owen’s frustration. His foster parent can’t take care of him anymore. His “mom” Sandy was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. She’s been having lots of ups and downs with her health that are directly displayed in Owen’s attitude here at the ranch.
Sandy has been a good solid home for Owen, the first he’s stayed in for more than a short stint. Not that it isn’t partly his doing, being moved around. Owen is a hard nut. He’s a bit rebellious. But he wasn’t Sandy’s first boy of the sort, and though he snuck out a few times and was once caught with cigarettes as well as shoplifting, she manages him with the patience of a saint. Plus, like myself, she gets he’s traumatized and doesn’t take things personally.
I’ve learned a great deal about putting myself aside from this young man. You can’t mentor a kid like Owen if your ego leads the way. I doubt anyone would use the word humble to describe me, but I am changing. I don’t matter to myself as much as I used to. Right now, seeing his eyebrows tight with frustration and anger tears at my insides.
Owen lived with his meth-addicted mom for years. He was homeless with her more than once before finally becoming a ward of the state at ten. Then, he had three meals and a roof, but still no stability, until Sandy. She’s been his home for nearly a year, which is a long stretch compared to his week- and month-long stays before her. That things were finally going right for this boy and they’re being upended is tragedy in action.
I’m still quiet, elbow perched on my knee, patient and giving him space to speak if he wants to.
He nibbles his lip. “Don’t want to talk about it. ”
When you push a young man who’s been taught to be hyper independent to talk, he’ll only shut down more.
I go to a nearby shelf and snatch a piece of twine we leave nearby for undoing bales. I slide it through the tightly tied twine of the bale and start the seesaw action that will have friction cutting through.
Owen scoffs at my traditional way of slicing the twine. “You’re afraid to keep knives around because I’m a hood rat?”
“I let you wield a pitchfork.” I laugh lightly. “I think most of the people around here are more afraid of getting arthritis from being thrown off horses than they are of you.”
He grunt-laughs.
“Except the ones who turn into werewolves on a full moon. The pitchfork then becomes a serious liability.”
Heat builds up with my action and begins to slowly burn through the tie. Finally, the hay bale pops open with a similar sound to a kernel of popcorn popping, and it falls apart without the pressure. “Truth is, the old-fashioned way is so much more satisfying.”
I glance up at Owen who’s now staring out into space at nothing in particular. He needs to get things off his chest.
I head to the back of the barn to grab some hay nets and ask a question I’ve asked him many times before. How bad is it? “Scale of one to ten?”
“Ten.”
I throw the nets down and tug one of my leather gloves back into place. “Hopeful or hopeless?”
He kicks one of the nets. “Hopeless.” He throws down the pitchfork with a clatter on the cement floor. “Everything sucks.”
“I understand how you’d feel that way.”
The state won’t allow Sandy to hold on to Owen now that her disease has progressed, and even if she could, he wouldn’t be allowed out of state where her family will support her. But Owen doesn’t know that Sandy truly won’t give up on him until he has a place or until she has no choice. Owen also doesn’t know that when Sandy told me about her declining health, I applied to become a foster parent myself.
I long ago decided I’d never get married. But I always wanted kids, and that tug never stopped pulling. Not all paths are straight. Mine certainly hasn’t been. And neither has Owen’s. I think we have a lot to offer one another.
My eyes track Owen who pounds his work boots to where he snatches some more hay nets as if they were runaways. He drags about five of them behind him, leaving a trail on the dusty floor.
Should I tell him my intentions?
I know he’d be happy with me; he’s said a hundred times how great it would be to live here on the ranch. He knows all the ranch hands now, my dad and brothers. Maybe it would give him hope in this hopeless time.
But what if I get denied?
I’m a single man for one, which even though the application and website indicate anyone can foster regardless of gender or relationship status, it’s got to be a red flag the size of Texas. Thankfully, I do tick all the boxes and haven’t left anything to chance. I already gave my manager, Bran, more responsibility and I’m looking to hire more people to help with the expansion at our new location. I’ll need to show I have time for Owen. I want time for Owen.
Lots have considered me self-centered. But I have always, and I mean always, prioritized my animals over myself. When I didn’t have money for much to eat, they still had their feed and supplements for health ailments. I was never too hungover to not be with them exactly when they expected me. I like being there for them. It’s the best part of my life.
Not that I don’t realize raising kids is a whole lot different than raising animals. It will be trying but a million times more fulfilling. And that’s saying a lot because my creatures are my identity. I’m ready for a new role now. I’ll take the title of Dad no less seriously just because it has the word ‘foster’ before it.
I’ve made a success of my professional life.
Now, I want to make a success of my personal one.
Owen loosens the hay with his pitchfork, sending grass pollen and dust into the air. I blink hard, hoping not to let it settle into my already bloodshot eyes. I’m allergic to grass. I don’t have to do this job. I pay others to do it on the thoroughbred’s side. It’s worth it, though, because it’s time with Owen.
“Hey.” I grab his attention for a minute so he stops churning up dust. “Hector and Chispa need a ride out this afternoon. Can you help me out?”
They don’t need a ride out. They’ve both been exercised this morning. But I know how much better Owen feels after a hack and how we both get talking out on those trails.
“Sure.”
He tries to sound sullen, but I sense we might have gone from a ten to a nine.
We work together in comfortable silence, and I wonder if I could put Owen at ease just by mentioning my application. Should I tell him no matter what, I’ll fight to get approved?
I have to stick this out. I’ve faced big challenges before. Adversity, too. But Owen isn’t the only one who has been disappointed in the past. Who has had someone lie, cheat, and not show up. I know how easy it is for someone to pull the rug out.
We finish up our family horses’ hay nets for the week, then we go to tack up the horses. Slowly, some of Owen’s tension releases through our activity.
Owen shifts the saddle into place on Hector and smooths the girth around to buckle it. “The thing is, I know Sandy said she wouldn’t leave until I’m placed again. But this morning, she had an episode, she was all frozen and… first, I was just worried about her. Like, what should I do? Why is this happening to her? It’s so messed up that good people have bad things happen to them. You know?”
“I know all too well.” I slip a bridle around Chispa’s nose.
Owen lets down a stirrup. “And then, I looked up online what’s going to happen to her. It’s… horrible.” He chokes up and quickly lets out a cough to mask the emotion. “Like, will her family take good care of her when she starts drooling? I just hope they’re going to help and not put her in a home or something.”
This caring side of Owen is what he often feels he needs to hide, but it truly is one of the best parts of him.
Owen fastens the buckle on the side of Hector’s bridle. “Anyway, I helped her this morning and wasn’t sure if I should come here today because I don’t know if she’ll be all right. On the way here, I kind of hated myself for thinking this way, but I was like, what if her health goes down faster than they find me another home? I kind of felt bad for thinking about it. Like, this woman is falling apart, this really solid person is sick, and I’m thinking about myself? I can handle a group home if it will be easier for her.” He coughs again, and his words are a mere mumble. “I guess… ”
I put my boot in the stirrup and hoist myself over Chispa. “You think you’re a burden on her?”
“Probably.”
“Sandy chose to have you. She chose to keep you on.”
Owen mounts and worries his lip. Then, he turns his face away from me, slumps over, and does something he’s never done in front of me before. He puts his forehead in his palm, and I’m sure he’s crying.
I jump down off Chispa without thinking and go to his side.
He turns Hector so he can hide himself. “Leave me alone.”
Damn, my heart has just fallen in my boots.
I put my hand on Owen’s back. “I’ll do most of what you want, Owen, but I won’t be leaving you alone.”
He clears mucus in his throat, trying to pull himself together. Finally, he glances up at me. There’s some sweat on his cheeks, over his freckles.
“Hey…” A lump fills my throat.
Maybe I should just tell him. I need to give this guy some hope.
“Listen, I…” feel more emotional than I thought I would at this moment, and my eyes sting. “I applied to be a foster parent when Sandy told me she was sick.”
Light reenters his bright green eyes. “Why did you do that?”
It’s hard to explain the millions of explanations, how his fate seems to intertwine with mine. You can’t explain intuition or a feeling anyway. It just is.
I shrug. “You seem to like it here.”
Hope creeps into his shoulders, and tension releases. “Yeah. I like it here.”
“Alright then.” I cough through the emotion that’s building. I guess the pair of us have this coping mechanism in common, too. “It’ll take some time. But…” I pat Hector’s shoulder to ground myself because my heart is racing. “I’ll get it sorted.”
He nods and chews the inside of his cheek. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
The same reason you haven’t wanted to let yourself hope, buddy. Why do humans prepare themselves for the worst? Why do we resist hope so damn hard? The outcome is etched in fate, why not enjoy the ride along the way regardless? When bad shit happens, it doesn’t hurt any less if we’re so-called prepared for it. And when the outcome is fortunate, why did we drown in melancholy for the weeks leading up?
Should I be teaching this kid that hope is a bad thing?
I head back to my horse to buy myself some time to think of a wise answer, and when none comes, I’m glad I have a whole family to help me with the foster parenting thing because I am far from having it figured out.
I suppose there’s no better answer than the truth. “I guess I’m afraid I won’t be approved. And then I’ll let you down. Funny thing about life, Owen, is that our fears and anxieties don’t change much no matter how old we get. I’ve always been worried about letting people down.”
We click our horses into gear and head out of the gate where a ranch hand salutes me and opens it then closes it behind us.
Owen asks. “Have you let people down a lot? Is that why you think you will?”
I scroll through my thirty-four years of good, bad, and ugly. Letting people down wasn’t exactly my MO. It was more that my older brothers and little sister were always so much more responsible. “I always felt like I was the wild one. Maybe I felt like a bit of a disappointment when I was younger.”
“ You were a disappointment?” He laughs like he can’t believe it. He makes one of those dry jokes he’s getting good at, the ones men all seem to use when things are going deep but we want to offer an out. “I guess your brothers are better-looking.”
“Hey now!” I crack a smile. “I think we need to get your eyes checked out.”
He laughs, and it’s nice to see he can still find his humor.
“I am perfectly secure with my appearance, thank you very much…” I decide not to let this moment get away from us just yet. I want to be close to Owen and I need to show him how to open up. “It’s just Enzo and Rio were always destined for greatness. Enzo is brainy, and Rio is just one of those guys you don’t say no to. Gabriel is some sort of superhero, so focused. And my sister, Shay, well, she’s creative. She got into college. I couldn’t seem to buckle down and never got the grades. All I had was my bravery, which oftentimes, my parents got confused with stupidity.”
“But you’re successful now. Luis must be proud.”
It’s my turn to laugh. “Yeah. He says he is. But that’s just it, O. You can’t let your fears settle too deep. They’ll only get more pronounced over time, like palm lines…”
He nods, and I think he understands.
As we ride into the gentle warmth of a Sunday afternoon, the relaxed loping of the horses underneath, the birds chirping, nature surrounds us, and we have another one of those soulful conversations that I never have with anyone else.
Not since the tree.
Not since Kat.