Chapter 21
I found him at the fence gate in early March, off shift, still in his work clothes, looking at a stretch of wire that Deacon’s crew, his crew now, in the sense that mattered, had strung the week before.
Two months of labor had changed how he carried himself, a leanness that hadn’t been there in September, shoulders set different, hands gone rough and capable again instead of merely photogenic.
I’d stopped by the gate on my way back from the north pasture, telling myself it was just the most direct route home, though there were at least two other routes that would have gotten me there without passing this stretch of fence.
“You’re staring at wire like it owes you money,” I said.
“Good wire.” He didn’t look over. “Tighter run than I’d have managed, back when I thought I knew what I was doing out here.”
“You did know what you were doing. You just stopped doing it and started managing a photograph instead.”
That got the corner of his mouth, the first real almost-smile I’d seen out of him in weeks. “Fair.”
“Mackenzie’s letter come through official yet?”
“Came through Tuesday. No sponsorship, no truck decal, no jacket with my name stitched on it in letters bigger than the cattle.” He looked over at me.
“Turns out I don’t mind that as much as I thought I would.
Turns out mucking a stall at five in the morning for actual pay feels more like a job than posing for a photo ever did. ”
“Don’t get sentimental on me, Boone. It’s still shoveling manure.”
“It’s honest manure.” He almost laughed at his own joke, which I hadn’t heard him do in months. “You want to know the strangest part? Deacon Marsh has fired me from more small jobs in two months than anybody’s fired me from in my whole life, and every single time, he was right to do it.”
“Deacon’s usually right.”
“He is.” Boone looked back at the wire, quiet a moment, running his thumb along a strand like he used to check tension years back, an old habit still living somewhere under the new one.
“I used to think being good at this place meant being good at talking about it. Being the one who could stand up at a banquet and give the toast people remembered, or close a sponsorship deal a competitor wanted, or make a room feel like the operation was bigger than it actually was. Turns out it just means showing up at five-thirty whether anybody’s watching or not.
Nobody photographs that part. Doesn’t matter.
Turns out it’s the only part that was ever actually holding anything up. ”
“That took you eleven years and a public humiliation to figure out.”
“Give me some credit. Most men never figure it out at all.” He said it dry, deadpan, and the corner of my own mouth went before I could stop it, and I looked away fast, hoping he hadn’t caught it, though his own smile deepening said he had.
“Don’t get used to that,” I said. “One laugh doesn’t buy you a fence coming down.”
“Wouldn’t dream of thinking it did.” He picked up his tools, done with his shift, done with the conversation as far as the day allowed. “See you at five-thirty, boss.”
“I’m not your boss.”
“No,” he agreed, already walking. “But you’re the one I show up for anyway.”
I stood at the gate a while after he’d gone, looking at the wire he’d been staring at, running my own hand along it like he had, the tension in it tight and true, as good as he’d said. No answer came for what stood in my chest there in the last of the daylight. The not-having-one was answer enough.
I walked home the long way that evening, past the old windmill still turning in the last of the wind, and let the thought come: what it might take to bring a fence down.
Not yet. But the thought arrived anyway. I didn’t chase it off.
? ? ?
Faye called that same week, her usual Sunday check-in, and before I’d decided whether I wanted to tell anybody that part at all, I was telling her about the gate, the wire, how he’d said you’re the one I show up for anyway.
“Say that last part again,” she said.
“You heard me the first time.”
“I want to hear you say it a second time, because I think you rushed through it like it didn’t matter, and I don’t believe for one second it didn’t matter.
” Her voice had gone gentle, the tone she took when she caught something real under a thing I was downplaying.
“Roz. Are you falling back in love with your own husband?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing, Faye. That’s the honest answer.
Some mornings I still want to hand him his walking papers and be done with the whole complicated mess of it.
Other mornings I catch myself hoping Deacon assigns him to the section of fence I’m working that day, and I hate how much I hope it. ”
“That doesn’t sound like a woman who doesn’t know what she’s doing. That sounds like a woman who knows exactly what she’s doing and isn’t ready to say it out loud yet, in case saying it makes it a promise she’s not sure she can keep.”
“Maybe.” I sat on the porch step, phone against my ear, the last of the evening light going gold over pasture that had spent seven months learning to be two separate things and was only now starting to look like it might go back to being one.
“I keep thinking about my grandmother’s orchard fence.
About how long a growing season actually is, when you’re the one standing on the other side of it deciding whether somebody’s earned their way back. ”
“How long has it been now? Since the fence went up?”
“Almost five months. Since he started working the crew, closer to two.”
“That’s not a growing season yet. That’s barely spring.
” Faye said it gently, not quite a caution, more a plain fact laid out.
“I’m not telling you to rush it, Roz, and I’m not telling you to slow it down either.
I’ve watched you make careful decisions your whole life, the kind other people call stubborn because they don’t understand it’s actually just thoroughness.
Whatever you decide about him, I trust you to get there like you get to everything: slow, and right, and fully your own. ”
“Thank you for that.”
“Anytime.” A pause, and then, lighter: “Also, just so we’re clear, if he breaks your heart a second time, I will absolutely drive out there and help you build a second fence, twice as tall, with a moat if the terrain allows for it.”
I laughed, actually laughed, the first easy laugh I’d managed in months, and we talked another twenty minutes about nothing important at all, the plain ordinary comfort of an old friend who didn’t need every conversation to carry the whole weight of a life.
? ? ?
My father heard about the Trace Holloway offer, same as he heard everything eventually, and he brought it up himself over Sunday supper, direct, no preamble, how he’d started coming at most hard subjects since the year began teaching him to say things out loud instead of carrying them silent.
“Deacon told me Boone turned down a job up near Amarillo. Real money, from what I understand.”
“He did.”
“Surprised me some, hearing it. Old Boone, four years back, wouldn’t have hesitated on a number like that.
” My father cut his chicken with the same unhurried precision he brought to most things, weighing his next words.
“New Boone thought it through and said no. That’s worth noting, Rosalind, whatever else you decide about the rest of it. ”
“I noted it.”
“Good.” He went quiet a moment, the quiet that meant he had more to say and was working out how to say it.
“I’ll tell you something I haven’t said before, because I didn’t think it was mine to say until now.
I had my doubts, watching him marry into this family eleven years back.
Good hands with a nervous animal, same as your mother always said, but I worried he wanted the Larkin name more than he wanted the Larkin daughter.
Watched him chase that rodeo-circuit fame these last few years and thought my doubts had been proven right. ”
“And now?”
“Now I watch a man turn down real money to keep mucking stalls on a piece of ground that isn’t even fully his anymore, for a wife who hasn’t promised him anything beyond a green-hand wage and a fair shake.
” He set his fork down and met my eyes. “That’s not a man chasing the Larkin name, Rosalind.
Man chasing a name doesn’t turn down Amarillo money to keep shoveling manure for less than a tenth of it.
I think I had him wrong, eleven years back, or I think he’s become someone different than the man I had doubts about.
Either way, my doubts don’t hold up anymore, and I wanted to say that to you plain, since I never fully hid the doubts themselves back when I had them. ”
“That’s a big thing to admit, Dad.”
“Man ought to be willing to admit he was wrong, same as he ought to be willing to say when he’s proud.
” He picked his fork back up, done with the tender part of the conversation, same as always, retreating to the practical ground he was more comfortable standing on.
“Chicken’s getting cold. Eat, Rosalind. Whatever else this year’s been, at least Consuela’s cooking hasn’t suffered for it. ”
I ate, and let the talk move to easier ground, but I carried what he’d said the rest of the evening, my father’s doubts spoken at last and taken back, one more piece of the county’s slow reckoning with a man they’d all, in their own ways, been deciding whether to believe in again.
? ? ?
Consuela mentioned, a few days after my father’s Sunday supper, that she’d caught something in how Boone watched me across the yard when he thought nobody was paying attention, and she brought it up like she brought up most of her observations: sideways, gentle, giving me every chance to change the subject if I wasn’t ready.
“He looks at you like a man afraid to want something too openly,” she said, folding laundry at the kitchen table, not quite meeting my eyes, giving me the privacy of not having to answer a direct gaze. “Careful. Like wanting it too loud might scare it off.”
“You’ve been watching him closely.”
“I watch everybody closely. Comes with the job, and with twenty years of caring about this family more than I probably should, given I’m just the help.
” She said it without bitterness, an old joke between us by now, the word ’help’ having long since stopped describing anything close to what she was to this household.
“I’m not telling you to do anything with what I’m seeing, Roz.
Just telling you I’m seeing it, same as I told you about the pie you didn’t order, all those months back.
Some things are worth naming out loud, even when the person doing the naming isn’t asking for a particular response. ”
“What do you think I should do with it?”
“I think you should do exactly what you’ve been doing all year: pay attention, take your time, and trust your own judgment over anybody else’s opinion, mine included.
” She finished folding the last towel, set it on the stack, and looked up at me now that the harder part had passed.
“But if you’re asking what I personally hope happens, since you’re asking, I hope you let yourself have the good thing, Roz, whenever you’re ready for it.
You’ve earned a good thing. This whole county’s watched you earn it, one hard month at a time. ”
I had no answer ready. Consuela gathered the laundry and went to put it away, and I sat on at the table, thumb tracing its worn edge.