6. Jake
Jake
The mother had dropped me off at the Human Services building, and I’d made my way up to the second floor, signed the papers, turned over my halfway house voucher, and got my bus ticket. The foster system was rid of me, and I was sure they were glad to erase me from their roster.
The ride on Greyhound from Denver to Chance, a town outside Fort Collins, took a couple of hours, due to the many stops and starts.
I hadn’t known what to expect when the coach pulled into Chance.
I’d been staring out the window at the passing landscape as city turned to town and farm turned to field.
It was the middle of summer, and everything was green.
Chance was a small place. The coach dropped me off in front of a store on Old Main Street called the Mercantile. Somehow I needed to get to Snow Creek Ranch. I’d made it that far; I supposed I could make it further. But which way was I supposed to go?
Setting my shoulders, I went into the store and walked up to the counter.
Two older men were waiting on a younger fellow who was trying on hats.
Real cowboy hats. They acknowledged me with their eyes and finished helping the young man, who finally strutted out of the store with a very large, very crisp straw cowboy hat.
“Help you, sir?” they asked in unison.
My throat was dry all of a sudden. My can-do and I’ve-got-this attitude somehow up and left. But all I needed was directions, and me and my backpack could make it there, surely.
“I’m looking for Snow Creek Ranch,” I said. My jaw stiffened as they looked me up and down. Appraising, as if trying to figure out how I, a city boy, had landed in their midst.
“Well, aren’t you a tall drink of water,” one said.
The other nodded and asked, “The ranch?” He sounded surprised, like I’d made a mistake. “Snow Creek?” he asked, as if making sure.
“Yes, sir,” I said, thinking of all the times I’d been confronted on the first day of school in a new house, a new town, with a new mother and father and gotten the you-don’t-belong-here feeling. “I’ve come for a job with Mr. Walter Barrett.”
“That sounds about right, I guess,” the second one said. “Well, you drive on north, continuing on the road you came in on, and then—”
“I don’t have a car,” I said, hasty and sharp. I was only eighteen, for Pete’s sake, and besides, I’d just come out of the system, so how the hell was I supposed to afford a car? “I can walk. How far is it?”
They looked at each other like a couple of punch-drunk comedians, their eyebrows going up at the same time. Then they both looked at me, and one of them pulled a battered cell phone from his pocket. “We’ll just give him a call,” he said.
“It’s ten miles,” the other said.
Of course they wanted to check that I had a right to be there. That Walter Barrett truly had offered me a job. The first day in any new place was always a proving ground. And in a short minute, we all were going to find out whether Mr. Barrett’s offer was smoke and mirrors or the damn truth.
If it was smoke, I’d be walking or hitching a ride back to Fort Collins. I could find a job there, maybe. Sleep on a park bench or under a bridge.
If it was truth, then the future was still a shifting gray fog. I had no idea what a ranch hand did. Not the first thing about ranches or horses or cattle. Though it would be nice to have a fine straw cowboy hat.
After some quiet conversation, the man with the cell phone held it out to me.
“Hello?” I said, being my most polite.
“Is this Jake? Jake Colter?” the voice asked.
“Yes, sir,” I said. I was gripping the cell phone so tightly that the case made a popping sound.
“Greyhound didn’t drop you off at the road to the ranch, then?” the voice asked.
“No, sir.”
“Well, I’ll come fetch you. Give me twenty minutes.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, but he’d already hung up. I handed the phone back to its owner. “He’s coming to get me,” I said.
A dull, feverish ache was starting up between my shoulder blades, but I was distracted from that by their again-raised eyebrows, twins of each other.
“You’re a lucky fellow,” one said.
“All that way, just for you,” the second one said. But he didn’t sound mad. Rather, he sounded impressed. Like it was something special to get picked up by Walter Barrett.
I didn’t trust that, though. Too many times, when I figured it was my turn for a treat, something nice, I’d gotten passed over, shoved to the back of the line. Nobody was going to think I was special, not even Walter Barrett.
Looking back, I’d been wrong as hell about that.
I’d gone out and waited on the steps in front of the store, and watched the lazy passing traffic as the sun reached its zenith.
I was about to scoot back up a step to be in the shade, sweating beneath my hooded sweatshirt, when a sleek black truck zoomed up to the curb and parked with a sudden skid of tires.
An older man with a gray mustache and a time-weary face rolled down the window. “You Jake Colter?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.” I stood up, brushing the dust from my backside.
“Walter Barrett,” he said to introduce himself. “Well, come on then, if you’re coming.” He returned his attention to the steering wheel, like I was just another errand, and perhaps an annoying one at that. I clambered into the truck, shutting the door carefully behind me.
I fully expected that the ride would be terse, filled with instructions and warnings. A list of tasks and rules. Repercussions for orders not followed to the letter.
But it hadn’t been.
As he drove out of town, he left the windows down, and the cab of the truck was filled with swirling air.
Sunshine came in through the dust-speckled windshield.
At a stop sign, he took off his hat and ran his fingers through his gray hair.
“Will you look at that,” he said. “We got here at just the right time of day.”
I turned to him, looking for signs as to what to say. Which way to jump.
He pointed with a nod. “Snow Creek. The sun coming down at just that angle. Shining on all them pretty cottonwoods, just where it bends north.”
I looked where he was pointing, my eyes wide to see what he was seeing: a sparkle of water between gray-brown tree trunks. The glitter of heart-shaped leaves pitching on their stems in the lazy breeze.
“That’s pretty,” I said, and I meant it, though I didn’t think I’d ever heard anyone call cottonwoods pretty before. We had them in Denver, in the parts where I’d lived. But they’d been scrubby, stunted by the city air.
Here, as we turned left onto the country highway, no more than two lanes, they were robust, soaking in water from the creek, branches made lively by the blue sky above.
“The water there is called Snow Creek, on account of it comes straight down from the mountains. Cold as ice,” he said, catching me with his glance. “But it’s a good cold. Good for chilling a six-pack or dunking your feet in on a hot day in August.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I kept my mouth shut, which was always the best way to go.
Walter drove at a fast clip and turned off onto a narrow paved road that twisted along open, grassy fields and in among pine trees.
“You’ll be in a bunkhouse,” he said. “On your own; hope that’s okay.
We’re sparse of ranch hands at the moment, but it’s the middle of the season, so no worries there.
They’ll be coming soon, when the cattle need bringing down.
We need a well dug and fences mended. The ranch house needs painting.
Hay bales need stacking from the second cutting. ”
At that moment, I couldn’t have cared if he wanted me to dance a jig on the roof. My own bunkhouse? With a door?
“You up for that?” he asked without looking at me.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“And is that all you brung? That backpack?”
“Yes, sir.” I said. I couldn’t be ashamed that I had so little. Many foster kids left the system with less.
“We’ll get you kitted up, son,” he said. “Boots. Hat. Thicker jeans than the ones you got on. You shaving yet?”
“Almost.” My voice sounded small in my own ears. I had shaved a time or two, using a disposable razor stolen from the father and foam from the soap dispenser. Sweating the entire time that I’d get caught, my face raw afterward.
“Someone will carry you to the Mercantile tomorrow for the hat and boots,” he said. “There’s a store down the street from there for everything else.”
He said it like that was just what you did. Take in a foster kid and give him a cowboy hat, first thing.
I wanted to ask him what was going on, but, like I had in the past if a rare windfall came my way, I kept my mouth shut and absorbed it through my skin for the drought that was surely to follow.
Only thing was, the drought never came. Not after that. I had fresh water everywhere I looked.
Walter—he told me to call him Walter—took me to the ranch and showed me my bunkhouse. Then he took me to the dining hall and introduced me around. I couldn’t remember any names that night. The faces were a blur.
The food was amazing, though my stomach ached from eating so much. When I got back to my bunkhouse, there’d been a small pile waiting on the freshly made bed: a packet of new t-shirts. A toothbrush. Shaving kit. White briefs. Thick socks. A tube of sunscreen.
Someone had told me at dinner that breakfast was at seven sharp, and there, on top of the pile, was a little battery-run clock. I set the alarm and went out to sit on the wooden steps to the bunkhouse.
The air felt clean and cool as the sun started to set over the low hills to the west. Everything turned dusky, the light oozing toward purple and darker blue. Birds flew around the roof of the ranch house in the distance, settled in the trees. Called to each other and sang their songs.
I stayed where I was until it got too dark to see. Then I went inside and took the longest, hottest shower. When I got out, I shaved with real shaving cream and a brand-new razor. All my own.
Me in the mirror. For once, I didn’t have burned holes for eyes. Sure, they looked surprised and wary, but in the back I could see a glimmer of something else. Hope, maybe. A flicker of something tenacious that told me this was what I’d been holding on for.
My hair dripped water from the shower, and I buffed my head with a towel.
Feeling clean all over, I put on new briefs and opened the windows.
Left the door open, too, and let the cool breeze waft over me, washing me as clean as the shower.
Cleaner. The air of change. Cool licks across my skin. Like being reborn.
My early days at Snow Creek Ranch were full of work. Sunup to sundown. My straw cowboy hat felt stiff at first, but soon molded itself to fit my head.
I soon had two pairs of boots bought for me. Everyday work boots and a pair of sleek Ariats inlaid with a pretty blue-and-brown pattern. I had two pairs of new jeans and the promise of more, as needed. The promise of anything I needed.
Any mistakes I made were met with quiet guidance rather than shouts and blows. I got gently scolded and then shown how to do the task properly.
How to close a gate so animals didn’t get out or in, depending. How to clean and store tools after using them. How to paint a building without getting paint all over myself. How to hold a door open for a lady, of whom there were a few on the ranch.
How to wash my hands before every meal and take my hat off when indoors. How to not eat like a starving animal. How to return a handshake with a solid one of my own. How to look someone in the eye when talking to them.
How to listen. How to believe what was being said. How to trust.
It became impossible to hide my devotion to Walter Barrett. After a while, I stopped trying. But he never acted like I was an amusing pup to be dismissed with a pat to my head. He treated me like he treated his other ranch hands, with respect. With focused attention when he was talking to me.
I became a part of the ranch. Best friends with the foreman’s son, Jesse.
In the winter, the down season, when other ranch hands returned to the city or went on the stock show circuit, I stayed.
I drove a truck to clear snow and used the tractor to move half-frozen manure.
Circled the ranch on foot and on horseback, through snow and wind, to check fence lines.
Watched for coyotes when the sun went down. Watched for fires in the dry of January winds. Rode to watch cattle in the upper fields, rain or shine. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for Walter.
When he passed away, taken by a quick, cruel cancer that he never told anyone about, I cried like a baby.
The sound of my sobs cut into the preacher’s words at the graveside like an axe cutting branches from a trunk.
On that stark hillside outside of Chance, where the cemetery was, there were no trees. No shade. No hiding.
I wasn’t ashamed of my tears. My affection for Walter, my loyalty, was well known. But I was fearful. Of the future. Of the unknown. Of changes to come.
Dennis Barrett, Walter’s son, had died way back, estranged from Walter, and in came Walter’s grandson, Lucas Barrett, to take over the ranch.
The first thing he did was announce that the ranch would no longer be a pure working ranch but a welcoming one, where paying guests could stay.
Also one where LGBTQ kids could come to get away from the city, away from families that had rejected them.
Where they could learn new skills. Create new lives for themselves.
To my mind, this was way too many changes all at once. One or the other, guests or kids, I thought.
I even brought it up to Lucas himself, because by this time I was tall and strong and experienced. No longer the close-mouthed foster kid looking for a signal as to which way to jump. I was a man, fully grown, and respected for my hard work and my can-do attitude.
“You might be right,” Lucas said with a warm smile. “The kids come first for now, and then the retreat for rich city folk. Maybe both. It pays to sow broadly, though, to see what takes.” He watched me as I took off my straw hat and ran my fingers through my hair, the way Walter always had.
“So, are you in?” Jesse asked. “Will you help us?”
I was one of many ranch hands, known for my skill at woodwork and handling horses. Yet here they were, treating me like I was a crucial part of their plan.
They weren’t lying. The Barretts I’d known never did, and neither would Jesse. They were showing me that I was part of the ranch’s future. Part of something important, bigger than myself.
All of which I was a sucker for. Lucas was no fool, and Jesse knew me through and through. They used what they knew to their advantage, but without taking advantage of me.
“Yes,” I said.
“Knew I could count on you,” Jesse said with a hearty clap to my shoulder. I didn’t flinch or move away, though I disliked his casual touch. Any casual touch.
“Come to me if you have concerns,” Lucas said. “Directly to me, you hear?”
“Yes, sir,” I repeated. I had a place on Snow Creek Ranch, and I was going to keep it.