9. Dalton
Dalton
As the sky darkened, nobody asked me to do anything to help prepare the bonfire. Instead, I was escorted to a hay bale covered with a green-, red-, and white-striped blanket. Everyone treated me with kid gloves, which was nice but also irritating.
Anyone else on the ranch, all those cowboys, would have shrugged off being bucked from a runaway horse like it was nothing. Or they wouldn’t have been on a runaway horse in the first place, because they were all good riders.
The LGBTQ kids danced around, getting in the way as they tried to help.
One of the ranch hands was laughing as the fire was built higher, and it all felt kind of wild to me.
But in a good way. Letting go. Letting off steam.
Being out there as the darkness grew and the air turned cool, sifting around my bare neck.
I was still dressed in only a t-shirt and jeans.
Those borrowed boots. Like I was turning into a cowboy, but was only halfway there.
Someone tossed me a sweatshirt, and I grabbed it and unfolded it from its untidy fold. It was stained at the cuffs, ragged with wear. When I brought it to my nose before tugging it on, it smelled like hay and dust.
Grateful to be a little warmer, I almost didn’t notice when Lucas walked up and sat on the hay bale next to me.
“These guys work hard,” he said. “Getting this place in shape like they do. But did you know that Jake checked on you no less than five times this afternoon?”
“What?” I asked, feeling as though I’d gone extremely deaf in a matter of seconds and couldn’t possibly have heard what I thought I’d heard.
“He did.” Lucas’ smile was wide, as though the whole idea was a massive joke of some kind. “Jesse said they were baling hay in the north field, across Snow Creek. Apparently Jake took off in that yellow truck of his about every hour, if not more often.”
“Maybe he was doing something else,” I said. “Putting air in his tires. Or whatever.”
It was getting dark. The firelight reflected in Lucas’ bright, cheerful eyes. “That’s not what one of your kids said. Dillon, I think. ’Cause he asked, and Jake told him.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I’d not heard Jake coming into the bunkhouse. But evidently he had, to check on me for reasons beyond my ken.
“He’s like that,” Lucas said. “Always worried about the wild things.”
I had no idea how that was relevant because I wasn’t wild.
With a pat on my shoulder—not hard and mocking, but friendly, kind—Lucas was on his way, going to stand beside the fire with his hands half in his jeans pockets, hips jutted, the way the other men were standing.
The way cowboys did. Watching the fire with dark eyes, as if thinking about other fires.
Other times. About the old days, when cowboys ruled the West.
Or maybe I was tired, having mystical thoughts like that.
One of the men brought out a guitar and strummed it, low and sweet, providing a background of music.
Someone else brought out the old-timey popcorn poppers and laid them, along with jars of popcorn, and a jar that held something that looked like white butter, along with canisters of salt, on a hay bale not too far from the fire.
I watched as two of the boys loaded up the old poppers and began shaking them over the dancing flames. Their eyes were bright with pleasure. Firelight shimmered on their hair like they had been showered with yellow glitter. I found myself relaxing into the moment.
After a time, the smell of hot popcorn wafted in the air. My stomach growled. I did love good popcorn.
Once again I was startled by Jake, who sat next to me on the hay bale and held out a wooden bowl of popcorn. It was so fresh, I could hear it still crackling in the darkness. “Here, have some.” Firelight shone on his face, adding gold to his eyes, a brightness to his stillness.
Five times, Lucas had said. Jake had checked on me five times.
“Thank you.” I dug into the bowl to pull out a handful and shoved half of that handful into my mouth.
It tasted of salt and of fire and of something deliciously rich that was not butter.
“What’d they fry this in?” I asked, for a moment distracted from his very near presence by the unexpected flavor of the popcorn.
“Tallow,” he said. “That’s beef fat.”
I’d never heard of anyone using such a thing on popcorn, but it tasted mighty good to me, so I wasn’t going to complain. I did want to ask why he was sitting with me, and why he was watching me out of the corner of his eye as he, almost delicately, ate one kernel at a time.
I’d opened my mouth to say thank you when a cat jumped into Jake’s lap, curling in the pool of shadow there with a flick of its tail. Jake handed the wooden bowl to me, and I took it.
Expecting Jake to push the cat to the ground, I instead heard him say, low and soft, “You don’t want this, sweetheart. Surely you don’t.”
He held out a kernel of popcorn for the cat to inspect. The animal rose up, gray-and-white coat limned by the flames, sharp eyes glittering slits, and sniffed and seemed to agree that it didn’t want it.
Jake stroked its head. “How many mice did you get today, Jasmine? How many? Ten? A hundred?”
The cat butted her head into Jake’s hand, like she couldn’t get enough from him.
“She’s a barn cat.” Jake flicked a glance my way as he petted her whole body, more long, slow strokes. “We’ve got five. They’re all good hunters.”
Nodding, I watched the cat shift its weight and then jump onto Jake’s shoulder, there to curl around the back of his head as though his shoulders were a human branch for her to spring from.
After dismissing me in one glance, with a flick of her tail she was gone, into the darkness, no doubt to hunt more mice.
Jake reached for the wooden bowl, but I curved my arm around it, a lap-based game of keep-away. “No, you don’t,” I said, teasing. “You gave it up, and now it’s mine.”
He looked astonished, like nobody had ever teased him before or kept popcorn from him before, which made me laugh as I shoved another handful into my mouth.
He needed teasing, and part of me hoped to win a smile from him, but instead he shifted back, as though I’d refused him something quite valuable.
“I’m only joking,” I said, holding the bowl out to him. After a second’s hesitation, he took a small handful, but he looked puzzled, and I felt bad. Worse than I should, considering the smallness, the harmlessness of the teasing.
I wanted him to like me. To approve of me, even for the short time I’d be at the ranch. In that moment, as though someone had opened a door inside him only to slam it shut again, I had sensed a gentle heart.
Of course, that heart was obscured by six feet of handsome muscle, yards of tanned skin, that masculine jaw, and his odd blue-and-green eyes and dark, unruly hair. But beneath all that, he was tender and easily wounded.
Was I the only one who saw this?
It was too bad I was heading home soon, because with my skills at unwinding financial puzzles, I could have figured out a way to make him smile at me. Just once. It would be like a prize, though there wasn’t anyone I could tell about how I’d won it.
He was looking at me again, out of the corner of his eye, as though watching to see which way I’d jump. What mean thing I’d do next.
I had a feeling that had I hurt Buddy or Jasmine, he’d have been all over me with the intent of teaching me a lesson about kindness.
Always worried about the wild things, Lucas had said.
I remembered Jake had advised me against driving home in the twilight.
About how I’d not be able to see. He’d not been worried about me, right?
Surely not. He’d been worried about the foxes and deer I might not see in time to avoid hitting them.
Maybe I wanted him to worry about me. Just once it would be nice if someone would.
Sure, Lucas had always looked out for me at the office. That was an eight-to-five gig, and he did his best as long as he was there. He did pretty good, in fact.
But now I was on my own.
My brothers ignored me, except when they needed me. I could explain that they were crass assholes because they blamed me for my parents’ deaths, but really, they’d always been that way, ever since I could remember.
I was the youngest. Typically, the youngest child was the pet of the family, spoiled beyond belief, but that wasn’t the case in our house. Rather, I was certainly an afterthought, standing at the end of a long line of more important things.
My parents had died in a car accident, on an icy road curving around a half-frozen lake, on the back way to Denver International Airport, because they hadn’t wanted to pay to drive on the clean and dry toll roads.
They’d been coming to pick me up from the airport, as I’d gone to Chicago to take the test to get my bank examiner’s certificate. My two years of study had been online, but CSBS preferred it when you took the test in person. The cheapest flights were in early December, so that’s when I went.
When I got home, certificate in hand, my parents were dead, and my brothers’ dislike of me turned into something far more severe.
Cadmar, the oldest brother, was the executor of the estate, and I got the short end of the stick.
Not that I’d expected anything different.
Cadmar got the house we grew up in, a nice two-story brick building in the old part of Cherry Creek.
Ansley, the middle brother, bought a new loft townhome in downtown Denver with his inheritance and invested the rest.
I received a check for $5,000 and the deed to twenty dusty acres where the well had dried up, out near Scottsbluff, Nebraska. From the stories, the land had a pretty view to the west of the river and the bluff, but I’d never been. My dad had gone back once for his father’s funeral, but not since.
Sometimes I thought about taking a road trip out that way, to visit Grandpa’s grave and take a look around. But my work in Denver kept me busy. It paid the bills.