One
Halsey, Nebraska
Three Years Later
Beck walked along the fence line like a man strolling through a rose garden, sliding his gloved hand along the top strand of wire, checking, testing, careful to avoid a barb’s bite. The morning wind caught the wire, making it hum, like a metallic whine on a harp.
But no harp, this fence, nor the memories that loomed up inside him, like they often did—fast, catching him unaware. Making him vulnerable and hating the way they made him feel.
The fence had been here since he was a kid, strung by his father before Beck was old enough or strong enough to wield a pair of pliers. A thousand times, he’d heard the wind pluck at the wires, making them hum.
But today, the sound worked under his skin.
The prairie was greening up after a hard winter.
New shoots pushed through last year’s yellowed grass, and the cottonwoods along the creek rustled in the breeze, their bare limbs edged with swelling buds in quiet promise of the coming spring.
Calves bawled somewhere behind him, hungry and impatient.
The sky stretched wide and unbroken over the ranch, the way he’d always known it.
Open. Endless.
He flexed his fingers against the wire. Drew in a tight breath.
There’d been sky over there, too.
But not like this.
Not free.
He moved on, taking more steps along the fence line, checking the wire, its tautness.
The motion blurred from his touch, no longer with gloves, but only his skin, roughened and cracked.
Three strands of wire now, not just one.
Strung between posts set in mud, with barbs every few inches. Built to hold men in. Keep others out.
A barb bit him through the glove, and he pulled his hand back.
The lingering sting reminded him he wasn’t there anymore, that he was standing in western Nebraska, on his father’s land, on a bright spring morning in 1955.
The smell of thawing earth and manure, and the faint sweetness of alfalfa hay told him what he’d always loved.
His home.
Beck kept walking, boots sinking slightly into the thawing ground. He’d come home three months ago, just before Christmas, and the ranch had absorbed him the way dry soil absorbed snowmelt—slowly, steadily, without question.
Constant work did that. Didn’t ask where he’d been, either.
His own place sat an easy walk from the main house, tucked behind a windbreak of cottonwoods his grandfather had planted when the trees were still seedlings.
The cabin wasn’t much, just two rooms, a small kitchen, and a stove that only worked when it felt like it, but it was his.
He’d moved out of his parents’ house and into the cabin after he’d been back only a few weeks, about the time his mother kept worrying about him so much.
As if he might evaporate like the morning dew if she didn’t keep a close eye on him.
His father understood a man needed a door that was his, though, and a bed that was more than a smelly cot. A place of his own, night after night. Free and alone.
Beck paused to pull a staple from his pocket and set it against a post, placing it just right. A small job, a clean job. One that didn’t take too much thinking.
“You planning to stare holes through that fence all day, Son, or are you going to mend it?”
His father stood twenty yards down the line with his hat low on his forehead, hands shoved into his coat pockets. Watching him. Measuring, as he often did, with few words and an occasional small smile to convince Beck of his humor.
Joe Archer was sixty and ramrodded the Archer & Sons Ranch like a man who’d done nothing but run the outfit his entire life, which he’d done since Beck’s grandfather passed on after Beck enlisted in the Army.
Men in town spoke of Joe with respect, acknowledging he was someone who deserved it after building a legacy that showed signs of lasting.
Beck held up the staple. “Getting to it.”
“Your mother’s got potatoes and eggs ready to fry. She won’t serve them to you cold, so you’d best hurry along.”
“Almost done.”
“Might as well wait for you. She won’t feed me without you being at the table, too.”
Beck grinned, and by the time he’d finished hammering the staple, his father had walked those twenty yards and joined him. Together, they left the fence line and headed for the main house.
“You sleep all right?” his father asked, as casually as if he were inquiring about the weather.
“Pretty good.” Beck glanced at him. “Might’ve slept more if Mom’s rooster hadn’t seen fit to say otherwise.”
“That’s good. Real good.” Joe’s voice stayed even over the crunch of their boot soles on the prairie grass. He exhaled. Beck didn’t usually see him hesitate. “Leaving the Army before you finished would’ve felt like surrender, you know.”
Beck sobered at the abrupt change of topic. Might be his father deemed him strong enough now to talk about what happened after Beck had been rescued from the POW camp. Sometimes a father was just slow in saying words that needed to be said to his son. Especially when that father was worried.
“That’s how I figured it,” Beck said.
The Army had given him the chance to leave Korea if he wanted, but he’d refused.
He moved into an administrative role, buried himself in paperwork and schedules and supply logs, anything that let him remain under the same sky where he’d been taken, in the same war-torn place that would’ve defined his capture if he hadn’t.
“Your grandfather would’ve been mighty proud of you,” Joe said quietly. “You didn’t come home with your tail between your legs. You finished your enlistment with honor and a strong sense of duty.” He halted in the grass. His big hand clasped Beck’s shoulder. “But no one is prouder of you than me.”
Joe released him, the affection gone as quickly as he’d given it. But Beck’s throat closed anyway. Meant a lot to hear the words.
“Thanks, Dad.” He swallowed hard.
Just when he thought his father was done and would start walking to the house again, he didn’t. Seemed he had more to say.
“The Archers have always answered the call, you know,” Joe said quietly.
“Your grandfather served in ’98, me in ’18, you in Korea.
You’re the third generation to serve our country, and there’s not much finer to be prouder of than that.
” He exhaled emotion of his own. “Now, let’s go in and eat breakfast. I’m hungry as a nanny goat. ”
Later That Afternoon
Beck braced his boot against the post, rolled the fencing pliers, and wrapped the barbed wire in tight, even coils until the splice pulled straight and strong.
“Good job.” His father eyed the wire with approval.
Beck stood with both boots on the ground again. “I learned from the best.”
“Looks like it stuck.”
He chuckled. “That and more.”
He bent to retrieve a small piece of wire from the grass, and with his fencing pliers in his hand, he straightened again, ready to move on to the next section of fence that needed some attention.
The low rumble of an engine changed his mind, though, and his glance swerved toward a green Chevy 3100 pickup truck barreling toward them. The truck barely slowed as it veered off the dirt road and through the grass toward them, leaving a cloud of dust behind.
Beck grunted. “Lonnie.”
“Wonder what lit his tail on fire.”
The Chevy skidded to a stop, braked hard, and the door swung open. By the time Lonnie jumped out, he had both Beck and Joe’s full attention.
“Smoke,” he said, pointing with his right hand, missing its thumb and index finger from an accident which had kept him out of the Army. “North pasture. Near the bend at Muddy Creek.”
Younger than Beck by two years, anyone could tell they were brothers. Both tall and muscled, same dark eyes, each carried Archer pride in word and deed. And by the look on Lonnie’s face, that pride was plenty worried.
“How bad?” Joe demanded, staring at the distant haze.
Lonnie’s mouth went tight. “Wind’s pushing it north.”
Beck’s gut sank.
“Let’s move,” he said, already headed toward the Chevy. He tossed the fencing pliers and wire into the back end with a clatter, then rounded toward the passenger side. He yanked open the door and shot a glance toward Joe. “I’ll get the water truck and shovels. We’ll meet you out there.”
Lonnie was already behind the wheel. A small tin toy tractor rattled against the floorboard when the engine started. Absently, adrenaline simmering, Beck tossed it onto the dashboard.
“We’ll cut it off before it hits the timber,” his father said, hustling toward his own truck farther down the fence line. “Tell your mother to let folks know. Get Eli out here, too.”
Lonnie acknowledged the orders with a wave, then drove like greased lightning back to the homestead.
At the barn, they both jumped out, grabbed supplies, and threw them into the truck bed.
Lonnie hurried into the house and informed their mother, who would use the ranch’s party line to spread the word, and then he was back in the barn again.
Eli Pearson, who had worked for the Archers for several decades, trotted out of the corral with his weathered features showing alarm. There wasn’t a finer mechanic around, far as Beck knew, but he was good at fighting fire, too.
“Ride with Lonnie,” Beck commanded. “I’ll drive the flatbed.”
Beck slid behind the wheel, turned the key, and stomped the starter.
The engine coughed once before roaring to life, and he put the flatbed into gear.
Water sloshed in the big steel tank bolted in the back as he made a big turn out of the barn with more haste than caution, yelling out the window to Lonnie to lead the way.
They drove hard along the pasture’s edge, bouncing over ruts. Beck stared hard through the haze, toward the north, suffering a raw fear from all that could be lost.