Crybaby Ranch

by Tina Welling

  “Mickey’s got a nice girl,” Maizie says about Bo’s lawyer friend. The two reminisce together about Mick’s childhood, when he used to spend time with Bo here on the ranch. I hope for Mick’s sake there are no nude pictures of him in the photo album.

  Twenty years ago, when their mother died, the sisters followed Grandpa Garrett into town. Bo told me the two bought a duplex a few blocks away from their father’s trailer; each of them live in one half. Bo says they have men friends, a pool of escorts they share and from which they select particular mates on occasion.

  “So now there’s Suzannah.” Maizie turns to me conspiratorially. “We’ve been asking ourselves: ‘Hmm. But where does Suzannah fit into the picture?’ Oh, we have our silly hopes, don’t we, sister?”

  “But we know,” Violet says, “that you have much on your mind these days and we’ll have to be patient. We told Bartholomew.”

  “What, what did you tell Bo?” My head swings side to side, from one sister to the other, following their sudden inclusion of me in their talk.

  “To be patient,” says Maizie from my left.

  “That you need to take your time grieving,” Violet adds from the right.

  “Grieving?”

  “Your mother, your marriage.” From the left.

  “Lost youth.” From the right again.

  “Oh, now cut that out,” Maizie says to me before I say or do a single thing. “Nobody’s been talking about you. Bo just said depression and divorce and we understood.”

  “We’re not stupid,” Violet says.

  “Sometimes we are,” Maizie says.

  “Oh, just for fun.”

  “Well, I don’t know, sister—”

  “She’s been listening to O.C.” Violet turns to me. “He says we’re senile before our time.”

  I want to ask more questions, but I suspect the sisters can maintain attention on subjects outside themselves for only so long. Besides, we are being called to collect dessert, my contribution to the potluck. Chocolate cake, dark, sweet, and moist. The aunts brought Irish whiskey and two flavors of whipped cream, orange and almond, to accompany our coffee.

  Later, it’s me that sidles up to the aunts. They are talking about Dickie and let me listen.

  “Attracted to Bo?” Violet asks herself in a search for words. “These matters are complex. More like…”

  Maizie finishes, “If Dickie could, he’d be Bo. That is if he could still be wealthy and own things.”

  “That’s it exactly!” Violet snaps her fingers in the air. “Dickie yearns to be a real rancher, instead of a pretend one with his fancy toys. Even more, he’d like to be as manly and handsome as our Bartholomew.”

  I wouldn’t mind getting the talk back around to Bo and me and their silly hopes, but Bo is heading our way. He grins hugely as he joins us and flings his arm around my neck. Until today, we haven’t seen each other since before I left for Florida. With his fist under my chin, he tips my face up and kisses me lightly on the mouth. “Welcome home,” he says.

  I’m surprised and dazzled. My ears heat up.

  Bo and his aunts talk, and I miss the entire exchange while my mind replays the smile, the kiss, the happy look afterward. His smile swooping down to meet my smile. My lips sizzle and feel like they might be swelling. Turning neon pink. Glowing in the dark like the forgotten coals in the barbecue pit on the edge of the yard. I am sure these attentions are just for me. Bo is too straightforward to be using me for some message to Dickie or Caro. He never touches me at my house or anytime we’re alone. I think he’s afraid of scaring me off. He has a solid touch. Well-grounded, strong, and good souled.

  After a while Bo releases me and moves aside to include Mitzi Beamer, the New York gallery owner, into our circle of talk. Mitzi is in the valley to fish. Bo was recommended to her as a guide by the sporting-goods store on the square because he could discuss contemporary art as well as fly fishing. All this comes out in Bo’s introduction of Mitzi to the group.

  A bit later I gather from their talk that Mitzi isn’t offering Bo any gallery space even after seeing his work. Instead, she suggests to Bo that he produce brochures of his work, which she offers to mail to architects and interior designers in the East with her strong recommendations. To me this sounds like an opportunity to earn good money and create a steady following. Bo appears unenthusiastic.

  When Mitzi finishes her sales pitch, Bo says, “I’m not a retailer, Mitzi. If I were, I’d rather sell popcorn.”

  This could be my answer to a question I’ve carried about whether Bo would court Caro for her financial ability to support his art career. If so, I’m left with the belief that Bo deals from his heart and doesn’t do anything just for money, not even flirt with Caro. Kind of a good news/bad news deal.

  Home again and getting out of my clothes, I think about the people at that party and wonder if natives of this valley have grown as strangely twisted as the junipers on the slope behind Bo’s deck. Some of those trees hunker to the ground with low bushy growth, where the snows might bury them December through May. Others grow tall and spindly, all their lower branches nibbled clean by mule deer. Far to the south, in the drainage, trees have been severed by avalanches and only their spiky trunks remain. The trees with their branches all thrust out to one side, away from the harsh northern winds of winter, remind me of the aunts. This is how they have survived. They have grown all to one side, toward the safe shelter of the other.

  Bo’s grandfather, aside from actually being small and wiry in build, reminds me of the trees that hunker close to the ground, spreading tough branches horizontally rather than skyward in the expectation of winter’s smothering snows. Bo told me once that the old coot is prejudicial and narrow-minded, and he’s right. O.C. is a man who has lain dormant like the junipers half his seasons. Despite his bluster and grumble, he strikes me as full of unconscious fears, disguised as verbal barbs launched toward the rest of humanity.

  At first, I enjoyed talking to him. He was funny and vibrant. Then, without warning, he injected a brutal swipe at homosexuals and Jewish men (“fags and kikes”) and looked at me expectantly, as if waiting for my smirk of agreement. I was taken by surprise. As much as I hoped to be someone he liked, I excused myself during that pause and didn’t wait around to hear the finish of his story. I imagine he’s complaining to Bo right now that I’m a snippy, humorless “little gal,” as he referred to me all night.

  “Say, little gal, you keep an eye peeled, you’re going to find yourself some huckleberries along Singer’s Creek. Bears don’t need them, can’t bake pies no better than they can tie shoestrings. They’re just big, oversized rats—don’t you think? Ought to shoot every one. The blessed Lord knows I blasted my share.”

  Honest to God, it’s as if he’s studied how to antagonize people. Yet I found him delightful, too, in his way. He attempted to charm me at times, went out of his way to introduce me as someone special to Dr. Goldy and the veterinarian, Gideon Haymaker. And the man could tell jokes—accents and all—like a pro. People huddled around him and howled so contagiously I could barely stand to keep away. But even from my safe distance, I could tell that half his jokes trailered abrasive punch lines.

  I suspect O.C. was hard on Bo as a child. Hard on the aunts, too. Why else would the two women cling so tightly to each other? Been so afraid all these years to tell the truth about Bo’s birth? Perhaps the sisters used Bo as a buffer between themselves and their father. But more often, I’ll bet, they were buffers themselves protecting their son, Bo.

  eleven

  Middle of June and I’m still wearing fleece and flannel. Just as Bo predicted, the arrival of summer has stalled. The cold night air frosts the morning grass and delays the maturing of the tiny lime-colored leaves on the aspen and willow and cottonwood trees. The daffodil leaves are short stubs in the grass that border my cabin and the lilac bushes around the old shed out back may not bloom until the Fourth of July. Bo says it’s happened before. I want to plant vegetables, but they
need forty straight nights without frost and such an event has not occurred on the ranch in recorded history. “One year we only had nineteen nights without frost,” Bo said. “This part of the valley is too high for gardens.”

  But tonight a chinook careens off the Tetons and the unexpected warm wind swats at the old Douglas fir in the side yard. It’s nearly midnight, and I stand outside barefoot in my flannel nightshirt. The temperature has lurched up twenty degrees since sundown, and long ago I rolled up my nightshirt sleeves past my elbows and kicked off my slippers.

  It’s exciting out here, as if the elements are throwing a party and I am invited. I raise my nightshirt up past my bare hips, then stretch it over my head, exposing my entire body. My nightshirt is a sail between my arms that catches the wind and threatens to lift me into the migration of last year’s dried leaves passing above me. I feel danger swirling in the blackness beyond the light cast from the kitchen door. I can’t convince myself to move into the yard farther. I resort to a bribe: Three giant steps into the darkness and I can have another glass of wine when I go back inside. The brilliance of the light in Wyoming has made me wish I could paint, but I must learn to draw first and have spent the evening teaching myself. Sheets of paper and Magic Markers are strewn across my kitchen table, while the wine bottle stands guard against a judgment so critical that I might ruin my own fun.

  Now legs lifted high, I leap once, twice, three times into the dark yard. A fierce blast of air slams against me and a shingle shears past my head. A cool shiver of fear spirals up my spine. This party has veered out of control. I turn toward the safety of my cabin. Before my eyes the lit doorway of my kitchen turns black. The power has gone out. Dense cloud cover allows no moon, no stars. As I drop my white nightshirt back over my body, it fades into a ghostly film around my knees.

  Is my cabin really straight ahead or have I unconsciously turned around in search of light? What if I get lost in my own backyard and wander into the danger of the forest where I hear tree limbs breaking loose? I don’t trust myself. Common sense knocks but I ignore it and feel stupidly immobilized in the spinning black night.

  Maybe it isn’t the wind that took out the lights. Maybe an escaped convict has found my breaker box and turned everything off. I don’t belong in a Wyoming cabin all alone when I haven’t stocked candles for a power outage or even bought a flashlight. And an escaped convict knows how to work my breaker box before I do.

  When my eyes adjust to the dark, I wad my nightshirt hem in a sweaty fist and pick my way on tiptoe toward the black bulk of my cabin. My hair plasters my cheeks and grit blows into my eyes. With relief I reach the kitchen door, then remember Tolly. She’s out in this weather, too.

  “Tolly. Tolly.”

  I hear mewing and soon she is lacing my ankles with her soft body. I lift her up and hold her against me. The cabin is mouse-free thanks to her. We both go inside, and I begin the search in the dark for matches and that elegant candle Caro brought me. Each time I enter a room I forget and flip the light switch on.

  Matches I find near the woodstove and the candle I find in my underwear drawer, where its scent seeps into my panties. I set the lighted candle on the kitchen counter. Then recall the oil lamp I bought when I first moved in and stuck away because it smoked.

  I’m not happy about going back outside to the breaker box, but how else will I know whether it’s just my house or an area outage? Already I’ve stalled a half hour or so. I can’t see Bo’s place from here and there’s no use calling him; it’s Saturday night and I heard him drive past hours ago on his way to town. In fact, since his potluck, I haven’t seen Bo much at all; he seems to have gotten my message about needing some distance and just stops by to leave my mail under the doormat. Without his cooking I’ve been on a dreary run of Stouffer’s Lean Cuisine. Have these people never heard of herbs and spices?

  The stiff, gummy wick of the lamp holds the flame I loan it from the candle and I go back out the kitchen door. On the driveway side of the house, I find the breaker box and open it. There’s a line of square plastic buttons. I tip my head toward my left shoulder and read the block print labeled sideways on the buttons: ON, ON, ON. I tip my head toward my right shoulder and read them again: NO, NO, NO.

  Which is it? ON or NO?

  I stare at the labels. Should I push one of these buttons or should I just go to bed and worry about this in the morning?

  Inside, the sound of trees thrashing, I hear a car chug up the road. Bo is coming back from town. Once again the night wind feels festive. I stand with my lamp raised high over my head like the Statue of Liberty as Bo’s Suburban whips into my drive. Give me your handsome cowboy artists yearning to breathe free.

  Bo cuts his engine and his headlights, climbs out and reaches behind his seat for a flashlight. He walks over to where I stand grinning and holding my nightshirt down.

  “Doing okay?” He flicks his flashlight beam around me briefly.

  “Sure,” I answer, cocky now that he’s here with me.

  “Thought I’d check on you.”

  “You worried about me,” I say in wonder. With Erik I had to produce a bleeding wound to stir his concern.

  Bo moves in closer and leans over me to shine his flashlight at the opened breaker box. I smell beer and cigarette smoke on his clothes. He’s been at the Cowboy Bar. Alone? With Caro? Oh, never mind.

  “The whole valley’s down.” He closes the cover on the breaker box. He shines the beam of light on the ground in front of us and puts a hand on my back to direct me around the side of the cabin toward the kitchen door.

  Once inside the cabin I blow out the smelly lamp and stick it back on a high shelf over the dryer. I’m afraid Bo might leave. “Have a beer?” I invite. While wanting to create distance, I have also stocked his brand of beer. Go figure.

  “Sounds good,” he says.

  Tolly trots out at the sound of Bo’s voice like the little tart she is, and he squats down and gives her body a loving massage, ears to end. I watch Bo’s hands in the candlelight from the kitchen counter, mesmerized by the strength of his fingers and the care in his touch. I feel the warmth and pleasure all along the ladder of my own back muscles, and for a moment, I want to purr and lick Bo’s face.

  I turn away to screw the caps on my Magic Markers. Bo opens the refrigerator door and reaches for a beer. He halts after closing the door and shines his flashlight on the drawings I just made and stuck up with magnets. They are the only two drawings that really turned out well tonight. I followed the directions in a new book. I never could draw for Beckett when he asked as a toddler, not even simple rabbits and cats.

  Bo looks first at the chair I drew as an exercise in perspective. I had jumped to the middle of the book, getting a bit over my head. He says, “These are great. Little kids draw things so funny.” He laughs. “Look at this stubby leg shooting out the side of the chair seat.”

  I am silent.

  He directs the beam of his flashlight to my other drawing. It’s the wine bottle with my wineglass beside it.

  “What the hell is this supposed…?”

  I remain silent.

  “Uh-oh.” Bo checks my face over his shoulder. He looks at the drawing again, then turns and scans the flashlight beam across my table, taking in the wine bottle, the wineglass, the papers strewn about, the Magic Markers. He turns off the flashlight and sets it on top of the refrigerator.

  In the candlelight he says, “You took on some tough subjects here. Chairs and empty glasses are difficult to draw.” He wrenches the bottle cap off his beer and tosses it onto the counter. “How many times did you have to empty that glass?”

  “Three.”

  “Maybe four?”

  “Maybe.” I am twisting the cap on my black Magic Marker and standing like a flamingo—one leg bent beneath my nightshirt with my foot propped against my knee. I couldn’t maintain balance if it wasn’t for the table edge where my hip rests. My father claimed he knew I’d done something that wouldn’t please him when
I stood like this as a child. “Look at this kid, Lizzie,” he’d say to my mother. “She doesn’t have a leg to stand on.” I catch myself and stand upright on both feet. Grown-ups in their own homes don’t have to please anybody.

  Bo says, “Did you know there is a law against drinking and drawing?” He tips his beer bottle up for a swig while watching me.

  “You’re rude.” I step nearer him with my black Magic Marker and carefully draw a goatee on his chin.

  Bo sets his beer bottle on the counter. He reaches toward the table for a purple marker and just as carefully draws cat whiskers around my mouth. I stand still and take my medicine. When he’s finished, I give him a black mustache to go with his goatee. He watches me draw with eyelids lowered in a way I find sexy. Or is it the mustache?

  Neither of us cracks a smile.

  In a sudden move, Bo blows out the candle. He says in the dark, “I’m counting to ten. You better hide in a good spot, because when I find you, I’m going to draw over every inch of your body. One.”

  I let out a yelp, grab another marker off the table, and shoot out of the kitchen.