Nowhere Ranch

by Heidi Cullinan

  And for four months, I did real well. But then I got the first letter, and fuck if I wasn't eight kinds of mess after that.

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  Chapter Three

  My cousin's name is Kayla, and she's two years younger than me. When I was having all the trouble with school, she tried to help me with my schoolwork, but she quickly became part of the problem. She meant well, but she always managed to make me feel like shit. She kept telling me I needed to work harder. Kept telling me all this stuff about how it was upsetting my mom and my dad, how poorly I was doing in school. Half our “study sessions” were her lecturing me. I was never so glad as when she gave up, and they just let me drop out like I wanted.

  When I moved out because of the porn, she came to visit me a few times. She had gotten really into church, and she was all about praying over me. I let her do it the first time because it felt wrong not to let someone pray for you, but I didn't after that because I don't think that was real praying. She said “Dear God” and all that, but it was all about how nasty I was. When she came back the next few times, after I told her no praying, she stood there at the screen door to my trailer and argued with me, telling me how I upset my family and how shameful my carrying on was. This was the same song and dance as Pastor, but Kayla had a way of making the barbs go deep in a way he couldn't manage. Usually after she left, I had to get really drunk or very high.

  The thing is, she really thought she was helping me. If she were a mean bitch, I could've ignored her. If she'd laughed and called me names, I could've said “fuck you” and forgotten her. But it messed me up something awful to have someone look at me with what looked a lot like love and tell me how wrong I am, then heap on guilt about how I'm hurting everybody to boot over something I can't change. It makes me feel like there's a Monroe Davis who is good somewhere, and I am the demon in his way. Like I have to die so he can live.

  Anyway, the day I got a letter from Kayla was not a good day. It had been forwarded about four times, which made me think she had called through to several ranches before she lost me, then just let the post office do the rest of the work when she ran out of leads after that. I opened it, worried, thinking something bad had happened at home, and I read it with my heart in my throat, waiting to see who had died. But that wasn't what the letter was about.

  Dear Roe,

  I don't know when this letter will find you or even where. But you need to hear what I have to say. Other people in the family might not have the strength to tell you what we're all thinking, but I have prayed over this, and I know this is what I need to do.

  I know you have told me you can't change who you are, but you know this is a lie, Roe. You're going against your family, and you're going against God. You're so selfish. You don't think for two seconds about what the rest of us have had to bear because of you. You think this is all about you, but it isn't. This is about your soul and your God and your family name.

  If you truly give up the demons in your heart, you can give up this horrible sin and get right with God. We are all here in the Light waiting for you. I know you are off in the darkness, that you don't know what Light is anymore. I want you to call me, Roe, and I want you to come home. I will help you and hold your hand all the way to your Salvation. I swear I will not abandon you. This is love I have for you. I will not give up on you. I will pray every day for you until you come home. I know I will not fail, because God is with me.

  That is the kind of strength I can give you, Roe. You think about that when you are alone and friendless in the dark, and then you pick up your phone and you call me.

  Love always in Christ,

  Kayla

  I stared at the letter for a long time after I read it, and then I read it again to make sure I hadn't been reading it wrong. It takes me a long time to read, so by the time all this had happened, my lunch break was over, and I had to slap peanut butter on a piece of bread and run out the door with it, except I hardly ate any of it. I tried not to think about the letter, tried to lose myself in work, but it haunted me so bad that eventually even Tory noticed something. He told me I looked like I needed a break and sent me off early to take a nap. But I couldn't sleep. I just paced the room like a caged animal until they were all gone home for the day, and then I went outside and started walking.

  I didn't know where the hell I was headed. I think I was set to walk all the way to the arctic circle. I don't know. I was full of hurt and rage and confusion. Jesus, but her letter messed up my head so bad. I knew she was wrong, but I couldn't say why. Which made me worry she might be right.

  What really burned me that night, though, was the way she had dogged me all the way to Nowhere. If I had been still in Algona I could see it, but nobody knew me out here. And even here I didn't have friends. I liked to have good relationships with the guys I worked with, but that's not friends. I was all about work and sleep and sometimes some TV. So if I was the kind of piece of shit Kayla thought I was, I kept it to myself. And I knew I wasn't a shit at work. I worked fucking hard. I put in ten to twelve hours at jobs that asked for eight, and I did it because that's what the jobs needed.

  But in that letter she took even that from me. If I hadn't liked Nowhere so much, I would have quit and moved on and made damn sure I forwarded nothing. But I really did love that job. I'd even made the kitchen work. I didn't want to leave.

  I was all jumbled and crazy and couldn't let it go. So I just kept on walking and walking and walking. And I wasn't thinking because I was so messed up in my head, and I ended up walking too close to Loving's trail he took when he rode, and of course he caught up with me.

  I tried to make like I didn't see him, tried to send off silent messages that I wanted to be left alone. But either he didn't see it or decided to ignore it, because when I didn't answer his call, he got off his horse and headed toward me.

  “Don't usually see you out here,” Loving said at last.

  We were in the middle of long grass, and his gelding Chaucer was taking the opportunity to grab a bite while we talked. Well, saying we were talking is a little misleading. Mostly we'd stood doing the silence thing like we had at the bar, though here we could enjoy a view. Nowhere was mostly evergreen and scrubby stuff, no big oaks because there just wasn't enough water, but it was pretty. Walking in it on my own had only calmed me a little, but standing with Loving helped a lot more, and I didn't mind the way we stood quiet, wind playing in my hair because I hadn't brought my hat. But now Loving had started us talking. So I answered.

  “Not usually, no,” I said.

  And we were done.

  I looked at him awhile. I had noticed more about him since Rapid City. Like before I would have said he had sandy hair, but now I knew about the little flecks in it that were actually bits of gray. He had a little cleft in his chin too. I know because I sucked on it that second night and pushed my tongue in it. And when I stood this close to him, it was pretty much impossible not to think about how strong he was, how broad-shouldered, how good it felt when he gripped me and pushed hard into me.

  But now he was talking again.

  “You seemed upset.”

  I looked away.

  When he spoke again, his words were halting. “Do you...want to talk about it?”

  I twitched. “Fuck no.”

  He relaxed, and I did too. Good. We had to be all done now. But no, he was rubbing his thumb along his jawline, and I could see him working up another bit of conversation in his head.

  “Well,” he said at last, “if you're looking for a distraction, I'm headed over to Crawford to catch the rodeo.”

  Now, when he'd said “distraction,” I admit I assumed he'd suggest sex and was all ready with my “no.” But when he said “rodeo,” I shut my mouth and thought for a minute. Lots of people, lots of noise, and lots of horses. And rough men on the horses too. You could do a lot worse than spending an evening watching cowboys straddle animals, their muscles taut underneath dusty clothes as they
hung on for dear life. And most of them had tents or trailers at the site, so when you got lucky and found a cowboy who liked bull in and out of bed, you could be part of another ride before you left for home.

  Yep. Rodeo sounded real good to me. “When do you plan on leaving?”

  “Figured I'd just grab a quick shower as soon as I got Chaucer rubbed down, maybe stop at the cafe in town to eat, then head on over.”

  I wasn't wild about sitting at the cafe with him, but I was real tired of sandwiches. “Sounds good,” I said.

  We didn't say anything more either until we got to the fence lines, and then it was just to talk about the livestock. Some of the ewes had gotten tetanus, and I did my best to explain to him how they could pick it up from the soil. Loving was agitated because he really worked hard on nutrition, and he was after that wool on his Merinos, so it was real fine-tuning to get the balance between health and yield. I found out he had been reading up on the Internet again, which made me a little nuts, but like I could say that. Except he brought it up again when we were at the cafe, trying to argue with me over what some guy said on a forum, and I couldn't hold my tongue.

  “Look,” I told him. “You aren't even telling me where this guy is from. If he's in northwestern Nebraska, that might hold some water. But I bet you money he is up in Minnesota, and I'm here to tell you that you don't have the same soil conditions here as in Minnesota. We didn't even have quite the same ones in Iowa. All ranching and farming is hands-on stuff, Loving. You gotta get in it to your elbows and grip it yourself before you're gonna understand it. I don't care how many books or magazines or chat rooms you toss at me. I know your soil better than they do, and that is where your trouble comes from. You gotta work with what the soil gives you. Come to grips with your own soil and your stock and make it work. That's all it is. Listen to your soil.”

  Outside of what I wanted in bed, it was the biggest speech I had ever given him, and really, it was more words than I had put together for some time to anyone. Loving just sat there listening. It was kind of a power trip, having the ranch owner so interested in what I was saying. Except when he finally said something back, all he said was, “You can call me Travis, you know.”

  So I'd given him the best advice he was ever going to get about how to fix his sheep trouble, and all he had to say was that I could call him by his first name. I grimaced and poked a french fry into my ketchup.

  He sipped at his cup of coffee before he spoke again. “So why aren't you somebody's ranch manager, Roe?”

  I took a drink of water and wiped my mouth with my napkin. “'Cause I like to move around.”

  “Where have you been?”

  I shrugged. “Midwest. Nebraska, Dakotas, Kansas.”

  “You ever think about Colorado or Montana? Texas?”

  “No,” I said, then decided that if I couldn't shut him up, at least I could get him to not try and get me to talk about myself. “So you ever done rodeo?”

  That made him laugh. “Just the cowboys, though not many of them either.” He sipped at his coffee again, but he was staring out the window absently now. “I came to all this a little late.”

  By “all this” I assumed he meant being queer. And I guess now it was me being nosy, because I wanted to hear more. “So did you not know?” I couldn't imagine not knowing myself, but I know for some guys it does come on like a sunset.

  “Oh, I knew. I also knew I was screwed, so I tried to pretend. Got married. Went to grad school. Got a good job. Voted Republican.” He was just holding his coffee cup now in both hands, like an anchor. “At about thirty I figured out I had made a mistake, so I told my wife. She convinced me to give it one more try, and I did, for six years of hell and counselors. Finally I told her, no, there was no more trying. For a while it made me mad that I'd wasted all that time, not just the six years but the whole marriage. But I would have hit the worst of AIDS if I hadn't gone the way I'd gone. So in a way she saved me.” He gave me a funny smile. “Work with the soil you have,” he said.

  I blinked, then shook my head. If this was what came of college, count me out. “I'm not talking about women, Loving. I'm talking about dirt. Plain and simple.”

  He raised an eyebrow at me. “Travis. It's not that hard to say.”

  I pursed my lips and looked down at my plate. Damn it, I should have stayed home. “You're my boss. You're Loving or Mr. Loving.”

  “Tory is your boss. I just write the checks and get ulcers over the mortgage.” He motioned to my plate. “Are you done? Because we should head out.”

  “Just hold your horses.” I shoveled country-fried steak and gravy onto my fork. “I couldn't eat because you been talking my damn ears off and making me talk back. And this is too good to waste.”

  This seemed to amuse him, and he settled in to watch me eat. But whatever gabfly had bit him still had its fangs in, because he started in again. “You don't come in to town often, I noticed, and you don't eat out.”

  Whereas he ate out all the damn time, he who had a full kitchen and more than one burner. I finished my bite, wiped my mouth, and said, “Eating out is for special occasions, and I don't have no use for special occasions.”

  Now he out-and-out laughed. “So what is this, what you're doing right now?”

  I stabbed at my food and said nothing.

  He let me finish after that, thank God, and for a good half hour we rode in his truck without talking. I just watched the sunset deepen and felt the wind in my hair, because Loving had put down the windows instead of turning on the AC, which I prefer also.

  “You aren't wearing a hat,” Loving observed eventually.

  I ran a self-conscious hand over my hair. “Don't wear hats when I ain't working.”

  “You wore one that night in Rapid City.”

  “Well, I was working then, wasn't I?”

  I'll admit I said that to make him grin, and he did. He looked really good when he smiled, and it eased something in me.

  “So what about you?” he asked. “You ever done rodeo?”

  “I did a bit when I was nineteen, but I don't care much for having my body beat like that. I'd rather chase the trailers.”

  “Did you go down to Omaha?”

  I shook my head. “We have rodeo in Iowa. And flush toilets too.”

  “I notice you didn't list your home state in the places you worked.”

  I moved my eyes out the window. “No ranches in Iowa. Land's too good. Got to farm it. We do cattle some, but we don't need so much pasture, which means we need less men.”

  I tensed, waiting for him to ask why I left, and I didn't know what I was going to say. But he let it go quiet between us after that.

  Thank God.

  I do really like a rodeo, and it'd been a lot longer than I would have preferred since I had been to one. I love the smell and bustle of the circuit. It's the same smell as a ranch but with more sweat and more ass to ogle. The only trouble with rodeo is that every now and again I attract birds. By which I mean girls, but they are like birds to me, so that's how I think of them. It's one thing for a guy to look at me like I'm meat, but when a woman does it, I don't know how to act. I can deal with the ones who want sex, but the birds that see potential boyfriend material are hard to shake. I don't want to be mean, but I don't do friends of any kind, and especially I don't do it with girls. I do nothing with girls.

  This became a problem as we sat next to Tory and his wife and his two kids, one of which was his nineteen-year-old daughter.

  Tory was stout and short and hairy, but Haley was slim and tall and beautiful. She had blond hair that looked like sunshine, and if breasts had done a thing for me, the pretty rack in her low-cut top would've been tempting. But of course breasts and I aren't much for each other, so after I gave her a polite smile and a “nice to meet you,” I settled down on an empty bench below the family and settled in to watch.

  Haley sat down beside me. “So you're the new guy.”

  She was breathless and beaming, telegraphing not
just friendliness but interest. Both sex and friends. This was a full-on red alert, but I couldn't do my usual cut and run, because this was my boss's kid.

  “Yep.” I kept my eyes on the rodeo.

  She moved a little closer, making sure her knee brushed against mine. I wanted to glance back to see if Tory was catching all this, thinking maybe he would help me out. No luck.

  “My dad says you're real smart. Says you should be a manager of your own spread.” She laughed. “But don't tell him I said that, because he's afraid you're gonna leave.”

  Well, I hadn't been planning on it, but today it was looking better and better every second. I shrugged and kept watching the rodeo.

  She tried a few more times to get me to chat, asking if I liked Nebraska, which I said I did, and how did I like the town, and I said it was fine, and she asked what I thought of Nowhere, and I said it was a good ranch. When Loving got up and said he was heading to concessions, I tried to go with him to get away, but he made me sit back down and just asked what I wanted, a beer or something else? I said, “A beer, thank you,” and sat back for more torture.

  But once Loving and her dad cleared out, she looked at me with this “Oh, now I get it” look on her face and said, out loud, no volume control at all, “Oh. Are you dating Travis?”

  I didn't know what to do or what to say. I felt like she'd put a gun to the center of my chest, but I didn't know what to say to make her take it away, or even if that was possible. And then, then, what did she do? When she figured out how upset I was, she leaned over and put her hand on my back. “Oh God. I'm sorry, are you not out?”

  That was it. I stood, ready to bolt no matter how pissed Tory might get, but damn if Haley didn't grab my arm and pull me right back down. She kept hold of my sleeve as she fished one-handed into her purse, coming out with a peppermint.

  “Suck on this,” she ordered, and I did, because what the hell else was I supposed to do? She kept rubbing my back, though, which I did not care for and which furthermore made no sense. She'd figured out—somehow—that I was gay, and now she was rubbing my back?