Nowhere Ranch

by Heidi Cullinan

“You told me your family doesn't fight, that they just give long, cold stares.”

  “Well, I figure you're going to pick a fight!”

  She shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. And if I do go into labor, I go into labor. They have babies in Iowa too, I'm almost sure of it.”

  There was no reasoning with her. There was certainly no arguing with her. So she came along.

  Of course, because she came along, we stopped a hell of a lot more for bathroom breaks. We had to head all the way up into South Dakota to get on I-90, and we took that into southern Minnesota to Highway 71 and then all the smaller roads that wound us in to Algona. The trip took nine hours without stopping, but it was a solid twelve for us, because of all the rest breaks. By the time we hit the Super 8, it was ten o'clock.

  It was hard to be back home. It had gotten harder with every mile that brought us closer. And as soon as we hit the Iowa border, I really started to itch. In Algona itself, I felt like every eye was on me. I thought of how they would all know about how I was coming from Nebraska, and we were in Travis's truck, so the plates said Nebraska, and they'd know it was me. They would all be talking about me already.

  I shouldn't have come back. I should've stayed at the ranch.

  The desk clerk at the Super 8 saw me come through the door, and she smiled a sad smile and came at me with her arms open.

  “Roe Davis. My word, how many years has it been? So sorry to hear about your dad, hon. He was a good man.” She cottoned on to the fact that I was a stiff board in her arms, and she withdrew and gave me a laugh. “You don't remember me, do you! It's Missy Letts. We were in school together. I was one grade behind you. You sat beside me in freshman English.”

  I blinked, trying to remember. I had been high through most of freshman English both times I took it. “Oh,” I said, trying to pretend. “Sure. Hi.”

  Her face was very round and shiny, but when she saw Haley, it got rounder and shinier as she beamed. “Ooh, and is this your wife? Oh my word, and you're going to be a daddy!”

  I wanted to run so bad. Travis must have figured it, because his hand came down on my shoulder. Haley, arms folded over her belly, gave the clerk her “I'm nice, but don't fuck with me” smile.

  “No. My boyfriend knocked me up and ran. I'm Haley, Roe's friend.” She nodded at Travis. “This is Travis Loving. Roe's partner.”

  Travis's hand tightened, keeping me in place. I swallowed hard and waited.

  Missy Letts's eyes had gone wide. Very, very wide. Her mouth had fallen open, and for a second we all just stared at one another, me terrified, Missy shell-shocked, Travis probably blank as a slate, and Haley making it clear anybody fucking with me would be answering to her. And then, carefully composing herself, Missy smiled again.

  “Well! That will teach me to go assuming things, won't it?” She let out a breezy, slightly nervous sigh and patted me on the arm. “It's good to see you, Roe.” She winked at Travis. “And your partner is a handsome one. Good catch.”

  Then she bustled back around to the other side of the desk, and as if she met up with gay dropouts who'd sat beside her in freshman English every day, she booked us our rooms, asking us if we wanted adjoining, upgrading Haley's for no charge with a wink and a smile to a suite with a whirlpool tub in it. “For your back, hon. I remember that stage. Don't make it too hot, but soak as much as you want. And make these big strong boys carry all your luggage.”

  Haley had liked that, but I knew she liked Missy's easy acceptance of me more than anything. I was ready to get upstairs, but Haley kept us down there, asking about Missy's kids, about doctors in town “just in case.” And to my annoyance, she kept dragging the conversation back to me and to Travis.

  “It's so wet here,” she said, amazed. “It rained all the way down from Minnesota, and from the look of it, that's all its done all week. We don't get much of that in Northwest Nebraska.” She nodded at Travis. “You could use some of this rain on the ranch, I bet.”

  It was such a blatant “Hey, Roe's man has a ranch!” plug that I wanted to kick her, pregnant or not. But Missy ate it up, because this was good dish. She turned to Travis with new appraisal.

  “Oh-ho! Handsome and has a ranch? How big is your spread?”

  “Seven hundred head of American Beltie cattle and six-fifty head Merino sheep on three thousand acres,” he replied. “Can't make up my mind if I want to stick to one or the other, so I keep expanding both.”

  To Iowans, that kind of acreage sounded like a king must run it, and Missy gave me a look that said, clearly, “Don't let this one go, boy!”

  I opened my mouth to tell her that this was just a hobby ranch, but Haley had taken over again. “Roe started out as a hand there. My dad is the manager, and he says nobody knows sheep like Roe does.”

  Started out! I still was a hand!

  Missy smiled and nodded. “Oh, yes. The Davises have always been good farmers. In the blood, see.”

  It was another ten minutes before we got to get our things and go upstairs. We had to take a few trips to get the cooler and everything, and when I passed through the lobby to head to the elevator, I saw Missy on the phone in the back office, speaking intently and waving her hands at the wall in excitement as she spoke.

  I didn't know who she was calling, but I knew exactly what she was saying.

  “Don't worry about it,” Haley told me as she lingered in the doorway between our rooms. “You're here for your family. For your dad.”

  “My family ain't going to like those rumors flying around,” I told her. “Dad wouldn't either.”

  “Tough,” she said, kissed me on the cheek, and then closed the door.

  I heard the tub water start to run shortly after. I got undressed, showered, and lay down on the bed beside Travis, who was surfing the Internet on his laptop. When I leaned against him, he shifted his arm to pull me in tighter.

  “You doing okay?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “I don't know. I feel like I'm in a dream. Like any second you're going to wake me up and tell me it's time to go start lambing. Like this all isn't real.”

  He sighed and pressed his lips to my hair. “It's real.”

  My fingers skimmed up his shirt and toyed idly with the buttons. “I don't know what I'm supposed to do tomorrow when we go over. Don't know what to say.”

  His hand rubbed my back gently. “You'll work it out. From what you tell me, they won't make so much of a fuss with Haley and me there. And I won't leave your side unless you ask. And even then you might have to ask twice.”

  I swallowed hard and let my finger slip between the gap of his shirt panels, touching the hair of his chest. “I love you.” It still stuck in my throat a little, but it was getting easier to say.

  He kissed the top of my hair again. “Love you more.”

  He surfed one-handed for a while, still rubbing my back until I fell asleep. Eventually he lay down too, turning me so we were spooned up together, my back to his front.

  In the morning we got up, got dressed, hit the continental breakfast, and tried to ignore the eager looks and whispers from the day desk staff. I didn't know them, but they clearly knew me and all Missy had passed on. They weren't glaring at me, though. They acted like I was some kind of celebrity. They giggled and whispered and looked at one another like I was the damnedest thing they'd ever seen. In a good way. I think.

  That wasn't the case when we got out to the farm.

  Heading down that gravel road was the hardest part of the trip. I was sitting in the back seat, which I had done the whole trip because Haley needed the space unless she was trying to nap, but holy shit, it was good I was in the back now, because I think I would have tried to jump out the door.

  I looked away at Coppit's Corner, but not in time. I saw the shattered concrete of the median, saw the wreath somebody had hung there, and I shut my eyes, shaking, not knowing how I was ever going to get through this.

  Haley grabbed my hand.

  I got a lot of hand-holdings and mumbled comfort
ing words of nonsense over the next two days. From Travis, from Haley, and from people who knew me but who I couldn't remember well. It's all kind of silly, but there's nothing else to say or do, really. They don't mean that things will be good. They mean that things will go on. That you will too. Which, at that moment isn't what you want. You want things to stop. You want to take ten minutes or maybe ten days or even ten years and figure this out, but no, everything keeps going. And going. And going.

  I went up the sidewalk to the house I had lived in from the time I was born until they'd kicked me out of it. I walked with my lover's hand on the small of my back and my pregnant Amazon warrior friend flanking me.

  I walked up to my mom, who was standing in the doorway looking at me. Smiling. Crying. My heart soared up.

  Then I realized she was looking at Haley too, and my heart crashed. She was doing what Missy Letts had done. She thought I wasn't just coming home but coming home straight and with a pregnant wife. I thought of the look of devastation that was about to cross her face, my heart dove into my feet, and the next thing I knew, I was turning around and heading back down the sidewalk again.

  Travis stopped me, but I just shook my head. I couldn't stop.

  “I can't. I can't, I can't do it. I can't. I can't watch her hate me again.” I shut my eyes and pressed my hand over my chest, because it hurt so bad.

  “Haley's talking to her.” Travis had both hands on me now, one on my arm, one on my back. “Just keep breathing. We're both right here. Just take it easy.” He kept on rubbing, and I kept on breathing as best I could. And then he squeezed my arm. “Okay. Haley's motioning to us. Come on, Roe. You can do it.”

  I was wearing my brown cowboy hat, and he tipped it forward a little as was his way, a little, playful nudge. He'd done it a thousand times in front of everybody, but all I could think was that my mom was watching. Was she seeing my lover, my partner taking care of me, or was she seeing me as an abomination? I didn't want to find out. But I had to.

  I didn't look at her until I got all the way to the porch, until I was looking at her shoes, dirty, worn-out orthopedic white shoes with navy socks.

  Holding my breath, I looked up.

  I wish I could tell you that it was some magic moment. I wish I could tell you that Haley had worked it out, that Mom was just so glad to see me that she didn't care who I loved. I wish I could tell you I was welcomed like the prodigal son. But I can't tell you that and be honest.

  Oh, she didn't yell. In fact, she was very polite. She smiled. And she cried a little more, and she hugged me. But Missy at the Super 8 had hugged me harder.

  Bill was inside, as was his wife. He hugged me, stiff and awkward, then looked at Haley with his eyebrows up. Funny how the rumor was probably all over town, but everybody would have worked hard not to mention it to my family. Either they already knew or telling them first would shame them further. She told the story again. She was getting good at it. I just wished she would leave off the “Roe's partner” bit, because I never looked away in time.

  Though I will say that I enjoyed watching Bill and Travis get puffed up around each other. Probably I shouldn't have, but I did. Talk about a pissing contest. Bill was clearly trying to look down at this sleazy bastard having dirty gay sex with his little brother, and Travis, who had ten years, five inches, and fifteen hundred acres on Bill, didn't so much as flinch, just looked down right back at his lover's homophobic brother.

  We sat around the table in the kitchen. Bill's wife served everybody coffee and some of the food people had brought by, and we played nice. Bill and Travis talked cattle, about the difference between Iowa and Nebraska land management, and then they dragged me into some talk about sheep. For a while it was almost like we were normal. Bill wanted to know about the Merino wool market and how that worked out, and Travis talked about the profit margin, and I talked about the dos and don'ts of organic wool regulation. And just like that, I was back home. At the kitchen table, with my family.

  Mom wiped at her eyes every now and again and avoided my gaze. She acted like Travis wasn't even there. But she kept looking at Haley, especially at her belly. I had never seen her look so hungry, and it was a little unnerving to see her looking at Haley like that. I wondered if Bill had ‘fessed up about not being able to have his own kids yet. I wondered if she were looking at that baby in Haley's belly and thinking about all that she wasn't going to have. I wondered if she was blaming me for taking it away from her by being gay.

  We finished lunch, and after that a few people stopped by, mostly from the church with more food. You could kill yourself on the food in the house already, but it kept coming, because that was the way it was. Half of it would have to be thrown out. Sarah packed up as much as she could with us when we left.

  Haley made me sit in the front seat, and she rubbed my shoulders all the way back into town.

  “You did good, Roe,” she said. “You did real good.”

  Back at the hotel, Haley took a nap, and even though I told Travis I wasn't tired, I did too. And then it was five, and we had to head over to the funeral parlor for the visitation.

  The director gave us all a few moments alone with Dad's body, and without anybody arranging it out loud, Mom and Bill and Sarah went in first, and then Travis and Haley and I went in after on our own.

  It was not going to be an open casket because of the accident, but it was open now. It was pretty grim, but even though everybody pointed out that I didn't need to do this, I did it anyway, because yes, I did. In my mind Dad wasn't all the way dead yet. I kept thinking he would come through the door and correct me on something or tell Travis to get the fuck away from his son. Something. Anything. I couldn't make my brain believe. I needed to see it for myself.

  It was bad. He had a big, crazy, stitched-up scar down the center of his face, and part of it was just out-and-out covered up, because it wasn't there. His skin was white. Paper white. His lips looked wrong too. Everything was wrong about him. I mean, everything. It wasn't him. This wasn't the man whose strides I tried to match when we went out to do chores. This wasn't the man who'd hefted me up on his shoulders so I could see the Fourth of July parade. This wasn't the man who'd tanned my backside for hiding my report card in the bottom of the wastebasket. This wasn't a man at all. It was just a body.

  And yet it's funny how there's things you just have to do. You have to go up and touch his hand. You have to bend down and kiss his forehead, even if you're scared to death that drape is going to slide and you're going to see something that will make you throw up. You have to take your lover's hand and hold it tight while you say, “I love you, Dad.” You have to feel like when you turn away, a part of you has died too, the part of you that was sure, absolutely sure that this could not be right, that your dad had not kicked you out without a word and not spoken to you for years and then died without saying you were okay as who you were. You had to do it.

  Kayla was there when we came out from viewing Dad, and Pastor Tim was with her.

  We stayed away from each other during the wake. Haley and Travis were still flanking me, though everybody kept making Haley sit down. I think I shook three hundred people's hands. I said “Thank you for coming” over and over and over and over again. Every now and again somebody looked at Travis and then back at me expectantly, wanting the story, but I was so numb that I never gave it. Haley didn't say anything either, though sometimes Travis did. He doesn't like talking about feelings, but he gossips like an old biddy, and he fit right in once he got warmed up. He yammered on about ranching, about teaching math at college, and when Harold Yomer came through, he even got on his Libertarian spiel.

  Oh, some people skipped right over us, pretending we weren't even there. I didn't mind at all. Less talking for me.

  When we finally got through the whole line and it was time to go, Kayla tried to come over, dragging Pastor Tim and looking purposeful, but Haley herded us toward the door, and when Kayla tried to stop us, Haley said she wasn't feeling well and touched her
belly. The grandmother brigade started to cluck and fuss, and we were out the door in minutes.

  Once we were back at the hotel, I lay awake on the bed staring at the ceiling in the dark.

  Travis was lying on his side beside me, and he touched my shoulder. “Still doing okay?”

  I kept my eyes on the ceiling. “It's weird, how Kayla and Haley are so much the same. And so different at the same time. I mean, they even look alike.”

  “Haley smiles more.”

  I grabbed his hand in the dark. “I'm glad you both came.”

  “Wouldn't be anywhere else.”

  “I just hope she doesn't have a baby during the funeral.”

  “From your mouth to God's ears.” He kissed my cheek, then turned my face so he could get to my lips. “It's going to be okay, Roe.”

  I nodded, and I kissed him again. And again.

  And then it was morning, and then it was the funeral.

  It was the same as the visitation, except it felt heavier. I shook a lot of hands and got hugs from old ladies. I sat in a lot of pews and listened to a lot of prayers and Bible verses and people blowing their noses.

  I stood at the front left corner of my father's casket, and I carried it down the aisle of the church, down the stairs to the hearse, and then I rode to the cemetery. At two thirty in the afternoon on April 21, I helped work the cinch and put my father's body in the ground.

  We went back to the farm after. There were fewer people there than at the funeral, but it was still pretty full, and while Haley chatted up my aunt Carol, and Travis stood like a sentry against the kitchen wall, I slipped up the stairs to my old room.

  Everything was still there.

  It was a relief, but it was creepy too, because it was really, really all just exactly as it had been when I left. Someone came in regularly and vacuumed and dusted, but everything I had left behind was still here. The ribbon from a demo derby I'd entered and won was still on the bulletin board. The magazines—the clean ones, about stereo speakers—were still in the bookcase in my headboard. My CDs were still lined up neat along the top of my desk, propped up by the Pink Floyd mirror I had won at the state fair when I was ten. The clothes I hadn't taken with me were hanging in the closet. It was all here, like I had been gone five minutes, not five years.