by Alison Ryan
For years, I’d found reasons not to come home. Work was always a convenient excuse, since I didn’t have a traditional nine-to-five job. I needed to be available to my clients 24/7/365, and what if I was in Montana when one of them was arrested or a casting director needed them at the last minute?
I’d convinced myself that there was nothing waiting for me in Whitmer. The ghost of my brother followed me everywhere I went, anyway, and my parents had just been too depressed and destroyed by his passing for me to take.
That was a whole story I couldn’t get into. I shook the thought of my brother away. Not yet, I thought. Keep him at bay for now. Focus on why you’re here.
Seeing my momma was just the distraction I needed.
Hugging Momma as we both struggled to find our voices through the tears made me realize just how much I’d missed her.
The “I love yous” and “I’ve missed you so much-es” blubbered out of both of us, and it wasn’t until Rattlesnake Ron’s truck kicked up a cloud of dust that enveloped us as he turned to leave, that we regained our composure.
She held me at arm’s length and looked me up and down. “My baby is so beautiful! And so grown up! Oh, Sarah, look at you!”
I wanted to tell my mother all the same sorts of things, but, truth be told, she didn’t look well. At all. Her hair had gone completely white, she was heavier than I could ever remember, and she seemed stiff all over when she walked. I went with diplomacy.
“Momma, it’s so good to see you!”
“Let me help you with your bags, where are they?” she asked. As if I’d let her carry my suitcase. I doubted whether she’d make it up the three steps to the porch without my help.
“I’ll get that stuff later. Oh, before I forget, Ron said he got two big snakes from the barn and to let him know if you see any others anywhere,” I informed her.
“For heaven’s sake. I swear, sometimes I think we ought to just leave and let the critters have this property. Between the snakes and the wolves and coyotes, it’s a wonder we can keep a chicken alive around here. And Sarah, there was a grizzly here last year! It came right up by the house!”
Growing up, I’d seen all kinds of animals, but the bears always stayed away. They were more at home in the mountains, away from people. Hunters went out and took them from time to time, hell, I’d even eaten bear stew my mother prepared, but they never came into Whitmer.
“A grizzly bear? Was here?” I asked, my head on a subconscious swivel, scanning for signs of the monster.
“A certain friend of yours took care of it for me. Hayes Calloway. He came out and shot that sucker, right out yonder past the big tree there.”
Mom was pointing and talking, but I’d stopped listening. When she said the name Hayes Calloway, my body reacted involuntarily. Butterflies filled my stomach, my pulse raced, and goosebumps broke out all over my body.
I may or may not have felt a twitch somewhere unmentionable.
I’d begged her not to mention him to me, but Momma was never one to remember a promise made when it came to Hayes.
“Did you say Hayes?” I asked, knowing full well that’s what she’d said.
“Oh, yes. I know you don’t want to hear this, but he’s a great help to us. You should know that. We see a lot of those Calloway boys around here. As a matter of fact, Hayes was here not even an hour ago. He brought your daddy home. He’s inside, sleeping off a bender,” she explained.
“Hayes was here?”
“Sarah, he stops by a few times a week, and if it’s not him, it’s one of his brothers or his uncle, Rick. They help out around here, if something needs fixing or the grass cut, whatever your daddy can’t do anymore. I told you in my letter about Huck getting engaged, right? To a girl from Kentucky, of all places. And she had a jealous ex who came to town looking for her, it was almost too much.” My mother practically swooned. She always did seem to have a thing for Huck Calloway. He was the youngest of the boys, and some said the most handsome.
I tended to disagree on that point.
“I’m glad you’ve given up gossiping, Momma,” I said, rolling my eyes.
Besides, I wasn’t interested in hearing about Huck, it was Hayes’ love life that had me curious, although I didn’t dare ask her about it. Such a query would set off a chain reaction of phone calls that would whip around Whitmer so fast it would make the weather vane atop the barn take flight.
She waved me off and we proceeded to the stairs, where my worst fears were realized. She took the first step easily enough, but when she went for the second, she collapsed against the railing, wincing.
“Momma!” I exclaimed, and helped to hold her up.
“I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m sorry, just give me a minute, sweetie.”
She gathered herself, but I could tell she was in distress. The pain she was in was obvious as she ascended to the porch and straightened up, inhaling deeply.
“Momma, what is it? What’s the matter?”
She looked at me with tears in her eyes. “I didn’t want you to see me like this. It comes and goes. It’s just a bad day is all.”
My anger about being kept in the dark about her MS could barely be hidden. “I still can’t believe you kept this from me.”
“Sarah, we don’t like to bother you. You don’t ever talk about coming home to visit, and you’re so busy all the time we barely even get to talk on the phone. There’s nothing you can do, anyway, so why burden you with it?”
“Of course there’s nothing I can do if I don’t know, Momma! I’d have been on the next flight here if I’d known.”
“Of course you would, and it would all be a waste of time. I’m so happy you’re here, let’s go inside so I can sit down. We can talk about my health later. You’re our guest, you’re the one who’s important.”
I followed her shuffling walk inside, and the first thing I noticed was the smell of cookies baking in the oven. My mother used to win bake-offs at the county fair, and her cookies and cakes were prized all over our little slice of the Big Sky Country. She’d tried to teach me, but I was hopeless in the kitchen. Her secret was how much care she put into the cookie itself, she’d once explained to me. Her theory was that everybody put the same chocolate chips into their cookies, and that those who overdid it with chips were just making up for inferior batter.
She went directly into the kitchen to check on her latest batch, and the sound of rumbling drew my attention to the far side of the room, where my father snored loudly beneath a comforter. His boots were lined up at the end of the sofa, the left one having fallen over on its side.
My heart skipped a beat seeing him there. Whereas my momma appeared to have gained weight, daddy had shrunk. He looked so small, his hair thinner than I remembered, and it was going gray, but not white like Momma’s.
I bent down and kissed him softly on the forehead, not wanting to wake him, although the way he was sawing logs it would have taken a stampede to roust him.
Momma had pulled a pan of chocolate chip cookies from the oven, and I felt like I gained five pounds just from smelling them. I recalled summer days when Kevin and I could polish off an entire pan and then go right back outside, saddle our horses, and ride all day. Now, my mind was busy calculating just how many hours of spin class it would take to subtract the calories of just one from my thighs.
“These are for the Calloway boys. We’ll take them over after they cool a bit,” Momma informed me.
“The hell we will,” I said. She’d caught me off guard. Seeing any of the Calloways, especially on my first day back, was not on my itinerary. “I just want to hang around here; you know? Be home when Daddy wakes up.”
“Pfft. That’s hours away, yet. Hayes had to practically carry him into the house. When he’s like this, a bite from one of Ron’s snakes won’t get him off the couch.” My mother’s patience with Daddy had clearly reached its zenith.
“Does he drink like this a lot?” I asked.
“He gets over to The Side Pocket and mee
ts up with his friends, they start trading old war stories, tall tales, they even have a name for their gatherings, The Liars Club, they call themselves, and yes, just like clockwork, Rick or one of his nephews winds up having to drive him home, and then we have to go back out and get his truck the next day. It’s not just that he gets drunk and passes out; lately he gets belligerent. He actually took a swing at Hunt a few weeks ago,” Momma explained. “I think if it were up to Huck and Hunt, he’d be banned. But Rick and especially Hayes stick up for him. For the life of me, I can’t imagine why. He’s just as shiftless as can be these days.”
I’d never heard my mother talk about my daddy like that. She filled a basket with the cooling cookies and then ladled out some stew from a pot she had simmering on the oven into a large plastic container. She continued her frank assessment of her husband of nearly four decades.
“If not for the Calloway boys, this place would have fallen completely apart by now. Your daddy doesn’t lift a finger. He barely eats, he just sleeps and drinks. I don’t know how his liver can process any of it. He hasn’t been to church in years, Sarah.”
My mother wiped a tear from her cheek.
“Momma, I’m so sorry. I had no idea. I’ll do as much as I can while I’m here. I’ll visit more. I promise.”
She blew her nose and patted my arm. “You’re so sweet, Sarah Beth. But between his drinking and this MS, there won’t be anybody left to visit before much longer.”
“Stop it!” I exclaimed. This was not the homecoming I expected. “You two are going to be around for a long, long time. Don’t talk like that.”
“Well, we might be around, but if things don’t change soon, we won’t be around. Do you understand?”
It took a minute to register, and even when it did, it was absurd. Was she actually considering leaving my father? Even if she was serious about something so preposterous, where would she go? What would she do? The image of Pam Acres making herself at home in the guest bedroom at my condo, some twelve hundred miles away from my daddy and the only house the two of them had ever lived in as a married couple was like a punch in the gut.
“What do we have to do to fix this, Momma?”
“He’s got to give up the bottle. Whatever it takes. If he has to go away to some sort of place, what do you call it?”
“Rehab,” I offered.
“Yes, rehab, that’s it. That’s where he needs to go. He needs to go to rehab and then get back to church. Pastor Melton asks about him every Sunday.”
My mind began to race through the various rehabs clients of mine had used, some more than once, for drug abuse, alcoholism, sex addiction, and general fatigue. I couldn’t imagine Thad Acres fitting in at any of them. I’d start researching Montana alternatives as soon as I could be alone with my laptop.
But I also knew how stubborn my father was, and how unlikely it was that he’d consent to getting any sort of help.
Did it make more sense for my momma to leave him after all? And if she did, where could she go? She had plenty of friends, and she could pay whatever rent she owed with her culinary talent. But who would take care of her? I didn’t know much about MS, but I didn’t figure it just “got better” at some point. And stress couldn’t be helping.
No, she needed my daddy, and he clearly needed her.
“I’ll do whatever I can to help. I can find a place that will help him. But he has to want to be helped.”
My mother picked up a cast iron skillet and held it in the air, menacingly. “If you can’t motivate him, I can!” she threatened, and I wasn’t sure just how serious she was or wasn’t.
“Now, if you’ll grab the stew, I’ll carry the cookies. We’re expected,” she instructed me.
“How can we be expected anywhere? I was lucky to get a seat on the flight I did. Even I wasn’t sure when I’d get in.”
“A mother knows where her baby is. All the time. I knew you’d be in Montana this afternoon,” she offered.
I dragged my feet, still not enthused by the idea of a visit to Rick Calloway’s house. I could at least hold out hope that Hayes wouldn’t be there. He’d be out fishing or hunting. Or up in a barn loft somewhere with somebody. My mind stuck on that thought for a heartbeat longer than it should have, and my pulse raced again.
I still wasn’t used to watching the painful shuffle that had replaced my mother’s walk, but we eventually made it out to the front of the house.
“Why don’t you drive, Sarah? I can’t recall the last time I sat in a passenger’s seat and just got to enjoy the view.”
“Or rode in anything that wasn’t a truck, I bet,” I joked.
The horses still weren’t convinced that I belonged there, and they gave me another suspicious glare as we left.
Muscle memory kicked in, and I drove directly to Rick’s place, through the covered bridge and over Little Antler Creek, up the windy road through the pines.
We approached the house and the car was immediately surrounded by three blue heelers, barking and wagging. I imagined they could smell the food.
The silhouette of a Calloway appeared on the porch, tall and lean, and he came down the steps to greet us. I squeezed the steering wheel and bit my bottom lip.
It was just Hunt. I was relieved.
“Mrs. Acres? Is that you?” Hunt’s voice resonated over the dogs, and he gave the biggest one a gentle pat on the head to quiet them down. He leaned down to open the door for my momma when he glanced across to me. “I see you’ve got yourself a chauffeur today. Well… I’ll be damned.”
I’d opened the door and stood up, out of the driver’s seat, and Hunt stood up with me. His expression went from friendly to confused to thoroughly bemused.
“Sarah Acres.”
“In the flesh,” I replied, reaching down to pet one of the dogs, who was enthusiastically trying to twist herself around my legs while licking every bit of my hand and wrist.
“Hayes, you ain’t gonna believe this,” Hunt shouted back toward the house.
Hayes? Shit. Fucking Hunt. He always was my least favorite of these damn Calloway boys.
I looked over to the house, where I hadn’t noticed the figure sitting on a chair with his back to us, bent over, busy with something.
“I just saw Mrs. Acres a little while ago, Hunt. Is Thad alright?” He was distracted by whatever he was working on, and if my hunch was correct, he was either cleaning a gun or whittling.
“Come on down here, dummy,” Hunt commanded.
Hayes rose from his chair and wiped his hands on his jeans before placing a hand on the rail and vaulting over and down from the porch to the dry, cracked ground that looked like it aspired to one day be a lawn.
He sauntered over to where we were parked, and I was frozen. His stride had a bounce to it; I remembered that walk. It drove me crazy in high school. He was always so full of energy, always moving. It seemed like sitting still caused him pain. If he’d grown up in California, he’d have been prescribed every ADHD medication on the market. Growing up in Whitmer, he was worked until there was no more work to do, then they’d throw a uniform on him and put a ball or bat in his hand and he’d play until everybody else was exhausted. Being on the receiving end of that boundless energy had given me the most delicious ache, deep inside. I shook my head and blinked such thoughts out of my mind.
Hayes had stopped about twenty feet from me, stone still. He glanced at my momma and gave her a respectful nod. “Ma’am.”
“Hello, Hayes,” my mother replied, and Hunt led her up to the house, carrying the stew. The dogs followed.
How long we stood, just staring at each other, I can’t say. I don’t recall any snow, so it couldn’t have been too many weeks. But it was a long time.
I found my voice first.
“Hello, Hayes.”
After hearing me speak, his legs worked again, and he walked over to me. Upon arriving at the car, he hesitantly bent down and gave me what was one of the more awkward hugs I’d ever received. He put his hands o
n my shoulders and gave a squeeze. “It’s really you,” he said, sounding astonished to see me, but convinced, having touched me, that I was real.
“It is. How have you been?”
“I’m how you see. Nothing changes around here, Sarah. How are you?”
If he was “how I see,” then he was delicious. And even more rugged and handsome than I remembered. His hands touching me had sent my pulse racing again, despite my inability to receive his hug like a human being who’d ever been hugged before. I was stiff all over and my mouth was dry.
“I can’t complain. Thank you for taking care of my dad earlier.” I didn’t know what to say to the man whose heart I’d left in Whitmer all those years ago, without a goodbye or an explanation.
“I’m his own personal- what do you call it out there in California- you know, when you call for a ride on your phone?”
“Uber,” I replied.
“That’s it, Uber. Yeah, I’m the only Uber driver in Whitmer. And I only have one client. And I get paid in cookies,” he joked.
“Sounds like a raw deal to me,” I said. “In England, they just had a court case where they decided that Uber drivers were employees and eligible for paid vacation and that sort of thing.”
God, I thought. Who the fuck cares?
“Is that right?” he asked. “Well, I reckon seeing a smile on your momma’s face is enough to make the whole deal worth it to me.”
His mouth transformed into that damn gorgeous smirk of his. I was powerless against it.
What was he trying to do to me?
“Sorry I’m all dirty, I’m cleaning a couple rifles. Actually, I’m cleaning all the rifles. Uncle Rick and I went out shooting and we wagered on the outcome. Since he’s gone to Great Falls to catch a movie tonight, and I’m the one here on the porch, you can guess how that turned out.”
His laugh had always been contagious, so we both laughed together.
It felt good to laugh with him again.
I was ashamed at how little it was taking for me to be under his charm. Even after all these years.
The return of the dogs heralded the arrival of my momma and Hunt back at the car.