He’s wondered one too many times since he left her in Texas, if he’s selfish for wanting somebody to be happy with him, to love him for what he can give and not for what he can pretend. He’s never met anybody like him, and maybe that’s what it would take for a partnership, a friendship, to work out. Somebody like him. Only problem is he doesn’t know where to look and he’s not about to advertise his oddities.
Montgomery takes a drag on his shrinking cigarette, blowing the smoke up toward the ceiling as he tips his head back against the lip of the tub. He’s only thirty-eight years old, and he’s fixing to be alone the rest of his life. He’s not sure he likes the sound of that. Not sure that he’s cut out for it.
He closes his eyes and lies prone in the tub until the water’s lukewarm, almost cold, and his cigarette’s an extinguished stub in his fingers. He steps out and dries off, puts on some clean clothes and his caramel brown cowboy boots, grabs his keys from the nail in the wall next to the front door, and heads out.
Half an hour later, he pulls up in front of Sam’s house and shifts the truck into park but keeps the engine on a minute. The house is an old two-story not far from Downtown Prescott, on a street of homes that look like something copied from a Christmas gingerbread tin. The outside is painted a faded grayish blue with white trim, and the roof shingles are dark. He peeks at it through the passenger window, then stares through the windshield as he wonders if going in is a good idea.
He doesn’t know what he wants with Sam, now or in general. He’s aware that he hasn’t shown any degree of enthusiasm about being Sam’s friend, that he’s only accepted requests made for his company without giving any further indication that he wants to spend time with Sam. It isn’t that Montgomery is indifferent. He likes Sam. He’s always liked Sam, since that night at the Caged Bird Saloon. He just doesn’t want to go getting attached to somebody who’s bound to disappoint him again. He doesn’t want to pin his wish for a partnership that’s not sexual or romantic on a guy who’s looking for a wife. If he were smart and realistic, he would tell Sam to quit bothering him and be done with it.
But Montgomery cuts the engine of his truck and gets out, sticking his hands into the pockets of his jacket as he goes up the walkway and the porch steps to Sam’s front door. He rings the bell and waits.
Sam looks a little surprised when he opens up. “Hey,” he says. “Is everything all right?”
“Yeah,” says Montgomery. “This a bad time?”
“No. Not at all. Come in.”
Montgomery steps inside and takes his time following Sam to the kitchen, looking around at the foyer and the living room on the right, the staircase that leads to the second floor with its polished, dark wood banister. The living room was probably meant to be divided into two areas, shared with a formal dining room. It stretches from the front of the house to the back, taking up the whole eastern half of the first floor. Montgomery’s surprised at how well-decorated and furnished it is for belonging to a man who lives alone. It’s nowhere near as bare bones as Montgomery’s living room, but there’s not a whole lot of excess either.
“Can I get you a beer?” Sam calls from the kitchen.
“Sure,” says Montgomery, still lingering between the staircase and the living room entrance. He hears Sam retrieve the beers from the refrigerator and pop off the caps with a bottle opener.
Sam comes back out of the kitchen and holds out one of the bottles to Montgomery, who takes it.
“Looks like you got a pretty good porch,” Montgomery says.
“You want to sit out there?” says Sam.
Montgomery nods.
They step outside onto the front porch, both of them wearing a jacket, and settle down in the two rubber fold-up chairs Sam’s got there. They look aged, maybe secondhand, and it’s strange that Sam put them out here in plain view. They clash with the interior of the house, and Montgomery has to ask.
“They run out of real chairs in Prescott?”
Sam smiles and sips on his beer. “I just haven’t gotten around to shopping for some. These I brought over from California.”
He doesn’t elaborate, but Montgomery doesn’t need him to. These chairs are relics from Sam’s old life, from his dead marriage, and no wonder they look used. Maybe they used to be a part of Sam and Jen’s porch or their backyard deck. Maybe the couple carted the chairs around with them on trips to the beach or the woods when they went camping. When it came time to split up all their possessions, she might’ve left the chairs behind, and for whatever reason—maybe sentimentalism—Sam packed them into his U-Haul instead of trashing them.
Montgomery didn’t take anything from the house he shared with Al. Just his clothes and shoes, his personal items that had nothing to do with her. He left all the framed photographs of them hanging on the walls, the dog, his pale blue wedding tuxedo. He didn’t want her haunting him, but maybe he wanted to haunt her a little.
He and Sam sit in silence for a while, drinking from time to time and looking out at the street and the sky, the stars twinkling above the roofs of the houses, the yellow lights glowing in windows and next to front doors.
“I saw Troutman,” Sam says, eyes combing over the houses across the street. “You were right. The Airstream’s his.”
Montgomery looks at him, then back ahead. “When are you going to bust him?” he says.
“Soon. I haven’t told my superior officer yet, but I’m sure as soon as I do, I’ll get the green light to pick Troutman up.”
“Why haven’t you said anything?”
Sam pauses, like maybe he’s not sure what the reason is. “He’s going to do at least three to five. Even if he gets out sooner on good behavior, I can’t see him doing any less than two. And his family—”
When Sam doesn’t finish the sentence, Montgomery says, “You feel sorry for him.”
“I feel sorry for his wife. And his kid.”
“Yeah, well. He’s not doing them any good where he is.”
Sam doesn’t argue, and they fall silent again.
“You want to stay for dinner?” Sam says, looking over at Montgomery.
“Sure.”
They order a pizza and drive into Downtown Prescott to pick it up, stopping at a liquor store on the way back for more beer. Sam throws a salad together, and they eat at the kitchen table, silent for much of the meal as music plays on low volume in the background. Once their plates are clean and the pizza box is empty, they start to talk as they work their way through a dozen cans of local beer, taking turns getting up to pick them out of the freezer.
“Let me ask you something,” Montgomery says, holding the fifth beer of his pack. “You got designs on the sheriff seat?”
Sam snorts. “I’ve been in this county less than six months. I don’t know how long I’m staying. Right now, I’m happy just to work.”
“What about before? In California?”
Sam pauses. “I don’t think I ever thought about it. It’s the kind of thing you need a certain amount of experience for, in my opinion, and I was happy being a deputy anyway. Still am.”
Montgomery sips on his beer.
After a moment, Sam says, “You ever date anybody here? Since you moved to Skull Valley?”
Montgomery glances at him before dropping his eyes to take another drink. “No.”
“Haven’t met anyone who interests you?”
“I don’t date because I don’t want to,” Montgomery says.
“You still in love with your ex-wife?”
Montgomery doesn’t answer.
“I’m sorry,” says Sam. “I didn’t mean to—it’s none of my business. I’m just feeling the beer.”
“It’s all right,” Montgomery says. He finishes his fifth beer, sets the can aside with the others, and opens his last one.
They’re quiet for a minute or two, the music no longer playing on Sam’s portable speakers.
“Did you go to college?” Sam asks.
Montgomery shakes his head. “No.”
> “Why not?”
“Wasn’t interested. I wouldn’t have had the money for it, anyhow. When I got out of high school, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do with my life, but I reckoned I wasn’t the college type.”
“I saw the books in your living room,” Sam says. “The first time I came to your house.”
“Always did like to read,” says Montgomery. “Not having a college degree doesn’t make a man stupid, Sam. Or ignorant.”
“I know. I just think it’s weird that someone smart who likes to read chose physical labor over school.”
“You went to college and became a sheriff’s deputy. Pretty sure the two don’t have anything to do with each other.”
Sam bobs his head. “Point taken.”
Montgomery pauses. “There’s no shame in honest work. If it makes you happy and pays the bills, what more can a man want?”
Sam blinks at him, his expression pensive and maybe a little sorry. “I don’t think you have anything to be ashamed of,” he says.
The empty beer cans huddle together at the edge of the table. Montgomery lights up a cigarette, sprawled out in his chair with his legs stretched in front of him. Sam watches him with his elbows on the table, one hand tented over the top of his last beer. Smoke starts to cloud the air between them, the smell of the Marlboro filling the kitchen. The house is quiet.
Sam gets up and takes the plates to the sink. He collects the beer cans from the table and dumps them in the recycle bin. Montgomery, a little drunk now, continues to smoke his cigarette without thinking anything at all. Sam comes up behind him, rests his hands on Montgomery’s shoulders and squeezes, his grip stronger than Montgomery would’ve expected. Montgomery only tenses against the touch for an instant, before relaxing into it. Sam starts massaging his shoulders, sweeping his thumbs over the back of his neck. Nobody’s touched him like this in years, not since Al.
“This okay?” Sam asks.
Montgomery’s already got his eyes closed, but he doesn’t miss the faint slur in Sam’s voice. “Yeah,” he says. “Feels good.”
“Let me know if it hurts,” says Sam.
“Hurt’s how you know it’s working,” Montgomery says.
Sam rubs his shoulders for several minutes, using both the heels of his palms and his fingers. He loosens a few knots, works on Montgomery’s neck and the space between his shoulder blades, doesn’t hold back on the pressure. When he finally quits and steps away, Montgomery’s flesh is warm and tender from the base of his skull through his shoulders and upper back. Sam’s hands are warm too, and tired.
Montgomery opens his eyes and breathes. “Thanks. I needed that.”
Sam wipes his hands on his jeans. “You’re welcome,” he says. “Just ask, if you—if you want me to do it again some time.”
Montgomery nods, even though his back’s to Sam. “I could use a drink,” he says. “A real drink. Don’t know about you.”
“Yeah.”
Sam turns and takes a couple glasses out of one of the cabinets and pulls an almost full bottle of Maker’s 46 from the top of the refrigerator. He stands at the table next to Montgomery and pours them both a glass.
“I think we’d be more comfortable in the living room,” he says, then heads out of the kitchen with the bottle of whiskey and his drink.
Montgomery gets up after a pause and follows him.
Sam’s leaning over the fireplace, tossing in a couple logs from the pile in a metal crate to the left and crumpled sheets of newspaper lying on the coffee table. He lights the kindling and tinder with a utility lighter and waits to see the flames catch before straightening up and trading the lighter for the whiskey on the mantle.
As the firelight begins to brighten, the room becomes even more inviting than it was before. The walls are painted forest green, the floor is a dark caramel wood, and the fireplace is exposed brick. Two matching sofas face each other in the center of the room before the fireplace, with a wooden coffee table in between, all standing on a large shag area rug. An old chocolate leather armchair is positioned to the right of the fireplace. Toward the front of the room, a tall bookcase stands against the wall, part of a different section of the long room arranged near the windows that includes a pair of big easy chairs, a smaller sofa, and another table. The television and a large, round sofa chair are in the back.
“You bring all this from California?” Montgomery asks without thinking.
Sam looks over his shoulder at him. “No,” he says. “Some of it I ordered from a catalog. Some of it’s from Phoenix. Took me all summer to put together.”
He sips from his glass and watches the fire grow.
“Must’ve eaten up your whole savings account.”
Sam glances back at him and smiles. “Just part of my half of the money we got when we sold the house.”
Montgomery drinks instead of replying. He and Al never owned property together. The house they lived in was a rental.
Sam sits down on the floor in front of the fireplace, his knees up and his elbows on them. Montgomery waits a moment before crossing the room to join him. He sits down on Sam’s left. He can feel the heat of the flames. They’re close enough that their elbows brush whenever one of them takes a drink. They drain their glasses in silence, then Sam pours them both a second and lies down on the rug, propped on one elbow. Montgomery stays seated, his back now to Sam, staring into the fire. He can smell the pine logs collected nearby and the wood smoke. The room is warmer now, and it was a touch cool before.
Montgomery thinks about fires: the bonfire at the 4th of July party where he met Al, hundreds of campfires built throughout his ranching career, a fire on a beach in South Texas that he and Al built on a chilly night of a vacation they took, campfires he and his father built when Montgomery was a kid and they’d take off for the woods in Colorado, the fire that he and Al burned their vows in, the fire that he and Bo Davis shared one night working alone together by which light Montgomery looked at him and felt how deeply he loved his friend.
“You ever wonder how you got here?” Sam says. “Sometimes, I stop and look around and realize how far away this reality is from what I expected a few years ago. It makes me curious about the future.”
“Not skeptical?” says Montgomery.
Sam pauses. “I don’t think so. I don’t have a plan, you know? No direction. I have a job and a place to live and some people in my life, and I don’t know what else to want….. Did you ever get that feeling when you were young, that you were going somewhere and one day you’d arrive? I thought I’d arrived when I married Jen. All that was left to do was have kids. Maybe I’d be sheriff of the county one day. I don’t know. Now, it’s like—like I’m back on the road again but I don’t have a destination.”
Montgomery takes a drink and says, “If it wasn’t for a couple of jackasses holding up a diner and trying to kill you, we would’ve never met. Could’ve lived half an hour apart for years, passed each other by dozens of times, and never once had reason to meet.”
“I probably would’ve pulled you over for speeding eventually,” Sam says.
Montgomery smiles, his back still to Sam. He’s feeling the whiskey now, his face and his insides warmer with it. He sinks backward, stretching out next to Sam and mirroring the other man’s posture, turned on his side and propped on one elbow.
After a few minutes of silence, the two of them not looking at each other as they sip their drinks, Sam speaks.
“Why did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Why did you save my life at the diner?”
Montgomery doesn’t answer right away. At the time, he wasn’t doing a whole lot of thinking. He reacted to the sight of Decker threatening someone with his weapon, and it didn’t make a difference whether it was a defenseless teenager or a sheriff’s deputy. The whole drama happened in minutes, faster than anyone who hasn’t experienced it would expect, and Montgomery did what he did because he knew that he had a chance against Decker and didn’t want to
see anyone hurt.
“He could’ve shot you,” Sam says, eyes slanted toward the fireplace. “Most people wouldn’t stick their neck out for a cop they don’t know. Even if they had a weapon.”
“You’re a person,” Montgomery says. “Not a job. You’re a man, no different than any other man who was there that night. No different than me.”
Sam looks at him, and Montgomery doesn’t meet his gaze. He finishes his drink.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Sam says.
Montgomery looks at him. Sam looks about as drunk as Montgomery feels. Montgomery nods.
“I’ve only ever dated women, but… there have been a couple times where I thought—where I felt some kind of love for other men that might’ve been romantic. They were really close friends of mine, and I wanted us to be something, to be… I don’t know. I’ve never really wanted to have sex with men. That’s why I’ve never tried dating them.” Sam pauses and takes a deep breath, blowing it out. “I think I would’ve liked being physical with those friends, not in a sexual way but… And I don’t know if I would’ve wanted to actually date them, even if they were all right with a nonsexual relationship. I know I’m not making any sense, but I’m trying to say that maybe I want to explore some kind of intimacy with a man, if the right one comes along. Instead of looking for a girlfriend.”
Montgomery turns his head to look at Sam, who’s still staring into the fire. He’s not sure what Sam means, but he knows he has to tell the truth in turn.
“There’s something you oughta know,” he says. “About me and my wife. I loved her but I wasn’t in love with her. Our marriage ended because I’ve never liked sex, and I got to a point where I didn’t want to go through the motions anymore. She was one of my best friends, and I wanted to be with her. Just not the way she wanted to be with me.”
Sam stares at him, silent and unreadable. Montgomery’s relieved not to see pity or criticism in his eyes, but he’s still afraid of what Sam will say. He’s never told anyone the truth about his sexuality or his divorce. Not even Al fully understands.
Lone Star on a Cowboy Heart Page 8