Painted Boots

by Mechelle Morrison

  The band begins to warm up. A thrill of panic races through me. If I’m going to talk to Dad, I’ll need to hurry.

  I spot Jesse, walking across the grass alone. She’s scouting the bleachers as she goes, her hand held like a visor against the sun, her hair a tumble of shining bronze. I run down the stairs two at a time and meet her just before she starts to climb. “Where’s? I mean, hey, Jesse. Is my dad here, too?”

  Jesse smiles. “’Course he’s here,” she says. “He’s waiting on Angie and Ray, back by the goal posts. I’m supposed to save us seats.”

  I turn and run. I almost forget to shout, “Thanks, Jesse!”

  Tower County’s football field is rimmed by an eight-lane track the color of a red rubber band. I stay in the center, my elbows pumping. It feels so good to run that I barely feel the ground beneath my feet. The sound of my boots is sure; they know where they’re going. My gold gown flows around me like a silky flag. It tangles between my legs, slowing me down. I toss my cap and yank the gown over my head and let it fly.

  I see Dad now. I see him! He looks great—his hair more honey-colored than it ever was in Portland, his shirt bright yellow and freshly pressed, his faded jeans brushing the tops of new cowboy boots. He waves and I wave, too. He calls out, “Hey baby.”

  I don’t bother with hello. I crash into him and wrap my arms around his waist. It’s been one year since Mom died—one year yesterday! All that time I believed Dad didn’t understand me. All that time I figured I was on my own to sort things out. I’d convinced myself he couldn’t help. But I was wrong. He’s been with me every step of the way.

  I feel like such a jerk.

  I hug him and hug him, trying hard to make up for all the hugs I know I’ve held back. My tears well up as Dad strokes my hair. He kisses the crown of my head. He says, “Aspen. Hey. I didn’t expect to see you until after. What—”

  “I love you, Dad.” I look up. I need to see his eyes. Dad brushes at my tears and I smile while I cry a little more. “I love you, Daddy! I haven’t told you once, not since we moved here, not since . . . not since Portland. I’m so sorry! I love you and I always will and now I’m going away until September and I can’t go without telling you how much I love you. I want us to always be family. I feel so stupid! I’ve been so selfish! You’ve always been there and I didn’t see it and I don’t know why and will you forgive me? I need you!”

  Dad presses his finger to my lips. “You nut,” he says, but his eyes are bright. “You’re my little girl. I’ll love you forever, no matter what. I love you when times are good. I love you when things are rough. Nothing could tear my heart from you, baby. I’ll always, always love you.”

  I hug Dad close. “It’s just. I’ve been so rotten to you this year.”

  “Aspen, honey. We’re programmed to fight for independence. I’ve been there. I know. Your fight just coincided with a lot of life-changing loss. It coincided with danger. I love you so much, baby. I thought I’d lost you, that I made too many mistakes.”

  “You’ll never lose me!” I say.

  “And you’ll never lose me.” Dad presses a kiss to the side of my head. He wraps his arms around my shoulders and rocks me side to side, like he used to do when I was younger and I’d stand on top of his feet. “Let’s look forward, ‘kay? We’ve had a tough year, but it hasn’t all been bad. Let’s only remember the good stuff.”

  “It’s a deal,” I say.

  Dad holds me close. He says, “Well now. You caught me huggin’ your girl.”

  With my cheek still pressed against his shirt, I ask, “What?”

  From somewhere behind me, Kyle laughs. “It’s an honor Graydon, to hear you say that.”

  Dad smiles—I feel it in the way his face moves against the side of my head. He squeezes me tight and whispers in my ear, “Do you remember how your mom always spoke for me?”

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  “This time, I’ll speak for her. Aspen, sweet, it thrills your mother, and me as well, to know you’ve found your other half.”

  We enter the field just like we practiced, marching in alphabetical order while the school band plays the standard fare. I take my seat in the second row, right between Madison Borrow and Celia Bunt.

  The vice-principal gives the welcome. Two teachers follow—Mrs. Martin and Mr. Goldberg. Listening to them talk about the joys of teaching the senior class, it’s easy to imagine how they might give the same speech every year. Like they keep it on file, or something.

  But when it’s time for the valedictorian to speak I sit up straight, craning to see. Kyle stands from his place near the back then walks the center aisle, the limp from his broken leg so slight I’m sure I’m the only one to notice. At the front of the seating he turns right, taking the stairs up to the stage. He looks different in his blue graduation gown and mortarboard, red honor sashes and tasseled gold cords—until I glance toward his feet. Black cowboy boots poke from beneath the frayed hem of his indigo jeans.

  He spreads two sheets of paper across the podium’s surface then taps the microphone. He scans the class, finds me, and says, “Hey, girl.” After that, he stares at his notes.

  When he looks up again his eyes are darker than they were before. He shrugs, gathers up his speech and crumples it into a tight ball. “This here’s the usual crap,” he says. The crowd laughs. “It’s the usual here we go out into the great yonder stuff I figured everybody talks about at graduation.” Kyle takes off his mortarboard and finger combs his hair. He lifts the honor sashes from around his neck then removes his gown. “That’s better,” he says, piling everything at his feet.

  He’s beyond gorgeous, dressed in a crisp white western-style shirt and the obsidian bolo tie he still won’t let me wear. His KDT tie, he calls it. The sky above him is brilliant blue, dotted with whipped-cream clouds. The crowd quiets as he rolls his shirt sleeves until they rest below his elbows.

  “Thing is,” he says, “This hasn’t been a usual year. This year’s brought stuff for me most people don’t face in a full life of living. And Dad, I hope you’ll understand my need to talk about my brother. Because what happened this year took root three years back, when Evan died.

  “It’s strange to say now, but I didn’t know a thing about myself back then. I thought I did, but I was wrong. I knew where I came from, sure. I knew the Thacker way. But my life was easy. On a platter. Evan parted the waters and I followed in his wake.”

  Kyle pauses. He glances at me. “I didn’t know that one big change changes everything. With Evan gone and my parents eaten up by grief, I found myself alone for the first time, ever. I didn’t know how to do that, to be alone. It split me in half. The part of me aching for my brother turned to music. The part of me aching for comfort turned to Em. One good choice. One bad.”

  Behind me, someone catches their breath. Celia Bunt whispers, “Oh. My. God.”

  Kyle gazes upward, his eyes at one with the sky. “I don’t know how many of you have been lost,” he says. “But I can tell you, from experience, there are things in this world that in an instant bring you to your knees.”

  He waves his hand toward the school. “This place seemed like everything, right? This place felt like our universe. That’s an illusion. This place doesn’t even qualify as practice for what waits for us out there. It’s obvious this place came easy for me—I mean, I’m standin’ here, the owner of a shiny four-point-oh. But what’s that mean, really? You miss a test, your grade goes down. Big deal. You stumble in your life, you build your choices in the wrong direction and before you know it, you’re staring up from the bottom of something deep and dark, with no thought to how you might crawl out. That’s how it was, for me.”

  Tears glisten in Kyle’s eyes. I feel the warm sting of tears in my own. It’s a moment before he’s able to continue. “When I took up with Em I had all this hope that somehow, she’d ease me through my grief. I wasn’t seeing how I was runnin’ from the responsibility of working through Evan’s loss. Things went bad fast with E
m and I’m embarrassed to say I stayed on, from fear, mostly. My world turned unrecognizable, made of feelings I couldn’t navigate and pain I didn’t understand and behavior I’d never been taught to confront. You could say I let go of my own reins and I’ll tell you, it’s been tough to get them back. I didn’t know how to change my course. I was too numb, too shell-shocked, over Evan’s death.”

  Kyle grips the podium with both hands. He leans toward the mic. “But I’ve since learned each of us has a resilient side, some inner spark that doesn’t want to let us die. Mine created haven. It sheltered me, and in a talent I’d never thought to develop. It took till the start of my senior year before I found the courage to step out and try for change. And I won’t lie—the first move I made toward a different life came with a lot of hurt. For me, for my family, for Aspen, my girl. Things went wrong. Things spiraled from bad to worse. But I discovered if you aim for what you want and stay fierce about it, the change you’re hopin’ for will come.” From behind the podium, Kyle grabs his black felt hat. He holds it in his hands, smoothing the crease and rim. A smile blossoms in his eyes. He fits the hat on his head.

  A girl sitting four rows back jumps to her feet. “You’re KDT!” She spins around, her graduation gown electric gold in the sunlight. “Bethie! I knew it! It’s like I told you. He’s KDT!”

  Other people know, too; I see it on their faces.

  Kyle grins, revealing the dimple that still makes me want to squeal. “Quiet down now,” he says. “Give me a moment to get things set. I’ve got a point to make, but it’ll be best made if I sing it.”

  Through the cheers and clapping, and above the chatter of “Who’s KDT,” Kyle holds my gaze. He says into the mic, loud and clear, “Time to come on up here, girl.”

  46

  I PULL MY graduation gown over my head and drape it, with my mortarboard and honors sash, across my chair. As I walk for the stage the warm spring air sifts the ruffles of my denim mini-skirt, which I’ve paired with a tight white tee. My mother’s necklace sparkles in the sunlight and I’m wearing Kyle’s boots—each one painted a different shade of blue in honor of his eyes. With my guitar strapped across my shoulder I take my place on his left, just like I do in rehearsal, leaving maybe three feet between us.

  I plug in the pick-up and test the sound. Then I wait, tuning and re-tuning my guitar.

  Kyle talks with Jimmy Staton, a junior who’ll be playing drums. Jimmy taps the beat while Kyle strums a few chords.

  Then it’s my turn. Kyle rotates his guitar as he walks toward me, tugging at the strap until the instrument hangs against his back. He takes the mic from my stand, letting out the cord between his fingers until the mouthpiece dangles almost to the stage. “You ready, for this life we’re bringing?” he asks.

  “Yes. Maybe.” I glance to the crowd. “You know I am.” He grins and I return his smile, wide and happy.

  He positions my mic then kisses me, taking his time. People clap, a few guys call out, “Whoo!” someone whistles. “Then hold on, girl,” he says over their noise, “’cause here we go.”

  Kyle steps up to his microphone. He plugs the pick-up into his guitar then looks down, the brim of his hat shading his face. He watches his fingers play the introduction, just like he does in his YouTube videos. The beat is fast, in four/four time, and Kyle plays it solo. Jimmy waits on his entrance. So do I.

  When Kyle sings his voice fills the world—beautiful and tenor and edged with the same gravely sound I hear every morning of my life as we talk together, lying in his bed. The crowd—our graduating class and their families—goes wild.

  We’re steppin’ out on our own,

  And yeah we’re feeling a great unknown

  But if you’ll take my open hand

  Then wherever we may roam

  Girl I’ll always be your home.

  Jimmy starts in, his drumming as infectious as slap-happy laughter. It’s my cue to play and I do, feeling alive and carried, as though I’ve just discovered I have wings. When it’s time for the second verse Kyle glances at me. I step close to my mic and sing with him.

  Don’t care, what lies ahead

  I’m true to you,

  you’re the place where

  my heart’s always led

  They’ll be troubles crop up on our way

  The unexpected it comes into play

  But yeah no matter where we roam

  You know you’ll always be my home.

  Kyle steps away from his mic, at ease with the spotlight while playing the reprise. But I’m at ease, too. The five months of practice we’ve given this song, and a dozen others, have turned us from people who play together for fun, into a team. Our music sounds effortless, though we know it’s not.

  I look out into the crowd the way Kyle taught me to do, watching as our music draws our classmates into our world. It hits me that this is how people will always see us: in love and happy. They’ll never see the things that wove our lives together. They’ll never know the truth of how we fought to be. The way we lick our wounds, naked and safe in each other’s arms while we’re talking out our pain, will always be one of our many, many private things.

  It’s not so much that we have secrets—it’s that we have what makes us us. Like how Mom never told me about Dad inheriting his ranch, or how Dad might never tell me why he left Wyoming, and his family, when he was young. The stuff my parents had wasn’t mine to know. It defined them, yes, and me by default. But it belonged to them alone.

  I glance at Kyle. He’s beautiful—hot in every sense of the word. When he’s ready to play the last verse he swings round and winks at me. “Come on, girl,” he says into the mic. He means so many things when he says that and I hear them all, in my thoughts. They’re my things.

  You and me, we got it right

  But times there’ll be things

  that will wake us

  Girl in the night

  I don’t care

  what the world throws our way

  Cause girl I’m standin’ here ready to say

  Hold my hand and you’ll be home

  With me you’ll never be alone.

  We play the reprise again and again. Our classmates clap and dance and sing along, their voices rising like helium into Wyoming’s endless sky. Kyle nods with his music, his body one with it. He smiles at me, wide, happy and open. A Gillette smile, the kind people have from being born and raised here. The kind my father had, before Mom died. The kind Dad has learned to have again.

  He’s out there with Jesse, somewhere, seeing my future unfold the way I saw it all those months ago after sitting in Kyle’s truck. And next to Dad, I’m sure, Ray and Angella Thacker are in awe of what their son has been up to when he barricades himself in the Jam.

  Or maybe they already knew.

  For a moment I see my mother, clapping in the shadows of my recitals, yelling my name from the stands at swim meets, cheering me on across the span of my childhood. She was my greatest fan. But now I have Kyle. I have Angie and Ray. I have Jesse. And I will always, always have Dad.

  Kyle and I are quiet this evening, though I’m sure our thoughts aren’t far apart. I cuddle against his chest, lost in the view of forest and farms and ranch land, a lazy circling hawk, the distant glimmer of sun on water. The sky is strafed with cloud, glowing in thin strips of yellow-gold, pink and white. Below us, in the boxy dead-end parking lot of Devil’s Tower, sunlight kisses the roof of Kyle’s vintage Chevy and sparkles atop our little Airstream trailer. Then the light is gone. We’re left in the sudden chill of the tower’s shadow.

  The shadow! In all these months, I haven’t thought of it once. It isn’t the raven-black entity Google Maps makes it out to be. In truth, it’s hardly discernible from where it isn’t. It could never capture a spirit, like I believed it could the night I fought with Em. It’s not a mystical keeper of death. The tower’s shadow is only shade, flowing like water across trees and rocks and dirt. That I imagined it to be anything else makes me smile.

>   Kyle says, “We got three days before our Cheyenne gig.”

  “Mmm,” I say.

  “So I’m thinkin’. How’d you like to break in another national monument?”

  “What?” I ask, and laugh. “Which one?”

  “Mount Rushmore. It’s about a two hour drive. We could make it there tonight, easy. Then come tomorrow we could mount the Mount and mount.”

  “You’re a naughty boy,” I say.

  “I’m your naughty boy.” Kyle pulls my hair behind my ear and kisses my neck. “It’s a good hour to the truck. Best we get or we’ll be stumblin’ fools in the dark.”

  He pushes me up, but once I’m on my feet I turn round to help him stand, too. Then I brush my denim skirt smooth and shake the dust from our blanket. The evening star has just begun to burn its place in the deepening sky when Kyle twines his fingers between mine and tugs me toward a narrow dirt trail.

  I glance at him, thinking of the summer concerts we’ve planned, excited that we’ll be in college together in the fall—unless our music keeps us on the road. Maybe we’ll head west then, and play Seattle. Maybe even Portland.

  Maybe.

  I squeeze Kyle’s hand. He squeezes mine in return. In the distance the edge of the world glitters, like so many things do, in the fading light.

  A c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s

  I couldn’t embrace the hard-core work of writing without my husband and daughter. They understand (or at least tolerate) my need to hermit. They allow me silence when they’d prefer TV or music. They suffer through the endless hours it takes me to grind out a first draft. They roll their eyes as I revise, revise, revise. Thanks guys! You rock.