Return To Big Sky

by Jade Cary

  “I’m allowed to be angry.”

  “Yes. But others are angry, too. At some point you grew up—or so we thought…”

  “That is not fair!”

  “No? I think you had some options once you finished school. Options and a few obligations.”

  “So, this is my fault? He got rid of me!”

  “Yes, he did. He had his reasons, and right now none of them are going to be good enough for you. In time you’ll see reason…”

  “Oh, my God!” I stood and loomed over him. “I keep waiting for diamonds and rubies to come flying out of your mouth and all I get are toads.”

  “All you’re going to get from me is the truth, sweetheart.” He stood. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Jed…”

  “And so are you. We have some fences to mend tomorrow…pun definitely intended.”

  “I won’t be sent off to bed like a recalcitrant child.”

  He looked at me as one would look at a rather obtuse recalcitrant child. “Suit yourself. ‘Night, Chan.”

  Love, Daddy

  It was not even nine p.m., and I was keyed up, restless. The last thing I wanted was to fight with Jed, tonight of all nights. Whatever night I chose to rile him wouldn’t have been good and tonight was the lesser of many evils, I supposed. Damn him! He made me so mad. Why couldn’t he fight like a New York man and nod and ‘uh huh’ until the fight had gone out of me? Instead, he prattled on about fifteen years, like it was a fucking lifetime. Truth was, I believed I had all the time in the world to make it back here, so fifteen years felt, to me, like nothing. I hadn’t yet reconciled what it felt like to anyone else, which I suppose was his blasted point.

  I went upstairs and changed into a tank and PJ pants and crawled into the king sized bed. As a child, I used to gather every stuffed animal that would fit next to me in order to create a smaller, and more secure, space. By the time I said goodbye to the ranch, I had grown into it, and I sleep in a king to this day.

  The room smelled the same, yet the essence of Jed permeated my every sense—a rustic, wild smell that had me reeling. Had I stayed here instead of being shipped away, I may have grown close to Jed in that brother-sister way that comes naturally after the reality hits that anything more was not possible. The young-girl fantasy I held back then was just that: fantasy. Once the fantasy had a chance of becoming reality, a girl tended to grow up fast. I was not a girl anymore. I had been with men, never loving them, never staying around long enough to learn their soft points. A few had loved me; none were Jed. I hadn’t been terribly cordial to the man I’d loved since I was a child, and that fact was settling in, deep and hard.

  “Stop it, goddammit,” I hissed, rubbing the ache in my chest. I cursed and gathered kindling and a match for the fire, checked the flue, and got a tiny flame going in the fireplace before grabbing my lap top and returning to the big four-poster bed. It was the situation, of course, I reasoned. I was angry, upset, emotional, homesick, and sick of home. I couldn’t trust my feelings now. I would bury my father the day after tomorrow, and then I would have closure. It’s what I’d been wanting for fifteen years. I would return to New York and to my life. My life was no longer here. It had been too long, and I had grown too much away from the things that anchored a person to a place like this. No, New York was home now.

  I opened my laptop and clicked on the email icon. The fire grew and crackled, filling the room with a warm glow that was as familiar to me as breathing. Instead of going to the inbox, I clicked on the Charles folder. Seventy-two emails sat in the folder, none of which had a subject, as was Dad’s habit. Many appeared in red, which meant they were unread. I clicked on the last one I received, sent September 1st—two weeks ago.

  Darling,

  I hope this note finds you well. The chill is setting in, and we have finally come to the end of another hot, dry summer. The fields were cut in late August, and will be left as forage until the first snowfall. An unfortunate foreclosure on a ranch in Ennis yielded us some fine horseflesh—six mares, four stallions and a gelding. We also picked up a fine Aztec stallion at auction, and he is quite a challenge, but he’s a beaut and he’ll make a fine animal once he’s brought to heel. Busy preparing for our annual labor day party, and Maria insists on preparing all the food. After some persuasion on the part of myself and others, we will hire Fred Surelock and his outfit to roast a pig complete with appropriate accompaniments. Maria is not pleased with me, as I am sure you can guess. Been a rough year so I’m sure looking forward to it. I sure hope you can find the time to make this one. It would be wonderful to see you. Home isn’t the same without you.

  Much love,

  Your daddy

  I watched the fire as it caught and grew to a nice flame. Dad got his party, one of his most cherished events before the weather changed and the harsh winters hit. I scrolled down to a random unread email, dated a few years ago.

  Dear Chandler,

  How’re things? Things are the same here. We had a mare foal yesterday and the young’un tore her up pretty good so we had to put her down. Daisy was a great gal, but this fella she birthed is a winner. He’s a healthy bay now, but will dapple gray soon enough, I predict, as the sire is a dapple. As you know, I discourage naming horseflesh if we don’t plan on keeping them, but a young hand has named him Mugsy. OK, I said, go ahead, but don’t get attached. He’ll bring a fine price at auction.

  Jed got married yesterday to a young town girl. I don’t see it lasting. The rest of us are fine. We all miss you.

  Write when you can.

  Dad

  I read through a dozen emails, a few I was reading for the first time, until exhaustion and emotion took over, and I fell asleep, tears moistening my pillow. I heard Jed’s soft call in a dream, wishing me sweet ones. I hung on to that.

  The clock read six-fifteen, Friday. In a few hours, the body of Charles Asher would be laid out for all to see, and many would come. It would be a hard day, especially after reading some of his emails last night. It would be a hard day for Jed as well. In one of his first emails, Dad shared some things about Jed. In fact, the first half-dozen emails were quite emotional and nostalgic. In one, he spoke of his parents, and of my mother:

  …I went into Virginia City last week, and I had a fine case of the ‘been-here-befores’. It was on that dusty main street where so many people come for a taste of the olden days that I first saw your mother, 30 years ago now. Maybe that’s why I’m thinking of her so much these days. Anyway, on that particular day she was sitting in one of those canvas chairs under a very bright light and lots of large cameras around her. It was a big deal having a movie filmed right on the streets of V City. An old horse stood nearby, and he looked quite dull in the eyes to my mind. I hoped they weren’t planning to put her on that horse, or I surely would have stepped in. Anyway, there she was, reading something in her lap—a script maybe. I was done for, as they say. Ah God, she was so beautiful, but you know this by the many pictures you have of her. Her fine auburn hair, like yours, was long in waves, and her eyes shone a deep blue like I’d never seen in my life. I was knocked for six, as my father used to say. I went up to her to have a talk, you know, and I apparently interrupted something because a dapper fellow in a vest and cap yelled at me like I was some dumb buck off the truck. I was embarrassed, and your mother of course laughed—not at me like you’d think, but soft and indulgent. I bought her a malt after she finished her work, and in fact was hours late getting back to the ranch and my chores. Anyway, the rest as they say, is history…

  It was this email from Dad I came back to and read most often. Reading them over again, I wondered why they didn’t draw me home. Had my anger been that profound? Why couldn’t I remember any of that anger now, in the light of day? Jed had been here for Dad, and I was glad of it. He filled the void my neglect had left in Dad’s heart, and I think he did the same for Jed. By the time the seventeen-year-old Jed came to the ranch to work that first summer, he was ripe for the attention of a good
man, and Charles had been that good man. Jed was who he was because of Charles Asher. I loved my father for that. He was truly the son my father perhaps wished he’d had.

  I showered and dressed in jeans, flannel shirt and boots. We were due at the funeral home at eleven so I was in no rush to get fancy just yet. I smelled coffee. I didn’t see or hear Jed around when I got down stairs, so I poured myself a cup and went outside.

  The Azteca raced around the corral as I approached. I had an affect on the animal for sure, and the feeling was mutual. I climbed up and sat on the top rail, like I had the previous night. The horse raced in a tight circle, the steam coming out of his muzzle in great puffs. I eased myself down inside the corral and stood as close to the fencing as I could. Each time the horse passed, he got closer. One ornery move on his part and I could be crushed against the fence. He was trying to intimidate me, get me out of his territory. I heard voices and footsteps. Three ranch hands had come to see what I was up to.

  “Looky that, it’s Miss Chandler,” Jack Blue said.

  “All growed up,” said another in a teasing, jovial tone that annoyed me so early in the a.m.

  “You okay in there, kiddo?” That was Collin.

  “I’m fine,” I answered. Sweat glistened on the animal’s coat, and he was breathing hard. He passed again, and this time I leaned back to avoid being knocked to the ground.

  “Come on outta there, now, Dutch. It ain’t safe,” Collin said.

  “I’m fine, fellas.” The horse made another round, brushing against me like a whisper, and nothing more. I could feel the nervous movements of the men on the other side of the fence, and if I could feel it, the horse could, too. In fact, he smelled their fear like a ripe fart.

  He took another pass, not so close this time. He did it again and then stopped on the opposite side of the corral. He pierced me with a look that spoke volumes. Then the Azteca offered up a final exclamation point: he turned his back on me and took a very large dump.

  “Thata boy. Good boy. You told me, didn’t you?” I admired an animal honest enough to say, Shit on you, honey. When I’m ready for you, you’ll know it.

  I climbed the fence, and was met on the other side by a very angry Jed Brooks. Déjà vu swept over me.

  “You done fooling around?”

  “Good morning, Ranch Hand. Coffee?” I extended my cup out to him. The men stared at the ground and chuckled.

  “Follow me,” he hissed. I did for fifty yards, and when we stopped at a row of fencing, I saw that his ‘mend fences’ comment the night before hadn’t been a joke. Half a dozen heavy log fence posts stood erect in the early morning sun. A large loop of barbed wire sat atop one.

  “Here.” He thrust a worn pair of leather gloves at me without turning around. “You remember how to do this?” Old, broken wire sat tangled on the ground. Between the cows and the weather, fences needed to be restrung occasionally. It was also a good way for a Montana man to avoid the elephant in the room, or on the range. Last night had not been pleasant.

  “Sure.” I set my coffee cup down, donned the gloves and grabbed the long staple out of his hand.

  “Start with that one.”

  I drove the staple halfway into the post and strung one end of the barbed wire through, wrapped it twice around the post, and drove the staple the rest of the way in. I remembered this, working odd jobs on the ranch, very little said until it was time to say it.

  “Nice work,” Jed commented.

  I did the same with the next one. While I wrapped and hammered, Jed straightened posts and did the same.

  “You lookin’ for a reenactment of when you were seven and I spanked your ass for going in that corral?”

  “As I reminded you last night, I’m not seven anymore.”

  “I told you to stay away from that horse, Chan.”

  “I heard you.”

  “Not good enough, obviously.”

  “Well. ‘Not well enough’.”

  Jed pierced me with a dark look. “Will you be correcting my grammar often while you’re here? If so, I’ll need to brush up.”

  I’d insulted him, and I did it on purpose. I found it gave me little pleasure. “Will you be treating me like a grown woman anytime soon, Jed? If not, I’ll just grab that hotel room so I can take breaths in and out without your permission.”

  “Breathe all you want. You don’t need my say-so. But when it comes to your safety, you’ll hear me.” He looked beyond me to the corral. “That boy’s not ready for the likes of you.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “Good. I’ll look forward to seeing it.” Jed set another post straight and hooked the barbed wire around it. I drove the staple in with a hammer.

  “You ready for today?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said after some thought.

  “Not a hard question.”

  I attempted one of my sardonic chuckles. “If I say yes, I sound cold. If I say no, I sound mournful. I don‘t know what to say. I don’t know how I feel, Jed.”

  Bent over the fence, he turned his face up to me and his eyes narrowed. My face grew hot. “Your judgment of me is getting tiring, Mr. Brooks.”

  “I’m not judging; I’m trying to understand you.”

  I drove another staple into a post through tear-blurred eyes. An errant sniffle brought his head up.

  “Hey.”

  I shook my head as tears fell, and as I stepped back I lost my footing. I closed around the loop of wire in my hand and felt the bite as barbs pierced the glove and caught the base of my middle finger and the fleshy part of my palm.

  “Fuck! Godammit!”

  “Hold on…” Jed straightened and grabbed my right wrist. He forced my hand open and extracted the barbs, tossing the loop to the ground.

  “Let me see.” He started to pull the glove off.

  “I’m fine.” I jerked away and he snatched my hand in an iron grip.

  “I said let me see.” He nailed me with a glare and slipped the glove off my hand. In my effort to pretend all was fine, I managed to rip a nice gash in my finger. My palm was only slightly better.

  “Let’s get you inside, get this taken care of.”

  “I’m fine, Jed. I’ll handle it.”

  He held my eyes with his normally denim blue ones, which had now turned the color of an angry ocean. “You’re not handling much of anything too well, lady, so how about you let me take over for a minute?”

  Tears swam in my eyes, and it wasn’t about pain. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here, Jed. I’m out of my element. Completely out.”

  “How are you out of your element? This is your goddamned father we’re putting in the ground!”

  He didn’t get it, and I said so.

  “Maybe I don’t, completely. And maybe I get more than you think. The girl who left here was razor sharp and tough as nails, and the woman who’s come back is fragile. I think the city’s left you soft, girl.”

  “What the hell do you know?” I started to walk away but he grabbed me by the arm and spun me around.

  “Plenty.” Jed pulled me against his chest and my arms went around his middle like that was exactly where they belonged. “What I know is that you are right where you need to be, and you’re going to be fine. Breathe, honey, and you’ll see that.” I sobbed against his chest and he rocked me in his arms. It felt so familiar, so right.

  “You’ve got one foot on a plane back to New York and another one on an oil slick. You’re so damn convinced you don’t belong here that you don’t even know you’ve arrived.” I gathered him to me like a down quilt and sobbed.

  “I want you to take this one day at a time, and if you can’t do that then I want you to take it an hour at a time. You don‘t need to feel happy or sad or mournful or anything else, for anybody, you hear me?”

  I nodded.

  “We’re in this together, Chan. I’ll be by your side here every step of the way, okay?”

  “Okay,” I snuffled into his shirt.


  “That’s good. That’s very good. I got you to agree to something.” I pulled my head up and melted into eyes that were back to their normal color and a crooked grin on the handsomest face I’d ever seen in my thirty years on this earth.

  “And I am not fragile,” I snapped. “I’m dumbfounded and caught off guard and I have no idea what to feel or how to feel it. I’m so damn angry at him, and at myself, that I don’t know which way is up. So, let me fly off the handle a little and stop trying to control me.”

  “I’m not. I swear I’m not.”

  “Just let me lean on you once in a while, Jed, without making me feel weak in the process.”

  “You’re right, babe. I’m sorry. You lean all you want.” He held me against him until my heart slowed and my emotions settled. A Montana woman, or man, did not ask for leeway with emotions, nor did they ask for soft places to land, but I was asking for those things now, and Jed was relenting. I’d rethink all this tomorrow, I supposed, but in the meantime, I’d take advantage of a weak moment on his part, and on mine.

  “Now, young lady, we’re going to go inside and I’m going to look at that hand. Got me?”

  I had him. I had him so good that my arms didn’t leave his waist until he had me perched on the kitchen counter while he doctored my hand.

  “The maple is changing.” I sat on the front porch in an old rocker. Jed sat across from me on the porch railing, coffee in his hand.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “I used to spend hours under that tree, fall chill in the air. I’d dream of pumpkins, Halloween costumes and bobbing for apples, the Murphy’s annual haunted barn party. I can smell it, Jed. It’s right around the corner.”

  “I smell it, too. Fall’s my favorite time of year.”

  “Same. How about a walk?”