“Why are you stuck?”
“Grace got Abilene in the divorce. I can’t go back there.” He checks my expression and explains. “I done cast my lot.”
I try to keep my expression neutral but I am thinking: He must have done something bad to make her leave. I see the scribble of your face. His wife lasted a week. He’s been here six months. He was here six months with you and your parents, alone. “You don’t have to stay here,” I say. “There are more than two options.”
He cocks his head and smirks. “I always thought there was just the one option. I guess you learnt it different.” He sighs. “They pay well, all cash, tax-free. A little corner of heaven, right? It should go down easy, but it don’t. It should be a dream come true, but it ain’t.” He slides his hands into his pockets. “It is beautiful though. Even in the dark.”
He stares ahead, hands tucked, like a romantic figure in a poem. I feel it like a pressure against my temples. My lungs hold tight. Is he really this dreamy character, or is he trying to appear that way?
I think of your life, all the pieces of it. The suspicious townspeople. Your radical mother. Your loopy father. And Jed, your backyard crying cowboy. It feels so contrived, like a game you designed for me to play. Or is that just because I have been trapped in my wheel for so long, stuck in stories of good and evil, that now everything feels fake? And then I get this scary feeling, like I have disappeared, like this ranch is my vanishing point, one last bend in the road and then I cut out like a candle.
And suddenly I want to tell Jed all of this, but I can’t because he’s a perfect stranger. Why is it that other people can sometimes make you feel the most alone? I have no one to talk to, no one close that I can trust. My mouth feels sewn shut. My heart is pulsing in my aching hands. I’m disappearing. And if I don’t find you, I’ll vanish without a trace.
“Heck, I better get some sleep.” Jed swings his body around at once. “You want me to walk you back?”
I am torn. I want to go to your house, but I can’t get past Jed. And I can’t trust him. I can’t trust anyone.
“No, I’ll be fine. It’s easy.”
His voice drops conspiratorially. “It wasn’t really a question. I can’t let a woman walk home alone.” I hate comments like that, but his accent softens my irritation. And as much as it embarrasses me to admit, I like the idea that somebody cares, even if it’s just enough to walk me a few hundred feet down the path.
We walk back to my cabin, guided by the halo of his handheld flashlight. I want to trust him. I want to tell him everything—about the cat and Belle Star and the sick dogs and the way your parents seem sadistic, always laughing at something that isn’t funny. But I think: Suspect. I think: Wait. Still, I don’t know how long I can hack it out here alone. If you disappeared, someone must have taken you. If you are in danger, I am in danger too.
We stop under the eaves, by the front door. His nostrils flare at the smell, and I feel embarrassed, like this really is my home. “Sorry they stuck you here. You oughta just stay with me; there’s three bedrooms. Lord knows I don’t need ’em.”
I feel the invitation catch in my throat, like we’re on a first date and he’s asked me to come back for coffee, forever. “It’s fine. I don’t mind it.”
“Well, I’d invite you over for dinner but I can’t cook worth a damn. If you ever need whiskey though, you can bet I’ve opened a bottle.” He steps backward until he’s five, ten feet away. He cocks his chin. “I hope you get along all right out here,” he says, like we may never see each other again.
* * *
—
I fall asleep and wake up an hour later to the sound of a baby crying. Half in dreams, I think I’m another person, with a different life. I have to feed the baby. I have to hold the baby. I have to rock the baby. I am out of bed, cold lighting my bare knees when I realize I don’t have a baby, and I shiver like it’s something I should be afraid of.
I climb back onto the bed, ignoring the feeling of dirt and dust between the covers, and I look out at the swollen bellies of the blackberry bushes gathered in the garden outside my window.
The perfect place to hide bodies. I imagine the blackberries are so thick because they feed on human flesh, and I almost want to go out there and rip the bushes apart, cut them down so I can sleep without nightmares. You could hide anything in there.
Episode 29:
Open Season at Fortuna Ranch
They found the bodies in a hunting freezer. They were stripped. They were cleaned. They were arranged to make the most of the space, so a bone was broken here. A neck was twisted there. They found seven bodies in one freezer.
The next morning, I am up on a ladder outside the lodge, cleaning the windows. I’d fed the horses. I’d checked in on Belle Star, who seems less agitated now that she’s alone. Your mother roars up on her ATV. The dogs that follow her settle like sacks in the grass.
“Well.” She cuts off the engine. “He decided to come back.”
“Did you think he wouldn’t?” I have not finished cleaning the inside panels, but I’ve moved outside, hoping to get another glimpse of Jed. There is something old-fashioned about this place. There’s a new man in town, and I won’t be able to sleep for days.
She gazes out at the ranch, where Jed is, invisible to us. “I didn’t know, the way he took off. Here for six months and he wants to go on vacation? What does that sound like to you?”
It sounds perfectly understandable. This place is isolated, even more so by the rules about not going into town, about not traveling past the perimeter. I can understand that after six months he might have felt like he was due a vacation.
“He was supposed to bring back his wife. Did you see her?”
It’s not my place to tell her about his divorce, and anyway I’m not supposed to have met him yet, so I say, “No, I haven’t.”
“Well.” She leans forward on her ATV. “We’ll just see how things go now you’re here.” She starts her engine and speeds away before I can ask her what she means.
* * *
—
I work for three days, falling into the routine even as the pressure inside me builds. I clean windows. I ride horses. I clean more windows. I ride more horses. But on the inside, I am frying, burning up. I tell myself I am building your family’s trust, burying myself deeper in your world, but every day the case gets colder.
I pass by Jed a few times a day. He works on the roof of cabin seven, making repairs, shirtless, sweating. And I am no closer to you, no closer to him, no closer to anyone. I work and I read Dear Mad’m and I plan for the weekend, when I will search your house, search the ranch, search Happy Camp.