“Thanks,” Harlan said. “I guess. I figure I’ve got just about enough skills to dump a bale of hay out of the back of a truck, though.”
“Nope,” Waylon said. “More like you’ve got enough hard work in you not to wander off after an hour, since nobody’s paying you any ten thousand bucks to be there. Owen brought home this old boy once, kid from Seattle or someplace. A couple of the cows were having some real trouble, and he just about threw up. And then he went inside and took a shower.”
“He did throw up,” Dane said. “Nose tackle. You wouldn’t think a nose tackle would be all squeamish like that. It’s just fluids. And some solids, of course, but that’s how everybody comes out. I know that, because I’ve watched all four of my boys come out the same way. Only difference is, for once I wasn’t the one with my arm up there.”
Joan said, “It’s a good thing Amy’s at work. If you say that in front of her, you’re going to be sleeping on the couch for a month. A woman wants to believe that’s a moment of awe for a man, not that he’s thinking how much she reminds him of a heifer.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t a moment of awe,” Dane argued. “Just that it was messy, but that I was used to it. That’s actually more romantic, because I could look past the heifer aspect and see the beauty.”
Waylon shook his head slowly. “Son,” he said, “no. Any time you’re using the word ‘heifer’ in a sentence when you’re talking about your wife, that’s a moment you’re going to want back.”
“Then how come she still loves me?” Dane asked.
“A question we ask ourselves constantly,” Owen answered.
Dane said, “Yeah? Where’s your wife?”
A moment of silence, during which Owen looked at his brother, the red flush mounting on his cheekbones, and then Joan said, “That’s enough.”
“Time to get back out there anyway,” Waylon said. “Harlan, you want to take a break, you go on. Ranching’s hard work if you’re not used to it.”
“I’m good,” Harlan said. “I do have an errand to run, but I’ll head back out there afterwards.”
Maybe everybody needed a break from having a visitor, keeping them from being able to say the bad stuff. Or maybe they’d never say it. If you asked him, though, it needed to be said.
Owen’s wife had taken off a year or so ago. “Didn’t like the ranch,” Owen had said. “She thought it’d be different, I guess. Wyoming dude ranch. Billionaire ranch, like in the movies. I’m not sure she liked me that much, either.” And that was all.
Owen had met her in a bar, which wasn’t always the best start, but you had to meet people somewhere, and an NFL career wasn’t the best for daily social interaction. She’d been tall, willowy, beautiful, and as animated as Owen wasn’t, and Owen’s eyes had followed her around the room whenever he’d been with her. When she’d smiled at him, he’d lit up like Christmas. Harlan had gone to the wedding, but he was lousy at telling who’d make it and who wouldn’t. He’d seen women stay with men you’d never imagine could hold them—his mom, for example, until she hadn’t, or the ones married to the guys with a different girl in every town they played—but a solid guy like Owen, who never did a crappy thing off the field and knew how to be there for somebody, couldn’t do it? Didn’t make sense to him.
The others headed out into the cold again, and he changed into a clean pair of jeans, then drove into Wheatland and scouted the wide, windblown, empty streets a while without finding what he needed. After his third pass by the Cut ‘n’ Yak, he gave up, parked the SUV outside Betty’s Diner, and headed inside.
It was quiet, like you’d expect, except for a table full of old guys in the corner, looking like the same guys you’d find in every farm town in the country. Their joints a little stiff from a lifetime spent outside, their shirts plaid, their arms ropy with the remnants of lean muscle, their battered caps advertising seed or farm equipment. Their sons would be working the ranch now, leaving them not much to do but sit around, drink diner coffee, and criticize the government. They took a look at him, summed him up as a big-city guy with suspicious hair who’d probably made a wrong turn off the interstate, and turned away again.
Harlan sat down at the counter, and when the waitress came over, told her, “Cup of coffee, please.”
“You bet,” she said, and headed off. Brunette, mid-forties, cheerful, and wearing the kind of shoes that told you she’d spent a lifetime on her feet. When she came back with the pot, she asked, “Come to see Owen Johnson, huh.”
Harlan ran his hand over his scruff of beard and asked, “Is it that obvious?”
“Well, yeah, hon. It’s the hair. You don’t see a lot of hair like that around here.”
“That’s what I was wondering.” He had the top part pulled back as usual, out of the way. If you bought your hair elastics by the package, it was definitely suspicious hair. He knew that. It was probably why he did it. He asked the waitress, “Is there a barbershop around here? I thought about the Cut ‘n’ Yak, but …”
She laughed. “Not that you wouldn’t make those girls’ day, but maybe you don’t want to have to put out that much charm. Head on out of town, past the courthouse and the Moose Lodge, and you’ll see Al’s. Almost to the highway, brown building, sitting all alone with the barber pole out front. You can’t miss it.”
Which usually meant that you could miss it, but never mind. It wasn’t that big a town.
When he and Owen headed over to Amy and Dane’s for dinner that night, Amy said, “You cut off all your gorgeous hair!”
“Yeah, he actually looks semi-normal,” Dane said.
“Yep,” Harlan said. “I’m not as pretty, but I blend better in Wyoming.”
Matt, who was six and opinionated, scrambled into his chair at the dining-room table and said, “You can’t be pretty. Boys aren’t pretty.”
Ethan, who was eight and literal, studied Harlan judiciously. “Maybe if they have long hair, they are. I don’t know, though. I never knew anybody else with long hair.” Not too surprising. The boys and Dane clearly did their barbering via the home hair clipper method. Dane probably used the clippers on the family dog afterwards.
Ethan wasn’t done, either. “You don’t look the same,” he said, “but I don’t know if you’re pretty or not. I don’t think you can be pretty if you have a beard.”
“Sure you can,” Amy said. “Except that it’s not the same. Surprisingly different, in fact.” She put her head on one side and studied him, and Dane sighed, took the meatloaf dish from in front of her, cut off a piece, and set it on her plate.
“You’re still ridiculously handsome,” Amy went on, “but you look tougher. You lost that swashbuckler thing, but now you’ve got some … harder edges happening. Post-apocalyptic. That’s the look.”
She was sparkling again. She was sparkling like crazy. Usually, that meant a woman had had great sex the night before and was feeling powerful in her femininity. Which wasn’t something you should be thinking about your hostess, but Harlan couldn’t help it. He noticed stuff. It was his gift. Or his curse.