Chapter 13
Bennett
I HADN’T PLANNED to take a road trip until after finals, but in our weekly calls—what I refer to as the ‘State of the Ranch’ calls—Doc mentioned they had a good chance of ice the following week. I remembered preparing for a hard freeze on the ranch since I’d done it many times. At the moment, they’d taken a break from fostering and the absence of extra hands made the burden close to impossible for one person to shoulder. So Friday morning, I hopped on a Greyhound bus and headed north.
“Boy, are you a sight for sore eyes.” Doc clapped me on the back before pulling me in for a hug. Displays of emotion were few and far between, but I know how worried they were after the attack. They’ve both been a lot more affectionate since I showed up on their doorstep six months ago.
“Good to see you too, old man.” And it was. It was so good to see a familiar face and a familiar place. What had been lush, green grass was now turning brown, as were the leaves on the oaks, while the setting sun created a patchwork of golden light for miles. Fall at the ranch was something out of a dream. Maybe because when I first arrived, it had been fall and even my angsty teen self could appreciate beauty in the wide-open space, along with the freedom that it symbolized.
My caseworker called the ranch my second chance. But when had I been given a first chance? My parents were still children themselves when I was born. I hadn’t been planned and they certainly didn’t let parenthood get in the way of their sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll lifestyle. I spent many a night listening to my coked-up dad beat on my mom mercilessly, only to hear them making up ten minutes later.
Being placed with Doc and Rosie meant I had been given a new normal. I finally had an opportunity to be a kid for the first time in my life, and once I exorcised my demons through blood, sweat, and tears on the ranch, I did just that.
We rode along in amiable silence, as we’d done for close to ten years. If I was a man of few words, Doc was a man of even fewer, but it had been exactly what I needed back then. And maybe now, too.
In the beginning, when I’d come to the ranch with a chip on my shoulder the size of the Titanic, Doc took one look at me and put me to work. We labored, side by side for hours, then days, not exchanging more than a handful of words. Then, one day the silence got to me and I started talking. I talked and I talked, and I talked some more. I ranted and raved. I screamed and I shouted. I swore, and I cried and soon enough, I’d gotten it all out, all while Doc just kept working, and gifting me the occasional nod to let me know he was, in fact, listening.
I asked him about it years later. I asked him why he stayed silent, while I blamed the universe, the world, my parents, and even him for all the problems in my life and I’ll never forget what he said.
“Silence was my gift to you. What you’d been through broke my heart and so did knowing I couldn’t change it. But I could listen. As a foster parent, there was very little I could do to fix the broken boy in front of me, but that boy didn’t need fixing. He needed healing. And he had the strength to heal deep inside of him the whole time. All he had to do was let the bad stuff out so good stuff could replace it.”
Of course, he was right. He always was. And from then on, when I needed to ‘let the bad stuff out,’ I asked Doc if we needed to ride the fence line. Sometimes he’d extend an invite if he thought something was troubling me. That was our code and I had a feeling we’d be checking a lot of fences the next few days.
“Bravo!” Rosie squealed as I snuck up behind her and swung her around the kitchen. She was losing weight. That worried me.
“Surprise.” Up on her bare toes, she threw her arms around my neck for a tight squeeze, then held me by the shoulders at arm’s length for inspection.
“You’re too skinny,” she chided, clicking her tongue. “You aren’t eating.” I started to shake my head, but thought better of it. She wanted the truth, but there was no way I’d tell her most of my money was here, invested in this house, this ranch. She’d murder me if she knew how little I kept to live on.
“Well, that’s why I’m here! Nothing compares to your cooking. Feed me woman, feed me!” Her stare held me in place, her face stone-cold sober. She didn’t buy it. But that was too bad. It was all she was getting.
“Why are you here, mijo?”
“Doc mentioned a hard freeze. Thought I’d help him get things ready.”
“Why are you really here?” She dropped her arms and I backed up until I was leaning against the butcher block island where I’d spent countless hours doing homework while Rosie fussed around the kitchen. “It’s that girl.”
Damn that woman and her Mexican voodoo.
“Mama, this again?” I turned to the sink and washed the travel nastiness off my hands. It also justified turning my back on Rosie. Her eyes had fangs that could sink right into my soul and suck out the truth without me even realizing it.
“You love her… “
I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths while I rinsed off the soap suds and dried my hands with a paper towel. Turning back around, I met those big, brown soul-searching eyes again. “Are you asking or telling?”
“Hmmm” is all she said. That usually translated into ‘I’m going to let you figure this one out, then you tell me.’
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, woman. What do you want from me?”
She’d been vigorously scrubbing an already immaculate countertop, but stopped at my words.
“La verdad.”
I ran my hands through my too long hair, applying pressure to my skull as I did. But my headache wasn’t in there, it was standing right in front of me, demanding I speak of things I had yet to even let myself think about.
“The truth? Okay, here’s the truth. I met a girl. She’s spoiled and narrow-minded, entitled and completely out of touch with reality. She’s a princess.”
“And?” Dammit.
“And she reminds me what it feels like to have a heartbeat.”
It took half a day to check the electric waterers and move the hay closer to the feeding area. After a quick lunch of vegetable beef stew, I insulated the pipes on the house and the barn and tested the generator, while Doc checked the fence line in the grazing pasture. By three o’clock, not only was everything almost ready, but the cold front began shifting and it appeared it was all for naught. Still, the time spent working in the wide-open space, breathing in the crisp country air was better than any prescription for beating the blues.
“You know, she’s not asking you to wife up. She just doesn’t want you to be alone forever.” I’d been poking around the barn, looking for an excuse to stay out a little longer and ended up rearranging tack that was perfectly organized to begin with.
“She meddles,” was all I had to say about the matter. I was using the push broom to sweep up what looked to be a decade worth of dust from the tack room floor, dreading another round of The Third Degree with Rosie the Roper.
“She’s sick, Ben.”
The broomstick fell from my hands, but I never heard it hit the floor.
“It was a small lump, I had it removed. No big deal,” she said, as if she was telling us she had to stop at the post office on the way home.
“No, not a big deal.” My eyes rolled back into my head. I wasn’t a moron. “Is that why you have no kids right now?” I looked from Rosie to Doc, but his eyes deferred back to his wife. “Is it? Because you have cancer?”
“Had cancer, Bennett. Had. Past tense.” She stood and walked up the stairs, taking care that we heard every step she took until her bedroom door slammed. She seemed adamant, but I had my doubts.
“I’ve never seen her pissed off.” I said to no one in particular, looking in the direction she’d gone.
“She’s not pissed, Ben. She’s scared. The lump was removed right before you got home. She was treated with a chemotherapy that beat up on her white blood cell counts. She had to have blood booster shots after each treatment. Now, she’s on tamoxifen and her prognosis is good.”
“Wait. Before I got home? So, this summer, while I was home, Rosie was going through chemo?” He nodded.
“She didn’t want you to know. She didn’t want you to stay because of her. She wanted you to go to school and make a life for yourself.”
The silence cast a shadow of shame upon my heart.
“Well, I better go check on her. She goes to bed pretty early these days, so once I get her settled, I’ll come find you.” I nodded, only half hearing him.
I’d been home all summer. I’d been working the land, riding the fence lines. I’d been drinking and I’d been running.
The saying, ‘War changes people,’ is often misunderstood. Its literal value isn’t taken into account. War truly changes a person. It injects a blackness into their soul that changes who they are and what they will be forever. But that fall wasn’t too far for me.
We are the sum of our experiences. And my formative years were spent in a home with a sociopathic monster. One who used his discontent to rationalize a level of brutality and violence most grown men couldn’t stomach. His victim being a woman whose need to escape into her next fix burned like a fire in her soul.
During my time in the Middle East, my lack of empathy made me a brilliant soldier. I viewed the enemy as an infection threatening to spread if I didn’t step up and defend my country. The day Chance took his first life, he spent the night puking into a latrine. My first kill was that same night and I slept like a baby.
That alone sealed my fate. I would be career military, like my mentor, Commander Daniel Daniels. Some kids enlisted, did their time, went home, and had a wife and a child within a year. That wasn’t the life I was bred for. That desire for home and hearth was nonexistent for me. I was happiest on the battlefield. I belonged in the thick of it all. But that plan blew up in my face.
The plane ride home from Germany was my walk of shame. The US Army terminated our relationship with an, It’s not us, it’s you, and as a parting gift, offered a pity ride to Texas. So I arrived at the ranch to lick my wounds, and let alcohol replace food. When I no longer got drunk, I stopped drinking and I started trying to outrun invisible monsters, getting nowhere fast.
I unintentionally slept in Sunday morning. I had a bus to catch later that afternoon, but I had some things to say to Rosie and I was sure she had a few words for me as well.
“Ahh, he lives,” she chided, flipping bacon and whipping eggs at the same time, like she had four arms. Mussed and unshaven, in only some green plaid pajama pants from Gap, I lumbered down the stairs and plopped onto the barstool I had always considered my own.
“Coffee.” I dropped my head to the cool granite counter. I slept a good twelve hours and felt like I’d just competed in a triathlon. With the efficiency of a seasoned greasy spoon waitress, she whipped up a steaming mug of coffee within reach before I could doze back off. “Thanks,” I grumbled.
“You’re worried.” It was a statement, not a question. I sat up and took a sip, burning my tongue.
“Well, yeah, I’m worried.” I’m not a robot.
“Not about me though. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.” She believed it and I sort of did too. She was a tough old broad. I stood and hugged her from behind as she continued cooking.
“You’re all I have,” I whispered, choking up as the reality of losing her crashed into me like an asteroid to the chest.
“Bravo. Why?” She turned the burner off and the blue light under the skillet went dark. Then she turned to face me. “Why are you so against falling in love? Who is this girl, this princess?”
“She’s… she’s everything.”
“And?” The honest truth? Did she really want to hear that? Did I?
“And I am nothing.”
I’d gone and done the one thing I swore I’d never do.
I’d fallen for someone.