Love, Like Water (8 page)

“Ricky left for home about quarter hour ago.”

“Well, then, if you’re concerned, best you go check out the small barn.” Tucker gave Eli a long glance. “Taking him under your wing, Eli?”

Eli felt himself flush. “He’s your nephew, you should be doing it.”

“Thought I was.” Tucker leaned back against the wall and folded his arms. “But I’m kind of thinking you like the boy. You spend enough time chatting him up.”

“He’s not a boy,” Eli pointed out. “He’s pretty close to my age. And I do like him.”

Tucker studied him with wise eyes. “I expect you do. He’ll be a good-looking man when he fills out some—always was a handsome boy.”

“Jesus, Tuck, I shoulda never come out to you.” Eli kicked the bale of hay next to Mary Sue’s stall. “What are you, some kinda matchmaker? First Jack Castellano, now Joshua. Couldn’t you have been an ordinary homophobe and canned my pink fairy ass?”

“So are you attracted to him?”

“It’s not… I don’t…. Damn it, Tucker! It ain’t like that. Okay. I like him. More’n that, I feel for him. He’s lost and kinda lonely, and it breaks my heart to see him like that. Make of that whatever you want.” Eli rubbed his head in distraction. “But I ain’t
thinking
about that right now. Jesus. He’s got way too much to deal with.”

“Well, I been reading, and they say that men think about sex every eight seconds, and gay men every five….”

“Holy fucking shit, Tuck!” Then he caught Tucker’s grin and shook his head. “Asshole.”

Tucker’s grin faded. “Seriously, though, son, I don’t like to see you setting yourself up for a fall, Elian. Even if Josh is queer, which I ain’t never heard nothing about, he’s got a lot of baggage he’s carrying around with him. The little Hannah was able to tell me was that he was pretty deep undercover with some Latino or Hispanic or whatever they call themselves these days, gang, and you know those guys
sweat
macho. Now, I don’t know anything about your gay dar”—he pronounced it as two separate words—“but I’m thinking he couldn’ta been gay in that kinda crowd. Which tells me, if he
is
queer, then he hid it so well I’m kinda wondering if he even knows it anymore.”

Eli kicked the bale of hay again, then sat down on it with a thump. “Since when you got delusions of being a shrink? Most men your age and your place in life wouldn’t tolerate me, let alone their own kin, being gay. Let alone act like it’s okay.”

Tucker snorted. “Come on, Eli, I ain’t a dick like that and you know it. Never thumped a Bible in my life, and I could give a shit who you’re screwing when you head off to Albuquerque for the weekend. But you can’t stop me from being concerned about you—you ain’t just my foreman, you’re my friend too, and the son I never had.”

“I thought Jesse was the son you never had.”

“He’s my younger son. Man’s entitled to more than one son, ain’t he? For that matter, Josh is my son too, now that he’s here. So if you thought about getting with him I’d have to think of it kinda like incest.” He grinned and ducked Eli’s mock blow. “Seriously, though, I don’t give a rat’s ass what you’re inta, but Josh is fragile, son.”

“Well, shit,” Eli said, “and here I was just about to go find him and bend him over a hay bale. Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, Tucker,
I
know he’s fragile! I may be gay, but I ain’t
stupid
. And I wasn’t thinking of him that way at all.”
Liar
, his internal critic smirked.
Yeah,
he thought back at it,
but not now. Not ’til he’s well. And if he turns out to be gay, too. Which, as Tucker says, ain’t likely.
“I just am worried about the boy, is all. There’s a lot more going on with him than just recovering from some addiction or other. And shouldn’t he have some kind of counseling or something? And not just you,
Doctor
Chastain. I read that recovering addicts need to have regular counseling.”

“Hell if I know. I know he was in some kinda program for a few months.”

“And he still looks like shit,” Eli pointed out. “So much for the program. Yeah, maybe it got him clean, but he ain’t gonna stay clean if he don’t have some kind of help.”

“So help him,” Tuck snapped. “I haven’t got a clue what to do for the boy. You’re closer to his age. Mebbe he’ll listen to you.”

Eli shook his head. “I dunno, Tuck. I don’t know how to handle people—all I know is horses.”

“Then treat him like a goddamned horse.” Tuck threw up his hands. “If you can convince him to see a shrink in Albuquerque, then I’ll find him a goddamned shrink. If he don’t want to, can’t do much to change his mind. He’s a man grown—and a damn strong one to come through what he’s been through, little as I know about it. Can’t force him.” His voice lowered, and he shook his head. “I’m worried, Elian. If you can help him, talk to him….”

“‘Take him under my wing’?”

Tucker snorted. “That’s right, throw an old man’s words back in his face. Yeah. You do that. See if it works. Hell, at this point, he probably needs a friend more than anything else.”

“I’ve got no objections to being his friend, if he wants me to,” Elian said slowly. “I just ain’t sure he wants one right now.”

“Yeah, well, a horse fresh off the range don’t exactly want to be friends with you either, but you know they’re happier once they are,” Tuck pointed out.

“Can’t argue with that.” Eli stood up from the hay bale he’d been sitting on and slapped his Resistol against his thigh and butt to dislodge the straw that stuck there. “Guess I’ll be in the small barn if you’re looking for me.”

Tucker grunted in response and picked up Mary Sue’s currycomb.

Dismissed. Eli grinned and headed outside, to cross the yard to the small barn. It was an older building than the big stables and pole barns that housed the rest of the stock and the farm equipment. The lower half was quarried stone; the upper, weathered gray timber. From what he figured, it was probably the first of the barns built on the ranch, the one that was built with the house back in the 1920s. This barn was strictly working class. If it had ever had paint, it had faded to a featureless gray, but for all that, it had its own sort of dignity. And it was built like a brick shithouse, solid as a rock.

The doors were open, but inside it was shaded and, despite the diffused sunlight that streaked through the open doors in the loft, about twenty degrees cooler than outside. And quiet: Eli could hear the mumbling sound of mourning doves in the eaves and the steady crunch of five neglected horses eating. Four of them were in plain stalls, but he walked down the aisle to the fifth, placed in a loose box big enough for the oversized kennel crate they’d fixed up for the cat. Leaning on the top of the door, he looked in.

Josh was there, sitting in the hay against the stall wall where the kennel was, his long legs stretched out in front of him, his fingers curled into the wire of the crate. The cat lay against the side of the crate, his head under Josh’s still fingers. The bay nosed at the hay under Josh’s legs, but Josh didn’t move.

Eli watched him sleep. The tight lines of strain had eased from his face, leaving it softer and him looking younger than he had before, closer to his twenty-eight years. His face looked thin, rather than gaunt. A few days of rest, fresh air, and Sarafina’s cooking had taken the sickly yellow cast out of his skin, though it would be a while before he gained back the missing weight. But that was all right—it would happen, and right now, it was probably more important that Josh start to feel comfortable where he was.

He couldn’t think of him as “Joshua,” though Tuck had said he preferred it—it was pretty clear, even to someone as unsophisticated as himself, that insisting on his full name was just Josh putting up another barrier. That calling him “Josh” might lead to things like, oh, conversation. Shared jokes. The occasional smile. And maybe something horrible like friendship. Not for the first time, Eli wondered what exactly had been done to this poor damaged creature to make him so wary.

Horses were easy. If they’d been beaten, they showed scars, they shied away from the touch of a hand or the sight of a crop. He’d even known one that went berserk when they tried to sweep the stable. Those cues were easy to read. The problems weren’t easy to fix, but once they had an idea of what they were dealing with, they knew what they had to do. People, now? People were funny. They were smart, and peculiar. So knowing what would set someone off wasn’t easy to pinpoint.

Take his old man, God rest his soul, because someone had to. He was usually pretty levelheaded, unless something triggered one of his rare drunks. He hadn’t been a mean drunk, but Eli hated it when he drank anyway. And he never could figure out what the triggers were. Maybe if he had, the old man would be alive today, instead of getting smeared across five hundred yards of Wyoming highway in the dead of winter.

The horse nudged the crate and the cat woke up, stretching. The movement pushed Joshua’s hand against the wire, and Joshua woke up. Eli watched it, watched the way he blinked in the stray sunbeam that had settled on his face, watched how he looked up at the grazing horse and smiled.

God, that smile—slow, a little uncertain as if he’d forgotten how to do it. It put a dimple in one cheek that Eli suspected would still be there when he got the weight back, and showed teeth even and white against the tan of his skin. Eli had thought that the boy might be passable-looking once he was recovered, but that smile made him realize that face was made to break hearts. He thought maybe his might be the first….

He must have moved or made a sound, because Josh’s head whipped around to stare at him, the smile vanished and all the tension flared back in his body. He could have wept to see it return. “Just me,” he said quietly. “Checking to see if you got et. Horses’ll eat meat if they’re hungry enough.”

Joshua’s eyes widened. “They will?”

Eli laughed. “Nah, I’m fooling with you. Sara says you don’t sleep so good—didja have a nice nap?”

“Pretty good,” Josh said distantly. He turned to look at the cat, which was standing up and doing that cat stretching thing with the arched back.

“How’s the cat doing?”

Joshua shrugged. “Bored and hates being in the cage.”

“Lucky you didn’t get bit. Cats are poisonous. Friend of mine nearly lost his arm from a cat bite.”

That startled a laugh out of Joshua. “They aren’t poisonous. They just have a lot of bacteria in their mouths. Some cats more than others. This one, given the way he’s been living, probably more.” He reached in and scratched the cat’s head. “But you’re not a biter, are you?”

“Good thing for you. So what do you think of Rory?”

“Rory?”

“The horse.” Eli gestured at the horse—an easy, nonthreatening wave of his fingers so the horse wouldn’t startle. It looked up in interest. “That’s his name. Tuck says it’s an old Gaelic name meaning ‘red’. Though he could tell me it’s an old Gaelic name for hockey puck and I’d believe him.”

“No, that would be ‘’nerfalon’,” Joshua said soberly.

“Would it?”

“No.” Again, that slow smile, this time directed at Eli. He felt his knees go weak. “It’s payback for the man-eating horse comment.”

“Smartass.” It was the only comment Eli could come up with; he thought maybe Joshua’s smile had fried his brain.

Slowly, carefully, he unhooked the latch to the box and came in. Rory raised his head and snuffled his shirt. Eli fed him a handful of mix from the bucket hanging outside the stall. Joshua sat in his corner and watched them.

When Rory was finished, Eli shoved his big head gently away. “You ate it all, you stupid horse,” he said in a soothing voice. In the same voice, he said to Joshua, “You can tell they were treated pretty well before the old man died. They each have their own tack, and it’s good quality. Turns out the old man had a son killed in Afghanistan that used to work the farm with him. I expect he just kinda lost the will to live after that.”

Joshua said nothing, just listened.

“The folks that shipped ’em here sent the tack along too. Needs some oiling—looks like it hasn’t been used for a while. But once these guys are a bit better, they’ll be happy to have their own gear again.” He glanced at Joshua, who was gazing at his knees, which he’d drawn up and wrapped his arms around. “Play your cards right, and I reckon Tucker might give you this boy all for your own. Once he’s fleshed out, he’ll be about the right size….”

“No.”

Eli raised an eyebrow, but didn’t answer. He just waited.

“I don’t want a horse.” He’d drawn his knees in tighter; he was so thin the bones seemed to go straight up and down. “I’m not going to have a horse. I don’t want it. I don’t want this cat, either.”

“Nobody offered you the cat,” Eli pointed out gently.

“Well, if they did, I don’t want it.” Joshua dragged in a long slow breath, then let it out again. “I’m here to work, that’s all. Uncle Tucker needs my help, I’ll give it to him. I don’t want anything else.”

Eli left off petting the horse and took the three steps to stand in front of Joshua. “If people want to give you things, son, you take ’em and say ‘thank you’. That’s the way people do it.”

“There’s always a cost,” Joshua replied shakily. “There’s always a snake in the woodpile. Nothing’s free. Tanstaafl.”

That sounded German to Eli. He frowned and scratched the back of his neck. “Sorry, I don’t know that word. I know
mach schnell
and
glasnost
and that’s about the extent of my German.”

The laugh that broke from Joshua this time was light and brittle. “It’s not German—and neither is
glasnost
—that’s Russian. ‘Tanstaafl’ is the acronym for ‘there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch’.”

Eli thought about it. Yeah, guess it was. “Well, maybe not. But there’s ways and ways of paying up, son.”

“I’m not your son.”

“Nope.” He reached his gloved hand down. “Come on. It’s nearabouts supper time and you need to wash up after spending your afternoon sleeping with that beast.”

“Which, the cat or the horse?”

“Take your pick.” Eli waited.

Finally, Joshua reached up and put his hand in Eli’s. Careful not to squeeze the bones too hard, Eli hauled him to his feet.