Nowhere Ranch (19 page)

But the adoption thing had hiccups too. Haley was dead-set that it had to be just the right family, and she didn't like any of them she saw in the files. I wondered privately if any of them were my brother and his wife. I mean, what the hell were the odds, but it made me think. Just seemed so weird, that my brother was aching for a baby, that Mom wanted a granddaughter, and here was Haley looking for a good home for her baby girl.

It bothered me that my family wasn't a good home. It bothered me even more that Haley was right. They really weren't. And admitting that made me feel hollow and sad and confused.

So everybody tried to do their best to give Haley a break, to let her snap and crab and sometimes cry, and so it seemed like probably we should let her try to redecorate Travis's house. To a point it was practical. We were sleeping in piles—Travis and I had his bed, Haley and her mom had the spare, and the three hands and Haley's brother had the empty rooms. They'd dragged my bed down and over from the apartment after a few days of sleeping on the floor and taking turns on the couch, and eventually somebody went in to town and got an air mattress. We'd go a week without power, we'd get it back for two days, and then another storm would take it out for three weeks. It was on the national news, it was so bad. Stores in town were open some, and they got their power back, but there had never been a rural outage quite like this. Livestock were dying left and right. All of us were scared to death some fool ewe would decide this would be a fine time to go into labor and really show us the meaning of hell.

There wasn't much for it though but shore up and wait and hope. We could use something to do, and we could use better decor and somewhere to sleep. And after Travis's expensive shit, where did it all come from now? Walmart. The barn. My apartment. The Parrish house. Some of it came from the hands’ places and even some from Goodwill. Why the hell we were fucking around decorating nobody knew, but Haley wanted it, so on we went. She painted too. We painted the bare white walls in paint Haley found here, there, and everywhere. Obviously we did the painting, but she gave the direction. You know, it kept our mind off things. And once there was actually some furniture and stuff on the walls, it was a little easier to sit there under blankets and pretend we weren't freezing our asses off. It all got just a tiny bit better. So maybe Haley wasn't so nuts after all.

In the kitchen Haley hung these brass-looking molds all around the rim above the cupboards. She did this cool stuff with old tack too. Wrapped horseshoes and leather leads and stuff that you would have thought was junk, like old cans and such, and yet when she was done it was pretty fucking amazing. The dining rooms and living rooms were the best. We had already set up card tables and lawn chairs in the dining room so we could eat, but Haley dragged decorations from her high school graduation over, and when she got done it looked like we were going to have a luau or something. She had those lights on a string, which I thought would be for show since we couldn't turn them on, but no, they had batteries. She cut out a palm tree from boxes and painted it too. Then there were the umbrellas: they looked like the kind you'd stick in a drink, but they were bigger. We ate by battery string light and candlelight in a fake Hawaiian getaway. It was actually kind of fun.

In the living room there was a funky braided rug in front of the fire with four chairs around it: one from the four seasons room, the recliner that had already been there, one from Salvation Army, and one from my apartment. The spare bedroom was Paul and Aaron's place now. Aaron was another one of the hands. They had brought over half their stuff outside of furniture, though they'd brought some of that too, small stuff to hold clothes and things, and they actually seemed like they kind of enjoyed being here. Once I heard them whispering that maybe this spring they could jockey for my apartment, since I wasn't using it. I will tell you I didn't care much for that, but I know I was being petty. I wasn't using it. And Travis was talking about expanding. He would do better to have hands on-site besides me.

And honestly, especially after Haley's gutting, there wasn't much left up there. I had already brought over my leather stuff because I worked it at night before bed. I played cards and carried on with everybody for a while, and then I went upstairs and braided until Travis came to bed. The idea of moving out for good made me nervous, but I supposed it was time to start thinking about it.

We were all so stressed out, and we so wanted our full electricity back, but the funny thing is, when it came on again, I was almost sad. For one day it was amazing and great. We filled the hot tub back up, turned on every light in the house, and I cooked like it was Christmas again. We watched TV, and one of the hands had a Wii, and we hooked it up and played it. It was actually kind of fun. I ended up later buying one myself. Felt like throwing money into the toilet, but maybe not, because I sure liked it. Bowling in my living room. What a world.

But after everyone had showered with as much hot water as they wanted and had eaten and relaxed, they went home. For somebody who worked hard not to have friends or engage in conversation, I had gotten awful attached to everybody being around all the time. I mean, here I could finally cook for people again, and now nobody was home.

I never said anything about feeling down, but Travis seemed to figure it out. He was extra tender those first few days. He never said a word about it, just noticed and gave me extra petting.

It was a long, hard winter. But it is still just about one of my favorite memories.

I mentioned that I had been braiding leather in bed. There's a story about that too.

Once I gave that leather bracelet to Haley, other people started to notice it, and when she told them I made it for her, they asked me about it. People I didn't know in town asked me about it. One woman tried to pay me to make her one. That upset me for a few days, because she didn't take “no” very well, and I started doing my shopping really early in the morning or asking Travis or Haley to pick things up for me so I didn't run into her.

Part of the problem is that I put extra into that bracelet. It looked too crude for Haley when I was done, so I undid it, and this time I wove some metal beads into it. Then it looked too heavy, so I undid it again. In the end I made it half as wide as I usually do, and I staggered the silver beads evenly around it. It was on brown leather, and in the end I worried it should have been black, but Haley said it was perfect and to stop fussing. And she really did wear it every day.

I gave the extras to her and asked if she knew somewhere someone would want them. Do you know what she did? She gave them to everybody! Her mom, her dad—Tory even wore his sometimes when he went into town. Her mom's was a necklace cord, and she put some pendant on it.

One guess as to who didn't get one and got uppity.

How was I supposed to know Travis would get bent out of shape? I just figured they were junk I made to keep my hands busy, but suddenly they were hot commodity. I didn't like it. I stopped letting anyone have them. Some I threw away. But it was already too late. Travis had seen them, Travis knew I made them, and now he saw me fussing with them when I went to bed. And he asked me about them.

“They're just these things I do with my hands,” I said. “They aren't anything really.”

“That one you made for Haley is very nice,” he'd said. “Everybody says so. And the others are nice too. Everybody who wears them gets comments about them.”

Meaning they weren't commenting about his, because he didn't have one.

Okay. So I got that they meant things to other people, and I got that Travis wanted one. But I couldn't just give him one of the pieces of garbage that I would have given to Goodwill. You saw how I fussed over Haley's. I wouldn't have even given it to her at all, except she hounded me. There was no way I was ever going to be able to make one good enough for Travis.

And I did try. I tried so many different things. I had been trying since the middle of December, thinking I would give him something for Christmas, but none of them worked, and anyway it seemed dumb the more I thought about it. By February I had a box full of things I'd tried to make for Travis and given up on. The best was a belt. I had thought he'd really like it, and I'd even looked it up on the Internet and bought one of somebody else's and tore it apart to see how to do it right. But when I was done it looked so crude, like a kid had made it. I put it away. I tried a bracelet, but the first one was too fat, the second too thin. I tried putting on little bits of metal on one. Not beads—I actually picked up little odd bobs and nuts and things from all over the ranch, thinking he'd like that Nowhere was in it. I really thought that one was going to work. But in the end it looked as dumb as everything else. I tried a circlet too, for his neck. I fashioned the NR brand out of wire and hung it from the center. Just as bad as everything else, that one was, and I gave up.

Well, sometimes I tried little things. But I stopped pretending I was going to give them to him.

And then there was the weekend Travis found the box.

We'd been busy all week gearing up for lambing. Nowhere does calving in the fall, which is smart for so many reasons, but the smartest is that in the spring we can focus on lambing and then shearing. There's all sorts of stuff about timing and nutrition, and Travis had caved finally, and we were vaccinating some and giving antibiotics. All this had been turned ass-over-teakettle with the storms and the outage, and so there was a lot to set to rights. But then that weekend we had it mostly together, and Travis declared we were going to have a quiet evening at home. Which for him was code that I would make us a nice dinner, he'd pour alcohol into me until I was really loose, and then we'd fuck like bunnies. Worked for me.

I made sirloin tips in gravy with some nice vegetables and bread and mashed potatoes with a little bit of sour cream and garlic in them. It was pretty good if I do say so. I was cutting into a blueberry pie and trying to decide about ice cream when Travis came into the kitchen. He was holding the box of the stuff I had made for him. He had it open.

He was really pissed off.

I was too. I put down the pie knife and stalked over, heart pounding, and I tried to take the box from him. “That ain't yours.”

He pulled it out of my reach. “Oh, isn't it?” He held up the bracelet with his initials woven in on beads, and I winced. He threw it back into the box. “What is this, Roe? And don't give me any shit about waiting for a special occasion. My birthday was in February. You gave me a bottle of wine and a blow job.”

I felt like he'd slapped me, except as soon as the hurt hit, guilt washed it over. Okay, so I'd given him a bad gift. I'd known that. “The stores were closed because of the storm.”

He rattled the box in my face. “Made all this between now and then, did you?”

“It's shit!” I shouted. My hands were shaking, and my stomach hurt so much I wanted to double over. “It's all crap, okay? I tried, but they all turned out shit. Just like everything else I do, all right?”

“There's nothing wrong with any of this. This is
better
than the one you made for Haley, and they're still talking about that in the Women's Circle that meets at the cafe.” He slammed the box on the counter and glared at me. “You put all that time into that for Haley, and she wears it everywhere—you gave one to everyone but me, and everybody knows it. It's great gossip. ‘Oh, they're living together, and they're both gay, pretty sure of that, but it must not be serious.’ They're saying that. They really are.”

“Because I didn't give you some stupid leather braided piece of shit?” I shot back.

“Because you treat me like your boss and your fuck buddy!” he shouted.

“Well, you are!”

The words, bellowed from my gut, hung like cannonballs in the air. Or bombs, maybe. When we let them land, they were going to explode.

Except Travis spoke so softly it cut under my shouting, and his words made mine turn to dust. “That all I am, Roe?”

I got mad. I got so mad, but I couldn't let it out, which just made me madder. All he was! He really thought that, did he? He figured I moved in—practically—with just anybody? With anybody I fucked? Had he missed the part where I said I really didn't fuck anybody twice? Had he slept through my telling him about my family and why I was out here instead of back home? Had he not been paying any fucking attention to anything I did in the now-almost-year I'd been here?

I was confused. I was scared. I was nervous, afraid I had fucked this up, but I couldn't tell how. It felt like a bad fight, and worst of all, we weren't yelling. All of a sudden I was back in Algona, my Dad had those magazines in his hand, my mom was crying, and all I could think was that it was all going to end—again. I would lose Haley and the baby and Tory and the dogs and the damn sheep.

And Travis.

I shoved the box at him, chest tight and vision blurry. “Go on then!” I shoved it again. It was hard to breathe. I felt dizzy too. “Go on and take whatever the fuck you want! You want that garbage, you can have it! I never gave it to anybody else—they just took it or got it from Haley, and I only gave her the one because she wouldn't shut up! It's all crap too! All of it! Everything!” I picked up the pie, and I tossed the whole thing into the sink. “It's all shit! Shit, shit, shit, and if you want it, you can fucking have it, but when it's crap, I don't want to hear about it, because I told you that was what it was!”

My chest and stomach hurt so bad now that I knew I was in trouble, so I stormed out of the kitchen, and then because I knew there wasn't going to be anywhere I could get away from him inside, I kept going out the front door. No coat. I ain't an idiot, though. I grabbed my boots and stuffed my feet into them as I went down the steps.

But after that I had no plan. For a second I thought about heading to my apartment, but he'd come after me there. Or worse, he wouldn't. Anyway, there wasn't anything there hardly. Not even a scrap of leather.

Not that I would ever be able to work a fucking leather ever again.