Song of Oestend (7 page)

“Sure, boss,” Garrett said.

The moment he was gone, Deacon turned on Aren. He grabbed his arm so hard that

Aren yelped a bit. “What the hell’s your problem?” Deacon asked.

Aren felt his cheeks turning red again, but now that he was alone with Deacon, there

was no reason not to tell him. “I don’t want you sending Sawyer and Frances off alone together.”

Deacon’s grip on his arm loosened and some of the anger left his face. “I can’t protect him all the time,” he said. “He’s got to learn to handle a bit of bullying.”

“It’s more than bullying,” Aren said, looking into Deacon’s eyes, willing him to

understand.

“You’re saying he takes advantage of the boy?”

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It annoyed Aren. Deacon made it sound as if what was being done was no worse than if

Sawyer cheated Frances out of his wages at cards, or bullied him into shining his boots. “If by

‘takes advantage of’ you mean ‘rapes’, then yes,” he snapped.

“You know this after spending one night here?”

“Frances told me. He warned me so I’d know not to let Sawyer do the same to me.”

Deacon sighed in frustration, but he let Aren go. “Sawyer came to me before I left for town. Told me he wanted to help the boy toughen up. I thought he wanted to help.”

“Help himself, maybe.”

“Shit!” Deacon swore, turning away. “I actually believed that son of a bitch, too.” He shook his head, pushing his hat up to rub his forehead. “Means I’m slipping.”

He actually cared. Aren was surprised to realise that.

“Hey, boss,” Garrett called, as he came jogging back from the barn with a burlap sack over his shoulder. “You ready to go?”

Deacon sighed again. He looked exhausted, but by the time he’d turned to face Garrett, he seemed to have regained every ounce of his composure. “Change of plans,” he said. “Run down the new kid. Take him with you instead.”

“Frances?” Garrett asked with obvious distaste. “He won’t even know what to look

for.”

“I know it,” Deacon said. “But guess he’s got to learn some time.”

Garrett seemed to consider for a second before shrugging good-naturedly. “Sure thing.”

“Tell Sawyer I’ll be along shortly to help him string the wire.”

“Got it.” He started to turn away, but Deacon stopped him.

“Garrett?”

“Yeah, boss?”

“You and Simon keep an eye on the kid, will you?”

“You think he’s trouble?” Garrett asked in confusion.

“Saints, no, but somebody else may be making trouble for him. And I don’t mean you

got to be the kid’s best friend, neither. But watch Sawyer, and make sure he ain’t going to any great lengths to get the kid alone. You know what I mean.”

Aren watched as understanding slowly appeared on Garrett’s face. He nodded.

“There’s always one,” he said. “We’ll take care of it.”

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He turned and left Aren and Deacon standing alone. “Simon and Garrett are good

men,” Deacon said. “They’ll know what to do.”

“Thank you,” Aren said.

“I’m glad you told me.” Deacon turned to Aren with an expression that was part

amusement, but part warning. “You got any other problems with the way I run this ranch, you best learn to tell me in private. You question me in front of my men again, I’ll knock your ass in the dirt so fast you won’t know which way is up. We clear?”

The thought of being on the receiving end of one of Deacon’s punches was enough to

make his heart pound. Aren had to try twice to make his voice work. “Clear.”

“Good,” Deacon said. “See you at supper.”

The subsequent nights in the barracks were the same as the first had been. Men argued and drank and boasted until the wee hours of the morn. They teased and mocked and

harassed each other. They seemed to do their best to make each other miserable. Aren hated it. It reminded him too much of his years in boarding school. He found himself looking over his shoulder when he went to the latrine. He steeled himself for the night one of them would grope their way into his bed.

He wished more than anything that Jeremiah would allow him to stay in the main

house. He wished there was a way to convince him he wouldn’t roll with any of the wives.

More than once, he considered going to him and confessing just how little he liked women, but in the cool, wind-blown light of day, he always thought better of it. He had no idea how men with his particular sexual preference were viewed in Oestend. Back in Lanstead, men like him were frowned upon by the lower classes, but among the university crowd they were grudgingly accepted, albeit often ridiculed. His relationship with Professor Dean Birmingham hadn’t been much of a secret.

The first time Aren had heard the word ‘catamite’ whispered behind his back, he’d

nearly cried. Likewise the first time somebody had referred to him as a ‘kept boy’. But over the last four years, he’d grown used to the crude comments, especially with regards to his SONG OF OESTEND

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relationship with Professor Birmingham. He’d also come to accept the fact that ‘kept boy’

wasn’t actually so very far from the truth.

Yes, in Lanstead it had been possible to be somewhat open about his lifestyle. But here in Oestend, he had no idea if his proclivities would be accepted or not, so no matter how bad things in the barracks sometimes seemed, Aren did his best to bear it.

The nights might have been bad, but his days were his own. No matter how late they’d

been up or how much they’d had to drink, the morning bell called the ranch hands to work bright and early each morning. With the men gone, he had the barracks to himself, just as Jeremiah had predicted. First, Aren would eat breakfast with Deacon, then he would go back to his bunk. He would sit on his bed with Gordon’s ledgers spread out in front of him. As he sharpened his pencil with his penknife, he always wished he could spend the time drawing, but art would have to wait. He had work to do.

It took him the better part of four days to sort out what Gordon had done. The man had obviously been less than meticulous. There were notes scratched in margins where there should have been numbers written in columns. There were scribbles and lines crossed out and arrows pointing across pages. And to make things worse, every bit of it was written in the sloppiest penmanship Aren had ever seen.

But Aren persisted.

By noon on the fifth day, he’d finally sorted them out as well as he could hope. He was reasonably sure he knew what went where and how much money was held in reserve. He found the ledger book that had the most blank pages left. He ripped the used pages out of it, and he started anew.

When he was done, he sat back to examine his work. His back and neck hurt from

bending over the books. His eyes were tired from squinting at the print in the low light of the barracks. His hand was cramped from holding the pencil for so long. But when he looked at what he had accomplished, he felt proud.

He put down his pencil with a smile. It was a bit like art, after all.

He wandered outside into the bright, warm sunlight. The wind was blowing as it

usually did, making a song in the grass and the branches of the trees. In the yard on the far side of the house, two of the wives were hanging out laundry to dry. He knew their names, although not which of them was which. Deacon had pointed out Jeremiah’s sons to him— SONG OF OESTEND

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Jay, the youngest, who was friendly enough, but seldom spoke; Brighton, the middle child, who lived up to his name, smiling and laughing more often than not; and Dante, the oldest, whose eyes were angry and temper quick. He seemed to suspect that every man on the ranch was rolling with his wife. Aren didn’t know if his suspicions were grounded in reality or not, but he did his best to steer clear of him.

There were a few kids, too. All boys. Two belonged to Brighton, and two were Jay’s.

Aren didn’t know which were which. He knew none of their names. None of them was older than eight. Aren saw them in the mornings as they went about their chores and in the evenings as they ran playing in the fields. But other than that, he ignored them.

“You’re outside!” Deacon called from the side yard, where he was chopping wood. “I

was starting to think you were afraid of sunlight.”

Aren was growing used to Deacon. They ate breakfast and dinner—or ‘supper’—

together every single day. Other than that, he’d barely seen the man, but those few hours had been enough to teach Aren not to rise to Deacon’s teasing. “I’ve been working on the accounts,” Aren told him as he drew closer.

“Forgot to tell you this morning that Brighton and Garrett are heading into town in a few days. You want to go with them?”

There was a bench against the side of the barn and Aren sat down on it to watch

Deacon work. “Why would I?” he asked.

Deacon stopped his axe mid-swing and looked at him surprise. “Got to stop at the

McAllen ranch on the way there and again on the way home. Every hand here’s begging me to let them go.”

Women. That’s what he was referring to. “No, thanks,” Aren said.

Deacon shrugged and swung his axe back into motion. “Suit yourself. You got anything

you need from town, let one of them know.”

Was there anything he needed? Other than a place to sleep that wasn’t in the barracks, Aren couldn’t think of anything.

“Tell me about the money,” Deacon said as he chopped through another log. “Is there

enough income to hire a tenth man?”

“Yes,” Aren said. Although he knew it was wrong, he couldn’t help but admire

Deacon’s body as he watched him work. The man was huge and appeared to be made of

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solid muscle. Aren counted it as both a blessing and a curse that Deacon had his shirt on. “Is that what you need?”

Deacon somehow managed to shrug as he swung the axe back around. He wasn’t even

winded, although Aren knew he would have been out of breath if he’d been the one

chopping wood. “Need a lot of things. Tenth man, new baler, another bull.”

“Another bull? If you needed a bull, why did you castrate that other one?”

“No good,” Deacon said, tossing the split wood into a pile and starting on a new log.

“Genetics. Got to mix up the blood. Traded one with the Austins a few months ago, but he came down with the froth. Had to be put down.”

“The Austins live north of here?”

Deacon stopped swinging his axe long enough to point at a battered wagon trail that

climbed the hill to the north. “Up there. Two days from here.”

“Why so far away?”

“Bad land between here and there. Rock and clay. Can’t grow nothing on it.”

“If it takes two days to get there, how do you stay safe from the wraiths on the way?”

“There’s a shack at the halfway mark,” Deacon said. “Small generator.”

“So you swapped bulls with them, but the one he gave you was sick?”

“Not like Zed cheated us or nothing. No way he could’ve known. But yeah, it got sick a few weeks later. Got a few cows fat with him, but then he started swaying like they do, swinging his head. ‘Course that don’t always mean the froth, but you got to isolate them, keep your eye on them. Day or two later, they turn mean. They’ll bust their way right out of the barn if you let them. Ram anything they see—horses, other cows, men.”

“So what do you do?”

“Have to put them down.” Deacon stopped chopping wood to look at Aren. “You ever

shot a gun?”

“No.”

“You ever seen one?”

“In a store once.”

“But have you seen one used?”

“No.”

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“Not as useful as you probably think. Not accurate at all. Saw a guy try to shoot a bull once and hit his own brother instead.” He shook his head. “Even if you hit the damn thing, if you’re too far off, you’re likely to just piss it off more.”

“So what do you do?”

“Got to surround it. Lasso it without being gored. Rope its legs and head, pull it down to the ground. Once it’s secure, someone’s got to get right up next to the blessed thing.” He touched his temple with the tips of his first two fingers. “Got to put the barrel right against its head.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“Yup.” Deacon picked up his axe again and went back to chopping. “Seen men killed

more than once.”

“So you need a new hand, a new bull, a new baler…” Aren thought about the books

and how much money he thought they had. “Anything else?”

“Sure wouldn’t mind a damn bottle of whisky.”

Aren laughed. “Well,
that
I think we can afford.”

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The next day, after breakfast, Aren found himself with a whole day of free time. For the first time since arriving in Oestend, he took out his sketchpad and the leather bundle that held his penknife and pencils. He tucked them under his arm and walked out of the barracks, into the courtyard. Now that he actually had time to devote to drawing, he realised that outside the courtyard, he didn’t know his way around the ranch. He had no idea where to go. He looked around. Nobody was in the courtyard except the kids and some dogs. His eyes landed on the abandoned house.

The house seemed to call to him. It sat away from the hustle of the courtyard, on top of a small hill, its windows dark. It looked forlorn.

Aren climbed the gentle slope to the bottom of the porch steps. The steps themselves

were grey and sagging in the middle. The entire structure was in need of paint. Still, Aren imagined it was lonely.

He climbed the steps. The front door had a long, narrow window next to it, and Aren

peered inside. The glass was thick and cloudy, but he could see a narrow entryway. There was a doorway on the left and a staircase against the wall on the right, and between them, a corridor leading towards the back of the house. There was one other window on the front of the house, and Aren peeked into it as well. It showed him a room with a bare wooden floor and one wall taken up by a large fireplace. There appeared to be furniture in the room, too, hidden under tattered horse blankets and dusty sheets.