The Ogallala Road: A Memoir of Love and Reckoning (20 page)

“Oka-ay. How was yours?” he said, daring me to say more.

Ward peered through the car’s back window. “What’ve you got there?”

“Oh man, wait till you see.” Jake opened the door and took out the gun. He flipped it past our chins without obeying the barrel-down rule.

Ward accepted the gun from Jake and turned it in one hand, examining it. He pulled back and returned the bolt, nodded, put the stock to his shoulder, aimed at the weather vane on the barn, pulled the trigger. The gun clicked. Had this been his tactful way of determining that it was empty? Again with one hand and in one smooth motion, he circled the gun in an arc away from us and back to the ground. He gave the rifle to its owner. “Now that’s a work of art, Jake. They don’t make ’em like that anymore. Must be worth a thousand dollars.”

“No kidding?” Jake said.

“Really?” I said. I’d recognized only the rifle’s sentimental value. It had been the first gun I’d shot. When I was ten, Dad had set up cans
along the pit silo and beamed his gold-toothed smile over every one I hit. It had also been the gun he’d used to kill the jackrabbit when I was six, before I understood what hunting was. Sent to fetch the rabbit, I’d carried it next to my chest like it was a kitten, the blood dripping down my shirt. I hadn’t gone in for hunting much after that.

“Want to shoot it?” Ward asked.

“Could we?”

Ward grabbed his own rifle from the mud porch, where a shotgun also leaned openly in the corner.

I watched the tail end of the flatbed pickup containing my men disappear down the road, then went upstairs, where I could keep watch for their return from the high windows. Sitting in the big armchair that Ward and I liked to snuggle in before bed, I tried to read the book I’d brought about the Sand Creek Massacre, which had taken place only about fifty miles the other side of the Colorado border. It was much better known than the massacre that had happened at Cheyenne Hole because many more Indians had been killed—137 Arapaho and Cheyenne. “The worst blow ever struck at any tribe in the whole plains region,” according to George Bent, the half-white, half-Cheyenne author, who had been wounded in the book’s attack. “And this blow fell upon friendly Indians.” But I couldn’t concentrate. I got up, wandered through the upstairs, then the downstairs, then went outside and talked to the horses.

Back inside, I lay down on the couch. Ward and I had been up late, making love after Diane had gone to bed, and we’d gotten up early. I really did need a nap, but when I closed my eyes, the house seemed to hold its breath, waiting with me the way it must have waited with Ward’s aunt for the return of her men. I thought of all the blood that had been spilled and all the wrong done winning the land for us. I thought of the rabbit’s blood, which had stained my shirt when I was six. What did I want Jake to learn by owning a rifle? What was I trying to share with him exactly?

Farm boys hunted with their fathers while still in diapers. His grandfather would have taught Jake to shoot if I had raised him on the
farm. The heritage was male. I had no way to hand it to him. I was just a mom who didn’t share the interest and was always worrying and was therefore not to be taken seriously. Now Ward was out there, sharing in the joy of the sport and lending weight to the rules I’d tried to impart. I loved that this was happening.

But the house was lonely. I didn’t much like the feel of it without Ward there. I remembered how lonely I’d been during Jake’s toddlerhood, when the only invitation I received, other than for dinners in town with Mom and Dad, had been to that one Tupperware party.

If I moved here, would Ward’s many connections extend to me? How about to Jake? Would he want to learn to ride and rope? He was, after all, the son of a cowboy. Would he grab at the chance as if it were his birthright?

•   •   •

I
WAS IN THE KITCHEN LOOKING THROUGH
the pitiful contents of Ward’s refrigerator when they burst in. Only an hour had passed since they’d left, but it had felt like five. I could smell the outdoors on their jackets, even Jake’s black leather one, which he’d painted in psychedelic swirls. The tobacco odor it normally harbored had dissipated in the crisp air.

“How’d it go?” I asked.

“Great!” Jake said.

“Great for you,” Ward said with mock resentment. “You whupped my ass!”

“We slid rocks across the ice,” Jake said.

“And shot them on the go?” I asked, incredulous.

“Yes! You should have been there, Mom.”

One morning with Ward, and my son had a new, positive self-image to turn over in his memory for years to come—hitting the rocks adeptly with his grandfather’s rifle, the bullets’ impact deflecting them into the yellow grass on the bank.

That night we ate in Colby, the nearest “big” town, then went to see
The Fellowship of the Ring
, the first of the movies based on the Tolkien trilogy. What were supposed to be thrills only bored me. Ward,
whose life in nature granted him immunity to special effects, said that he thought the movie had been “all Tabasco, no meat.” But as we walked to the car, we pretended to be as wowed by the film as Jake had been.

“Mom, do you think we could stop at a store?” Jake asked as we pulled out of the multiplex lot. Even a Kansas town of four thousand had a multiplex. “I need to get a pack of smokes.”

As much as I hated his smoking, I remembered what that addiction was like. It would be terrible going through withdrawal while trying to cope with this new situation. “Okay,” I said.

Ward pulled up to the curb outside Walmart’s fluorescence. “I’m sorry, Mom,” Jake said. “But can you get them for me? I can’t buy them here myself.”

It was wrong, but what could I do? I went in and bought his brand, Marlboros. “Here you go,” I said, getting back into the car. “I can’t believe I’m doing this, though. Feeding your addiction.”

Ward flicked my thigh. “Cut it out,” he said.

My ego bounced off those words like a pinball hit by a flipper. The only man who had ever dared command me in such a way had been Jake’s dad, and it hadn’t gone down well then. I wanted to call Ward on it but not with Jake sitting in the backseat.

Later, lying awake in Ward’s darkened bedroom, I said, “Diane says you’re a keeper.”

“She
does
?” he said, obviously pleased.

“Yes. And I know you are, but it was kind of shocking when you told me to cut it out tonight.”

“I didn’t mean to insult you, but give the kid a break. I might not have bought him the cigarettes, but I figured either buy ’em or don’t.”

Wouldn’t it be nice, I thought, to be that certain? To always know what was right and wrong. And to make decisions with such simple clarity. This trait struck me as distinctly western, and distinctly male, part of what Jake had been missing out on all those years. And what amazed me even more—Ward seemed to be investing himself already.
He was taking a parental role. This seemed worth the trade. I would take a little high handedness from a man, especially one I was this attracted to, if it meant my son would have a father.

The next morning, while Jake was still sleeping, Ward and I left him a note and went into town to get groceries. The plan was to take him horseback riding after lunch, but when we returned, my car was gone. Apparently, he’d gone back to his grandma’s. I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t disappointed.

“All in good time, sweetheart. Let him make his own choices.”

It sounded so easy when Ward said it. A few days later I asked Jake if he liked Ward. He said, “Ward and I’ll get close when you guys get married.”

I wouldn’t have exposed him to Ward unless I thought we were headed in that direction, but given what he’d been through, Jake’s choice was wise.

2

M
Y TOWN WOULDN’T HAVE INTERESTED
W
ARD IF IT HAD BEEN
L
INCOLN,
N
EBRASKA, OR
L
AWRENCE,
K
ANSAS, OR ANY OTHER MIDWESTERN UNIVERSITY TOWN.
But Laramie had the advantage of being a cowpuncher’s paradise. He had fond memories of trips he’d taken with buddies through the area. “We were rougher and readier then, and oh brother, the good times we had at the bar!” That would have been the Buckhorn, we determined, a morbid Noah’s ark of a saloon, its walls hung with the stuffed heads of every type of mammal that had ever hopped, loped, or padded through the Rocky Mountains. The mirror over the back bar at the Buck had reflected the faces of Calamity Jane and Buffalo Bill, and still sported a bullet hole left by some anonymous rowdy.

Ward practically salivated over the silver bits and spurs at the western antique store. Unwilling to let go of so much cash, he bought
only an old Wyoming license plate embossed with the state’s logo, a bronc-riding cowboy. But in the used-book stores, he picked up treasures on Butch Cassidy, Tom Horn, Charles Russell, and famous quarter horses.

Evenings during his visits we cooked together and marveled at our inability to sit through a meal without getting up to hug. When Jake brought his band friends over to practice in the basement, Ward descended with me into the din. Sitting on an upturned bucket, he extended his approval of Jake even to his punk-rock drumming.

On his third visit, I invited some friends over for a game of dictionary. Ward noticed that my tiny living room wouldn’t seat everyone, so he brought two chairs in from the dining room. I relished seeing him play host in my home. We sat side by side in the straight-backed chairs he’d brought in. He looked relaxed, the ankle of one leg resting on the knee of the other, his soft roughout loafers undercutting the formality of his crisp blue Wranglers, pin-striped shirt, close shave, cologne, and recently clipped hair.

In the game, players attempted to dupe others into believing their made-up definitions of real but obscure words. While Ward leafed through the dictionary, searching for his word, my swimming buddy, Jonas, indicated him with his eyes and held up ten fingers.

I gave him a
really?
look.

Jonas nodded, his face alight with mimed lust. A few years ago a young man named Matthew Shepard had been savagely murdered in this town—the tragedy that had become a rallying ground for making attacks on gay men and boys hate crimes. Yet here sat Jonas, unselfconsciously gay as could be. Laramie was a university town. “Conservative and bigoted” didn’t sum it up any more than “flat and farmed” summed up Kansas.

“I can’t wait until this summer,” Jonas said to Ward. “Julene and I will take you
swimmin’
.”

Ward looked at us over his reading glasses, which he wore studiously low on his nose. “Oh no you won’t. I wouldn’t jump into one of those alpine ice tanks for a million bucks.”

“Why not?” Jonas said. “You’ll like it. Right, Julene?” His impish laugh reminded me of Tommy Smothers.

I said, “Wait until you see Lake Hattie, Ward. The water is magical.” I knew he could not fail to be amazed by it. At seven thousand feet above sea level, Hattie reflected the sky, sun, and weather. Her colors shifted at the touch of wind or shadow. She was predominantly turquoise. But when clouds passed over, ultramarine patches advanced across the surface. And when I swam, always with my eyes open, the water was the color of jade underneath. In the crystalline air at that altitude, snowy peaks thirty miles distant seemed to loom directly over me. All of my senses thrilled to be surrounded by the earth’s most ubiquitous elements—sky and bare green hills and clear green water.

Most people found Wyoming lakes too cold for swimming, but Jonas and I shared secret knowledge. After the initial shock, our bodies adapted to the cold, and the water exhilarated us. Everyone else stood on shore hot and miserable, their fishing poles stuck out over the water. It never occurred to them to take off their clothes and jump in.

“You’ll see,” Jonas said. “It’s easy.” In an explanatory, self-deluding tone, he told Ward how he entered the water. “First I put my toe in. Then I walk a little ways. Then I stop awhile.”

“Then you sing your song,” I said, unable to contain my laughter.

Jonas nodded and held his hands palm down at his waist. “When the water gets up to here, I sing my song.
Mannee, manno, mannaa
.” He’d entertained me with the song often, his voice getting higher in pitch and more frantic the farther in he waded.

•   •   •

“
E
VERYONE LIKED YOU SO MUCH,”
I
SAID
as Ward and I were getting ready for bed. He’d won the game that evening, bluffing us all with perfect imitations of dictionary language.

“And I liked them,” he said. He laid his jeans on the arm of my pink wingback chair and turned back the bedcovers.

I got in beside him. “How about Jonas? Did you like him?” Ward
had told me once that he didn’t believe homosexuality was natural, but he wasn’t going to judge anyone for it. And that’s not judging? I’d thought.

“Especially Jonas. What a comedian!”

“Isn’t he?” Relieved I wouldn’t be fighting any political battles tonight, I wriggled closer.

“But you know,” Ward said. “I feel sorry for him.”

“Sorry?” I tried to keep my tone light. “Why?”

“It’s clear to me that there’s nothing he can do about it. He can’t help how he is.”

I responded carefully. “Can’t help that he’s gay, you mean?”

Ward nodded.

“You don’t have to feel sorry for him,” I said. “Jonas doesn’t feel sorry for himself.”

“Really?” Ward sounded surprised. “You don’t think he does?”

“I’m certain he doesn’t.”

“That relieves me, because he’s such a good person.”

His receptivity to my ideas and insights amazed me sometimes. I felt as if I were a space probe that had self-launched from Kansas in the late sixties and had returned, bringing news of the universe—to a receptive audience for a change.

Ward was proving far more adaptable than I’d imagined possible. But this didn’t diminish my surprise when, over the phone, he began talking about moving to Laramie. “It’s the only practical solution,” he said. He didn’t see his ranch as an option for us. “Who would you talk to here in Plum Springs? All you’d have would be me and your computer.”

He actually preferred my friends to his own in some ways. “In Laramie, people talk about ideas. At home, they talk about things. It’s always bored me. I just never realized I had any options.” Now he saw his way into another life. Wyoming would be good for both his horse-breeding and livestock-supply businesses. Instead of a spare mix of farmers and ranchers, hundreds of cowboys would be potential buyers of not only the bloodlines he was developing but also the roping horses
he trained. So yes. He would move to Laramie because “I can and it is what you deserve.”

I feared that taking Ward out of Kansas would be like trying to transplant the huge cottonwood tree we’d met beside. The roots were too formidable. All sorts of heavy equipment would be required, and when you were done, all you’d have would be a dead tree.

I wasn’t even sure I would want a transplanted Ward. I didn’t voice this reservation because the thought of leaving my beautiful house, the mountains, and my wilderness-loving friends frightened me. At the same time, I secretly considered the possibility. Ever since I’d met Ward, an irresistible compulsion had been rising in me. It contained the same mixture of fear and desire I felt when standing at the edge of Hattie each June, about to take my first swim of the summer.

I applied reason, although reason had nothing to do with it. In Kansas, Ward was well connected with every horse fanatic in a hundred-mile radius. His friendships would give me access to people I hadn’t had as a single mother. There would be neighborhood gatherings, like the card parties my parents used to attend when we lived on the farm. Jake would have horses to ride and guns to shoot. He would have instruction from a man who was at one with his land, not some uprooted caricature of himself.

Just as Ward liked some things about Laramie better than home, there were some things about Kansas that I liked better. I would soak up the quiet especially. I loved the air. Western Kansas air had a lofty aridity to it. Sun and air and silence mingled on the plains so that the qualities were inseparable. They blended with that particular ethereal-blue sky that the land yearned toward whether it had been farmed or not. Throw in the native grass on Ward’s place, and I would be home.

All I had to do was sing my song and accept the immersion gradually. Pretty soon Kansas would be my element again. And I would be loving it.
Mannee, manno, mannaa
.