This Red Rock (4 page)

reached the point they did, because it doesn"t really matter—

even if it mattered to me at the time. Frank caught hold of

me later that evening, as I stumbled, tired and filthy, back

toward the house. Nobody had told me when things began

and ended around here, but the slow roll of people away

from the fields was like a tide, determined, strong, pulling

with it everyone who fell into its path. I, exhausted, let

This Red Rock |
Louise Blaydon

22

myself be pulled. Frank met me ten feet from the door, teeth

flashing white in a grin.

“Hey,
grissino
! I hear you"ve been working hard for Oro?”

Oh, man, did I want to work hard for Oro.

I shook away the flush of warmth that caught at my

spine at the sound of Oro"s name, and grinned. “Sure have.

Your stables have never been so clean.”

Christ, even the muscles of my face hurt when I spoke.

Everything hurt, from my aching shoulders right down to my

taut hamstrings. Even my hair
felt like it might be aching

slightly, and this was only my first day
.
If Oro did this for a

regular living, he had to be in
incredibly
good shape.

Frank, moving forward to meet me, was laughing. “I"m

glad to hear it! I"ll tell your mother. She"ll be relieved.” He

tipped me a wink and slipped his arm through mine, lending

me his solid support, if I wanted it. “I"ve put Oro in charge of

you,” he went on, as we entered the house by the kitchen

door and he gestured at my boots, an unmistakable
get ’em

gone.
“So you just do as he tells you, and you won"t go far

wrong. That okay?”

“Huh?” I was crouching, by this point; scraping dry dirt

off my shoelaces with a thumbnail, preparatory to

disentangling the damn things. And, more than that, I was

playing for time, really; trying to work out what would be the

most apt response, when what I wanted
to do was break out

in a grin and thank my uncle rapturously. I would have so

happily done anything at all
Oro told me to, was God"s own

truth—and not only because he was six feet of solid sex,

either. I"m no idiot, and no pushover, and I need to feel safe

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Louise Blaydon

23

before I"ll let anything go. There was something about Oro

that absolutely radiated trustworthiness; something in his

smile and his clean-cut face that told me he was good

people, and he could be relied upon. I would have done

anything Oro told me, in any arena, because I trusted him

not to tell me wrong. Not something that usually happened

to me in quite so short a space of time, and not something I

could easily tell Frank, either. Nevertheless, once I"d shoved

off one boot, I managed to make an attempt.

“Absolutely a-okay, sir,” I said, smiling up at Frank as I

fumbled with my remaining boot. “I like Oro. He seems like

he knows what he"s talking about. And he"s patient, too, I

guess.”

“He"s a good kid,” Frank agreed, and I could tell by the

way his smile softened that he was pleased. I"d done well.

And I liked that. “So you just report to him, while you"re

here. I can see you"ll do fine.”

Later that night, when we"d eaten, Frank broke out a

pair of his own work boots and insisted that I try them on for

size while he watched. They were, more or less, perfect,

uncle and nephew matching up in this one particular, more

neatly than I"d expected. Frank was more pleased than he

should have been about this development, too. The smile he

smothered behind his palm was more than a little endearing,

and I can"t pretend that the gifting of his own boots wasn"t,

in and of itself. There was something undoubtedly symbolic

about it, when he could just as easily have dug me a pair out

of the supply closet where he kept things for ranch back-up

and emergencies. He didn"t want to give me something out of

storage. He wanted to give me something of his, something

he maybe would have given a son. I"d always known that I

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Louise Blaydon

24

was the closest thing Frank had to that, but it was only in

snatches—in moments like this—that I realized how much I

wanted to live up to that for him.

“Go sleep it out, Alex,” Frank said, clapping me between

the shoulder blades. “Let your muscles unclench. More hard

work tomorrow.”

I hugged him tight, curtailing it with a back slap of my

own. “Will do. Thanks for the boots, Uncle Frank.”

I didn"t have to look back to know he was smiling at me

as I made my way back to my room.

A LOT of guys these days have no idea at all what ranch

hands
do.
I don"t mean to sound superior, or anything,

saying this, but I"m pretty sure it"s true. I know for a fact

that my friends in California would never have assumed I"d

be spending my first day shoveling horse dung into a pile to

be carted off for fertilizer. In California, you only have to say

the word “ranch” and everyone"s immediate thoughts are of

cowboys, lone rangers roaming the hills, all big hats and

fancy boots and pistols shoved into their belts. Ask them

what they think these sensitive riders
do
, exactly, and they

find it a little harder to respond. It"s guys from California,

and from Boston, and from up-state New York, who pitch in

obscene amounts of money for “dude ranch” vacations,

where they spend a weekend in a ridiculous shirt, singing

“Kum Ba Ya” around a camp fire thinking it makes "em a

cowboy.

Well, like I said, the Southwest is in my blood, however

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Louise Blaydon

25

much at home I may feel in San Diego. I always knew what

ranches were, and just what ranch work entailed, and I

knew that wasn"t it. Uncle Frank"s ranch hands would never

be caught dead wandering out on the hills alone. That"s the

whole point of a ranch, right there: everybody stays together

on it. Frank still has horses, because it"s his opinion that

cattle respond with greater trust to a herdsman riding

behind them than to one chivvying them down the hill in a

tractor. He may be right; on the other hand, he may just be

kind of old-fashioned. The jury"s still out. The point is that

ranch hands do actually have
jobs.
Jobs, plural; a whole lot

of different things they have to be able to do with ease and

expertise. A good ranch hand is a jack-of-all-trades, from

seeding, fencing, mowing, irrigation, basic mechanics, to all

kinds of animal husbandry. A lot of the traditional gear of

the cowboy can still be seen on Uncle Frank"s workmen, but

that"s because a lot of it is eminently practical. “Cowboy”

boots are shaped like that so they"ll fit well into stirrups; the

hat"s like that because it"s made to keep the sun off your face

and the back of your neck all at the same time. Denim jeans

were
made
to be durable and perennially appropriate. Shirts

with tassels rarely feature into the equation. Lots of guys

frequently wear T-shirts under open shirts, although long

sleeves are the norm, even so, since they shield you from

everything from blazing sun to pesticides. Working on a

ranch is far from a walk in the park. Most ranchers are guys

who"ve been brought up in the trade, and those who weren"t

have to put in a lot of hard work to get themselves up to

speed.

When I woke up for my second day of work at Frank"s, I

wasn"t under any illusions. I didn"t expect to be a fully

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Louise Blaydon

26

trained
vaquero
by the end of eight weeks" work. Nobody else

expected that from me either. But even if I"d never be able,

like Oro, to fix anything that needed fixing at the drop of a

hat, there"d always be
something
I could probably manage.

That morning, what needed managing was the back fence.

There"d been kind of an unexpected summer storm a couple

nights previously, and the fence had suffered under the

onslaught. Oro had all the necessaries stowed in a bag on

the back of my saddle before I even got out of the house:

hammer and nails; wood; chicken wire. He grinned at me

when he saw me, and tipped his hat. I steeled myself in my

new-old boots, ignored the prickle in the small of my back,

and returned the grin.

“Tasks already?”

He had two horses with him, both of them chestnut and

gleaming. The one to his right, its reins in his hands, was

his, a fact he made quite evident by the angling of his body.

The other, the one with the bag on its saddle, must then, I

reasoned, be for me. Oro reached out as I spoke, and

smacked its flank affectionately.

“I always have tasks, Young Grasshopper,” he informed

me good-naturedly, his Rs rolling throaty and rich in his

mouth. “Frank told me you could ride. That true?”

He was wearing a soft white shirt, worn thin with

washing. Against it, his skin was like caramel, burnt-sugar-

brown. I swallowed, and pointedly thrust one boot into the

horse"s stirrup, letting him see how easily I did it, how

familiar the motion was for me. “I can ride.”

“Good.” He let go of the horse, relinquishing power.

Letting me know, in some small way, that he trusted me.

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Louise Blaydon

27

“You"re riding Sasha. Frank wants the fence repaired up on

the east boundary. I"ll ride over there with you, make sure

you know what needs doing, and then leave you to it. Sound

okay?”

“Okay,” I said, swinging my leg over Sasha"s back. She

was perfectly docile, patient, and leaned into my palm when I

stroked her mane. Oro"s horse let out a soft breathy sound

through his nose, tossing his head a little to fend off a fly. I

smiled slightly, and looked up from the horse to its rider.

“You always ride that one?”

“He"s mine,” Oro nodded, patting the animal fondly.

“Reuben. And he"s a beautiful specimen, too, aren"t you,

Reuben?” He leaned forward, face almost touching Reuben"s

mane as he scratched long fingers behind his ears.

“Gorgeous boy, huh? Oh, yeah, you sure are.”

Goddamn, I was jealous of the freaking horse.

He straightened up after a minute, and grinned across

at me. “I get over-affectionate,” he apologized, a little

shamefaced.

“Hey, no problem,” I told him, meaning it

wholeheartedly. “He"s a good horse. You have every right to

be in love with him.”

Oro laughed outright at that remark, the sound of it

heady and clear in the scarlet early morning. “I do, don"t I?”

He shook his head. “Screw it. I do.”

We rode out around the ranch"s perimeter together, the

first sounds of the day"s work just beginning to break the

dewy after-dawn quiet. We didn"t speak much, because it

didn"t feel like a time, really, for speaking, with the sky still

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Louise Blaydon

28

stained from sunrise, and the silence hung comfortable

between us. Half way there, he told me I had a really good

seat, and I glowed a little with pleasure. A little further on, I

asked him if that was a different hat, and he laughingly

congratulated me on my observational skills. Other than

this, there wasn"t any conversation. I rode just slightly

behind him over the dried out grass, and watched his back

as he moved, the shift and sway of him as he straddled the

horse. The sun cast the shadow of his hat in a dark puddle

over his shirt, right down to where it clung to him lightly,

sticking to the beginnings of sweat in the dip of his spine. I

turned away; focused my eyes on the horizon. Any more of

that, and I"d be imagining that sweat on my tongue, the salt-

sharp tang of his skin as I licked down his back. Oro was a

workman, a professional; he didn"t deserve that. I watched

the colors changing on the backdrop of sky, and rode on

smooth behind him.

It doesn"t take too much expert knowledge to fix a fence.

When we arrived at the gap the wind had created in the neat

brown line of the fence, the two of us swiftly dismounted,

and Oro unhitched the bag of equipment from Sasha"s