Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2010 04:40:53 -0500 From: Sean Williams Subject: Ben Leaves Bareacres Ranch Ben Leaves Bareacres Ranch Chapter 1 An old rusted gate made a tinny rattle as the wind blew across a dusted plane in Southern Montana, my home. The gate was the entrance to Bareacres Ranch, where I was born; an unpaved road lead to the house, a wooden shingle building that appeared picturesque from afar but, to me, was nothing more than a pretty prison. My soul yearned for escape, but there was none to be had as the stretches of treeless dark soil in Montana were endless. You might see one house standing alone after travelling for miles along the road; you might come across a closed general store with no one inside, or a plain of grazing cattle, but with no one tending the herd. That's what Montana was to me: unpeopled, dry in the summer, cold in the winter, soulless. For me, Bareacres Ranch, my father's business, was a blank white canvas with a little patch of color off to the corner. This patch of color was my family. There were nine of us: my two parents, my eldest sister, my five older brothers, and then me, the youngest. Sometimes people say that the youngest son is spoiled, the kid that gets to enjoy the happy time of his parents' early years of old age, but I always felt like an afterthought, perhaps even a mistake. By the time that I came around my mother was worn out from taking care of six other children and my cousins from the city who always spent the summers with us. Although I was the youngest, I always felt like the least loved. I was close to my brothers, but they wanted to escape Bareacres just as much as I one day would; they somehow managed their flight, but something always drew me back. The gate always made that rattle, for as long as I can remember, and no one ever thought to fix it. The rattle was loud enough that I could hear it all the way from the house, where we, the Goodwin family, slept. It used to keep me up at night, that low frequency cry, but as I grew older I learned to ignore it. The rattle was always loudest in November, when winter announced to the Goodwins that it was on its way. Where we live, there is always a couple days of snow in late September or October, blown down from the hills, and then it doesn't snow again until November or December. But, in between the snow, there is a heavy rain and the wind is strongest when this rain comes. This is the announcement that winter makes, "I am coming so I hope you have enough feed for the cattle." But I never cared about the cattle, even though I learned how to milk the dairy herd when I was eight and how to round up the beef cattle when I was twelve. For me, the youngest and least wanted of seven children, the call of winter was the announcement that spring would come, when the winter had passed. With spring, we, the Goodwin family, would labor for our own redemption. This land had belonged to others before us; it had been home to tipis in a village of Indians who lived on reservations now. It was the red man's land, I always felt, but with the springtime, with the release of the herds and the sowing of the harvest, the Goodwins proclaimed that they deserved this land just as much as anyone else. "This land is ours too," said my father's soul. "It is ours now." Did we merit redemption? I never really cared if we deserved to be absolved of our ancestors' crimes. I only wanted to create as much distance between the ranch and me as I could. My best friend growing up was Ephraim Standingbear, an Injun, as they call them here. There is a reservation fifty miles south from our ranch, where most of the Indians in the neighborhood live, but the Standingbears did not live there. They had their own small farm about ten miles down the road from our huge ranch, a small operation that was so unproductive that my father always wondered how they managed to keep it running. My father, Frank Goodwin, felt something like pity for the Standingbears and he was probably the most important customer for the alfalfa and wheat that they grew on their hundred acres or so of land. To be perfectly honest, my father was probably the only white man in these parts who did not harbor a hidden and deep-seated racism towards the Indians. I never really noticed how people treated the Indians around here until one day one of my cousins from Minneapolis visited and told me that she thought everyone in the neighborhood was racist and that we "should be ashamed of ourselves." It was not an overt prejudice, there was no name-calling, but it was just sort of an assumption that the Indians were somehow poor because they deserved it. Reading this, it may be hard to understand how I would not have perceived this sort of feeling until an outsider mentioned it, but when your world consists of falling down ranch houses five or ten miles apart from one another, where the cattle outnumber the people one hundred to one, there is a lot that goes unnoticed because there is no point of comparison. Well, Ephraim Standingbear was the first Indian that I befriended and he was my link to a world that was bigger than my own and that I wanted to be a part of. We met soon after his family moved to their farm, when I was about eight years old. I do not remember exactly how we met, but Ephraim said that we first saw each other when one of the Goodwin horses jumped the fence and ended up at the Standingbear farm; Ephraim's father came to return the mare and Ephraim came with him. We became friends soon after that, going to all of the same schools, and he was back on his farm when I dropped out of college to return to Bareacres. I almost managed to escape the ranch, but I did not quite make it. My parents were happy at the thought of my going to the state university and studying agricultural studies, but this change of scene was not to last, it wasn't meant to. In the middle of my sophomore year in college, my brother Lance announced to the rest of us that he had fallen in love with a girl from Billings, who worked at the local supermarket in our neighborhood, and that he was moving to the big city to live with her parents. That meant that there was one less hand to help out on the ranch; this came right at the time that my father had decided to expand the dairy cattle aspect of the ranch (most of the ranches in the area raised cattle exclusively for slaughter) and the ranch was already understaffed. Well, after Lance decided to flee the ranch and move in with his girlfriend's family, my mother called me and told me all about it. There was no need for her to say that she wanted me to come back. The Goodwins speak volumes in two or three words or in silence; I knew that they needed me home. So, I packed my bags and caught the first bus home. I wrote a letter to the university saying that I would not be back. I even wrote to the benefactors of my scholarship to apologize and explain why I had to give up the opportunity that I had been given. That was particularly difficult for me as I felt guilty that I had wasted the money that I had already been given, but I did not know what else to do. So, here I am, a twenty year-old Goodwin back on the ranch. I had managed the escape that I had wanted almost from the moment of my birth, yet, here I was, back again. "You'll never leave Montana," said Ephraim Standingbear, laughing and spitting the tobacco down into the pot. We sat on the porch of the Standingbears' house. "I don't know what you were thinking." "Man, it was worth a try," I said. "Don't lie. I know you want to leave as much as I do." "Yeah, that's true," said Ephraim. "But anything's better than the reservation." "My Dad drops stuff off at the reservation sometimes. It never seemed so bad to me." "That's because you're not Injun," said Ephraim. "The reservation depresses me. There's nothing as depressing as a fucking reservation." "Even more reason to get out of here," I said. "I guess you should want to get away from here even more than me." "I don't think I'll leave either." I laughed and declined the chewing tobacco that Ephraim offered. I never got into the stuff, but it was not uncommon in our neighborhood. "Dude, you're twenty," I said. "You have plenty of time to figure something out." "So do you." "It's harder for me," I said. "There are too many reasons to stay here, even though I hate it. My parents... I don't know. They need me and I feel like this is the only thing I have to give them. My presence... just being here." "I guess I'll have to get back to work on my cloning experiments," Ephraim began. "If I could clone you, or even one of your brothers, then you're off Scot free. How does that sound?" "Scot fee?" I asked. "Man, that sounds nice. Never gonna happen though." "You were close this time. Real close. If your dad could hire some of those wandering people, those hands that travel across country, than you might not need to stay." "But that's just it," said I. "I am FREE labor. My parents don't have to pay me, they only have to feed me. Why would they give that up?" "They only use you that way because you let them," Ephraim replied. "The rest of your family figured that out, which is why they left and you are the only one hanging around." "I hate Bareacres," I said. "I have to find a way to get out of here." "Talk your Dad into hiring some ranch hands, man," said Ephraim. "Even with you around the ranch is still a few hands short." Ephraim had a good point, in fact, my father had already begun placing advertisements around town for temporary workers. It was February so we would need help soon. I could handle the dairy side of things for now, I could even help with feeding the beef cattle, but when it was warm enough to let the herds out, then we would be in trouble. Even my father knew that. One morning in early March, a few weeks after my talk with Ephraim, my father told me over breakfast that he had found three men looking for work in Billings and that they would be over later to see the place. I was surprised to hear that my father had found help so quickly, but I was hopeful that perhaps he would realize that he did not need me after all. Wishful thinking on my part, but it was all I had at that point, wishes, hopes, and dreams of flight. Later that day, I saw my father's Chevy Avalanche turn off the main road and enter the open gate of Bareacres Ranch. The first warmth of the new year had begun that day, it had been a cold winter, and I imagined that it would not be long before we could let the herds out. There were hazards all around, muddy ditches, fallen down trees, but we needed to get the cattle out as soon as possible and my father knew that. Something about the day was strange, besides the new warm breeze. Try though I might, I could not manage a moment's peace the night before. I did not sleep a wink; it was pure restlessness. I was going stir crazy. I walked into the living room at one in the morning and watched what little was on television, I even managed to grow tired after a couple of hours engaged in watching nothing, but when I dragged my feet back to my room, I still could not sleep. Something would happen today. I knew it as soon as I saw my dad's Chevy turn the corner and begin its trip down the road to the house. If nothing happened today then nothing would ever happen; as beautiful as this place was, it became ugly when it was all you knew. I might run as far as my legs would carry me, I might focus on each successive hill up ahead, and when I conquered them, when I gazed at the land beyond, it was still Montana and Bareacres ranch was as close behind me as if I had never run anywhere at all. I turn around and there is the house, the falling down house that my grandfather built on the red man's land. There was the Goodwin's homestead just behind me, as it had always been. Only by some miracle would I ever leave. I stood on the porch of the house as the truck pulled up and I walked down the steps to meet my father. I wore a flannel shirt, old jeans, and muddy boots that came halfway up to my knees; this was the Goodwin uniform on the farm. Even my mother dressed like this. There was a picture of her hanging up in the living room, a blown-up photograph of a very beautiful auburn-haired girl of twenty sitting in front of a background of endless Montana sunset. It was the last picture anyone had taken of my mother before she married my father more than thirty years ago. Well, that was a long time ago and my mother wasn't pretty anymore. She was just another farmhand now. Just another farmhand wearing the same blue jeans and long-sleeved shirt as the rest of us. "These are the guys," my father said, barely looking at me, as he stepped out of the driver's seat of the truck. In the back I saw three men in dark work jackets huddled in the bed of the truck. They stood up when my father started to talk. "Hop down," he instructed. One by one, the men hopped out of the truck. Two of the three were very short, but looked strong. They looked like they had worked on a farm before and would have no problem picking up what they needed to do at Bareacres. The third man was tall and had sort of a shadowy look, as if he had something to hide. This man looked at you as if he was looking passed you, like you were a hologram or a ghost in "Ghostbusters". All three of the men were somewhat dark and I thought they were Indians when they first pulled up. My father nodded as each of the men stepped forward and introduced themselves. We shook hands. Afterwards, my father announced that we should all go and see the main herd of beef cattle. My father treated the cattle better than he treated some people and whenever someone new came to the ranch, he introduced them to the cows. We all got back in the truck and drove down to one of the store houses, where this herd was kept. The men nodded in understanding as my father explained how many cattle there were, where he liked to graze them, and how much feed they needed when they were not grazing. The men seemed to understand; they asked nary a question. As we all stood there, my father suddenly decided that it made sense for two of the men to take up tending the dairy cattle, while I helped the third man tend to the herd. "We'll let this herd out tomorrow," my father said. I never questioned my father, but I merely remarked, "There's still some frost." My father did not reply, but he nodded. "We'll talk about where to graze over dinner," he said. Afterwards, he took two of the men to see the dairy cattle, alas, more introductions, and I was left with the third man. With little to talk about, I made conversation by talking about the dimensions of the cattle pens. When that talk grew old, I mentioned that we kept hogs too. "They're right in back," I said. "You don't look like your father," said the third ranch hand. This man was the taller of the three, the one with the brooding look. "Man, I didn't think you could talk," I said. "I talk," he said. "When there's something to talk about." "What do you mean I don't look like my father?" "His hair is bright and yours is darker," he said. "You've got darker eyes, too, and you're taller." "I look like my brothers," I said. "We all kind of look alike except some of us have brown eyes and the others have gray eyes." He nodded, but did not say anything after that. But then a little later he said, "What sport did you play?" "I played football," I replied. "I was the quarterback." "You look strong," he said. "I had you pegged for a running back." "Nope, I was the quarterback." "What are you doing back here, on the ranch?" asked the new hand. This line of questioning irritated me, but I said, "My parents needed help here." The Goodwins were frank people and I didn't have anything to hide. "I tried to get out of here, but I came back... I felt bad. They needed my help." "You wanted to get as far away from here as possible, but something always brought you back. What was it that you wanted to do?" "I don't know," I said. "Anything, I guess." "Become a doctor?" "No," I replied. "I don't think that's for me. Man, I guess I could do anything, but maybe it wasn't meant to be." "Sometimes there's a fate in store for us. Anyone ever tell you that before?" he asked. "No." "How tall are you?" he asked. "6'1," said I. "Do you think 'Bareacres' is a good name for a farm?" "No," I replied. "You ask a lot of questions." The new ranch hand shrugged. "Man, it's my turn," I said, and then I let her rip. I asked him where he was from, how old he was, what his parents did, how many brothers and sisters he had, if he was an Indian, and what, exactly, he was doing on my father's ranch. I asked these questions, one after another, in turn, and he laughed. He began answering them and addressed them all, not forgetting anything. "I'm from Washington state, but I bet you've never been there." "I'm thirty-three." "My parents had a dairy farm in Washington up until five years ago, when they sold it." "I'm not an Indian. My grandparents were from Spain and everyone in my family is kinda reddish." "I came here, because... well... I've been travelling all around the country looking for work since my parents sold the farm and my cousins told me that there was work in Montana so I came out here. Those two other guys are my cousins: Benito and Juan. My name is Ademar." "I know," I said. "You told me that when you shook my hand." "Ever meet anyone named Ademar before?" "Dude, enough with the questions," I said. But then I added, "No." "Are YOU an Indian?" Ademar asked, with a grin. I laughed. That was definitely another question. This guy could not take a hint and, besides, the Goodwins were probably the whitest people in the neighborhood. "No," I replied. "There's this story that my mother's grandmother was an Indian, but I don't believe it. We're pretty white." Ademar nodded. "Here comes your Dad, Ben," he said. We both turned to look as my Dad walked into the storehouse with Benito and Juan. "You don't have a Spanish accent," I said, looking into Ademar's brown eyes. His look had a hidden meaning and I instantly looked away. I started to sweat. "I told you," he said. "My grandparents were from Spain. Honestly, my Spanish isn't even that good." I nodded. "Alright," my Dad said, standing beside us with the other two ranch hands. "I'll drive you guys back into town and we'll come pick you up at five in the morning tomorrow. Ben, you'll have to take the truck and pick them up tomorrow, alright?" I bit my tongue and agreed. My father eyed all three men closely and put the thumbs of both hands in his belt loops. I knew this was his "serious talk" posture. "Now listen, fellas," he said. "This is a professional operation..." and he explained some of his rules, commands that all of us Goodwins had heard many times before, and then he said, "And I like my workers to be clean-shaven." After he said this, he looked at Ademar, who had about three days worth of stubble on his chin and cheeks. I suppressed my laughter. "You're going to have to shave that," my father said. "I don't mind mustaches but any other type of facial hair has to go." "Yes, sir," said Ademar respectfully, rubbing his chin. The following day was the first real day of business for the new ranch hands. It was another sleepless night for me, the second such night in a row, and I was tired most of the day, but I managed to pull through. Towards late afternoon, just as Ademar and I, on our horses, were in preparation to lead the herd back to the storehouse, we heard a crack of thunder in the sky and the cows stopped their march and looked around. Moments later, the sky opened up and let down a cold, pouring rain, the first major rain of the year. Ademar looked over to me briefly and I pointed beyond one of the hills ahead; I kneed my horse and began to lead the herd in that direction. Ademar, clutching his lasso, did the same. The cows did not want to move, and it took us about thirty minutes to get from the spot where we first met the rain to the old barn beyond the hill. The main storehouse was more than two miles away and I thought it would be better to lead the cattle to the barn than all the way back to the storehouse, at least until the rains let up. After the last cow was brought in, Ademar and I leapt down from our horses and tied them to the railing on the wall. "Were you expecting that?" Ademar asked, wiping the water away from his face with the back of one of his hands. "The rain, I mean." "No," I replied. "We get up too early to check the weather report. Sometimes my Dad checks, but I never do. I only check if I think the weather might turn bad." "I guess we should have known," said Ademar. "The sky was dark most of the day." "Maybe," I said, "but, man, it's hard to predict sometimes." Above the barn was a loft with a floor of oak logs and hay. I told Ademar that we could stay up there until the rain stopped and he followed me up the ladder to the upper level of the barn. Our jackets and shirts were soaked and I suggested that we take them off and hang them up to dry. It was chilly in the barn, but wringing and hanging up our clothes made more sense to me than sitting around soaking wet. Ademar agreed and we took off our jackets and shirts. I was used to being undressed in front of other guys since I had played football and baseball all throughout high school. I did not think twice about being shirtless in front of Ademar. I was undressed first and I watched as Ademar took off his jacket and his shirt. As Ademar pulled off his shirt, I saw that he was lean, but with a strong chest that projected forward from his body. His chest and forearms were covered with dark hair and I could see the hint of a hairy bush peeking over the waist of his jeans. Now, guys pretend that they never check out other guys, but it's a lie. We always compare ourselves to men around us, especially when they are good-looking. Ademar was handsome with his clothes on and incredible with them off. I was no slouch, and I was not shy, but Ademar intimidated me once he took his shirt off. Once he had done this, I avoided looking at him and I peered down from the loft to watch the cattle and horses below. Ademar got up walked over to me and sat down closer to me. I covered my crotch with my forearms as my cock had suddenly grown hard. This change was completely unexpected and I started to sweat again. Ademar did not seem to notice and he kicked off his boots as I sat there trying to calm myself down. I had never been with a guy before and had girlfriends all throughout high school, but something about this situation had turned me on. Ademar smiled as he sat beside me, one of those good-natured, "can't get me down, world," smiles. It was a look that let you know exactly what kind of man he was, when he decided to look at you that way, and I felt that our acquaintance had jumped from twenty-four hours to twenty-four days. As he sat there smiling, saying nothing, I could feel the warmth of his body as his bare shoulder brushed against mine. He did not back away when his shoulder touched me, but, in fact, seemed to move closer. "Did you really think I was an Indian?" he asked. "Dude," I said, "I thought we agreed, no more questions." "I know," said Ademar with a sigh, "but I'm just curious." "Not really. My best friend is Indian and you don't really look like any of the Indians around here. Man, I just wanted you to stop asking so many questions." "Do you like Indians?" Ademar asked. "What do you mean do I like Indians?" "I mean... would it be a good thing to you if I was an Indian?" I shook my head. "I don't care," I said. "I wouldn't treat you any different. That's kind of a weird question, man." Ademar nodded and looked away. "I don't think the rain is letting up." "I know," I said, and I sighed too. "We might be here for a little while." Ademar laughed. "You don't have much chest hair," he said, looking down at my chest. I looked down as well and said, "I have a little bit. See?" and I rubbed the middle of my chest and the area around my nipples. Before I knew what was happening, Ademar reached over and started to rub my chest as well. He leaned closer towards me and squeezed one of my nipples. He looked up into my eyes. I did not pull away at first, my heart started racing as I felt Ademar's hand on my chest, but, after a few seconds of this, I jumped up and said, "What are you doing? What the hell do you think you're doing?" "Nothing," Ademar said, raising his voice a little. "Sit down." "What?" "Ben, sit down," he said. "I won't hurt you." "Hurt me?" I asked. "Man, what the hell are you talking about?" Ademar sighed and indicated the spot I had been sitting in before with a nod of his head. "Please, sit down," he said. I sat down and Ademar nudged closer to me. He looked at my face, spending a few moments staring at my mouth, and then he looked up into my eyes. Slowly, he moved his hand along my thigh and over to my crotch. A few moments later, I felt his hand on my cock and he said, "Your dick's hard." "Don't do that," I said. "C'mon, I have a girlfriend." "Really?" "Sort of," I said, with a chuckle. "We're doin' the long distance thing." "It doesn't matter. You want it as much as I do." Ademar leaned in closer to me and put his strong, calloused hands on my shoulders. He looked into my eyes and I closed them. I leaned my head back. For a moment, I had left Bareacres ranch and was drifting in a raft on the sea, or running along a beach. I have never been to a beach in my life. There were no cattle below, no horses, my father was not a couple of miles down the road. Gone was the rustling front gate, the white tumbling down house. There was only me and Ademar and time had slowed to a stop. Ademar pulled me close to him and put his face against mine. "You feel warm," he said. "So warm. I needed this." I did not know what he was doing or why he was doing it. I did not necessarily agree with where this seemed to be going, but, somehow, I did not want it to stop. Ademar reached for my hand and guided it over to his crotch. "I'm hard too," he said. "Feel it." I took a deep breath, "Yeah," I replied. "I feel it." Ademar hugged my body close to his and kissed my neck. I had been sitting with my arms at my sides this whole time, but, as he kissed me, I put my arms around him. "Ben," Ademar began, "there's something about you. I don't know what it is, but it's different. I never talk this much. I never do, but I feel like... I feel like you're pulling me towards you. Do you feel it?" "I feel it," I said. Ademar released me from his hold and gazed into my eyes again. My cock throbbed in my jeans and I stared at Ademar, joining him in this mutual gaze. "I don't understand," I said. Then Ademar leaned in and kissed me. It was a simple kiss, our mouths were open; there was no tongue at first, but it was a kiss of first passion, a kiss of people that had been separated and were returned to one another. It was a kiss of Gypsies in Spain, a kiss of people that did not know where they were. Ademar rubbed my chest with one hand and held on to my back with another as he kissed me. He leaned against me and one of his thighs moved up and down my crotch. I began to precum in my pants. "Oh fuck," I said. We never swear at Bareacres, one of my father's rules, but I had left the ranch, remember. Ademar pushed me back and lowered me down against the hay, and I lay with my back flat on the floor of the loft. Ademar positioned himself on top of me and began to work his way down my body: kissing both sides of my neck and licking and sucking on my nipples. He worked one nipple and then moved on to the other. My dick grew rock hard in my pants, pushing, throbbing against the fabric of the jeans. Then, Ademar began licking my abs. He reached for one of my hands with one of his own and we intertwined our fingers. I wanted to pull away, but I was spellbound. "Oh fuck," I whispered as he worked his way further down. He began to unzip my jeans. I heard the rain beat against the side of the barn, I heard it tumble down the sides of the wooden roof. The time stretched out and it did not have any meaning anymore, not to me. But I was brought back in to the present when we heard the sound of something unlike the rain beating against the door to the barn. It was a fist. "Anyone in there?" we heard a voice ask. "Shit," I heard Ademar whisper. Moments later, there was a sound like a crash as the barn door was pushed open and the light and rain flooded in. The horses neighed and I heard my father ask: "Are you guys in there?" Ademar leapt up and looked at me. I sat up and reached for my shirt. "We're up here, Dad," I said. Ademar tossed me a look of utter defeat and began to dress himself. As he dressed, he continued to watch me and I watched him. The time sped up as we caught up to the present, and my heart raced. Ademar was my way out; in less than a day of knowing him, I had taken a trip, a running leap, away from Bareacres, but came crashing back home when my father pushed open the barn door. I somehow felt that this was the end, that he would be called away, but I somehow hoped that it would not be true. It couldn't be. TO BE CONTINUED [Usual disclaimer: this story is fictional although inspired by personal experiences. Any similarities to real people are pure coincidence. I appreciate any and all feedback (and I realize this chapter is a little boring). Please feel free to e-mail me at the address above. Please let me know if you find any typos and I will fix them. Take care!]