Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2011 13:29:36 -0500 From: Sean Williams Subject: Ben Leaves Bareacres Ranch Chapter 2 Ben Leaves Bareacres Ranch Chapter 2 Then there was the whistle of the evening train from South Dakota. It was a sound that was loud at first, before it fell off into a low and prolonged hiss, like the hiss of a rattlesnake. There were no passengers on the train as no one rides in trains anymore, at least that was what I figured when I first heard the whistle all those years ago. If I watched the far-off train move idly by from my window, a man trotting on a three-legged horse might have outrun the train, and closed my eyes and then opened them again, I imagined that I watched the first trains that came up this way in the 1890s full to the brim with new people from Germany or Ireland or perhaps just the disillusioned from back East; they were thoughts and images which would last only a moment, because it was really just a train that came from nowhere and was going nowhere. I knew that. It was a train that felt it important to announce that it was passing through, moving as slowly with its cargo of cattle or grain as the first trains must have moved. The train cut a swath through the hills, rattling over old tracks. The train tracks were almost buried in the plains; a newcomer or a visitor to the ranch would not have known that a train passed this way until they found themselves standing on the non-electrified steel tracks, or tripped over them. And the trains that came through were just like the freight trains that must pass through all the empty places of America; eighty or one hundred rusty rail cars strung one after another with weathered words ledgered on the side announcing that some of the cars belonged to or had once belonged to the Union Pacific Railway, half empty railway doors, inward sloping roofs. The first sound associated with the train was the conductor's steam-filled whistle, but the noises that lingered were the clanging of the battered steel walls of the cars against one another, the train carrying over tree branches or boxes strewn over the tracks, the wail of the cattle if there were cattle in the cars, the beating of the rain against the side of the rail cars when it rained. I imagined that I was the only one that heard these sounds, beside the conductor of the train. The train usually passed through late in the night or early in the morning; most of the people in these parts would already be up and about their business if the train passed through at dawn, but I did not think that any of the people around here would pay attention to the train. No one would care but me. And since I was the only one that cared about the train, I was the only one that heard the sounds, really heard them, of the trains that passed through. Just as I had wanted to run away from Bareacres, only to find that wherever I went the ranch was only a few paces behind me, in the same manner had I planned as a kid to hop on the train some night and let it take me wherever it was going, only to realize that the train did not actually go anywhere, at least no place that was much different from here. I tried it anyway, when I was thirteen years old, and when the train stopped three hours later at a station in the middle of Montana, I found one of my brothers waiting for me. He beat the crap out of me, which I knew he would as soon as I saw him standing under the flickering light of a leaning lamppost, but he could not beat out that part of me that wanted to leave. That part within me that said "Fuck this place" in a very un-Goodwin fashion could not be bled out or beaten into submission, not by a fist, or a switch, or a bat. That part stayed and stays with me still. "That's a funny thing to say," Ademar would tell me later, when I told him the story of the time I ran away. I told him that my brother really wanted to beat himself but he couldn't so he beat me instead. "We all wanted to leave," I said, shrugging, looking away. "None of us wants to stay around here anymore. My brother must have watched me jump out of the window and run toward the train, how else would he have realized that I had left and where I had gone to? The thing is, he wanted to leave just as much as me, I know he did, but he was too much of a coward to do it." "You think he should have just hopped on the train with you?" "Maybe. I don't know." "Well, you never actually made it out," said Ademar. "Maybe your brother had the right idea." "I almost did," I said, remembering the brief time I had spent away at college. The whole time was spent hoping that I never had to come back home, not even for the holidays. "I came pretty close. But you're right; I never really made it out." Ademar looked at me then. It was an intense look; dilated dark eyes staring at me, but leaping back and forth from one of my own eyes to the next. "This place is a part of you, but it's not really who you are." I made no reply, but I did glance at Ademar for a moment as he spoke. "You want to break free," he continued, "but you don't know how. You're scared. You think if you buy a bus ticket and hop on and don't look back, well, you might fail and end up back here. You said that your brother couldn't beat the rebel out of you, but whatever he did it worked, because here you are, Ben. You could have left somehow." "That's not true. If I could leave, I would be a thousand miles away by now." "I think it is true," said Ademar, calmly. "You'll never get out if you're afraid of falling. Falling down isn't necessarily a failure. Everybody falls down, it's part of being a man, but that doesn't mean you don't try. At least that's what I think, but you're afraid to. It's written all over your face. 'Fuck, I don't want to fail.' You're not used to losing so you don't try. You told me before, you were captain of the football team. I bet you guys always won." "Usually." "I can tell," said Ademar, nodding. "But being a part of a team is not like having to go it alone. Buying a train ticket and catching the midnight train with no where to go, all by yourself. It's not the same thing." I sighed. "I don't know what you're talking about. I shouldn't have told you that story." "Why did you tell me?" I sighed again, but I didn't say anything in reply. The truth was, everything about the ranch and this town felt like a dead weight around my neck. A feeling like that has to come out somehow, eventually, but I didn't think anyone in my family or any of my friends would really understand it, even the ones that left. Somehow I was different from them. They probably would have understood, some of them at least, but I just wanted to talk to someone who wasn't from these parts. I was going stir crazy being back on the farm and the only thing that I had discovered which could calm me was talking to Ademar. "They'll come back soon," he said, "my cousins. We only have about fifteen or twenty minutes." I laughed and shook my head. "Fifteen minutes for what? That thing that happened before... or almost happened, it was a mistake. It was late. I was tired. I don't know. Something you said or did was playing tricks with my mind." "Playing tricks? Is that what you said?" I looked out of the big barn window. From where we sat, I could see the trail that led towards the barn, where Ademar and I sat talking. "I have a girlfriend," I said. "I told you that. I think I might love her. She's amazing, you wouldn't understand. Just give it a rest." Ademar laughed. "Give it a rest." "Do you even like girls?" I asked. My face probably looked like I was sneering. "I don't think you do. Just leave me alone, man." "You want me to leave you alone?" asked Ademar, standing up. He was wearing the Goodwin uniform of a flannel shirt, jeans, high boots, and a cowboy hat. The first three buttons of his shirt were unbuttoned and the hair from his chest was visible. "You want me to leave you alone? That's fine. You can blame it all on me if you want to. I corrupted you. I can take it. You know enough about me by now. I don't stay in one place for long," and Ademar spit out on the hay. "I just pack my stuff and move on to the next gig when I feel like moving on, corrupting one boy after the next. It's what I do." Adhemar was looking away and I did not know what to make of what he said. "I didn't say all that," I began. "I just meant..." "It doesn't matter," said Ademar, walking towards the ladder that led down from the loft of the barn. "I got your message loud and clear." That morning, my father and I drove into town to pick up Ademar and his cousins. They sat in the cab of the truck as usual and it wasn't long before we were driving passed the white fence to the ranch and toward the house. I sat beside my father in the passenger seat and the first thing that I saw as we pulled up to the house were two people standing on the steps up to the porch. I recognized my brother-in-law Russ right away and then I realized that the shorter woman standing next to him had to be my sister. I thought it was weird that the two of them had managed to show up to the house in the time that we were gone, it had only been about thirty or forty minutes, and I wondered what had brought them to the house. As soon as we hopped out of the truck, Russ walked down from the porch and held out his hand for my father to shake. Then he shook mine. Russ stood out like a sore thumb being about 6'6 and, as he shook my father's hand, I watched my Dad's face and then laughed to myself. "Yep," I said to myself, "he still can't stand the guy." "You look taller," said Russ as he shook my hand. "I don't think so," said I. "I don't think I grew in the year or so since you last saw me." Russ shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "That's a pretty strong hand shake you got there. You look more like a man now." I laughed. "Your Mom wants you in the house," said Russ. Not long after that, my father drove Ademar and the others to the cattle pens where they would be working for the day. The plain was still pretty damp from a recent storm and my father decided not to let the cattle out today. The three ranch hands would have to feed the cattle in the pens. My father wanted me to bring around some oats for the horses and I told him I would do it after I ran in and figured out what it was that Mom wanted. I kicked the mud off my boots on the mat in front of the screen door to the house and then walked in. Mom was in the kitchen and when she saw me she walked over and kissed me on the cheek. "What's that for?" I asked. "Nothing," she said. She was grinning, but she was the guarded type and I knew that whatever it was that had made her smile she would never tell. "Russ said you wanted something." "I just need you to go into town and get some stuff for dinner," she said. "Russ and Julie have come in so we'll make a big dinner tonight. Look, I'm already starting already," and she held up the ham shanks that she had taken out of the freezer for defrosting. "I wasn't expecting them, but Julie said they were in the area, so here they are." "We just came back from town," I said, slapping a hand down against the kitchen counter. "I wish we had known about that before! Now I have to drive back into town and Dad has the truck." "You can take my car," and she removed a set of keys from her pocket. "You know how to start it right? You'll have to pump the gas pedal a few times first, you know that. And I don't see how I could have known that someone would need to go into town when Russ and Julie just showed up..." "You aren't talking about me, are you?" asked Russ, walking into the kitchen and clapping me on the shoulder. "Where's Julie?" Mom asked. "She's in her room, getting unpacked." "How long are y'all planning on staying?" I asked, looking up at Russ. He was a good five or six inches taller than me and he had this way of glaring down at you like he was trying to figure out the best time to knee you in the balls. "I don't know," he said. "Maybe a couple weeks, maybe longer." Russ was unemployed, we all knew that. His last job had been as a minor league baseball player in Minnesota, but he was quite possibly the worst player on the team so as soon as they got some new talent in, they let him go. He looked like a baseball player, big and strong and kind of mean-looking, but it wasn't looks that counted in ball, at least if you didn't have the talent to back it up. "What were you guys talking about?" "I have to go into town and get some stuff for dinner," I said. "Good," said Russ. "That's good. I'll drive." "That's alright, Russ. I don't need anyone to drive me." "But I wanna get out of the house so I'll go." "Fine, but I have to swing next door to get some oats and we can drop them off by the horses on the way back from town." Russ shrugged. It took longer than either of us had expected to get everything that Mom wanted but after about an hour and a half, every listing on the itemized list that she had given me before I left the house was crossed off. "You didn't expect me back, did you?" Russ asked on the drive back to the house. As broke as he was, Russ still drove a blue and somewhat new Mercedes, the only one around these parts. Why he let me put bags of oats in the trunk of his Mercedes is beyond me. "You looked surprised when you saw me on the porch." "I just don't get why you would come back." "I like it here." "You're not from here." "I know," said Russ, looking over at me. "Maybe that's why. But, you look like you can't wait to get the heck out. 'Good Lord, get me the hell outta HERE'!'" Russ laughed and as much as I wanted to blow him off and not join him in his laughter, it was funny so I laughed along with him. "That sounds about right," I said. "Why do you hate it so much?" "I don't think you would understand." "That's right," said Russ, "you don't THINK I would understand, but you're wrong. Try me." "Just because I'm from here and my parents are from here and my grandparents were, too, that doesn't mean that I'm meant to spend the rest of my life here." "True." "How in the hell can I figure out who I am and what I want to do if all I ever do are the same things I was doing when I was fifteen, in the same places?" "No one's arguing with you." "Fuck it, man," I said. "Something always seems to bring me back and I feel like I'm never gonna make it out." "We don't always get choices in life." "Well, maybe I have a choice. Maybe I have to make it a choice." I said, shaking my head. "You just drove passed the stable." "Shit!" said Russ and he pulled the car back around. I dropped off the oats and Russ offered to drive me over to the house, but I wanted to swing by and see how the hands were doing so I told him to drive back without me. Juan and Benito were doing fine, feeding the cattle like they were supposed to, but Ademar was nowhere to be found. His cousins did not know where he was, which I thought was odd, but I found him back in the barn where we had run for cover that day about a week ago. It was a day that I wanted to forget, but I would soon realize that Ademar did not feel the same way. Why, I did not quite understand, at least not then. "You better hope my Dad doesn't find you in here," I said, climbing up the ladder to the loft of the barn. "I'm taking a break." "A break from what? You've only been working for about two hours." Ademar laughed. "I think its against the law for an employer not to allow his workers a break." "My Dad doesn't care much about the laws. This is all off the books anyway, right?" "Yep," said Ademar, and after that we got to talking about the trains that I had heard that morning. "I didn't hear them," he said. "They must have driven passed where you all sleep," I said. "The train passes just north of town. Northwest I think," and I told him about the time that my brother had beaten me when I tried to run away. "That's a funny thing to say," he said after the story was finished. We got to talking about life, my life, and the scene ended with us getting into words and Ademar running off. From the window of the barn, I watched as Ademar walked back towards the cattle pens. "At least I got him to go back to work," I thought to myself. I climbed down to the barn floor and walked the whole way back to the house, which was more than a mile away. It wasn't long before it was dinner time; with Ademar and the others doing most of the work that I used to do, I was able to spend hours at the house and, with people to talk to for most of the day, the hours seemed to float on by. And dinner turned out pretty well. Mom was pleased with her hard work in the kitchen - she was happy to be cooking for someone other than just me and Dad - and I could tell that Dad was pleased, too, because he did not say a word or even pause for a minute in his eating to listen or respond to what was said to him. "I don't like Idaho," Julie said after dinner was done and Mom got up to get wine glasses and wine for us all to have. In my family, the tradition was to have a glass of wine immediately after dinner and my Dad started letting us kids have wine as soon as we turned sixteen. "I knew you wouldn't," my Mom said in response to my sister. "You don't know anyone out there." "We do," said Russ. "One of my sisters lives out there. She workes for Boise State, but... I don't know. Julie never got used to living there. I almost found work out there, too." "Boise's a big city," I said. "It's not like here." "I wouldn't call it a big city," said Russ. "Its a decent-sized town and they have malls and all that. I figured Julie would like it." "Is it bigger than Billings?" asked Mom. "Boise?" "I don't know," said Russ. "Well what are y'all gonna do?" my Mom asked, locking her eyes onto Russ's. My Dad, who was still chomping away at what looked like an entire fried chicken, suddenly put down his drumstick and looked at Russ, too. I could not help but laugh. "I don't know," said Russ. "We haven't figured that out yet. I have to get a job. There isn't a whole lot of work around that I could do. Once, I figure that out we can head out; we might need some help, but... We figured we could get all that sorted out here." "Well, of course you can stay as long as you like," and Mom looked over at Dad, who promptly resumed attacking the unfortunate animal on his plate, saying nary a word. When dinner was over and we had all helped Mom clear the table, I walked out and sat in one of the porch chairs, watching the fireflies hover and listening to them buzz around the swaying porchlight. I wasn't there for long when the sound of the door swinging open was heard behind me. "I figured it would be colder," said Russ. "Where's Julie?" I asked. "She's turning in," Russ replied, taking the rickety wicker chair beside my own. "Mom and Dad, too. It'll be just the two of us awake in about thirty minutes." I nodded; I listened to the sound of the wicker chair creak under Russ's weight. He was a pretty powerful man and the these chairs that my grandfather built god-knows how long ago were not made for big guys like him clocking in at over two hundred pounds. "I think Ephraim just called," said Russ, glancing over at me. "It's cool, I'll call him in the morning." From the porch, Russ and I watched as first one, then another, and then another of the lights in town went out. The town was a good fifteen or twenty miles away but if the night was clear enough, you could see most of the lights in town from the porch, before they went out. Soon, there were so few lights light left on in town that they could easily be counted out from the multitude of bright lights that had been, minutes before. There were maybe five or six now. "I can't believe you wanted to come here," I said. "Not everyone hates it here. I like it. I could live here for the rest of my life." I turned to look at Russ and raised my eyebrows. "Man, you're crazy." "Maybe. Have you figured out an escape plan yet?" "College was my escape plan, but that didn't work." "You didn't flunk out, did you?" "No," I replied. "I just... I just had to come back. I guess I was never meant to go anywhere or do anything." "You don't know that." "You're right, I don't, but it sure as hell feels that way." "Listen to me," Russ said, using his legs to drag his chair closet to mine. "You're a young guy, your life isn't over yet. You don't want to be forty or fifty and regret that you never left home. It's alright to leave for a year or two, figure things out and come back home if it doesn't work. You wouldn't be the first man in history to do that." "I know," I said. "I know... I just have this feeling that I'll never leave. Sometimes you can just tell how things are gonna work out." "Are you okay? You don't look good right now." I laughed. "Maybe I ate too much." "Listen, Ben," said Russ. "You're a good kid and if you ever need me for anything let me know, okay? I'm on your side." It felt strange hearing that from the man that was married to my sister. Julie and I had never been close. She had always been the pretty child in the family and had always gotten her way, even if that meant the rest of us had to suffer. I remember when she was seventeen and my parents refused to give her the money she needed for a new pair of sneakers, so what did she do? She reached into the shoebox on the top drawer of my closet and took the allowance money that I had been saving up for three months. It was only eighty dollars, but I was pissed when I found out that she had taken it. That was the kind of girl that Julie was. Every town out in these parts has someone like that: the gorgeous blond that always gets what she wants, whatever it takes. Honestly, sometimes it felt like we were not even related. She was just a body that lived in our house from time to time. Well, listening to the husband of this gorgeous blond tell me that he was on my side... let's just say that it was a hard thing to swallow. "You don't trust me," said Russ. "I can tell." "It's not that." "I'm not a bad guy. You never really had the chance to get to know me. Me and Julie got married pretty quick. No one in your family really knows me that well. One of these days, I'm gonna drive you out to Minnesota and you can hang out with me and some of my friends. Just you and me. It'll be awesome." Russ was only 29, but the prospect of hanging out with him and his friends seemed like something forbidden: like joining some sort of all boys club where you could get in by invitation only. The thing is, something about Russ was larger than life (the fact that he was 6'6 might have been a part of that) and as much as I wanted to dislike him because he was married to my least favorite sibling, I was still kind of in awe of him, and not necessarily in a bad way. "What's that from?" asked Russ, passing a finger along a scar through my right eyebrow. "It looks like it hurt." "I was hit in the face with an arrow." "What?" "An Indian came by one day and he wanted us to give back his land. I wanted to give it to him, but Mom and Dad said 'no' so he shot at me with his bow and arrow." Russ looked at me for a few seconds and then I smiled at him. He laughed. "What really happened?" he asked. "Thrown from a horse when I was fifteen." "Ah," said Russ and then he sighed. He looked around impatiently and then he leaned forward somewhat in his chair. "I'm not a bad guy," he said. "I don't think you are," I said. "I never said you were." "I'm not a bad guy," said Russ again and, next thing that I knew, I felt a hand on my thigh. "You look like you're sister. Your face, I mean." At first I thought it was nothing more than a friendly gesture, but when that hand creeped up to my crotch, the message was evident. Russ leaned toward me as if he was going to kiss me and I felt his hot breath on my neck. He squeezed my crotch with his hand and I was already starting to get hard. "Everyone's asleep," he said. "What?" "Everyone's asleep." I heard Russ panting in my ear. "My dick is so hard right now," he said. "I'm already starting to leak cum in my pants. Let's fuck. Right now, let's do it. My car's right back there," and he pointed to the field beside the house. After a few moments in that position, I pushed his hand away and leapt up from the chair. I rose up so fast that the chair was pushed back and struck the front wall of the house. I ran inside and then came back out with my Mom's car keys in my hands. "Where are you going?" asked Russ in a loud whisper, following me down from the porch. "Nowhere." "Where the fuck are you going?" But before Russ could do anything about it, I was in the car and pulling away from the house. I heard the sound of the gate creaking as I drove down the lane away from the house and, before I knew it, I was on the main road away from Bareacres. I made it into town in twenty minutes flat, which was a record for me, although it felt more like five minutes. My heart was beating a mile of minute and I ran two stop lights in town because I wasn't paying attention. I found the Imperial Motel, which was a rundown old building on the other side of town. The look of the place gave the impression that it must have been a decent place back in the 50s and 60s, but now it was little more than the rallying point for everything seedy in the neighborhood. One of my aunts called it the "palace of the heathens" whenever the place chanced to come up in conversation. My Mom called that aunt "Madame Melodrama" and I am sure you can figure out why. I parked the car and watched the prostitutes laughing and carrying on in the front of the hotel and the whinos falling down by the curb, even though it was not yet ten o'clock. I ran over to the fire escape along the side of the building and climbed up to the second floor of the hotel. I knocked on one of the windows and a voice asked: "Who's there?" "Let me in," I said. After a pause, the window was pushed open and I climbed down into the room. "What is it?" asked Ademar, looking at me with eyes simultaneously wild and concerned, a steady, even concern. He was shirtless and the top button of his jeans was undone. He was sweating and the room had a heady, musky smell. The walls were painted reddish brown and it seemed like the whole place was on fire. I was on fire. "Did something happen?" "I'm sorry, man," I said, walking towards Ademar, putting my arms around him. I rested my head on his shoulder; my face touched his. "I was wrong," I said. "I'm sorry." TO BE CONTINUED [Usual disclaimers apply here. Do not read if it is against the law to read this sort of material where you live. This story is pretty benign but hey, who knows. I respond to all e-mails, even e-mails about typos. Take it easy, guys.]