Jamie had his hand on his back pocket as he walked into the Rusty Nail, ready to pull out his driver’s license if he needed to. That license was about to expire tomorrow on his birthday, but he was a little excited to legally be able to go into actual bar, even if the bar was on a back street in a small town at the end of the world.
Well, not the end of the world exactly, but so far from the world he’d come from he might almost be on a different planet. That was pretty dramatic, but after a long, bumpy Greyhound bus ride from Greeley that left him seeing the mid-morning sky as a hazy narrow line stretching toward the horizon, it was hard to believe he’d arrived. The unending openness of the high prairie flung itself all around him like a blue bowl full of strange promises.
It’d been such a long journey, in more ways than one, a journey that started almost two years before when his parents had announced they were getting a divorce. He couldn’t blame them for that, as it had been easy to see they’d not been happy with each other. But the result had been jagged endings he’d been unable to tie up that left him running into mental barriers, rattling inside his own life.
His two-year stint at Red Rocks Community College came to an abrupt end, as the divorce seemed to swallow all the money. And after? He’d lived with Mom for half a year until she kicked him out. Then he lived with Dad, and the same thing happened. Both of them had started new lives, rocketing off into shiny futures, leaving him stranded on some metal-sheened launching pad with no way to lift off.
And here he was, at the end of the road. At least he wasn’t still trapped within the cement walls of the meat packing plant in Greeley. At least he wasn’t still sharing an old, rattle-walled house with three other guys from the plant, guys who thought it was okay to take his carton milk from the fridge and drink it in front of him, as if daring him to object. No more would he have to sit at the table trying to eat his breakfast, shoulders hunched, hoping that one of them wouldn’t take it in his mind yet again to spit in his half-eaten bowl of cereal as they walked by.
The last straw had been when, after a 12-hour shift at the plant, the usual length, one of his housemates had clocked him out early, getting him in trouble with the foreman and losing him hours of pay. He’d explained it, the foreman had adjusted the time card, but from then on out, the foreman eyed him askance, always shaking his head, and didn’t trust him. The guys from the house, greaseballs all, snickered as he walked past, and splashed blood at him with their rubber boots when he was on the assembly line, cutting up meat.
Since he couldn’t take a break, the blood had dried in his hair, and he had his pay docked for being untidy. Then the guys told him he was short on the rent when it was obvious his check had already been cashed, and that was about all he’d been able to stand. He stuffed everything he owned into his one faded green duffle bag, slapped last year’s sneakers on his feet, and bought a ticket to the first ranch that showed up on his internet search.
“You gonna buy a drink or what?”
Jamie looked up, pushing his dust-coated hair out of his eyes. It was going to be tricky. Normally he would have already have his new license in preparation for tomorrow, his twenty-first birthday, when he would become legally an adult, so there shouldn’t have been a problem. At least not back in Colorado, where he figured bartenders would cut him a break and serve him, anyway. In Wyoming, he had no idea. But his throat was dry, and if he bought a beer, then maybe this guy would tell him where the ranch was.
“Lemme see that license.”
Obligingly, Jamie pulled out his wallet and sucked in a breath as he handed it over to the guy behind the counter.
The guy took it and huffed a laugh, and only too late did Jamie realize his mistake. Only an idiot would hand over his whole wallet. Someone more savvy would have pulled out the license and handed that over. There were rules in the real world, rules he was on his own to learn. The ones he did know had come painfully, and he knew, he just knew, that the ones he didn’t already know were going to cost him.
“Not quite,” said the guy, folding the wallet shut, tossing it on the bar with a hard flick of his wrist, like he was throwing away trash.
Jamie didn’t flinch, though he wanted to. Why was it that the more north he went, the men seemed to get tougher and more mean?
“I’ll be twenty-one tomorrow,” said Jamie, doing his best to push casual strength in his voice as he stuffed his wallet into his back pocket.
“Come back tomorrow, when you’re older.” The guy’s rangy, straw-colored hair hung in his pale blue eyes, and he looked at Jamie with a complete lack of interest and a whole lot of disdain.
“I don’t really want a beer,” said Jamie, though that was a complete lie. He wanted beer, or a glass of water to drink, at least, but he didn’t think this guy would give it to him without charging him for it. “I’m looking for directions to the ranch.”
“What ranch?” asked the guy. His mouth twisted downward as he said the wordranch.
“The one—”
Jamie thought about the day when a representative from a nearby ranch in northeastern Colorado had come to the meat packing plant with special instructions on how to slaughter his grass-fed beef. The rancher wore a crisp-collared blue denim shirt, standing out from the grubby slaughterhouse workers like a handsome, well-groomed beacon. While the foreman sneered at the rancher and basically told him to take his business elsewhere, the rancher remained calm and businesslike and, settling his shoulders as he left, didn’t seem at all bothered to have been refused a spot in the meat packing plant’s slaughter schedule.
Thinking about the rancher, and the kind of man he seemed to be, the thought had been planted in Jamie’s mind that not all cattle came from feedlots up near the Nebraska border. Searching on the internet, he discovered that some herds of cattle were raised differently than feed-lot cattle. These cattle were fed solely on grass and lived out their days in peaceful, grass-green fields. His mind easily imagined an idyllic green field where happy brown cows twitched their tails as they grazed in the sunshine.
If he could get a job working with cattle at a place like that, he wouldn’t have to wade in blood up to his knees every day and cut apart beef ribs and hunks of flesh that were still warm, blood beading on his knife blade and spraying into the air each time he raised it.
“Farthingdale Ranch,” he said. “I’m looking to get hired there.”
“That’s not arealranch, kid,” said the guy, his disdain brimming along the top of the words. “It’s a fuckin’ dude ranch.”
“A dude ranch?” asked Jamie, confusion taking over his idyllic image of the place. “I thought it was a cattle ranch, where they raise cattle.”
“No.” The guy shook his head and looked ready to turn away from the conversation rather than engage in any more of Jamie’s foolish notions. “It’s a place where idiots from the city come to play at being cowboys.”
“Still.” Jamie’s late-night internet search at the library had obviously given him wrong information. Or maybe he’d read the online brochure wrong. Keeping his hope firmly tucked tight, Jamie cast a look around the bar. It wasn’t hardly past eleven o’clock in the morning, and so only a few customers sat in the dark booths along the wall, nursing beers. “It’s what I came all this way for. I’d like to give it a try.”
“Sure, kid,” said the guy, laughing. “Maybe they’re hiring, after all. You’d be the third I sent up to them this week, and I ain’t got no complaints yet.”
“How do I get there?” asked Jamie, feeling buoyed up once more.
“Go up Latham Street,” said the guy, pointing out the window. “Go south to Main Street, then go west. Just follow the road, it’ll lead you right to the gate.”
