When Leland finished talking, they stood side by side, admiring the view. Jamie’s skin drank in the sunshine as he finished the water Leland had given him. And it was nice, real nice, to be in a place like that with the blue sky all around, the breeze rippling through the prairie grasses, skirting the rocks that turned into low, grey mountains.
“We’ll head down along that road,” said Leland, pointing into the long valley. “As we go, we’ll drop off blocks of rock salt one by one, so the grazing horses can congregate without crowding. They like that.”
With a smile, Leland gestured it was time to get going. They got in the truck, and Leland drove down the road. While they didn’t talk much as they went, it was nice just the same.
Jamie wasn’t used to being with men like Leland, who saidwe are doing this, and then did it. In Jamie’s world, his old world, back in Denver, or at the meat packing plant, everything was a promise that never came true. Out here, it was different. Leland was different. And Jamie was starting to feel different about himself.
They dropped off the salt blocks, one by one. Leland would stop and tell Jamie where to place the blocks, and Jamie would jump out of the truck and make it happen. Sometimes, Leland got out too, and walked around checking for bear scat, he said, or gauging the level of moisture in the grasses. Mostly it was Jamie doing the work, but he didn’t mind, because it wasn’t very hard.
They delivered the salt blocks until the truck bed was empty and they were in the middle of nowhere. At least that’s what it felt like to Jamie, with the blue bowl of the sky overhead. There was no sound except for the low, almost-silent whistle of the wind over the tall prairie grasses. No presence except for Jamie and Leland, all alone in the middle of it, as though they were the only two people left on Earth.
It was there, way out there on the high prairie, that Leland folded down the tailgate and opened the cooler.
“Eat up,” he said as he brought out the sandwiches and cookies and cans of soda. “You’ve got room to grow in those shoulders of yours,” he said, and for a moment it seemed like he wanted to pat Jamie on the shoulder, only he didn’t.
They sat on the tailgate in the blazing sun, the wind rushing around Jamie’s ears as they ate. The wind whisked away any sounds, and they had to keep a hold on the sandwich wrappers to make sure they wouldn’t litter the landscape.
The best part was when Leland smiled at Jamie, and wiped away a bit of mayonnaise in the corner of his mouth, and then dabbed playfully at his face with a paper napkin. Was he flirting? At least it felt like flirting, but where would it lead? Leland didn’t seem like the kind of guy to do casual hookups. Jamie couldn’t imagine him unbending those rules of his to lower his guard for a quickie behind the barn.
Driving back was fun, as Leland went a little faster without all the salt blocks in the back, and it was nice to see the ranch rise into view and to recognize it as home. Leland dropped Jamie off at the barn, told him to check with Clay for work, and drove off to park the truck.
Feeling pleased, Jamie went into the large, airy barn, somehow seeing it with fresh eyes. He was really a ranch hand now and had delivered rock salt to the fields where the horses grazed. Now, with his straw cowboy hat firmly on his head, he found someone who could direct him to Clay, who was out by the corral, helping Brody, who was instructing a small class of guests with their riding lessons.
“Hey, Clay,” Jamie said, putting his booted foot up on the wooden rail, like Clay was doing. He pushed his straw hat back and watched the lesson for a minute. “Leland said to check with you for work.”
“You can rake this corral after the lesson,” Clay said, giving him a bright smile. “You remember to dump the manure?”
“Yes,” he said. Raking a corral wasn’t as exciting as being with Leland all day, but he wanted to be helpful, wanted to keep his job.
“Make the sand smooth as you can after,” Clay said. “And be sure to stop for water. Every hour, pretty much, understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Jamie said with a mock salute.
“Just Clay,” Clay said.
“Yes, just Clay,” Jamie said, laughing to himself.
Raking the corral after the lesson was over was sweaty work. Flies buzzed around him in the heat, and while horse manure didn’t smell so bad, Jamie felt sticky and dusty all over by the time he stopped for water.
He drank an entire bottle while standing in the shade, then went out to finish the job. The sunshine, once bright and breezy, blazed down on the crown of his straw hat as he took the rake and turned it over to smooth the sand in the corral, which was pretty huge.
After that, Clay set Jamie to picking up stray leaves and branches around the barn, making everything tidy, which, after the morning’s outing, felt boring. He wanted to deliver salt blocks with Leland again, or help saddle up the horses for an afternoon of trail riding, like he saw some of the ranch hands doing.
Feeling a little hard done by, he threw away the last of the trash in the bins near the supply barn, then went back to the main barn where he thought to find Clay and ask for something more interesting to do.
But instead he found Leland in his office. His hat hung on a wooden peg in the wall, and his sleeves were rolled up, and it looked like he’d run his hands through his hair again. He had a bottle of iced tea at his elbow and was going over a stack of papers on his desk. The office was plain, but there was a shelf full of books about ranching and horses, and everything had the air of hard use about it.
“Hey,” Jamie said, and while he felt better just looking at Leland, he also knew he wanted to do something more exciting than picking up trash. “I’m done picking up trash. Is there anything more I can do? Like break a horse or something?” He felt foolish the second he asked it.
“Break a horse?” Leland asked, as he finished what he was writing. When he looked up at Jamie, he smiled. “We don’t break horses anymore, at least not at this ranch. We only buy horses that are gentled in, and then we train them. That’s how you get the best horses.”
Leland reached into a small brown fridge that sat along the wall and pulled out a bottle of water, which he handed to Jamie.
“It’s good to take breaks,” he said.
Jamie took the bottle of water and leaned against the doorjamb and drank it half down, all in a few gulps. When he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, Leland was looking at him in that way he had. Half appraising, half something else. Jamie couldn’t even begin to figure him out, but he wanted to try.
18
