Yes, there were cowboys and cowboy hats and boots and cattle drives and bucking broncos. He had no wealthy backer to be a bronc rider, nor even knew how to get into the super secret club of pickup men.
He never wanted to be a rodeo clown. Didn’t have a horse or a truck or a dog or a rifle. Could never figure out what the secret handshake was to enter that world he’d imagined in his mind. Where cowboys and ranchers worked together, raising good, dependable horses or herding cows to lush, green pastures edged by clear, cool streams of fresh water.
His reality had been following the rodeo circuit: cleaning up the animal pens, chuffing hay into feed bins, fixing leaks in water troughs. Driving eighteen wheeled trucks pulling vented trailers full of cattle destined for the feedlots to be fattened up before slaughter.
During the winters he worked in those feedlots and slaughterhouses, and some summers the only job he could get was at one of the granaries tucked along the railroad tracks, metal towers signaling their existence, and marking the memories of days gone by.
Inevitably, some old guy, or a trio of old guys, it was never an even number, would be hanging around the granary break room telling stories, shooting the shit. After which, they’d head over to the local diner and continue jawing there.
Sometimes because, he guessed, they considered Marston a good listener, they’d invite him along. His half hour lunch would turn into an hour and his boss would holler and threaten to dock his pay. But that would never happen because Marston would just work a little later to make up for it, building more muscle than his stomach could keep up with, and his boss would be happy because the old guys were happy, though why that ever mattered to his boss, he had no idea.
His life was slated to go on like this, year after year, until he either died in a drunk driving accident, coughed up a lung, or was absorbed into a big city, never to be seen or heard of again.
His dream of being a cowboy, having anything to do with horses and riding and little doggies, singing heart-aching songs beneath the moonlight, his cowboy hat tipped back to let the star-shine soak into his skin, was fast becoming a shredded thin-skinned version of itself.
Until one day. A very fateful day.
He’d gotten a job at a slaughterhouse just outside of La Grange, Wyoming, and had said yes to covering another guy’s shift on a cold and snowy Saturday in late March. Getting overtime would help him save up for his own single-wide trailer, a sure sign he was following in his parents’ footsteps while not to the letter, close enough to give him nightmares.
But what other option did he have? The apartments he rented were shitty and noisy and growing more expensive. At least in a trailer he’d be able to pretend he lived in a real house with real walls. A fraction of a lawn that he could water to greenness when the summer days came. A faraway dream if ever there was one.
But that day, on a Saturday he wasn’t originally scheduled to work, he’d been in the noisy, smelling-a-bit-like-bleach break room, sitting catty corner from a guy he saw around sometimes, a broad-shouldered serious looking guy with solemn blue eyes.
Gabe didn’t have much to say, much like Marston never had anything to say, because what was the point?
Gabe’s lunch that day had been a thick Dagwood-style sandwich he’d tucked in a large plastic container. This was accompanied by a bag of BBQ potato chips, a little baggie of beef jerky, six Oreos, six chocolate chip cookies that looked homemade, a chunk of cheddar cheese, and an apple, along with a thermos of iced tea.
Sometimes Marston couldn’t help staring, and sometimes, when he looked in a mirror, he could still see the hunger in his own eyes, mementos of a childhood of want and scarcity. He must have looked at Gabe with those eyes, because Gabe, without a word, had slid over the cheese, the apple and, astonishingly, the Oreos.
Marston’s mouth had watered and he’d swallowed hard. He was a grown man and could afford to bring his own PB&J on wheat bread, buy a bag of plain Lays from the vending machine. Get a glass of water from the tap. He didn’t need charity from anyone and wasn’t about to take it now.
Then Gabe had said, quite conversationally, as if he and Marston had talked before this and maybe knew each other outside of work, “I’m always starving in the morning, so I always bring too much.”
Marston had a sudden, vivid image of the broad-shouldered Gabe standing there in front of his open fridge, studying the wares, each shelf packed to capacity with cold cuts, pickles, butter, milk, cheese—everything good.
“But when I work hard, doing physical work like this, it makes me feel sleepy when I eat too much, and I can’t keep up the pace I set in the morning. You see?”
This was accompanied by the unspoken,You’ll be helping me out.
To add to the temptation of just saying yes, Gabe reached out and tugged on the baggie of Oreos, making them shake around in their small litter of black and white crumbs, and Marston imagined he could almost smell their sweetness.
Those Oreos were the best Marston had ever tasted, not that he’d tasted many, and after that, he might even be able to say that he and Gabe were friends. Not that Gabe liked to hang out a lot, not that Gabe had a lot to say for or about himself, but that was fine with Marston.
They managed to be on the same shifts together, and would have lunch and take breaks together, with small smiles rather than words as greetings and goodbyes. And, after that day, Marston spent more of his money on groceries, making bigger lunches so Gabe wouldn’t feel sorry for him anymore, skimping on either breakfast or dinner, packing on more muscle as he and Gabe worked in sync.
Then, on a day in mid-April when the grasp of winter seemed to start to loosen, Gabe had come up to him at lunchtime and, for once, he had something to say.
He told Marston about a job he had lined up, amagicjob. The kind you wished for on a shooting star. The kind you were sure you’d never have, on a guest ranch in Wyoming.
Marston had blinked at this, a bit confused to hear this kind of talk from Gabe, a praiseful speech about the ranch, the guy who ran it, the kind of work that was available.He runs a guest ranch so rich folk can pretend to be cowboys,Gabe had said.He’s picky. Real picky, but my friend Jasper helped me get in, and I think I can get you in. You want in?
Looking around the break room, clean but shabby, the pale tan linoleum worn enough to have patches all the way down to the baseboards, Marston knew he should jump on this chance. Yet the lure of the known, a single wide in a trailer park, yanked hard at his soul, the barbed hooks looped in so deep there was no pulling them out. No signing up for a job where he could work with horses, where his old dream could come true.
“I don’t know how to ride,” he said, ashamed to admit it. “Don’t know about horses except how to load them onto a trailer and unload them again at the other end. Don’t know about—” he paused, spreading his hands wide to collect his confusion. “Guests.”
“They’ll teach you,” said Gabe, then he pointed to the scarred surface of the table. “What Leland Tate wants is good hard workers, and that’s you. But you gotta say yes fast cause the season begins in May.”
“Yes,” said Marston as fast as he could, jumping with both feet over a cliff’s edge that led to a pit where he had no idea what would happen next.
