“Right after breakfast?” he asked, focusing his attention on Gabe.
“Yes,” said Gabe. “We’ll have water and snacks, bring your own gloves and hat, and don’t forget sunscreen.”
Marston smiled because the ranch was like that, always focused on the safety and health of everyone who worked there, and now the valley was the same. Then he got in line behind Gabe, and piled his plate with bacon and eggs, settling himself along the long table in the middle of the tent, where everyone else was seated.
At the far end of the mess tent, plowing his way through a pile of pancakes, was Kell. He had his head down, like he was tired, like maybe he’d not slept the night before.
Marston didn’t have a chance to ask, as the morning moved apace, and after breakfast, he hurried to his tent to grab his gloves and his hat, shoving a tube of sunscreen into his front pocket.
Clay had towed a large flatbed truck down to the valley, coming in along the side road. There was a little bit of good-natured dithering as they decided who would sit up front in the truck’s cab, which only held four, and who would sit in the truck bed.
“We’ll squeeze Clay up front and drop him off at the ranch,” said Gabe, swirling the keyring in his hand. “You guys need to figure this out.”
“I’ll sit in the back,” said Marston.
A little cool wind in his hair, a little warm sunshine on his back would help him clear his head and keep it clear. He climbed into the truck bed and settled himself in a corner.
The truck bed was clean and still fairly new, so there were no rusty edges or dings, but he knew that if the truck went over a bump that it’d be easier to steady himself in the corner.
“Me too.”
Marston looked up to see Kell climbing into the truck bed, tucking himself into the corner opposite to where Marston was.
With his knees tucked close to his chest, he looked like he was trying to make himself as small as possible, like he was worried that Marston, or someone, would kick him out and make him ride up front.
“This is fine,” Kell said as the members of Royce’s team, also tapped to help finish up the job, piled in around him.
It was fine, in a way, to look at Kell with his wind-blown hair all around his face, the bright morning sunshine making his green eyes glitter, the lines of his face limned with gold. And a distraction, as well, pushing Marston right up against his own late night into early morning resolutions to stay focused on his job.
There was a sweet hopefulness in Kell’s face that maybe today would be a good day, that maybe he was settling into the rhythm of the valley, which, much like the rhythm of the guest ranch, was a steady progression of work, and rest, and food and good company. It didn’t get any better than that.
As the truck sped along, Kell looked small against the tallness of his fellows, less sturdy, less able for the physical labor. Which, after a blissful, wind-tossed, sunshiny hour, Marston found to be absolutely the case.
Gabe drove the flatbed to the furthest end of the field where acres and acres of stubbled field evidenced the hard work that had already happened, the green-flecked bales of hay that waited showing how much work needed to be done.
They’d easily finish loading all the hay bales in, perhaps, three trips back and forth. There were, after all, twenty-five horses currently in the pasture in the valley, and there would be more moving in and out all through the summer. After all, early mowing produced the sweetest hay.
Everybody piled out, and Gabe directed Kell and Wayne up on the truck bed, with the rest of them walking along, bending to grab the bales, and throwing them up, where Kell and Wayne would arrange them. There were more men on the ground, walking slowly between the stubbled rows, so the two on the truck bed had to hustle to keep up.
And while Wayne, red faced and sweating, his hair sticking to his forehead, could keep up, it was plain, quite plain, that Kell could not. He could lift the bales, but struggled to carry them to where they needed to go, struggled to lift to stack them.
Anywhere else, any other situation, and he might have fit right in and kept up just fine. But he was surrounded by ex-cons who had evidently used a great deal of their prison time to lift weights and throw bowling balls or whatever else it was that ex-cons did for exercise to build steel-hard muscles and elephant-sized endurance.
Marston helped out where he could, throwing the bales all the way down, closer to the stacks, rather than just at the end of the flatbed. He called for breaks when he didn’t really need them and took his time climbing onto the flatbed for his turn at stacking.
From the height of the flatbed, warm in the full sunshine, glinting off its metal edges, the curved land stretched out, sloping down to an irrigation ditch, running with snowmelt.
Jonah, standing next to him, peeled off his blue snap-button shirt, and tucked it in his waist, flexing his bare arms, muscles rippling beneath his white tank top, a blue heron standing out along his left bicep.
“Don’t worry, I got plenty of sunscreen,” said Jonah, putting up his gloved hands in a defensive position. “Royce made me layer it on.”
That particular statement confirmed everything Marston had suspected was going on between Royce and Jonah. The kind of protective care that Royce displayed all the time was obviously something Jonah responded to. And why not? Why shouldn’t he?
“Yeah, okay,” said Marston in response to Jonah’s unasked question. “You’re right.” He took off his own snap-button shirt, tucked it into his waist, and arched his neck back to feel the sun on his shoulders. “No tattoos, though,” he said, trying to make conversation for conversation’s sake, the way everybody around him seemed to do with ease.
“You could get one,” said Jonah, steadying himself as Gabe put the truck in gear and it slowly started rumbling along. “I love Mom, or something.” He made a gesture across his bare bicep, the one without the tattoo.
“Huh.”
