“I don’t know,” said Gabe with a little shrug. “Maybe dancing should be part of it, part of the civilizing of these guys.”
Had anybody else said that Kell needed civilizing, however true the statement, he would have punched him in the face. But this was Gabe, who’d been nice to him, and they were going back to the valley, where it was a different world than he’d been living in for two years. Hell, it was different than being at home.
“Maybe we could set something up,” said Maddy. “We should check with Leland. In the meantime, Kell, how do you like those boots? Do you want to try on some different ones?”
Maybe Maddy was the kind of person who would allow Kell to try on boots for hours or until hell froze over, however long it took. She was obviously hard working, like everyone around Kell seemed to be, so the last thing she deserved was for Kell to have a hissy fit about it.
“I’ll take these,” he said, ducking a little to touch the knee of his jeans.
“You like ‘em?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, then tried again. “Yes, ma’am, I do.”
“Boots don’t make the man,” said Gabe as they put Kell’s work boots in the boot box and some paperwork was signed at the cash register. “But those seem to suit you pretty well, I’d say.”
“Thanks,” he said, meaning it more than he thought he would.
New boots. New day. New place. New Kell. Maybe he could make a new life for himself after all.
Chapter12
Kell
At the parking lot in the valley, Gabe told Kell he was at liberty to stomp around and break in his new boots until dinner, and that he, Gabe, was going to check on the team.
“We’ll do another campfire tonight,” said Gabe, smiling at Kell as if to smooth away his surprise.What, again?“They never get old,” he said, tossing the key fob on the driver’s seat of the silver truck as if he was, quite simply, not worried that anyone would steal it. And maybe, in the valley, nobody ever did. “They simply never get old.”
Kell could imagine that they did not and never would, not if they were as satisfying as the one the night before, where the smell of smoke and the flicker of starlight high above the yellow and orange flames was now planted like a picture in his brain.
He and Marston after the others had left.
Him spilling his heart out to Marston in the near-darkness. Marston’s eyes, a strange hazel-blue-and-gold, looking at him, utterly serious, not smiling but kind. Listening to Kell, waiting and patient. Saying exactly what Kell needed to hear.
There had been no platitudes, nothing like,Of course your parents love you. Of course they want you back. No. Instead, he’d said,That sounds rough. You didn’t deserve that. The truth and support all rolled into one.
There was no way another campfire session would turn out exactly the same or even similar, but if there was half a chance, then Kell would be there in a heartbeat.
In the meantime, where was Marston? After putting the box with his work boots inside in his tent, Kell shuffled around in his new boots, enjoying the edge of the fine straw brim of his new hat, that added cool shade to his head and gave everything he looked at a border of straw.
He went to the mess tent and hung around for a minute, and then ambled out into the woods, his fingers in his pockets as he walked to the lake and then to the facilities. He went back to the mess tent, the cool breeze on his neck the whole while, but he couldn’t find Marston anywhere.
Gabe had mentioned Marston worked on his own in the woods making signs, but Kell didn’t know what kind of signs those were. So except for that morning, when Marston had shown up to help with the hay, it seemed he was by himself all the time.
Images of Marston on top of the flatbed, strong corded arms lifting bales of hay into place as though they weighed no more than a feather, flitted through Kell’s head. The line of his neck, the press of his thighs inside hay-dusted blue jeans.
The height of him, looming over Kell as Marston stood on the edge of the flatbed truck looking down, a shower of gold flecks of hay shimmering in the sunlight like a halo around his head.
He’d sensed that Marston had been moving slowly, only he couldn’t figure out why, since work was pressing, and the clouds to the west were looming. When he’d been drinking water from the cooler, Marston had turned away as he’d lifted the plastic bottle to his mouth, but then, in a quick, spare moment, he’d looked over his shoulder at Kell as if checking up on him, making sure he was drinking enough.
Kell hadn’t been fussed over like that since before he’d left home. Since the Christmas before he’d stupidly outed himself to his parents.
The sense of it, of being on someone’s radar, usually rankled and meant nothing but trouble, so he’d always done his best to shiver out of the way, tonotbe noticed. Being noticed meant you were about to be harassed, told to get lost, or full-out arrested.
But to have Marston looking at him like that, as though Kell was the only one who Marston cared to watch out for, did different things to him. Bede had looked out for him, but this felt different. It soothed the edges of him, all prickly and standing straight up from being on guard, watching out for himself for two years.
On the road, danger lurked. In prison, dangers abounded. Here in the valley, it already felt safer, and when Marston screwed the top back on his plastic water bottle, and then straightened up, the chin jerk of greeting and acknowledgement, all at once, meant only for Kell, in that moment, he felt not just safe, but cared for.
How did he know? Because Marston never looked at anyone else. Never made sure of them. Never reached further for anyone else so they wouldn’t have to lift the hay bales as high. Never stood by for anyone else when they climbed up on the flatbed to do their turn at stacking.
