That voice. Quick, with rippling hints of the east coast whence Winston hailed. A city boy, finding a life in the grown up cattle town of Denver.
Bede’s eyes grew hot, and he scrubbed at them, pushing the boots away as he stood up.
To distract himself, he picked up the straw hat, and turned it around, fingers gentle on the brim. It was a very simple hat with a tooled leather band and matching arrows cut out on each side.
The crown was folded in a way he’d been told was a cattleman’s fold. Which made it easy to pick up the hat between his fingers and put it on his head.
The image of Galen laughing in surprise when he’d selected a hat for himself only to find out that all three ex-cons on his team had picked out the exact same hat made Bede feel more like smiling. Like laughing again.
He’d almost heard Galen asking himself whether it might be a good team-building move to break down and say yes to the hat. When he had, placing the hat on the counter with the others, a little cheer had gone up, Toby and Owen crowing and fist pumping as if Galen had just come over to the dark side.
Standing by the silver truck as he demonstrated how to properly wear a straw cowboy hat, Galen’s guard had gone down even further, like he was with his good buddies and showing them all how to be that much cooler, and looking pretty adorable himself.
Then he’d looked up and probably realized what he was doing, acting all nice instead of like some guy with a pole shoved up his ass, and got serious, clicking on his key fob in his pocket and waving them to get in the truck.
Bede had grabbed shotgun just to see what it would feel like to be up front in a moving vehicle, and a pretty nice vehicle at that.
Galen had driven up the road to the ranch, rather than going straight back to the valley. Galen had said, for reasons of his own,I’ll give you a quick tour of the guest ranch. Might as well, long as we’re up here. Casually, like they were all friends on an outing, rather than one team lead and three parolees, one of whom was a dangerous drug lord.
Up close, in the confines of the truck’s cab, Galen smelled amazing, his scent pulling Bede in, though he stopped himself, and asked if they could roll the windows down. Galen agreed, and the bright breeze flew into the cab.
The dirt road went in and out of clumps of green-leafed trees, over a stone bridge, and finally along the middle of the maincompound. With a dining hall on the left, cabins on the right, and a barn and paddock up ahead, Bede could see it was a posh place, even more lush than the valley.
Most notable was the wide, glassy river that separated the ranch from the empty green prairie that seemed to go on forever. Not that Bede could see all of this at once, the place was huge. Spread out. Verdant, with plenty of shade and places to sit between activities.
As they drove back down the road, there were ranch hands out in front of the large wooden lodge, stringing up lights. Other ranch hands were rolling out what looked like oak barrels full of ice.
“What’s that for?” asked Toby, pointing, his arm jutting out from the rolled-down window in the back of the pickup cab.
“It’s for the Tuesday night dance,” said Galen. He slowed down so they could all get a good look.
Bede figured that if you were a guest at the ranch, you got to go to the dance. But if you were a parolee, even if you had new boots, you wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near any good law-abiding guests, regardless of your ability to do the two-step.
Swallowing the sour taste in his mouth, Bede stayed quiet all the way back to the valley.
Before prison, he and Winston had talked about taking country line dance lessons together. They would have learned the two-step, and Bede could have gone to one of those Tuesday night dances. The crowd would probably be small and friendly, and those lights he’d seen being strung up would at just the right warmth and brightness.
He’d never been one for going to popular clubs. There were just too many people he didn’t know. Too many chances to bump into the kind of people he never wanted to bump into. Other drug dealers, for example.
He didn’t imagine that parolees would be invited to that dance, but now, sitting on his cot, his boots in his hands, he changed his mind. He might not be able to go to the dance, but he’d sure as hell wear the boots.
Quickly unlacing his work boots, he slid the new cowboy boots onto his feet. Standing, the boots felt sturdy and new, and in them he was ten feet tall. Then he put on a clean shirt, snapping the buttons closed slowly, one by one.
Had Winston been there, he would have whistled at Bede, and, with his eyes, told Bede how good he looked, and that Winston might actually prefer it if they didn’t leave the tent. That they go back to bed and rumple the bedclothes.
But Winston wasn’t there, so Bede walked to the mess tent by himself, his new boots leaving tiny triangular toe prints in the pine cones and dust.
Along the way, he swallowed hard and then swallowed again, sweeping his hair back from his face, straightening his back. Hardening his heart against memories of Winston and the future that they would never have.
He couldn’t let anyone know, not Kell, not Galen, not anyone, how he felt as though he was being torn through by rotating blades. It was a new world, and he needed to either shrink into a ball of nothingness, or march right on into it.
In the buffet line in the mess tent, he barely knew what he grabbed from the steamers, and when he sat down at one of the long tables with his tray of food and began eating, he could barely taste it.
And when Galen spread his hands wide, Bede could only blink at him, confused by what he wanted.
“Where’s your list?” Galen asked. And then added, “Of books.”
“It’s in his pocket,” said Kell, giving Bede a soft elbow. “I saw him put it there.”
