Zeke looked at Cal and seemed to laugh under his breath. “Bronc riding is an old frontier tradition, right? A way of breaking in a horse quickly. But we have better training methods now and men like Buck Brannaman leading the way—he’s a horse trainer—so why put a horse through that? To prove your manhood? That’s bullshit.”
“What happened to the horse?”
“I bought him,” said Zeke. He took a sip of his beer and sighed. “I couldn’t stop thinking about him, so after I got out of the hospital, I tracked him down. He wasn’t fit to ride and was just about to go into a kill pen, so I bought his rights for fifty bucks. Then I found a woman who keeps horses and lets them live out their days.”
“That was nice of you,” said Cal. “And her.”
All he could think about was it took a man like Zeke to do what he did. And that Zeke looked handsome as he thought about his past, all relaxed, his green eyes gazing at a middle distance only he could see.
“Turns out the woman is Leland Tate’s mother, which is how I got my first job up at the guest ranch. Which led me to my current job in the valley.” Zeke refocused his attention on Cal, and it was like being wrapped up in a warm cloak of protection. “There’s value in what I’m doing now,” he said. “There wasn’t then, only I couldn’t see it.”
Cal opened his mouth to say something profound, to make the moment last, the intimacy between them, but at that moment, Leland Tate showed up with a small box in his hand.
Cal recognized Leland from the Zoom interview he’d done back at Wyoming Correctional. Plus, he was hard to mistake for anyone else, and tall besides, standing out from everyone in the restaurant around him without moving a muscle.
Leland slid into the booth next to Zeke, and raised a finger at the waitress, who’d come up to the table.
“I’ll have what he’s having,” he said, pointing to Zeke’s half-drunk beer. She brought it right away, as if she’d been anticipating this very moment. Leland took a sip and sighed, and said, “I think this is one of my favorite moments.”
“Yeah?” asked Zeke, as if they were pals of long standing and not employer and employee.
“I get to sit, take a load off, and hand out free phones.” He reached across the table to hand Cal the box he’d been carrying. “There you go, Cal.”
Cal took the box and opened it to reveal a sleek-looking cell phone. He knew it was a refurb, but it looked brand new.
Taking it out of the box, his first thought, oddly, was to call Preston to brag about the phone. Which was a stupid idea, of course it was. But since he was two weeks into the program, he only had a week before Preston was due to show up. And he still hadn’t come up with a way out of that encounter.
“Thank you, Mr. Tate,” Cal said, looking up.
“Call me Leland,” said Leland. “Mr. Tate was my father.” Then he added, “I wanted to commend you on the amazing amount of hard work you’ve given us. Zeke says you’re a natural with horses.”
“Well—” Cal paused, his brain stammering at the compliment. He was getting better with the horses, but—“A natural?”
“Yes,” said Zeke. “I can always tell. What’s more, horses can, as well. When they come up to you all on their own, that’s how you can tell.”
“I’ve got a long way to go before I’m as good as you,” said Cal, thinking that maybe it was Leland’s presence that allowed him to say what he’d been thinking out loud. That watching Zeke with the horses was its own kind of poetry.
“Aw, shucks,” said Zeke, in a way that told Cal that Zeke was uncomfortable with compliments like that. Ones said out loud infront of witnesses. “It’s only because I’ve been at it for years, I reckon.”
“You are outstanding with horses,” said Leland. Then he swallowed the last of his beer in a huge gulp, and stood up, reaching to shake Cal’s hand. “Keep up the good work, young man. And Zeke, let me know if you need anything, okay? I know you fellows like to be self-reliant, but I’m just a phone call away.”
With that, Leland left the tavern, wending his way through the tables. Cal turned his attention to Zeke.
“Did you mean it? What you said to him about me and the horses?”
“Yeah, I meant it.” Zeke nodded. “I wouldn’t lie about a thing like that.”
Cal glowed and the sparkling, happy feeling settled more firmly around him. And in spite of his best efforts to make it last, the evening ended all too soon, and they drove back to the valley in the near-darkness, with twilight having come down hard and sudden.
The cool darkness was a reminder that summer would be ending in a half dozen weeks, and Cal still hadn’t figured out what he was going to do. But he didn’t want to bring it up or ask Zeke for advice. He just wanted to enjoy the last glimmer of light reflected in Zeke’s eyes and soft smile.
After they separated in the parking lot, Cal made his way to his tent, thinking he’d grab his things and take a shower. When he got there, he realized he’d been clutching the phone so hard, he’d left fingerprints on the glass. Taking his shirttail out of his jeans, he wiped the phone down, slowly.
He didn’t have anyone to call. Not anyone in the whole wide world. But maybe he could ask Zeke for his number? Just in case.
He got ready for bed, shooed the moths out of his tent, and pulled the sheets and blanket back to simply lie on the cot andstare at the ceiling of the tent. Sometimes he imagined he could see flickers of lightning, though he could hear no thunder.
In the morning, he awoke to the sound of his cell phone ringing. Thinking that Zeke somehow already had his number, he answered.
