markwildyr.com,
Post #78
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| Courtesy of Pixabay |
Thanks for
giving me a pass for my last posting. Car wrecks and internal bleeding and
endoscopes and colostomies get in the way sometime.
Anyway, here’s
a new story. It’s one I wrote a long time ago, but decided I wanted to update.
Here’s part one of the story. Enjoy.
*****
DEV
My
father rolled down the Dodge pickup’s window, admitting the heat and dust as we
left our quarter-section and drove across town to the old Jones place early
Monday morning.
“Are
you looking forward to your summer, Patrick?”
I
brushed a blond cowlick out of my eyes and nodded. “Guess so. As much as a
fellow can look forward to stretching fence. But thanks for offering to pay me.”
“Only
right,” he answered. Then he read my mind, like he usually did. “Up till now it
was just chores, really, but this’ll keep you hopping full time till you go off
to college in the fall. Got a corral and shed to build after the fencing’s done
if I’m gonna run cattle on that land.”
“Yeah.
I’ll get it done, pop.”
“I
know you will. You okay with me asking the Hartshorn boy to give you a hand.”
I
paused before answering. Everyone talked about Devon Hartshorn, but nobody ever
said anything about him, if you know what I mean. His family was new to town
when some drunk plowed into their car out on Highway 55. Killed everybody
except the Hartshorn boy, who was never the same afterward. The kids at school
claimed he was feeble-minded or worse. The thought of working with a blithering
idiot raised the hair on my neck.
But
that wasn’t all of it. Nobody was left to take care of the kid after the family
was killed, so they put him in a public home. When he turned eighteen the man
who ran the place took him to live at his house. Everybody thought that was
mighty Christian of Mr. Jones until the ugly rumors started. He was abusing
the kid, people said. Abuse to me was a walloping that wasn’t earned, but the
kids in the know whispered about another kind. Some guys claimed Mr. Jones
was…well, screwing the kid. The outraged locals ran the man out of town, and
now Devon lived alone in the old Jones house
out on the west side.
Dad
spoke into my silence. “Devon ’s a good boy
despite all that’s happened to him. He’s a good worker even if he is kinda soft
in the head. Do you know him, son?”
“Seen
him around town, but that’s all. And, yeah. I’m okay with working with him,” I
said as we turned into the dirt drive beside a white clapboard, cross-gabled
house.
I’d
never seen Devon up close and don’t know what
I expected, but it wasn’t what I got. A handsome, fit young man with
coffee-colored hair and deep brown eyes tripped down the steps and grasped my
dad's hand.
“Morning,
Devon ,” dad said. “You know my boy, Patrick? You’re
gonna be working for him this summer. You two are gonna fence part of the old
Mills place for me.”
“Yes sir,
Mr. Holt. Hello, Patrick,” he solemnly greeted me with a firm handshake. “Did
Mr. Mills say it’s okay?”
“Mr.
Mills is dead, Devon ,” my old man explained. “I
bought his land, and that’s what you and Patrick are going to fence. Understand?”
“Yes sir.
I’ll work good for you, Patrick.”
“Uh …
okay,” I said in a daze. Dad explained things to Devon
like he was a ten-year-old, but the guy was built like an adult—although he
looked younger than me. And that couldn’t be; Mr. Jones got chased out of town
four years ago. If the kid was eighteen then, he’d be twenty-two at least.
“You sure
you’re okay with this?” my father asked when Devon
hopped in the truck bed and we started for the house. “He’s a good kid, Patrick,”
he went on when I nodded. “You treat him decent, you hear. Everybody acts like
he’s different—and he is, I guess—but they’re either condescending as hell or
else they treat him like a mindless animal. I know you won’t do that.”
Devon
and I loaded a posthole digger, fence posts, wire, cutters, the come-along jack
from the barn and headed for the job, fortified by two fat sack lunches and a
big cooler of water. Neither Devon nor I said
a thing on the six-mile drive to the Mills place. I was too nervous, and he
apparently had nothing to contribute.
I quickly
learned if I carefully explained what was expected, Devon
performed perfectly. If I assumed he understand something, it led to disaster. When
we broke for lunch, I tried to initiate a conversation.
“You're
a good worker,” I started and immediately realized that condescension thing had
reared its ugly head.
“Thanks,
Patrick. Mr. Jones said that was what everybody expects out of a fellow.”
The
casual mention of his abuser threw me off stride. “I'm surprised you even
mention that son-of-a-bitch’s name. Uh … him treating you that way and all.”
His reaction
was astounding. “Don’t go saying bad things about Mr. Jones! He was good to me.
Till he up and left me all by myself. Why did he do that? I thought he liked
me. Said he loved me. What does love mean?” Devon
asked throwing me a curve.
Stunned,
I looked at the incredibly handsome boy…man…sitting beside me on the Dodge’s
tailgate, chewing his sandwich placidly. “Uh, that’s when you like somebody
really well.”
“Oh, then
I guess I love you, Patrick.”
“No,
no!” I sputtered. “I mean like when a man and a woman want to get married. Or how
a fellow feels about his father or mother.”
He
frowned in concentration. “Can a man love a man?”
“Sure.
Like brothers, you know. Otherwise, they’re just buddies.”
“Buddies.
Is that what we are, Patrick? I had a buddy once,” he went on in his childlike
way. “Mr. Jones was my buddy. He loved me.” The frown came again. “But he went
away.”
“You
don’t know why he went away? Be damned, you don’t have any idea, do you?” I
muttered when those big, liquid, clueless eyes turned on me. “How could you
like a man like Jones?”
“He’s
a good man,” Devon said seriously. “He treated
me real good. Took care of me when nobody else wanted me.”
That
made sense—put up with the abuse in payment for the care. My curiosity got the
better of me. “Didn’t you resent what he … did to you?”
“He
didn’t do nothing to me,” came the sincere reply, making me wonder if a great
injustice had been done in the heat of the chase.
“He
didn’t … do things to you? You know, personal things.”
A confused
frown revealed Devon ’s lack of comprehension. “He
did good things to me.”
I
backed off. “Well, if it’ll make you feel any better, he didn’t want to leave
you. He got … uh, he had to leave, and they wouldn’t let him take you with
him.”
“I
know. That’s what he told me. Said he couldn’t even write to me.”
“Great,”
I muttered, crawling to my feet.
As I
delivered Devon home after work and paid him
for the day like my dad had instructed me, he promised to be ready bright and
early the next morning. We were both filthy from the day’s work, and I wondered
if he’d have enough sense to clean his clothes.
I had
time to clean up before mom put supper on the table, but decided I was too
tired to go into town and find my girl, Sara Sue Crowley. I settled for talking
to her on the telephone for fifteen minutes instead.
*****
Sounds like Patrick’s handling everything okay. Or does
it? Tune in next time to find out a little more.
Amazon permits you to read a short passage of my novels, Cut Hand and Johnny Two-Guns. I also believe the STARbooks-published River Otter, Echoes of the Flute, and Medicine Hair are still up. I sure would
like to get the final book in the Cut Hand Series, Wastelakapi… Beloved, published, but it’ll take some help from
readers to get Dreamspinner interested.
My contact
information is provided below in case anyone wants to drop me a line:
Website and blog: markwildyr.com
Email: markwildyr@aol.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/mark.wildyr
Twitter: @markwildyr
The
following are buy links for CUT HAND:
And now my mantra (yes, it’s mine, even if I borrowed it
from Don Travis): Keep on reading. Keep
on writing. You have something to say, so say it!
Until next time.
Mark
New posts at 6:00 a.m. on the first and
third Thursdays of each month.
