Page 72 of Boy Blue
“Can I go get him now?” I asked Jack, though I didn’t really need his permission. I didn’t needanyone’spermission to fiercely love this boxcar boy, but I asked just the same, to honor Blue’s ritual.
“Yes.” The single word was delivered to me as a breeze kicked up, spraying sand across my bare ankles.
I took a step just as Blue turned around. He was too far away for me to see his expression, and his face was in shadow anyway. His fair hair swirled around his head, and he was coming toward me at a fast pace and before I knew it, he was in front of me, and his arms curled around my neck, and he pressed his whole body to me.
“I love you,” he said. “You are everything to me.”
I kissed his temple and breathed in his scent and knew this moment would be written in my heart and would stay there forever.
“I love you, Blue,” I said, whispered and low. “You could have died when you fell from that train, but you didn’t. And someone else could have found you, but they didn’t. I found you. And I’mkeepingyou.”
My throat was too thick to say anymore, but Blue laid his head on my shoulder and sighed, as if he’d come home at last and meant to stay there forever.
epilogue - blue
My experience with flying had always been in first class. My family always had the best seats. When we went to Europe or Asia, we had those lay-down seats and our own flight attendant. This had been very posh, and a far cry from the premium economy seats on Delta that the four of us had as we flew out to Santa Monica. At least to me.
In contrast, my traveling companions seemed well pleased with our seats and the free sodas and small bags of pretzels, so I held onto Wolfe’s hand and didn’t say anything about it. Those first-class seats were part of my old life anyway, so I didn’t need to think about them anymore.
Jack and Morgan’s wedding had been a whirlwind swirling around me. Other people did the planning; all I had to do was show up and be Jack’s best man at the courthouse in Hysham. Which was easy, so easy, especially since he was shining with happiness during the whole ceremony.
I caught Wolfe looking at me as he stood at Morgan’s side, and there was a light in his eyes that told me what my heart already knew. That he wanted a ceremony just like it for the two of us. That he wanted to love me forever.
I wanted to love him right back.
That Wolfe wanted to sacrifice his snowmobile to pay for the trip to Santa Monica made me sad because I knew the machine (that he’d only ever used the one time, to go into town rather than talk to me) represented how he thought his life would go once he’d settled in his cabin along the banks of the Yellowstone River. That he’d be self-sufficient, that he could remain alone in his cabin. That he wouldn’t need anyone. Ever.
He’d been betrayed by his family, just as I had been betrayed by mine. Selling the snowmobile meant moving beyond that and into his own future, where his family would have none of his energy or time; not even the memory of them would exist.
Gus Odell had turned this sad plight around and made selling the snowmobile feel different. The raffle raised a lot of money to begin with. The young couple who’d won the snowmobile seemed very pleased, and I sincerely hoped they’d get a lot of use out of it.
We ordered the lace master before we flew out to the coast, and then Wolfe and I picked the charities where the remainder of the raffle money would go: the women’s shelter in Billings, the fund for the new Grange, and the no-kill animal shelter in Hysham.
The lace master would arrive after we returned, and my plan was to encourage Wolfe to make what hewantedto make, and to never work with plastic gimp threads again. My other plan was to get a job to help bring in money that would go to support us, rather than mooching off of Wolfe’s generosity and his love for me.
Maybe I could shovel horse manure at Gus Odell’s ranch. Maybe I could work at the coffee shop, though they probably wouldn’t have enough work for me to do.
Wolfe’s suggestion was that I start a Patreon account and write about the weather and the happenings in town. I told Wolfe he was out of his mind, and I wasn’t a writer, anyway.
Mabel loved the idea when she heard about it (which, of course, she did), and thought I should do spotlight articles about people’s pets, with the focus being on what Mister Rocket was up to each day.
Morgan, who’d also heard about it, suggested I write posts about the history of the town, starting with the lives of Oralee and Toby Malone. Then I could write about how the Grange burned down and the town’s efforts to rebuild it. And how he was donating the land because he was generous like that.
Jack told me to write about what I wanted to write about.
So, with all of that input, I decided I would consider it.
I’d never been to Santa Monica. Before, while riding the trains with my fellow boxcar boys, it had only been a spot on the map, a place to get to. A faraway dream. Star, of course, had chosen the location as a goal, rather than just a destination.
In his mind, as I had learned, certain events, such as our arrival in Santa Monica, needed to be accomplished with ceremony, with rituals turning the act into a symbolic shift inside our souls. Or at least that’s what Star told us one night as the boxcar rumbled along the rails and, because Jack had found a six-pack of beer, we were slightly drunk; the words flowed from Star’s mouth as he braced himself against one wall and looked out the open boxcar door and watched the rain trying to get in.
I didn’t humor Star in this. Rather, Ibelievedhim. So did Jack. We both dutifully wove our personal stories and mentally sketched out how we would feel once we arrived. Star had wanted to see dolphins gamboling in the waves. Jack had been focused on eating that hot dog with his toes in the sand.
I wanted to stand with my feet in ocean water because salt kills evil. I wanted to watch the sun go down and promise myself I wouldn’t cry about my family anymore. That what they did to me wouldn’t matter anymore. To paraphrase Stephen King, Iwanted to stand at the edge of the Pacific Ocean, a place with no memory, so I could build new memories. So I could build a new life.
By the time I arrived on the beach, and walked away from the others, and took off my flip-flops and stood there with my feet in the cool water, actually stood there where I’d envisioned myself standing, it felt surreal. It felt like I was floating above the surface of the rippling, sun-sparkled water. It felt like my soul was racing toward the sun, leaving everything I had ever known or ever been far, far behind me.
I tasted the water, licking it from my fingertips. It was bitter, like tears.
