Page 1 of Boy Blue
CHAPTER 1
wolfe
There was a blizzard approaching from the west, so I drove into the town of Hysham along the frontage road, zipping over the railroad crossing, just ahead of a giant, three-engine freight train, which had paused on the rails, chuffing, impatient to get going.
There was a kid dicking around by the tracks and two more on top of a boxcar as the wind picked up and the snow started coming down, but I didn’t pay them much mind. I had to get to the market to get supplies for the storm and head back to Diamond Willow, the cabin I had purchased the previous March.
I had arrived in Montana at the tail end of the previous winter, which had been hard enough for a newcomer like me. Spring and summer had been easy. And now, a blizzard? It was only October.
That was fine. I’d be prepared, food wise. I had a generator, two oil lamps, canned food, and dried food. I had wood for the fire. I had water in jugs in case the pipes froze. What I didn’t have was fresh milk and butter and eggs. Beef and fresh vegetables for a stew. And donuts. Cake donuts were my favorite. They were made fresh every day by the market’s baker, and they always ran out.
As I trundled my truck up the street to the market, I passed the feed and grain, now owned by a man named Morgan Malone, a sad sack if I ever saw one.
Sure, he’d been in an accident and walked with a cane, and his aunt had died, but he was alive, wasn’t he? He was free. He could sell up and move any time he wanted, but all he’d done at his aunt’s funeral was glower, as if every person in town was there just to spit at his feet. There was no saving someone who looked at life like that.
I parked in the small parking lot of Hysham Market and made my way inside as cold snowflakes sifted down the collar of my parka. I’d left it unzipped because I ran warm and didn’t think the snow would hit so quickly. I figured I had about an hour to shop and get home before the temperature dropped and the drifts started piling up, and the wind began to howl.
Once at the cabin, I could hunker down, attend to my orders. Then, after my chores were done, I could build a fire to sit in front of and enjoy my tea and cake donuts, all well deserved.
The market was crowded; everybody was getting ready for sub-zero temperatures and piles of snow. Near the apples, Ambrose and his pals had surrounded Morgan Malone and were talking animatedly to him, probably about supplies he needed for the blizzard.
Morgan glared at them, working his jaw like a bouncer eagerly awaiting his opportunity to bust some heads.
What an ass. Ambrose, Neville, and Maurice were invaluable. They’d given me great advice the previous March about how to survive in Montana. Where to buy wood. About saving water in jugs even though I had a well and a cistern because just-in-case. About how ice hanging from the eaves looked pretty, but that it could pull at the roofline and weaken it. Take out a shovel and knock those pretty things down!
I was obedient and did as they suggested, and I survived my first winter just fine. Now a new winter approached, with an early blizzard coming in, and I was prepared. Well, I would be soon, once I was done at the market.
The three older gentlemen also been widely curious about my history, but I left it vague, pointing them in the direction of my leatherwork apprenticeship with a gentleman by the name of Ricky Patterson who, in one short season, had given me a life skill that no one could take from me.
Neville, the quietest of the bunch, had even given me my first sale: An order to take his grandfather’s brass belt buckle and make a leather belt with it—the grandfather, as I soon learned, who had driven cattle in the last, great days of the Goodnight-Loving Trail out of Southern Colorado.
I charged him twenty-five dollars. He tipped me ten and seemed well pleased with the results. Word got around, and I soon had a little business going fixing harnesses and saddles and bridles. Fixing straps for purses. Creating leather wristlets. Re-braiding whips. Making a braided hatband. Making lanyards for the church bazaar and other community drives.
Business had picked up over the summer but had slowed down at the first nip in the air. My last sale had been in early September, when I received a call from Mr. Tate, who owned a great deal of land in Wyoming and who, near as I could figure, knew everyone who knew anyone. I’d been recommended to him by Gus Odell, a rancher who lived in town and who’d received some livestock from Mr. Tate—a horse by the name of Honey.
Gus wanted to help me, and so made the connection between us. I was currently working on two saddles and two bridles for Mr. Tate, but had been stymied by a back order of supplies from the feed and grain.
Mr. Tate, in addition to a ranch-style retreat, also ran a prison rehab. Well, had run. The program was over now, and theplace the ex-cons had created out of the wilderness with pretty much their bare hands was now a kind of adult sleep-away camp, with rustic beds going for five-hundred a night.
I had heard about the rehab program Mr. Tate ran when I’d gotten released from Reynoldsville State Prison, but I never applied because I figured that me and my measly eight months in jail wouldn’t give me enough time behind bars to qualify.
I was always somewhere in the middle, either too needy or not needy enough. Always unworthy. Until, that is, I stumbled upon an ad that Ricky Patterson had placed on an online ranch jobs site. Leatherwork apprentice wanted. What a life-changer that apprenticeship had been. With the skills Dick had taught me, I could survive on my own.
Overheated in the market, even with my parka unzipped, I pushed my buggy—locals called it a cart—over to the meat counter. There, I met up with Mabel and her dog, Mister Rocket, a sharp-eyed Russell Terrier who, as evidenced by his welcoming wag and open-mouthed panting, might actually be glad to see me. I’d worked hard to earn the dog’s trust, though I knew that I still smelled like prison, even after all this time.
I came up to them and made kissy noises and reached out to pet him. “Hello, sweetness,” I said to him. And to Mabel, I said, “Hello, ma’am.”
She had the sweetest eyes. She had grandmother eyes, dark and bright at the same time, and it just about made me cry to look in them.
My own grandmother passed away while I was in prison, so I hadn’t been able to go to the funeral. Not that I would have been allowed near the family had the funeral taken place after I got out. Well, it was too late to think about it now, so I settled my shoulders and focused on Mabel and Mister Rocket.
“Getting everything you need, ma’am?” I asked her, looking at her cart. It was, I was glad to see, stocked with good thingsto eat: bread and milk and cheese and butter, bundles of carrots and of onions, a bag of peaches and of rhubarb, and two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream.
“You’re sweet to ask,” she said. “And do you have a moment? I wanted to talk to you about making a new collar for Mister Rocket. Leather with brass fittings. Something very elegant.”
“Sure,” I said, stopping, letting the hurried crowd at the market ease around me. “Would you like me to make up some sketches, and then you can say yes or no?”
“That would be lovely.” She smiled at me, her smile that always made me melt. “And here,” she said, waving at her cart. “I was over by the baked goods, and the donuts were going fast. I grabbed a dozen cake for you.”
