Page 40 of Boy Blue
Blue stood in the doorway, barefoot, arms crossed over his chest, already shivering as he stood there watching me.
I straddled the snowmobile and checked the fuel level. I started the engine, then, leaving it running, I went over to him, stomping in my boots, watching out for his bare toes.
“I thought it was a tractor under there,” he said.
I wanted to cup his face in my hands, kiss his mouth, ease the tangles from his hair.
“Get inside,” I said, without doing any of these things. “You’ll freeze.”
“How long will you be?” he asked, still on the threshold, his toes in the snow. “I’ll make tea for when you get back.”
“Maybe an hour.”
We weren’t talking about what had happened between us the night before. We weren’t acting as though either of us wished it hadn’t happened. Instead, we were pretending it hadn’t happened at all. Which wasn’t right.
I’d been cut off from my family because of the conversations that didn’t happen, the void into which no explanation had been accepted from me. I didn’t like that. Didn’t want it to happen now.
But I needed a little bit of time. All of this was too complicated to explain to Blue, so I went back to the snowmobile, mounted it, and eased on the gas to pull out of the snow and around to where the drive would have been, feet beneath the white.
Without looking back, I drove along Bauer Road to Hysham over folds of white snow, sending plumes of snow in my wake. My hands went numb within the first five miles, but I kept going because I was a fool who didn’t know how to have a simple conversation anymore.
My eyelashes were caked with frost by the time I pulled into the unplowed parking lot of the feed and grain. It was Sunday. The store was closed. Too bad. I’d come all this way on my oh-so-important errand, and I did not intend to leave without my special order.
I parked the snowmobile anyoldhow, left it running, and banged on the door. To my surprise, someone came to the door rather quickly. It could not have been Morgan; he was using a cane last I saw him, moving as slowly as an octogenarian who was unsure of his footing.
A young man unlocked and opened the door, standing in my way of entering. He was young, with glossy dark hair and green eyes unusual enough to be remarked upon.
“Help you?” he asked. “Look, we’re closed.”
“I’ve come to pick up my special order,” I said. I needed to not return to my cabin empty-handed.
“Special order?” the young man asked, ear cocked as though listening for something.
Morgan appeared on the landing of the stairs to the apartment above the feed and grain, but he was so changed, I almost didn’t recognize him.
Yes, he was still using that purple cane, and yes, he still had circles under his eyes and walked with a limp. But as I talked with him about my order, I noticed he stood a little straighter, seemed more steady on his feet. And, as he talked with the young man, whom he called Jack, Morgan was actually smiling. Or at least I saw a smile in his eyes; his mouth looked like it wanted to join in.
He sent Jack to the back room for my special order. His eyes tracked Jack the whole way there and back. As if I were the least significant thing around him.Jack, would you go, he’d said, his voice soft, laced with honey.
As far as I knew, Morgan came to town alone and had attended Oralee’s funeral all on his lonesome, standing apart from everyone there. Nobody had accompanied him to town, least of all a young man named Jack, who handled my special order with youthful energy, placing a dusty brown box on the counter.
I used my pocketknife to open the box and check the contents, always a good idea in my mind, and found that everything was there. Then Morgan sent Jack for the paperwork for me to sign, again asking Jack in the softest, sweetest voice. Jack racing off, then running back, being Morgan’s arms and legs and all with a smile. A dimpled smile.
I stayed a moment, chatting about the Grange that had burned down and the efforts of the town to get it rebuilt, about the local coffee shop, just to be neighborly. And all the while—all the while—I thought about Blue waiting for me in the cabin, arms across his chest as he hugged himself. Watching as I rode across the waves of snow, disappearing into the white.
“I need to get going,” I said, and waving away offers to secure the cardboard box to my snowmobile, I trudged out into the icy cold, beautiful, clear morning.
My hands and face had a chance to warm up, and now they were stiffening at the thought of a ten-mile drive that, in a truck, would take twenty minutes, maybe thirty, would now take an hour. I’d be frozen all the way through by the time I got home.
My own fault; I didn’t have a face mask for this kind of weather. But I kept going. The cabin was my home. I told Blue I’d return.
I needed to tell him the truth, rather than litter the air with sullen silence. He deserved to know who I was and why him kissing me and me kissing him back hadn’t been the best idea.
That sweet mouth should never taste what a hundred other mouths had tasted, nor touch what a hundred other hands had drawn prison-tainted pleasure from. I needed to tell him I’d been in jail. He deserved to know a great deal more, but I would start by telling him about my past.
Shivers raced up and down my whole body by the time I pulled up the drive and parked the snowmobile next to the truck. A snowsuit was an expensive investment, and at the time I’d deemed it too costly. Now I was paying the price for not anticipating that when I used the snowmobile, I needed to be bundled up for the Arctic. I could barely get off the snowmobile, so I left it uncovered, stumbling to the cottage, numb with cold, feeling foolish as Blue flung open the door.
“It’s twenty below,” he said, dragging me inside, dodging the snow flipping from the tips of my boots, dodging the boots themselves.
