“Really? Wow. I guess I haven’t really either, though.”
“The city is pretty diverse. Drive a mile this way and you’re on ‘Boutique Row’ where the ritzy people shop before an evening at the RMC. A mile west of there and you’re entering my territory. Lots of tall buildings, dirty streets, and welfare moms. There are the projects south of us, and they’re nicer, but the stigma is there. If you are a project kid, you’re a good-for-nothing. The schools are bad; dealers are on every corner, luring another kid to a life of dependency on the projects. There are even rumors that the mayor has thugs pushing drugs so the city gets more state funding, but I don’t know if that’s true.”
Lane whispered, “Are there really homeless people on the streets?”
He nodded, remembering the old woman he’d found sobbing one morning outside the factory where he worked because another homeless person had stolen her coat. “They’re everywhere, except in the nicer sections of town and near the campus. Rockland University has a zero tolerance policy for indigents.”
“Have you ever met one? Not just seen someone on the street, but talked to one?” Lane seemed morbidly fascinated by someone who had no place to call their own.
“Usually once or twice a week. I’ll talk to someone on a bench in the subway or the park. I give out cards to a shelter every day though.” Not knowing why he did it, he told her about Jewel, the elderly woman outside the metal works factory. Lane’s eyes grew wide at the idea of an elderly woman without a coat. “You bought her one?”
“Yeah. There is a thrift store three blocks from where I work, so I ran over and got her a coat and some gloves. I’d have given her mine, but she’s not that much bigger than your little sister.”
“And I always thought that homeless people were just insane, or lazy, or addicts of one kind or another. A sweet little old lady doesn’t sound like an addict.” Tears pooled in her eyes as Lane spoke.
Matt nodded. “It’s true actually. A lot of them are. It doesn’t make it any less pathetic, but there are a lot of schizophrenics, alcoholics, and drug addicts on the streets. I’d say a good majority are. But, in the city, if you lose your apartment, you lose the ability to hold a job, which means getting another apartment is impossible, and the cycle never ends. You can’t even get welfare without an address, so you can’t apply for assistance.”
Lane sighed. “I want to see the city. I’ve seen Spokane, but nothing like this. I want to see what you’re talking about. It’s like a foreign world.”
She glanced at the sky and then jumped up. “Drat. We’re in trouble now. It’s past two and lunch is over.”
Matt chuckled as she confirmed her statement with a glance at her watch. Where else would someone look to the sky instead of her wrist for the time except in “Big Sky Country?” “Guess we’d better go then. I hate to leave though; it’s gorgeous here.”
She led Cardiff to a nearby rock and waited for Matt to mount. “You can tell me more about Rockland on the way back.”
The trail down the mountain went much more quickly than the assent, although Matt found it difficult to stay comfortably in the saddle. He shifted here and there, unable to take Lane’s suggestions and make them work. He felt battered and sore, his muscles screaming against riding another foot. Lane shifted his foot in the stirrup, adjusted his saddle, and even tried pushing him back on the saddle to see if he’d find some relief, but nothing worked.
By the time they rode into the stable yard, Matt was anxious to be off the horse. Instinctively, he imitated Lane’s movements and tried to swing down from the horse’s back, but his foot twisted, and he landed flat on his back, one foot still dangling in the stirrup. Cardiff looked at him with utter contempt. Boozer licked his face cheerfully, while Lane disentangled his shoe and ineffectively stifled guffaws.
Patience flew through the front door, down the steps, and to Matt’s side. “Oh, Mr. Rushby, are you okay? I saw you fall. Lane should have made you go to the fence. It’s easier!”
She fussed and cooed over Matt as he stood, testing his legs and ankles. He could walk. This was a good thing. His legs felt like jelly though. “Am I supposed to feel like my legs are asleep?”
Tad, who had wandered over to check the commotion, returned to the barn. Peals of laughter erupted seconds later, as men and boys streamed into the stable yard. Warren pulled Patience aside and gestured for Matt to come inside. “Your muscles get a work out on the back of a horse, son, they just need a break. Martha saved you some dinner.”
Inside, the boys and men disappeared. Lane brought Matt a plate of food to the couch. “Just sit there. What can I get you to drink?”
They pampered him, teased him, and made him feel welcome. Matt enjoyed meeting Lane’s two youngest brothers Levi and Jude, and watching the family repartee. As an only child, he’d never been a part of a close-knit group like this. He was close to his parents, his aunt and uncle, and his grandmother who had baked him cookies, and told stories of moving into the slums before they were slums, but it wasn’t like this.
After supper, the Argosys and Matt played board games, compared life in the city to ranch life, and a friendship formed that Matt hoped would continue even once he returned to Rockland. Little Patience developed an immediate hero worship of a man who had never touched a sheep, ridden a horse, but who rode on trains underground every day, and lived near the wonderful Arts center that her father loved.
Levi and Jude listened, awestruck, to stories of playing street hockey, basketball, and going to the movies any time Matt wanted. “You must be really rich!”
Matt shook his head. “Actually, I live in the poor section of the city. I live with my parents and that let me save the money for this trip, but even then, it took me ten years. It’s a catch-22. They need me to live with them, so I do. That gives me money to do things I couldn’t otherwise do, but not enough to live on my own.”
He stroked the supple leather couch and fingered the silky afghan thrown over one corner. “I could never afford nice furniture like this, or a big truck like yours.”
“But you go to movies—”
Warren leaned forward to silence his son, but Matt stopped him. “No, really. It’s okay. He doesn’t understand, and that’s probably a good thing in the long run. You see, Jude, that is one of the funny things about people who don’t have a lot of money. One of the reasons it stays that way is because they allow themselves a lot of little unnecessary luxuries, like movies on Friday nights or the bowling league, to make them feel less deprived.”
He saw understanding dawn on several faces including Martha’s. “I still waste more money than I should, but I realized ten years ago that if I didn’t spend that ten dollars a week and put it in the bank instead, that at the end of the year, I’d have five hundred twenty dollars. In ten years, I’d have five thousand two hundred dollars.”
“So you stopped going to movies at all?” Even Lane was impressed.
“No. I just limited myself to once a month. So that was four hundred a year and four thousand in ten years. I did other things too. I bought a year subway pass that saves me twenty bucks a month. I could never afford it before, but once I saved my first year’s movie money, I had enough. Then I paid back my account as if I bought one every week. I made money from myself instead of giving it to the subway people.”
Warren nodded. “That’s some smart thinking. You think of that all by yourself?”
Matt felt foolish for talking about saving ten dollars a week and twenty dollars a month when a man like Warren Argosy probably didn’t notice if little amounts like that went missing. “I just had things I wanted to do and no money to do them. One day it hit me that I did other things that I didn’t want as much as what I didn’t have.”
Lane’s eyes rolled. “That was convoluted.”
“You know what I mean. I went to the movies because it was a way to relax. It’s what people around our place do. We have hamburgers at the Burger Bin after church or play video games.”
Patience waited impatiently for an opening in the conversation and then gave up. She moved closer to Matt and tapped his knee until he met her eyes. “What did you want to do more than go to the movies or eat hamburgers?”
Her little pixie face enchanted him. He tweaked one braid and winked at her. “I wanted to come see what was so great about Montana.”
“Did you find out? Do you know what is so great about Montana?” she demanded, her eyes wide with eagerness.
“Yep. You.”
Embarrassed at being the center of attention as her brothers burst into laughter, Patience raced from the room. Martha stood to follow. “It’s bedtime for her anyway. If I don’t get back in here tonight, come back anytime. You’ve been good for us.”
After Martha kissed her husband and children good night, Warren turned to Matt once more. “Why Montana? I would have assumed you’d want to see some exotic place like the Bahamas or even Florida. Why way up here?”
Matt had noticed a row of well-worn books on a shelf in one corner of the room. He made his way to the shelf, found a familiar title, and brought it back. “This. I read all of these when I was a kid. I read about the western frontier for most of my summers as a teen. To a boy who grew up in a concrete jungle, the ideal vacation is L’Amour territory, and I thought Montana would be prettier than southern Nevada.”
Tad howled. “You got that right. Nevada is barren and flat. I never read those books. I thought they’d be dumb, so I didn’t bother.” He picked up the book with an interested eye. “Maybe I should give one a chance.”
Lane caught a stifled yawn from the corner of her eye and sprang into action. “We’re being awfully rude. Matt’s on a different time zone and spent the day in the saddle. He’s got to be beat. I’m gonna take him home and get a promise from him to come back before he goes home.”
Three
Sore muscles tortured him with every attempt to move. He was hungry, but Matt couldn’t bring himself to get out of bed. He’d lain awake for the past three hours, watching the minutes tick by on the generic digital clock on his bedside table. Each minute that passed mocked him. All those years of saving, and it looked like he was destined to spend the entire time in bed nursing an aching body.
Just as he decided to let his muscles win until lunch, he heard the rumble of a vehicle outside his door, the crunch of boots on the gravel and then—and Matt truly dreaded it—an impatient knock on his door. He groaned and then called out, “I don’t need any towels, Mrs. Gideon. Mine are clean,” hoping whoever it was would go away.
Lane’s voice called back, “Trust me, you want to open this door.”
He shuffled to the door in slow motion and cracked it open. “Go away. You are a professional torturer, and I don’t trust you.”
Swinging a bag of marvelous smelling somethings in one hand and a tube of something medicinal looking in the other, Lane pushed the door open and entered the cabin. “You need relief. I also brought ice. This is what you’re going to do. I’m going to draw you lukewarm bath and bring the bags of ice in. You pour all the bags in the tub.”
Matt watched with dismay, as she ran bath water and lugged three large bags of ice in from her Jeep. On one of the trips past, she handed him the other bag and said, “Eat up!”
The cinnamon rolls were delicious. Lane left as he reached for another one, taking the bag with her. “I’ll be back in an hour. When you can’t take the cold anymore, dry off, and rub this stuff anywhere you can reach. It’ll warm up your muscles, and you’ll feel like you can move without dying.”
Sixty-five minutes later, he gingerly tied his shoe and called, “Come in, it’s open.”
Jingling her keys as she entered, Lane grinned to see him dressed and ready for the day. “That’s the spirit. You’ve gotta walk around today or it’ll be worse tomorrow. Let’s get you something to eat.”
As they drove through town to a small Mexican restaurant, Matt gathered the courage to ask the obvious question. “So tell me what you are doing here today. Why did you come again?” Before she could protest or make a sarcastic retort, he backpedaled. “Not that I’m complaining. It’s nice to have someone to talk to, but why?”
“I knew you’d be sore, and that was partly my fault. I took you on a long ride when we could have taken quads or something.” She threw him a grin that seemed to be intended to look sheepish. It wasn’t.
Matt, while grateful for her aid, couldn’t help but feel somewhat disappointed. After hours of conversation and one of the most enjoyable evenings of his life, he thought he’d made new friends, but now… Her voice interrupted his thoughts. “Of course, Patience bounced all over my bed asking when you were coming back, and I had to admit that I didn’t know. Everyone is really hoping you will.” Her shoulders relaxed a bit. “We honestly haven’t had real company in so long …”
As they parked in front of the restaurant, Matt absently read the name aloud. “Mexi-Kitchen.” He tried rolling the name around his tongue, but it sounded strange. “It sounds like the word ‘Mexican,’ but then it doesn’t at the same time.”
“Poor Mrs. Montoya. She has no idea that the name of her restaurant is a local confusion. But, she makes the best tacos in the world. Let’s go!”
Matt watched as Lane ordered, joked with the cute teenaged waitress, and waved cheerfully at a large Hispanic woman in the kitchen. Finally overcome with curiosity, he asked, “No pariah status here?”
Lane wagged her head. “Nope. Mrs. Montoya knows what the town thinks and won’t jeopardize her business, but neither will she risk losing ours. When we have extra hands to help with shearing and shipping, we order huge quantities of food. She couldn’t afford to lose our business if she wanted to, and everyone knows it. So here is our Geneva. I wait for the lunch rush to be over and park out front to warn people of my evil presence. It works.”
“So no one will come in while we’re here?” Matt thought the whole thing sounded silly and felt a growing desire to laugh.
“Well, none of the
Brethren
or anyone dependent upon them for their livelihood will.”
Matt shook his head, barely stifling a chuckle. “Sounds to me like the
Brethren
need to reread their Bibles.”