Wrangler (19 page)

I didn’t know any life other than that, but I did know I never felt safe, never felt like I had a
home,
a soft place to run to when I was scared or hurt. 

What made Leander truly evil is he told me he loved me.  He wooed me and groomed me.  In some sick way, I think he thought he did love me and if the letters he sent from prison the first month after he was sentenced were any indication, some sick twisted part of him still does.  Somehow he found out where I lived, even though I changed my last name to Jessie’s family name, from Sweeting to Gordon.

He would always address the letters to some fictional name then put ‘in care of’ either Jessie’s name or even my uncle who’d passed.  He wouldn’t be allowed to send them directly to me, but somehow he found a way around the rules.

Back when it was happening, finally I was strong enough to tell Mrs. Simpson, my art teacher, before it went too far.  She noticed my drawings and paintings taking on a darker edge, struck up friendly conversations trying to find out if everything was okay at home.  She knew my Mama.  Knew where I lived.  So, her concern wasn’t just lip service.

Finally, one afternoon, I handed in a painting of me with someone’s hand around my neck and another hand where it shouldn’t be.  From there, it took on a life of its own.

The memory of the sick feel of his hand down the back of my pants just at the crack of where my ass started and the way he kissed me still makes me gasp for air and hold down my stomach.

After the first few letters got here that one month, either Jessie took care of reporting him or the prison caught on and stopped him from sending them. But two months ago after years of nothing the route carrier pulled into the driveway and honked while I was out working on getting Rooster to, at least, not rear and buck every time I tried to lead him out of the pasture.

When the route carriers pulled in and honked, that usually meant they had a package for us and that was true that day as well. 

This box didn’t have the same ‘in care of’ and the return address was somewhere unusual, not what he used to use. And it had been so long.  I don’t know how he managed it, but he must have figured out a way to get it to me.

When I opened the shoe-box-sized delivery it was filled with letters, pictures of Leander and a small gift box which, to my horror, contained a ring.  It was one of those fake carnival prize sort of rings made from cheap brass and chipped glass stones. Presumably all he could get where he was.

But still.

The note attached to the ring box said he would be home soon.  I took the box full of horrors behind the barn and burned it without telling Jessie. 

After the fight with my mom for custody, there was Jessie, arms open, taking me in, good and bad.  I was a handful for a long time before she settled me in, assured me that I was safe and Leander was where he was supposed to be, locked up. 

Bile tickles the back of my throat thinking just how close we are to the end of his seven year sentence.  And who knows?  With overcrowding, for all I know he could be out already.

I shiver and try to swallow back the sickness that comes over me in waves.

“You gonna shuck those ears or just keep ‘em warm?”  The warm smile of my Aunt Jessie limping down the porch steps breaks me out of my daydream.

“Yeah. Sorry.”  I smile back.

“You got your eye on somethin’, young lady?”  A playful twinkle in her eye, Jessie doesn’t miss much.

“Just admiring the view!  You always told me there was nothing wrong with that.”

“Yep.  I sure did.”  A hearty chuckle and open smile follow.

She leans on her cane as she comes around my side of the picnic table.  Leroy is lying at my feet, his tail flapping in the dust under the picnic table every time he hears my voice. 

I reach down and scratch him under his collar, thinking for the first time there’s a man in my life I may like more than my dog.

Jessie’s wrinkled hands support her on the picnic table as she takes a seat next to me, grabs an ear of corn and starts pulling the outer layers free, tossing them into the galvanized bucket next to my feet.

“You thought any more on what you want to do this year?  You think you still gonna go on to that community college over in Monroe?”

Aunt Jessie’s eyes study me.  I sometimes really wonder where I would have ended up without her.

“Ummm, not sure.”

“You got the money in the trust fund for your college.  You’re so smart, Rachel.  You ought do something with your life.  Don’t end up a lonely old woman like me.”  She winks at me.

“You should use that money for yourself, Jessie.  Fix up the house a little, you know? It’s starting to look tired.” 

Jessie set up the trust fund with money she didn’t really have, and I feel guilty about it now that I’m old enough to understand.

“Rachel.”  Her voice loses the playful tone.  “You are smart and you have a gift. You should figure out what God wants you to do with it.”

“It’s really hard to make any money as an artist or a writer though.  It’s just something I do. My hobby.”

I started drawing when I was just little.  My teachers in school always put my art work up for the class to see.  It was something inside me, it just came out; I could look at something and re-create it on paper with paint, pencils, charcoal – almost anything.  In high school, I won the Legion’s Award for Inspiring New Artist for three years, and the local literary guild published four of my short stories in their quarterly newsletter. 

It didn’t really mean much, but at the time, art and my stories were all I had.  It was everything.  I remember locking myself in my room, listening to the fury of whatever was going on outside my door living with Mama, and I could lose myself in my drawing, painting or writing. 

My art and writing saved me when I felt unsavable.

“Shoot, Rachel.  Money ain’t the only thing in life.  You gotta do what you love and figure out the money later.  Look at me.”  She waves her arms to the sky and around her head.  “I loved your Uncle and we loved this farm.  I’ve lived a good life, Rachel, and we never did worry too much about money.  Some years were good, some worse, but we always had each other and the love of this farm.”

What good can possibly come of me going off to school?  Even if I do get my degree, I would never leave Jessie here alone. All we have is each other.

“Jessie...”

She sighs, knowing I’m changing the subject. “Yeah, honey.”  The sound pulling the covers off the corn and the churning of the hay bailer out in the field swirls through the late summer breeze.

“Do you ever talk to Mama?”

Jessie stays quiet.  Her hands pause with fingertips ready to snap the base off the corn cob. Instead she holds it there, her fingers shaking like the corn silk in the breeze.

“No.  We don’t talk.”  She finally answers with a hint of disdain in her voice.

It’s odd, I thought I would miss her, wonder where she is or how she’s doing.  Feel like I was
missing
something by not having my mother in my life.  But, I don’t.

“Do you want to talk to her?”  Jessie’s face is tight.

“No, I guess not.  I just wondered.”

“Some doors are best left closed, I reckon.  But, if you ever want to talk to her, you let me know.”

Jessie reaches over and stops my fingers as I pinch the silky strands from the corn.  I look up from the corn and Jessie’s eyes are waiting for me.

“You’re a survivor, Rachel.  Tougher than anyone I’ve ever known.  You can do anything with your life, you hear me?  Don’t you let me, or your past —or anyone— ever tell you otherwise.  Understand?  When you feel that something is right, you follow that feeling.  If it’s art, writing or school, or whatever, you gotta trust yourself in life.  You done been through enough for three lifetimes already, and you still here, and ain’t you just a wonder to me.  Beautiful, smart, talented. God had his hand in your life already, Rachel.  I know it may not feel like it sometimes, but how you done come out of that life with your Mama and become such a godly soul, Lord only knows.”

She lowers her head and goes back to shucking.  I see two drops fall onto the soft yellow cobs resting on the worn flowered apron covering her lap.

“Whew!  That’s quite enough of that talk.”  Jessie shakes her head and smiles at me.  “Get this corn on, we got lunch to finish.”

There’s a flutter in my belly, thinking of Chad and taking the lunch out to them in the field.  The sight, sound and thought of him never seems to fail to send a wave of heat over my face.  I imagine his walk, the way he dips just a little bit to the left with each step, his crooked smile, hand on his hat, dust on his boots, walking out of the field.  I swallow hard and breathe through my mouth trying to stop my wandering imagination before it gets too out of hand.

Jessie whistles as she heads inside to get the rest of lunch on the stove.  She takes the corn with her and asks me to go on down to the barn and tend to the chickens. I know there are a couple other chores that need completing today, too. I hear the loud whirl of the hay baler out in the back forty acres.  Thoughts of last night of Chad’s hands on me, his mouth, the way he filled me with himself playing over and over in my head like a really great movie you just can’t forget.

I head on down to the coop, and the clucking and scratching of the chickens take over as I shuffle inside their screened home.  Reaching into the hen baskets and setting the eggs gently into the basket on my arm, I feel like I’m walking on pillows.  Everything seems surreal, like an airbrushed photo. 

I think about what Jessie had said, about following what feels good. Am I that kind of girl that might like the slap of a hand on my behind?  Being talked to the way he does?

Never in a million years would I have thought my first time could be so dirty and so right at the same time.  And, with a man like Chad.  He’s kind, sweet but my skin chills thinking of that other side of him, the stern alpha that whispers those filthy words to me, those hands that command me and draw out sounds I didn’t know I could make.

I woke during the night last night, drenched in sweat.  Dreaming of Chad pushing me down on the bales of hay in the barn, tearing my clothes off the way he did last night. 

Spreading my legs as far as they would go and diving his head down, his tongue lapping between my legs, his hand slapping and stinging my behind as he sent my body into spasms.  Moving over me, his giant cock released from the front of his jeans, as he lifted me like a doll and plunged his cock deep inside.  His face looking into mine, he laughed and pulled me hard toward him, pressing his cock as deep as my body would take.  The roar when he came, and my body getting filled with white, sticky liquid, spilling out of me and covering the bales of hay below us, gallons and gallons of cum.  As he smiled and jerked, holding me tight, forcing me to take every drop of his release.

My body shuddered and I climaxed in my sleep. When I woke up, I struggled to figure out what was real and what was dream.

I shake my head, chastise myself for my daydreaming. I have to get myself back to the real world.  Chores need to be done and I need to help Jessie finish up lunch so I can drive it out to the field.  The guys are baling hay today and it’s hot, hard work especially with our old machines.  Always something falling off, or coming loose. Enrique does his level best to keep things working with a few Band-Aids and duct tape every year.

Jessie’s in the kitchen window of the elderly farmhouse. It seems to me the structure has spread as it’s aged, got wider, but more bent over somehow. The paint peels like shedding skin, and the porch seems heavy and stooped.

But Jessie always seems comfortable with her life. She always talks about how happy she and my Uncle Dan were.  I wish I had known them more then. It really was a good life for them. 

I’m just not sure what
I want.
  Do I want a farm life?  Or, should I go to college, get myself a degree in art or design and try my hand at life in a city?  Now, all I seem to be thinking about is Chad, and that has to stop. 

But we haven’t talked about where he comes from or why he’s doing field work.  He seems smart, able to do something else.  Enrique does it because he loves Jessie. 

I want to know more about him.  Jessie must know something – she’s paying him.  Walking back to the house with the eggs, I try to figure out how to bring it up without her figuring out there’s something going on with me and Chad.

“I’ll put the eggs in the ice box.”  I swing the screen door open and smell the fried okra and cornbread.  My stomach does a different kind of flip this time when I smell her wonderful cooking.

Jessie nods and keeps working at the stove.  I shuffle around in the kitchen, getting the napkins ready in the box we take out to the field for lunch.

“Jessie...”

“Yessum.”  She doesn’t turn.  Her silver-white hair sits pinned up on the top of her head, neatly braided.

“How do you find the guys that come and work?”

“Ummm, well, you know Enrique was part of our church.  Took pity on me when I couldn’t pay the wages most expected.  A lot of the other men over the years just sort of came around at the right time.”

My head buzzes with a low energy.  She hasn’t said anything about Chad and I don’t want to ask directly and let out my secret.

I jump a little when she starts talking again.

“Chad, now, he was down at the feed with Enrique that morning. I walked in and there they were.  Seemed like a good kid, talked the talk when it came to working a farm, so I took a chance, let him show me what he could do.”

“Hmmm.”  I play it cool.

“Why you ask?”

“I don’t know, just wondering.  The right help just always seems to come along at the right time.”

“Yeah, I been lucky that way.”

“Chad said something...his family had a farm, but they lost it.” I shrug, hoping the pause seems unsure. “Something like that.”

“Yeah?  Hmmm.  I’m not sure. I think he’s from over in Monroe or Jessup. Maybe he said Meyer.”  She looks at the sky thinking. “How far is that? Couple hours at least North West? All I know is what I told you and he said to put Chandler James Butler on his paycheck.”