Page 7 of The Boy from Half Moon

“You never know,” she argued.

“I know and you know,” I said. “Besides, Dad will bitch the entire time he’s here that I purchased a loft, not a house, and that I paid far too much.”

“And how much was far too much?” she asked, needing to supply my father with ammo once the call ended.

“Not happening, Mom. Tell Dad hello for me, though.”

“Why don’t you tell him yourself, dear? He’s sitting right here,” she said.

“No thanks,” I replied. “Gotta run now, Mom. Nice talking with you.”

I heard her exhausted sigh before I hung up but didn’t care. My father and I barely acknowledged each other these days, so why go through a painfully forced conversation with him? I didn’t give a shit about Fox News and his rantings, and he couldn’t have cared less about my feelings about the state of conservative politics. We’d negotiated a perfect solution. We didn’t speak to one another.

After hanging up the call, I felt hunger pains. The hotel had a gift shop and a tiny bar that sold greasy bar food. Uh, no thanks. The day was Saturday, so I figured places may be open later than normal and I could drive around and see what healthier choices I could find. I was half tempted to drive the forty miles back to Madras and the bakery I’d visited two days ago, but I needed more than pie and lemonade.

In all actuality, I’d been obsessively thinking about the young man I’d encountered there. I had no right to waste energy on a boy I certainly would never consider as dating material, but still, he was hard to resist. But a roll in the hay? I was totally up for that with him.

Most of us run into people that make an impression on us. Maybe they’re incredibly good-looking, something a tad different from our usual preferences, or perhaps they pique your sexual appetite for some lustful reason. But the guy at the bakery? He was all of those things wrapped in one delicious package.

I couldn’t get him out of my mind even though I knew he was too young, and from what I’d observed, too insulated from the real world, and probably wasn’t gay. How could he be gay inside what appeared to be a cultish religion based on what I’d seen at the bakery? Perhaps I was being too harsh, but the women were dressed modestly and his clothes looked like he lived in a bygone era.

And besides, he was a kid. A very big kid for sure, but he could be sixteen or twenty-five, and I didn’t need to be thinking about someone I definitely could not have. He was in a cult. Maybe? Probably.

For so long, I’d been devoted to, and very much in love with, Thomas, so I didn’t wander or cheat. In fact, I barely recognized attractive people around me when I was with him. But now I was single, and even, apparently, horny after meeting ‘bakery boy.’ His hotness had filled my sails with the wind of desire.

Every time our brief interaction replayed in my mind, I tried to think of something else to distract me from wishful thinking, but despite my best attempts, I still couldn’t get him out of my head. He was raw and powerful, and that look had settled somewhere deep in my want file. To be honest, maybe it wasn’t as much a love want as it was a physical longing.

He seemed mysterious and edgy, even though it appeared he belonged to the strict religious group he worked with. But what had happened to his strength and calm demeanor when the dressed-in-all-black, mysterious man walked into the bakery? He turned as white as a ghost and hightailed it to the backroom, not even saying goodbye to his customer, me.

I looked at my watch. The time was three-thirty. It’d take an hour to get to Madras, making it four-thirty. I grabbed my cell and googled bakeries in Madras. Safeway came up and some local gas station that sold Hostess Twinkies. There was no Google mention, nor was there a website, for the bakery. Of course, there wasn’t. Modernity seemed to have passed them by and it appeared they didn’t mind that in the least.

The hot guy was young, but he was definitely not a twink. In fact, at thirty-two, standing next to him made me feel like the twink, and that was exactly where my urges were coming from. Bakery boy looked rough and innocent at the same time, and that was a deadly mixture of desire for me.

I decided to drive to Madras. If bakery boy wasn’t there, or a healthy food choice failed, there was always the McDonald’s I’d seen on the highway when I’d first driven through town.

CHAPTER FOUR: Luke

I liked this time of day at the bakery the most. We closed at four every afternoon, after opening at seven, and for three days of the week, I was always the last employee there for an hour as I did the final cleanup and prepped for the following day.

It was this last hour when I was alone with my thoughts and found quiet time just for me. My day began at six to assist with the early morning baking and moving of heavy bags of flour and other supplies. Saturdays, like today, were even better because I knew we’d be closed on Sunday.

I worked at two of the several businesses our community owned and operated in Madras. Here, at the bakery, and our handcrafted furniture store, located on the highway in Bend. I split my six-day work week into halves, three days at each location. Most of Sunday and two additional evenings of the week were spent in mandatory worship.

Before my father tragically died in a farming accident, I was being groomed to be an elder and eventually take over the leadership of our community. Half Moon Ranch was the name of our community, but most folks outside of the ranch referred to us members as the Moonies—usually not said respectfully. Names like The Jesus Moonies or Loonie Moonies were common nicknames.

Our controversial leader had not gone out of his way to endear himself to the small town of Madras. Unlike my own father, the latest leader, Franklin Smith, was flashy, aggressive, and dead set on angering the townsfolk. He was abrasive to folks and petty in his behavior. If he ever felt wronged, he’d go out of his way to seek retribution on whoever had offended him. And that meant if you were a business owner, he’d open a competing business and try to drive you to bankruptcy. He was hated countywide, which, of course, helped none of us who lived and belonged to his group.

My father, Luke Oliver Sr., had been our leader until his untimely death five years ago. Franklin Smith and his family had been shunned three years before that and forced to leave the ranch. Franklin’s father, also Franklin, had been high in the church hierarchy, but had spouted off and practiced some extremely controversial beliefs, so he and his family were excommunicated. We may have been unusual to the townsfolk, but spaceships weren’t picking us up anytime soon, like Franklin’s father believed.

Upon my father’s premature passing, Franklin managed to avenge his now-dead father and came back to lead the flock, sidelining my mother, myself, and my little brother. We were relegated to smaller roles, stripped of our family hierarchical rights within the church, with my mother shunned and unable to remarry.

It had been a living hell ever since, but I could not convince my mother to leave the compound because Franklin and his posse had convinced her she’d fail in the outside world. Because my mother had been born within the walls of the ranch, she knew nothing of the modern world outside our walls and believed Franklin was correct.

The powers that be didn’t like members leaving and informing the outsiders about what went on within the complex’s walls, and they had no problem enforcing their policies. No promises of mine to take care of her and my little brother David, or starting over in a new town, could convince her to leave.

Because my father had been held in such high esteem in the past and truly cared for his flock, my family was now feared by the new leader. Many of the recent leadership group had served with my father, but feared the same retribution my family suffered, so they followed Franklin’s rules to the letter, leaving us outside of the family group, one my father used to nurture and mentor.

Now that I was nineteen, I spent much of my time planning my escape. Had it not been for a mother who wouldn’t leave and a brother I didn’t dare leave behind, I’d have departed the day I turned eighteen. Unfortunately, for my freedom, I would never leave them behind. That didn’t stop me from working on my mother’s mindset at every opportunity to convince her to join me in exiting the oppressive system within the strict walls.

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