Page 6 of Hidden Memories

Owen shoves his pitchfork into the hay bale like he’s mad at it. “Youknowwhat’s wrong. Why ask?” Angry, pained eyes glare up at me. “Is this fun for you? Asking if I’m all right when you know damn well I’m not?”

He whips his gaze back to the hay bale and mumbles under his breath, something about me being a sicko. I know he doesn’t mean it. This boy and I have bonded. I recognize the inability to express your feelings, the hurt. The anger. I didn’t go through anything nearly as tough as this young man, but I had a chip on my shoulder, too, once upon a time. And a chip, left to fester, grows slowly into a great big boulder that makes it impossible to fly. I’ve seen it in many men who grow old, grumpy, and regretful.

If not for a chance meeting in my past, a woman who broke me as much as she made me, I might not have become anything but a horror story, dead in the dust at a rodeo. A story for people to tell over dinner when they have nothing else to talk about.

I’m determined to be this boy’s chance meeting. Though, unlike mine, this one I intend to end happily.

I grab a hay bale from the pyramid that was left outside by the delivery guys and hoist it next to Owen. He continues to break up the bales to make hay nets for the week.

“You’re right.” I put my boot on the bale I just threwdown and lean over on my hand, attention focused in Owen’s direction. “I should just ask directly and not beat around the bush. So… how’s Sandy?”

Herein lies Owen’s frustration. His foster parent can’t take care of him anymore. His “mom” Sandy was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. She’s been having lots of ups and downs with her health that are directly displayed in Owen’s attitude here at the ranch.

Sandy has been a good solid home for Owen, the first he’s stayed in for more than a short stint. Not that it isn’t partly his doing, being moved around. Owen is a hard nut. He’s a bit rebellious. But he wasn’t Sandy’s first boy of the sort, and though he snuck out a few times and was once caught with cigarettes as well as shoplifting, she manages him with the patience of a saint. Plus, like myself, she gets he’s traumatized and doesn’t take things personally.

I’ve learned a great deal about putting myself aside from this young man. You can’t mentor a kid like Owen if your ego leads the way. I doubt anyone would use the word humble to describe me, but I am changing. I don’t matter to myself as much as I used to. Right now, seeing his eyebrows tight with frustration and anger tears at my insides.

Owen lived with his meth-addicted mom for years. He was homeless with her more than once before finally becoming a ward of the state at ten. Then, he had three meals and a roof, but still no stability, until Sandy. She’s been his home for nearly a year, which is a long stretch compared to his week- and month-long stays before her. That things were finally going right for this boy and they’re being upended is tragedy in action.

I’m still quiet, elbow perched on my knee, patient and giving him space to speak if he wants to.

He nibbles his lip. “Don’t want to talk about it.”

When you push a young man who’s been taught to be hyper independent to talk, he’ll only shut down more.

I go to a nearby shelf and snatch a piece of twine we leave nearby for undoing bales. I slide it through the tightly tied twine of the bale and start the seesaw action that will have friction cutting through.

Owen scoffs at my traditional way of slicing the twine. “You’re afraid to keep knives around because I’m a hood rat?”

“I let you wield a pitchfork.” I laugh lightly. “I think most of the people around here are more afraid of getting arthritis from being thrown off horses than they are of you.”

He grunt-laughs.

“Except the ones who turn into werewolves on a full moon. The pitchfork then becomes a serious liability.”

Heat builds up with my action and begins to slowly burn through the tie. Finally, the hay bale pops open with a similar sound to a kernel of popcorn popping, and it falls apart without the pressure. “Truth is, the old-fashioned way is so much more satisfying.”

I glance up at Owen who’s now staring out into space at nothing in particular. He needs to get things off his chest.

I head to the back of the barn to grab some hay nets and ask a question I’ve asked him many times before.How bad is it?“Scale of one to ten?”

“Ten.”

I throw the nets down and tug one of my leather gloves back into place. “Hopeful or hopeless?”

He kicks one of the nets. “Hopeless.” He throws down the pitchfork with a clatter on the cement floor. “Everything sucks.”

“I understand how you’d feel that way.”

The state won’t allow Sandy to hold on to Owen nowthat her disease has progressed, and even if she could, he wouldn’t be allowed out of state where her family will support her. But Owen doesn’t know that Sandy truly won’t give up on him until he has a place or until she has no choice. Owen also doesn’t know that when Sandy told me about her declining health, I applied to become a foster parent myself.

I long ago decided I’d never get married. But I always wanted kids, and that tug never stopped pulling. Not all paths are straight. Mine certainly hasn’t been. And neither has Owen’s. I think we have a lot to offer one another.

My eyes track Owen who pounds his work boots to where he snatches some more hay nets as if they were runaways. He drags about five of them behind him, leaving a trail on the dusty floor.

Should I tell him my intentions?

I know he’d be happy with me; he’s said a hundred times how great it would be to live here on the ranch. He knows all the ranch hands now, my dad and brothers. Maybe it would give him hope in this hopeless time.

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