I dreamed I was a rancher and the people in the old photographs on the kids walls were me and mine: my own pastoral utopia with a meadow and a creek. I dug in the meadow to channel water for our cattle. Hunted raccoons with a lanky lop-eared dog. I smelled mud and grass and manure, carried a knife in every pocket. When I looked up I saw a girl waive from the house telling me to come in for lunch. I saw a sandwich and potato chips. I smelled coffee in a stove-top percolator and home-made donuts, and the girl smiling at me. I held my shovel in my hands as I ate. My back ached no matter how straight I sat. She wore modern clothes, street clothes; sneakers, and denim. And though I ate and drank continuously I never grew full, and my hunger and thirst followed me out of the dream to the kid’s old ranch house.
I opened my eyes and saw the old woman floating on the edge of the room talking about someone named Horace. “He’s just a boy,” she said. “And I worry.”
I rubbed my eyes and looked at my watch. It was 12:00. I’d slept for three hours. The woman was standing in the doorway that lead back into the house. “Pardon?” I said.
“Horace,” she said. “He goes to town alone. I worry. Please take care of him.”
That was his name then. Horace wasn’t a name that belonged in the new world, and there wasn’t much else about him that did. I looked around the parlor and couldn’t find anything to prove I’d not traveled across the great wide valley to a time where boys are named Horace and polyester cowboy shirts are still commercially available, mother-of-pearl snaps and all–maybe paired with designer blue jeans and a messenger bag, a smart-phone in the breast pocket, stylish eye glasses. The image all at once became familiar; not quite awake yet, I wondered where I could get a shirt like that.
“Oh don’t worry, uhh, Ma’am,” I said rubbing my eyes. “I think he can take care of himself.”
“Please!” she urged. And I wondered what it was about me that made her think I could offer anyone protection. I wasn’t sure I was ready for the responsibility. Riding shotgun to the kid in that dusty littered pickup truck, I figured I was in good hands. I couldn’t likely turn the tables on him. He was young, but seemed old; the way he walked, the way he spoke, what little of that he did. I hardly felt qualified. Aren’t these people supposed to distrust outsiders like me? What had the boy told her in those hushed words deep in the house?
“OK,” I said. And her expression didn’t change. “I’ll make sure he gets home alright.”
She didn’t say anything else, just disappeared back into the dusty ancient structure. I stepped out onto the porch, the sun and heat reflecting off the ground and sage up into my face and stood at the edge of the veranda lamenting my choices in apparel while waited for the boy to return.
-M
