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Everything in me wanted to resist, to curl back into a ball on the bed and pretend Noah had never heard my screams, but I saw it, how serious he was. I let him lead me out of the soddy and into the yard. “I think you need to stay at the house. It’s too fucking cold out here already.”
“I can’t do that,” I said, and meant it. I’d put the man out enough.
“Jesus, Eli.”
After we got into the house, he took me across from the kitchen where the big bathroom was, and got me inside, setting my duffle there. Before he closed the door, he said, “Come right here after and get you something hot to drink. You can stay the rest of the night on the couch for now, or we can stay up from here.”
“Thanks,” I said, but I didn’t know if I meant it. I appreciated his kindness, but no one had ever seen me have the nightmares, no one had heard my screams. If Harvey had, he never mentioned it, and he was always sleeping when I woke from them.
The shower that I’d been using since I got to the ranch, except for the couple of times I’d tried the cold water one in the soddy, was a good shower. It had one square, flat head that came sternly out of the wall and had great pressure.
The bathroom was brown stone tiles, marbled with blues and grays, and the floor was terra cotta clay tiles, with thick rugs over them to save me from stepping on the icy tiles.
Harvey’s floors were heated, and I’d hated that. I don’t know why, maybe just the expense, the waste of it. If you didn’t want to get your feet cold, then get some rugs, or carpet the place.
I’d resented a lot that Harvey had, that he did, and I figured I was being stupid, wishing I could rid myself of those resentments.
The dream returning broke my heart a little. Those negative thoughts… they came rushing back to me, after I’d come so close to finding the peace I’d craved for so long. Suddenly, even the ranch didn’t hold that for me, and I feared I’d have to move on, and that was after I’d just told Noah I would stay.
When I got into the kitchen, hair dripping down my face and onto the shoulders of my shirt, I sat on the stool, ready to tell Noah that I’d changed my mind. That’s when he asked me a question I didn’t expect.
See, he didn’t have crosses in his house; I hadn’t seen a bible. So, I assumed he didn’t think one way or the other. When the question came it caught me off guard.
“Do you believe in God?”
I was so shocked by the question; I didn’t know how to answer.
Then he explained, and I understood. “I’m not preaching, believe me. I don’t know what exactly I believe, but I have a point, if you’ll hear it.”
“Sure… yeah, okay.”
He pushed a cup of steaming tea at me and then leaned over the island, brushing his mustache from his lips while he thought things over that he wanted to say. “I never understood why someone worked their whole lives, worrying about getting into a place they weren’t sure was real. I’ve seen men that barely lived because of something called Heaven and what that afterlife could give ‘em.”
He was staring off, as if seeking the answer.
“Sometimes, it’s because they almost died, or maybe it’s that they are fixing to die soon. Those, maybe I can understand, but those that live their whole lives just for the hope of getting into another, well, that seemed like a waste to me. I figure we live this one right, proper and fully, and if we get into another, great. If not, this one wasn’t wasted.”
I knew there was a point, because Noah didn’t speak about things without one. I’d never thought I’d see him waxing metaphysically, though, so I was intrigued. “I can see your point.”
“Do you? Because, when bad things happen to us, some rush off to see about that afterlife a little early. Whether they mean to, or it happens because they’ve given up on things. What you got to face, Eli, it’s not easy. I am guessing you’ve had those dreams since you were in the service, and that is more than understandable. Thing is, if you keep living back there, in whatever hell that was, then you’re wasting this life. What I wondered is, if you believe in God, heaven and all that. See, because then I might understand, after seeing others that were working to get there, if you think that would be better than this life. I’m here to tell you, we don’t know what’s next, if anything. Live this one. Live it to the hilt.”
As I thought about what he’d said, I sipped the hot tea, sweet with honey, and I knew. He was telling me to stop living in the past because all too soon, it was all past.
“I haven’t had the dreams since I came here,” I confessed, and I felt another purge coming, my body limp to it. “I thought, maybe, this place made them go away.”
“Our demons come at us when we’re at our weakest. You just got through getting a lot of heavy shit off your chest yesterday. Let’s get you built up so you can stand and fight ‘em when they come.”
“How?”
He smiled, and for the first time, he winked at me. “I’m good at fightin’.”
And that was the last time I thought of leaving for a long, long time.
I slept some more on the couch and woke when the morning was almost over. The sun was bright in the noon sky when I looked out of the big front window, seeing Noah with a wheelbarrow, taking a load of hay to the horses in the corral.
He was… perfect. Oh, I was sure he had his flaws, but I’d met no one like him. He was so strong; I wondered how he could have any demons at all, and then my head turned, catching the picture of him and his husband, and I knew.
I went to the mantel, taking the picture in my hands. I wondered what had taken him from Noah. They looked so happy together. I was sure, whatever happened, it was horrible for him.
