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“He sells shit gas. Everyone stops there, because it’s cheap, but it’s cheap because he waters it down. Most people ‘round here know, and stay away, but tourists, well, they don’t figure it out until, like you, they’re too far down the road to hold him accountable.”
I felt like running back to that station and throttling the guy. “When I get running again…”
“No use in it. He’ll lie and his cousin is the sheriff. You got no chance in small towns where the people that came before you are all related. Let me handle him. What chance you got fixing it?”
“If it didn’t mess up my fuel pump, I need to clean everything and then get more gas.”
“Pity,” he said, and I stared over at him as he took a drink of water.
“Pity I can fix it?”
“Yeah. I could use some help around the place. My old friend retired last year, and I got enough work for two, doing it myself.”
Was he offering me a job? I didn’t know, but I suspected it. The thing was, I didn’t say a word after, for which he took to mean I didn’t want it. “Well, I can head to town and find someone. Got a lot to do before winter.”
“No, I’ll… wait, me? You don’t know me.”
“Still brought you to my house, fed you.” He turned to me and looked me dead in the eye. “I’ll give you gas after you clean up your bike, but I have a feeling you need a job and place to stay, and I need someone to help me get ready for winter. Once that’s all done, if you want to leave, you’ll have a few more bucks in your pocket and food and a bed while you’re here.”
It was like someone had given me a gift I didn’t deserve, but I had to take it. Before that, I was lost, thinking I’d be sleeping outside. “I’d love a job. I… thank you.”
“Just do a good job and that’ll be thanks enough.”
“I will. I work hard when I have one. And I won’t… fuck up. Sorry for my language.”
“You’re on a ranch now, boy. Cuss all you like, just don’t fuck with me or my property. I have a lot of guns.”
I couldn’t help but smile at that warning, and that was on the side of taking it completely seriously. “I won’t.”
Chapter Four
Afterthedisheswerecleaned, Noah pitching in with me—which was a revelation as to the different men out there in the world—he walked me to the living room and grabbed his jacket from a hook by the door. “I have a little soddy out behind the barn. It’s warm, dry and has everything you need, including a tiny bathroom.”
I asked, “Soddy?”
“Yeah,” he said with a chuckle. “Back in the old days, they made small houses in the side of hills, or made the houses of the soil and grass on the prairie or mountains. They are even sometimes covered in grass.”
I knew of adobe houses, so the concept wasn’t horribly foreign, and I was excited to see it. I was possibly less excited to live in a house like that, but it was better than sleeping in the streets or under that bridge I’d imagined.
“Lead the way.”
As they passed a corral with horses, one came over to the split-rail fence, hanging his head over to Noah. “Hey, boy, how’s your night?”
The horse let himself be petted on the nose by Noah but looked like he’d biteme. “This one isn’t broken yet. I haven’t had the heart to tame him.”
“Meaning, you can’t ride him?”
“I’ve ridden him a few times, bareback, but he's not fond of the practice. I need to break him, get a saddle on him, and bridle, but… there’s something about a wild thing that gets my heart beating a little faster.”
That way he had of saying thingsfelt pointed at me, though for the life of me, I couldn’t explain how. We left the corral in our wake as we kept going around a narrow trail to the soddy.
It was as Noah represented, a house built into a hill, extended some, though. There was a front to it, with windows, and two windows on either side of the front three walls, but the rest was built right into a small hill that was a hump in front of a much larger hill. Noah went around the side and into a tiny shed that was next to the soddy, and soon I heard the starting of a motor.
When Noah returned, he explained, “That’s the genny. No TV out here, but there’s a radio with batteries and I have plenty of books at the house, if you don’t fall right to sleep after your day’s done.”
We went inside the structure, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was as cozy and warm as anywhere I’d been in my life.
There were walls inside, and it wasn’t simply dirt surrounding me. They were blocks of concrete and wood, stacked in layers, and on most of them were thick blankets with Native American designs.
