A Few Thoughts from and Aging Clown

 

He would have made an excellent father, except that wasn’t a dream we were supposed to have.  Hell, we weren’t even supposed to be together, much less get married and have a family.  Two men together was even against the law, but the heart doesn’t follow popular opinion or laws and regulations.  The being together we could do, but the family…..not so much. 
 
It was because of children that we met.   We both loved kids, though I must admit to liking them more for the paycheck they generated rather than because they were wonderful.  But He……He was a teacher in a school that handled a lot of special needs kids.  His classroom had a dozen ten year olds that he called his children, all of them with various behavioral issues.  It amazed me how he and Percy, his classroom assistant, managed to teach the kids actual facts and figures in amongst all the behaviors that kept the children from regular schools.  Both of them had the teacher voice – you know the one that made your stomach do weird things when you heard it, knowing that you’ve done something not quite up to their expectations of you?  The day we met I heard that voice and even though it wasn’t directed at me, it struck like lightening and tingled for the next few days as I kept running into Him.
 
Northlands had hired me for a week.  I was a clown with an appetite for knowledge about what makes people tick.  When I was young I read true crime novels.  That carried over into psychology books about those criminals which lead further back into how they were raised.  I devoured book after book and while I was performing for all sorts of children, I developed different shows that might appeal or be better for those kids that faced challenges.  I like to be different.
 
So here I was, in front of His classroom, halfway through my show.  Let me tell you, kids are a tough audience.  If you’re not having the best day, kids can tell and they have no problem calling you out on anything.  I learned quickly that if I was having a bad day, I had to figure out a way to drop all of that as I stepped on my stage.  It’s hard.  There are those days when you’re just in a sucky mood and you can’t or don’t want to let go of that feeling.  I can mostly let those days go, because being called out for sucking by kids is a heck of lot worse than letting go of that, and sometimes feeling better by the end because of the children’s laughter.
 
I had just pulled a rabbit out of my shoe.  I know, most people pull rabbits out of hats but as I said, I like to be different.  The rabbit was obviously happy to see daylight and didn’t want to go back in his cage.  He gave a mighty kick and wound up on the floor.  That was too exciting for two of the kids, both of whom came flying towards the rabbit.  I didn’t see Him move, but as I was bending down to grab the rabbit, He was bending over to stop the two children from grabbing him as well and our heads knocked together.
 
If I wanted to be more romantic, I’d say that I saw stars, then came to with an Angel carrying me off into the happily ever after.  Instead, I stood up, grabbing my head and thought Ow! and then lightening struck.  He had a hand on one shoulder of each child and said “Do NOT touch the rabbit.”  Yup, I’m a weirdo and that was all that I needed to hear to fall madly, deeply in love.  I didn’t know it at first, of course.  I just thought that there must have been a nerve connected to the bump on my head that shot down through my stomach and out through my toes. 
 
Deimos – most people think bunnies are cute and cuddly so he HAD to have that name – hopped over to the side and hid behind a trash can.  The two children were escorted back to their pillows on the floor, with a stern reminder to stay put, and then He came to check on me.  I had to swallow a smile because he had a smudge of my face paint on his face, looking for all intents and purposes like a child having gotten too creative with paint they were supposed to be putting on paper.
 
“I’m so sorry, are you okay?” He asked, taking a deep look into my soul.  I blinked to break the spell and took a step back.  I had never met anyone that seemed to think they were allowed that deep inside me, even before we’d officially met. 
 
“I….I’m fine.  Where did Deimos go?”  Not sure why I was stuttering, other than for just having my head bumped,  as I looked away from him, though I didn’t miss that twinkling eye and slight upturn of his mouth when I named the bunny.
 
“This cute little thing surely doesn’t have anything to do with dread and terror?” He said, picking up Deimos and bringing him back to me.
 
“That is kind of the point?”
 
“What point is that?”
 
I took Deimos and put him into his cage, locking the door to prevent another escape attempt as I tried to come up with an answer.  His casual questions were sounding a bit interrogating.  “Juxtaposition.”
 
“I haven’t met a clown with such a wide ranging vocabulary.”
 
I managed to get my eyes up to meet his.  “There’s a lot more where that came from.”
 
“Where did the rabbit go?” a small voice said from the middle of the pillows.  Both of us blinked and returned to the classroom with what felt like a resounding thud that everyone could hear.  I managed to finish my show and escape the room while He and Percy were getting the morning snack together for their kids.
 
He told me later that Percy put her foot up his behind so that he’d actually ask me for my number, since I was only on day two of the four I was supposed to be in the school.  She was a really lovely woman who didn’t see why everyone shouldn’t be able to love who they wanted to and I thanked her for that many times.  The fact that he fell in love with me, without even seeing my real face, was amazing.
 
 
 
We met Philip Winthrop in 1981 because of Jake.  Jake’s home was in flux and Philip decided the best course of action was to take him out of the city and move him to the middle of nowhere, which turned out to be a beautiful ranch in Wyoming.  He was hired to visit the ranch to give Philip some help in getting Jake settled and schooled.  What was supposed to be a two week, well paid vacation turned into finding our extended family for life.  Philip was kind enough to invite the both of us and it was two of the most blissful weeks in my life to that point.  Here was a house where you could show affection without worry, where you could run outside for miles completely naked and not see another soul, where there were horses and birds and trees and grass and mountains…..well, you get the point.  Totally unlike Boston where you will see trees, but they’re manicured to within an inch of their lives and placed just so.
I hadn’t seen anyone else in a discipline relationship before.  Didn’t even know there was a term for it, or that it was a thing.  And no, I didn’t see anyone get spanked while we were there, but you could just feel that …current.  I suppose you have to be wired for it to come across that way, because nothing was ever right in your face.  You could just tell that Philip had IT, same as He did. 
 
It was a very…..arousing two weeks.  It had been a long time since my teens but I sure as hell felt like a teenager that fortnight, discovering  a whole bunch of stuff I hadn’t known existed, was allowed to exist, especially for people like us.  If someone had asked me to write down my dreams, this was it. 
 
Three days in, He grabbed a bag, a blanket and my hand and we walked out into the pastures.  We walked for a couple of hours, never in a hurry, and just talking about our good luck in having Jake in His classroom.  I was getting rather hungry and had asked several times to stop and have our picnic, but He kept saying no, this wasn’t the spot.
 
The spot ended up being beneath a single large tree.  It was on the crest of a hill, with a view for miles.  You couldn’t pick a better view.  You could tell the river was off in the distance because the trees were lining it.  There were mountains elegantly placed behind that,  a couple of them still seemed to have some snow left on them, even though it was early summer.  There was a lazy breeze blowing, just enough to move the air, bringing amazing freshness with each breath.  You could hear some birds calling to one another now and again but otherwise there was silence.  Absolute,  total silence.  Boston wasn’t a loud city, but it wasn’t until you were in a place where there wasn’t anything mechanical within miles that you realized how much background noise there is in everyday cities.
 
The blanket got spread, the shoes came off and we settled on it and totally enjoyed the bits of meats and cheeses and crackers that were in the bag.  It was topped off by a couple of apples and would have only been better with a bottle of wine.  There was nothing that needed to be done, no place we needed to be and it was GOOD to relax. 
 
We must have bored ourselves to tears because I woke up feeling a little warm.  We had situated ourselves near the edge of the shade and the sun had moved, leaving my feet and calves in the sun.  I poked Him, planning on getting up and getting back to the house but that didn't happen for a while longer.  My poke elicited a deep and wonderful grumble and we rolled around on the blanket doing things to each other that would have gotten us arrested in Boston, but was blessedly, perfectly right in Wyoming.  We barely made it back in time for dinner and it was one of the best days of my life.  We had found our extended family and it was the best feeling in the world.




"William, come here."

I nearly jumped out of my skin as my gaze returned to the paint in front of me as my stomach landed somewhere near my toes.  I slowly turned from the corner, torn as always between the relief that I'm out of the corner vying with the knowledge that what comes after that moment in time is nothing to look forward to.  I take the few steps over to him, tears already stinging my eyes.  He's pulling the chair out away from the table and the screech it makes sounding like my stomach is being pulled along behind me.

He has taken a seat in the chair.  I have never figured out how someone can have such a commanding presence, even when I'm towering over them, but he does it well.  His arms are well defined, just like the rest of him.  Solid and strong, and still not an ounce of fat anywhere.

"What did you decide?" He asked in that teacher voice that reached all the way inside.  Now was definitely not the time to confess to having the best parts of your life flash before your eyes when you were supposed to be thinking about your answer to this question the whole time you were in the corner.  Since this was a recurring issue, I didn't really need all the time he afforded me to answer.

I swallowed to clear the lump that had formed in my throat and had to start twice to get out my reply without sounding like a ten year old child.  "I......I need to check with you before purchasing anything that even resembles soap or lotion."  

"And why is that a good idea?" He asks, as if I might have forgotten the answer to THAT question as well.

"Because I purchase too much, but -"

"Because we will be, our entire extended family will be, and probably every horse, cow and sheep on the ranch will be, clean and smelling like a daisy for months if there ever comes a time when the last bar of soap is ever manufactured.  We.  Have.  Enough." 

It's SO not appropriate to laugh out loud at that preposterous statement.  So I work hard at not doing so but guess I wasn't controlling my mouth as well as I thought.

"It is not a laughing matter, William."

"It is a tiny bit.  TINY bit.  I don't think the horses want to smell like daisies.  They would probably prefer to smell like marshmallows, or coconut, not flowers."

That didn't stop the spanking, and it was a good one, complete with promises, tears, and I'm ashamed to say a lot of blubbering.  He's really good at making his point and I didn't buy any more lotion or soaps for at least an entire month that time.  I was in the doghouse for a few days, but that didn't dampen the pleasure I felt in seeing the corner of his mouth upturn when he would have preferred it not to, nor the sparkle in his eyes right before I lost my pants, and my dignity, at his hands.

 

The End

 

Copyright Rolf & Ranger 2021

Albion Way

Our muse took us for a short road trip away from MEC, probably because being shut up in the house with either one of us can be a bit difficult

We'd like to post this story today with a special hug for our friend Knox, a sweet forum member, who knows why. 

So off we go! (Or maybe not....) 

Enjoy! 

R&R 



Albion Way


He’d spent about forty minutes walking up and down the porch with the phone, dealing with the several and in all honesty fairly trivial issues in Milan that the junior CEO that ANZ had sent out there did not appear to be able to do anything productive about.

Paul brought him a mug of tea out at one point, balancing it on the porch rail near him. Dale, crouching by the pots of herbs as he pointed out the obvious flaws in the package being negotiated, gave him an appreciative smile and went on picking the withered leaves from the thyme and the sage plants with his free hand, breathing in the familiar and clean scents as his fingers brushed the leaves, looking at the snow caps on the mountains on the horizon and assessing how what would be required to strip down and recover the window frames along this wall and the kitchen and study door for proofing this fall. When the junior CEO finally sounded as if he had the confidence to return to the deal, Dale accepted the transfer of the phone over to the head of the corporate being worked with; an older man and a pleasant colleague that Dale had worked with several times in the past few years, and finished off the final details.

Paul came out to sit on the swing as he was ending the call. Dale turned off the phone and sat down beside him to drink the tea.

“That should be the end of that one. I don’t think they’ll call back.”

“I do enjoy hearing you tell people off in Italian.” Paul said placidly. “What did they need?”

“Honestly? A few prods to get a grip and think.” Dale drained his mug. He had mostly finished the yard chores when the call came. Riley and Flynn were in sight in the home pasture, the dogs streaking ahead of them. Jasper was re filling feed bins in the corral with Hammer and Gucci rubbed down and turned loose and nudging to get under his elbows and eat as he handled the big sacks.

Dale gave the stables a sweep out since it became dusty at this time of year in good weather when it wasn’t in use, and then swept off the porch and refilled the water troughs while Flynn and Riley dealt with the horses. They took turns with the shower and set the table around Paul while he finished preparing dinner and ate while they swapped notes about the varying points of their day apart.

“So Italy’s just feeling insecure?” Riley summarised when he got the gist of ANZ’s query. He and the others took a steady interest in any fragments of work that came in day today, whether it was ranch based or ANZ; Dale never ceased to appreciate it or to be slightly surprised by it since it was usually tedious stuff.

“More or less. It’s a young CEO with low experience, and it’s a corporate I’ve worked with a few times.”

“Did you ever ring anyone else for help in your early days?” Riley leaned on the table with one elbow, voice casual, eyes dancing at him. Dale picked a little off his bread roll and flicked it in his direction.

“Yes. Constantly.”

“Liar.”

“How’s the heifer with the stitches?” Paul asked Jasper, who paused between mouthfuls of the spiced pork and salad they were eating.

“Better. There’s no sign of infection today but I’ll clean it out again tomorrow.”

“That reminds me, we’re almost out of antiseptic solution,” Riley added, “I saw we were down to the last couple of bottles this morning. I’ll pick some up in Jackson tomorrow when I get the feed delivery.”

“And salt, we could use another half dozen salt licks. The shires go through them like buzz saws.” 

“They’re on the list. I’ll go via the store over on Albion Way and get the giant ones. They like those.”

“If you’re going in there, don’t come back with another dozen horse toys.” Flynn warned. Riley grinned at him.

“They have good stuff. Leo loved the cone.”

“They fought over the cone. I had to go down and take it away from them at two am when the bickering got rough.”

“If we got them one each it wouldn’t be a problem.”

Flynn shook his head. “If I catch you with any more cones or more armfuls of plastic junk you’ll have the problem of not sitting down for dinner, halfpint. Your choice.”

“Mean.” Riley said without heat. “Anyone else want anything while I’m there? Dale? Want a cone?”

“No,” Dale leaned helpfully out of the way to let Flynn get to Riley, “I think I’m sorted for cones thanks.”

 

 

 

            The late spring weather was pleasantly cool at night. Dale fell asleep easily in the soft breeze from the open window, turned against Flynn’s side. When he jerked awake it was with a start, as if there had been some shout or sound outside. His heart was thundering, sweat was breaking out across his shoulders and palms, and for a moment he listened hard, wondering what had woken him. The house was peaceful and silent. Outside there was the occasional voice of a horse or sheep, but they were the normal quiet, night-time murmurs, not the sounds of animals with concerns. Dale took a few slow breaths and listened some more. Nothing. No clue as to what had startled him. Flynn’s hand found his back, Flynn’s voice was soft behind him, but Dale knew Flynn would be feeling the thudding of his heart under his palm.

“Dream?”

“No. I thought-” he trailed off, with no real idea of what had happened. Flynn leaned up on one elbow and listened with him.

“You thought what?”

“….I don’t know. That I heard something.”

“The phone? Fax?” Flynn knew his proclivity for hearing even the soft sounds of wires activating. Dale didn’t need to consider that hypothesis to abandon it.

“No. I’d know what that was.”

All was quiet outside. Dale slid towards the edge of the bed and Flynn followed as Dale made a brief check on Paul and then Riley. Both were sound asleep. Jasper’s bed was empty; that was not at all unusual on a fine night, but Dale stood in his doorway for a moment, concentrating until he was as sure as was possible that the feeling had nothing to do with him. Behind him, Dale heard Flynn pad softly down the stairs. He was back a moment later, large and calm with the planes of his bare chest reflecting slightly silver in the darkness.

“He’s left the back door on the latch. The stove and boiler are fine, everything else is locked up and the dogs aren’t out of their beds.”

They had an entire alert system out there. The dogs let them know in no uncertain terms if anything happened outside during the night that they didn’t approve of, and the corral horses equally made plenty of noise if they were suspicious or interested. If the dogs weren’t even up and about in the yard then nothing was outside to be concerned about. In the interests of thorough elimination of all possibilities, Dale checked the phone and slipped quietly upstairs to check the fax machine. Nothing. Both, as he’d known, were devoid of any activity. Flynn was waiting for him on the landing, and put a hand in the small of his back, guiding him back to bed. Dale lay down with him, looked up at the ceiling and tried to clear his mind. And stop his heart thudding out of his chest since it was still going strong. Sometimes if he could blank his thoughts, just be and not interfere, information got clearer, but there was nothing. No feeling of an email they needed to see, no feeling to go and shut a gate or to check a lock, and those kind of minor urges were usually clear and dispassionate enough that he found himself just knowing to do them without really having to think about it.

Flynn’s hand rested on his chest over his heart, then Flynn took his arm and pulled, and Dale turned over far enough to let Flynn tug the t shirt he was wearing off over his head and toss it across to the chair. Dale lay down in his arms, bare skin to bare skin. Flynn was cool from the night air, the hardness of his chest and the scent of him deeply familiar.

“Anything on your mind?” Flynn said in his ear.

“No.” Dale said it with certainty and without hesitation. “No, nothing I know of.”

Flynn’s hand rubbed slowly on his spine. “Take some deep breaths.”

“If you like I’ll go and get a paper bag to breathe into,” Dale said with some irritability. The hand on his back slid lower and patted, firmly.

“Breathe, and I’ll keep that in mind.”

With an effort, Dale made himself stop and take a few deep, slow breaths. It slowed his heart slightly. Flynn went on rubbing in slow circles, his voice rumbling under Dale’s ear. “Anything you can think of that might have triggered a panic attack?”

“That’s what you think it is?”

“That’s what you’re telling me you think it might be, if you’re talking about paper bags.” Flynn said without heat. “Think it through, kid. Things can sneak up on you, we know they do.”

“I honestly can’t think of anything.” Dale sorted rapidly through the last forty eight hours, all of which had been usual and tranquil and…

Fine. Good days.

“No, nothing. The Italy business was nothing, it was a casual chat. I’ve been fixing fences and moving sheep around the past two days, it’s been all as usual.”

And yet there was still an overpowering sense of something wrong, something to be alert about. He was still shaking slightly, he could feel it. Sweat was cooling on his skin.

He’s right, by process of elimination it probably is a bloody panic attack. So get a grip.

Annoyed, Dale shut his eyes and intentionally slowed his breathing, forced his body to relax and mentally focused on grounding himself. The deep pressure of Flynn’s hand on his back, the cool of the sheets beneath him, the movement of the mattress. It helped somewhat.

Neither of them returned to sleep. Dale because whatever was triggering his body to run on high alert was declining to shut up and stop it, and Flynn because it had to be impossible to try and get some rest next to someone whose heart was apparently trying to run a marathon on its own. After around twenty minutes of that, Dale lost patience, pulled away from Flynn and sat up.

“Look. This is ridiculous, you get some sleep. I’m going to get dressed and shift the rock pile. Maybe that will stop it.”

It would at least burn off the adrenaline. And be tiring and distracting. And painful, because you’ll make sure it is, because you’re getting angry with yourself. Which is not helpful.

Flynn took his arm, the yank was a strong one and it turned Dale directly over his knee, and the swat was hard and very well placed. And if Dale were honest, he’d more than asked for it.

“Corner. That one. Hands on your head.”

Slightly ashamed of himself, Dale took up the corner, which their room possessed due to specific arrangement of the furniture for his benefit, and which Flynn made good use of. Flynn made no further comment. Linking his hands on the top of his head with his butt stinging hotly from that swat, Dale shut his eyes rather than stare at the wall and made the effort to stand straight and still, very aware of Flynn behind him. This was a physical challenge, but rather a different one to hauling rocks. And with it, slowly but in a wave, came the usual sense of acceptance that he was not the one making the decisions. The sense of handing over and letting go all responsibility, and the usual following wash of deep relief. It was a form of meditation he’d always, reluctantly, found rather useful.

Flynn left him there a good twenty minutes and approximately forty seconds by Dale’s calculations. Long enough for his arms to be complaining and his knees starting to ache from the stillness. Then Dale heard him get up from the bed.

“Dale.”

Dale turned to face him. Flynn jerked his head at the door.

“Let’s go.”

Dale couldn’t read his expression, but his stance suggested that doing anything but obey him, quite quickly, was not a good idea. Not quite sure what he had in mind and more than slightly aware that this might be a short trip downstairs to the study since Flynn’s tolerance for temper and messing about in the middle of the night was not high, Dale walked ahead of him. Instead of the stairs though, Flynn steered him into the bathroom, closed the door and turned the shower on. He made no comment, just stripped them both and took Dale with him under the stream of water, turning him so the water fell on Dale’s shoulders. He’d set it to hot, the kind of hot that soaked out muscles at the end of a hard day, and he put his arms around Dale’s waist and held him there, so the only option left was to surrender, lean into the familiar planes of his chest and let the water fall. There were several minutes of silence under the spray in his arms, Flynn’s head against his, Flynn’s arms hard around him holding him still, skin to skin and breathing the steam, and then Flynn nudged his chin up and Dale gladly enabled him in several deep, hungry and demanding kisses that searched his mouth. It was never possible to kiss Flynn and think about anything other than Flynn; particularly considering Dale’s entire mind and body tended to rather irresponsibly hurl aside every other consideration but Flynn given a third of a chance. It was a deeply, powerfully physical comfort that melted the last of the tension away to flow down the drain with the water. Then Flynn turned off the spray, grabbed a towel and rubbed them both down in the same brisk and efficient manner he tended to rub down a horse and which scoured Dale’s neck, shoulders, back and behind to glowing, and took them back to bed.

Sleep came quickly after that.

There were still restless dreams. A number of them came in quick succession where Dale found himself vaguely looking for something or trying to work something out without having all the information but knowing it was a problem. He woke when Paul went downstairs, the usual signal for the day starting, and it was almost a relief.

Flynn stirred when he got up, but it was their usual routine and he didn’t object. Dale still held strong suspicion that he was likely to be sent back to bed after breakfast: making up sleep lost to chewing, obsessing and other forms of overdramatic enactments of stress was one of the many immovable boundaries Flynn held. Dale shaved, aware and monitoring as he did it that it was only once and that no other impulses or compulsions or obsessions were involved. They weren’t. The only thing he was aware of, constantly, was a strong feeling of dread, of anxiety, as if something awful was going to happen. Not a call to action but a solid brick wall of trepidation.

Which was ridiculous, but he couldn’t shake it.

Frustrated with himself, Dale wiped down the sink, dressed and went downstairs quietly enough not to disturb the others. Paul would be putting the bread in to bake and doing the other small chores he began his day with, which usually included a pot of tea, and this was time that he and Dale usually spent together. This morning, as he got halfway through the family room, his eyes fell on the garage door ahead of him and his heart jolted again, as hard as it had in the night to wake him. It was hard enough to stop him dead.

Albion.

It was the one word or coherent thought that came to mind; crystal clear and as strong as if someone had said it aloud. And instantly all the sensations of dread consolidated and came together in one rush, focused towards that word and the garage. It was overwhelming.

Dale stood for a moment more in the silence of the empty family room, alarmed and trying to frame it into any kind of coherency. The ranch tended to send its signals to him like this, frequently without clarity or support like some kind of mad cryptic crossword and however he racked his brain and tried to focus it, it got no better than a dread – an overwhelming and horrible wall of fear.

So why? Don’t give me half the information and leave me with the mess of it! David, are you there?

There were times he could make that connection. This morning there was nothing. No help of any kind.

David, please, for pete’s sake help! Is this information? Is it something I need to do? And if it is, how the hell am I going to explain it? Or is this random panic that I’m letting get out of control and I’ve just found a focus to put it all on?

At this point, he really had no idea. At all.

 

 

*

 

 

            Dale had an outstanding line in no, I don’t intend to talk about this that took natural talent and extended it to genius level. He walked into the kitchen this morning looking poised, immaculately tidy, and bearing all the signs to Paul of a bad night. A cup of tea and ten minutes to cuddle and talk first thing in the morning always mattered a great deal to Dale, and Paul took his time over it this morning, gently nagging the details out of him until he was able to talk about middle of the night showers without looking as if they ought to be court martialling offenses. By the time the others came downstairs it had taken effect and Dale was looking less tense and he ate a fairly good breakfast, albeit to begin with in the determined Look At Me Being Fine way that made Paul take his fork away from him and Flynn explain that his choices were to can it or to go and stand in the kitchen corner until he felt more like canning it.

Riley, sympathetic to middle of the night panic attacks and with an eye on the time as it was several hours to Jackson, grabbed his wallet and jacket as soon as he’d finished eating, kissed Paul on his way past, gave Flynn the required promise of driving with due care and attention, and headed out to the garage. The rest of them, still eating bacon rolls, heard the splutter and an odd whine from the jeep. It was repeated. Then Riley reappeared in the kitchen doorway, swapping one set of keys on the hook for another.

“The jeep’s dead. Might need to check the battery when I get back.”

It happened. A couple of weeks could pass between one of them taking a jeep out, and the batteries needed checking regularly to manage the time they spent standing in the garage. Riley disappeared again. Paul, finishing his roll, lowered it at the second splutter and whine.

“Both of them? They can’t be that bad, I took one over to Clara the other day to pick up the sutures she ordered for us.”

They heard the jeep hood pop. The points were kept in the garage to recharge batteries; it was something they all knew how to do. Paul was about to take Riley another cup of tea to fill the time while he waited for the battery to charge, when Riley reappeared in the doorway.

“The battery’s fine. On both of them, I checked. I can’t see what’s wrong but I can’t get either of them to start. Dale, will you come take a look?”

Dale, who had long since become established as the most successful mechanic the family possessed, got up. Flynn however looked across at him as he got up, and then put a hand out to stop him. “Hey. What’s that expression about?”

“What expression?” Riley demanded. Paul, looking with Flynn, could only see grim and slightly wired in Dale’s jawline; both characteristics that tended to go with too little sleep. Jasper, leaning on the table and drinking tea, looked too. Then he got up and went into the garage. Flynn kept hold of Dale, waiting. Jasper was back a moment later and he leaned on the door frame, long and casual and his soft voice calm.

“The plugs are missing on both.”

“Missing?” Paul looked to Flynn and then Dale in bewilderment. “If that was what you heard last night Dale, someone messing about in the garage, why would they-”

Jasper held out a hand to Dale, palm upwards. “I’ll take them please.”

There was a moment’s silence. Paul looked at Dale, shocked. Then Dale said stiffly and very politely, “No sir, I can’t do that.”

“You can’t do what?” Riley said, confused.  

Flynn turned him by the hip and Paul watched Flynn check Dale’s jeans pockets, then look up at him. “Where are they?”

Dale didn’t answer. Less, Paul could see, because he didn’t want to, than that he couldn’t find any appropriate or polite way to say it. He looked trapped, determined and very slightly panic stricken.

“You disabled the cars?” Riley said, sounding completely baffled now. “Why would you-”

“Halfpint, come sit down.” Flynn interrupted before that got any further. “Dale, give those plugs to Jasper. Now.”


“No sir, I won’t.” Dale said it quietly but promptly, and he meant it. 

Paul knew the expression. Flynn knew it too and he was watching Dale with a whole lot of thoughtfulness. Paul turned his chair to where he could better see Dale’s face.

“Ok. So you decided that taking the plugs was necessary. Tell me why?”

“Just say it, kid.” Flynn said when Dale hesitated. “It’s all right. Any part of it, start anywhere and we’ll work it out.”

“I can’t explain, because it’s insane.” Dale gave them a steady look, one after the other direct into their eyes, and it was somewhere between despairing and the kind of determined he got when he was really, seriously upset about something. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience, I really am.”

“Are you serious?” Riley said in disbelief. Dale gave him a short nod.

“Very.”

“Now tell us the part of it you think is insane.” Flynn had hold of Dale’s hand and he hadn’t let go. “This is to do with whatever happened in the night.”

“I have an extremely bad feeling about the cars and about Jackson, and in particular, Riley driving to Jackson.” Dale said very shortly. “There you are; that is it. That is all. No further information, no specifics of any kind. I apologise but that’s all I can tell you, I don’t know anything else. I very much wish I did.”

There was another moment’s silence in the kitchen.

“So because you have a bad feeling about me going to Jackson, you went into the garage and broke both cars?” Riley summarised. “Well that’s normal. That’s really a good way to start the day. I have stuff I need to do today you know-”

“Just Riley going to Jackson, or any of us?” Jasper said from the doorway, across what promised to become a tirade. Dale looked across at him.

“I can’t be sure. Certainly Riley in particular.”

Jasper nodded slowly, absorbing. “So if I drove to Mac’s ranch, would that be ok? Take a moment. Think how it feels.”

“I….. really don’t know.” Dale sounded somewhere between tired and frustrated, and Paul’s heart went out to him. “I’ve been trying and I can’t distinguish exactly if it’s focused on Riley or the cars or the place in Jackson. But I have no idea if this really is something important or it’s just me randomly obsessing because of a panic attack last night – I have no idea. I’m very sorry, but I have no idea.”

“But it’s bad enough for you to make sure there’s no chance of Riley leaving the ranch today.” Flynn confirmed, and it was a tone that took hold of and calmed the slightly despairing note in Dale’s voice. There was a pause where Flynn and Paul and Jasper discreetly exchanged glances, and they reflected together on what on earth to do. Then Flynn leaned on the table and looked at Dale. “Right. If you feel this strongly then I won’t let Riley drive today.”

“You what?” Riley said hotly.

Dale looked down at Flynn, and Paul saw his eyes; the overwhelming relief and the deep thank you for that act of trust.

“I agree.” Paul said to Dale as much as Riley. “Dale, go unbreak both cars please, then bring us the keys. Yes,” he added when Dale hesitated, “you don’t control us by taking over and you know that. You tell us what the problem is and then you trust us. That’s how it works. Go on, love.”

Dale went. Not willingly but he went, and Jasper went with him. Riley hissed in sheer exasperation. “He has some random feeling that my driving today is a bad idea so I can’t drive?”

Flynn reached over to snag Riley’s wrist and pulled Riley over into his lap, wrapping him enough to prevent a further outburst although to Paul’s eye, there was as much reassurance in it as restraint.  

“This is not fair,” Riley muttered savagely, “I had plans today,”

Flynn squeezed the arm around his waist. “I know, and I’m sorry. But there’s no essentials we need in Jackson that won’t wait until tomorrow.”

“So he just says and I can’t?”

“Wait a minute.” Paul ran a hand through Riley’s hair, moving to sit next to him and Flynn. “Just give it a minute and we’ll sort this out. I know you’re angry.”

“You said you wouldn’t let me drive today, how is that sorting it out!”

Flynn didn’t answer, waiting. In the garage, one engine started, then the second. They heard the sound of hoods and doors close, the sound of the locks engaging and Dale emerged with Jasper and handed the keys to Flynn.

“Sweet.” Flynn said, pocketing them.

“Sweet what?” Riley demanded. “Flynn! He can get upset when one of us leaves, you know this happens-”

“How many times have one of us come and gone to Jackson or Clara’s or to the garage in the past month?” Paul interrupted gently but firmly enough to stop him. “How many times have you ever seen Dale ask us not to?”

“But he is right.” Dale said rather tonelessly. “That does happen, it is a fact. I become randomly obsessed with things at times; that is another fact,”

“No, you don’t. Occasionally you get anxious about not knowing when you’ve done something enough or right. I’ve never known you to focus it on one of us.” Jasper was standing close to him and he spoke with certainty. “I have known you, plenty of times, to know something that the rest of us haven’t picked up on, including when a piece of machinery is going wrong or when you need to be somewhere or to do something, and you’ve been proven right. Riley, do you agree?”

Riley cast him a grim glance that said yes he did, but he was not ready to admit it.

“So we need to take some time.” Jasper told him. “Dale, I want you to detail the cars this morning. Start there. Go over them, check there’s nothing about them that’s pulled your attention. We’ll see what else emerges and we’ll know more in a while. And I’ll do it with you, because put a level on this?”

Riley gave Dale a very pointed look.

Dale answered him immediately and quietly. “Level one. Manipulating or hiding things to control; not to mention up and down through the night.”

“Then let’s straighten you out on managing us instead of talking to us, and flat out disobeying Jas and I when we ask you to do something.” Flynn said. “Both of which you know are unacceptable. Go get me a paddle, kid.”

Riley looked up as if he wanted to say something, but didn’t. Dale went. He returned a moment later with the lexan paddle in his hand. Riley rolled his eyes skyward. Flynn took no notice of him, scooting his chair back to make enough room. He took the paddle from Dale and waited. Dale unbuttoned his jeans without expression and pushed them down, sliding his underwear down after them. Flynn turned him over his knee, settling him with his hands on the floor. Paul could see the tension in his neck and shoulders, most of which had nothing to do with the paddle in Flynn’s hand. Flynn pushed Dale’s shirt higher up his back and rested his hand below it on the small of Dale’s back. He didn’t lecture any further; just used the paddle to apply a short, but sound and thorough spanking to the bare bottom over his lap. It took less than five spanks of the paddle to shift Dale’s silence and the rigidity of his back, he was yelping and starting to twist almost immediately, and somewhat ragged but sincere and much more fluent apologies and commitments to behave followed in swift succession, not that they did much to distract Flynn. He didn’t stop using the paddle until Dale’s behind was one solid, warm red across his lap and promises had frayed out into tears. Which was most of what would do him good. Flynn laid the paddle on the table when he was done, giving Dale a minute to lay where he was, shoulders shaking, to catch his breath. Across the table Riley looked subdued more than angry now. Flynn helped Dale turn over, pulled him up into his lap wet faced and with any reserve yanked down, and hugged him as Dale’s arms closed around his neck.

“Stop with the bull. We will straighten this out, and Jasper, Paul and I will make the decisions on the available information. It is not your problem. Understood?”

Dale’s voice was unsteady but considerably calmer. “Yes sir.”

“Riley?”

With the lexan on the table Riley answered him swiftly and sincerely. “Yes sir.”  

“Then go tack up Leo and Snickers, we’ll check on that heifer and sweep up through the sheep on the other side.”

“Yes sir.”

It wasn’t happy, and Riley as he left didn’t look happy, but a long day spent riding with Flynn was never a bad day where Riley was concerned. Flynn put Dale on his feet and helped him to sort his clothes out.

“You, face that corner there until Jas calls you to sort the cars out. We’ll wait, we’ll see what happens.”

“And if it turns out I am just randomly making stuff up or being controlling?” Dale trailed off, sounding shaky but he looked considerably calmer and there was a frankness there now that there hadn’t been before. Flynn turned his chin up, bringing Dale’s face close to his and holding it there.

“If you are, then it’s anxiety. It’ll be for a reason, that reason will get clearer and we’ll handle that too. Either way, we are going to be fine. Got it?”

“Yes sir.”

“Come here.” Flynn pulled him into his chest, giving him a crushing hug that went on a while. Dale gripped him back just as hard; Paul could see the clench in his shoulders. Flynn kissed him when he let him go, turning him towards the corner with a soft pat on his backside.

“Corner.” He pulled the car keys from his pocket and handed them over to Jasper. “Riley and I’ll be back mid afternoon.”

 

 

*

 

 

            Jasper backed the jeeps out into the yard and he and Dale spent the morning going over them one at a time. Paul, baking and working through the household chores, kept an eye on them out of the kitchen window. He saw them both sit on the grass out by the paddocks for a while and knew they were taking the time to ground, to centre themselves, to clear energy. After which, they started on the cars and Jasper seemed to be getting Dale to look at and talk him through each section of the car workings at a time. It was taking time, it was keeping Dale’s attention on him as much as the car, and they were unfastening bits and poking them, and cleaning them. Generally Dale looked as if he was finding it a useful thing to do; mechanics of any kind was usually something he could lose himself in for hours without difficulty. To Riley, this would have been a heavy consequence. To Dale….. no, this was something he often did for enjoyment, and it would be a practical way to act on anxiety too if that was the issue. And that would be the really hard part for him; the not knowing.

Jasper came in to wash his hands at one point, and having checked through the window that Dale was still occupied underneath the jeep they were focused on with a spanner in his hand, Jasper collected the phone and quietly dialled in a number.

“Hello? Hi Cheryl, it’s Jasper out at Falls Chance Ranch. We’re all good thanks, how are you? Yes. I was calling to ask, what are the roads like in Jackson this morning? Traffic all ok?”

Paul went on kneading bread, watching his face. Jasper nodded, absorbing whatever the Sheriff’s radio dispatcher was telling him.

“Ok. Thanks, just considering if we’re going to drive out today.”

He put the phone back and shook his head in reply to Paul’s look of inquiry.

“Nothing, all clear.”

“I’ve checked the local news sites a couple of times this morning on the computer.” Paul admitted.

“We’re most likely never going to know.” Jasper said simply. “I’ve had that conversation with him this morning. How are we ever going to know if he picked up on something that would only happen if Riley was on the road this morning in a specific place at a specific time? We can’t. He doesn’t have the experience yet to know any more than we do. Gifts like these aren’t convenient, they aren’t meant to be.”

“And he doesn’t get randomly anxious, there’s always a reason and a cause. We can always find the root of it.” Paul went on pounding dough, having given this a lot of thought this morning. Dale was right; it was a valid fear. Sometimes the worst explosions did come out of nowhere for him. But you could always find the trigger. And Jasper having left Dale under the jeep instead of insisting Dale came inside with him and stayed in arm’s reach said a lot too. Jasper was always acutely aware of what either of their brats needed to feel safe: if he’d truly thought Dale was struggling this morning he wouldn’t have walked this distance away from him. “Yes, that’s what I think too.”

Jasper paused to wrap an arm around Paul’s hips and Paul turned his head to kiss him.

“Do you two want to stop for lunch?”

“I’ll take something out and we’ll eat as we work, I’d rather keep him busy.”

“All right, I’ll bring a tray out in a while.”

Paul ate out there with them on the porch while they went on working on the cars, and when they were done the two of them did the yard chores together, Jasper keeping Dale with him which made everything take longer but getting things finished wasn’t Jasper’s priority. After which he took Dale to shower, and the two of them walked down to check the post box.

Riley and Flynn came in while they were gone. Paul took tea out to them in the yard as they were rubbing down the horses. Riley looked his usual self, he looked up over Snickers’ back with his usual cheerful smile. His temper while it tended to burn bright in the moment, usually blew itself out fast. Riley rarely had difficulty in moving on and seeing a more balanced picture, and if Paul had to guess, Flynn had made thoroughly sure that Riley had had the chance to rant himself out and talk himself into a better frame of mind.

Flynn paused in checking Leo’s hooves and straightened up to stretch his back. “Dale been ok?”

“Quiet, but yes. They didn’t find anything on the cars.”

Riley snorted. “Yeah well the deer I would have hit at ten oh seventeen by the fourth tree to the left of the eighth rock isn’t there anymore, so the problem’s over.”

“You think that’s what it was?” Paul asked him. Riley went on rubbing Snickers down in long, hard strokes that Snickers was leaning into and blissing out over.

“Of course it was. I was mad about it this morning but he doesn’t mess about without reason. No one else may get the reason, but there always is a reason.”

Jasper and Dale rounded the corner together with a couple of letters in Jasper’s hand that looked like circulars rather than anything interesting. Riley ducked under Snickers’ neck to start on his other side.

“Hey. If I was going to take a jeep out and drive to Clara’s place right now would that be ok with you?”

Dale, who had looked rather stiff and as if he was apprehensive about how angry Riley still was with him, looked towards the jeep and Paul saw him consider it. Carefully, thoroughly.

“Yes. Not a problem.”

“And run it up and down the drive and to the landing place?”

“Yes.”

“And out to Pinedale?”

“Yes.”

“And into Jackson?”

“You don’t want to go to Jackson now.” Dale said almost automatically. Riley paused and nodded at Paul.

“There you go.”

“It was the word,” Dale said a little unwillingly, as if he expected this to sound too foolish to share. “Albion. That was the word that hit me this morning when I saw the garage. That store.”

“Only because you were worried I’d come back with a trunk full of cones and Flynn would strangle me.”

It was a gentle attempt at teasing, but Dale shrugged, rather bleakly. “That’s as possible as anything else. I really don’t know.”

It was really bothering him. Multi billion dollar deals and international complexities, easy. He handled those without effort. Responsibilities like this? Not anything like so straight forward, never where the ranch and its people were concerned or where he felt a duty through the gift he had.

“Can I go to Jackson tomorrow?” Riley asked Dale. “Anything in you saying to freak about that?”

Dale looked at the jeep again. “No. That seems to be fine when I think about it. I can’t promise not to change my mind in the middle of the night.”

“I guess we’ll see.” Flynn let Leo go with a pat to his neck. “Turn Leo into the corral for me.”

Jasper walked with Dale down to the corral to open the gate. Paul jogged up the steps hearing the telephone in the kitchen, leaving Flynn putting tack away and Riley still grooming Snickers, more now because Snickers loved it than anything else.

“Hello, Falls Chance Ranch?”

Flynn came out of the stables and closed the door, brushing off his hands. Paul came out onto the porch and leaned on the rail waiting for him.

“That was Cheryl from the Sheriff’s office.”

“And?”

Paul looked across the yard, waiting too for Jasper and Dale who were coming to join them.

“Jas rang her earlier to ask about the roads in Jackson today.”

Dale abruptly stood slightly straighter, like a man before a firing squad. Paul looked down into the silver-grey eyes, gentling his voice.

“She just called to say if we’re still planning to drive out today to stay away. A store delivery truck opened its doors in the car lot on Albion Way around lunchtime and found a chemical container it was carrying had exploded. It’s all over the tarmac and the fumes went over everyone in the vicinity. There’s a few ambulances there, all the store staff and customers are having to go to hospital to be checked over. The police have sealed off the road and the fire service are trying to figure out how to get the chemicals safely up off the ground.”

There was a moment’s silence. Then Riley shook his head.

“Wow.”

Dale turned and would have walked away towards the garage except for Jasper who stepped in front of him, and put his hands on Dale’s shoulders. Dale braced against him; Paul saw his hands against Jasper’s chest to fend him off. It didn’t move Jasper an inch. Jasper cupped a hand behind his head, talking steadily and very gently.

“You acted on the information you had. There was nothing more that you could have done.”

“You can’t be upset that you were right?” Riley said in dismay. “Come on….”

Jasper held Dale where he was, not letting him go. “It’s the first time you’ve felt anything like this. You had no means of understanding it better or knowing more.”

“You can’t feel responsible for anything that happened!” Riley left Snickers and came to them. “Dale, you can’t,”

“People were hurt.” Dale sounded grim, “What is the point of this if I don’t – I knew something was going to happen, I knew where,”

“Really?” Riley put a hand on him, close to shaking him, “You did? Because for the longest time all I got from you was a general idea of something about not good for me to go. You never said where or why or what time. So tell me again how you knew all that?”

“I knew you shouldn’t be there.” Dale said with difficulty. “Albion, I had that word. I knew I didn’t want you near there or near the jeep.”

“And that was all you had? So you were going to call who and say what? I’ve got a bad feeling about that street?”

“Riley, I’ve shut down plenty of buildings before now.” Dale gave him a flat stare, one of his ice stares and they rarely saw those aimed at them. “If I wanted a street shut down, a street would be shut down.”

He meant it. Riley shook his head, seriously and with affection.

“On a feeling so vague you broke the jeep so we’d just not go out today? You weren’t even sure enough of what was happening to tell us about it. Even if you’d closed the street the truck just would have opened up its broken load somewhere else, you can’t blame yourself.”

“Enough now. There’s nothing we can do about it from here.” Flynn jerked a thumb at Riley. “Take a head collar up and get Petra, halfpint; I dug a stone out of her near fore this morning and I thought she was bruising. Bring her down and we’ll soak her hoof.”

Jasper pulled Dale’s head against his and Dale returned the hug. Somewhat wearily but he returned it. Flynn nodded at him when Jasper let him go. “Go get your journal.”

He waited, hands on his hips, watching. Dale took the outside door into the study to retrieve the book off the shelf where it lived, and a pen, and brought both back to him. Flynn opened it to a fresh page. “I want a description, with a clear timeline, of what you knew and when. Take a seat on the steps.”

Dale climbed the porch steps and sat, gingerly enough to say he was still tender from this morning’s paddling. Jasper rested a hand on his head as he passed and went to feed the dogs.

Flynn, filling a bucket of hot water for Petra in the stable doorway, kept an eye on him and saw him sit, hands clasped in front of him with the pen between them, looking down at the hard earth of the yard. Flynn’s sharp whistle made him glance up.

“Stop chewing and write.”

It gained him a somewhat fulminating look. Flynn set the bucket down and crossed the yard to him. Dale raised his hands before he was halfway there. “Ok, ok, I’ll do it-”

Flynn tugged him to his feet with one hand and soundly swatted the seat of his jeans with the other before turning Dale to face him. “First time of asking, good attitude.”

That shook the iced look. Dale answered hurriedly and Flynn saw the hand twitch that was trying not to grab for his backside and rub. “Yes sir.”

“I’ll expect that done when I’m done with this hoof.” Flynn sat him firmly down on the step. “Get on.”

Riley was walking the matriarch of their shire horses over the grass towards them. Flynn went back to finish filling the bucket, added a heavy dose of Epsom salts to the water and glanced at Dale. His jaw was tight, but his head was bent over the journal and he was writing. Once he started, he would be unable to be anything less than brutally and factually correct. Petra came into the yard and stooped her great head to meet Flynn, nudging into his shirt front and hopefully whiffling at his hands. Flynn rubbed her nose and dug in his pocket to find a lifesaver which she accepted graciously as Riley tethered her to the rings on the barn wall.

“She’s walking a bit light on that foot but not exactly limping.”

Flynn patted Petra’s hip and clicked to her as he took her massive, shaggy foot. She willingly lifted it for him, let him grip it between his knees and gently prod around the inside of her hoof. “No heat, she’s less tender there than she was this morning. We’ll soak it and check again in the morning but that looks better to me.”

Petra stood with her foot in the bucket, serenely ignoring Boris and Raglan, the other two shires, who were hanging over their paddock fence and calling to her. Mostly in indignation that she was getting to go out and they weren’t. Flynn, crouching on the yard earth beside the bucket with a hand on her knee to steady her, glanced again at Dale. He was completely absorbed now. Wholly focused in what he was writing, committed to it. The way he committed, entirely, without guard or reservation to everything that mattered to him.

When Riley walked the now comfortable Petra back towards her paddock, the big shire pacing gracefully with her head looming above his, Flynn tipped the contents of the bucket down the drain, swilled it out, and went to sit beside Dale. “Let’s see it.”

Dale surrendered the journal, not too willingly. There were several parts where he’d annotated; Flynn could feel him itching to write out a neat copy. Flynn skimmed through it, nodding slowly.

“Good. Now you’ve written risk assessments and crisis analysis plenty of times. Show me where, based on that timeline within that information, you could have acted in a way that benefitted the driver of the truck at Albion Way.”

“I can’t.” Dale admitted. It was grim, he didn’t want to say it. Flynn tapped the page.

“All right. Where could you have benefitted the staff of the shops at Albion Way?”

“I can’t. Nor the bystanders. I know.”

“But you don’t believe it.”

“I do.” Dale leaned his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped together between them as if to stop himself taking the pen back and trying to make the evidence reach another conclusion. “It just seems wrong.”

“What seems wrong?”

“That I didn’t know more. That I didn’t make better sense of it.” Dale’s hands moved in a stifled, expressive gesture. “That I didn’t think more widely than just about me and mine.”

“Based on that evidence.” Flynn repeated. Dale looked back at the page.

“There is a responsibility that comes with this.”

“Yes. There is. You have a sense of service.”

“Yes.”

“And you tell me that in that service, you are the tool, and not the architect.” Flynn said bluntly. “That it’s need to know; you don’t get all the information. That your curiosity and your emotions about what you can know and how it goes aren’t a part of it. In fact you say they get in the way of you doing the job as it should be done.”

There was a long silence. Then Dale breathed out and it was a tired, defeated sound that went with him abruptly turning a little so his shoulder leaned against Flynn’s.

“I have never liked not knowing.”

“You would have liked to have been able to protect the people at Albion Way the way you managed to protect Riley.”

“After a great deal of ineffective faffing about.” Dale said heavily. “Yes. Very much.”

“Try that again.”

“You’re relentless.”

“I know I’m waiting.”

Dale ran both hands over his face and Flynn felt him lean more of his weight against him. “I am hideously embarrassed I actually…..”

“Took the plugs out of both jeeps.” Flynn finished for him. Dale made a faintly stifled sound from behind his hands.

“I’m sorry. One day I will stop panicking.”

“You will.” Flynn hung an arm around Dale’s shoulders, tugging him closer. “It’ll happen, kid. All of this will get easier with time and experience.”

He felt the give in Dale’s body against his; the acceptance of the truth in that. Then Dale turned his head to find Flynn’s mouth and kissed him, a brief and gentle kiss that said thank you. Flynn closed the journal and handed it to him.

“Put this away and come get a shower with me.”

The End

Copyright Rolf & Ranger 2021 

Naughty but Nice

23^rd December 2010

 

You could see it if you knew him well.

Riley leaned on the doorframe of the kitchen, looking through a large crowd of people surrounding the table and helping themselves to brunch. The day before Christmas Eve there were a few more due to arrive today, the ones squeaking in on the last flights, but the majority of the family were now occupying the house and thoroughly enjoying Christmas the way they always did. It was happy noise and busyness, Paul was turning out potato cakes from the stove with Luath and Darcy helping out with washing up and talking with Lito who was sitting on the counter to be out from under their feet. And Dale was looking remarkably hot in a pine green shirt that set off the darkness of his hair and the line of his shoulders in a way Riley was privately enjoying quite a lot, and he was discreetly, efficiently doing everything.

He was listening to and handling conversations while he did it, and he was doing it discreetly enough that probably no one else around the table knew. But used glasses and cutlery were vanishing off the table like snow slipping off a hot roof, dishes were being moved around the table to within reach of the older members of the family who found it harder to fight through a crowd to get around the table, chairs were being placed by the people who hadn’t yet realised they wanted to sit down but would in a moment, cup mats were within reach of more or less everyone – if you really wanted to see Dale’s eyebrows move to stun, put a wet glass or hot mug down on a wooden surface, he was worse than Paul over that – and crumbs were vanishing almost before they touched the floor. Like a master illusionist with a tidying up fetish, and no idea whatsoever of how to chill.

He, Paul, Flynn, Niall and James had arrived back from London with vast amounts of stuff, some of which was really excellent stuff, the chocolate and cheese in particular. Luath, Wade and the others had arrived about twelve hours later, and most of them were still dealing with the jetlag. Flynn in particular was tired and grumpy this morning and had gone out to deal with the corral horses. His answer to Riley asking if he wanted help had been a short no, he wanted hard work and leaving alone, punctuated by a kiss that was both his apology and appreciation for the offer. Paul was sublimating it in potato cakes. And Dale………

Paul caught his eye across the kitchen, nodded very slightly at Dale, and Riley saw the swift message flashed to him. Help? Without embarrassing him if you can, love.

Yes.

Jasper’s hands rested on his hips from behind, Riley didn’t need to look round to know it was him. He felt Jasper’s chin rest on his shoulders for a moment, the warmth of Jasper’s breath on his face and the faint spicy scent of his aftershave as Jasper looked where he was looking.

“I’ve got it.” Riley muttered to him. “I’ll drag him out riding-”

“Go put outdoor clothes on.” Jasper said in his ear. “Layers.”

Well that sounded promising. The family room wasn’t much quieter than the kitchen. Riley jogged upstairs and shouldered into the fleece and sweater and lined pants they were all wearing at the moment to work outside. He heard Jasper bring Dale upstairs and give him similar instructions, and they met on the porch a few minutes later in the few more inches of snow that had fallen since they scraped it this morning, pulling boots and jackets and hats on. Everyone in the kitchen save for Paul was being too noisy to notice them go.  

“What is it you need doing?” Dale asked Jasper, leaning on the porch rail and jumping down into the deep snow in the yard. Riley followed him, not unappreciative of the effect of landing shin deep in snow, or that Dale was wholly unaware that he was playing. In the snow. By automatic habit, because around here he did that. The sheer cluelessness could be extremely sweet.

“Job up by the bunkhouse.” Jasper said, heading across the yard which was easier for him since his legs were longer. “We’ll take a look at the shires on the way.”

Riley followed them, picking up a handful of snow off the fence rail as he walked. It was white and shining, undisturbed since the heavy fall overnight, and it was perfect this morning. It crunched in his hand when he squeezed it. The snow was deeper as they got further away from the house, and it had drifted several feet high against the fence posts. The shires were playing in it. Riley loved to watch them gallop, Boris and Petra were dodging each other in a slow, heavy game of chase that sent the snow showering from their great hooves. They were thickly blanketed, a new bale of hay was out in the middle of their pasture, and while the door to their shelter was open, they were ignoring it and would until it started to get really cold this afternoon.  

The bunkhouse looked like a swiss chalet up by the tree line. Heavy snow covered the roof and the porch, the rails and the window frames. Jasper stamped on the porch to shake snow off his boots and pulled the key from his pocket.

“Get some of the snow off the porch? I’m going to check the pipes.”

The small stable at the bunkhouse held some shovels. Dale collected a couple and the two of them cleared the steps and the front porch. It didn’t take long; they got in enough practice at shovelling snow at this time of year that it was something they could do on automatic pilot. Dale was carefully knocking some of the heavier snow off the windows to lighten the load on the frame when Riley leaned the shovel against the porch rail, formed a large snowball and scored a direct hit on the middle of his back. Dale didn’t react in the least, just continued to knock off snow. Riley waited, knowing him, and ducked the swift snowball Dale launched straight back at him as he turned.

“Is that a snowball I saw whizz past the window?” Jasper inquired from the door.   

“Might have been?” Riley said innocently. Jasper nodded, closing the door.

“Good snow for it?” He reached down to feel – and straightened, shying a snowball straight at Riley as both his brats fled. Dale dodged around the back of the house and Riley ran after him, which was not easy in deep snow. There was no sign of Dale behind the house. Jasper caught him up, glanced at where the footprints stopped and glanced upwards, signalling to Riley to be quiet. Riley smothered a laugh and backed away, casually rolling another snowball in his hands.

“Dale?”

The snowball flung from the roof hit him straight in the chest, several more showered down and Riley heard the thud of Jasper catching several as he climbed up the porch roof and onto the bunkhouse roof. Riley walked further back as the snowball shower stopped, far enough to see Jasper capture Dale and roll him over in the snow to stuff snow down his neck. He could hear Dale laughing and there was nothing responsible or subdued about it. Jasper slid off the roof a moment later and reached back to catch and steady Dale as Dale dropped down after him. Both were plastered in snow, and both looked cheerful. Jasper shook his hair to get the worst off.

“Come on inside. And strip, don’t walk snow in here, the house is dry.”

“It’ll be freezing.” Riley complained.

“It won’t.”

They stripped and left snowy clothes in the alcove inside the door, which meant they were down to sweaters, shorts and socks by the time Riley and Dale followed Jasper into the small sitting room at the back of the house. It was one of the most protected rooms in the little house, the windows were thickly curtained and small in the stone walls, and Jasper had lit a fire in the grate. He must have lit it before the snowball fight; it was roaring now and the warmth was blasting out into the room. Dale knelt in front of it, holding his hands out to get warm. Jasper took a seat on the hearthrug beside him. “Ri, there’s a box over on the table? Bring it here.”

Riley picked it up. About two foot long, three inches deep, wrapped in gold paper and the kind of delicate ribbons that Jasper excelled at knotting. He could add art to parcels.

“It’s early for gifts?” Riley pointed out with interest, handing it to him. “Something for Paul? Is there a card you want us to write?”

Jasper took the box and then his hand, drawing Riley down on the rug with him and Dale.

“No. Go ahead and open it.”

Riley gave him a curious look, settled cross legged and unwound the ribbons. The paper parted. An ornate lid lay underneath, and Riley lifted it with delicate fingers. Then he and Dale together burst out laughing. “Chocolate?” Riley demanded. “You want to hole up in here and eat chocolate? Where did you find this much in one box anyway?”

“That has to be about four pounds of the stuff,” Dale pointed out. There was craftsmanship in the row upon row of individual chocolates inside the box. Swirls and coloured candy toppings, different shapes, different colours….

“It’s Christmas.” Jasper stretched out on one elbow on the rug, selecting one at random. “It seemed like a good idea.”

“It’s the best idea ever!” Riley chose one, still laughing.

Dale shook his head. “At eleven o clock in the morning, still full of breakfast?”

“That’s right.” Jasper put a hand on his shoulder, gently but firmly pulling until Dale lay down beside him. He selected another from the box, bit it in half and put the other half in Dale’s mouth. “What do you think?”

Well with Jasper leaning on one elbow over him, he didn’t have much choice other than to try it, although Riley couldn’t help grinning. “Stop looking like he just fed you a live rat, it’s chocolate. You’ve got nothing to feel guilty about, hedonism isn’t illegal in this state.”

“I think it was probably caramel,” Dale said somewhat indistinctly, although it was his you’re all slightly mad voice. 

“Good.” Jasper selected another, bit that in half too and put the other half in Dale’s mouth. “How about that one?”

“Probably mint of some kind.”

“Mmn.” Jasper relaxed beside him, running a hand slowly up and down his chest.

“Oh wow, I just found a hazelnut thing.” Riley stretched out in bliss, sucking slowly and watching the fire crackle and jump. “Oh this is good. It’s the first time I’ve been anywhere there aren’t ninety seven people talking at me in two days.”

“Paul’s currently trying to cater for those ninety seven and he could probably use a hand?” Dale said rather dryly. Riley snorted.

“Come on, you do know how this works. He’ll tell the nearest person what he wants done the minute he wants help, and there’s a house full of them. They’re family, not guests. You don’t have to wait on them, you get to just enjoy being there with them.”

“Some of them are quite elderly.”

“You do realise they will kick your butt if they hear you saying that?” Riley helped himself to another chocolate.

Jasper selected two from the box and with care bit both in half. “Close your eyes.”

It was mildly said but it wasn’t a suggestion. Dale rather slowly did as he was told. It was something Riley knew hit his buttons. It wasn’t the first time he’d watched Paul or Flynn or Jas quite intentionally do this with him. There was a lot of trust involved in letting someone feed you, and there was even more with his eyes closed. Jasper parted his lips with one finger and ran one of the opened chocolates across his tongue, taking his time about it. “That’s one. No, I don’t want to hear what it was. This is the other one. Which do you like better?”

“If you say ‘better in what sense’ or mention molecular structures I’m telling Flynn.” Riley said indistinctly. That broke him; Dale laughed, fending off Jasper.

“Ok, ok the second one. I have no idea what either were, but the first one was….reminiscent of soap.”

“Seriously?”

“It was offensively lemony.”

“When does a lemon become offensive?”

“Well I largely assume that depends on what you do with it.”

“Give me the soap one?” Riley asked Jasper, who put the remaining half in Riley’s mouth and the other half of the preferred one to Dale. Riley lay back, considering.

“It’s not that overly lemoned. You got made to eat peas in strawberry airs and marmite before we got hold of you for pete’s sake, lemon fluff can’t be that bad by comparison?”

“Right.” Dale leaned over to search the box, located what he wanted and pushed it firmly into Riley’s mouth. “If you want ‘it can’t be that bad’-”

“What the heck is this?” Riley demanded, wincing as he chewed. Dale lay back against Jasper.

“A Parma Violet. You’re welcome.”

“Good grief, it’s like eating air freshener.”

“Told you.”

“Is there anything with chilli?” Riley rolled over to explore, took one out, licked the base of it and stuck it to Dale’s nose. “There ya go. Chilli served en cowboy, no soap in sight.”

Jasper leaned down before Dale could do anything, nipping it delicately off Dale’s nose with his teeth. “Perfect, thank you.”

Dale burst out laughing. Jasper smiled down at him, his dark eyes twinkling. The front door opened in the distance and Flynn’s voice called down the hallway. “What’s going on in there?”

“Absolute obscenity,” Dale shouted back. “It’s appalling.”

“Get your kit off and come and help.” Riley called after him. Flynn looked through the doorway. He’d left his boots and coat at the door and his face was reddened with cold. He took in the three of them sprawled in front of the fire and the box of chocolates and his jaw shifted in the downward tug of one of his real grins. Riley lay back on the rug, holding out one of the chocolates to him. Flynn unbuttoned and slipped off still slightly snowy pants, and came to join them. Behind him, Paul shook snow off his hair. Riley saw him glance past Jasper to Dale, his eyes warmed and he caught Riley’s eye and smiled.

Thank you.

“Trust you two to hole up with sugar and drag Dale with you,” he said, taking his own pants off and following Flynn.

“Dale was not unwilling.” Dale pointed out. Jasper smiled, hand still stroking up and down Dale’s chest.

“There wasn’t much resistance. Not really. We’re getting him better trained.”

Flynn took a seat on Dale’s other side, stretching out close beside him. Paul settled next to Riley, leaning around him to take the chocolate Riley put in his mouth. Riley shifted over to get his head in Paul’s lap, watching the fire dance.

“So,” he said casually. “Are we really going to lie here, in total peace and quiet and no one else around, and just eat chocolate?”

23^rd December 2002

 

“Darling,” I said firmly, and I may or may not have been holding a kitchen implement at the time – I think it was a spatula. He later said it was a carving knife but I’m positive he’s fibbing. “You can stop, right now, or this morning is going to involve a shallow grave in the woods.”

There are moments when Philip used to look thoughtfully at me, disappear for a moment and then return armed with my jacket and a handful of cash which he’d hold out not quite at arms’ length. These he would hand over along with the keys to one of the jeeps and a suggestion that I went into town and watched a film or had a meal I hadn’t cooked and had an evening away from it all. It was extremely tactful and very kind, but it may also have been to do with wanting to protect his brats from my head exploding messily all over the kitchen. I was younger then, I exploded more easily.

I do love the house full to the brim and the busyness of it all at Christmas, and I love every person that comes into the house so it’s fun from start to finish. But.

I had, that morning, gone into the family room and firmly extracted Bear and Gerry who had tracked muddy snow across the (mopped half an hour ago) kitchen floor on their way into the bathroom, and put them to work with a mop and cleaning cloths to return the bathroom to the state I expected, with a flea in their ears. I had also retrieved Miguel, who somehow, apparently, runs his own home, and explained about soaking wet jackets hung up in a pile which would never dry, and sorted the pile of equally soaking and snow covered jeans waiting by the washing machine which was working on the load of jeans soaked this morning, since it was knee deep out there and still coming down. Riley, who went through more clothes than anyone else because the novelty of serious snow had still not yet worn off for him and frankly I wasn’t sure it ever would, was responsible for about a quarter of them. The dryer was running on high since trying to keep people clothed to go out and do yet more work out there in a couple of hours’ time was becoming a challenge when there were this many of them getting plastered in snow at frequent intervals. I had presented Luath with the stain remover and the cloths and left him to supervise the sorting out of the wine stain on the rug and referee as to exactly whose fault it was, as Wade and ‘Lito were hotly debating the matter.

And when I took the car keys and a heavy jacket to nip over to Jackson and get the last few odds and ends essential to getting through the next few days, Mr O’Sullivan took them out of my hand and said if I really had to risk breaking my neck on the roads in this weather then he was driving me.

It was then that I held up the very definitely a spatula, and made the comment about the shallow grave. And a reminder that I was driving the roads to Jackson when he was laying in fields in New Zealand doing his homework.

Flynn merely snorted at me, ducked straight past my defence to snatch a kiss I didn’t succeed in dodging, and went to start the jeep.

Men.

The high school band were banging out Jingle Bells vigorously in the town square when we arrived. A couple of the trumpet players were right-note optional, and they triumphantly hit a high note and slid off it again, making me wince. Flynn locked the car in the spot he’d insisted we parked in, and glanced at his watch. “Quick, we’ve got an hour’s parking.”

There is a car park two streets away where we can leave the car all day if we want to. He knows it. I know it. I didn’t waste time arguing with him; in Flynn’s opinion there is no shopping anyone can justifiably do that requires more than forty minutes, and he regards that as him being extremely generous. I pulled out my list and surveyed it, since I’d spent a fair amount of time last night in planning. He was not going to hurry me; he could just forget that idea.

“Whatever you’re going to do, go do it. I have to grocery shop.”

“I have nothing to do,” he said infuriatingly. “I came to help you.”

“No,” I informed him, heading across the icy street and ignoring that he was gripping my arm as if I was going to slide over if he stopped playing the Neanderthal for two minutes. “You hate grocery shopping.”

“I’m perfectly capable of following you around and carrying bags.”

“Go to the library. Look at saddles.”

He held open the door into the butchers.

“We don’t need a ham that size,” was the first helpful comment he made. “No one needs a ham that size, you could feed Michigan with that.”

The butcher looked at me in consternation since I’d ordered the ham two months ago.

“That is exactly the size I need,” I said very firmly to the butcher. “It’s perfect in fact, since I know exactly how many meals I need it for and exactly what the stock I will be making from the ham bone is for, because I think about these things. A lot. I don’t actually pull meals out of a hat, they require planning for. I also need all twenty pounds of the turkey.”

“I could take out a mortgage with what that costs.” Flynn commented as I handed cash to the poor butcher.

“It’s worth every cent,” I said even more loudly and firmly. “Thank you. That’s lovely. Have a wonderful Christmas.”

Flynn wrestled me for the two bags and held the door for me out onto the street. “Stand here, I’ll put this in the car. Stay off that ice.”

“I am not going to fall if I take two steps without you.”

“These pavements are bloody lethal, stay put.”

Apparently magically immune from falls himself he headed rapidly back towards the square. The high school band was still going strong. A group was walking down the street, mostly consisting of truly embarrassed local high school seniors dressed as elves in stripy leggings and tunics, waving to the crowd and trying desperately to avoid the eye of their parents, siblings and school friends. I stood with the crowd and watched for a moment. In the middle of it a man was dressed in a Santa outfit and was vigorously ringing a bell. Which was more tuneful than the band. He was followed by a seven foot tall, two legged reindeer with an enormous mask head.

“Oh my God.” Flynn said in my ear, reappearing behind me. “Well that should successfully traumatise every small child in the town.”

“Behave.”

“You did see the shed they had in the children’s play area over by the square? The one they had marked at Halloween with the sign saying ‘abandon hope all ye who enter here?’ and told all the kids it was a haunted house? I just passed it. They’ve cleaned off the cobwebs and written ‘Santa’s Grotto’ on it now as though children lack any form of memory. Come on in little kiddies. We’ve got forty five minutes left on the parking.”

If I tried throttling him, he’d probably laugh.

“Fruit.” I said, determinedly ignoring him.

The Christmas lights were flashing over the main street, all the way down to the ski lift. At this time of year with this much snow, the resorts were full, the town was hopping with tourists and the pavement was crowded. I kept a strong supply of apples, oranges and lemons in supply in the cold of the garage through the winter, and I’d stocked up prepared for Christmas a good month back. Fresh soft fruit however, as opposed to what I bottle in the fall, has to be bought fresh. I wanted grapes to frost for the top of desserts, I had a pavlova in mind for tomorrow evening’s buffet which is always a bit of a special one in our house and I like to make it as varied as possible. Limes are useful for dressings, and for putting in ice cream bombes which I was fairly sure some of our finickier cowboys would say were beneath them as insufficiently manly but Gerry and Jasper wouldn’t care, and we have more than a few people in the family addicted to bananas and berries for their breakfast pancakes.  

Flynn kept his mouth shut and just took packs of fruit from me to hold, pointedly moving out of the way of two little boys, aged about three and five, who were battling it out on the floor beneath the melons while their harassed looking father was debating his shopping list by cell phone with whoever had sent him out. They were rolling on the floor and it had reached the point of grabbing hair and squealing when we went to the checkout.

“If people can’t control their offspring,” Flynn muttered, stuffing fruit into a paper bag as the cashier rang up, “I want the right to come shopping with a rope.”

“Go and look at saddles.” I ordered under my breath, preventing him squashing raspberries.

“You need help.”

“Right now I really, passionately, want you to go and look at saddles.”

The melons finally tipped over. The father yanked the boys to their feet, still wrestling with the phone.

Everybody knows a turkey and some mistletoe help to make the season bright, the store music was playing. Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow…

“Screaming and hitting each other with melons…” Flynn added.

“Flynn O’Sullivan!” we were stepping out of the shop door at the time and I don’t thunder as well as he does but about half the people on the pavement turned around. I dropped my voice as much as I could, grabbing the bag of fruit off him. “Get your behind as far away from me as you can manage before I do something I’m going to get arrested for!” I saw the glint in his eye, and swatted him, which never makes a whole lot of difference. “And I don’t mean like that! Give me the car keys and go away.”

“I’ll put that in the car,” he said, trying to take the fruit. “We’re down to thirty minutes parking-”

I let him have the fruit, turned on my heel and stalked away.  

I needed a coffee. Preferably a lot of coffee. And to be somewhere not knee deep in cowboys. It was on days like this I really missed Philip who used to be very good at offering a well-timed hug and a sympathetic ear, having spent much of his life living with a particularly difficult cowboy himself.

It was then I heard the screech of brakes in the street. There was, thank goodness, no bang. I whirled around. The man with the two little boys must have followed us out of the shop. He was face down on the road, the cell phone he’d been knocked out of his hand and he wasn’t moving. The driver of the car was running around the hood looking distraught. I jogged as best I could across the road as most people in the street were standing in shock and doing nothing useful. There was the man; I couldn’t see the kids and that was terrifying. A second later someone sprinted past me regardless of the ice and snatched up the smaller of the two boys who had wandered on past the car towards the other lane of still moving traffic, scooping him out of danger. It was Flynn. As I knelt beside their father, Flynn swung the smallest boy to sit on his hip and grabbed the hand of the other child, leading them back towards the sidewalk. “This way. This way honey, stand with me.” 

That tone worked on every panicking horse and brat I knew. With the kids safe, I knelt beside their father on the ice. I couldn’t see any blood, he was sprawled but there were no angles suggesting anything broken.

“I didn’t hit him!” the driver of the car sobbed to me, wringing her hands, “I stopped as soon as I saw-”

“He slipped, I saw it.” someone else said behind me. “He slipped on the ice in front of you, you never touched him.”

The locals around here are good and mostly chilled out people; I saw whoever it was had an arm around her shoulders and someone else was checking the front of her car.

“He’s only knocked his head, he’s coming round.” I rubbed the man’s shoulder as he lifted his head, groaning. “Hey. Are you ok? Anything hurt?”

“Ow.” the man said from the heart. “Ow. Oh God, the boys-”

“They’re here, I’ve got them.” Flynn was crouching on the pavement with an arm around the youngest child and the other one beside him, and from what I could see he’d pulled lifesavers from his pocket where they always resided for the horses, had broken several into fragments and was in the process of feeding the bits to the kids to keep them busy, in about the same way he does with foals. There’s no one small or vulnerable he can’t calm, and it was working. With their father sitting up and looking more normal, the kids were willingly splitting their attention between him and the candy.

“Arms and legs ok?” I said mildly to the guy, helping him get upright. “Take a minute and check it all works.”

“I’m good. Just sore.” The man put his hand up to rub the rising egg on his head. I picked his phone up and gave him my arm for support as he got to his feet.

“Is there someone we can call for you? You should probably get yourself checked over, you were knocked out.”

“My wife’s up the street, we were…” he rubbed his head again.

“Getting the last bits of shopping?” I suggested. He grimaced at me.

“Yeah. Fun isn’t it?”

“I think your phone’s ok,” I began and stopped as I saw a woman in jeans, boots and a thick parka making her way down the icy street as fast as she was able, and she looked terrified. “Ah. Is this her?”

If the guy had looked sheepish before he looked way more sheepish now. The woman took in the kids eating peppermint with Flynn and came straight to her husband, gently touching the lump on his head.

“I saw the traffic stop – tell me that wasn’t you?”

“I slipped, that was all.”

“He was knocked out for a few seconds,” I told her, “Only a few, he seems pretty oriented,”

“I’ll make sure he’s ok, thank you.” The woman put her arm around her husband’s waist. Flynn brought the boys across to them. The crowd on the pavement began to disperse. Flynn’s arm came around my waist and squeezed. “Coffee?”

The street was freezing cold, I was even colder now from kneeling on the ice, and it came out before I’d had time to consciously think about it. “Oh yes please.”

I waited outside one of the many shop fronts dispersing hot drinks while he bought them, thinking that there he was, doing the exact same thing he’d been doing to me since the day I met him. Being ruggedly gorgeous, absolutely infuriating and the kind of man who turned shopping into a hell. While also snatching small children out of traffic, being there the second I needed him, and comforting a bewildered toddler with a gentleness that turned my heart over watching him do it. There is nothing about that man that is straight forward.

He brought me a cup with a lid and I leaned with him against the wall, taking a sip. My eyebrows shot up at the taste of it.

“Schnapps?”

“And cream. And a peppermint stick, obviously because what else would you throw in what’s supposed to be coffee?”

I grabbed his drink out of his hand and sipped it. Of course he had plain Americano. Since he wouldn’t drink something with a peppermint stick in it if you paid him. His dark green eyes laughed at me. On the other hand, alcohol and sugar were exactly what I wanted right now, and of course he knew it. He always knows it. I went back to drinking the schnapps. It did help. Flynn’s hand found my spare one and held it, his thumb tracing over my knuckles.

“There’s twenty minutes left on the car.”

Argh. I was going to kill him. I grabbed him by the collar and snatched a quick kiss instead. They can be infuriating, cowboys, and as someone very wise said once, there’s no re sale value. But I wouldn’t ever be without them.

 

The spinning seemed to go on forever. Riley, clutching the dash and the door, was aware of Dale turning the steering wheel beside him with a look of cool concentration as the jeep slid, then the front right wheel buried itself in a snow drift, they were both flung hard against their seatbelts, and the car was still. Dale turned off the engine. The silence was shocking. Riley, rigid with shock from the smash of a moment ago, struggled to catch his breath. He felt Dale’s hand on his knee, a calm grasp, then Dale was out of the car and jogging towards the truck behind them.

It was on its roof. The truck was on its roof.

With shaking hands, Riley popped his seat belt, looked blankly at the snowbank blocking his door from opening, and climbed out over the driver’s seat. Dale was wrenching at the truck’s driver door. Riley went to help him. The man was upside down inside, hanging from his seat belt, and the engine was still running. It took both of them to prise the bent door open, however long hours of hauling cattle, sheep and horses together made this easy. They didn’t need to exchange a word to get hold of the guy, shift his weight enough for the seatbelt to release, and then manhandle him out between them as gently as was possible.

Sitting on the icy road, he proved to be fairly elderly. Silver haired, thin, starting to shiver in the ridiculously below temperature of a sunny Wyoming winter morning on the white glare of snow, but his eyes were alert and clear, and while he was shaking, he gave them a rueful nod.

“Thanks. I’m sorry, the truck went out of control on the ice and I went into the back of you. I was watching the road, watching the distance, I don’t know what happened-”

“It’s like a freaking ice rink out here today.” Riley reassured him, “Are you hurt?”

“No, just shaken about.”

“Got a jacket in the car?”

“In the back.”

Dale was leaning through the driver’s cockpit, and Riley heard the engine cut out and the sound of the keys being pulled out of the ignition. The clutter of belongings dropped to the roof of the truck held a coat, old but thick, and the guy accepted his help to pull himself to his feet and get the coat on. It was a battered truck, and had been before it was flipped. Many ranchers’ vehicles had seen service longer than city ones did; make do and mend was a way of life out here. Riley stood back to survey it, seeing Dale doing much the same.

“We’re not going to be able to roll that back up, are we?”

“The floor pan’s buckled,” Dale leaned over the upturned truck bottom to examine it, placing his hands carefully on the smoking and oily metal. Steam was rising strongly in the freezing air, a white mist lifting from both their cars, and the smell of engine oil was strong.  “And the exhaust’s fractured, it’s not drivable. Where were you headed, sir?”

“John Dolan.” the man offered his hand to Riley since Dale had gone to look at the jeep. “I … had a meeting, but they didn’t show. I was heading back to Pinedale.”

“Riley Hamilton and Dale Aden, we’re from the Falls Chance ranch about five miles over that way,” Riley nodded in the general direction. “I’m afraid there’s no cell phone signal around here, we can’t call a garage-”

“The jeep’s drivable.” Dale interrupted. Despite the fact he had no coat on and it was perishing out here, he was laying on his stomach on the ice examining the undercarriage and he pushed briskly to his feet. “We can take you-”

Well to the ranch. Obviously. A warm kitchen and plenty of tea while the guy waited what would probably be hours for a garage to get a truck out here. But Dale paused, looking sharply at something beyond the jeep. Riley knew the look. Dale looked quizzical for a second or two, and then faintly impatient at something Riley couldn’t see, but then he went on in the exact same tone,

“- to the garage up the road. There’s a phone there and they may have a recovery vehicle.”

The garage was some miles further than the ranch. Starting to shiver in earnest, Riley shook his head and opened the passenger door.

“Come get in the warm, John. Dale, want to slide that truck off the road?”

The road was icy enough that between them they slid it on its roof without too much difficulty to where it was less likely to cause more accidents.

“What?” Riley muttered to Dale while they were out of John Dolan’s earshot.

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“David.”

“Why the garage?”

“I have no idea.” To Riley’s ears Dale sounded more than slightly ticked about it. There wasn’t time to ask more. They got back into the warmth of the jeep, and Dale reversed with care back onto the road. He was – Paul would add that this was contingent on him having at least one of them in the car with him – an exceptionally good driver in this weather. It was why Riley had gladly handed him the keys to let him drive when they left the ranch. And it was typical; in this weather, this close to Christmas, this road might see a vehicle an hour. And they’d still managed a collision.

Flynn is going to go mad.

“Where were you headed?” John asked them. Riley glanced back to him from the passenger seat.

“Home. We were helping out over at a neighbour’s ranch, it’s a lot of snow shovelling for one person alone. Are you local?”

“No. Lived over at Pinedale for most of my life.” The guy’s shivering was stopping in the warmth of the car. “I was supposed to meet with my son. Up at that garage, actually. That was where we were supposed to meet.”

“He didn’t show?”

“No.” the man sounded tired. “I waited an hour. We hadn’t talked in a while – a few years. Swapped a few letters, he agreed to come meet me and talk… I guess he thought better of it.”

“I’m sorry.” Riley said quietly. The man gave him a resigned shrug.

“It’s my fault, not his. Christmas always seems like a good time to try and fix things. Sometimes I wonder if that’s a good thing or not.”

They passed Clara’s place, where the newly ploughed and shovelled driveway bore testament to their handiwork this afternoon. Some minutes further on, the garage came into sight. Riley was watching the snowdrifts at the side of the road and only noticed as Dale failed to turn in at the garage. John Dolan also glanced over in surprise.

“Hey, that was the garage there.”

“Where are you going?” Riley demanded. Dale winced.

“Sorry. Day dreaming. I’ll find somewhere to turn around.”

What? Riley gave him an ironic look. No, he didn’t daydream when he was driving. The man moved around the county like he had inbuilt satellite navigation; he went exactly where he planned to go with the same mathematical precision with which he handled the wheel in the middle of a collision spin. And ‘find somewhere to turn around?’ There was no traffic for miles, he could have done a fifty-two-point turn right here in the middle of the road without bothering anyone.

“You sure you didn’t get a knock when I ran into you?” Dolan asked him. “You’re looking a little spacy?”

That’s just his thinking about a What look; you get used to it. Riley was looking for something helpful to say to stall for time, when Dale abruptly slowed the jeep and drew it to the side of the road.

“Here.”

“What’s here?” Riley demanded. “Now what are you doing?”

“Tracks. Look.” Dale turned off the engine and got out.

“Take a coat.” Riley reminded him, grabbing theirs from the back seat. “Not Freezing Is Fun. Where are you going?”

“Is your friend ok?” Dolan demanded, following them. Dale walked briskly, some feet forward to where – Riley saw them, the marks in the ice of a swerving vehicle, and began to jog after him, zipping his jacket.

“Oh hell. In the ditch? They’d have landed in the ditch.”

Please don’t let this be Clara or Emmett. Please.

Dale was already climbing down the deep snow of the ditch. Riley saw the truck on its side and swore. “That’s Mac – is he in there?”

Dale climbed out over the hood, swiping snow off the window. “Yes.”

Riley felt for handholds, pulling himself up onto the side of the truck. Through the back window he caught sight of Mac through the snowy glass, his face alight with relief, waving to them from where he was sprawled.

“The door’s buckled.” Dale said shortly, “We won’t get that open without power tools.”

“Put your coat on. We’ll smash the window, I’ll get a tire iron.” Riley jumped down to jog back to the jeep. By the time he got back, Dale had managed to communicate through the window to Mac, who had pulled his sweater and coat over his face as far as he could. Riley dug the tire iron into the windscreen with all his strength, hacking until it shattered. With Dale’s assistance they managed to batter and kick out the screen until they cleared the glass and Dale pulled his knife from his pocket, leaning inside to cut Mac free of the seatbelt. Mac gripped his hand, Riley grabbed a handful of Mac’s sweater and jeans, and together they hauled him out. He was white and shivering with cold and probably with shock too, but he clambered down off the truck by himself and shook his head as Riley followed him.

“How the hell did you know I was there? I really thought I’d had it, I’d be lucky if anyone ever found me, there’s no one on the road today and I was right out of sight of the-”

He paused, staring at the grey haired man standing on the road. The man nodded to him.

“Mac.”

“Dad.” Mac looked to Riley. “Did he tell you to come looking for me?”

“I waited at the garage an hour.” Dolan told him. “I’d given up, I was heading home when I rear ended these two. My truck’s written off – same as yours by the look of it. They were taking me back to the garage when they missed the turning, and they saw the tracks.”

Well actually someone had sent them on if Riley had to guess. Coincidences tended to stack up like this when Dale’s Whats got involved. Dolan took Mac’s hand to pull him up the bank.

“Are you ok?”

“Bruised.” Mac turned his head gingerly this way and that, trying it out. “Nothing worse. I hit a patch of ice and the truck just slid sideways, I couldn’t do a thing.”

“We’ll take you home.” Riley told him.

Dolan cleared his throat, looking at Mac. “I’m … probably not going to get a tow truck out here today. If I come with you I’m probably stuck with you overnight.”

“You’re welcome to come with us if that works better for the two of you.” Riley said, picking up on the man’s unease, but Mac shook his head.

“S’ok Riley. That’s no problem.”

They dropped Mac and his father at the Yellowback ranch. Mac nodded his thanks as he got out of the jeep, the quiet and sincere nod of one neighbour to another in this place where people weren’t effusive but where they’d help without question or hesitation.

“I appreciate it guys. I’ll call Falls Chance and let them know what's happened and you're on your way.”

Yeah that really wasn’t helpful of him, not that it would have been polite to say.

 

The End

 

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