This Cowboy's Son

Matt avoided his parents’ room, couldn’t possibly go in there, so headed back out to the kitchen.

He touched the stove and left his fingerprints in a layer of dust. When had it last been cleaned? More than fifteen years ago. Just before she died, Mom had been consumed by her anger and depression. The house had become more and more dirty, until Matt couldn’t stand to eat there.

He opened a cupboard door and spotted a tin of beans and a loaf of bread, now green and dried out. He opened another cupboard door and froze. There on the second shelf, beside the salt and pepper and a bag of pasta, was a small, framed photo of his mother and him.

He looked younger than Jesse was—maybe four, maybe only three. Why was it in the cupboard? Did she want to look at it every time she reached for the saltshaker? Or had she put it here without realizing? Like when he used to find the milk, warm and sour, in a cupboard, and unopened tins of beans in the fridge?

His mother was holding him in her arms and smiling. She’d been so pretty when she was young.

Flashes of memory filled his head, glimpses of this and that, with no rhyme or reason, before finally settling on this one. He thought that maybe he remembered when this photo had been taken.

He remembered his shock later, after his mother had changed.

“MATTHEW, WHAT IS THIS?” Mama held up a pair of pants with holes in the knees. He’d put them in the laundry basket on the floor of his closet, with all his other dirty clothes, just the way he was supposed to.

“Well, what do you have to say for yourself?” Her voice sounded funny, like one of the bad ladies in the Cinderella movie. She sounded mean.

“Those are my jeans.”

“I know that, you little moron.”

His mouth dropped open. Mama called him a name. She never did that before.

“I mean, why do they have holes in the knees?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I must have falled down.”

She hit him across the face. He fell on the floor and cried. Where was the mama he liked? Where was the mama who loved him?

MATT CAME OUT of his memory with the question he’d asked himself so many times as a child. Where was the mama who loved him?

It had started the day she’d slapped him and had gone downhill from there, with Mama becoming more and more demanding, her demands more and more unreasonable.

Then Pop started to stay out later and later, coming home only long enough to make sure his kid idolized him and then running off to another rodeo or another ranch or another bar.

To another woman, Missy Donovan from Ordinary.

When Pop did come home, he was angry and drunk and ready to leave again, but not before he and Mama tore each other apart in the bedroom. They went at it like animals.

When Matt was old enough, he got out of the house before they started, and stayed out until long after they finished.

Matt’s shell threatened to crumble now, to let the emotions free to kill him with their poison.

He set the old photo on the scarred countertop, facedown because he couldn’t stand to look at him and his mother happy. What kind of weird compulsion had driven a warm, loving woman mad?

Was it inside him, too? Was there some sort of double curse in his life? He’d learned too much of the wrong things from his father. Love ’em and leave ’em. Don’t let a woman get her hooks into you. When things get too tough, run scared.

Was he also eventually going to lose his mind the way his mother had?

And now he had a child to worry about.

What on earth had he ever learned here that would help him to be a parent?

JENNY HAD BEEN POSITIVE Matt would run, had known it in her marrow. Then why did she feel so disappointed that he had? It was nuts. She didn’t want Matt sticking around or deciding that he should have a hand in raising her son.

She and Angus would do just fine raising Jesse. Angus knew how to be a good father.

She sat down on the top step beside her son and took the small spoonful of custard he offered her.

“Do you want to play in the backyard when you’re finished?” she asked, smoothing his bangs away from his face.

“Yeah.” He lapped up more of his custard.

Angus drove into the yard in his big silver Cadillac. When he got out, he looked tired. Frustrated.

As she’d done so many times lately, Jenny wondered what was going on with him. What was distracting him? He approached the veranda with heavy steps.

His face lit up for Jesse, though.

“Hey, little buddy,” he said and tickled the boy.

Jesse giggled then offered him custard.

“No, thanks. You finish it.” Angus turned his attention to Jenny. “How did it go?”

“About as well as I expected. He lit out of here twenty minutes ago. Barely hung around long enough to find out his name.” She tipped her head toward her son.

Jesse finished his custard.

“Take the container to Angela in the kitchen and head out back,” Jenny told him. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

The screen door slammed shut behind him. Jenny smiled. Kids made so much noise.

Angus put one foot on the bottom step. On his face, Jenny read a disappointment in Matt that ran much, much deeper than her own.

Angus had always wanted to think the best of Matt, and he hadn’t had Jenny’s firsthand experience with Matt’s leaving.

“Angus, I hate to say ‘I told you so,’ but this is exactly what I expected.”

“Where did he go?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

Angus glanced around the grounds. “I guess he’ll come back for his stuff later.”

Jenny smiled grimly. “Oh, yeah, he’ll be back for Master.”

He didn’t think twice about leaving me behind, but he would never forget his horse.