Saddle Up by CJ Bishop

CHAPTER 6

“The Broken Anchor”

Heff was halfway down the stairs when he heard the first dish break. He didn’t think anything of it—accidents happen—until a second crash followed. And a third.

“Goddammit!” Garland bellowed—and another dish bit the dust. “Fuck!” Fury infused his voice. The next roar formed no words—just an explosive cry of… anguish.

Heff faltered in the hall outside the kitchen, a bit uneasy about walking into the warzone.

“Goddamn motherfucker!” Garland wailed and—kicked?—something? Heff heard wood splinter and what sounded like a cupboard door break off its hinges. The man’s shouts grew thicker, bogged down by emotion. “Fucking piece of shit!”

The hallway blurred before Heff. The pain in Garland’s voice began to overpower the rage—yet seemed to fuel the destruction as shit hit the kitchen wall opposite of where Heff stood in the hall. He flinched, trembling. Last night in the barn… the tears… had it knocked down the precarious barrier between Garland and his grief? Though a little frightened by this outburst… Heff’s only surprise was that it didn’t happen sooner. At the funeral, Garland was so tightly wound, just trying to hold himself together. At Foster’s office, he’d broken slightly, but not nearly enough to release his grief.

He was breaking now.

Except, it didn’t feel like a random “blowout”—he was raging at someone.

Heff grew more uneasy; was Garland furious at him for “spying” on him in the barn? The depth of rage exploding inside the kitchen right now… was not a rage Heff wanted directed at himself. Garland wouldn’t actually hurt him… or would he? Heff didn’t know this Garland.

Taking his life in his hands, Heff tentatively stepped into the kitchen doorway just as Garland snatched a piece of broken plate from the counter and flung it behind him without looking.

Heff yelped as the broken dish zinged past his face, grazing his cheekbone. He grabbed his face. Though the cut was shallow, blood spilled down his cheek.

Garland whirled around at Heff’s sharp cry. “Jesus!” He rushed to Heff and grabbed his face. “Fuck.” Garland practically dragged him to the sink through the debris scattered across the kitchen floor and wet a clean washcloth. “Don’t fucking sneak up on me,” he muttered, a slight tremor to his raw voice. He washed the cut, his face pinching. “Goddammit…”

“I-I’m okay.” The injury was minor, but Heff couldn’t stop shaking. “It… it barely grazed me.”

“It could’ve been worse,” Garland growled low through a tight scowl. “Why the fuck did you even come in here? You got a death wish?”

“No,” Heff whispered, staring the man in the face.

Garland avoided eye contact. “Hold this.” He pressed the cloth to the cut. “I’ll get some bandages.”

Heff held the washcloth to his cheekbone as Garland left the kitchen, kicking broken dishes out of his way. Heff looked around the room; plates, glasses, bowls lay shattered on the linoleum. Small appliances had been launched at the wall. The glass carafe for the coffee maker was in the sink—smashed to pieces. A lower cupboard door hung by one hinge, splintered in half.

Amidst the debris? Garland’s broken heart. Heff saw it in each piece of shattered dish, each dented or busted appliance, in the crack on the kitchen wall, the broken cupboard door. The kitchen screamed his anguish.

Heff recognized it, because inside himself… he was as broken and shattered as this room.

…………………………..

Garland gripped the bathroom sink and glared at himself in the mirror—more than ever hating the man staring back. “You fuck… you could’ve really hurt him. You want that on your conscience, too? You don’t have enough reasons to fucking hate yourself—you need to add one more?”

Yanking open the medicine cabinet, Garland grabbed a roll of gauze, surgical tape, and peroxide. He turned to leave the bathroom and halted, staring at the items in his hands.

You know what you have to do.

He did.

Garland returned to the destroyed kitchen and bandaged Heff’s face. The boy didn’t mention the debris or Garland’s destructive outburst… or what he witnessed in the barn last night. For all those things, Garland was thankful. He didn’t want to talk about what just happened—and he didn’t want to talk about last night. Any of what happened last night. Luckily, Heff wasn’t aware of the sleepover. And Garland had no intentions of telling him.

Clearing his throat, Garland rinsed out the washcloth, a strange, unnerving sensation filtering through him as he watched Heff’s blood swirl down the drain. What if you’d hit him in the eye? Or busted his nose? His mouth? Cut open his head? Garland laid the cloth over the center partition of the sink and leaned on his arms, staring into the basin. “A couple of horses got loose last night,” he mumbled. “I need to bring them back in before the second wave of the storm hits tonight.”

“S-second wave?” Heff stammered.

Garland straightened and turned around. “Last night’s storm was just a preview. A blizzard is coming in tonight. A nasty one. If I don’t get the horses back to the barn… they’ll die out there.” He evaded Heff’s eyes and moved past the young man.

“I’ll… I’ll clean up the kitchen,” Heff said softly.

Garland halted in the doorway. “No. Leave it.” He took a deep breath, his throat pinching. “You should go home… back to Maine. Now—before the storm comes in.”

“Garland…” The boy’s voice wavered. “The ranch…?”

Shaking his head, his back to Heff, Garland mumbled, “If I can’t hold onto the ranch by my own merits… then I don’t deserve it.” You’ll never fucking deserve it—Heff deserves it more than you. He cleared his throat. “Just go. The storm shouldn’t hit until evening. You have plenty of time to get out.”

Heff was quiet a moment, then whispered, “You want me to leave?”

Garland stared at the floor. “Yes,” he rasped. “Go back to your friends… your life. Don’t give me or this place a second thought. Whatever happens… happens. It’s not your problem.”

Switching gears on Garland, the boy asked anxiously, “Will you be able to find the horses and bring them back before the storm hits?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure?”

Garland swallowed, unprepared for the depth of concern in the young man’s voice. “Yes. Just make sure you get out of here well ahead of the storm. And…” He exhaled slowly. “… take whatever you want that belonged to your sister.”

Heff didn’t reply, though the weight of his stare pressed at Garland’s back.

Garland took a step forward and faltered. “Don’t ever go out in a storm… understand? Never again, for any reason.” Sure as fuck not for me.

“Okay,” Heff whispered.

Now was the time to walk away and not look back but Garland’s boots fused to the floor. He had one more thing to say and his body wouldn’t move until he said it. It was the very least he owed the boy.

“I’m… sorry,” he mumbled. “For the way I talked to you… about you… yesterday. I guess I’m just an… insecure asshole like all the rest.”

He didn’t look at Heff—knowing what he would see in his eyes… because even after five years, he knew what kind of man Heff Wilder was.

A hell of a better man than you.

…………………………..

Garland vacated the kitchen without even one last glance at Heff. This was his goodbye. He wanted Heff gone. He’d rather risk losing the ranch… than spend one more day in Heff’s presence.

The pain of that truth bothered Heff. Though he’d lost Garland as a friend… possibly more… long ago—it felt as if he was losing him all over again. Maybe it was the apology. His old friend was in that apology.

Heff sagged against the sink and pressed his hands to his face and cried. Nothing awaited him in Maine. The thought of returning to his cold, lonely apartment left him empty inside. It hurt to be here at the ranch, for so many reasons, but he could still feel Mandy in this house, her spirit was alive here. Home is where the heart is. If that were true, then Mandy and Frank never left, not really. They loved this ranch.

Maybe you never really left, either… if home is where the heart is.

Lowering his hands, Heff looked at the empty doorway, tears running down his cheeks. He thought about that day at the pool, that moment—I think I love you—that redefined everything he felt for Garland back then. He hadn’t told anyone that it was more than a crush, not even Mandy. He didn’t want to be told that he wasn’t old enough to know what love was, as if a person had to be a certain age before they could fall in love. At sixteen, Heff knew how it felt to love. If it hadn’t been real… would his heart still feel the pain today? Five years later?

Why was he thinking about that now? Garland told him to leave; he wanted him gone. He wasn’t “in love” with Heff and never had been. All of that love stuff had been Heff’s fantasy. Garland got what he wanted from Heff that night in his room. Maybe they had never really been friends and Garland had simply played him from the start… to get that one thing. And once he got it… he threw Heff away with no more care than one tosses out trash.

It should have ended there. Whatever Heff felt for him should have died right then.

Why hadn’t it? He’d convinced himself it had, but now… being near the man again… Heff realized he’d been fooling himself.

So, leave. Get away from him—before he decides to play you again.

Heff moved away from the sink, his thoughts and emotions pulling him in all directions. He absently scooted debris from his path as he left the room and returned upstairs. In his room, he sat on the bed, his mind and body numb. After a few minutes, he went to Mandy and Frank’s room. If he meant to leave for good, he wanted something of Mandy’s to take with him.

The couple’s presence permeated the bedroom. Their passion for one another was unlike anything Heff had witnessed before with any couple. Many nights he’d heard them making love—and envied that passion, the all-consuming love for one another. He would close his eyes and imagine making passionate love to Garland… and pretend that Garland was imagining the same things about him.

Heff pushed those thoughts away as a lump formed in his throat. It seemed so unfair that such a perfect love as Mandy and Frank’s could be snuffed out so soon. God was supposed to be merciful and just. Where was the justice in their senseless deaths? The mercy? Maybe there was no God, no rhyme or reason to any fucking thing that happened in life.

Heff sank down on the bed and pressed his palm to his eyes, throat working. It hurt so bad to be here, but it suddenly terrified him to leave. Once he left this property… would he just spiral away into a chaotic, pointless existence? Everyone needed something to ground them, give them direction. Maybe eventually his writing would become his anchor, give him purpose. But Mandy had been his life anchor. And to some degree, years before… Garland as well. Now all the anchors were cut loose, and he was drifting… lost at sea with no one to come searching and bring him home.

No home to return to.

Just go. Drift until you find a “harbor”… there’s one out there somewhere… you got this.

Heff rubbed his wet eyes and stared at his hands. You got this. A tickle of déjà vu skittered through him. That’s what Garland had told him the night of Heff’s sixteenth birthday when he’d gone to the man’s room, terrified of the storm. He held Heff deep in his arms, kissed his head, and… “You’re okay… you got this, baby.”

Heff wilted into a fit of sobs. “I don’t…” he cried. “I don’t got this… I don’t…” He laid down on Mandy’s bed and hugged her pillow to his face, sobbing harder. “I can’t make it without you… I’m not strong enough… not brave enough.” He choked on his sobs. “Everything… scares me.”

On cue, an explosion of thunder shook the house.

Heff cried out and clutched the pillow. Something ticked against the window. He crawled off the bed and brushed aside the curtains. Snow. Flakes began to swirl on the breeze outside.

“No…” Heff whimpered.

No—the storm wasn’t due until this evening!

Heff gripped the window frame and looked out at the barn… and beyond… where the approaching storm was swallowing up the horizon, reducing it to a wall of white chaos.

Heff began to shake, eyes filling, fear paralyzing his heart.

Garland.