Page 13 of The Banker and the Blue Collar Man

I squinted at the mother as she stood in the doorway from the kitchen to the living room, watching me as though I might make a mistake. But I wasn’t looking at her. I was looking into my past, rifling through the patchy memories, each house a picture in a slotted bin in my mind. I couldn’t for the life of me remember the Leetons, let alone owning a model horse.

“Sure,” I said, because I’d be good goddamned if I let anyone know I didn’t remember. “They want me to be a ranch hand?”

“Walter Barrett, the owner, read about some program or other about bringing city kids out to a real working ranch, and he wanted to do the same. It’s a bit high-minded, if you ask me, but it’s a job with room and board. Say the word, and I’ll have a bus ticket waiting for you.”

I didn’t know, but that I didn’t have much to lose. And now that I thought longer, I did have flickers of memory about that model horse. A buckskin with a black mane and tail.

I’d called the horse Buddy, not being a very inventive boy. I’d been eight at the time, and who knew what happened to Buddy. Maybe he got lost during a move to a new foster home. Maybe some other boy owned him now.

“Well?” the social worker asked in a sharp voice, like I’d kept her waiting for an entire hour, which was about fifty-eight minutes too long.

“Sure,” I said, mentally shrugging. “Where do I pick up the bus ticket?”

“At the Human Services building on Federal,” she said. “Second floor. You’ll hand over your halfway house voucher, sign release papers, and then you’ll get the ticket. When you get to Snow Creek Ranch, ask for Walter Barrett. He’s the owner.”

“Okay,” I said, making a mental map as to how to get there.

“Well, good luck,” she said. “Goodbye.” And then she hung up.

“Who was that?” the mother asked, coming toward me.

I was too big to smack around anymore, but I flinched and backed away as I hung up the phone.

“I’ve got a job,” I said, not giving her more information than I had to. “Can you give me a ride to Human Services tomorrow? I have to pick up a bus ticket.”

I could see it behind her eyes that she wanted to toss me out on my ass then and there. But if she did that, she might not get more foster kids, and her monthly income would be slashed by that $1,795.

“Sure,” she said, though I could see she wanted to say no. “I’ll take you before work tomorrow, but you better not make me wait. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

The snap of her flip-flop as she turned on her heel to go find the father and talk to him echoed in my ears every now and then. It sounded like a door slamming. Or like the metal lid of a crawl space coming down with a hard bang, cutting off the light and shutting me in darkness.

There’d been a lot of doors like that, all through my childhood, so I didn’t expect that Snow Creek Ranch would be much different. But it would be a change, at least. It would be something.

The next morning, I showed up, dressed and packed, so I didn’t keep the mother waiting. The ride downtown to the center was quiet, and the entire way, she never said a word to me. But that was okay. My mind whirled with thoughts.

I’d seldom ridden in cars, except to and from foster homes. And, on one occasion, to the emergency room, when I’d somehow fallen and opened the flesh just below my right eyebrow. Blood had blocked my vision, and I remembered struggling against the nurses who wanted to put in stitches.

The mother and father from the house with the cage—had it been an actual cage, or just felt like one?—had stood in that emergency room and talked about how clumsy I was. How careless.Yes, those other bruises, that’s from when he fell down the stairs.

Except, in a piece of my memory that was somehow quite sharp, that house had all been on a single level, so how I fell down any stairs was beyond me.

Finally, a doctor came in. He was older. Had white hair. Warm hands. His name tag said Dr. Clemson.

He’d said, “Can you look at me, Jake? Look at my eyes or my name tag or wherever. The nurse is going to numb the area, and then the stitches won’t hurt.”

Well, I could trust him, or I could keep struggling. For a long, hard second, I hadn’t known which way to go. They’d turned the overhead lights off, so there was just the exam light on my face. So they could see what they were doing, I thought.

I’d been one hard breath away from kicking someone anywhere it could hurt.

Dr. Clemson put his hand on my cheek and patted me gently. “Let out a breath,” he’d said, and I felt the pinprick of a shot, and then a feeling spread across my face like warm, shifting sand.

All the while, as someone held my face still, I felt the tug of thread, but it didn’t hurt, just like he’d said. The entire time, Dr. Clemson kept his hand on my cheek and locked his eyes with mine.

I didn’t think I’d ever forget his kindness.

After the stitches were in, covered with a long, wide bandage, Dr. Clemson had told the mother and father that I should come back in ten days to get the stitches removed.