Page 14 of The Banker and the Blue Collar Man

Of course, they never did, so, after a couple of weeks, when I got a moment in the bathroom, I took off the bandage, now gray with the edges coming up in curls, and used nail clippers to tug the stitches out myself.

I remembered looking in the mirror and thinking there were two cigarette burns where my eyes should be. That my hair was cropped short, too short. That my lips were chapped, and it looked like someone had smeared ash on my cheeks.

The scar had faded now, but I could still feel the thread being tugged as those stitches went in.

Chapter 6

Jake

The mother had dropped me off at the Human Services building, and I’d made my way up to the second floor, signed the papers, turned over my halfway house voucher, and got my bus ticket. The foster system was rid of me, and I was sure they were glad to erase me from their roster.

The ride on Greyhound from Denver to Chance, a town outside Fort Collins, took a couple of hours, due to the many stops and starts. I hadn’t known what to expect when the coach pulled into Chance. I’d been staring out the window at the passing landscape as city turned to town and farm turned to field. It was the middle of summer, and everything was green.

Chance was a small place. The coach dropped me off in front of a store on Old Main Street called the Mercantile. Somehow I needed to get to Snow Creek Ranch. I’d made it that far; I supposed I could make it further. But which way was I supposed to go?

Setting my shoulders, I went into the store and walked up to the counter. Two older men were waiting on a younger fellow who was trying on hats. Real cowboy hats. They acknowledged me with their eyes and finished helping the young man, whofinally strutted out of the store with a very large, very crisp straw cowboy hat.

“Help you, sir?” they asked in unison.

My throat was dry all of a sudden. My can-do and I’ve-got-this attitude somehow up and left. But all I needed was directions, and me and my backpack could make it there, surely.

“I’m looking for Snow Creek Ranch,” I said. My jaw stiffened as they looked me up and down. Appraising, as if trying to figure out how I, a city boy, had landed in their midst.

“Well, aren’t you a tall drink of water,” one said.

The other nodded and asked, “The ranch?” He sounded surprised, like I’d made a mistake. “Snow Creek?” he asked, as if making sure.

“Yes, sir,” I said, thinking of all the times I’d been confronted on the first day of school in a new house, a new town, with a new mother and father and gotten the you-don’t-belong-here feeling. “I’ve come for a job with Mr. Walter Barrett.”

“That sounds about right, I guess,” the second one said. “Well, you drive on north, continuing on the road you came in on, and then?—”

“I don’t have a car,” I said, hasty and sharp. I was only eighteen, for Pete’s sake, and besides, I’d just come out of the system, so how the hell was I supposed to afford a car? “I can walk. How far is it?”

They looked at each other like a couple of punch-drunk comedians, their eyebrows going up at the same time. Then they both looked at me, and one of them pulled a battered cell phone from his pocket. “We’ll just give him a call,” he said.

“It’s ten miles,” the other said.

Of course they wanted to check that I had a right to be there. That Walter Barrett truly had offered me a job. The first day in any new place was always a proving ground. And in a shortminute, we all were going to find out whether Mr. Barrett’s offer was smoke and mirrors or the damn truth.

If it was smoke, I’d be walking or hitching a ride back to Fort Collins. I could find a job there, maybe. Sleep on a park bench or under a bridge.

If it was truth, then the future was still a shifting gray fog. I had no idea what a ranch hand did. Not the first thing about ranches or horses or cattle. Though it would be nice to have a fine straw cowboy hat.

After some quiet conversation, the man with the cell phone held it out to me.

“Hello?” I said, being my most polite.

“Is this Jake? Jake Colter?” the voice asked.

“Yes, sir,” I said. I was gripping the cell phone so tightly that the case made a popping sound.

“Greyhound didn’t drop you off at the road to the ranch, then?” the voice asked.

“No, sir.”

“Well, I’ll come fetch you. Give me twenty minutes.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, but he’d already hung up. I handed the phone back to its owner. “He’s coming to get me,” I said.