Chapter Text
The best thing about Oregon at night, Virgil thought as he watched the bus bounce over the potholes and cracks that littered the old asphalt road, was the utter lack of any possible human interaction. Even at the bus stop just out of town, there was hardly anyone moving inside buildings or trucks and positively no one on the streets. It was nothing like back home, where the skyline was constantly blazing with light and at any given moment someone was driving somewhere, or wrecking something, or yelling at someone. Here life was still, as though time had actually slowed down—just for a moment—to preserve this tiny pocket of peace in a world far too hectic to appreciate it.
Virgil shook his head, scoffing at his own emotions. He had evidently been spending far too much time around Roman if he was beginning to think like a sap. Still, Oregon was pretty cool and he, for one, was glad summer was finally here. Hanging with the twins was fun and all, but nothing beat the three months out of the year he got to come down to the Broken Wheel Ranch.
The BW Ranch, as the locals called it, was technically a little too small to be considered a proper ranch. It was really more of a small family farm, but since its legal name was actually ‘The Broken Wheel Ranch’ everyone around here just called it a ranch rather than bicker about size and technicalities.
As for Virgil, he had been born on the BW Ranch and had lived the first decade of his life there. The ranch had been in his family for three generations before him and by the time he was ten, his parents had taught him almost everything he needed to know about running the place. He was happy there and assumed, in the easy, oblivious way children did, that he would take over from his dad when he was old enough, just as his father had done before him. He thought he would spend the rest of his life on the Broken Wheel Ranch, miles away from the nearest town or neighbor with just the horses and chickens and Sloth, the lazy old basset hound, for company.
But like a flash flood on a previously sunny day, it didn’t take long for everything to change.
His parents sat him down one afternoon and told him they weren’t happy together anymore. That they wanted a divorce. It was no one’s fault, his father stressed. Not Virgil’s, not his mom’s, no one’s. Sometimes people just grew apart. They were two different people, his mom told him. Virgil’s dad was a rancher, born with sweat in his blood and earth in his bones. He was meant to run the ranch; he was happy here. But she wasn’t. She yearned for the city, for the bright lights and opportunities and the pulse of life that seemed to radiate in the very air itself. She was, had always been, a city girl at heart. But she had given up that life once for his father, and then a second time for Virgil himself. Now, she wanted to go back.
And she wanted Virgil to come with her.
The knowledge that all wasn’t well in Virgil’s small corner of paradise came like an unexpected punch to the gut. The idea that his parents were getting a divorce, that his mother was moving who-knew-how-many miles away, was crazy enough but now he was supposed to decide where he wanted to go? Who he wanted to live with? That was an insane choice to have to make! They kept asking him what he wanted, trying to include him in the easier parts of the process, to show him that they would still be a family, even if they weren’t together anymore.
It helped, but it wasn’t what Virgil wanted. What ten-year-old Virgil really wanted was to wake up and find out that this was all some terrible dream. That his mom was perfectly fine living on the ranch and she and his dad were still happy and still wanted to be a family together. He wanted everything just to go back to the way it used to be.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to happen. It was a truth Virgil slowly came to realize as he watched his mom start to pack up her stuff and ship them somewhere out east. It was a truth he realized as he listened to his parents talk about things like ‘divisions of assets’ and ‘custody agreement’ and ‘alimony’ when they thought he was asleep. It was a truth he realized the day he walked into the stables and overheard his mom crying to her sister on the phone, saying how scared she was about moving away and having to find a new job.
She didn’t see him. Virgil had gone through the side door and ducked into one of the empty foaling stalls the moment he realized he wasn’t alone. She never knew he was there. But as he crouched behind the half-closed door, listening to his mom weep softly, wondering if she would be able to make it, if she wasn’t too old to still be chasing flights of fancy, if maybe the sensible thing to do was just to stay on the ranch and try and be happy there instead, Virgil finally made his decision.
His mom wanted to go to the city. She loved it the same way he and Dad loved the ranch. Virgil knew she did, because when he was younger, she would always tell him stories of the scrapes she and Aunt Katy got into there, stories about the bright lights and the noise and the shows she used to loved to attend. She would tell him about how she dreamed to become an actress and he would ask why she didn’t. Then she would smile and say ‘Because I met Dad. And then we had you, and now being your mom is my new dream.’ And she would always smile when she said it, but even then, Virgil could tell that her smiles for Dad and the ranch and her smiles for the city weren’t the same.
She loved Dad. But she loved the city more.
And, Virgil marveled quietly as he watched his mother wilt in the shadows of the stable, she loved him most of all. Because she was afraid, and she didn’t want to go alone. She wanted him with her. But she had been willing to let him choose. If he wanted to, she would let him stay.
That was why he had to go. If he left, Dad would be here alone. But he wouldn’t really be alone. He would still have the neighbors and the folks from town. He would still have the chickens and the horses and old Sloth. He’d still be on the ranch, and he’d still be a rancher and he wouldn’t have to change much except maybe he’d have to learn how to cook. But if Virgil stayed and Mom left, then she’d be all alone for real. She wouldn’t have any neighbors she could go to for help, cause she wouldn’t know anybody, and she wouldn’t even have chickens to give her eggs or horses to ride cause she was moving to the city and Virgil didn’t think they had chickens and horses there. She’d be alone and scared, and maybe Virgil couldn’t stop her from being scared cause he didn’t know much about the city or why it was scaring her, really. But he did know that it was almost always better to be scared with someone else than it was to be scared on your own. Because if you were with someone else then maybe they could stop whatever was scaring you or at least help you not to feel so scared. But if you were scared by yourself, then there was no one there to help and you had to figure it out all on your own. And maybe Virgil couldn’t stop whatever was scaring her, but he could hug her when she did feel afraid and remind her that she didn’t have to be, because she was already tougher than anything out there. She just needed help to see it.
Mom needed help. She needed him. So, even though Virgil really, really wanted to stay at the BW Ranch, he would go with her and help her be brave. And besides, he reassured himself, it wasn’t like it was forever. Sooner or later, he’d be able to come back, even if he had to wait ‘til he was as old as Dad. Someday he’d come back.
To his surprise, however, ‘someday’ had wound up being a lot sooner than he’d thought. He had learned what a custody agreement was, and he and Mom and Dad decided that he would spend most of the year in the city with Mom, so he could go to school, but spend summer break with Dad at the ranch. And he could alternate Christmas and Thanksgiving holidays with them, so that one year he might spend Thanksgiving with Mom and Christmas with Dad, and next year he’d spend Thanksgiving with Dad and Christmas with Mom.
It wasn’t the best arrangement. Virgil still believed the best arrangement would always be if he and his parents could all live in one place together, but he was also old enough to know that was probably never going to happen again. And besides, it was still a pretty good deal. At least this way he didn’t have to wait until he was an old geezer to come back and see Dad and the horses. So, everyone agreed and every summer for the next six years, like clockwork, Virgil flew halfway across the country and took a two-hour bus ride out to the middle of nowhere to spend three months feeding chickens and mending fences and training horses.
It was, without a doubt, his favorite part of the year. Even when he had to wait an extra hour at a bus stop in the middle of the night.
As if summoned by his thoughts, twin trails of light suddenly pierced the darkness. Virgil glanced back toward the town, barely able to identify a blue Ford pickup under the dim light of the flickering street lamps.
He smiled, grabbing his black duffel bag as he climbed to his feet. The Ford drew steadily closer, its breaks squeaking horribly when it finally rolled to a stop in front of the bus bench. The driver didn’t bother to turn the engine off, but he did step out of the truck, and Virgil moved quickly, meeting him in front of the rumbling pickup. “Hey, Dad. How’s it hanging?”
The older man didn’t hesitate to fold his arms around his son, pulling him close and chuckling when he found he could only reach up to the teen’s shoulder now. “I can’t believe you’ve gotten even taller on me! What’s your mother been feeding you, tumbleweed?” He shook his head, smiling as he reached out to take Virgil’s bag. “I’ve been fine. It’s been pretty busy out here, what with breaking in the new yearlings and trying to decide how much of the herd we can afford to send upstate to auction this year. There was a pretty bad storm down this way a week ago, and it really worked a number on some of the fences down by Adder’s Hunt. I rode out to look over the damage, but I haven’t been able to get started on fixin’ it yet.”
“What’s the matter, pops?” Virgil chuckled as he climbed into the passenger seat. “Slowing down in your old age?”
“‘Old age’, he says. Listen here, boy, I’m only twenty-seven years older than you, and don’t you forget it! I’m not in my dotage yet.”
“Oh, really? Cause from where I’m sitting, it looks like you’ve got a couple more crows feet around those blue eyes of yours, old timer. Maybe you oughta take it easy; don’t want your poor heart to give out so soon, do you?” Virgil grinned, his own dark eyes twinkling.
The rancher snorted, putting the truck into reverse, and backing halfway off the road. He glanced once in both directions and quickly drove forward, cutting the wheel just in time to align the Ford on the left side of the road. “The only thing that’s going to make my ‘poor heart’ quit kicking is the sass it has to put up with whenever you come down. Don’t they teach you to respect your elders in that fancy school of yours?”
“Nah. They’re too busy teaching us quadratic equations and how to conform to the expectations of a mindless pleonectic society.”
“Though, they apparently do find time in between torture and brainwashing to teach you vocabulary.”
“Yeah, but they call that ‘oral presentations’. And don’t let the name fool you; it sucks worse than math ever could.”
“Even quadratic formulas?”
“Hey, at least in algebra I’m only judged on how well I find the numeric value of a letter, not on how many times I trip over my own tongue while 20 pretentious teenagers record a video of it to post online.”
The older man raised an eyebrow, briefly diverting his attention from the abandoned road to stare at his son. “And your teacher didn’t do anything about this?”
Virgil shrugged, turning his own gaze to the pitch-black road in front of them. He appreciated his father’s concern, but someone should definitely be keeping an eye out for cows or deer this deep in cattle country. Besides, it wasn’t really like he could do anything about it. “It was a sub. She couldn’t care less if the whole building caught on fire, so long as each one of us stood in front of the class and talked while the room was burning around us. She was more interested in whatever she was doing on the computer than what the rest of the class was doing.”
“I’m sorry you have to put up with that, Virge. Have the kids been messing with you too much?”
‘Too much’, Virgil knew, meant ‘do you want me to do something about it?’ And Virgil knew that if he asked, the rancher would. It might have to wait until after busy season at the ranch, and it might seriously cut into his dad’s savings to pay the air fee, but if he asked, the older man would be there.
He always was.
“Nah, I’m good. Wouldn’t want you to get arrested for beating up a bunch of snot-nosed kids. Even if they are self-righteous pricks.”
“Interesting how you immediately jump to me getting arrested,” his father hummed as he turned his attention back to the road. “You don’t think I know how to cover my tracks better than that?”
“I think your lack of knowledge of the terrain might work against you,” Virgil retorted, smiling as he shifted his gaze to the blur of shadows outside his window. “Not to mention you’re kinda easy to pick out of a line up.”
The burn scars that stretched from the left side of his face all the way down his arm more than made sure of that.
His father smirked. “Point you. But then if I wore a mask and a pair of gloves with a regular button-up, it wouldn’t be as conspicuous. Then all I would have to do is lie low while the cops investigated every 30 – 40-year-old male in town with a motive to beat up a kid. Town that size, I can’t possibly be the only one.”
“Every 30 – 40-year-old male that’s 5 feet, 8 inches tall with blue eyes and black hair, who wears a beat-up pair of brown Durango Rebel boots and a black Resistol hat with a three-piece buckle set,” Virgil retorted. “You gotta keep in mind the whole target demographic, not just the obvious.”
“Right.” The rancher flicked on his blinker and turned down a dirt road. The ground here was even more uneven, and he had to drive carefully to avoid getting sucked into a sand trap. “So, I’d obviously have to switch out the boots for a pair of sneakers.”
“And ditch the hat.”
“Virgil. A cowboy’s nothing without his hat.”
“The hat’s gonna get you caught. It has to stay behind.”
“You suggest something like that again, you can walk back to the ranch,” his father countered with absolutely no heat in his tone.
“Sorry, but that’s the choice you have to make. Either you get to pound some pretentious jerks into the pavement, or you get to wear your hat. You can’t have both.”
“Ugh, fine. I hope you appreciate the sacrifices I make for you, boy.”
“With all my heart,” Virgil drawled, his face as dry as his tone. After a moment, his lips curved into a smirk, and he had to refrain from rubbing his hands together like some cheesy cartoon villain.
It took a surprising amount of self-control. “Ok, so you ditched the hat,” he continued, ignoring the pained whimper that came from his left. “You’re wearing a mask, gloves, a button-up and sneakers. What about vocal recognition if you do get caught?”
“You mean am I gonna waste my time monologuing about how the little brats tried to humiliate my kid for kicks and then say something incredibly poetic and meaningful that will make them rethink their entire life choices and swear never again to stray from the path of good?” The rancher sneered. “No. In the first place, that never does anything useful except for, like you said, giving the police another way to identify me if I got caught. In the second place, I’m not going to mention a single thing about you. That would just give me motive in the law’s eyes, especially once they found out how these idiots have been treating you. Besides, I need you to be a neutral party for my alibi.”
“What the heck is that supposed to mean? Since when am I part of your alibi?”
“Uh, since forever? Jeeze, Virge. Why do you think I even had a kid?”
Virgil laughed. “I always just assumed I was the result of temporary insanity in both you and Mom.”
“Well, that’s not wrong,” his father teased. “But after my head cleared, I began to think about the long con. No one ever suspects a humble rancher just trying to keep his small farm afloat while looking after his son.”
“Dang, you did plan ahead. So, what am I, in this alibi of yours? How does it play out?”
“Sorry, tumbleweed, but I can’t tell you that just yet. Neutral party, remember? In order for you to be able to claim plausible deniability, there has to be a lack of evidence as to your involvement.”
“What?” Virgil snorted. “So, I’m just supposed to wait around for you to show up on my door one day with bloody gloves and come up with some impenetrable story all on my own?”
“Of course not. In the first place, bloody gloves would be a much too damning piece of evidence to leave unaccounted for. I would either have to hit the kids in the stomach, where external bleeding isn’t as likely, or dispose of the gloves after the fight.”
“You’d have to burn them, then. To get rid of the DNA.” Virgil chewed the inside of his cheek contemplatively. “If you want to burn a random article of clothing, with no questions asked, your best bet would be to go down Bay Street. That’s the seedier part of town and a lot of homeless people hang out there and burn junk in these big metal drums.”
“During the winter, you mean? For heat?”
“Sometimes,” Virgil shrugged. “Sometimes for other reasons.”
“I see.” The rancher fell quiet all of a sudden, the playful atmosphere evaporating like water in the dry summer air. Virgil sensed this and glanced over, watching his father closely. After a minute, the man spoke up. “Do you go there a lot?”
“Sometimes.”
“Because that’s where your friends live? The ones you told me about?”
Virgil bit down on the inside of his cheek in a way that was not contemplative. “Look. We’re almost home.” He didn’t say he didn’t want to talk about it. Not in so many words. But he knew the older man would hear the request just the same and drop it. His dad had always respected when he didn’t want to talk about something, and he had never pushed his son to talk when he wasn’t ready or tell more than he was comfortable telling. It was one of the things Virgil loved most about him.
His father sighed but said nothing else as the headlights briefly illuminated the sign for the ranch. The emblem was a whitewashed wagon wheel with a few spokes broken and part of the rim missing. On a hanging plaque underneath, in black cursive writing, were the words ‘Broken Wheel Ranch’ and underneath that in even smaller font, ‘Janus Steel: Owner and Proprietor’.
As the truck slid to a stop, Virgil unfastened his seatbelt.
Janus cut the power to the engine. The headlights stayed on for a few seconds afterward, but it wasn’t long before they went out too, plunging the duo into darkness.
The rancher cleared his throat. “Well. It’s getting pretty late. We should both get some rest. Work starts at daybreak, you know.”
“I know.” Virgil slid out of the cab and made his way to the back of the truck, pulling out his duffel bag. “Hey, Dad?”
Janus pushed the car door closed before turning to look at his son—or rather the shadowy outline of his son. “Yeah, Virge?”
Words formed on Virgil’s tongue and vanished just as quickly. He didn’t really know how to say everything he wanted. He didn’t know how to thank Janus for taking him in every summer, for joking and laughing with him and encouraging his sarcastic wit with dry humor of his own. For allowing him to share his stories without expectation and, even more, letting him keep his secrets without guilt. For never once being angry or disappointed that he had chosen to go with his Mom all those years ago.
He didn’t know how to say thank you for being a dad. “Nothing. Just…I’m glad to be back.”
Janus smiled in the darkness and waited for the teen to reach his side. He clapped Virgil’s shoulder, squeezing gently. “I’m glad you are too, tumbleweed.”
I’m glad you are, too.