Finally a Hero

If this was the desert, Jesse thought, it was the oasis of deserts. There were plenty of green plants and cacti. Every few yards, there was a swing with a canopy. An empty tennis court was to his left, and what looked like a one-room schoolhouse was to his right.

“Man I bought her from had built two more rooms, but neither was up to code.”

Jesse wasn’t sure what that meant.

“I added electricity, running water and furniture. A few years later, when my wife got pregnant with Eva, she insisted on a bigger house. I built her this when she had my third daughter, Emily.”

“Is your wife the redheaded woman back at the main house?”

“Patti?” Jacob’s laugh sounded more like a bark. “Patti de la Rosa works for me. She helps Eva run the business side of things. She’s been a blessing since my wife died. More than once her advice on how to raise my three daughters kept me from falling on my face.”

“No sons?”

“No, but my daughters can do just about anything that sons could do. Eva’s the only one who stuck around, though. She was just a little thing when I started expanding the main house. I’ve got pictures of her mixing mud mortar. She thought she was making pancakes, I’m pretty sure.”

“You built the main house?”

“Designed it, built it, maintain it.”

Before Jacob could say anything else, they arrived at the barn.

“I’ll introduce you to Harold Mull. He’s the head wrangler and foreman. When I’m not telling you what to do, he’ll be telling you. The vet’s here, too.”

Timmy had been keeping up, but now that they’d reached the barn, he hesitated.

“Come on,” Jesse urged him. “Nothing’s going to hurt you.”

“Ever seen a horse before?” Jacob asked.

Timmy shook his head.

“Well,” said Jacob, “they’re my favorite animal in the whole world. Next to dogs, of course.”

Timmy nodded as if he agreed.

Next thing Jesse knew, Jacob had both of them in the barn, standing next to a stall, as the vet took care of a horse named Harry Potter.

“My youngest daughter named quite a few of the horses,” Jacob explained. “She always had her head in a book. Consequently, we’ve got some very literary horses.”

An hour later, after introducing Timmy and Jesse to more horses and to the two wranglers, Jacob led them to a set of stairs in the back of the barn. The top of the stairs had a storage alcove on one side and the apartment on the other.

“We call this the loft and don’t lock the door. You can if you want. I’ll need to find the key.”

The front door opened to a living room with an ugly green couch, a mud-brown easy chair, a scratched coffee table and an old-fashioned television. Timmy, uninterested in the tour, immediately settled onto the couch. The kitchen was behind it. A door to the right led to a bathroom and bedroom big enough for only a bed, no dresser.

After showing Jesse around, Jacob cleared his throat and said, “You can start in the morning. Four o’clock. Harold will tell you what to do. Meantime, dinner is from five to six here.”

The door slammed behind him, and for the first time that day, Jesse had silence.

He didn’t trust it.

“Well,” Jesse said. “Let’s go bring the car down and unload our belongings.”

Timmy’s belongings, really. Jesse had a duffel bag.

No answer.

Timmy was curled into a fetal position on the couch, sound asleep. Jesse headed for the door, put his hand on the doorknob and stopped. Could he leave? Could he leave a five-year-old alone? What if Timmy woke up and got scared? Worse, what if Timmy woke up and wandered downstairs and out the barn door?

Five minutes later, Jesse carried the boy, who maybe weighed thirty-five pounds, all the way back to the main house. Eva stepped out on the porch.

Unlike most women, she didn’t holler, “Everything okay?”

Instead, just like at the restaurant, she watched him. Her expression indicated that she already knew what he was doing, plus all the things he didn’t know, and why and exactly how it would turn out.

He sat Timmy in the backseat—right where he first met the boy—and drove to the barn, parking by a blue truck, which must be the trademark for the ranch. Then he gently eased Timmy from the car and carried him upstairs and to the couch. Before he went back downstairs to unload the car, he snagged a blanket from the bed and covered the boy.

His son.

It took only ten minutes to unload the car and put their belongings away. Timmy’s clothes went in the bedroom closet, which actually had drawers. His games stayed in the living room under the coffee table. Then Jesse meticulously went through every crevice of the car. He found the owner’s manual but no title or registration receipt. He found a jack but no spare tire. After circling the vehicle, he realized the spare tire was already on the front passenger side. The only paper in the glove box—aside from receipts and other trash—had been the birth certificate. There was no other information on Timmy.

He had no clue if his son had been to preschool, the doctor or church. He was starting from scratch, both as an ex-con and as a father. A slight breeze pushed against him as he entered the barn and headed for the stairs up to his apartment. Instead of hundreds of convicts, he smelled horse.

He wasn’t sure which smelled worse.

Entering his apartment, all he could think of was that for the first time in more than five years, he had nothing to do, nowhere to be and no one to avoid. Instead, he had someone besides himself to take care of.

Walking to the window, he stared out at sweet freedom. It existed. He put his fingers on the glass, probably not bullet-proof, and then felt along the frame, finally getting his fingers just under the edge. It opened, and he breathed in the fresh air—hot, tinged with the scent of animals and roiling heat...and yes, something sweet.

Chapter Five

Currently, there were thirty-two people seated in the dining room of the Lost Dutchman Ranch. Most were already finished with their meals and just sitting around, talking. It was too hot to do anything else.

“We really need more than eighty guests,” Eva fretted, setting her tray on the picnic table closest to the kitchen door. That was another marketing strategy. She wanted enough guests and enough conversation to hide the sounds of clanking plates and Cook complaining about how slowly the potatoes were boiling.

“We have room for more than eighty,” Patti said. “We don’t need eighty. Your father’s not worried.”

“Of course not. He’s sitting with the couple renting our number five suite in the Rawhide section. The man used to rodeo like Dad.”

“Friend of your dad’s?” Patti asked.

“No, but he found our place because he did a Google search for Dad’s name. Apparently he’s putting together some sort of rodeo reunion, and Dad’s name was on his list. When he read about the Lost Dutchman Ranch, he decided to combine work and play.”

“They look rich enough. Wonder why they didn’t reserve a cabin?”

“Maybe they’re rich because they know how to be careful with their money.”

That reminded her. She’d watched Jesse at the diner peel bills from a small, dwindling roll. He was a man who didn’t have much money to be careful with.

“Actually,” Eva said, “they chose Rawhide because of the name. Thought it sounded Western. They plan to come again next year and stay in Boomtown.”

Eva’s father had named the lodging areas at the Lost Dutchman. The five suites were in a section called Rawhide. The five cabins were in Boomtown. The single bedrooms—seventeen of them, motel style—were in Tenderfoot.

“They’re perfect guests,” Patti said. “They already know how to ride, they like to hike without a guide, and the only complaint they’ve made had to do with the temperature going above a hundred and five.”

Eva glanced over at the people. Both were dressed in jeans and long-sleeve shirts, compared with the rest of the room—most in cotton shirts and shorts.

Shaking her head, she went back for seconds. Meals were buffet-style, a help-yourself kind of meal, with only one server walking around and making sure all the guests had what they needed.

The dining room was in the back of the main house. Picnic tables held guests, visitors and employees. The atmosphere was meant to be fun and relaxed. They did not serve a four-star meal. Tonight’s menu was barbecue pork, beans and potato chips. All homemade by Cook, an ex-rodeoer. His specialty was Mexican food, but actually there wasn’t a food type he couldn’t produce.

As Eva returned to her seat, she checked out the back of the dining room where a kids’ area—complete with a television for watching movies or playing video games—hosted about a dozen children of various ages.

At least ten of today’s customers were not guests of the ranch but townies and tourists.

Absent were Jesse Campbell and his son.

Eva knew this because she’d stared down the path to the barn at least a dozen times. The little boy had to be hungry. For that matter, so did Jesse.

“Hey,” Patti said, “you only got a bun.”

By the time Eva came back with actual meat on her bun, Patti had left to close down the front desk, and her father had moved over to join her.

“They’re usually four o’clock eaters,” he explained, referring to the couple renting in Rawhide. “Now they want to go relax. Imagine having time to relax.”

Eva knew what her father’s day typically looked like; relaxation wasn’t on his schedule.

“So, Dad, why isn’t the new hire here?”

“He called and said the little one was sound asleep and they’d be taking it easy tonight.”

Eva leaned in. “Dad, did you get the whole story from him? About how he came to have Timmy?”

“Jesse said his mother showed up at the prison to pick him up. She had the little boy in the backseat. He claims he didn’t even know he had a son, and apparently Jesse’s mother wanted nothing to do with her grandson.”

“He’s telling the truth. I was at the Miner’s Lamp when they pulled into the parking lot. I overheard the introduction.” Eva wasn’t sure where she was going with this conversation. She felt bad for Jesse, of course, and all that he’d gone through so unexpectedly. But what she really wanted was to express to her father was that right now, they couldn’t afford another hand, especially one that came with a second mouth to feed.

“Hard to imagine having a kid and not knowing he existed.” Her dad frowned and looked around the dining room. In the back area, a mother had joined her two children, and together they worked on a puzzle. Near the restroom, a young mother rocked a baby. On the wall above the entrance hung a portrait of all the Hubrechts. Jacob, Naomi, Eva, Elise and Emily. Smiling. Happier days.

“Everyone deserves a second chance,” Jacob said. “You need to be a little more understanding. Mike Hamm says that of all the men he’s studied with this past year, Jesse is the most receptive. When Mike was working with him, talking about career choices, Jesse kept referring back to his two summers working with horses. Kid had a rough childhood and made some mistakes. Maybe being here will keep him from making more. He needs someone to take his side.”

“Kid? How old is he?”

“A year younger than you.”

“What kind of mistakes? Why was he in prison?”

“You don’t need to worry about it. I will tell you he was more an accomplice than outright criminal, and there’s no record of violence.”

Eva could only shake her head. “He worries me, Dad.”

“Everything worries you.”

“That’s not true,” she protested.

“Think of this,” her dad said, waving a potato chip at her. “Jesse offered to work for free, just have to room and board. Now, really, who should be worrying? You or him?”

“Him,” she said, humbled.

Her father nodded. “He kinda made me think of how the apostles must have felt, entering towns with no provisions, no bread, no money, no extra shirt. I didn’t want to watch Jesse shake the dust off his feet because I didn’t try to welcome him.”

“That’s a stretch, Dad.”

“Is it?”

To Eva’s chagrin, she didn’t have an answer. Playing it safe and selfish didn’t seem much of an argument.

Probably because she’d been using it too long.

* * *

Jesse sat slumped in the easy chair, watching his son sleep, and wondering how his first day of freedom could have gone so wrong.

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