Returning

Some months after he arrived at Lancer, when he was above all Murdoch's son and Johnny's brother, an ambiguous man with an odd accent dressed down tones of beige and brown, he had only one burning desire. To understand.

Enlightenment came during a time caught between the early rains of spring and the wretched heat of full blown summer. As the saying went, out of the frying pan into the fire. He knew some truths about that statement.

His name was Scott Lancer. Lancer. He sat in a favored well-worn saddle, on his chestnut mare, and looked across Tio's Meadow toward the ranch, a middling size stretch of green and brown in the San Joaquin Valley, where he should have grown up.

The breeze was spiked with juniper; a small lake nearby, its water shimmering like the finest crystal. Looking toward the western tip of the ranch, he couldn't see the grand white arch, but knew it was there, stolid and sturdy under the mid-afternoon sun.

He shook his head at how angry he was before he met Murdoch, how he lived in Boston trying to fit the mold Grandfather had made for him, his days passing like rain drops on a pane of glass, without passion. So few people knew what they were capable of. But by twenty, he had managed to do things—and have things done to him—that took his breath away, and he supposed that had been part of the problem. His world had been widened, his eyes opened.

Carter once remarked that he had hurried to get out west; his friend and confidant was being kind. Hurry was such a plebian word. He didn't hurry—he ran so fast the wrought iron gate on Tremont Street had slapped back against its hinges.

Lancer was his consolation. For it, he dove in with arms outstretched, his old life streaming behind him, a leap against everything sensible and expected, but a leap that was necessary and somehow saving.

No one judged him more harshly than himself. Perhaps he would forgive himself for doubting in time.

The smell of cattle and horses hit him as he crested a small hill. Johnny announced his arrival with a shout wrapped up in a toothy white smile. And he thought, Yes, I'm returning. Who wanted, after all this time, to just belong.

Wasn't that the reason he had left Boston in the first place?

The End

1/29/'19