"School was a lot of different things for me," Heath said. "My mother felt that there were two things she could give me, manners and an education. So she was pretty much a fanatic about school. She had already taught me a lot before I started school, so I thought it was boring at first. I'd go to sleep.
One day the teacher asked me why I was sleeping. I told her because I was done with everything and there was nothing else to do. She started letting me help younger kids with their arithmetic. I liked that. I did that all throughout school."
"You did?" Nick was surprised. He would have thought Heath was as uninclined to schoolroom academics as he had been. What he was saying sounded more like Jarrod.
"Yeah. That was actually the best part. And I was very, very lucky with the teachers I had. My teachers treated me like I mattered to them, like I was as good as any of the other children." Heath paused for a second, and Nick thought, what? Heath liked school because he felt that he mattered to the teachers, like they thought he was good enough?
Nick was bewildered for a minute, that a child – his brother – had felt that way, like it was unusual for him to matter to someone, to be as good as the other children? Nick was shocked. He had never thought about anything like this. But Heath seemed to take this like it was just part of life. He was continuing to say something, and Nick returned his attention to what Heath was saying.
"My last couple of years of school, Mr. Franks would let me borrow his own books about things I was interested in. That on top of my mama's books that she brought out west with her, and I actually learned way more than you'd think for a kid growing up in a mining town. By the time I had finished regular school, I actually liked the extra work."
"You sound a lot like Jarrod," Nick said. "That's what he was like. Interested in books."
Heath said, "Well, the other side of it is that I'm sure I got in way more fights than Jarrod did." He grinned. "By my last couple years of school, none of the other boys wanted to fight me anymore. I'd licked everybody sound enough that no one wanted to try it again."
"What were you in fights about?" Nick asked. Then he realized his mistake.
"When you're the town bastard, you tend to get in fights," Heath said dryly.
"I'm sorry. That was a dumb question."
"The worst thing was coming home and my mama making such a fuss. She acted like a black eye or a cut lip was just the worst thing in the world. I tried to tell her it was nothing, it was completely worth it, but she still got upset."
"Completely worth it?" Nick laughed at the way Heath put it.
"Boy howdy, it sure was," he replied. "As long as I put more of a whipping on him than he did me, it was worth it. And I pretty much always did except for a time or two with someone much bigger." He chuckled and said, "My mama wasn't impressed when I told her she should see the other boy if she wanted to see some damage. She just looked at me like she couldn't even fathom why I would do that."
Nick laughed. "Now, that sounds more like me," he said. "Jarrod never got in trouble, never got in fights, then Mother had to deal with me. She was thrilled when I finally finished school, since she was tired of all the trouble I got into."
A question occurred to Nick. Heath's skill with horses was extraordinary. It was one of the ways Heath reminded him of Father, the way he judged a horse, the way he rode like he was born on a horse. "Say Heath," Nick said. "How did you learn about horses and to ride the way you do, growing up in town?"
"I always loved horses," Heath said. "I worked for the livery stable owner in Strawberry before and after school for years. I learned a lot about horses that way, but the way I really learned to ride was from the Modocs."
"The Modocs?"
"Yeah, when I was about seven or eight, I was wandering around in the woods one summer. I met a couple of Modoc boys close to my age. We ended up playing together. They brought me back to where they lived. I met their fathers and uncles. They asked me if I could read and write like white men. I told them I could.
They said if I would teach their boys, then they would teach me things Indians knew. One of those was riding. They let me ride their horses. I rode bareback, so I learned how to sit a horse if I wanted to stay on. By the time I got my first job on a ranch, I was pretty good."
"I see," Nick said admiringly. His younger brother had clearly been resourceful.
"That's where I learned hunting and trapping, too," Heath said. "I started bringing home game when I was about nine years old. Also, a friend of mine invited me hunting and fishing with him and his daddy. That turned out to be a good thing, because the mine started going down, and there was less work in the town for my mama and Aunt Rachel."
"Who was Aunt Rachel? She wasn't your mother's sister, was she?"
"She was my mother's best friend," Heath said. "They met when my mother's husband was still alive. Rachel was a widow. She had come out here with her second husband, and then he had died and left her without much. They became friends.
Then when my mother's husband turned up drowned, they decided to share the house my mama had lived in with her husband and split the rent. Neither could afford it on her own. And Hannah was a former slave who lived with us too. She had escaped from Alabama and got a ride west. She took care of me when I was small and did the cooking."
"What did they do for work?"
"They took in laundry and sewing. My mama did some embroidery. She did some work for a dressmaker in town, until that lady went out of business. She made shirts for a general store in town. She also kept hens in the back yard and sold eggs. In between that and what I earned at the livery stable, we got by.
I did other odd jobs too when I was old enough. I did a few things at the mining camp, like washing clothes for miners and bringing them food and beer. My mama made me quit that, though. They had sent me down in the mine, and she found out about it and got upset and snatched me home."
Nick absorbed what Heath was saying. He began to understand the huge gap between the way he had grown up and how Heath had grown up. No one would have ever dared sent Mr. Barkley's son down into the mine, either him or Jarrod.
"How old were you then?" Nick asked him.
"I was seven," Heath said. "I remember that because my mama had been sick for weeks, and I was glad to get the work. I got away with it until she got better."
Seven years old and working in a mine, glad to get the work, eight or nine years old and putting meat on the table for three women and himself…what a world apart Heath had lived from Tom Barkley's other children, Nick reflected. And yet he had grown up into an extremely capable and responsible young man in spite of it all, or maybe because of it.
He had not allowed the hardships to lure him into a life of running with an outlaw gang or being a drunk. He had grown up as straight as an arrow, strong, honest, and brave. He was a young man any father would be proud of, any man should be proud to call his brother.
Things Jarrod had said started to make sense to Nick. He began to feel some compassion for his younger brother. Heath had been very matter of fact about everything he had said. Nick knew he was glossing over how he had felt about most of these things, how his mother had felt.
But every once in a while, back at home, Nick had glimpsed an unguarded moment when Heath was remembering something very painful, and the blue eyes so like their father's had revealed more than he wanted to give away.
He had one more question. "That brother of your mother's that you mentioned…he never helped at all?"
Heath sighed. "No, he didn't. They had never been close in the first place, and the last thing he wanted was someone to take care of while he made his fortune in California. He had never liked my mother or her father anyway. He was jealous that his mother's second husband was rich, and he thought my mother was spoiled.
He bought the hotel in Strawberry, so I guess he thought that made him some kind of important businessman and pillar of the community." Heath gave a short laugh at the thought of his uncle Matt as an important businessman. Then he went on, "Once I was born, he had nothing to do with my mother, said she was an embarrassment and he didn't want her around."
Nick thought back to what Jarrod had said. How would you have felt to hear someone call you names and Mother names your whole life? To know you were the reason that your mother couldn't remarry and have a man provide for her, so you were dirt poor and had to take care of your mother instead of the other way around?"
Nick concluded that it must have been very, very hard. He knew now that Heath had been supporting his mother's little household for years until she died. And her own brother had treated her like an embarrassment? He thought about that for a minute. If something had happened to Audra that might cause a scandal to the family, he knew every single one of them would have stood staunchly behind her and helped her no matter what people thought or said.
He remembered something else Jarrod had said, referring to Heath. The Barkleys don't do things by halves. Half-brother was not a term they would ever use. A brother was a brother. Heath was their brother. Nick knew he hadn't been as welcoming as he should have been. He could practically feel Father giving him a look of disapproval.
Then he thought for a minute – what if he had never even seen Father's face? What if he had never heard Father call his name, call proudly "that's my boy!" What if Father had never even laid eyes on him, known he existed? What if there was just a void there, no one there in his place? Nick allowed himself to feel that for a moment. He found it overwhelming, and he grew silent.