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emmettrook · 5 years ago

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westbound

“Em, hey. What’s up?”

He should be asking Harper what’s up—she normally calls about nine in the morning, on her way to Livingston if she needs to go to the feed or hardware store after chores. Her calls are usually short, fitting into the window of time between the valley when cell service cuts out and her arrival in town, but this call’s from the house number. “You ain’t drivin’?”

“No, I’m in the office. Em, listen…”

By now Emmett knows that a pause, any request for extra attention, means Harper is serious. Normally she just takes it for granted that people are listening and will obey—not many people ignore Harper Rook. But this time her voice is softer, almost tentative, if tentative had ever been a thing Harper did. “…You heard Doug broke his neck?”

Doug O’Carroll, Jimmy’s father. A second father to Emmett, when he’d lived at home. Janey gives a disgruntled rumble as Emmett sits up, jostling her off his legs, and a moment later she hops off the couch to follow his pacing. “--What?”

“He’s okay—a colt he was startin’ fell over on him, that’s all. But he just had surgery this morning, and they say it’ll be months before he can get back to work, and it’s too much for Andie to take care of on her own.”

Well—Emmett’s starting to get an idea of where this is headed.

Reaching for the bottle of whiskey he’d tried to keep out of sight in a cabinet, he holds his phone on his shoulder as he pours a glass. The VA people’d said he shouldn’t treat alcohol as a cure—but that doesn’t mean it won’t help.

“I sent Chase over there,” Harper says, “but it’s a lot to handle, and he’s doin’ more learnin’ than gettin’ things done—”

Emmett takes a drink.

“I’m not asking you to come back,” Harper says. “Just think about it.”

“Yeah, okay.”

He’ll think about it, all right. After he hangs up he sits on the couch and pets Janey and sips his whiskey and thinks about it. But the truth is, there’s no point in thinking. His mind’s made up by the sole fact that Jimmy would have gone to help Em’s folks in a heartbeat. Jimmy wouldn’t have cared if too many bad things had happened for home to feel the same as it used to, or if being in familiar places without his best friend felt like a knife in the heart. Jimmy wouldn’t have cared how hard anything was when what mattered was family, or friends who were family in all but blood ties. If there was a job to do, and his folks needed help, Jimmy would have known the only answer was to step in and do it.

“We don’t got a choice,” Em tells Janey as he packs up his duffel. “You wanna go chase cows?”

Janey, he thinks, has probably never seen a cow before.

Maybe he’ll come back to Chicago, he thinks the next day, as he hefts his too-dusty saddle into the backseat and Janey jumps in beside it, tail wagging, tongue out. Maybe he won’t be able to take living out west again. Maybe he’ll miss the city. Maybe he’ll miss the gang.

But maybe, for Jimmy’s sake, he’ll learn to stay.

When he leads Red out of the trailer at the O’Carrolls’ three days later, Jimmy’s horse Buck sticks his head over the fence, nickering a welcome. Both horses are older now, Buck’s knees swollen with arthritis, white hairs mixing with the sorrel of Red’s coat, but they remember each other. When Emmett sends Red after some cattle the next day Red remembers that, too. And Emmett remembers the creak of the saddle, the feel of a rope in his hands, the snugness of chaps cinched around his legs to block the cold. He’s sore the next day, from riding, but he’ll get used to it again. This life isn’t something he can forget—and for once, it’s not something he wants to.

It’s gonna be hard. Emmett knows that, just as plain as he’d known he’d had no other choice but to come back. And there’s gonna be days when he wishes he was still in Chicago. But even though there’ll be demons to face, and loneliness to fill, and things in his past he can’t justify—he’s home. And that’s the first step, even if it’s a long road ahead.

“C’mon, Janey,” he calls, as she digs at a marmot burrow. “Let’s go, Red.”

And they go.

#CALAMITY JANE ROOK | janey #ROOK RANCH | family and home #self para

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emmettrook · 5 years ago

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black friday

Maybe it was missing his family on Thanksgiving.

The Kovali held a party, and while he was there he’d been able to forget what he was missing, but it wasn’t the same—not when Dakota wasn’t there to turn on the Macy’s Day parade because she loved to see the balloons, or when the kids (even though they weren’t kids anymore) didn’t get sent outside to burn off energy while the turkey was in the oven, or when they didn’t pile into one of the ranch trucks to drive out and cut a Christmas tree. Molly facetimed later that day, right before they sat down for dinner in Montana, but it wasn’t the same.

Maybe it was the fact that, despite the pauses and delays of scant cell service on Molly’s end, he could see Jimmy’s parents there. The O’Carroll family was small, so they’d always come over, the adults gathered at one end of the table and the “kids”—no matter how old—at the other. So it was nothing new—but before, Jimmy’d been there. Emmett had been there. And now they were missing, for different reasons.

And maybe that was why Emmett dreamed about the war again. Because it had split his life into before and after, and no matter how many times he’d replayed it in his dreams he kept seeing the truck explode. Kept seeing Jimmy die again

and again

and again.

And that was why Emmett spent Black Friday drinking.

He hadn’t planned it like that. It’d started like normal, waking up with a shower to wash off the cold sweat, a glass of whiskey to try to chase away the memories. A walk for Janey. A beer with lunch to take the edge off. And when it didn’t, he’d gone to Farley’s, thinking he’d only be there a few hours.

But Dave was there, his wife having ditched him for shopping, and then Matt came in, and Aaron, and they played pool, and shot the breeze, and Anna and Dylan came in for the Cincinnati vs. Memphis game and got them all into watching (as long as they promised to root for Memphis), and then of course they had to celebrate when Memphis won, and then Matt’s girlfriend showed up with a bunch of her friends, and Emmett wasn’t quite sure if the girl he’d gone home with was one of those friends or just somebody else who’d happened to be there. He wasn’t quite sure what her name was, either—honestly, at that point he wasn’t sure he even remembered his own name. He didn’t remember much of anything, except that when they’d left Farley’s it’d been dark out, and that had surprised him. He hadn’t thought they’d been there that long.

And he hadn’t planned on spending all night with a stranger. But when he finally woke up and checked the time—11:41 Saturday morning, his battery on 2%--Janey’s grinning face lit up his lockscreen.

SHIT.

Tripping around the half-darkened room, collecting his clothes with his head pounding and mouth dry, he left without waking the girl up, stumbling into the blinding daylight and too-loud city noise of a Chicago hangover.

He didn’t know where his truck was—outside Farley’s, probably with a ticket on the windshield, or maybe towed already. Hell, he didn’t even know where he was, but he caught a taxi before making it to the corner to read the street signs. He’d been gone almost 24 hours—poor Janey would be ready to burst.

And she was, running out the door as soon as he opened it and doing her business without pausing to chase the cat who’d been perched on the railing or inspect the split trash bag someone hadn’t bothered to throw in the dumpster. “Sorry, kid,” Emmett told her, scratching her ears once she’d come back to him. He hadn’t made it farther than the stairway. “You have a crazy night too?”

But when they got back inside, he realized that she’d had a hungry night, and a thirsty one. She’d been clawing at the cabinet where he kept her food—he couldn’t fault her for that—and her water bowl stood nearly empty, and a pang of guilt ran deeper than his headache. Shit.

“Sorry,” he told her again, scooping a generous portion of kibble into her dish and filling her water while she wolfed it down. “I didn’t mean to…I thought I was comin’ back.” He’d thought he was going to be back so much sooner. He’d thought he was going to take care of her. He’d thought he was going to be okay.

But when he went to crash on his bed, offering a “C’mon, bud” and figuring she’d be happy to jump up and flop next to him—she didn’t come.

“Janey?”

She was still in the kitchen, watching him with an expression he couldn’t place. “Janey,” he said again, “here, girl.”

But she still didn’t come, and when he finally ordered her because he couldn’t figure out what else to do, she crouched low to the ground, slinking toward him like she hadn’t done since the first day he’d brought her home, when she’d been brand-new and not sure whether to trust him.

And Emmett felt like shit, but he got up again, sitting on the edge of the bed to call her over—and then he saw that she’d had an accident on the floor in the corner, and she looked so damn guilty about it, like it was her fault when the fault was all his, and his heart broke.

“Jane,” he said, and was crying, and she was at his side, whining and licking his face like he was the one who needed comfort, and she was more than he’d ever deserve. “Janey—I’m sorry—I’m so sorry, baby—”

She wormed her way into his lap, all sixty pounds of her, and whined in his ear and pawed at his arms and let him cry in her neck, and he gave her a hundred apologies she couldn’t understand and forgot about his hangover because he’d been out drinking while she was here, alone, hungry and guilty and trying her best and not knowing it wasn’t her fault—

It was his fault. It was his, and he knew it, and for the first time he couldn’t try to deny that something needed to change.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, “I won’t leave ya again—promise—”

And he didn’t deserve it, but she stayed with him, steadfast and loyal and dependable, like he should have been, like he wanted to be.

Like he wished he’d been for Jimmy.

“C’mon,” he said finally, crawling back into bed. He’d clean up after her later—he had lots of cleaning up to do. Starting with his own mind.

So, as Janey stretched out alongside him, thumping her tail against his knee and breathing dog breath against his face, he dug his phone from his pocket—1% battery. Caught in the nick of time.

[text: Doc] You know what you said in the ER?

Emmett had come in a few weeks before with a boxer’s fracture—maybe unsurprising on its own, but it’d been 3 a.m. on a weeknight. And although he hadn’t told Roe why he’d punched a wall—hadn’t told him about the dreams, and the panic attacks, and the rage at how helpless he felt—Roe had known something was going on. And Emmett hadn’t listened, then.

But he needed to, now. For Janey’s sake, if not his own.

[text: Doc] You got some of those numbers?

His phone died seconds after he’d sent the text, and he fished around for the charger, plugging it in and turning it on silent. He’d check later, after a nap, maybe. Janey would wake him up.

Running his hand over her skull—the same hand she’d bitten when he’d rescued her, the same hand he’d broken—he closed his eyes, settling in despite how much she smelled like a dog. She needed a bath, at some point. One more thing to clean up.

“You and me, kid,” he mumbled. “We’re gonna figure this shit out.”

He sighed; she licked his hand.

“Promise.”

#CALAMITY JANE ROOK | janey #emmett and roe tag tbd #self para

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