Bunkhouse Boys

Excerpt

Bunkhouse Boys
Marie Piper © 2016
All rights reserved

Kenny had always been a terrible sleeper. He’d never been one to just lie down and close his eyes and dream. Always, he’d be the one still up hours after everyone else. He became real familiar with the ceilings of the places he slept, from the sod house of his childhood to the different bunkhouses at the ranches and farms he’d worked at as he grew to a man. He came to know lots of holes in the boards that made walls, and the stitching of the blankets that warmed him. Even at twenty-five years old and employed at the Tate ranch where the boss ran his boys hard from sunup to sundown, Kenny could never simply just go to sleep.

Of course, he was wide awake and pulling at the loose string of a missing button on his long underwear the night Blue snuck back into the bunkhouse. Everyone else had drifted off hours ago, and as Blue made his way through the dark room, his long tan duster caught the moonlight and made him look like a ghost. Blue took off his coat and lay back on his bunk, which was next to Kenny’s. The wood of the bedframe creaked under his weight. Blue was big man, tall and broad-shouldered, and he filled every inch of his bed from top to bottom. He dropped his boots off the bed, rustled a bit, and his pants followed after his boots.

Unseen, Kenny rolled his eyes in the dark.

All the boys drank at the saloon a few miles away more often than they should, but Blue was the most relentless about it. Every night after supper, unless he was on duty, Blue would take off to town and not come back until his words were slurred and the reek of booze came from him. He’d stomp through the room noisily and wake half the boys before he even got to his bunk.

For a moment, the room was silent save for the sounds of snores and mumbles and farts, same as any room full of sleeping men. Kenny let go of his string and started counting the planks on the bunk above his head. Duncan snored loudly up there. Not many of the other fellows liked him, on account of his being a loud-mouthed brute who always seemed to be ready to pick on those younger, smaller, or different than he liked.

A quiet sound caught Kenny’s attention, the sound of an arm against a blanket. It was coming from Blue’s bunk. Kenny could tell even in the darkness what he was doing. The motion, the rhythm—Blue was yanking at himself. In a room full of men, this was not unusual. Still, Kenny turned his head toward Blue’s bunk. In a peek from the moonlight, he could see Blue’s blanket moving on his lap.

“You like watchin’ me?” Blue whispered.