When we got back inside and shook the snow off our shoes and jackets, Sheila Renfro asked us to join her for dinner.
Sheila Renfro and I are a lot alike.
She has lived her whole life in Cheyenne Wells, Colorado, where she was born. I have lived my whole life in Billings, Montana, where I was born. She likes routines and things she can rely on. I like the same. She’s very smart—in one evening with her, I learned that she knows almost as much about professional football as I do, including offensive formations and defensive alignments. I even tested her by asking what a dime package is.
She said, “Don’t be silly. It’s when there are six defensive backs.”
She was right.
She is even a Dallas Cowboys fan, just like I am. I asked her why she liked Dallas better than Denver, since Denver is much closer to Cheyenne Wells than Dallas is, and she said, “The Cowboys are America’s Team.”
That kind of logic is impressive.
She received good grades in high school, and I did, too. She said she never felt like she fit in with her classmates, and I know exactly what that is like. I never fit in with my classmates at Billings West High School, either. Despite our good grades, neither of us felt prepared for college, so we didn’t go. I asked her if she has regrets about not going to college—we agreed that regrets are not fun.
She said, “Heck no. I got to stay here and work for my daddy.”
That’s where Sheila Renfro’s story turns sad. When she was twenty-two years old, on August 7, 1997, her parents were killed in a car crash just seven miles out of town as they were coming home from Denver. That left Sheila Renfro all alone.
“They’re in the ground now,” she told me. She took me around her living room and she showed me pictures of her parents. I vaguely remembered both of them from my time in Cheyenne Wells, but that was a long time ago and memories are faulty. In the pictures that were taken toward the end of their lives, when they were much older than when I met them, they look content. Contentedness is a hard thing to quantify—impossible, in fact—but the looks on their faces in the pictures tell a lot. The smiles are genuine and loving. I don’t think you can fake something like that.
“Do you miss them?” I asked Sheila Renfro. I knew this was a silly question. Of course she misses them. It was all I could think of to say.
“Yes,” she said, “but I can’t do anything about it. They’re in the ground now.”
Sheila Renfro told me that she promised herself when her parents died that she would stay in Cheyenne Wells and make sure the motel they built together kept running. She said it has been hard sometimes, that her fortunes ebb and flow with oil activity and agriculture in southeastern Colorado. I knew what she meant. My father’s mood often correlated (I love the word “correlated”) with the price of oil, even long after he left the oil business and went into politics. Most people complain when the price of oil is high, because they know it will cost them more to fill their gas tanks. My father never saw that as a problem. Sheila Renfro doesn’t, either.
“It’s a great motel,” I told her. “You’ve run it well.”
“I’m glad I had the help today,” she said. “I could use it on a full-time basis.”
I told her that maybe things would pick up and she could hire someone. She sort of smiled at that. Then she said it was time to eat.
We had taco soup, which I’d never had before, and Jell-O brand strawberry gelatin. It was a good meal. Kyle liked it, too.
It’s 2:59 a.m. now and I’m no closer to sleep.
I throw off the covers from the bed and limp-walk to the bathroom to get a drink of water. My mouth is dry.
The back of my leg still hurts from where the barbed wire snagged me. Sheila Renfro was nice enough to patch my pants after dinner. She said I could stay in the living room with her while she did her sewing, but I was embarrassed because I was down to my underwear and my shirt, so I went into the bathroom and closed the door, and Kyle stayed in the living room and talked to her.
After she was done with the pants, she came to the bathroom door and said, “Open up. I want to see that cut.”
“No,” I said. “I’m in my underwear.”
“I have seen a man in his underwear before,” she said.
This declaration from her brought to my mind several questions that I wanted to ask—the kind of questions Dr. Buckley has told me are inappropriate. So I kept my mouth closed, even though it was difficult.
I opened the door, and she barged in and knelt in front of me.
“Turn around,” she said.
I did as I was told. Now my underwear-covered butt was in her face. I was so embarrassed.
“Looks like it nicked you,” she said. “Have you had a tetanus shot?”
“November twenty-sixth, two thousand and eight, from Dr. Rex Helton,” I said.
“OK, good. I’m going to put some peroxide on it. Stay where you are.”
She stood and began looking through the cabinet drawers in the bathroom, which I couldn’t see but could hear. Finally she said, “Aha,” and the next thing I knew, the spot on the back of my leg was cold and tingly. Next she pressed hard on my injured spot as she affixed a strip bandage to it.
“Good as new,” she said, and she left. I put on my pants. I had a boner, so they didn’t fit right.
Kyle stirs as I’m heading back to bed.
“What time is it?” he asks. I left the light on in the bathroom by accident, and it is casting a yellow bar across his face.
“It’s 3:03 a.m.”
“Wow.”
“Yes. Why are you awake?”
“I had a dream.”
“About what?”
“I don’t want to say.”
I sit down on the edge of Kyle’s bed, and he sits up and gathers his legs into his arms.
“Was it a bad dream?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“You can tell me about it if you want.”
Kyle sets his forehead on his knees. He speaks, but he doesn’t look at me.
“I’m scared.”
“Of what?”
“You know how you and that lady were talking about how your parents died?”
“Yes.”
“I dreamed that my mom died. She was reaching out for me, and I was reaching out for her, and I couldn’t reach her and she was gone.”
Kyle looks up at me now. He’s crying. I understand it. I feel like crying, too, when I consider such a dream. Donna is my good friend.
I tell Kyle something I’ve never discussed with him.
“Do you remember when we first met?” I ask.
“Yeah. You were painting your garage. I helped you.”
“Did you know that a couple of days after that, I had a dream about you?”
“You did?”
“Yes. I dreamed that you were dangling off the rimrocks above Billings and that I was holding on to you, only I dropped you and you fell.”
Kyle is looking directly at me. He uses the back of his hand to wipe his nose.
“I woke up and I drove to where your mom worked and I asked her to call your grandmother in Laurel and make sure you were OK. I was freaked out, and I freaked out your mom, and for a while she wouldn’t even talk to me.”
“Wow.”
“That was as scared as I’ve ever been, Kyle. I don’t keep statistics on such things, but I’m confident that’s true. But here’s the important thing: What I dreamed wasn’t real. You didn’t fall off the rimrocks. That’s how I know your mom is fine.”