The Farmer's Son

Chapter 33 The Sound of Silence

Ray stared with wide, deep eyes at the face in the ambient glow from the flashlight. Alan returned the look, his own eyes soft and dark. Ray opened his mouth and tried to speak, the knob in his throat bobbing up and down, but no sound would come from the dry throat.

Alan's gaze flicked down to the movement in Ray's throat. "Alright, don't hurt yourself," he said. "You're too dehydrated. When was the last time you had anything to drink?"

For the first time Ray looked away from the other young man's face and towards his bag, where the bottle of water he'd filled at the well earlier that day lay. It was empty. Alan followed his gaze with the beam of his flashlight and sighed.

"You know if you died here, no one would find your body until next year?" Alan said.

"How did you find me?" Ray asked, his forced voice a hoarse croak.

Alan paused a moment, returning his gaze to the tired blue eyes that were colorless in the flashlight. "It was a group effort, really," he finally said. "Hank called Mae, who called Pa, who started calling around to see if anyone else had seen you, and found Cecil, who saw you on the road when he was passing on his tractor, and finally Jamie, who saw a tall man in a cowboy hat at Dusty's earlier today."

"That killed the rat, that ate the malt, that lay in the house that Jack built," Ray said, with a dry, dusty chuckle that made him cough.

"Okay," Alan said. "Stop. You really will hurt yourself."

Alan's gaze flicked over Ray's disheveled hair and unshaven face, the red rimmed eyes and haggard cheeks. It had been less than two weeks since Ray left, but circumstances and events had taken their toll on him. Physically and, Alan could tell, mentally. He wondered if this was what Ray's life had been like when he first left the ranch in search of Joel: directionless, hopeless—homeless.

Except now, he wasn't homeless.

"What are you doing here, Ray?" Alan asked, continuing his thoughts aloud. "If you were back, why didn't you come back to the farm?"

From under his disheveled hair Ray's eyes glanced up at Alan then down. There was no need to say anything. They both remembered how they parted.

Alan sighed. "I'm sorry," he said. "I was angry. I thought if I said that you couldn't come back, maybe you wouldn't leave in the first place."

"I wish I hadn't."

Rubbing his hand slowly up and down Bear's back as the dog sat contentedly between his outstretched legs, Ray's voice was barely a whisper. It was unclear if he'd meant to say it aloud or was even aware that he had.

Blinking in surprise, Alan took another look at him, this time truly feeling the air of despair that came with sitting alone in an abandoned home. He reached out impulsively to touch Ray's face, but at the last second hesitated, then dropped his hand to stroke Bear's head instead.

"What are you going to do?" Alan asked. "I was half kidding before, but if you keep wandering around during a heat wave with no water, you really will die." He paused. "Will you come back with me?"

Ray was silent. His gaze lowered to Bear, he rubbed his hands through the warm, soft fur contemplatively. "Do you really want me to?" he asked quietly.

"I'm here, aren't I?"

Bloodshot eyes looked up. "What are you doing here?" he asked, the thought occurring to him for the first time. "Jamie said I was at Dusty's."

His eyes glittered in the ambient light as Alan smiled. "I had a hunch."

Looking up at the eyes and smile, Ray swallowed.