Sunbathing sounds like an indulgence and we always seemed to skulk in shadows.
“Your father set you up to carry a heavy burden,” Isaiah finally says.
“Life sucks.”
“Yeah, but why don’t you let us carry some of it for a while?”
I pop my mouth open to tell Isaiah to back off when we notice Logan walking from wherever he had disappeared. He wears his baseball hat, the bill tugged low, and his pack is on his back. His hands are shoved in his pockets and he just looks so...alone.
My heart twists. I understand alone. “None of his friends knew?”
“No, and they’re really fucking pissed.”
“Are you?” I glance over at Isaiah to read his expression.
His shoulders move up then down before he tears at a weed in the ground. “I get it, but don’t. I consider him a friend.”
Isaiah’s gray eyes aren’t storm clouds which means he’s not mad, just hurt. Probably like the rest of the guys in the cabin. Not one of us deal with hurt well. Anger is more of a friend we rely on. “What does type 1 diabetes mean?”
“Don’t know. West is the only one with a fancy enough of a cell plan for internet service and he’s trying to read up on it now. Sounds scary. Confusing, too.”
Sounds a lot like me. “Can he die from it?”
“I don’t know. I hope not.”
A tiny bit of the anger I had recedes, not because I’m happy he told, but for the first time I slightly understand why he betrayed me. Logan keeps saying he doesn’t want me to die and thinking that there’s something wrong inside of him that could go wrong, like a ticking time bomb, creates an edge of fear in my soul. I don’t want Logan to die, either.
Understanding someone’s point of view, it turns out, can be a real bitch, especially when I’m hell-bent on not feeling up to forgiving.
Logan
Sun’s high in the sky, baking every single one of us. Sweat pours off me and my muscles scream in protest with each new bale I pick up and toss onto the flatbed. No one’s talking. Not unusual for when the work goes on for so long and has been this intense, but no one’s said a word since I got back and we started.
The pace is steady and ruthless. Chris drives the tractor that pulls the flatbed we walk beside. It’s not a blistering pace, but when having to heave heavy blocks of hay from the ground to the flatbed while keeping up with the trailer in a 110 heat index...it’s grueling.
I slam the hooks into yet another block of hay and drop it off at Ryan’s feet. He’s on the flatbed stacking. Besides driving the tractor, no job back here is easy. It’s the type that causes blisters that pop open and bleed. It’s the type that causes you to pass out at night without the thought of eating. It’s the type that drives you into your own mind and causes you to question who you are as a person...as a man, and I keep hearing my father’s words over again... You don’t know who you are.
The tractor halts and so do we. In front of me, Isaiah wipes his arm across his forehead and a new rain of sweat plummets down.
I glance up and there’s no more room for hay. It’s stacked six by six up and down. Now we head to the barn and begin the next torture of tossing into the loft. Isaiah swears as he removes his gloves and my hands feel just as raw and red as his.
Ryan offers me a hand. I accept it and pull myself up and onto the side of the stacked bales of hay. When he lets me go, he gives the same offer to Isaiah. Isaiah eyes him, but then accepts. The two of them have a strange relationship. Ryan loves Beth, Isaiah once loved her too, now Isaiah and Beth are friends. That makes Isaiah and Ryan friends by default.
It’s fucked-up logic, but fucked-up describes this group well.
Once Noah is on, Chris takes off for the barn. I support myself against the hay, my feet feel hot in my boots, matching the rest of me that’s sunburned. The flatbed jostles over the lazy hills and dips abruptly with the camouflaged holes. It takes time to reach the barn, but not enough for my body to have rested.
Work like this is nonstop, demanding, and constant. Chris’s grandfather pays us good money