Looking for Trouble

by Misha Horne

It wasn’t nothing personal. I just had no use for people. They wore me out, was all. I didn’t crave company the way most folks seemed to, and it took a lot of work out of me to pretend I did.

I had an odd feeling I was in a place where someone had just come along and swiped an eraser across most of it. Town was there, I guessed, but just barely. There were people around, but not any crowds. There were buildings, but they stopped going up after two levels, even on what looked to be the main street, which seemed to stretch out a long way, but not actually go anywhere or offer much.

I could half believe I was in a dream. Will Kaplan was just the type to show up in one of my dreams— the kind that made me frustrated and embarrassed after.

Jesse Morgan, whoever he was, got my blood pumping and my tongue moving, and no matter how hard I tried to push it down, that odd feeling he gave me was as stubborn as I was, which didn’t hardly seem fair.

He was all the things I wasn’t, all the things I’d ever been drawn to without knowing why, loud and pretty just like the damn train. His soft face and hard sass were stirring up all kinds of things in me I hadn’t readied myself for when I headed into town today.

I half wished I really was taking him back home to give him a good thrashing, just to put his head on straight. With that mouth, he just about begged for it.

His brown pants were worn, but lord, he wore ’em well. A person would have to be blind not to notice, and I wasn’t sure even that would have done it.

About every part of him was in need of repair, and if I had any weakness, I reckon it was strays.

I wasn’t sure what appealed to me more— the satisfaction of helping put someone back together who seemed in such clear need of direction, or the surprised jolt of attraction when he did what I told him. And I wasn’t hardly sure why either appealed to me at all. But, together, they cut through me into places I hadn’t thought were real, and in some ways I felt as dazed as he looked.

I sat there looking back at him across the table, drinking in his even temper like it was whiskey and cold water, quenching me all the places I was dry, cooling me all the places I was hot. Except for the pit of my belly, which had caught fire the first minute I saw him and was smoldering still.

If you can run your mind half as quick as you run your mouth, you’ll pick up alright.

Traveling without knowing what would happen when you got where you were going made you feel like you were falling all the time. Made you clutch at anything in the dark. It was good to remind myself of that.

Kindness came at me like a kick in the gut, and I wanted to latch onto it, like a stray dog. I was that chicken, I realized. Wanting attention, but ready to peck people away when I got it. I was so out of tune with myself, I felt sick.

It seemed easy to agree with him, even when I wanted to argue. He just made everything seem simple when I was sure better at tangling things up.

He’s from some wild lot and he ain’t half broke yet. He’s out here till he cools off enough for me to mess with him.” “How do you break a horse?” He shrugged, jiggling at a fence post and then another as we walked, all of them standing sturdy. “Ain’t no solid set rule, really. Depends some on the horse. But you gotta let him know you’re boss and keep letting him know till he figures out you mean it. Some folks try and force the wild out of ’em, but that don’t work, my opinion. Just makes ’em a different kind of wild.”

“Guess I ain’t got much right to complain about the train, do I?” he finally said. I shook my head. “Don’t work that way. Tough times don’t measure cup for cup.

I couldn’t remember ever getting so short of breath when someone rolled their eyes at me.

The little bit he’d told me about himself, that he’d shown about himself, didn’t add up to much that would make a good list. But some people weren’t made to be figured on paper.

an explosion of a man filled with spit and sass I was itching to tame six ways to Sunday.

When I stood watching him try the things I’d tried to show him, he got nervous in a way I’d only seen animals get nervous. Rough-shy, my daddy used to call it, when a sweet horse got startled and turned angry.