Looking for Trouble

by Misha Horne

Still, I didn’t want to wait around for anything like fear or indecision to chime in, so I picked up what little I had and lit out before I had a change of heart.

Doesn’t matter how much money you have, everybody sweats the same.

Sure Enough, folks used to call it as a joke, albeit the nice kind. Six months of walking and wagoning and worrying, when you got to thinking sometimes that the country might stretch forever like purgatory with nowhere to stop, enough felt like goddamn paradise.

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.

“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.

But I couldn’t argue that even though I was in a strange place with a strange person, nowhere near where I’d intended, and should have been itching to leave, it was about the first time in my life I ever felt like sitting still. I was warm and fed, and I slept harder and deeper than I ever could remember. More than that, I felt calm. Safe might even be a better word. Like I was with someone who’d know what to do if there was ever any real trouble.

He sighed again. Seemed to be built of sighs tonight. “I could be patient maybe. Almost feels like… You know, that night you brought me out here, seems like I hardly remember it I was so tired. But you told me it was easier to breathe out here. And you were right. Sometimes I don’t think I took a real breath my whole life before I got out here. And now I catch myself just… being. Sitting still. I didn’t ever think I liked the quiet, but I think I just never knew what it felt like.” I nodded. “Changes you,” I said. I wanted to say more, but I didn’t know what.

I felt born again. I felt whole. I hadn’t seen enough sky my whole life to hold all of what I felt, and I’d seen most all of it. I seemed to come back into my body just as I wrapped my arms around him, grabbing at his back and sides and hips, greedy for handfuls of him, like he was gold, or water, or earth, or every good thing in life that droughted so bad it earned your real appreciation. My whole life had been a drought, it seemed now, and he was filling me so quick I felt like I might overflow.

He hadn’t just kissed me. He hadn’t just touched me. He’d claimed me. Changed me. Told me what I’d always known but hadn’t ever heard from another person. I was just fine. This was alright. I was wanted. I would never be the same again. I wouldn’t want to be.

There wasn’t anywhere I belonged any better than this. I’d come out looking for someplace I could be wild and found someplace that tamed me instead. Found someone willing to push me to be better, but who wanted me just as I was.

My body prickled everywhere with heat. “Christ. You think I don’t want that too, you’re outta your mind. But, we don’t have to treat each other just one way. We can have both. Ain’t no rule that says we can’t be more than one thing.”

“You ain’t the only one who likes to feel useful,” I told him, words forming where they never quite would settle for me before. “I ain’t got no use for people mostly, it’s just how I am. But you… You just hold my interest, the way you talk about things and see things. You make me think different. You make me feel all these different ways, and boy I don’t like change at all, but I like the ways you change me.”

Since the first step you took off that train. I knew you were trouble right then. Just didn’t know how much trouble appealed to me till it came packaged up like you.”

“Did I hurt you?” he asked me. “No,” I told him, honest. “You took it all away.”