DUST

Briar told me we needed to go for another run because I’d spent the day goofing off.

“Goofing off?  What about our run this morning?  What about all that weight lifting—and the jitterbug dancing you had me do?”

“That wasn’t dancing!”  He sounded disgusted at the thought, but his eyes showed he was grinning inside.  “That was showing you how to move around, side to side, forward and back, while maintaining balance and keeping you able to move quickly in any direction as needed.  That’s the key to both offense and defense. ‘Jitterbug!’ Where in the world do you come by these words?”

I ignored that; I’d already answered him on the subject of my vocabulary.  “Yeah, but it wasn’t goofing off.  It was work and took strenuous effort!”

He rolled his eyes.  “OK, OK, so I’ll reword it.  You need to run after only goofing off half the day.”

“I’ll be happy to,” I said, accommodating him, and then was surprised to realize I actually meant it.  The fact was, I was feeling great.  I’d done my reps till I was ready to scream this morning, but it was all with light weights—Briar had said I wouldn’t get nearly as stiff and sore that way—and it still didn’t take much activity to tire me.  I’d probably know for sure whether the weightlifting had been too much when I got up next morning, but right then, I felt good.

So we ran.  We ran slowly this time, and he took me back up the hill again.  This time, it didn’t seem nearly as steep.  When we got to the top, I took him across the field so he could see the view of the city.  He was as impressed as I’d been.

I noticed he was staying well away from the edge of the cliff.  I asked him about that, teasing him a little.  “Scared of heights much?”

I thought he’d tease me back, or deny it, or something.  Instead, his face was serious.  “Yeah, I guess I am.  Everyone’s got things they don’t especially like, and I’ve never been comfortable in high places where a slip or a stumble can kill you.  But being afraid isn’t bad.  It’s just your senses telling you to be careful.  It’s how you behave when you’re frightened that’s important.  You don’t want to let unreasonable fears stop you from doing what you want or need to do.”

When we got back to the house, Briar told me to shower and get dressed and reminded me that Pat would be arriving soon.  So I showered after first making sure no one was hiding in the trees.  Although I had to admit, it was a little exciting, thinking of Travis hiding and watching me like he’d been.

Briar showered when I was done, and when he was dressed he said we should get started in the kitchen.  “Pat’s bringing the main course, but we can do the rest.”

“The main course?  That sounds fancy.”

“No, but it’ll be nice.  We need to get some potatoes baking, cut up some veggies, make a salad, set the table—all that sort of thing.”

Pat arrived a half hour later.  She was carrying a bottle of wine, two stemmed wine glasses, and a package wrapped in butcher’s paper.  She stopped to peck Briar on the lips, smiled at me and mussed my hair and then said, “Here are the steaks.  I’ve got a couple more things to get out of the car but thought you two could get these started.”

Pat set the package on the counter and opened it while I looked on.  Inside were three deep-purple steaks, each well over an inch thick. 

“Ah,” said Briar.  “She got ‘em.”

“What?” I asked.

“This might be old hat to you, you being a rich kid and all, but it’s special for Pat and me.  You have had filet mignon, I’d guess?”

“No, I don’t think so.  My father had a cook come in after my mother died, and she was Italian.  He said Italian food was the best.  He liked things Italian, maybe because he seemed to love movies about the mob.  I think he had romantic feelings about the mafia; at any rate, he liked the idea of being in charge and doing whatever you wanted, like in The Godfather.  Anyway, he ate out with friends a lot so was seldom home for dinner, which meant the cook was mostly for me. 

I stopped as I remember those lonely meals.  “I ended up eating a lot of pasta dishes.  I almost never had steak.”  What I didn’t say, not wanting to disappoint him, was that I never had understood why other people liked steak so much.  Of course, the steaks I’d had hadn’t looked anything like these.

“Well, these are pretty good steaks.  I think you’ll like them.  We’ll have them with baked potatoes, butter and sour cream; asparagus lightly broiled in olive oil and butter with a squeeze of lemon; and dinner rolls.  That should fill us up.”

“Sounds good,” I said.  There was no doubt I was hungry.  Ever since I’d been here, working and training, I’d been hungry.

Briar seasoned the steaks as I watched, using seasoning salt and pepper and garlic powder, then rubbing all that in with some olive oil.  He let them sit till the potatoes were about done, then set a large frying pan on the stove and turned the heat up to medium high.

“How do you like yours cooked?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve certainly had steak before,” he said.  “How was it cooked?  What did it look like when you cut into it?  The inside?”

“I don’t know what you mean.  It looked the same inside as outside.  Dark brown.”

He just shook his head, looking disgusted.  “Uh, tonight it’ll be different.  You’ll see.”

Briar showed me how to make bleu cheese dressing.  He said if I didn’t like it, there was a jar of vinaigrette in the ’fridge.  I tasted what we’d made and thought it was kind of spicy but really good, too.

Pat came in when everything was ready except the steaks.  She looked over Briar’s shoulder.  “How’re you cooking them?”

“Rare,” he said.

“Good.”

Of course I’d heard of rare steak.  I’d just never eaten it that way.  When my father’s cook fixed it, she cooked it for about twenty minutes.

We all sat at the table and Briar opened the wine.  He gave me just a small glass of it and said I could taste it if I wanted to.  I did.  It wasn’t all that good.  I liked Coke a lot better.  Dinner was really the only time Briar liked me drinking anything but water or orange juice, so I was happy to have it.  Other times, it was almost always water.

The steak looked a little scary to me, almost like it was still bleeding when I cut into it.  The cutting part surprised me.  Before, with steaks, I’d had to really work to cut them, and they were much thinner than these.  With these, I hardly needed the steak knife.  The knife just sliced right through the steak without any effort on my part.  But the inside was still red, and I wondered if it was still raw.

I cut a small piece and cautiously tasted it.  Briar and Pat were watching, and when they saw my reaction, they smiled.

I chewed it, although I hardly need to as it almost melted in my mouth.  I sliced a bigger piece off and forked it in, and then was cutting another bite while still chewing.

Briar laughed.  “That’s what steak is supposed to taste like.  Enjoy it!”

Which is exactly what I did.  We ate in relative silence as the food was so good.  The fact the exercise I’d been getting had my appetite doing a dance all the time didn’t hurt, either.  It was a terrific meal, and I made the most of it.

When the food was entirely gone, I pushed back my chair a little and sighed.  Briar and Pat still had some wine left and were sipping it with obvious pleasure.  I liked the mood around that table.  There was an atmosphere in the kitchen and all through the meal that I’d never experienced before: a feeling of warmth and closeness, of family.  A feeling that the three of us weren’t simply comfortable together, but that we all liked each other.

Pat broke the silence.  “Could you clear the table, Dustin, while I go get something?  Briar, I need your help.”

I stood up with some sorrow that the meal was over, but I’d gotten used to helping with the chores of the house in just a few short days.  It didn’t seem like helping was a chore.  It seemed to be doing my part to keep things running smoothly.  I was part of making things work.  What I did had value.

The table was empty when I heard them returning.  Pat called out, “Sit down, Dustin,” so I did, and then they walked in, and I got the surprise of my life.

Pat was carrying a cake with 14 candles on it, all of them burning, and Briar was right behind her with some gift-wrapped packages in his arms.  As they walked in, Pat began singing and Briar jumped right in with her.  “Happy Birthday to you…”

They sang the whole song right to the end, Briar trying to harmonize on the last four notes and failing miserably.  She set the cake in front of me while singing.  When they were done, I took my eyes off the cake and looked at them, then had to wipe my eyes.  I’d never had a birthday celebration that I could remember.  Maybe when I was little with my mother, but I didn’t know; I had no memory of one.  This was incredible.

Pat got forks and a knife, and Briar got some ice cream from the freezer.  After she had me make a wish—which was private but included Travis—and I had blown out the candles, Pat told me it was tradition for the birthday boy to make the first cut in the cake, and I tentatively did so.  Then she took over.  It was a chocolate cake with mocha frosting and filling.  Briar had some coffee ice cream.  It was all wonderful, and even after that huge dinner, I cleaned my plate.

There were four gifts.  The first I opened was a box containing three books, new SF ones by authors I knew and liked.  The second was long and narrow and turned out to be a .22 rifle!  Briar said a boy should know how to shoot, and that he’d teach me.

The third turned out to be a cell phone, my own phone!  I couldn’t believe it.  Most of the kids at school had one, but my father hadn’t let me have one.  It wasn’t the cost of the plan that had bothered him; he had a fortune.  I thought maybe he didn’t want me to have as much freedom as a phone would have given me.  Now, I had one!  I knew Travis had a phone, too.  I’d seen it, and he said it was so his customers could call him.  Now I had a way to call him, and him me!

The fourth gift was a small box that seemed to have nothing in it when I shook it.  I tore off the paper and found it was a box with a note in it.  All it said was, ‘Go out front.’  I looked at Pat, and she just grinned, so I got up and went to the front door and looked outside.

Sitting right in the middle of all the building supplies was a brand new Moped with a big red ribbon and bow attached.

I was stunned.  I hadn’t known they knew when my birthday was, I hadn’t had any idea they’d want to celebrate it even if they had known, and I’d never thought they’d do anything like this.  I hadn’t thought anyone would.

I turned around and they were standing behind me, watching me and grinning.  I threw myself at Pat, and she caught me and hugged me.  I disengaged and looked at Briar, and he stuck out his hand for me to shake.  No way, I thought, no way, and jumped into his arms as well. I didn’t let go for a long time, either, long enough that when I did, his shirt was wet but I was no longer crying.

When you’ve lived your life without love, and then you find it, it can be overwhelming.

I loved the gifts.  They told me something that perhaps Briar and Pat hadn’t even thought of when they’d picked them out, but I did as soon as I looked at them.  I’d never, ever have got something like those things from my father.  What those gifts showed me was that Briar and Pat both felt I was responsible enough to have such things.  A rifle, and a motor scooter, and a phone. 

Because my father had always thought of me as an incompetent little boy, I’d thought of myself that way, too.  But you don’t give an incompetent little boy a motor scooter or a rifle or a phone.    To Briar and Pat, I wasn’t an incompetent little boy.  To them, I was a responsible adolescent.

I just stared at them and the tears came again.  These people really understood me and gave me credit for a maturity I didn’t even think I had.  They believed in me.  I quickly ran outside to look at the Moped, to admire it, and to try to get my emotions under control.

When I was composed enough, I went back inside.

Pat and Briar were sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee, and I could hear them talking as I came in.  I stopped when I heard Pat say, “I still don’t like him having a rifle.  What does he need it for?”

I stopped because I wanted to hear the answer.

“It’ll give him a sense of responsibility, and more confidence in himself if he learns to shoot accurately, which I think he will.  Look how he’s doing with everything he’s trying this summer.  He’ll soon be using the tools as well as I do, he’s making progress on the weights because he uses them correctly and doesn’t overdo it, and the running!  Pretty soon I’ll be struggling to keep up with him.  He’s learning how to spar, and if he keeps trying like he has with everything else, he’ll pick that up, too.  He’s amazing.  The kid had no confidence at all when we got him, but it was because he’d never tried anything, never been shown how, and because everyone kept telling him he was worthless.”

I peeked around the corner and saw Briar reach out and cover Pat’s hand with his.  “I think the rifle will be more of the same.  Besides, I love seeing him happy, and every boy I’ve ever known has loved learning to shoot a rifle.  Owning one is just another step forward for him.”

I had to go outside and visit the Moped again before I could return to sit with them.  When I did, Briar was having another piece of cake.  I did, too, just to keep him company.  Well, maybe it was because the cake was wonderful.

When I went to bed that night, even as tired as I was, I had a lot to think about.  The Moped was going to allow me to visit Travis and for the two of us to ride around the area together.  There were many dirt roads, he’d told me, and almost no traffic.  It was a hilly area, hard to ride bikes in, but with the Moped, we could go almost anywhere all by ourselves.  We could have lots of fun exploring, and it was even legal because they allowed a kid to get a special license at 14.

So was the Moped my best present?  No, not at all.  The best present hadn’t come with fancy paper and a ribbon.  It was the unspoken love Briar and Pat were giving me.  They really cared for me!  Pat had said while we were eating the cake that they’d wanted to make up for birthdays past when there’d been no recognition of the special days at all.  I’d asked her how she’d known, both when it was and that there’d been no recognition of it, and she said she was working with Briar’s lawyer, getting everything worked out for my father to sign over custody along with the agreement about the financial aspects of it that he’d agreed to.  The lawyer had had conversations with my father, and he’d learned when my birthday was, but only by getting a copy of my birth certificate.  He’d told Pat that my father had no idea what the date was, and when asked, said they’d never paid any attention to birthdays, that it was a girly thing to do, that men ignored sentimental stuff like that and he was trying to make a man of me.  So, Pat had been pretty sure I’d never had much, or anything, for my birthdays.  She’d wanted for this one to be special, and Briar had agreed and had paid for everything.

I’d told them that the presents were wonderful and that I couldn’t thank them enough, but the fact they cared about me and wanted the day to be special was even better.  And that I loved them both.

Pat said she loved me, too, and Briar got up quickly, saying he needed to make some coffee to wash down the cake.

We didn’t talk about the other great present I got that day—that was private—but I was sure thinking about it.  I now had a friend, Travis, and had all the time in the world to dream about where that friendship would take us.