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"A Boy Made Of Quiet"
(Bogalusa, 2004)
There was a stillness to Bogalusa that didn't feel holy, the kind that settled like mold in the bones, that pressed down on skin like a slow rot. It was a town built on smoke and sawdust, where the pine mill coughed all day and the churches whispered all night, and nothing changed but the seasons and the faces buried in the red clay.
Men sat in front of the feed store from sunup to dusk, speaking in quiet threats and spit. The women walked fast, eyes down, hands gripping purses like secrets. Kids played rough, dirt on their knees and names in their mouths that stung sharper than wasps. And if you were born wrong, the wrong color, the wrong name, or the wrong hunger in your chest, Bogalusa made sure you never forgot it.
At the edge of town, right where the paved road lost interest and turned to gravel, sat a slumped little shotgun house with sagging gutters and a caved porch.
That's where Blake Buckley lived when he was eight.
The yard was mostly weeds and rusted car parts, with a plastic bucket in the corner that caught rainwater like it was trying to be useful. A clothesline ran from the porch to a fence post that a hurricane had leaned sideways three years back and never set right.
Inside, the air was stuffy with the scent of beer and something faintly metallic, old blood, maybe, or something worse. Blake's daddy, Curtis, worked at the mill when he wasn't drinking or throwing punches. And his mama, Louella, drifted through the house like a ghost with a cigarette, saying little and caring less.
They didn't beat Blake, not exactly. Not the way folks in town meant when they said beating. But he'd been knocked down more times than he could count, had his wrist yanked hard enough to bruise, been told more than once that boys weren't made for crying, weren't made for talking neither.
So Blake learned to be quiet.
He learned to cook a little, mostly rice and beans. Learned to tie his shoes with broken laces and patch holes in his jeans with duct tape. He learned how to wait out his daddy's rages, eyes fixed on the shadows on the wall, listening for the shift in breath that meant it was safe again.
At school, he spoke with a drawl he didn't know he had, sat in the back, and didn't raise his hand even when he knew the answer. The other boys called him trailer trash, ghost boy, or weird, though they weren't sure why. Girls left him alone. Grown folks looked at him with pity, or else not at all.
But through all of it, the silence, the scraps of food, the cold stares, Blake's heart stayed soft.
He'd feed stray cats from his lunch scraps. Sit beside the quiet kids at recess, even if they had nothing to say. When he found a baby bird fallen from its nest one summer, he carried it home in a shoebox and tried to feed it soaked bread, crying when it didn't make it through the night.
He didn't know why he cried. Just that the world had too many dead things in it already, and he didn't want to be one of them.
Sometimes, he'd sneak out onto the porch with a threadbare blanket late at night and stare up at the stars. The night sky was the only place that didn't judge him, didn't yell, didn't turn cold. He'd lie there counting the constellations, whispering their names like prayers, telling himself that maybe someday he'd get out of Bogalusa. Maybe he'd find a place where nobody knew his daddy's name, where people didn't look at him like a bruise walking on two feet.
Maybe he'd find a place where he could just be.
And so Blake Buckley grew like a weed in cracked concrete, crooked, stubborn, but reaching for the light anyway.
This particular day was like any other day.
Somewhere in the kitchen, the faucet had started to drip again. Out back, a possum knocked over the metal trash lid and scattered what little they had to scatter.
Blake stood barefoot in the kitchen, one hand on the chipped counter, watching the steam rise off the pot. It was just beans and rice, again. The kind that stuck to the bottom no matter how slow you stirred. He'd managed to heat a slice of cornbread, too, dry, but warm.
He worked quietly, like always, careful not to clang the spoon or shut the cabinet too loudly. Curtis Buckley was passed out in the recliner, boots still on, a bottle hanging loose from one calloused hand, his snores thick and mean.
Blake fixed the plate anyway.
He didn't rush. He smoothed the food just so, wiping a smear from the edge with the cleanest corner of his shirt and setting the fork down straight.
Then, walking with bare feet soft as breath, he carried it into the dim glow of the living room. The TV was on, static hissing in the corner like a warning. The only light came from the streetlamp outside, spilling gold across his father's sleeping face, mouth open, jaw stubbled, eyes sunk deep into their hollows.
Blake set the plate down on the wobbly coffee table.
He hesitated, just for a second, eyes flicking to his father's chest, watching it rise and fall. Still breathing. Still here.
"Just in case you're hungry later," he whispered.
No answer. Of course not.
But Blake said it anyway. Every night, he said it. Like a ritual. Like a hope.
He turned and walked back toward the hallway, the lightning bug glow trailing through the broken blinds. Before heading to his room, he stopped at the back door and opened it slowly.
There, on the porch, waited the little gray stray he'd been feeding for three weeks, thin as thread and too proud to meow. Blake knelt, setting down a paper plate with a spoonful of beans and some torn bread.
"There you go," he murmured. "Ain't much, but it's somethin'."
The cat eyed him, then crept forward and ate.
Blake sat beside it for a while, knees drawn to his chest. The stars were bright that night, clearer than they had any right to be over a place so full of hurt. He traced the constellations with his finger: Orion, Cassiopeia, the Little Dipper. Said their names under his breath, like they were friends.
Inside, his shoes were lined up at the edge of the bed, perfectly spaced. His schoolbooks stacked by size. His alarm clock ticking just loud enough to remind him time was still moving.
These were the things he could hold.
These were the things he could fix.
These were the things that stayed where he left them.
And as the wind rustled through the porch screen and the cat finished her meal beside him, Blake Buckley, eight years old, barefoot, and unloved, found just enough peace in that moment to go on one more day.
*
(Bogalusa, 2007)
Bogalusa's Middle School cafeteria always reeked of sour milk, and the water fountains spat out more rust than water. The teachers were tired, the walls yellowed, and the other kids moved in flocks, loud and restless, teeth bared in too many directions.
Blake walked those halls like a ghost in work boots two sizes too big. He kept his head down, sleeves tugged over bruises, shoelaces double-knotted, and jacket zipped even when the heat pressed thick against the windows.
He wasn't dumb, he just didn't talk.
It was easier that way.
When he did speak, it was quiet. Careful. Like he was afraid of saying the wrong thing and inviting more of the wrong kind of attention. He learned early that silence was safer than softness, and boys who said too much usually got hit first.
A teacher once asked, too sweetly, if he was "developmentally delayed," and Blake had nodded just to make her go away. He knew the words they used didn't always mean what they said, but what they meant always came with spit or fists.
Mostly, he watched.
He knew who could be pushed and who did the pushing. He clocked who flinched when the loud boys yelled, who sat alone at lunch, who never had clean clothes. He noticed every pattern, every shift in breath, every flicker of fear that crossed another kid's face, because he carried the same one himself.
There was a boy in his math class, Grady Ledoux, the preacher's son, all sandy hair and dimples. Grady was kind. Always said hi to Blake in the hallway, even when Blake couldn't quite manage more than a nod. He'd pass him notes sometimes during tests, little jokes or doodles, like he thought Blake might laugh if given a reason.
Blake never laughed. Not out loud. But he kept those notes. Tucked them under his mattress like they were made of gold.
One afternoon, Grady brushed past him in the hallway, fingers barely grazing Blake's hand. Just a touch. Nothing big. But it bloomed like wildfire in Blake's chest, leaving him breathless and wrong and seen.
He didn't sleep that night.
And the next day, he kept his distance.
Because even at twelve years old, Blake knew what that kind of feeling could cost.
What it did cost.
The gym locker room was always worst, tiled and echoing and brutal. On this day, he barely got his shirt over his head when Travis, the meanest seventh-grade boy, snapped a towel across his back.
"Damn, Buckley," Travis sneered, "you bathe in ditch water or just roll in it?"
Laughter. Always laughter.
Blake didn't flinch. He never flinched.
Another voice chimed in, not cruel, just curious. "Why don't you talk, Buckley? What, you mute or somethin'?"
Blake looked up slowly, his eyes steady and flat. He opened his mouth, held it a beat, and then closed it again.
It was all they needed to push harder.
He didn't fight back. He never did. But his silence made them nervous in a way that thrilled them, like poking a sleeping dog to see if it would bite.
That night, he sat in the dark of his room, staring up at the ceiling, thinking of Grady's hand and Travis's laugh and his own useless, locked-up voice.
He didn't cry. Not anymore. Instead, he cleaned his shoes with an old toothbrush, folded his clothes for the next day, and counted the holes in the ceiling tiles.
Control.
Control.
Control.
Being invisible was safer than being wrong, he thought.
Wanting was dangerous.
Speaking gave people permission to use your voice against him.
So Blake retreated. Into silence. Into the careful rituals of tidiness and repetition. Into the places no one else looked. But still, despite it all, his heart didn't harden. Not fully. Not yet.
He still fed the cat. Still noticed the kid crying in the nurse's office. Still saved half his sandwich for a boy with bruises darker than his own.
He didn't ask for thanks.
He didn't speak.
But he cared.
Even when it hurt.
Even when it meant he had to carry that hurt alone.
*
It started with a smile.
Not even one meant for him. Just one that drifted across the hallway, caught in the shuffle of lockers and the screech of sneakers, aimed at someone else, but Blake saw it.
Grady Ledoux smiled like the sun didn't know how to stop shining on him. The preacher's son, of course. They always were.
Grady had perfect posture and calloused fingers from guitar lessons. He was polite, in that practiced, Sunday-morning way, always calling teachers sir and ma'am, carrying extra pencils, and helping the girls with their books. His daddy ran the First Baptist Church on Bogalusa's Main Street, a big man with a deep voice and a firm handshake. His mama wore pearls to the Winn-Dixie and never once looked at Louella Buckley without that tight smile that said everything without saying a thing.
Grady was untouchable. Golden. Safe in a way Blake could never be.
And that made him dangerous.
Blake noticed him first because he was kind. Not performing kindness, but the kind that lingered when no one was looking. One day in gym class, when Blake took a dodgeball to the gut and doubled over, Grady knelt beside him while the other boys laughed.
"You good?" he asked. Just two words. Nothing more.
Blake nodded. Couldn't speak.
After that, it started to happen more. Grady held the door open, passing him a note in class with a joke scribbled on it, "Mrs. Randall's wig lookin' like a squirrel today." This made Blake snort into his arm, the sound shocking even to himself.
He didn't talk back. Not much. But Grady kept trying.
It wasn't love. Not yet. Blake was too young to know what that word even meant. But it was something. A pull. A brightness. A flutter low in the belly that made it hard to breathe when Grady sat too close.
He never told a soul.
He couldn't.
This was Bogalusa.
Boys didn't look at boys here. Not like that.
And Blake already had too many strikes against him, poor, half-wild, from a broken home with a daddy who called anything soft "woman shit."
So he watched Grady from a distance.
Watched the way his hair curled when it rained. Watched the way his eyes lit up when he talked about music. Watched him leave church with his family on Sunday, dressed like a magazine ad, looking like he belonged in a better story.
Blake never touched him. Never even let his fingers graze his by accident. But when he lay in bed at night, eyes wide and heart thundering, he'd picture that easy, careless, safe smile and ache. Not just with want. But with shame. Because he knew it was wrong. At least, that's what they'd told him his whole life. Boys like Blake didn't get to feel things like that. Not for boys like Grady Ledoux.
That kind of love? That kind of longing? It was a sin. A sickness.
So Blake buried it.
Deep.
Like a dog burying a bone it knows it ain't supposed to have.
And in its place, he built silence. Strength. Stone.
And slowly, he let the softness rot.
Weeks later, Blake had just returned from school, his shirt clinging to his back, dusting his sneakers. He walked like always, head down, books tight to his chest, but even that didn't stop what happened on the porch.
Curtis was already there, slumped in the old metal chair, shirtless, a beer balanced on his belly, eyes glassy and narrowed. The radio crackled low with gospel static, and the ashtray on the table beside him was full of cheap cigarette butts and the stench of something half-dead.
Blake hesitated at the screen door, hand on the latch.
"You sweet on that Ledoux boy?"
The voice hit him like a slap, not the volume, but the venom behind it. Blake froze. He didn't move. Didn't breathe.
Curtis leaned forward, the chair creaking. "I asked you a question."
Blake said nothing. His throat closed around the lie he couldn't spit out.
Curtis stood, slow and mean, jaw working under his sunburned skin. "Saw the way you was lookin' at him," he growled. "Ain't no normal boy looks at another like that. You got somethin' wrong in your head, boy?"
Blake stared straight ahead. Into the shadows of the hall. Into the air. Anywhere but at his father.
Curtis stepped closer. "You some kinda little faggot, is that it?"
The word hit like a whip. Ugly and loud, cracking through the air like thunder. Blake flinched, just barely. But not enough to satisfy him.
"You hear me? You best get that shit outta your head. I catch you lookin' at another boy like that again, I swear to God I'll beat it outta you." He jabbed a finger into Blake's chest, hard. "You'll end up like that cousin of mine, the one they found in New Orleans with a dress on and a goddamn needle in his arm. Dead. And rot for it."
Blake didn't speak. Didn't cry. He just nodded. One small, sharp nod.
Curtis stared him down, then spat in the dirt beside the porch steps and turned back to his chair, muttering to himself, like Blake had ruined his evening by existing.
Inside the house, the walls were thin and the air was thicker. Louella never came out from her bedroom. Didn't ask. Didn't care.
That night, Blake packed a pillowcase with a T-shirt, a flashlight, and the spiral-bound notebook where he kept the few notes Grady had passed him in class. Just dumb jokes, mostly. But they were his.
He didn't run away. Not exactly.
He crawled under the house instead. Slid between the lattice boards and into the cool, dry dark beneath the floorboards — the crawlspace, where no one ever looked. Where the air was sweltering but still, and the spiders stayed to their corners, and the dirt was honest.
He lay flat on his back, the earth under him and the wood above. The whole house groaning above his head like it carried the weight of every lie ever told inside it.
He stared up at the beams and joists and shadows, and he imagined what it would be like to sleep somewhere that didn't smell like beer and ash.
Somewhere nobody said his name like it was a threat.
Somewhere he could look at whoever he wanted and not feel dirty for it.
He didn't cry.
But he didn't sleep, either.
He just lay there with the notebook clutched to his chest, listening to the house settle and the night press in, and he made a vow, quiet, sharp, and final.
They won't ever see all of me again.
Not unless I want 'em to.
It was at that moment, buried beneath the floorboards of the house that made him, that Blake Buckley began the slow, silent work of unmaking himself, piece by piece, until only the strong parts remained.
*
It started with rusted concrete weights he found at the edge of the Bogalusa dump, half-buried under a mattress that smelled like rot and rain. The bar was bent, and one of the plates was cracked clean through the middle, but it didn't matter. Blake saw them and knew, instinctively, that they weren't junk.
They were tools.
He dragged them home in a wheelbarrow with a wobbly tire, pushing down the dirt road just as the sun started to dip behind the trees. Nobody asked what he was doing. Nobody ever did.
He cleared space between old tires and a busted weed whacker in the shed behind the house, more a lean-to than a building, with a roof that leaked and spiderwebs thick in every corner. The floor was bare dirt. The only light came from a crack in the tin wall and a flashlight he hung from a nail with a rubber band.
That first night, he could barely lift the bar. His arms shook. His palms burned. His breath caught in his chest like it didn't want to stay.
But he came back the next night.
And the next.
And the one after that.
He didn't count reps. Didn't have a plan. He just lifted. Bent. Pressed. Grunted. Bled.
Sweat soaked through his shirt collar, pooling at his jeans' waistband. His shoulders ached. His back screamed. His hands blistered, then calloused, then blistered again.
No one cheered.
No one watched.
But the weight didn't lie to him.
When he lifted, the world disappeared. No voices. No threats. No shame. Just the bar, the grind, the breath.
And slowly but surely, he started to change. Not all at once, slow, like river rock smoothed down over years. His arms grew thick with new power. His chest widened. His posture shifted. But more than that, something inside him hardened.
The fear didn't vanish, it calcified. Turned into grit.
At school, the boys who used to jab at his ribs or toss slurs under their breath started looking twice. He didn't fight, he didn't posture, but he stood taller and looked them in the eye a little longer.
He didn't need to swing a fist. His silence was louder now. He didn't cower, and that unnerved people more than anything.
One afternoon, Travis Ray bumped him in the hallway on purpose, sneering, "Watch it, Buckley."
Blake didn't flinch. Didn't speak.
He just stared.
Held Travis's gaze until the other boy looked away.
That was the last time anyone laid a hand on him.
Blake kept lifting. Kept building.
Not for girls. Not for boys. Not for show.
But because every rep made the memory of his father smaller.
Every drop of sweat was a piece of shame scrubbed clean.
Every new muscle was another inch of ground between who he was and who he refused to be.
He learned the power of silence.
The weight of his own body.
The sacredness of control.
And in that rusted shed in Bogalusa, Blake Buckley stopped being prey.
He was still quiet.
Still haunted.
But now, he had a body like stone, and a soul that refused to break.
*
(Bogalusa, 2011)
The Louisiana heat came down meaner than usual the summer Blake turned fifteen. School had let out, but there was no such thing as summer break when your family ran on fumes and borrowed money.
Curtis had been out of work since March. Louella barely spoke. The fridge was mostly shadows and a few old packets of soy sauce. Blake was stronger now, tall and broad-shouldered, his silence no longer mistaken for weakness, but he was still just a kid, and kids couldn't put food on the table.
That's when he met Tom Earl.
Tom ran a garage at the edge of town, Earl's Auto & Radiator, a tin-roofed cinderblock building with grease-stained floors, faded signs, and a line of busted trucks out back that never seemed to move. He was in his late fifties, wiry but strong, with a face like cracked leather and kind eyes beneath bushy brows. He wore the same blue coveralls every day, a cigarette always tucked behind his ear like punctuation.
Blake showed up at his door after hearing from a boy at school that Tom sometimes took on help. He didn't say much. Just stood there, arms crossed tight, sweat trickling down his neck, eyes wary.
Tom looked him up and down, wiped his hands on a rag, and asked, "You any good at listenin'?" Blake nodded. Tom jerked his chin toward the garage bay. "Then grab a wrench and shut the hell up."
That was all it took.
Tom didn't ask questions, not about Blake's bruises, not about the long sleeves he wore even in July, not about why he didn't talk unless he had to.
What he did was hand him tools and teach him how to listen to engines like they were speaking a different language, how to find the squeal in a belt, or the ghost of a leak in a gasket.
"Work's the closest thing to prayer I ever found," Tom muttered once, tightening a bolt. "Ain't gotta mean nothin' to nobody else, long as it gives your hands somethin' to do."
And when Blake messed up, and he did, plenty, Tom didn't yell. He just fixed the mistake, showed him again, and lit a cigarette.
Late one afternoon, after they'd spent four hours under the same Ford with a bad transmission, Tom sat on the tailgate, cracked a Coke, and looked over at Blake.
"You carry somethin' heavy," he said.
Blake didn't respond.
Tom sipped, then added, "Whatever it is... don't let it decide your whole damn story."
Blake finally spoke. Just one word. "How?"
Tom smiled. Not soft. Not unkind. Just real.
"You learn to keep movin'. Fix what you can. Let the rest burn." He tossed the empty bottle into a crate. "The road don't ask who your daddy was. Neither do good people. You'll find both...if you keep goin'," he said, casually returning to work.
Blake paused, his eyes fixed not on Tom but his words.
Blake worked that garage through three summers. He earned enough for his first van, a beat-up '84 Westy with a busted radio and a dent in the passenger door. Tom helped him fix it up piece by piece after hours, free of charge.
One particular day, Tom sat on the tailgate of his old F-150, shirt unbuttoned at the neck, a cold beer sweating in his hand. His fingers were black with grease and dust, just like Blake's. They'd spent the better part of the day working on a rusted-out Buick that barely wanted to live.
Now it was quiet. That good kind of quiet, earned with work.
Blake leaned against a concrete block wall nearby, a rag slung over one shoulder, a cigarette between two fingers. He'd gotten taller fast, broader, too. Tom had watched it happen day by day, like water filling up a well. But what struck him most wasn't the boy's body. It was his silence. The way he wore it like a second skin.
Tom took a swig, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then looked over. "You ever think about leavin' this place?" he asked.
Blake didn't answer right away. Just watched the smoke rise from his cigarette, slow and spiraling in the warm air.
Tom waited. He always did.
"Sometimes," Blake finally muttered. His voice was low, husky from disuse.
Tom nodded, like he already knew. "You oughta. Bogalusa ain't got much to give a boy like you. Place like this'll grind you down if you let it." Blake flicked ash toward the dirt, his jaw tight. Tom studied him. "I see it in you, you know. That itch. That weight behind your eyes. You don't belong here, kid."
Blake turned to look at him. Not angry. Just wary. "Ain't like I got anywhere else to go."
Tom shrugged. "You don't need it to start movin'. Sometimes the road's enough." He leaned back on his palms, legs stretched out. "I left once. When I was your age."
Blake raised a brow. "Why'd you come back?"
Tom smiled without humor. "Stupid reasons. A girl. A funeral. The lie I told myself that maybe home meant somethin' more than what it took from me." He glanced over at Blake again. "You...you smarter than I was. You don't look back when you shut a door."
Blake didn't respond, but his throat worked like he wanted to.
Tom's voice softened. "You're strong, boy. Got hands that know work and eyes that don't miss nothin'. But your heart…" He paused. "Your heart's locked up like a storm cellar. Like you expect it to blow every time someone gets close."
Blake stiffened.
His jaw clenched.
Tom held up a hand. "I ain't judgin'. Hell, I get it. This world teaches boys to hide what they feel. To swallow every damn thing that hurts 'til it don't got nowhere to go but inward." He tapped his own chest. "It'll rot you from the inside if you let it."
Blake took a drag from his cigarette. Exhaled slowly. "Don't think I know how to feel it and still keep goin'."
Tom nodded. "Yeah, that's the trick, ain't it?" He chuckled softly. "You remind me of a dog I used to know. Stray. Showed up at my daddy's barn every other week, limping and starving, but he wouldn't let nobody touch him. Wouldn't eat 'less you walked away first. But he always came back. 'Cause somewhere deep down, he still wanted to be fed."
Blake stared off into the horizon, where the pine trees clawed the sky.
Tom finished his beer and set the bottle down on the tailgate. "All I'm sayin' is, when the time comes...when you do leave...don't let what happened here decide everything else that's waitin' for you. Don't let silence be the only way you know how to live." After a moment, he added, quieter, "There's people out there who won't hurt you for wantin' more. You just gotta let one of 'em find you."
Blake crushed out his cigarette, then looked at Tom. Really looked.
They sat like that for a while longer, the sun melting into the trees, and the sounds of the town were distant and dull. Neither of them said another word. They didn't need to.
But Blake would remember this moment long after the smell of the garage had faded from his clothes and the red dirt had worn off his boots.
He would carry it on every highway, every motel, every arena.
Because even though he didn't say goodbye to Tom the day he left, the kindness of his friend's words, would always glow somewhere behind him, even in the dark.
*
(Bogalusa, 2014)
The sky was just beginning to shift from indigo to rose, that thin edge of morning where everything still feels like a secret. The town hadn't stirred yet, Bogalusa lay hushed, and even the dogs hadn't started barking.
Blake stepped out onto the porch barefoot, duffel strap digging into his shoulder, the floorboards warm from the day before. He paused a moment, just standing there, looking out over the weed-choked yard like it was a grave he'd finished digging.
The house was behind him, breathing slowly and sour in its sleep. Curtis was snoring drunk on the couch, and Louella curled up in her old recliner like a folded letter never read. They didn't wake. They didn't stir.
Blake didn't leave a note. There was nothing left to say.
His van, with primer patches and a bed that creaked, waited at the end of the drive, packed with all he owned: a toolbox from Tom Earl, a pair of dumbbells, a worn notebook filled with words he never said aloud, and a carton of cigarettes he hadn't yet learned to quit.
He climbed in, turned the key, and the engine thundered to life like a slow-beating heart. The gravel popped beneath the tires as he pulled away, hands firm on the wheel, jaw tight, not looking back.
Just before the pines swallowed the last glimpse of that sagging porch, he whispered a promise into the morning fog.
"I won't belong to any place that can spit me out."
It wasn't anger.
It was protection.
A new creed, carved in silence and held deep.
From that day on, Blake Buckley became a man of movement.
He worked in machine shops and feed mills, mucked stables and welded iron gates. Learned how to be useful, but never familiar. Charming enough to be hired, quiet enough to be forgotten.
He slept in trailers and motels, sometimes in the back of the van, sometimes in the arms of strangers whose names he never asked for. He let them touch, but never too deeply. Let them close, but never too long.
Because to be wanted was to be vulnerable.
And to be vulnerable meant someone might stay.
And staying meant roots.
And Blake Buckley didn't grow roots anymore.
He wore his strength like a second skin, muscle, grit, and silence. The kind of man folks noticed, but never really knew. The kind who looked like he'd seen fire and never flinched. Because that was the vow.
Never be seen in full.
Never be tied.
Nothing more than the road and his own breath.
And for years, that was enough.
Time moved, but Blake didn't, not really.
He just kept going.
He rode bulls in Amarillo and Dodge City, red dirt caked into his boots, adrenaline pumping like salvation. The crowd's roar never reached his heart, it was just noise. Just another high that burned off by morning.
He fixed engines in backwoods garages from Texas to Alabama, calloused hands deep in grease, sleeves rolled up, sweat rolling down his neck like it meant something. The work gave him purpose. The pay gave him gas money. That was enough.
Sometimes, there were motel rooms. Flimsy locks, yellowed curtains, a television muttering to itself. He'd meet someone, a guy with rough fingers or a woman with too much perfume and sad eyes. They'd reach for him in the dark, wanting what they thought they saw: strength. Mystery. Fire.
But they never got all of him.
Just a piece.
Just a night.
Then he'd be gone.
He left behind shirts, belt buckles, sometimes a lie. An 'I'll call you'.
But he never did.
Every place offered him a little sliver of peace. A warm body. A drink. A horizon. But none of it was enough to make him stay. Because staying meant being seen. And being seen meant being known.
And being known meant being loved.
And for Blake Buckley, that was the sharpest blade of all.
(To be continued...)
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