I wasn't hungry and Gary didn't like it when the kitchen help ate with the customers, so I took a cup of coffee and stood outside the kitchen's back door. The sun was full up. In a few hours, I'd be able to smell the sage and the mesquite, the fragrance driven into the air by the day's heat. Until six days ago, I had spent my entire life on the east coast, unaware how I was hemmed in by the leafy green. The West shook me with its open country, the scrubby brush of the ranch giving way to buttes and then mountains past that: everything you could want to see, all at once.
The thin spire of Castle Rock sent a shadow across the near pasture. I set my gaze beyond the red rock, focused on a mountain with a long ridgeline marked with a couple of irregular bumps. The bottom of the mountain was cloaked with evergreens, but the top of the ridge was rocky and open. Unlike the more distant peaks, this one was free from snow. In the empty morning air, it looked close enough to touch. That one, I decided, that mountain was the one I'd climb on my first day off. The decision was like a handshake with fate. I was here; I could do this. God, how I wanted to be here in the midst of this beauty, this unbelievable place. And God, how terrified I was of the people eating eggs and biscuits behind me.
I heard the chairs scraping on the mess hall floor, signaling breakfast's end and the start of my job as a dishwasher. I went inside before Gary could yell at me, filled the sink with hot soapy water to soak the pots. After the coffee, my mouth was dry and my head still throbbed, beating out a question against my skull: what am I doing here? And if they knew? What would happen to me?
Once the breakfast dishes were cleaned, I took a break and walked to the lodge, which was next to the mess hall. Yesterday I'd helped the girls clean the windows and had noticed a topographical map of the area on the wall. The sunlight gleamed off the bare wood of the lodge's walls, lighting the glassy eyes of the elk head over the fireplace. I leaned close to the map, found the south fork of the Shoshone twisting across the valley, looked for the sharp bend that I knew marked the ranch. The area was so vast, the terrain so spotted with buttes, ridges, outcropping, let alone mountains, that Castle Rock itself got no mention on the map. But I found my day off mountain without problem, the elongated ridge to the northeast clearly marked: Dead Indian Mountain. Someone, probably Darryl, had neatly crossed out 'Dead' and written 'Sleeping' above it. (No doubt the Cody chamber of commerce had changed the name in a wave of political correctness.) Sleeping Indian Mountain. A euphemism that would hardly fool a kid. It somehow seemed fitting for me.
Gary took the afternoon off, and I had the kitchen to myself to prepare everyone's dinner. I left the radio tuned to the country music station. I might as well get used to it, I figured, and besides, it was that or talk radio. Gary had left me a list of things to do: organize the storeroom, check the inventory, sharpen the knives. Delightfully mindless tasks. I opened all the windows to let in the smell of sage and took a deep breath, relieved to be alone with my thoughts. Wyoming. My college friends thought I was crazy for working out here, but I knew it was where I wanted to spend the summer. I'd seen pictures of the mountains, the red rock, and thought, I have to go there. At the time, being transgender didn't seem like a big deal. I'd been living as a man for two years and doing just fine in Boston. But I hadn't thought of the close quarters of the bunkhouse, the macho attitude of the wranglers, the possibility that a straight girl would fall for me. I just wanted to be here, to hike the mountains, work in the kitchen; if I fit in with the group, great, but I wasn't asking for anything except space to do my own thing, and it seemed to me that the West had plenty of space.
I served up the steak and potatoes that evening without trouble, cleaned the kitchen, and headed to the bunkhouse. The other guys were already gone when I got back – probably their night in town at the bar. So I took out my guitar to play for a bit. Within minutes, Larry, one of the wranglers, showed up at the screen door.
"Hey, Alex, come on over. We're just hanging out," He said. "Bring your guitar."
I snapped the case shut and walked alongside him, trying to match his long strides. I was suddenly nervous again, thinking that most of the tunes I knew were Ani Difranco, Indigo Girls. The closest I came to country was kd lang. Everything about me felt like it would give me away, my walk, my height, my tenor voice. The weight of what I was, or was not, settled around me, even as my boots stirred up red clouds of dust from the road. The sun was setting – Castle Rock was already a silhouette. I looked at the outline of the Indian mountain, definitely sleeping peacefully, not dead. It was a dark lump against the blue-black sky.
Larry held the door for me. The trailer's living room was full of wranglers and the Ole Miss girls. A game of spades was underway at the kitchen table. Brandi's head turned as I walked in; she smiled. And though I didn't want her smile, couldn't, to be fair, to be safe, want it, I smiled back. Was there a little less weight on my shoulders? The group made room for me at the table, and I played a few rounds of spades before the guys cajoled me into taking out my guitar. I played "Brown Eyed Girl" and "The Day the Music Died" – songs that everyone could sing along to. The couples that had already formed that summer leaned against each other – a cowboy and his girl. Brandi sat next to me, and I was saved by my guitar, which covered my chest and lap; it was my shield, all the defense I needed to keep her at bay. And I thought, this is good, this is what I can be.
Soon enough, people began to drift away, say goodnight. The wranglers were headed off early the next morning to bring in the rest of the ranch's summer horses (which ran wild in central Wyoming all winter, a concept I still couldn't wrap my mind around. Eastern horses spent all winter in their barns or carefully swaddled in blanket coats.). The girls had their first day off tomorrow and were headed in to Cody for 'real food' ("Oh, God, no offense!" They all told me, remembering that I was someone who cooked their food.) and a movie. Brandi stood up with the other girls.
"I guess I'll see you tomorrow night," she said. "Maybe we can get our next day off together."
I felt Mitch dig his elbows into my ribs, heard him laugh, "She wants you, man. Don't puke this time."
I held my guitar in front of me like a talisman, wished her goodnight. If only there was always something to hide behind. The light from the trailer quickly faded into the night. I walked carefully through the darkness. I mean, after all, what is gender? What did it matter? That I'd been born and raised as a girl, spent seventeen years as my parents' daughter, my brother's sister, knowing all along that was not me. What did it matter that night in Wyoming, under the quiet stars? I wanted to open the silence, tell it who I was. There was no light for shadows, for silhouettes, no sense of where I was. Yet I felt so there, as if the mountains were mine, promised to me. I was a child of this country. What did it matter?
It didn't matter. And so, the next morning, a gorgeous morning, after I startled (or perhaps they startled me) a pack of pronghorn antelope outside the mess hall, I filled the sink with hot, soapy water and began to wash the breakfast dishes. The kitchen door opened behind me, and I figured it was Gary coming in to start on lunch. But it was Darryl's voice I heard.
"Alex," he said, "come to my office."
All the panic was back. I turned, hands dripping, and followed him to his office. We both stood, his desk between us. I in my apron, he in his cowboy hat. His mouth open. Closed. Open.
"Are you transgender?" He asked, not exactly making eye contact.
Whatever I had expected, it was not this. Not this burly man standing, shy and quiet, not the word transgender. Maybe, "Get off my ranch, faggot!" Or something of the sort, some inarticulate western rage. For a second, I, too, did not know what to say. But there was no point denying it.
"How did you find out?" I asked.
Darryl pushed forward a piece of paper on his desk. "This," he said.
It was a postcard, a picture of some bucolic New England farm scene on the front. On the back, a note scrawled in the handwriting of a college friend, just a quick few lines hoping I was well, enjoying the mountains, that it wasn't a problem being transgender in Wyoming.
No, not really a problem.
"Pack your stuff and get off my ranch," said Darryl.
I untied my apron, that thin layer between the world and myself, laid it on his desk.
A short time later, Greg came into the bunkhouse. Without a word, he hefted my backpack on his shoulder. I carried my guitar behind him out to the truck, slid it in the back. I didn't know what Darryl had told him, but the ride down the twisty, bumpy road was silent. I rolled down my window, let in the sound of the rushing south fork and the red dust. The road curved and the ranch disappeared behind us. Soon our tires hummed on pavement. Looking back, I was surprised to see the outline of the sleeping Indian from the other side, the bump of the nose, the long and spreading ridge. From this side, the resemblance was more apparent; I could see the headdress, even the jut of a chin.
The cows thinned out and we began to pass houses. Finally, Greg turned to me. "I'm sorry you're going," he said, not taking his eyes from the road. I was too. "Darryl can be a real asshole, I guess," he continued. We passed the first store on the outskirts of Cody, the first gas station. "I think you're a good cook, a real good dishwasher," he said, his cheeks flushed with the effort of this compliment.
"Thanks," I said, meaning it. He parked near the center of town, stayed in his seat while I unloaded my backpack and guitar. The truck pulled away from the curb. I turned my head, trying to look around the square outlines of the hotels and shops in downtown Cody. The snow-capped fringe of mountains was visible in the distance. I even thought I saw the tip of the sleeping Indian's nose.
I settled my backpack on my shoulders, lifted my guitar. I hadn't wanted to be a dishwasher anyways.