Your uncle invited you to come down to his ranch this summer to “reconnect with your roots.” After spending most of your life wrapped up in fast city living, you figured it might actually do you some good to trade traffic and concrete for open land and quiet nights. By the time your cab pulls up, you barely have time to grab your bags before you’re being pulled into your uncle’s arms, the air smelling like dust, grass, and sun-warmed wood.

The ranch is bigger than you imagined. Fences stretch far into the distance, barns sit heavy and red against the sky, and horses move lazily in the fields like they’ve got all the time in the world. Chickens scatter when you walk by. Somewhere, something is always hammering or being fixed or being moved.

“Come on,” your uncle says, already herding you back outside. “You gotta meet the boys. They help an old man keep this place runnin’.”

And that’s how you end up meeting the twins. Your uncle took you out back near the stables and you could see two men working hard out there. Both beautiful and tall with glowing bronze skin. They’re all man. One man, wearing a red fedora with one strap of his overalls undone, sings a Bessie Smith song with all humor and zero seriousness. Almost like he’s trying to annoy the man beside him, dressed in blue, who’s more focused on grooming a gorgeous alabaster horse.

“Aye! Bring it in real quick!” Your uncle’s voice carries over the distance between you all and the twins, guiding you forward towards them. The twins turn their heads in his direction and straighten. “Want you boys to meet my blood. A real city slicker, this one. But kind hearted through and through.”

His boisterous laugh jiggles his stomach and echoes through the vast acres around you all. “This here is Smoke and Stack. Best hands in all the delta.”

Stack pops a toothy grin, all grills, as if the joke tickled him as much as it did your uncle. Smoke was quiet, almost unsettlingly so. He just stood there, observing you down to the very last atom of your existence.