Colt
Maple creamer swirls through my coffee with the clink of a spoon, and I add an extra splash for good measure.
Despite the early hour—just shy of four a.m.—the bunkhouse is bustling with ranch hands getting ready for work.
In the summer months, we start at dawn and work until the midday sun becomes unbearable.
With the boss, Austin, insisting we work solely on horseback, high temperatures aren’t only putting the men at risk, they’re dangerous for the entire remuda.
Rob, the biggest asshole in the bunks, elbows me hard in the ribs, nearly causing me to spill the spoonful of sugar I’m carefully navigating toward my cup. “Should you pour that entire tin of sugar in there?”
“It’s how I stay so sweet.” I stir the heaping spoonful into my drink, turning to bat my eyelashes at him.
“Your mommy tell you that?”
I shoot him a finger gun with a supporting wink. “Yours did.”
Denny’s cackle echoes through the small kitchen space, and he pushes between Rob and me to grab a coffee mug. “You walked right into that, Rob.”
“Fuck you both,” Rob sneers.
I click my tongue at him. “That’s no way to talk to your new stepdaddy.”
Yanking open the fridge, I stare blankly at the lack of food inside.
We get bagged lunch from the women in the big house every day—the main ranch house with a massive kitchen—but my metabolism still thinks I’m a teenage boy, and I need breakfast. Guess an apple with a few bruises and some of the snacks I keep in my room will have to do today.
“Speaking of stepdaddy.” He leans against the counter and slurps his coffee loudly. “Your shadow gonna be here again today?”
A quick glance over at Denny confirms that, yes, Jonas will be here today.
Lost track of how often he’s been here lately—what started as Denny trying to win back the heart of his ex-girlfriend became Colt the nanny.
Finding chores for a ten-year-old who’s never spent time on a ranch before is a job all on its own, though the barn walls and floor have never been this clean.
“I talked to Whit last night—told her we’d keep him busy all summer, actually. So he’ll be around a lot,” Denny says.
“Got any ideas for chores to give him?” I raise an eyebrow at Denny. “He’s gonna wash the paint right off the barn walls pretty soon.”
“Actually, yeah. We’re tarping the silage pit today. He can help move tires.”
Rob chuckles. “Good way to get rid of your shadow in a fucking hurry. Kid probably only weighs as much as those tires.”
A few hours later, I’m chugging coffee on the tailgate of my truck and waiting for Jonas when my ears perk at a car rattling over the cattle guard.
I tip forward to see who it is, and Betty takes that as a sign that I’m handing over my snack.
Her teeth delicately graze my knuckles as she engulfs my peanut butter oatmeal bar, along with half of my hand.
“Hey! You jerk,” I scoff, tossing the tiny chunk still pinched between my fingers.
Betty’s snuffling around in the rocks when I slide my ass off the end of my truck and start toward the big house. With any luck, the girls will have something I can eat to give me enough energy to survive until lunch.
Testing her luck, Betty follows, nipping at my heels the closer I get to the house. She fucking loves it here, thanks to Jackson and Kate Wells’s kids constantly leaving food unattended. Sure enough, she ditches me the second she sees their six-year-old, Odessa, playing in the flower beds.
“Be good,” I call after the dog. And I guess the kid, too. Betty’s bark is noncommittal.
I knock the dust from my boots on the slow climb up the front steps and swing open the screen door, letting it fall closed behind me with a slam.
Cheerful voices and country music carry through the home, stretching down the long hallway and pulling me in.
My stomach rumbles at the scent of freshly baked bread, and my strides lengthen.
Here’s hoping I can snag a warm slice with some butter.
“Hey,” I announce my presence, sneaking up behind where one of the ranch owners, Austin, is snacking on sliced cheese.
When his hand slides away from the plate, I grab a piece of Swiss for myself. Austin gives me a look, shaking his head, and I continue surveying the goods spread over the counter.
“Are y’all having a party I didn’t know about?” I grab a handful of crackers and slices of cheese, tossing a piece of cheddar into my mouth as I carry on down the island.
Austin’s fiancée, Cecily, hands me a plate. “Our wedding…”
Drumming my fingers on the edge of the counter, I say, “Oh, right.”
Not sure how my mind temporarily spaced on that when Austin and Cecily’s wedding is all the women have been talking about around here for weeks.
I take a place at the extra-long table—big enough to seat the Wells family and then some—and eat enough cheese and crackers to feed an entire preschool. When Jonas saunters into the kitchen a few minutes later, Kate hands him a plate and nudges him toward me.
For a kid who seemingly keeps coming back here by choice, he sure doesn’t appear thrilled. His expression reminds me a little too much of the look his mom gave me when I showed up there to pick him up last week. Whit cut me down with a single glance, and damn it if I didn’t love it.
“What are we doing today?” Jonas scopes out the goodies on his plate.
“Better eat your Wheaties.” I present my own stack of layered Monterey Jack and crackers. “Those tiny bean poles you call arms are gonna need all the help they can get.”
Austin tilts his head, slowly raising his coffee mug to his mouth.
“Tarping silage,” I explain, earning a knowing nod from him as he sips.
“Here, kiddo.” Kate sets a brown paper bag on the table next to Jonas’s plate. “Packed you extra snacks. Bring lots of water, too. It’s a hot one today.”
Not long after, the two of us are traipsing out of the house, each carrying two brown paper bags chock-full of sandwiches, granola bars, fruit, and spare water bottles.
The sun has sweat prickling my back in an instant, and I tilt my cowboy hat to shield my eyes.
In silence, we head along the gravel driveway, past the barn and cabins and bunkhouses.
Jonas reminds me a lot of my younger brother, Beau, as a kid; he’s quiet and reserved and hard on himself for even the smallest mistakes.
The other day Jonas slammed a fist into the barn wall—hurting nothing but his pride—after Denny scolded him for not closing the paddock gate properly.
But he sure learned his lesson, and he triple-checked every gate he closed for the rest of the day.
“So what exactly are we doing?” Jonas asks, tossing a stick for Betty as we approach the massive, gently sloped pile of silage—chopped-up hay that’ll be left to ferment for cattle feed.
Already covered in overlapping white tarps, it’s just waiting for us to place rows upon rows of tires to weigh it down and help keep both oxygen and moisture from getting in to ruin the fermentation process.
We drop our lunch bags on a shaded patch of grass and I point to the stacks of old vehicle tires piled high. “You’re covering the tarp in those.”
He blinks at me, and a small smile crops up on his lips. “You’re messing with me, aren’t you? That’s not a real thing.”
“Sure is. We put plastic over the cut hay so it can ferment for a few weeks to feed the cattle through winter. Gotta place all those tires on there to hold the tarp down in the wind.”
He still doesn’t seem to believe I’m not fucking with him, so I start up the gradual embankment, grabbing a tire under each arm and setting them down along the top of the pile.
With black streaks already evident on my hands from the warm rubber of the tires, I position them on either side of my mouth to bellow at the kid. “Come on. Don’t want this to take all day and night, do ya?”
Awkwardly cradling a tire in both arms and looking through the hole in the center, he walks toward me, huffing and panting the entire way.
With an exasperated, dramatic yelp, he lets go once he’s reached the top.
The tire hits the tarp with a hollow thunk, teetering on its edge for a split second before rolling halfway back down.
When it finally catches a small lip in the plastic sheeting and tips over, it swirls around for a moment, sounding like the dull bounce of a half-deflated basketball on a gym floor. Taunting Jonas.
I pull the collar of my shirt over my nose to silently laugh. I definitely don’t need to correct him on this one; he knows exactly where he went wrong.
Jonas throws his hands up. “Oh, what the fuck—fridge.”
Fear overcomes him. He stares at me wide-eyed, metaphorically crapping his pants. Kid probably expects soap in his mouth or some shit.
“Fuck fridge?” Laughter no longer quiet, tears build in the corners of my eyes. “Man, that one earns you a real fuck. Give’r.”
Stomping his foot, he balls his hands into fists and yells, “Fuck!”
And without being told, he slowly trudges down toward the tire, muttering a string of expletives that I’m sure his uptight, pantsuit-wearing mother wouldn’t appreciate.
Sweat beading on his upper lip when he gets back to the top, he puts the tire down with the gentle touch of somebody setting down a newborn baby, smiling to himself when it stays put.
Doesn’t feel like a good time to tell him that we could’ve left that one where it landed, since eventually we’ll need to cover this entire thing anyway.
“One tire down, about a million more to go.” I slap him on the back.
And for the next hour, we work alone, taking frequent, dire water breaks and sweating our fucking bags off under the summer sun.
Thanks to parched mouths and heavy breaths, we don’t talk a lot, but this feels different than the other days.
Neither of us complain, nor do I need to encourage him along.
We’re simply two ranch hands working side by side.
Finally a couple other guys show up to help, and that allows for slower movements and a snack break. We chat a little bit about our hobbies—I razz him about his silly video games, and he roasts my thrifted T-shirt collection.
Both of us are panting as we grab tires from the quickly dwindling pile. Jonas pipes up, “You think cows like the taste of hay?”
I squint at the rolling, sun-soaked hayfields in the distance, brushing sweat from my upper lip. “Nah. I think it’s like salad. We kind of just eat it because we have to.”
“My mom likes salad. I think it’s disgusting.”
“Your mom pretends to like salad to convince you to eat it. Bet she’d rather eat pizza. Bet the cows would, too.” I follow him through the soft dirt, skirting around another ranch hand.
When the last tire hits the tarp with a small cloud of dust, we collapse in the shade under a nearby oak tree.
“Shit, that was some tough work.” I peel the sweat-drenched shirt from my body and fan my face with my cowboy hat. “Thanks for your help today, dude.”
Swallowing hard, Jonas leans back against the tree and wipes his filthy hands across his thighs. “Please tell me we don’t have anything else to do now.”
“If you see Denny or Austin coming toward us, run.” I laugh under my breath. “No way in hell they’re making us do more work today.”
Jonas hands an empty plastic water bottle to Betty, who gleefully crunches it and tosses it in the air for herself. She followed him up and down the silage pile relentlessly, sticking close to his heels and nipping each tire he threw down, like she was reminding it to stay in its place.
“Matter of fact, let’s get outta here before they can try to give us another task.” Hands pressed to the cool earth, I push myself up to stand, relishing the crackle of my spine and the hard-earned ache everywhere else. “I’ll give you a ride home today, if you wanna stop for ice cream on the way?”
“I don’t have any money.” His nose crinkles.
“I think an ice cream is the least of what you deserve after today. That was some seriously hard labor, and you killed it, dude.”
With a bashful grin, he stands up. “Thanks.”
I scoop my shirt from the ground and my nose turns up immediately. “On second thought, let’s hit the showers in the bunkhouse first. I don’t think they’ll even let us into the ice cream shop smelling like we do.”
Jonas smells his armpit and comes away with a disgusted look. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I smell like roses.”
“Bullshit. I can smell you from here.”
“I don’t have any clean clothes, so I’ll wait until I get home.”
“Suit yourself. But if you start stinking up my truck, you’re riding to town on the flat deck of my pickup.”
I start toward the bunkhouse, Jonas and Betty hot on my heels. With each lumbering stride, my muscles relax and the roaring pain searing through my body dulls to the typical ache. Turns out being a ranch hand for your entire adult life is a touch hard on the body.
“You back here tomorrow?” I ask. “Was planning on going fishing.”
A darkness falls over his face, and he drops his eyes to the ground. “Nah, hanging out with my dad.”
“That’ll be a lot of fun, I bet.”
“Yeah.” He doesn’t sound convinced. Knowing what I do about this kid and his apparent disdain for conversation, I don’t push for more. Not after the day we had.
When he reaches for the knob on the front door of the bunkhouse, he sucks a hiss through gritted teeth.
“Ouch. I think I got a blister.” Jonas picks at the bubbled skin on his palm. He nearly trips over a chair while navigating through the bunkhouse—all his attention focused on inspecting his delicate fingers.
“By the end of the summer, you’ll have hands as callused as mine.” I hold a work-hardened hand up and point out the thick skin on my palm and fingers. “Then you’re basically invincible.”
Jonas gawks at me. “What do I do with it until then?”
“Wash it good, so it doesn’t get infected.
Maybe throw a Band-Aid over it when you get home.
” I grab a washcloth from the hall closet and toss it to him, shaking my head at the way he awkwardly fumbles it to avoid having anything touch his delicate injury.
“I’ll have a quick shower, then we’ll head out. ”
“For ice cream, right?” He perks up, forgetting about his hand for a second.
“All you can eat.”