Chapter 4 #2
“I’ve done that. Did you know that? I was working at a little rodeo, and they asked me to fill in for the safety man who was out because he had the flu.
I was roping a bull, and he turned back on me, tried to gore my horse.
Thankfully, I didn’t lose my horse, but he went down on my leg, broke it real bad, and I just passed right out there in the arena. ”
“No shit?” He stared at Cam wide-eyed because that sounded like hell on earth.
“Yep. Thank God, when he got up he stood still instead of making a run for it, because he would have dragged me along, and I might have lost a lot of skin if not my life over that.” Cam put a tiny bit of water in the pan and then started heating it up.
He stared while Cam took pizza out of the box and put it in the pan and then covered it with a piece of foil.
Well, this was new and different. Maybe this was a tactic off YouTube or something, but he hoped that didn’t ruin his damn pizza.
Cam winked over at him when he gave that pizza a concerned look. “This is way better than microwaving it, trust me, and it doesn’t dry it out like it does in the toaster oven.”
“If you say so.” He sat back a little, not leaning on his back so much as resting his head, closing his eyes.
Everything still ached pretty hard from having fallen on the floor.
His belly rumbled and his cheeks heated because damn it, that was all he needed was to embarrass himself with Cam even more.
“Give me about two minutes, and you’ll have your pizza. Do you want some ranch to dip it in?”
“Did they send pizza sauce? They usually send pizza sauce when we order in little cups. Even if you forget to ask for it.”
“Yeah, weirdo, they did.” He went to pull that out of the fridge too, putting it down on the counter. “Did you want me to heat it up?”
“Nah, as long as the pizza is hot, I don’t mind cold sauce.”
“Cool. Cam pulled another pizza box out of the fridge, and it looked like a supreme maybe when he yanked a couple of pieces out. “I’ll heat mine up next, that way you can start on yours.”
“Thanks, I appreciate that.” He took a deep breath. “Look, about the vet.”
“Don’t worry about it. I had to make sure all your guys were good to go in case I decided to bring my roping horse out here for a while.”
He blinked, not sure he understood what Cam was saying. “I—wait, what?”
“I’m thinking about bringing her out here to help me out as much as you. There’s just not enough room at Mom and Dad’s, and I don’t want to end up with my horse getting hurt because one of their angry rescue horses kicked him.”
“So hold on. You want to board your horse here?” That was…weird as hell. Why would Cam want to be here?
“Just for a little while. I didn’t figure it’d be a problem. You got a bunch of empty stalls out there, some real decent-looking pasture land.”
Somewhere along the line, Mitch had lost the plot. He had no idea where, but then again, it was in the middle of the night. So maybe it wasn’t so much him as it was just late and therefore he was too tired to figure this out.
“You don’t have to think so hard. You can just breathe.
” Cam winked at him, obviously playing. “We can work this out for the next couple of days. I’m gonna have to get back on the road soon,” he said, “but it seems challenging to try to deal with this on your own, and I need a place for my horse to rest.”
It was tempting and awful at the same time, which was weird. “I can’t make any decisions right now. I’m hurt, I’m exhausted, and I’m starving. But what can a couple of days hurt? Your people have been too good to me, and I know it. I’ll repay everybody.”
“Shit, man, we’re neighbors. Your kids seem like good kids, and you seem like you need a sandwich.”
“I thought you were making pizza.”
Cam stopped. His mouth opened. He stared for a second. Then he shook his head. “I am. It’s almost done. Would you like something to drink?”
“Milk, please. I’m so thirsty.”
“You got it.” Cam started opening cabinets, and instead of telling the man where the glasses were, Mitch sat there, staring.
His brain and body just couldn’t coordinate.
Cam pulled out a glass finally, then filled it with milk. “You need more of this. You got a running list anywhere?”
“Uh-huh. Right there on the fridge.” He jerked his chin at all the odd magneted stuff on the front of the refrigerator.
“Oh, good deal. Who has the pretty handwriting with the hearts and flowers?”
“Well, it’s not Sarah. Or Rachel, really. Rachel’s just not old enough. She’s going to have bubble handwriting. Bekka’s my hearts and flowers girl.”
“Milk.” He chuckled softly as he read the list. “I take it y’all eat a lot of cereal?”
“Right now, yeah—cereal, canned soup, sandwiches. Bekka is trying really hard to learn to make eggs, and she makes a very, very good spaghetti and meatballs.”
Cam grinned over, that roper scar at the corner of his smile making it all crookedy. “Apparently, she also likes grape jelly meatballs.”
“Oh, she’ll eat them, but they’re for my baby girl. Rachel’s birthday is coming up, and that is her favorite food ever.”
She wanted a bike, and dammit, he was going to get her one if he had to go steal it from a pawn shop.
“Cool.” The pizza was plopped down in front of him, and Cam went back to heat up his own pizza while Mitch snarfed up two of the pieces without even thinking about it. They hit his stomach hard, but man, it felt good.
“What about the other two? What are their favorite foods?”
“For supper? Bekka’s my casserole girl. She loves baked enchiladas, tamale pie, and lasagna.
She likes one-pot dishes with cheese on top.
” Lasagna was probably her favorite. Although that little baby, she craved herself some green chicken chile enchiladas.
For being so sweet she could eat some hot food.
“And your girl of the night?”
“Potatoes. If you can do it with potatoes, she will eat it. Mashed, fried, baked, tater-totted.” Was tater-totted even a word? He liked it, even if it wasn’t. “Scalloped, au gratin. Boiled in a stew, in a soup. She loves her a potato.”
“I love that for her. I also am a fan of the humble potato.”
Mitch chuckled, and he didn’t want to chuckle because he didn’t want to think that Cam was funny. He didn’t want to think that Cam was charming. He wanted Cam to be awful so he could tell him to go away and never come back and darken his door.
But his mouth was full of pizza, so he couldn’t do that.
He shook his head, thinking how he should let bygones be bygones, but it was tough. The kind of total rejection Cam had laid on him back in the day still stung, even if his life had moved on in a huge way.
It was nuts.
So instead of saying anything, Mitch gnawed on a crust.
Cam sat down across from him and started eating. “So, how’d you end up roofing?”
“Needed a job. Tried tile work; didn’t like it. Got a job on a roofing crew, and I had a knack for it.” Simple as that.
“You ever think about owning your own business, hiring a crew?”
Shit. He had it all planned out. “All the time. But you’ve got to have equipment.
You’ve got to be able to buy supplies. You’ve got to be able to hire a crew.
Pay them before you get your money. It’s one of those things where you have to make time to make the money to do it.
I think once the girls are grown, or at least everybody’s well in school all the time, I might be able to sneak a few more hours for it. ”
It was just hard.
To be honest, he got into a rut every now and again. Day-to-day life was enough to keep him on his toes, and the second he thought he was going to get ahead, something happened. A tire blew, one of the kids got strep, a pipe busted—something.
It was always something, and he would say he was unlucky, but he was also smart enough to look around at the folks next to him and across the way from him and know this was how it worked.
If a man didn’t have big money, life was a challenge, and even some of those folks who thought they had big money? It wouldn’t take but one broken back to fix that right up.
“That makes sense to me. It’s always one step forward, two steps back with everything.”
“Well, I hope it’s more even with you.”
“Shit, man, I’m a rodeo cowboy. I work with animals all the damn time. My year can hinge on whether or not somebody turns up lame or decides that he just doesn’t want to rope today.”
“I hate that, but I get it.” He really didn’t. He didn’t understand the need to be on the road. He didn’t understand the need to throw a rope.
But he wasn’t a gambler either.
He was the turtle, except he had this sinking suspicion that maybe he wasn’t winning in his race.
And he would be a shitty human being if he willed someone else to fail because he wanted to win.
“Yeah, sometimes it sucks to have to be a good guy.”
“Where did that come from?”
He shrugged. “I was thinking about what I would teach my girls, and I would teach them to be good folks, so I can’t be an asshole. On purpose.”
Cam tilted his head to one side, chewing slowly on a piece of pizza, looking for all the world like a goat chewing its cud, which was hilarious.
He just sort of nodded. “Yeah, I can see that. You don’t want to be a dick anyway, but when you have kids to pass it on to, you have to think about what you’re teaching them, huh? ”
Mitch had to admit it surprised him that Cam got that so fast. But maybe it wasn’t such a surprise. He had tons of brothers and sisters, right? Maybe he knew more about setting an example than Mitch thought.
“Daddy, are you awake?” Little Rachel came dragging her teddy bear out into the kitchen, her bare toes curling on the linoleum tiles.
“Did we wake you up, baby?” He held open an arm, and she climbed into his lap, super careful not to jostle him. She had learned how to do this without hurting his back.
She gave Cam a shy glance, then ducked her head against his chest. “No. I had a dream. I was gonna look for you, but then I heard you out here. Can I have a piece of pizza?”
He grinned at Cam over the top of her head. “How about a little bit of milk and maybe a nibble of some of that leftover cornbread? Pizza is going to be awfully hard on your tummy at this time of night.”
“Okay, Daddy.” She yawned, and Cam watched her a bit like he would probably watch a strange unknown creature that had crawled out from under the brush. It made him laugh.
But it was Cam who got up and got her milk and cornbread wasn’t it? And who just quietly faded into the background while they sat and talked about her dream? It was Cam who carried his youngest back to bed because he couldn’t quite lift her, he was so tired.
It made him sad for himself, but it also made him admire Cam. The man had hidden depths, and he wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or not.