Chapter 5 Bode
The next day, I find Maggie sitting in the barn with Ash.
The two of them are covered in hay and giggling as one of the ducks walks silly, unbalanced circles around the stall.
Ash’s messy hair is covered by a poorly knitted beanie with his name across the band.
A Christmas present from Dot that he’d been wearing nonstop since he opened it.
The echoes of Crew and Logan fighting him out of it to put him in the bath still make me laugh when I think about it.
When the duck nips at Maggie, she laughs wildly and falls back into the hay, scooping the duck in her arms as she goes, and I hate how I react to the sound.
The sun is rising faster than I’d like, but my boots still come to a halt just outside the stall, and all I can do is listen to them.
A smile tugs at the corner of my lips, and for a moment, I regret being so hard on someone whose laugh sounds like the soft crashing of water against a lakeshore on a summer day.
The calm it brings me makes me forget it’s barely above freezing outside.
Ford clears his throat from the other side of the barn as he throws a saddle over Castle’s smooth pitch black back.
The temperamental horse braying as Ford started in on the straps.
He raises one thick eyebrow at me, and the silent implications that he knows exactly what I’m thinking are enough to have me interrupting the sweet moment.
“If you wanna be a nanny, you should take that up in your free time, but if you’re done lollygaggin' with ducks and kids, we got work to do,” I say to Maggie as I step into her sightline.
She looks up at me, and blonde waves fall around her heart-shaped face in soft bundles, like she had willed it that way. I chewed on the inside of my mouth and swore. Ford would find the prettiest little thing to walk up on this ranch. Magnolia is punishment for something, I just know it.
“Well?” Maggie’s voice was tight but still full of so much light.
“Well, what?” I scowl.
“Are you gonna give me some jobs to do or just stand there gawking at me like I have two heads because I am not in the mood for your passive-aggressive weirdness today,” she rambles as she hands Ash the duck and pushes from the hay.
She moves around me like she’s more comfortable at the ranch than I am and wanders into the foal’s stall to say good morning.
She nibbles at the fingers of her gloves, tugging off the leather with her teeth, and once free, uses her long, soft-looking fingers to scratch the underneath of Odin’s snout while whispering sweet nothings to him.
“We have to finish up the fence today, saddle your horse, and meet me outside,” I say to her without commenting on the fact that I was definitely not staring at her earlier.
Maggie nods, a small smile on her lips, and she makes her way over to Gus to get him ready for the day. She talks to him the entire time, spouting off crap about her day yesterday and how it's colder today, so they better bundle up.
I laugh, tossing the saddle over Kelpie, as she starts to talk about how her toes are cold and how she keeps getting snow in her boots. Everything she’s saying is a complaint, but it sounds sweet as sugar coming from her lips. It’s infuriating.
“She’s gonna be the death of me, Kelp.” I pat the horse and hoist myself up into the saddle, settling down comfortably and inhaling once.
My hands were sore from the day before stretching wire out over the posts, and I should have spent more time soaking them last night, but I fell asleep so fast that I didn’t even bother.
The air hits my face as we duck out of the barn and trot over to where Crew is standing with Logan. He’s zipping up her jacket and pulling her hat down over her ears and forehead, kissing the exposed skin as he goes, and I feel the need to avert my eyes from the soft display of affection.
I go to turn Kelpie, tugging on the reins, but my name is called, and I sigh at the sound.
“Bode Walker.” Logan marches up to me in her snow boots as she shoves her hands into her mittens. From behind her, Crew raises his hands, signaling that he’ll be of no help because Logan is on a mission and I’m her target.
“You better be nice to that girl today,” she says angrily, but her face comes in close to Kelpie, and she nuzzles the horse against her shoulder. “What has gotten into you?”
“Ain’t nothing into me, Shepard. I just don’t have time to be babysitting some city plant,” I say with a huff.
“That’s bullshit,” Logan argues. “You’re acting like Ford.”
I look down at her and scowl. “Am not.”
“Are too!” she counters. “You gave me a shot when I didn’t deserve it, and Maggie did nothing to no one on this ranch, so cut it out and start treating her with some respect.”
“You’re on something this morning,” I snap at her, and she smiles.
“Get to know her before you start slinging insults around Bode, or you’re no better than that asshole,” she says loudly and points to Ford, who shoots her a dirty look.
Logan flips him off, and for a second, I think Ford might get down off his horse, but he mumbles something under his breath and turns his horse away up the hill.
“Now, where’s my son?” She looks around and I point to the barn.
Logan thanks me, stomping away and into the barn, saying good morning to Maggie in passing. Crew wanders over to us with his hands in the pockets of his jacket and his nose red from the cold.
“Ford needs my help out in the back this morning, and I’m taking Peter with me, so you two are on your own,” he says, looking between the two of us. “Can you manage not to kill each other?”
“No promises,” Maggie coos and Crew laughs at her but takes his leave.
“Follow me,” I say, turning Kelpie and starting up the hill in the other direction.
“Have you always worked at Whiskey River?” Maggie asks after half a second of silence and I sigh.
“Yeah,” I keep my back to her as Kelpie navigates the snow. “Be careful the grounds soft here,” I say.
“So you’ve been here your entire life like Ford?” she asks.
What the hell did she know about Ford?
“No, I took on the job after high school,” I said reluctantly.
She hummed at my answer and pushed Gus a little harder to come to a canter beside me. Her blonde curls were wild beneath her blue knitted hat, and her cheeks were rosy from the wind.
“Your brother is that famous rodeo clown,” she says, and I have to hide the smile on my face by looking away from her.
“He’s a famous rodeo rider,” I correct her, even though clown is more important when describing Levi.
“He won nearly six titles last year, you must be proud of him,” she says, and I nod my head. I was proud of Levi, but most of the time I was scared out of my mind that my phone was gonna ring one day and it would be a doctor on the other end giving me the worst kind of news.
“Why didn’t you go into rodeo?” she asks.
Because someone needed to keep Levi alive long enough for him to reach his dreams, I thought.
“What’s with the twenty questions, city plant?” I grumble, and she scowls this time. Got you.
“I’m just making conversation, all you cowboys do is grunt back and forth while rolling around in the mud. And while that’s very nice on the eyes, it doesn’t do much for the brain. I’m not one for riding in silence, and talking keeps me warm.”
I stare at her while she rambles on.
“Talking doesn’t keep you warm,” I say, rolling my eyes and turning down the snow-covered path that leads to the tail end of the fences we need to fix up today.
“Sure it does, I’m warmer, aren’t you?” she asks with a smile that could melt the snow.
“No,” I said, trying to ignore the blossom of heat in my chest from the sight of her.
“Make sense, it would take a little more than some uncomfortable questions about yourself to melt that icy heart,” she teases, and I shake my head at her.
“I don’t have an icy heart, you’re just annoyingly awake,” I say.
“I’m not sure that's the insult you meant it to be, Cowboy,” she laughs. Please stop, stop laughing. The sound is too sweet and soft, it’s killing my dislike toward you. “So why the ranch? Why not follow your brother around?”
“Because I’ve never been a fan of falling off horses.”
We had watched Dad wither away in a chair after all his accidents, his brain gone, his motor functions shot.
The most he could manage was bringing the bottle to his lips.
I was glad when he died because it meant less money spent on whiskey and more on Levi.
It sounds cruel but… when you’re drowning in medical bills and the old man just won’t die even though it means bettering the lives of his sons…
You say a lot of shit you think you’d never utter.
“It ain't that bad, maybe it would knock some sense into you?” she jokes.
“Falling off a plastic horse on the merry-go-round at Disneyland doesn't count,” I say, trying to keep my tone flat.
“Was that a question or a jab, because if you’ve fallen off a merry-go-round horse, I’d kill to hear that story,” she says without skipping a beat.
She was infuriatingly quick.
“Do you ever stop talking?” I ask her as I pull Kelpie to a stop and slide from the top to the icy ground below. My hand seizes and I lose my grip on the horn, my boots slip, and I nearly land on my ass, but I reach out and grip the half-built fence with my glove to balance out.
Maggie watches the entire event with a smile on her face and slips off Gus with the grace of a ballerina. Her boots hit the snow with a soft crunch, and she offers me her hand, but I ignore her and pull myself back to a fully upright position.
“You need new boots, the treads are all worn out.” She points to my favorite boots as she snuggles down into the matching blue scarf she’s got wrapped around her neck.
“My boots are just fine,” I scowl. Aside from the tiny hole in the heel and the sloping rubber sole, I had been working in these boots since high school. They were perfectly fine, my hands were just sore.
“Whatever you say.” Maggie uncovers the tarped materials, carefully folding it up.
I can tell she’s struggling to keep quiet as we get to work, but she hands me the posts, the sheers, and the wire without me even asking when I come to need them, and she’s quick to learn the tricks, making it a seamless process.
“You never actually answered why you chose the ranch,” she says when she finally breaks down.
“There’s not much else here to do.” I shrug and make sure the following post is secure.
“Tell me about it,” she whines and hands me the wire.
“Oh, sorry, is our town too small for you?” I tease her, but take it and start wrapping it tightly around the post.
She narrows her eyes at me but doesn’t say a word. The teasing about her lifestyle seems to choke her up more than anything, so until she puts an end to it, I’m going to keep teasing.
We get over half of the fence done before she gets distracted again, and her head whips around in the breeze like she’s looking for something.
“What the heck are you doing, Maggie?” I stand up as she drops the wire roll and starts traipsing through the deep snow. “Maggie-Mae!” I call out to her, but she and her cute little determined stomp disappear down a hill.