Chapter 3
Camila
Waking up with a migraine is like opening your eyes to a world where the light screams and every sound bites.
It’s not a hangover. I barely drank at last night’s dinner with the staff; I just clung to my glass of wine like it was a life preserver.
A crutch to get me through a painfully awkward evening.
I was judged, measured, and found wanting in every respect. I didn’t even bother to defend myself.
There’s a stillness in the New Mexico dawn that makes every sound explode: the crunch of gravel under my new boots, the thud of a door closing, the lowing of a calf calling for its mother.
“Holy shit, did you dress up as a cowgirl?” is the first comment I hear. No “good morning” or anything. Just sarcasm.
I’d rather not answer and instead ask where I should start. I’m almost sure she spent the night dreaming up the worst possible chores. Maybe shoveling manure or breaking a wild horse. Instead, Liz wipes her hands on her jeans and points at a roll of barbed wire.
“You’ll need gloves,” she mutters, jerking her chin toward several pairs of leather gloves.
Untangling the barbed wire and then fastening it to the different sections of fence sounds simple, at least in theory.
In practice, every loop I unwind tries to open a new wound in my palms despite gloves two sizes too big.
The wire itself seems possessed by some kind of malevolent physics, folding back on itself every time I try to straighten it.
In under twenty minutes, I’m bleeding from various fingers, and my clothes are plastered to me with sweat.
The cowboys don’t laugh—not openly, at least—but I can hear their boots as they prowl around me. I suppose it must be hilarious to watch me lose a battle to a piece of wire. Liz watches me too, arms crossed, her expression deadly serious, which is worse than laughter.
By noon, I manage to get the wire cut and straightened to a manageable length, only to discover I have no idea how to anchor it to the posts, and all my work flies to pieces at the first tug.
“You have to twist it tight,” Liz finally explains as she secures it without any effort.
“Thanks. Next time I have to draft a lawsuit, I’ll call you and see how you do,” I protest, though I doubt she hears me because she’s already barking orders at two of the hands.
We eat in the shade of a shed, but with not even a hint of a breeze, the heat barely lets up.
The sandwiches Mrs. Henderson made are so loaded with onion and mayo I nearly choke.
They talk quietly, in short phrases, economizing words.
Sometimes they mix Spanish and English. Every so often I catch the word “lawyer,” as if the idea of having me work on the ranch for two months were some joke of my grandmother’s. Maybe it is.
The afternoon is even worse. Liz plants herself beside me with a tractor full of manure and two shovels. Flies buzz around us.
“It’s not hard,” she says, handing me one of the shovels. “You spread it over the ground as fertilizer.”
It’s not easy, either. The shovel weighs a ton, but seeing how effortlessly Liz does it is even worse. It’s almost insulting. Now I understand why her arms are so well defined without ever setting foot in a gym.
It doesn’t take long before my boots and jeans are saturated with a stench I doubt will ever come out.
Around four in the afternoon, Liz takes pity on me when she sees I can barely move and sends me home to rest.
The next few days don’t get better—quite the opposite.
I get up before dawn and wrestle with a string of impossible tasks everyone seems to find hilarious.
I eat in silence, listening to their conversations.
After lunch, more work until I can’t go on, and Liz makes me stop early.
I guess she doesn’t want to face the idea that she could end up with the ranch because I died of exhaustion. She’d rather I quit.
The only thing close to a break in my workday is when Liz sends me to the shed to fetch supplies.
It’s not hot in there, but every time I step inside, it reminds me too much of that afternoon we kissed in secret years ago, and then I got scared and left her hanging.
Maybe that’s why she does it. A kind of penance.
By Friday, my hands are covered in blisters, and Mrs. Henderson has to go to Alamogordo to buy me Band-Aids at a pharmacy. Everything hurts—literally every muscle in my body, even a few I didn’t know existed.
After dinner, Liz sits next to me on the porch with a bottle of bourbon.
“You’re not going to quit,” she murmurs, but it’s not a question; she knows I won’t.
“No, unless I die,” I say, trying to make it sound like a joke, even trying to smile, but I don’t think I pull it off.
“You don’t have to prove anything. Nobody expects you to be Rosa,” she adds, taking a pull and handing me the bottle.
I take it, and the liquor burns all the way down.
“You okay?” she asks, dropping her voice to a whisper.
I want to say yes, but everybody knows that’s not true.
Liz takes a long pull of bourbon and fixes her gaze somewhere out in the dark.
“We were all born on the ranch,” she says so softly I can barely hear her. “Of course we’re used to it. And of course we fight for our way of life. Many of these families have lived here for generations. It’s all they know.”
She walks off without waiting for an answer, leaving the bottle by my chair.
Saturday brings a fresh crisis. Some of the employees are off, and the rest of us have to unload a truck with huge bags of feed.
I watch Liz throw one onto her shoulder and take note of the stance she uses to balance the weight, but I go down the second they pass me the first sack.
Now they do laugh, though by the end of the day some of them say goodbye to me, and I catch a few new words. “She held out.” “Crazy lawyer.”
In my room, I fall on my back on the bed and stare at a stain on the ceiling.
The house is quiet. Almost everyone is in one of the barns, celebrating the end of the week with a few beers, or in town.
Only the sound of cicadas comes in from outside.
I want to cry, but the tears don’t come.
Instead, I focus on the pain. In my hands, my shoulders, and the strange pride of having survived the first week of work.
Sunday morning feels like a reckoning. Out here the air is too clean, the sky too blue. My body’s a wreck, but outside, the ranch is beautiful. Liz is already working with Diego, the Hendersons’ son. There are no days off when you have to feed the cattle.
And I have to blink a few times to make sure I’m not dreaming.
It’s hard to miss. A black Tesla, completely out of place, comes up the road to the ranch, kicking up a huge cloud of dust. Liz and Diego trade a surprised look; even the cows stop eating and stare.
The car glides into the ranch. No engine noise, just a faint hum. It’s so strange I can’t help but laugh.
Michelle gets out and waves at me as if we’d just run into each other at a club in Chicago.
“Want to show me your ranch?” she asks, arching an elegant eyebrow at the state I’m in.
We walk for a good while, and I surprise myself by explaining water rights, the crops, the head count. Everything I’ve learned over the week. She just listens and nods politely until we get back to the house.
“I see a luxury resort. Golf courses, cabins with their own pools. High-end mindfulness retreats. This is worth a fortune. Think about it, Camila. Ranching doesn’t have a future anymore; tourism, on the other hand…
Anyway, all the ranches around here will disappear sooner or later; you have the chance to get ahead of it and get rich.
You’d make more than enough to bankroll that project you’re always talking about,” she adds, tying a knot in my stomach.
She opens her laptop, and what I see on the screen takes my breath away. They’ve recreated the ranch, but it’s no longer my grandmother’s place. Luxury cabins tucked among the old cottonwoods. A conference center overlooking the riverbed. Trails, pools, a golf course.
“We’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse… or you can own a piece of the business, if you want,” she announces with a smile clearly practiced in the mirror.
“It’s not that simple,” I admit. “My grandmother put a stupid clause in her will. Sixty days. I have to stick it out here for two months, or the ranch goes to the foreman. I have to work at this place and…”
“Work on the ranch? I didn’t want to say anything, but you look terrible,” she cuts in, making a face I can’t quite place.
“I don’t have a choice. Two months and the ranch is mine.”
“What if she’s the one who quits before the two months are up?” she blurts.
“Quit? Liz Harper was born here. My grandmother took her and her sister in when they were little, after they lost both of their parents. The ranch is her life, and hard work doesn’t scare her. She’s not the one who’s going to quit,” I explain.
“Fine, let me talk to that cowgirl. And the others too. Bring them to dinner. I’ll treat all those hicks to a nice dinner in Santa Fe, let them try lobster and an expensive wine—you’ll see how fast I win them over.
People like that don’t know how to think long-term.
The minute I offer them in one go what they make in half a year, they’ll be the ones asking you to sell. ”
“I doubt it, Michelle. Liz won’t budge, and the rest would follow her to the death, but it’s been nice seeing you. If I manage to last two months, I’ll be happy to look over your proposal.”
“At least let me take you to dinner in Alamogordo tonight. By the way, that cowgirl over there… does she always look that pissed off?”
“That’s Liz, the ranch foreman we were just talking about,” I sigh.
“I’d say she’s jealous.”
“Don’t talk bullshit, Michelle.”
“Eight o’clock tonight in Alamogordo, I’ll text you the restaurant location,” she shouts before getting back into her Tesla.