Chapter 8 Mud Lessons, Messy Heart
Mud Lessons, Messy Heart
MADISON
Ican still feel the shape of his hand on my waist.
Which is ridiculous, because that hand was purely functional—stabilizing, steadying, the kind of hand a grumpy farmer puts on the hip of a city girl who nearly tips a display of beets onto a baby stroller. The kind of hand that means nothing.
Town meant something.
Everyone at the Saturday market saw Dylan tip his hat and slide closer so the woman from the bakery wouldn’t elbow me out of frame.
They saw me loop my arm through his like it was the most natural thing in the world.
They saw Matthew roll his eyes so hard it should’ve come with its own weather advisory.
By the time we turned up the gravel lane, the sun was low and the rumor mill was high.
“Home, sweet circus,” I say under my breath as the farmhouse comes into view, all white siding and stubborn dignity.
Dylan doesn’t answer. He’s quiet, like he’s always quiet, and somehow even more so. He kills the engine. The truck shudders into silence. We sit there, not looking at each other, listening to cicadas saw the air in half.
Matthew is already on the porch, arms folded. He has that big-brother posture that says he’s about to be annoying out of love. “You two want a press conference or a plan?”
“Plan,” I say, too fast. “Please. Plan.”
Dylan’s jaw flexes. “Plan.”
Inside, the kitchen smells like coffee grounds and hay dust, which is a terrible scent combination and also somehow my favorite now.
Matthew drags the Ray Wilkes memorial legal folder onto the table—the one with deeds and deadlines and the underlined line that says if the farm can’t show solvent operations by harvest, everything Ray built gets carved up and sold.
“So.” Matthew taps the folder. “If you’re committed to the… performance in town—”
“It’s not—” I start.
He cocks an eyebrow.
“Fine,” I sigh. “It’s strategy. Temporary.”
“It should never be temporary when it comes to the farm,” Dylan says, voice low. He’s looking at the folder, not me.
I pinch my fingers together to keep from reaching for him. “The strategy is to get enough attention to float the proof-of-concept suppers and the flour from your mill and the ‘Farm Firsts’ series. Not because it’s cute. Because it’s revenue. Because it buys us runway to do this right.”
Matthew nods like he hates agreeing with me. “Ground rules, then.
One: nobody climbs anything alone.
Two: nobody drives anything without a spotter.
Three: if you’re going to let town-folk believe you’re playing house, you keep the drama off-camera.”
“Deal,” I say.
Dylan looks at me finally, eyes pale and unreadable.
“Four: you tell the truth in what you post.”
My mouth is dry. “Always.”
“Then we start with tractors,” Dylan says, clapping his hands once like a coach. “Because the wheat isn’t going to plant itself and I’m too handsome to die pushing this field by hand.”
***
There are skills you learn with your brain and skills you learn with your bones. Tractor driving is both and neither. It’s also a surprise arm workout when you panic and oversteer.
“Ease it,” Dylan says from the step, one boot on the metal rung, one hand braced on the fender. “Ease. Don’t fight it.”
“I’m not fighting,” I say, fighting. The wheel is alive under my palms, and our row looks like it’s trying to chart an escape route.
He leans in, reaches across me to nudge the throttle, the brim of his cap bumping my temple. The scent of sun and old cotton and clean sweat fills every cell I own. His forearm brushes my ribs. Neutral. Totally neutral. I am a professional.
“Look ahead,” he murmurs. “Pick a point and go there. Not the ground. There.” He taps the far fencepost.
I do it. We straighten. The hum of the engine smooths out like a compliment.
“Better,” he says. There’s a ghost of a smile on his mouth before he notices and erases it. He takes his hat off and sets it on my head. “Sun,” he says, like it’s a reason and not a gesture that detonates in my chest.
“Cute,” Matthew calls from the field edge. He’s filming, the traitor. “City girl cosplays farmer. Internet loses its mind.”
“Internet can lose its mind about the straight row,” I call back, giddy and proud. I keep my eyes on the fencepost, ease the throttle at the turn, breathe. The second row is better. The third is almost clean. My bones start to learn.
We spend an hour like that—Dylan’s voice a metronome, my hands discovering they can be steady. Sweat runs down my spine; dust cakes in my elbows. I love it. I love it in a way I don’t know what to do with, because loving this means loving everything that comes with it.
Which is when the goats stage a jailbreak.
“Gate!” Matthew shouts.
I cut the engine so fast I nearly stall twice, jump down, and sprint. The small pen off the north shed has a latch that apparently qualifies as decorative. Six goats flow onto the yard like spilled marbles.
“No problem,” I say brightly to no one. “I have a plan.”
“Don’t run,” Dylan says, already moving with that loose, competent stride that makes you believe him even before he opens his mouth. “They think it’s a game.”
“Copy that.” I tiptoe. I rustle the bag of saltines I tucked into my back pocket after learning all of the goats know how to unzip backpacks.
Gray Chaos swivels toward the crinkle. He considers me, considers Dylan, considers the pocket, and moseys over with the exaggerated nonchalance of a cat.
I break a cracker and hold out a corner, “C’mere, Hashtag.”
Matthew chokes on a laugh. “You named the goat Hashtag?”
“I didn’t name him,” I say, lying while Hashtag nibbles delicately like he didn’t just lead an insurrection. “He named himself.”
We coax two more with crumbs and dignity.
A pair of neighborhood kids—Maya and Theo, gap-toothed and fearless—appear on bikes and volunteer as auxiliary wranglers.
Dylan nods thanks like this is normal. Because it is.
Because farms don’t run on one person’s strength; they run on borrowed hands, shared jokes, and the kind of neighborly barter nobody writes receipts for.
When the last goat sashays back into the pen, I fix the latch with a length of baling twine and one savage glare.
“You’re posting that,” Matthew says, smug.
“Maybe.” I make a show of aiming my phone at Hashtag.
The camera accidentally, absolutely accidentally, catches Dylan grinning at the kids.
It’s a quick, crooked thing, unguarded and beautiful.
I freeze the frame and see something I am not ready to name.
My thumb hovers over Save. I press it. Then I tuck the phone away.
***
By late afternoon, the light has that thin gold edge that feels like a promise. We’re in the small north barn when the heifer starts labor. I know enough to know that birth is work, not a crisis; I also know the way Dylan’s shoulders set is not the way they set when someone misfiles a seed invoice.
He calls the vet anyway. We give the cow space, keep the pen quiet, check the clock. I hold the flashlight the way he tells me to, steady and low. He keeps his voice level, hands sure. The vet’s truck bounces up the lane in a timed way that says everything is under control.
Sometimes everything under control still breaks your heart.
There is no gore. There is only effort, and then there is stillness.
The vet’s face is kind in a way that makes my throat hurt.
Dylan presses his palm once to the heifer’s neck, once to the small body that will never stand.
We do what needs to be done. We don’t talk about the part where we don’t breathe for a minute in the dark.
After, we bury the calf under the line of cottonwoods on the east edge, where the soil is soft and the light is good in the mornings.
Matthew brings the small shovel Ray used for this exact kind of loss and doesn’t say how he knows where it is.
The three of us stand there, useless and necessary, and say nothing that isn’t the truth.
Back at the barn, I sit on the tailgate of the truck and open my phone. The cursor blinks in the caption box, patient. My fingers type anyway:
Today the farm reminded us that doing everything right doesn’t always mean you get the ending you want. We keep showing up. We keep loving what we can’t control. We make the soft place for the next fragile thing.
I stare at it. I read it out loud in my head and hear how it’s more about me than the heifer, more about my need to be witnessed than the farm’s right to grieve in peace.
I close the app. I put the phone face down.
Dylan appears beside me like he was grown from the same tailgate. He doesn’t look at the phone. He doesn’t look at me. He looks at the field, jaw tight.
“I wasn’t going to post it,” I say.
“I know.” His voice is rough, but not with anger. “Thank you.” He swallows. “She’ll be all right. The heifer.”
“I know,” I say, and only then realize that I do.
He nods toward the horizon. There’s a thin bruise of gray over the tree line. “Weather says wind tonight.”
“Good wind or bad wind?”
His mouth quirks. “Is there a good wind?”
“Hair wind,” I say. “The kind that makes you look like you planned your life.”
He huffs something like a laugh. “Then bad.”
***
We get one hour of normal—if normal is pasta that’s half butter, half apology, and Matthew reading the paper aloud like a cranky news station. The porch light clicks on as the sky goes pewter. My legs ache in a way that makes me feel honest.
A ping lands on my phone. A cookware brand I DM’d two weeks ago has circled back: Proof-of-concept supper? Send a deck. The word supper blooms like a lantern in my chest.
“Good news?” Matthew asks, not looking up from the classifieds like he’s eighty.
“Potentially great,” I say. “If we can pull a table together, we might have a sponsor to underwrite the rest.”
“Table we have,” Dylan says, rinsing dishes. “Bread I can mill. People who’d come, I can think of ten.” He says it like a ledger, but I hear the hope he won’t admit to.
He dries his hands and takes two steps toward the mudroom. The wind chooses that moment to punch the house in the ribs. The screen door slams once, hard, even though it’s latched.
He glances at the window. “Tarp,” he says. “North roof.”
“I’ll spot,” I say before he can tell me to stay.
Matthew drops the paper. “I’ll spot,” he says at the same time.
We end up a three-person unit without speaking about it. Boots on. Jackets. Headlamps. The yard is a moving thing now, shadows sprinting under the floodlight as the trees bow and unbow. The tarp on the north side of the barn snaps and bellows like a sail about to tear free.
“Ladder,” Dylan says, already moving.
“I’ve got it,” I say, grabbing the lower end. Matthew takes the middle. Dylan takes the top and we turn this twelve-foot aluminum argument into a coordinated act.
Chain lightning lights up the sky in the west. The count to thunder says we still have time.
Dylan braces the ladder, tests the rungs, and swings up like he was born to it. Matthew plants his feet and locks his hands on the side rails. I stand behind Matthew, hands raised, the human version of a safety net.
The wind gusts meaner. The tarp snaps. One corner rips free with the long, helpless sound of fabric losing a fight.
“Dylan—wait,” I say, voice sharper than I intend. He’s already three rungs up, already reaching for the loose flap, already cursing under his breath.
He pauses. Looks down. Meets my eyes.
I raise my chin. “We do this together.”
The ladder rattles. Thunder cracks closer, the kind that rolls through your ribs and rearranges your heartbeat.
He nods once. “Together,” he says.
And then the wind hits hard from the north, the ladder rocks, the tarp whips, and everything in me lifts with it.
The first cold drop of rain lands on my cheek like a warning.
The screen door on the porch bangs open behind us. The light wobbles in its fixture.
“Dylan!” I shout over the wind.
His hand closes on the loose edge of the tarp.
A seam gives way with a sound like a zipper on a sleeping bag right before you find out if you’re warm enough.
The world tips.
***