Chapter 13 Wyatt
I’m still not completely sure what has happened. Julian works for the Linden Group. Linden Group.
I’m sitting on a hay bale by the gray mare’s stall. The mare stands there with her head low, waiting for me to get up and brush her again. The barn smells of her and of straw but underneath that there is the lingering scent of the alpha I was beginning to believe was my soul mate.
Linden is the name on the trucks that come through the crossroads in the mornings.
Linden is the name on the permits I’ve been reading about in the local paper for four years.
Linden is the name that is destroying my well and is going to have me selling my cattle by end of year, if my calculations are right.
Julian works for Linden. And he didn’t tell me. If he had told me from the beginning, then that would be different, I’d have liked him less when I met him but it ultimately wouldn’t have changed everything.
He tried to talk to me and I know he thinks I’m giving him the silent treatment but I’m really not. I don’t know what to say. I can’t say it.
It feels as if my voice has been stolen. I don’t think I can physically talk to him, and if I could, I can only imagine screaming like a lunatic.
Like that’s going to help. The only dignity I have is in staying quiet and walking away.
I set the brush down on the bale beside me.
They could have brought him here on purpose. Linden’s big enough and old enough to have people in Bureau admin. They could have sent him up here to find out what I knew and soften me up and get me to sign. It would explain everything.
It would explain why he came at all, when a man like him from a city like his would normally have fought the cohabitation order in front of a judge for a month. It would explain why he didn’t tell me.
But he is my prime match. That is definitely true. I can feel it in my blood, but that doesn’t mean that Julian Duffield didn’t use that opportunity to spy on us for Linden.
Which leaves the other thing, which is worse, and is that he was here by accident, and he slept with me by choice, and he lied by staying quiet, and at some point in the last week I started to think he was mine.
I put my face in my hands.
I don’t cry. I was going to, when the sound of the sedan’s engine disappeared at the end of the track, and I didn’t.
Now the moment has passed and my body has decided we are doing this dry. Fine. I take one breath and another then I stand up, because the cattle still need looking at and there is no version of this morning where that stops being true.
Donna’s truck comes into the yard a little after ten.
She stops at the porch and lets the boys out and stays in the cab with her hands on the wheel. I walk across the yard to her window. She rolls it down.
“You okay?” she says.
“Not really.”
“Oh honey. I’m here for you, no matter what. You know that, right?” I nod.
She looks past me toward the barn. Then at me again. “He gone?”
“Yeah, finally.”
“I need to get back home but how about I come over tomorrow night. I’ll bring that tuna casserole you like.”
“Thanks, Donna.”
She looks at me for a long second. Then she puts the truck in reverse. “You deserved better than that, Wy. I know you. You’re going to overthink this. Don’t. This was all on him.”
She pulls out.
Matthew is on the porch with his backpack at his feet and a stuffed horse under his arm.
When I reach the top step he walks into my legs and puts his face against my hip and stays there.
I set my hand on the back of his head. Caleb is at the porch rail looking out at the yard with his hands in his pockets. He does not turn around.
“Go in and wash up,” I say to Matthew. “I’ll come fix lunch.”
He goes.
Caleb stays at the rail. I stand next to him and I look at the same yard he is looking at. The dust from Donna’s truck is still hanging over the track.
“What an asshole,” he says.
I don’t tell him off for cursing. He’s too old for it. Besides, he’s right.
“I’ll do the calves this afternoon.”
“No, you need to concentrate on school.”
“Let me help, Wyatt. Please. I’m not a little kid anymore. And that jerk--” he breaks off. “That jerk didn’t deserve you.”
I look at him. “Okay,” I say, finally. “Thank you.”
He nods and goes inside.
I stand on the porch a minute longer. The sun is fully up now. Somewhere past the ridge the Linden pumps are running. I can hear them if I listen.
The weeks pass. I get up and I feed the cattle and I fix what needs fixing and I cook dinner and I put Matthew to bed and then I go up and I lie in my bed and I don’t sleep much and I get up and I do it again.
Caleb does the calves. Caleb does a lot of things. I let him, because he wants to, and because I am tired in a way I have not been tired before.
Donna comes Wednesdays for Matthew. She does not come in. She takes him and she brings him back and she gives me a look on the porch every time that says she is counting, and I know what she is counting, and I don’t ask.
My head is full of Julian. I can’t stop thinking about him. I never stop. His scent is everywhere. I dream about him. He might be gone but I can’t escape him. My head spins with thoughts that cycle over and over and never go anywhere.
It’s a Tuesday in the middle of the third week that Caleb comes into the kitchen and says the feed is low.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s go in after lunch.”
I’ve not been into town since Julian left. Caleb is sitting next to me looking out his window the way he does. He reaches over and turns the radio up a couple of notches when a song I like comes on and the two of us sing terribly all the way to Main Street.
We turn into Halsey’s parking under the faded sign that says HAY/FEED/HARDWARE/PROPANE. The bell over the door rings when we come in.
There are four men at the coffee pot in the back corner. Halsey is behind the counter and there’s a woman I don’t know near the nail bins.
All five of them stop what they are doing when I come in.
“Hey Wyatt,” Mr. Halsey says.
“Hey Hal.”
“Good to see you in. Been a while.”
“Been busy.”
He nods. He says, “Caleb, son, go grab me one of the mineral tubs from the back, would you?” and Caleb goes, and when Caleb is gone Mr. Halsey leans on the counter with both hands.
“Heard about the match,” he says. “Heard you saw him off.”
“Yeah.”
“Good.” He says it flat, the way he says most things. “Glad to hear it.”
One of the men at the coffee pot calls across. “Wyatt. Come have a cup.” I know him. His father farmed the section next to ours before Donna and Roy took it over.
I go over. I take a cup. Mr. Halsey keeps pots of coffee going all day and has done since before I was born. The coffee is always terrible.
He clasps my shoulder once and lets go. “Heard your alpha turned out to belong to Linden. And you had to keep him in your house two weeks.”
“Government order said I had to.”
“Bureau,” he says, spitting the word out sideways. “Hell of a thing, that. Hell of a thing.”
The man next to him — his name is Eddie and he works at the co-op — leans in. “You know what I think? I think they planted him.”
There it is. All four of them nod.
“Come on,” I say.
“Hear me out,” Eddie from the co-op says.
“Linden’s got lawyers. Linden’s got people in Denver.
You telling me they don’t have somebody in the Bureau office who can pull a name off a list. They see Briggs come up on the match.
They see the Briggs parcel is a holdout they’ve got left in this whole valley.
They see an architect on their payroll come up as the match.
You’re telling me that’s a coincidence.”
“I dunno,” I say, although I’ve been thinking the same thing.
“Either way,” he says. “Don’t matter. He’s gone now. You got him out. That’s the important thing. Man like that, up at the ranch, sleeping in your mother’s house. Sleeping in your mother’s house, Wyatt.” He shakes his head.
Mr. Halsey, from the counter: “Eddie.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Let the man drink his coffee.”
Eddie shuts up. Roy looks at me. The older man looks into his cup.
Then Halsey says, “My old man’s south quarter’s down to six feet on the shallow well.”
“Yeah,” the older man says. “Mine’s worse.”
“County says it’s the drought.”
“County says a lot of things.”
“Wyatt. Your south well still putting out?”
“No,” I say. “South well’s done.”
They all look at me. None of them look surprised.
“How long,” Roy says.
“Since April.”
Roy whistles soft through his teeth. “How’s the house well?”
“Dropping.”
“Fuck, Wyatt.”
“Yeah.”
The older man shakes his head. “They offer you a number?”
“A while back.”
“You tell them no.”
“Yeah. It wasn’t enough even if I wanted to take it and I did not.”
“Good,” Eddie says. “Good for you. Don’t you take their money, Wyatt Briggs. Don’t you take a nickel.”
I don’t say anything. I drink the coffee.
Caleb comes back with the mineral tub under one arm and sets it on the floor by the counter. He looks at me across the store and he sees my face, and he turns to Mr. Halsey and says, “Two bags of the ten percent, half bag of the crumble for the chickens, and I need to grab a new bulb for the barn.”
“Ten percent,” Mr. Halsey says. “We got the new mix in. Little cheaper.”
“Okay.”
Caleb goes down the aisle to the bulbs. I stand at the counter with my back to the coffee pot. Mr. Halsey writes the order on his pad without looking up.
“Put it on the account,” he says.
“Cash is fine.”
“Account, Wyatt.”
I don’t argue with him. I put my wallet away.
Caleb loads the truck. I stand by the driver’s door and watch him do it and I do not help.
He shuts the tailgate and comes around and gets in on the passenger side.
The older man from the coffee pot has come out onto the loading yard to stand with his hands in his pockets and watch us go. When I lift my hand he lifts his.
On the way out of the yard Caleb says, “Wyatt?”
“Yeah.”
“Are the new calves gonna need the creep feed yet or do we hold off another week?”
“Another week.”
“Okay.”
That is all he says until we are a mile out of town.
Then, looking out his window: “They shouldn’t’ve talked to you like that.”
“Like what.”
“About Mom’s house. Like you were stupid for letting him in.”
“They weren’t saying that.”
“They were.”
I don’t answer. We drive. The fields go by. The Linden site is off to the south somewhere behind the low ridge and you cannot see it from this road, and I am grateful for that, because I do not think I could look at it today.
“Wyatt?” Caleb says again.
“Yeah.”
“I liked him.”
I look at him. He is looking out his window.
“Yeah,” I say. “I know.”
“I just wanted to say it. I won’t again.”
“Okay.”
We drive.