Chapter 17 #2
"Santa Marta." Coyote was quieter than I'd ever heard him. "You say Santa Marta three times and they have to listen because she's the one who minds the dead. Mama said you could call on the Virgin for most things, but for this you call on Marta. The dead are her job. They have to do what she says."
"How do you know she'll come?"
"She comes for Mama. Mama was a bruja. She left me her saint when she went."
"And the saint comes for you?"
"She comes for whoever Mama sent her to."
Whatever Coyote was doing, it was working better than the cottonwood ever did. I leaned in the doorway for a second to watch it.
"What about Ransom?" Fenix said.
I held my breath.
"What about him?"
"He has them too."
"I know."
"More than Joe."
"I know."
"How come his don't bother him?"
Coyote made a small sound that might have been a laugh. "Different kind. Joe's are loud. Ransom carries his quiet. Has since he was a kid."
I backed off the steps before either of them could turn around.
The wind hit me when I cleared the side of the house.
I cut across the yard toward the barn instead, fast, not looking at the porch where Winston was probably still on his phone.
I didn't slow down until I had the barn door shut behind me, Galahad's stall in front of me, my hands flat on the rail.
His water was full, his hay was clean, his shoulder warm under my hand. The horse didn't need checking, and I didn't need to be checking him, but here we both were.
The bag of road salt slumped against the wall by the tack room door, half empty since February. I'd walked past it a hundred times since the thaw without seeing it.
I was being stupid. I knew I was being stupid.
The kid in the cellar thought he was dead.
The dead I knew about had been quiet a long time.
There was no reason in the world to think they were stirring on a Wednesday afternoon because some boy had counted ghosts on Joe Dancing.
The dead I didn't know about were still strangers, and I didn't owe them a damn thing.
I crouched down and scooped up a handful of salt anyway.
The first pinch went into the front corner.
My ears burned the whole walk over there.
The second went in the back. By the third corner, I'd stopped trying to talk myself out of it and just kept walking, because if I was going to be a damn fool about it, I might as well be a thorough damn fool about it.
"Ransom?"
I closed my fist around the salt.
"What are you doing?"
I turned around. Winston was standing in the doorway, hat in hand, his face somewhere between confused and amused, trying not to be either.
"Checking the horse."
"With salt?"
"Yeah."
He came in and shut the door behind him. He stopped in front of me and looked down at my closed fist.
I opened my hand. The salt was sweating into my palm.
"Coyote was teaching Fenix something," I said. "I overheard. It's stupid."
Winston didn't say anything. He stood there with his hat in his hand and waited.
"You think I'm crazy?"
"Maybe."
I huffed a laugh through my nose.
He took the salt out of my fist without asking, pinched some between his fingers, walked it to the corner and dropped it where the floorboards met the wall. He came back to me, put what was left of the salt in my hand, and closed my fingers around it.
"Now your barn's clean, Lanza."
I shoved him back against the stall and kissed him hard enough to taste salt on both our tongues.
Galahad snorted and tossed his head. Damn horse.
Winston's free hand came up and fisted in the front of my shirt at the breastbone. He held on like a man holding a horse on a short rein, tasting like cinnamon and coffee.
The barn door scraped open.
"Ransom, Sierra said to ask if..." Mateo stopped at the threshold. "Oh. Aw, hell."
I pulled back from Winston slowly, keeping my hand flat against his chest.
Mateo had his hat off and was pressing it flat against his chest like he'd just walked into a funeral.
"You're not sorry, Mateo. What did Sierra want?"
"He wanted to know if you wanted the leftover sausage in the icebox or if he could put it in the dog's bowl."
"Tell him in the dog's bowl."
"That all?"
"That's all."
He paused at the door. "Boss."
"What?"
"I'm real happy for you."
"Out, Mateo."
He grinned, and shut the barn door behind him.
I turned back to Winston. He had his hat low over his eyes, his hands in his back pockets, the kind of look on his face that told me he was working hard not to laugh.
"He's never going to let me live that down, you know."
"Well, good for him," Winston agreed.
My phone started going off in my back pocket.
Once, twice, then a sustained rolling buzz like a rattlesnake had taken up residence against my ass.
I ignored it. It kept going. I ignored it harder.
Winston's eyes flicked down to my pocket and back up to my face, and his mouth started doing something I didn't like.
"Mateo's typing fast," he said.
"Mateo is dead to me."
The buzzing didn't stop. I pulled the phone out and held it at my hip without looking. It kept buzzing.
"You gonna look at it?"
"No."
"Could be important."
"It isn't."
"Could be a hostage situation."
"It isn't."
"Could be the boys reportin' a fire."
"Winston."
"I'm just sayin'. Lotta buzzin' for nothin'."
I gave up and looked.
mateo: boys
mateo: BOYS
cruz: what
mateo: I just walked in on the boss kissing the ranger. in the barn. against galahad's stall.
cruz: STOP
cruz: MATEO I S2G
cruz: TONGUE??
mateo: I didn't stay to find out
cruz: WHY NOT
mateo: because I would like to live, cruz
linc: called it
cruz: since when?
linc: day one.
linc: ranger came back with his hat on backwards. nobody puts a hat on backwards by accident.
cruz: linc you're a SAGE
cruz: boss if u r reading this
cruz: and we know u r
cruz: congrats. the ranger is HOT.
mateo: daddy vibes for real
cruz: punch above ur weight. proud of u ??
coyote: ranger is not his daddy. Theyre not related.
linc: not what he meant Coyote. Not what he meant.
I locked the screen.
Winston was watching me with his head tipped sideways and his hat pushed back, the kind of look a man gets when he's already won and is just waiting for the other man to admit it.
"That bad?"
"Worse."
"They got a name for the chat?"
"Bunkhouse."
"They got a name for me?"
"They got a lot of names for you, Ranger. I'm not telling you any of them."
"Ransom—"
"No."
"Just one."
"No."
He grinned. We stood there a minute in the half-light of the barn with Galahad blowing slow breaths over the rail and the wind rattling the loose board on the south wall. Winston put his hat back on and adjusted the brim.
"So," he said. "I ain't ever been on a working horse ranch before. You got chores that need doin' or what?"
I smirked and went to the wall to grab a pair of shovels, handing one off to him.
He looked down at it with a frown before looking back at me. "What's this for?"
"Mucking stalls," I said and leaned on my shovel.
"And while I'm shovelin' shit you'll be…?"
"Supervising," I provided deadpan. "Go on, Ranger. Get to work."
He looked around at the piles of shit Galahad had left in his pen, at the flies buzzing and Galahad's tail swishing. "You're not serious."
"Deathly," I said. "You get Galahad's stall cleaned out, and Tilly's next door, and you'll get it done by lunch or else."
"Or else what?"
I grinned and picked up my shovel. "Or else you'll be sleeping in the guest room tonight instead of my bed."
Winston stood there a moment as if waiting for me to take it back. When he realized I wasn't going to, he turned and scooped up a big pile, muttering, "Motherfucker," under his breath.
My phone buzzed once more in my back pocket.
I didn't look.