4. Knox
FOUR
KNOX
Tony has been gone for hours, and the sun sets as I stretch the last of the barbed wire around the final post in the west paddock. The last thing I need is any of the sick cattle endangering those who haven’t shown signs of disease yet.
I crank the wire stretcher two more times, feeling the burn in my arms after a hundred yards of installation. I’m accustomed to hard work—it’s all we do around this place—but the day seems to have crawled by, and now that all I can do today is done, exhaustion settles over me. My t-shirt is drenched with sweat, my hair is matted to my head beneath my work hat, and a cool shower and ice-cold beer in my hand has never sounded sweeter.
When I’m finished wrapping the final piece of wire, I rise to my feet, sighing as I tip my hat back and wipe the sweat from my brow with the back of my arm. All it took was three hundred feet of barb pricks through my gloves and scratches down my forearms, but I’m done, and I scrutinize the fence with tired eyes. It’s not my best work, but the steers are safe from drinking the pond water that’s been poisoning them for days.
Running my teeth over my lip, I toss my pliers into the crate on the back of the ATV and roll what’s left of the barbed wire spool around the spinner on the back. Finally finished, I pull my gloves off and glance at the six steers I gave injections to today as they mill around in the corner of the paddock.
While a part of me thinks I should’ve seen the signs of sulfur poisoning sooner, I know there’s only so much I could’ve done. And with the increased earthquakes, I have a feeling the sulfur levels in the groundwater worsened only recently and fast, if the twelve dead I already have are any indication.
Removing my hat, I run my arm across my forehead and temple again and squint toward the house. The lights are on, which means my father is finished loading the four Angus steers we have left for San Antonio. I just pray they don’t start showing signs of poisoning by the time they get to the client. He’s already behind schedule as it is.
My gaze shifts to the sick cattle again. Two of them pace, acting confused, but they aren’t getting worse, which is all I can ask for at this point. Each steer we lose is one to three grand we’ll never recoup, depending on size and breed, and with the way the economy is going, we can’t afford to bleed more money, or we’ll lose this place entirely.
I glance at the pump house by the barn. The well is filtered and separate from the pond, but the scent in the air is a constant reminder of how bad the sulfur has gotten, and I’m not sure how long the filtration system will be enough to keep our drinking water safe.
One of the steers snorts in the pen, stirring my thoughts. If I had any energy left, and my muscles weren’t heavy with fatigue, I would burn the dead cattle tonight to keep the scavengers away—I should burn them—but I’m spent. And with Tony down south to help his mother, whose house was damaged in this afternoon’s quake, I’m all I’ve got.
Chugging what’s left of the water in my thermos, I make a mental note of a few final things to do before I can call it a day.
I check the gate, keeping what’s left of the herd separate from the sick, and I climb onto the ATV to head back toward the barn. I’m about to switch it on when my phone rings in my back pocket. Pulling my cell out, I glance at the screen. One missed call and a picture of Tony with a shit-eating grin from over a decade ago flashes with his name.
I answer with a frown because if he’s called me twice now, there’s something wrong, or he’ll be longer than he thought. “Everything all right?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing.” His voice is reedy with apprehension.
My frown deepens, and I glance toward the house. “Why?” He hesitates so long my skin crawls with unease. I’m not sure I can take more bad news tonight. “Tony?—”
“Haven’t you seen the news?”
I glance around the ranch, cast in inky dusk. “I just finished the fence. Why? What happened?” When Tony doesn’t answer, I can’t turn the quad on fast enough. “Tony!” I bark.
“A tsunami hit the West Coast,” he finally answers, and I can barely hear him over the drone of the engine.
“What?” I pull the phone away from my ear and stare at the missed call in the notification bar, clicking it to see who it’s from. Not Tony, Kellen. My brother’s name stares back at me, and my heart plummets. The near-constant sadness and anger filling me since my brother left is drowned out by relief.
“He called me,” I rasp, putting the phone back to my ear. “That means he’s okay.” I say the words aloud to reassure us both.
“Good. I was hoping you’d heard something from him.”
“I gotta go.” I scan the ranch through a new lens. “I’ll call you later.”
“Do that. I’m serious.”
“I will. Thanks.” Ending the call, I shove my phone into my back pocket, turn the throttle, and haul ass down the dirt road. Even if Kellen is okay, he might as well be a world away in San Francisco, and nausea churns as I reach the house.
The quad skids to a halt. I jump off and jog for the front door, flinging the screen open as I barrel inside. Then, I stop short. My father stands in front of the seventy-inch flat screen with his coffee thermos gripped in his hands, staring at an aerial view of San Francisco. It’s gone, and I gape at the submerged city in horror.
1,700-foot tsunami decimates the California coast.
The ticker flashes at the bottom of the footage, and I read it over and over, trying to comprehend.
“Wait,” I say, stepping closer. The footage time stamp says it was this afternoon. “No. No. No.” I pull up Kellen’s missed call from lunchtime, and my eyes blur. He’d called me before the tsunami, which means...
My mind numbs over as I stare at images of toppled high rises, floating debris, and overturned ships in the city drowned in gray seawater.
The news flashes images of Los Angeles next, then Seattle, and back to San Francisco.
I tap my home screen to life. My mind spins a million miles a minute as I press send, hold my breath, and begin to pace the living room, waiting for my brother to answer. It rings and rings, and all the while, my father stands statue-still in front of the television, wordless.
There’s no voicemail and no answer. “Come on,” I urge, and ending the call, I try again. I glance at the ham radio on the bookshelf. Kellen doesn’t have one, and I’m not sure ours is powerful enough to reach California even if he did, so I press CALL on my phone again.
“Don’t bother.”
I pause mid-step, phone partially to my ear, and look at my father. “What?” His back is to me.
“No one can survive that.” He says it with a shocking level of indifference.
“You don’t know that?—”
“Don’t be a damn fool.” He points to the aerial shots of the coast.
“Kellen might not have been in the city. He might’ve been somewhere else,” I grit out, trying to convince us both. But I’m too astonished to think much of anything as I realize my father even looks unaffected. “Are you seriously going to pretend you don’t care in the slightest that Kellen could be injured or dead?” The words barely croak out of me as I step closer to him in his silence—so close he has no choice but to look at me. “You can act like a coldhearted son of a bitch all you want, but you’re the one who is a fool.” I point to the washed-up city. “He is your son!”
“Was,” my father corrects with a bone-chilling sharpness. “He chose to leave?—”
“You all but shunned him from this family!” I shout.
When my father looks at me, a smirk lifts the corner of his mouth, sending chills over my skin. “Then why don’t you ever speak to him?” He jabs his finger into my chest.
Fear, anger, and regret knot inside me with each of his words.
“Why the hell are you so pissed at him if it’s all my fucking fault? Huh?” My father’s eyes shimmer with emotion, but not the good kind. “Why do you act like he abandoned you and never answer his calls?”
I hate the truth of my father’s words. “Because he did abandon me!” I shout back, my chest heaving. It’s the first time I’ve admitted out loud that my brother ran away and left me here, alone with our father and enough grief to fill every room in this giant fucking house.
“That’s what I thought,” he mutters.
“Stop it!” I demand, tired of Mitch Bennett’s heartless bullshit. “Stop acting like you don’t care. Like you’re indifferent that your oldest son could be dead?—”
“He’s not my son!” Fisting the neck of my t-shirt, my father shoves me into the wall, his coffee-laced breath a sweltering punch in the face. “He’s not my son,” he repeats. His gaze is wild as it shifts over me.
“Because he’s gay. Say it, at least. Say the words,” I insist.
But he doesn’t say it. My father is scared, no matter what he says. I see it in his eyes—the fear of admitting to himself his regrets are insurmountable and he’s drowning in them.
His fist tightens in my shirt as his body vibrates with rage and all the grief he’s never been man enough to face.
“Hit me, old man,” I dare him. “Take all your self-loathing out on me, like you used to. But remember, I hit harder than you do now.”
I can hear the protest of his teeth as he grinds them together, battling the urge to pound on me. With a final shove, my father steps away, his jaw sharp as glass and his chest heaving. Without another word, he stalks to the front door, grabs his Stetson and leather jacket, then he flings the screen door open and stomps out into the night.
“Really?” I call after him. “You’re still going to San Antonio?”
But my father doesn’t reply.
“At least keep your radio on!” I shout.
His dually roars to life, the trailer creaking as it jerks into motion, and only as he disappears down the drive do I allow myself to exhale. Tears burn the backs of my eyes as I lean against the wall, my shoulders slumped.
I can’t keep doing this. Every day it eats away at me, and I get further and further away from the person I want to be and the life I want to live. I’m tired of cleaning up my father’s messes and running a ranch that is barely afloat.
I don’t know how long I stare at the muted television and the helicopter view of San Francisco submerged in murky water. But it’s long enough that I feel the heaviness of it all piling up and weighing me down. Irrepressible rage and utter helplessness consume me as I realize how alone in this I actually am.
My gaze darts to our family photo on the mantel. I think of life ten years ago and life now. First Mom, then Kellen.
Ava’s face comes to mind. Those amber eyes have looked at me with anger, sadness, and regret. The face of someone whose family is responsible for what’s become of mine. A woman who evokes so many conflicting emotions when in my presence that numbness is all I feel. And I’m so goddamn tired.
In two long strides, I pick the frame up and throw it at the hearth. The glass shatters against the stone, and miraculously, I feel lighter. But my relief is momentary and quickly swallowed by despondency. I have no idea if my brother is alive or if I will ever see him again, and I’ve spent the last ten years sulking.
Lifting my phone to my ear, I press CALL again. It rings and rings before I hang up and try again. I don’t know how many times I call Kellen, but at some point, I realize he isn’t going to answer. Probably never again.
I walk to the bookshelf and turn the ham radio on, the volume all the way up, just in case he tries to reach me. Then I stop at the wet bar across the living room. I uncork the decanter and down a glass of whiskey. As I pour another, I tell myself that if Kellen is alive, he’ll come home. He has to.