Chapter Six
He had a strange, unsettled feeling when he drove Bix out to the barn to get an assignment for the day. Deciding to take the
day off, he didn’t like the idea of Bix leaving so quickly after she got here. He just felt like whatever he was sending her
off to, it wasn’t going to be good. And he felt like she was so vulnerable that he didn’t like the idea of it at all. He could
see that she didn’t think so. It was obvious to him she thought she was tough. Well able to withstand any of the bullshit
out there in the world.
Obviously, she had done it up until this point.
He didn’t feel like she should have to.
He would never have gone out looking for somebody to help, but now she had fallen into his lap like this, and it just seemed...
You’ve latched on to her, but she hasn’t necessarily latched on to you.
No. It was clear to him that she was ready to bolt at a moment’s notice if any of them put a foot wrong. And he wasn’t entirely
sure what would constitute putting a foot wrong as far as Bix was concerned. She was an unknowable entity, and maybe that
was part of the reason why he was fascinated by her.
People, in his experience, were generally exactly what they seemed.
Oh, some of them had a pretty good mask. But it didn’t take much digging to get to the heart of it. His father hadn’t presented
like a maniacal asshole. At least, not to the children that had been raised underneath his firm hand.
He had been a difficult man. Giving praise and rescinding it. But Daughtry had idolized him. His father was a hard worker.
For a lot of years King’s Crest was the highest-earning ranch in Four Corners. They were the most successful. He’d said it
was because he was dedicated to doing business on the side. He’d laid out the ethics of that business like he’d really thought
it through. The Kings, he’d said, were hard workers. Lazy people borrowed money then blamed others when they couldn’t pay
it back. But if you had a debt, it was the right thing to pay it back. Sometimes he had to be hard to collect those debts,
but that was him protecting his family.
Daughtry had bought it all, hook, line and sinker. He’d worked with his dad.
He hadn’t realized his dad was a loan shark and a drug runner. And so when Daughtry went with his dad to collect debts, he
was cheating people. Along with his dad.
So yeah, he knew that people could fool you. But at this point in his life Daughtry was difficult to fool.
But Bix was a study in contradictions. On the surface, she was almost exactly what he might expect. An angry antiestablishment rebel who came about the belief system pretty honestly. What had the system done for her? Nothing. Even he could see that, and he believed in the system.
He didn’t believe it was perfect. It was only as flawed as all the people in it. But he believed that the framework existed
to make good things within the system, and that was what he tried to do. Because he prized rules and order above all else.
A clear and binary way to act and mete out justice.
But there was more to her. He could see it, in the quick flashes of softness that appeared in her eyes. Little bits of emotion.
She did her best to hide it, maybe even from herself. He had become a student of the people around him because he had been
bound and determined not to be tricked again.
Not the way that his father had deceived him.
But rather than feeling frustrated or suspicious of Bix for being unreadable, he felt intrigued.
He wasn’t used to that.
When they pulled up to the barn, Justice and Denver were standing outside next to a pile of lumber that had clearly been freshly
delivered.
“Morning,” he said, when he parked the truck and got out.
Bix followed behind him, her movements reminding him of a squirrel. Quick. Agile. Anxious.
She came to stand beside him.
She wasn’t wearing the sweats anymore. She had changed to an oversize flannel shirt and a pair of jeans with holes in the knees. She had put her black beanie back on. She was back to looking like a teenage hooligan. Even though he already knew she wasn’t.
Even though he already knew that she was capable of looking soft. More her age. More like a woman.
Immaterial. It was just something he’d observed.
“Where’s Landry?” he asked.
“He took Lila to go pick up some feed. They said they’d be back late afternoon.”
“All right. I took the day off. I have some things to do around my house, but I’ll be around later.” He shifted. “Bix is willing
to do any kind of carpentry work that you have.”
Denver turned to Bix. “You know how to build?”
“I don’t suck at it,” Bix said.
“Know how to use power tools?”
Her eyes went bright. “No. But I would love to learn.”
“Oh, we can have some fun,” said Denver.
And Daughtry thought of what she had said. About how she would probably get along with his family better than he did.
He was watching it happen right in front of him. He shouldn’t let it bother him.
It did.
“See you around, Daughtry,” said Bix, waving him off. He wondered why the little scoundrel was so eager to get rid of them.
“I’ll be back,” he said.
“I know,” she said.
“Fairly quickly,” he added.
“Great,” she said. “In the meantime, I’ll be using power tools.”
“Don’t let her hurt herself,” he said, turning away from Denver and Justice and heading back toward his truck.
He got in the cab, and not for the first time, wondered what the hell he had gotten himself into. His first order of business
was to find a bed, and he had a feeling his best bet was going to be contacting his sister. He decided against calling, and
instead went out to the north field on the ranch, which he knew was where he was most likely to find her on this day of the
week.
And there she was. On the back of her horse, her dark hair streaming out from underneath a cowgirl hat. Her husband, Micah,
was with her, also on the back of a horse. They looked happy. So happy. And it made his chest ache because Arizona had spent
a lot of years being angry and bitter and unhappy.
Their father had been cruel to her. Daughtry hadn’t known that at the time. But after she had gotten in a car accident that
had left her scarred and with permanent injuries, their father had been outraged at her for being mortal. He hadn’t had any
patience for her emotions, for her depression. Arizona had put up a thick shield, a wall that was difficult to get around.
Micah coming back into her life had changed everything. Not just because she was in love, but because he had helped her realize
that a lot of what their father had said to her, a lot of what had gotten in her head, wasn’t true.
He was happy about that for her.
The problem was his father had loved him. Daughtry had been his right-hand man. He had always approved of what Daughtry was
doing and that had given him a sick kind of twisted-up metric for measuring good and bad. Right and wrong was something he
had never given much thought to. And he did his best to let it govern his life now.
He put the truck in Park and killed the engine. Then he got out and gave his sister a wave. She saw him, and oriented her
horse his direction and began to ride toward him. She let the mount fly, clods of dirt flying up behind his hooves. And she
made sure to stop dramatically just in front of him. Which threw a little bit of dirt on his jeans. But he didn’t mind.
“What brings you by?” she asked, looking mischievous, in a way only younger sisters could.
“I had a question for you. You know Bix, the woman that I just hired to work on the ranch?”
“She looks like a kid to me.”
“She’s not,” he said. “I mean, younger than we are, but an adult.”
“Okay. Proceed.”
“I need a bed for her. So that she has a place to bunk down while she’s working here.”
“Okay.”
“I was just wondering if you knew if there were extras either at the ranch house or in storage somewhere.”
“I have one that we just put out in the storage shed. You’re welcome to get it if you want.”
“Yeah. I’d appreciate that.”
“It’s unlocked. Just behind the house. It should be the closest thing to the front. We just got a new bed and put it in there.”
“Perfect.”
“We have an extra bedroom,” she said. “If Bix needs a place to stay...”
“No,” he said. “I’ve got room at my place.”
“And you actually want her to stay with you?”
He couldn’t quite untangle why this felt like the best way forward. He felt responsible. For her. For his family. He felt
like she was a mission that he had to see all the way through because he was the one who had started it. It seemed reasonable.
Rational even.
He didn’t want her at the ranch house. While he trusted Bix more or less, he would be an idiot to trust her all the way. That
was just logical.
“She’s...”
“Your stray?” Arizona asked.
He bristled slightly at that. It was unflattering to both him and Bix. But the problem was it was not far from the truth.
“She’s my responsibility,” he said, opting to just put a better label on it rather than scold his sister.
“You are a man who loves responsibility,” said Arizona. “And a hair shirt.”
“You’re the only person who can get away with saying things like that to me.”
“Wow. What do you do to the other people who say things like that to you? Do you glower at them until they put themselves
in handcuffs?”
He gave his sister a deadpan look. “I’m going to go get the bed now.”
“Okay. Feel free to take some of my other junk with you.”
“I’m not a cleaning service, Arizona.”
“You’re not good for much, Daughtry.”
He shook his head and made his way back to the truck. It was a short drive over to the house his sister shared with Micah
and their son. A cute little place, with a picturesque yard. It was amazing the way that his sister’s internal changes were
reflected in the way she had decided to shape the home that she and Micah shared.
He didn’t have time to linger much on that, though. He went to the shed and opened it up, quickly finding the mattress, box
spring and basic bed frame.
It was a bigger bed than he had been intending to put in the space, but Bix would probably enjoy it. Not that she had said
anything about whether or not she had enjoyed sleeping in his bed last night.
He grunted a laugh as he thought those words. Definitely not in the context women normally slept in his bed. Not that they
usually slept in it. It had been a while since there had been a woman anyway.
He was fond of arrangements. He wasn’t big on going out, getting drunk and picking women up; that was his brothers’ territory.
It wasn’t that he’d never done it; he just wasn’t habitual about it. It was one of those things that fell into a gray area
for him. And he didn’t like a gray area.
He liked things to be clear. Definitive.
And that was where he preferred a long-standing arrangement over a hookup. There was a woman who delivered vitamins for the cattle to the ranch a while ago. And she had included him as a stop on her route even when they didn’t need vitamins.
There had been clear boundaries and clear rules. She had chosen to stop and see him, she had always been totally sober and
in her right mind, able to skip the stop if she hadn’t wanted sex. His father was just such a manipulative bastard, and he
had never, ever wanted to be like that. He didn’t want to cajole or seduce. He didn’t like anything that fell into that category.
He realized he was a little bit over-the-top about that. That he took it to an extreme. But his actions when he’d been a teenager
had been such that he felt extremes were warranted where he was concerned.
He didn’t trust himself.
She had moved on to another area, and that was fine. But it had also left him in a bit of a dry spell. He was busy, though,
and it wasn’t something he thought about overly much.
It was a testament to the fact that it had been a few months that handling and moving a bed put his mind firmly on sex.
He got everything loaded into the back of the pickup and drove it back to his place. He was beginning to feel a little like
a Ping-Pong ball, pinging around back and forth. Then he wasn’t done yet.
He brought the bed into the empty room in his house and worked toward assembling it. And by the time he was through, it was lunchtime. He could grab something at the house, or he could head over to the barn, where Fia and Denver had no doubt collaborated on some vittles for the workers.
He opted for Denver’s food, because he knew it would be better than whatever he could rustle up here.
But when he pulled up to the barn, what he saw made his stomach drop down into his feet.
He looked up through the windshield and saw Bix. She was on the roof, no tether or safety line or anything like that. Scrambling
around like a wildcat from one end of the ridgeline to the other.
He put the truck in Park and didn’t even bother to turn it off.
He got out and looked at his brothers, who were just standing there with their hands on their hips looking up.
“What the hell is going on?” he asked.
Denver gestured toward the barn. “She’s checking to see if the roof leaks.”
“Are you insane ? She could get herself killed.” He started to walk toward the barn, but realized there was no ladder. “How the hell did she
get up there?”
“She climbed,” said Denver, looking impressed.
“Like a rat,” said Justice.
“And you just let her?”
“You’ve known her longer than I have,” said Denver. “You know, like a half a day longer, but what gave you the impression
that she was somebody that asked for permission to do anything?”
He knew his brother had a point. But they could’ve picked her up and tied her to something to keep her from doing something
that dumb.
“She’s skin and bones,” said Daughtry. “She probably doesn’t have the strength to be doing things like that.”
“And yet she is,” said Denver.
Daughtry hadn’t worried that she wouldn’t work hard. That was funny. Maybe because he didn’t care whether or not he was taken
advantage of. That wasn’t the point of him offering her work. But it hadn’t occurred to him that she would go overboard trying
to prove that she was fit to be here. And it should have.
Because she was exactly that person. If he really thought about it. Everything she’d said added up to this. People might make
assumptions about her because she had been working on the wrong side of the law, but what she did was work. She obviously
believed that a person had to earn their way; she just didn’t believe that the way was necessarily what the law said.
And now here she was, going overboard trying to prove herself.
“Bix!” he called out.
She stopped and peered down at him. “Hey, Sheriff. I’m just checking to see where the shingles have gone bad.”
“Get down here.”
“I’m not done,” she shouted back.
And to his chagrin she continued to scamper around up there, until she made her way to the edge, sat down on her rear, bent
over and gripped the edge of the roof, and just about gave him a heart attack.
She was dangling, her feet in the air. Until she swung them forward and seemed to find a foothold in the wood. Then she leaned down and gripped another board, until she was secure. She worked her way down like it was a rock face and she was a free solo climber, the amount of strength she contained in her skinny limbs shocking. He couldn’t breathe. Not until she was halfway down. Not until she was far enough that if she fell, she wasn’t going to get killed or maimed.
And then with about three feet to go, she hopped down. “Did you have something to ask me, Sheriff?”
“I didn’t have anything to ask you. I have something to tell you. Don’t do things like that. That was stupid.”
She crossed her arms, her expression speaking of mutiny. “Justice and Denver didn’t have a problem with it. Anyway, there’s
going to be a whole crew out there working on that roof, because it is in shambles. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”
“I’m not shocked,” Denver said, looking grim.
“This is getting expensive,” said Justice.
“Well, I knew it would be expensive,” said Denver. “And the truth is, we have the money.”
“You’re going to pay for it out of your pocket?” Justice asked.
“If I have to.”
“All because Landry wanted to make changes around here?” Daughtry asked.
“Because it’s the right thing to do,” said Denver. “Because we’ve got to keep evolving if we want to be secure.”
“Damn straight,” said Bix. “Evolution is the only way to survive. The world isn’t going to slow down for you. So, you’ve gotta figure out how to keep up.” She looked at him. “And sometimes you have to climb a few barns.”
“Except you don’t need to do that,” said Daughtry.
“I’m fine. Do you have any idea how many times I have evaded the law that way?”
He looked at her and frowned. “No.”
She smiled. “A lot.”
“I think she’s great,” said Justice. “A regular street urchin.”
“It’s true,” said Bix. “Oliver Twist doesn’t have anything on me.”
He didn’t know why, but the literary reference surprised him. Maybe because she’d mentioned that she had gone to school. That
she certainly hadn’t made it sound like their dad had taken a great interest in giving her a quality education.
Denver checked the time. “Time for lunch delivery.”
And as if on cue, Fia pulled up in her car and got out. Denver walked into the barn and returned a moment later with tables
and Fia set out two big silver tins filled with meat.
Then Fia began to put sides and baskets of bread out, and then two glorious-looking pies.
Denver smiled at his sister-in-law. “Thanks.”
“It’s my job,” she returned. “And anyway, you cooked the meat I just heared it back up.”
“I don’t pay you enough.”
She waved a hand. “You don’t need to pay me.”
Bix looked at Denver. “You do need to pay me .”
Denver laughed. “Don’t worry. I definitely will. You can get extra hazard pay too, since Daughtry is so pressed about your adventure up on the roof.”
“I’ve only known him for a little over twenty-four hours, but I think it’s safe to say that Daughtry is always pressed.”
That earned her a riotous laugh from his brothers.
“Hilarious,” he said, moving over to the table of food and piling on rolls, coleslaw and brisket.
Bix did the same, though she had twice as much food on the plate.
She separated from the group and sat against the barn, her plate resting on her knees, which were pulled up tightly to her
chest as she ate quickly, shoveling the food in.
Like she was afraid it was going to disappear.
He imagined that she might be.
He sighed, mostly at himself, and moved across the expanse of dirt to where she was sitting. He took a seat down on the ground
beside her, with a couple feet of dirt between them. “I know you’re used to having to live hard. But you don’t need to prove
yourself here. You don’t need to put yourself at risk to earn a place.”
“I’m not doing that,” she said, not pausing her eating. “It was a job that needed doing, so I did it. I like working.”
So, he had been right about that.
“Yeah. I get that. You seem like you really get a lot out of this.”
“I do,” she said. “It’s nice to do something that people...” She shook her head. “I’m never going to claim to be a hero of any kind,” she said. “Ever. But it’s a little bit nice to do something that’s actually worthwhile. Building something. I mean, making moonshine is making something. I take pride in that. I don’t take things away from the world, I add to them. I can’t help it if people are irresponsible with their liquor. Everyone needs to be responsible for themselves. And personally, I think the state ought to stay out of everyone’s business.”
“Yes. I did get that from you.”
“The point is,” she said. “I might do things that are a little bit shady, but I don’t ask for money for nothing. I pull my
weight. I earn my keep.”
“Yeah. I see that.”
“Now. If I think you’re a little bit of a sucker who’s overpaying me, that’s your problem, not mine. I didn’t trick you.”
“You tried,” he pointed out. “When we first met.”
“How?” she asked, pausing to lick her finger.
“You pretended that you were afraid of me. You’re not afraid of me.”
“All right. I didn’t say that I was the soul of honesty. I said that I prefer honest work. But I’m going to do what I have to in order to get by. Hard-line morality is expensive, Daughtry. And I’m not
rich.”
He grunted. But didn’t really have a response to that.
He looked over at her, and for the moment, she seemed like she was lost in thought. Her pale eyebrows were drawn together,
a crease between them. “Have you considered brewing beer?”
“Me personally?” he asked.
“Well, not you personally. The ranch. I think it’s a good idea, the things that your brothers have proposed. But there can
always be more. I was thinking about what Denver said. Everybody finding something to do. Well, someone could brew beer.”
“Do you like alcohol?”
Her expression was unreadable. “No.”
“You don’t drink.”
She shrugged. “I don’t.”
“But you make alcohol. And now you’re suggesting that we brew beer. And you don’t even like it?”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it. I don’t drink, but I do taste my stuff before I put it out. I can tell when the product is good. I was trained to figure
that out. But I can’t afford to go drinking my own moonshine. Hell, there’s a metaphor for life in there somewhere. I have
to sell what I make. And as for buying alcohol? Waste of money.”
“Like cigarettes.”
She looked wistful then. “I do miss cigarettes.”
“No drinking, but you got into smoking?”
“Yeah. Just the guys hanging around always had some. It was easy to bum off of them. I liked it because it calmed me down
a little bit without making me feel like my senses were impaired.” She shook her head. “I don’t have to justify myself to
you.”
“I don’t suppose you do.”
“Let me get you some more food.”
She squinted. “Being nice again?”
“No. I also want seconds.”
He grabbed her plate, filled it up again, along with adding some more to his. Then he brought it back to her. Her eating slowed on the second round.
“Fia’s a great cook,” she said.
“Yeah. She is.”
“And Denver... did the meat?”
“Yeah he’s like a grill master. He gets super intense about it. I think if he didn’t have the ranch he’d have opened a restaurant.
Though that would require him to actually deal with people, which is not his strong suit.”
“I mean, I like him fine enough.”
“He’s... I don’t know, he’s complicated. He takes care of all of us, but hell if I know what’s going on in his head half
the time. He took in a teenager for a while after our dad’s illegal activities landed him in prison. And there’s this other
family... Our dad was responsible for the death of Dan Patrick, and Denver has been sending money to the girls in that
family for years. Ever since.”
“Your dad murdered their dad?”
“He didn’t murder him. He put him in a dangerous position, though. And he lost his life. She didn’t have anywhere to go. Denver
felt responsible, and took her in. Nothing means more to Denver than family.”
“He’s like Vin Diesel.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“Too bad for you,” she said.
Silence lapsed between them. “If you want to, I can take you out to the van and get your things.”
“I have a job to finish here. Afterward?”
“Okay. I guess I’ll grab a hammer too.”
After the hours had passed, Bix got in his truck, and they drove out toward her van. She had hidden it as best she could off the highway.
It was... not much.
An old, orange piece of junk with curtains in the windows.
Bix scrambled to the side door and unlocked it with the key that was in her pocket. She jerked it open, and it seemed like
it required an unusual amount of force.
“I’ll just... I’ll be a second.”
She disappeared into the van, and it shook as she moved around inside. He decided that he wasn’t going to wait.
He took a step up into the van and looked around.
It was dilapidated. A threadbare mattress on the floor in the back. There was a dresser that looked like it was bolted down
to the floor, and on top of it, there were some bins. He looked down inside and was surprised to see... books.
He reached inside and took one out.
Rich Dad Poor Dad.
Then he picked up the one under that one.
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
He kept surfing through the stack. The Four Agreements, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a...
It was full of self-help books.
He just stood there staring at the books, not quite able to make sense of them.
She turned and gave him a furious look. “Why are you digging through my stuff?”
“I’m not trying to be nosy.” Except he was.
“Well, you do a great impression of someone who is. Besides you’re like... a detective. It’s your job to be nosy.”
“I’m not a detective any more than I’m a sheriff.”
“Whatever, Sheriff,” she said, waving her hand. “That’s all splitting hairs to me.”
“Do you want to bring your books back with you?” he asked, ignoring her attitude.
She looked uncomfortable. “I don’t care. I could.”
“Where did you get them?”
She shrugged. “There are little free libraries everywhere these days. I always stop and look. Don’t look free shit in the
mouth, I mean, right? So, I just take whatever seems... you know, not terribly boring.”
Mostly nonfiction, he saw. There was also a worn copy of Anne of Green Gables , Oliver Twist —that made him chuckle—and a romance novel. “The Wolf and the Dove,” he read.
Her cheeks went pink. “I haven’t read that.”
She was lying. “Like I said, I grab whatever crap,” she said. “It’s free. And the nights are long. I don’t have Wi-Fi.”
She didn’t. It struck him then, how odd it must be. To be twenty-three, to not have a cell phone. To not be on the Internet.
That hadn’t been his experience of being twenty-three; it had been ten years ago, after all. But even he had marginal connections
to technology.
“Let’s bring your books,” he said.
He grabbed the whole crate and carried it back to his truck.
She had an armful of clothes when she came out.
“They need to be washed,” she said.
“As you already know, I have a washer and dryer.”
“Thanks,” she said.
She didn’t ask why he was doing it. She didn’t act overly hostile. It was kind of weird. All things considered.
When they got back to his place, he helped her carry her things inside. He showed her to the bedroom that he’d moved the bed
into. “I guess I ought to get you a nightstand and a dresser.”
She looked like she didn’t know what to say to that. She looked around the room, her eyes totally unreadable.
“I’ll just... I’ll get some things organized, and then I’ll do laundry.”
“You want to go over to the big house for dinner?”
“Can I...? Could we...? I mean can I...?”
“There’s some shit in the freezer if you don’t want to go out again. That’s fine.”
“That would be good,” she said, looking relieved.
“All right. I’ll leave you to it.”
He didn’t need her to thank him. He wasn’t doing it for gratitude. But it bothered him a little that he didn’t feel any lighter.
It hadn’t gone any further in cleansing his soul than he’d imagined it would.
That’s fine. Just keep going. Just stay on the straight and narrow.
What other option was there?