Chapter Seventeen
The till fork hit a rock about six inches down and sent a jolt up both arms that rattled Logan’s teeth.
Colorado ground. Full of surprises, every last inch of it, and not the good kind. The good kind involved gold nuggets or arrowheads or, at minimum, soil that didn’t fight back like it held a personal grudge against agriculture.
He worked the fork around the stone, levered it up, and chucked it to the growing pile near the chicken coop. The rock landed with a thud that startled two hens into a flurry of squawking.
“That one had roots.” Grace crouched about four feet to his left, dragging a hand rake through the turned earth, breaking up clods into something that might, with enough optimism and manure, pass for planting soil. “Look at that. Took half the dirt with it.”
“Rocks don’t got roots, Grace.”
“This one did. I saw ’em. Little rock roots, holdin’ on for dear life.”
“That ain’t how geology works.”
“How do you know? You a geologist?”
“I know rocks don’t grow roots on account of rocks not bein’ alive.”
“Everything in this ground’s alive, Logan. The worms, the bugs, the little white things that look like tiny potatoes but ain’t potatoes—”
“Grubs.”
“—the grubs, thank you, and if all them can make a home in this dirt, I don’t see why a rock can’t put down roots too.”
She said it with that sideways look, the one where her mouth stayed serious but her eyes gave up the joke. Brown eyes. Honey, when the light came through them right, and the afternoon sun did that thing where it dropped low enough to catch her face straight on.
He drove the fork in again. Hit clean soil this time, which cooperated by turning over in a dark, loamy wave that smelled like rain and earthworms and something green underneath, the way good dirt smelled when it’d rested long enough to remember what it could do.
Behind them, on the porch, Pa sat in the rocker with Miriam propped on his knee. The baby had hold of his mustache in one fist, yanking it sideways every few seconds, while Pa pretended not to notice.
To be fair, maybe he really didn’t notice. The man had survived a cattle stampede in ‘71, a bar fight in Leadville that’d left him with a scar from ear to jaw, and thirty years of Colorado winters. A baby pulling his mustache would barely rank.
From the far pasture, the faint sound of Mason hollering something at Jonah carried over the ridge. Thomas’s voice cut in, probably correcting whatever Mason had hollered, because Thomas corrected everything on principle, even when he had no idea what the original thing meant.
Three hands on the ranch now. Three, counting Jonah, and the difference showed in places Logan hadn’t expected.
The south fence got mended two days ago without Logan having to ride out there himself.
The feed stores stayed stocked without him checking every morning. The horses got brushed on schedule.
Which meant this. Right here. A whole Tuesday afternoon spent turning dirt with Grace instead of riding fencelines alone.
He’d have eaten his hat before admitting it out loud, but having Jonah around—the man he’d tackled on the front porch like a stray dog but six days ago—had turned into one of the better decisions he’d stumbled into.
Or, more accurately, one of the better decisions Grace had forced him into by walking out and leaving him to choke on his own pride until his family shamed him into riding after her.
However you sliced that particular pie, it ended with more hands doing work and Logan standing in a garden with his wife.
Wife.
Such a strange word. Stranger still that, at some point, it’d just become... the word. The one that fit her. The one his brain reached for first.
“You’re quiet.” Grace sat back on her heels and brushed a strand of hair off her face with the back of her wrist, leaving a smear of dirt across one cheekbone. “That’s either real good or real bad with you. Ain’t figured out which yet.”
“Just thinkin’.”
“About?”
You. Standing there with dirt on your face and your sleeves rolled up, and that thing you do where you squint at the ground like you can see the vegetables already.
“Soil composition.”
“Liar.”
He almost smiled. Almost. The corner of his mouth twitched, and he covered it by driving the fork down harder than necessary, which hit another rock, which sent another jolt up his arms.
“You two plan on turnin’ that whole acre by supper?” Pa’s voice carried down from the porch. “At the rate you’re goin’, that garden’ll be ready right about the time Miriam here starts school.”
Grace looked up. “We’re makin’ good progress, Rafe!”
“You’re makin’ conversation is what you’re makin’. I been watchin’. More talkin’ than tillin’ from where I sit.”
“We can do both!”
“Uh-huh.” Pa shifted Miriam to his other knee. “Boy never could work and talk at the same time. Even as a young’un. Remember, Logan, when your Ma—”
“You quit that talk now!” Logan frowned. “I’m serious!”
“—asked you to help shell peas and you got so focused on gettin’ every single pea out perfect that it took you three hours to do one bowl?”
Grace blinked. “Three hours?”
“Three hours.” Pa rocked back in the chair.
“The boy lined every shell up in a row on the table, sorted by size, before he’d throw ’em out.
Miriam, God rest her, just about lost her mind.
She said, ‘Rafe, our boy is either gonna be president or the most borin’ man in the territory. I can’t tell which.’”
Logan huffed. “That ain’t—”
“Oh, and the firewood.” Pa bounced the baby. “Logan, how old were you? Seven? Eight?”
“Pa!”
“Eight. The boy stacked firewood for the first time and tore the whole pile down three times because the bark didn’t face the same direction on every log. His brothers come runnin’ inside, cryin’ because Logan yelled at ’em for stackin’ crooked.”
Grace pressed her hand over her mouth. Her shoulders shook.
“And the thing is,” Pa leaned forward, tipping the rocker, “the boy ain’t changed one bit. Thirty years old—”
“I’m twenty-five!”
“—and still can’t let a single thing be less than perfect. Serious as a sermon from the day he come into this world. I don’t think the boy’s told a joke in his entire life.”
“That ain’t true.”
“Name one.” Pa raised a finger. “One joke. Go on.”
Logan stabbed the fork into the dirt and left it standing. “I tell jokes.”
“When?”
“I told one last week.”
“You told Thomas his bootlaces didn’t match. That ain’t a joke, son. That’s an observation that made a grown man question his eyesight for twenty minutes.”
Grace doubled over right there in the dirt, laughing into her knees. Her shoulders heaved. The rake fell sideways, and her whole body shook with it.
“I know jokes.” Logan crossed his arms. “Plenty of ’em.”
“Well, go on then.” Pa spread one hand wide while the other kept Miriam steady. “Enlighten us.”
Fine.
“Two ranchers bragging about their spreads. First one says, ‘I can get on my horse at sunup, ride all day, and still not reach the far end of my property.’ Second rancher nods real slow and says, ‘Yeah. I had a horse like that once. Shot him.”
A chicken clucked somewhere near the coop. The breeze moved through the grass. Up on the porch, Pa blinked as slowly as a barn owl.
“That’s...” Grace tilted her head. “That’s actually pretty good.”
“Pretty good?” Pa scoffed. “It’s the oldest joke in the territory. My grandfather told that joke, and he wasn’t funny neither.”
“Alright, old man.” Logan planted both hands on his hips. “Let’s hear yours, then. Since you’re the comedian of the family.”
Pa grinned under that mustache. “What’s the difference between a horse and the weather?”
“What?”
“One is reined up, and the other rains down.”
Grace groaned.
“That…” Logan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Is the worst joke I ever heard in my life.”
“Your mother loved that joke.”
“Ma laughed at everything you said because she loved you. That don’t mean it had merit.”
“Oh, you wanna talk merit?” Pa straightened up. “Why’d the scarecrow win an award? ‘cause he stood out in his field.’“
Grace snorted. Actually snorted. The sound punched straight out of her nose.
“See?” Pa pointed at Grace. “She gets it.”
“I got one.” Logan grabbed the till fork and pointed it at his father like a judge’s gavel. “A preacher, a lawyer, and a rancher walk into a saloon—”
“Lord, not a three-men-walk-into-a-saloon joke—”
“Hush. A preacher, a lawyer, and a rancher arguing about which profession is the oldest. Preacher says, ‘God created the world from nothing—that’s a miracle, so preachers came first.’ Lawyer says, ‘Before that, there was chaos, and bringing order from chaos—that’s law.
’ Rancher just shakes his head and says, ‘Who do you think made the chaos?’”
Pa chuckled. “Alright. That one’s passable.”
“Passable? That’s quality.”
“It’s passable, and you’re pushin’ your luck.” Pa scratched Miriam’s chin. “Give me another.”
“Two ranchers bet on whose bull can jump a fence—”
“Heard it.”
“You ain’t even let me—”
“The one bull clears the fence, and the other one’s still standin’ there chewin’. Heard it. Next.”
Logan worked his jaw.
Fine. The old man wanted to play? Logan had one in the back pocket. One that Mason had told him two winters ago after a night of cards and too much bourbon, the kind of joke you only repeated around men and livestock.
“ Alright. Fella comes home, wife’s packin’ a bag.
He says, ‘What’re you doin’?’ She says, ‘Leavin’ you.
I heard a woman can get five dollars for what I do for you for free.
’ So he goes and gets his own bag. She says, ‘Where the hell are you goin’?
’ He says, ‘I want to see how you live on ten dollars a year.’”
The punchline landed, and his grin spread before the rest of his brain caught up.
Then it caught up.
He glanced at Grace.
Grace—who stood four feet away with dirt on her face and a rake in her hand—opened her mouth. Logan’s brain froze for about three full seconds as he prepared for shock or offense or that tight-lipped silence his mother used to get when Pa said something coarse at the table.
Instead, Grace squeezed her eyes shut and erupted with laughter straight from her chest that hit the clearing like a cannon shot. The chickens scattered, and Miriam startled on Pa’s knee. The till fork vibrated where it stood in the ground.
She bent at the waist. Grabbed her knees. The laugh kept rolling, and her face went all red as if she couldn’t breathe.
“Ten—” She gasped. “Ten a—”
Another wave hit her. She sat down in the dirt. Just dropped, right into the garden bed they’d spent two hours preparing, and laughed until tears cut tracks through the dust on her cheeks.
Up on the porch, Pa shook his head and looked at Logan with both eyebrows raised high enough to wrinkle his whole forehead.
Logan…
Logan just stood there.
Because she was laughing. At his dirty joke. In their half-tilled garden patch, with the dirt under his nails, the smell of fresh-turned earth, and the baby squawking on the porch. Everything, everything about this moment was so far from the simple, boring, predictable life he’d planned that...
He looked down and burst out laughing.
Grace wiped her eyes with both hands. “Logan Foster, you are terrible.”
“I—look, I forgot you—I mean, that joke ain’t—it’s a ranch joke, you tell it ‘round the hands after supper, I didn’t mean to—”
“Oh, stop.” She waved him off. “I grew up in the slums of New York Harbor. You think that’s the worst thing I ever heard?”
She pushed herself up from the dirt and brushed off her skirt, still grinning wide enough that the freckles on her nose crinkled together.
“My brother’s friends used to tell jokes that’d make a sailor turn red. That one’s practically a church hymn by comparison.”
“But—”
“But nothin’. Tell me another one.”
“I ain’t tellin’ you another dirty joke.”
“Why not? I liked that one.”
“Because it ain’t—I mean—there are—” He rubbed the back of his neck. “It ain’t proper.”
“Logan.”
She stepped closer. Close enough that he could count those freckles if he had the nerve to stare, which he did not, because staring led to other things his brain kept circling like a horse on a lunge line.
“You tell me another dirty joke right now.”
“Yes, ma’am.”