Waylaid (True North #8)

1. Rickie

Rickie

Lunchtime is over on the Shipley farm, and now we’re standing outside again under the hot summer sun.

I’ve been working here for a few weeks, so I know the routine.

First thing in the morning I help my friend Dylan milk the cows and the goats.

Then we eat breakfast before spending the rest of the morning on hard labor.

My legs and back are already tired from digging fence post holes. I’m a city boy at heart, so the last few weeks have been a challenge.

“You’ve done this before, right?” Dylan hands me a wire basket with a wooden handle. “Put the eggs in here.”

“Sure thing.” Although I haven’t collected eggs before. It sounds easier than hauling fifty-pound bags of feed around.

He also hands me a plastic milk jug, with the top cut off and a braided rope looped around the handle. “This is for picking blueberries. You hang it around your neck, so you can use both hands to pick.”

“Cool, cool. Because I’m really good with my hands.” I lift my gaze to Dylan’s twin sister, Daphne. And sure enough, I find her watching me with curious brown eyes that sharpen immediately when I catch her staring. Again.

Flirting with Daphne is the second-best thing about working on this farm. The first best thing is the food. Honestly, I’d happily swap the order of those favorites, except the flirting hasn’t gotten me where I need to go. Yet.

But it’s only a matter of time. Daphne knows what she wants.

It’s the same thing that I want. I can’t say why she’s so skittish, but I’ve given her the time and the space to overcome her hesitation.

And yet she’s still keeping her distance, shooting me looks every time she thinks I’m not paying attention.

Spoiler alert: I’m always paying attention.

“Okay kids,” Dylan says with a chuckle. “I’ll be back in time to fence in the chickens and do the second milking. Go easy on him, Daph,” he tells his sister.

“Why?” she demands. “Everyone has to do his share. Even the new guy.”

“Yeah, I know. But that isn’t what I meant.” His eyes twinkle. “Be nice.”

“Hey, it’s all good,” I insist. “I like your sister. A lot.”

Her lips tighten.

Dylan smiles. Then he gives us a wave and lopes off toward his truck, where his girlfriend is waiting to accompany him to town to do errands.

As soon as he’s gone, I turn to Daphne. “This is good. We need to talk.” This is pretty much the first time we’ve been alone together since I arrived here. Daphne always watches me with hungry eyes. But she doesn’t talk to me. When I walk into a room, she walks out.

She’s afraid to let me in. I just need to figure out why.

“We’re not here to talk,” she says. “The berries won’t pick themselves.”

“Fine—should we pick berries first, then? Or collect the eggs?”

“Divide and conquer. I’ll take the berries.” She takes the milk jug right out of my grasp. “You get the eggs.”

“But—” This arrangement doesn’t work for me at all. “Why not together? We can have a nice little chat about why you’re avoiding me. Besides—the chickens don’t like me. Don’t send me in there alone.”

She halts midstride. “Wait. Are you afraid of the chickens?” Her brown eyes light up as if I’ve just handed her a precious gift.

“No way. Did I say that?” I scoff. I’m not actually afraid of the chickens. We eat chicken a couple of nights a week, so I’m pretty confident about who should be afraid of whom.

Their eyes are a little creepy, the way they look at you first with one side of their pointy heads before switching to the other.

But never mind. She’s already looping the berry jug around her smooth neck. Daphne Shipley is all long limbs and honeyed summer skin. She has soft-looking brown hair and expressive brown eyes that can go from angry to laughing with dizzying speed.

And I have it so bad for her.

“Get the eggs. Don’t miss any,” she calls over her shoulder. “There should be thirteen or fourteen today.” That’s all she has to say before she disappears into the blueberry patch—a dozen or so shrubs arranged in three rows.

The berry bushes aren’t as tall as me, but Daphne bends over and disappears, leaving me alone here on the grass, with a wire basket and too many questions and my sexual frustration.

Just another day in my messed-up life. I’m kinda used to it already.

I turn toward the coop and contemplate my strategy. The faster I get this done, the faster I can pick berries with Daphne.

Two or three of the hens are already watching me warily.

At least I don’t have to deal with their electric fence, which Dylan already dismantled.

So the hens are milling around their coop, scratching in the grass for bugs, and waiting to slash my throat with their sharp beaks and their scaly red feet.

“Okay, ladies,” I say, easing my way toward the coop. “Everybody be cool! This is a robbery.”

I hear a snort from the berry patch. Maybe Daphne isn’t a fan of Pulp Fiction .

But a good line is a good line, even if the chickens are doing their best to ignore me.

The coop has these little doors that open from the outside, revealing the nest boxes.

It’s a pretty good system, and the first one I open has an egg right there for the taking.

It’s still warm. I set it carefully into the wire basket and then open the next box.

A hen glares at me from inside, her red eye angry.

“Lift up your feathered ass, girl. I don’t have all day.”

She doesn’t budge, and I let out a sigh. Then I give her a little nudge, and spot the two eggs she’s sitting on.

“This hurts me more than it hurts you,” I promise her. Then, one at a time, I steal those eggs. And she lets me.

Three down, ten or eleven to go.

As I open the next box, I feel eyes on my back.

I don’t turn around yet, though. Daphne’s watching me.

She probably thinks I’m incompetent. While I was born in Vermont, I’m a military brat.

I grew up all over the world. And my idea of spending a great day outside is drinking in a German biergarten or sitting at an Australian cafe drinking flat whites and reading poetry.

But it’s hard to deny that the country life looks good on me. It’s only been a few weeks, and I’m tanner and stronger than I’ve been in years. And Daphne likes that a whole lot more than she’s willing to admit.

Fine. If she’s going to watch me, I’ll give her something to look at.

I set the wire basket down in the grass and then strip off my T-shirt.

Then I angle my torso a quarter turn and flex when I open the next box.

I gather another egg and then cut my eyes to the right to try to catch her watching me.

Bingo . I see a flash of silver between the branches of a blueberry bush.

“Shipley?” I call out. “You need something? What are you doing with your phone?”

“Checking the time! I have a call in an hour. My new job in Burlington starts tomorrow.”

Huh. I was planning to head to Burlington tomorrow too. What a coincidence.

“After you’re done with the eggs, you can pull some of these weeds,” she says, changing the topic. “It’s a mess over here.”

“Yes ma’am. We can do that together, right?”

“No way,” she insists.

Damn. I go back to the eggs.

* * *

The sun beats down on me an hour later as I tug another dandelion out of the dirt.

My back aches from leaning over, but my knees are saved by the green cushion I’m kneeling on.

It’s called The Garden Pad, and when Ruth Shipley—Daphne and Dylan’s mom—handed it to me fifteen minutes ago, her smile said, Here, you poor, tired fucker. Don’t die on my property.

The chance of that is low, but not zero.

And I’m really fucking thirsty right now.

My body aches from this morning’s pasture work, where I dug hole after fence post hole to keep up with Dylan and his older brother, Griffin.

I’d had too much pride to take things slow.

And now my poor tired body needs to lie down on this strip of grass for a nap.

I'd also like a cold beer and a smoke. But I’ve promised Mrs. Shipley that I’d quit smoking, so I can't light up so close to the farmhouse. And I'm a stubborn bastard. I’m going to weed this damn patch if it kills me.

Staying here for the summer was all my idea, after all.

Dylan Shipley is my friend and roommate during the school year.

I knew the Shipleys were always short-handed, so I’d made Dylan a deal—if they took me on for the summer, I could rent out my Burlington house and get Dylan’s rent down to practically nothing for next year.

“Hell yes,” he’d said. “We’d be happy to have you, so long as you know what you're getting into. The hours are long.”

I’ve never thought of myself as a wimp. I’ve climbed El Cap. I’ve crossed jungles in Thailand. Not lately, though. A couple of years ago I was injured, and it took a big toll on my body as well as my life.

Still—I hadn’t realized until now how soft I’d become. And it’s taking longer than I’d hoped to adapt to all this farm work.

I plunge the dandelion fork down into the dirt and wiggle it. But when I tug on the weed, it promptly breaks off in my hand. “Fuck.” The weeds know I'm not cut out for this. They can tell I'm the kind of guy who thinks weed is something you put in a bong. It's not a verb, damn it.

Several long minutes of digging and cursing later, I'm finally able to extract the damn root from its hole. I toss it into the ragged pile I’ve made. Then I throw down the hand tools and sink onto the grass like the tired man that I am.

Above me is a sky so blue that it almost hurts to look at it. The yellow sun beats down on my bare chest. Three weeks on this Vermont hillside have already tanned my skin to a burnished glow beneath my tats. My back throbs and my limbs ache against the grass.

And now there’s something crawling on my ankle. I’m too tired to see what it is. Who knew it was so exhausting to be healthy?