Chapter 10 #2
She’s on her knees with her arms spread wide, reaching to grab as many of them in a hug as she can without getting fully trampled. Her giggle is infectious, floating across the driveway as we pull into a parking spot next to her.
She moves to stand, reaching down to scratch the chin of every one of her goats. They don’t let up, and when she opens the back hatch of her Jeep, they all start scrambling closer, trying to hop up into her vehicle.
“Are they always this excited to see her?” I ask Grayson. The moment he parks the truck, I push the door open wide, hopping out of the cab.
“Pretty much. But on Tuesdays they become maniacs.” He waits until I round the bed of the truck, and his arm reaches out for me once I’m within reach. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say they could tell what day of the week it is.”
“But why?”
The question dies in my throat as soon as Harper pulls the cardboard lid off of the box that’s tucked in the back of her Jeep.
She reveals the biggest case of bananas that I have ever seen, and two of the goats jump up with their front hooves resting on the back of her Jeep as they rip a banana out of the box.
As soon as they step back, another goat reaches forward to steal the banana from their mouth.
It’s a free-for-all. The goats go wild for bananas as Harper laughs along, plucking them out one by one as fast as she can.
They wait around her like children waiting for their allowance, and as soon as she hands them a banana, they run away, looking for a private spot to munch on their favorite treat.
“Holly!” Harper squeals as soon as the hoard takes a step back. She moves through the pack, reaching her arms out to hug Grayson around his stomach before she grins and both arms come up to squeeze me so tightly it nearly knocks the breath from my lungs.
“I didn’t know you were going to be here.
This is quite the pleasant surprise.” She playfully elbows Grayson in the gut, giving an exaggerated wink that she doesn’t even try to hide.
“Some would say that you owe me a thank you, but I’ll let that slide.
Would you like to feed my goats some bananas?
” She gestures with two hands to the back of her Jeep where one of the goats has actually climbed up and stuck its head in the box.
“Comet, you little jerk!” She rushes back to the car and helps him down, rifling through the box to hand him another banana. “You’ll get your share, Mama won’t forget about you.”
His face tilts up, and she drops her chin, bopping their noses together.
I turn back to Grayson. “Now that I see it, there is no way you can ever get rid of these goats. Ever.” I take a step forward, peering into the box to see if there are any left. “Can I feed them one?”
Harper spins to point at Grayson. “Did you hear that? Holly said you can’t ever get rid of my goats.
” She turns back to me. “Of course you can feed them. You can peel it and give them the inside first, and then the peel. When they aren’t parading around like gluttonous assholes, they eat them right out of your hand. ”
I pull a banana from the box, peeling back the skin and breaking off a piece. I spy a smaller goat, and I turn back to Harper briefly. “Which one is this?”
“That little guy is Cupid. He’s the smallest, but the fastest.” She raises a hand to point around the herd.
“The one with the full black face is Prancer. Dasher has a black face with a white zigzag line down the center. Dancer is the one that’s always hopping around instead of walking.
” She reaches out to scratch the cheek of a darker brown one.
“This little guy is Vixen, because he’s so damn cute.
Comet is the one that was just in my Jeep, he’s lighter brown with white splotches.
And Donner and Blitzen are twins.” I look around and spot two that look nearly identical. “Is there a Rudolph?”
She pouts at my question. “No, I had a Rudolph originally, but he got sick one winter and didn’t make it.”
I feed Cupid the rest of the banana, and once he’s done chewing, his tongue darts out to steal the peel right from my fingers. “I’m sorry, Harper. That must have been hard on you.”
Her face falls, and she reaches into the back of her car, grabbing the cardboard box that’s now empty and half torn apart. “I was just a kid.” She shrugs. “They were my babies.”
“Were?” Grayson playfully asks, and she sticks her tongue out at him.
“You act like you can’t stand them, but I hear you talking to them, Gray. Cooing each of their names, singing Christmas carols to them.”
I snicker at that, and when I turn back to Grayson, he looks like he’s going to say something else, but then his ears perk up and his eyes trail across the fields that lead behind the barn.
I follow his stare, trying to stay really quiet to see if I can hear what he hears.
I think I hear some of the cows mooing, calling out like they usually do.
I wouldn't think anything of it, but then Grayson turns to me, and his eyes rake up and down my knee-length summer dress. “Want to go for a ride?”
***
With my heels swapped out for a pair of his mom’s rubber boots, I climb in next to Grayson.
He starts up the side-by-side, and reverses out of the machine shed.
He’s just about to put it in drive when he puts his fingers to his mouth, pursing out a shrill whistle.
“Hey, Chandler!” he calls. “Wanna go for a ride?”
I whip my head around, expecting to see a dog that I somehow missed during my time at the farm.
Except, I don’t hear a bark, or the scramble of nails on the deck boards.
Nothing. Until Grayson’s somber expression changes into a smile, and when I turn to follow his gaze, I have to blink twice as a calico cat races from the barn.
The cat runs toward the UTV, and it isn’t until he’s about to hop on that I realize it only has three legs. “Is that…” I trail off, pointing at the cat as it scampers up and across my lap to land in Grayson’s.
Grayson gives a few rough scratches under the cat’s chin, and the cat immediately purrs its thanks.
“It’s my three-legged cat, yes, ma’am.” He throws the UTV into drive, and instead of heading down the gravel road, he drives over the front lawn of the main house, around its massive porch, and into the open fields.
“You can’t drive me off into the sunset and not explain how this little guy lost a leg, and is named Chandler.
” Grayson chuckles as I scooch closer to him, reaching out a hand to let Chandler sniff my fingers.
Once he’s satisfied with what he smells, he rubs his cheek against them, letting me scratch his chin just like Grayson had.
I tuck a leg under me, and Grayson lifts his arm to give me space.
One of his massive arms is draped on the steering wheel while the other falls over my leg, the position leaving us tucked into one another.
Chandler makes his home on the tops of our joined legs with his neck stretched to see over the dashboard as we make our way toward the back of the property.
“A few years ago,” Grayson starts. “I had just arrived at the farm one morning. I had taken care of the horses and let them out to pasture when I went into the main house to refill my coffee.” He points to a shadow in the distance where the peak of a small roof lies in the tall grass.
“Underneath that roof is an old hand-dug well. It’s filled in now, but at the time, it was just an open hole.
Maybe three feet wide by about ten feet deep.
The morning was quiet, not a ghosting of wind, and when I took the steps up the front porch I heard the saddest little meow. ”
I run my hand over Chandler’s head and down his back, and he arches under my touch.
I always wanted to have a cat as a pet. We never had pets growing up.
With the long hours my parents worked and the trips we would go on, it wouldn’t have been fair to have one.
“The house will be full of hair,” my mom would say.
I had even asked for a bird at one point, but she always said no.
“I followed that sad meow through the backyard and it led me to the old well. It had been a rough winter that year, and the heavy snow shifted the old roof we had covering it. The space wasn’t big enough for any person or farm animal to get trapped in, but it was just enough for this little guy to slide under when looking for a warm spot to hide. ”
Grayson's voice gets a little somber as he describes the scene he came upon, and as if Chandler is recalling the memory with him, he twists in my lap, using his singular front paw to climb onto Grayson’s shirt.
Grayson leans down a little, keeping his eyes focused on the path ahead of us, while letting Chandler place little kisses into his beard.
“I went back to the house and woke up Harper,” he continues.
“She was still living with my parents at that time, thankfully. Theo was at work at the fire station and Lukas was still in the military. Everyone else was out for the day. Harper followed me to the well, and when we realized we couldn’t get him out unless one of us went down there, she volunteered. ”
“Damn,” I huff. “Harper is a little spitfire.”
Grayson chuckles at that. “She sure is, but being the older brother, I couldn’t let her go in there. If one of us was going to get hurt, I’d much rather it be me.”
My heart swells. I know, without any doubt, that Grayson is the giver of this family. He cares about everyone, worries about them, puts their needs above his own without a second thought.
“So, you climbed in there?” I prod, knowing that I’d be terrified as hell to do that.
“Sure did. We first got a ladder and I tried to climb down, but it was an old well. By the time I got five feet down, the walls were more narrow than we thought. Years of sitting empty caused it to dry, and they had caved in a bit. I couldn’t fit down there with the ladder.”
I adjust my position so I can scooch even closer to him, resting my head on his shoulder as he slows the drive, maneuvering over some roots and deep trenches.
“I climbed back out and we pulled the ladder. We didn’t know what to do, and his meowing was breaking my heart.
I didn’t think, really. I just started climbing in, got about two feet down, and let myself drop. ”
“What?” I gasp. “Did you even fit?”
He barks out a laugh. “Yeah, that’s the problem. I was able to pick up Chandler, and with my arms raised and Harper leaning over the hole to reach for him, we were able to hand him off. But then I realized I was absolutely, without a doubt, stuck.”
“How’d you get out?”
“Harper panicked. She told me to wait and she ran back to the house. She called Theo at the department. My fatass was trapped down there for two hours until the fire department could get some equipment out here. They sent down a zipline thing that I clipped to my pants and I punched holes in the sides of the walls for something to grip on while they tugged me out.”
My body, even though it’s tucked up against Grayson’s thick one, and even though the air still holds onto the heat from the sunny day, breaks out in goosebumps.
Grayson Hart is the definition of a man.
A man who can punch dirt holes to climb out of a well, who can throw around fifty pound bales like they’re bouncy balls.
The same man who rescued a kitten from its demise and hums Christmas carols to the goats.
“Grayson Hart,” I practically coo, reaching an arm over to squeeze his bicep. “That’s probably the most adorable story I’ve ever heard.”
The faintest blush reddens his ears, and I prop my chin on his shoulder, watching as my silent stare causes the blush to grow.
“It’s nothing, really,” he finally says.
“Couldn’t let the poor guy end like that.
The only bad thing to come from it is that his front leg was badly mangled from his fall down there.
The vet couldn’t save it, but it doesn’t slow you down at all, does it, buddy?
And we named him Chandler after that Friends show.
Harper said there’s a guy on there that’s a goofy dancer, and that’s how Chan looked when he was learning to walk with one less leg.
” His voice lowers into the same soft-pitched tone he uses with Maple as he talks to Chandler, and my heart flutters.
I heard once that cats are a good judge of character, and judging by the way Chandler is rubbing against Grayson’s forearm, I’d say that’s true.