Chapter 36 – Cody
Chapter Thirty-Six
Cody
A Few Months Later
Oske Returns From Canada
I’m ready to start life as a married man.
Oske told me that she met somebody during her travels who desperately needs my help.
The situation with all the immigrants in our country appears to have crossed into real problem territory.
I gotta be honest, we don’t pay much attention to politics out on the ranch.
A couple guys got really into all that defending the homeland bullshit in 2020 but they left the rest of us pot smoking horse wranglers behind to chase glory by beating up Mexicans or whatever fucked up shit these bastards get up to.
I don’t see how making life hell on earth for other people helps me spend more time under the open sky. Or with the horses.
Unfortunately, for the next few months I’m going to miss them.
I don’t expect Oske to keep our arrangement a secret, so I made plans for myself.
Once I get my new wife, I’ll be dragging her out to a safe house in the middle of the desert, about twenty miles away from Deacon Hollingsworth’s house – and he’ll be our closest neighbor, houses connected by a thick patch of hunting land shared between the two of us.
He doesn’t talk enough to anyone to tell my secrets.
I’ll need a few months to get my wife used to our arrangement before I drag her back to the ranch, and I’ve made all the necessary preparations to the point where waiting for Oske to just bring her to me gets more anxious than waiting for a part to my motorcycle.
Deacon sold me his old Ducati when he upgraded and old is relative since it’s a 2017 fire engine red model and nicer than any bike I ever owned.
Oske: I’m here with her.
I step outside the ranch house to meet them.
I don’t want them coming to the door and feeling like refugees…
Although, that’s what they are apparently.
The sun brutalizes my concrete driveway as I walk towards Oske’s borrowed slate grey Jeep Grand Cherokee.
I can’t see the passenger in the tinted backseat at all.
Oske hops out of the car, leaving the air conditioning running as she comes to talk to me.
“She’s inside?” I ask her.
She nods and looks at me sternly. “Promise me I won’t regret this.”
“You won’t.”
“I’m not looking to make a woman’s life harder, Oske. I promise.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
She means “the catch” to our little agreement. The real risk in this situation is hardly meeting a strange woman and agreeing to marry her. It’s the baggage she comes with that brings the real risk.
“I’m helping her stay here, aren’t I? Is that what she wants?”
Oske nods, looking at me with a grave expression. “Don’t give them over to anyone, Cody. Okay? Promise me you won’t let anything happen to her.”
“How did you find her?”
“Brinley has a bleeding heart and I can’t stop her from following it.”
“I never took you for the type to put anybody else first.”
“We all have our weaknesses, Cody,” she says. “I’ll get the last of the paperwork and… try to look less like a grumpy feral rancher.”
“I don’t look–
“You didn’t even shave that wild red beard,” Oske complains. “She’s probably scared to death looking at your ugly face through that window.”
Christ. Does Oske really have to make me feel like I’m hideous? Suddenly, I feel thrown off completely. Oske opens the back door of the Jeep and I see the first sign that I might be in over my head. I knew what I was getting into but this is still… hard to face.
Oske lifts the white blanket off of the car seat and exposes a small, caramel-skinned child, fast asleep.
His mother sits on the other side of him, looking very frightened and unlike anything that I expected.
I glance at her briefly and then back at Oske, who looks at me as if she expects me to back out.
I can’t. I signed the contract and not just that, I had extensive conversations with her and know exactly what we’re both getting into.
“I know what I’m doing.”
“I see,” she says. “This is Shay, your new wife, and her son, Caleb. Shay, this is Cody Hollingsworth. I’m going to take you all inside and let you get to know each other with a mediator for about twenty minutes and then I have to get back to Brinley and you two are on your own.”
“I can handle that,” I say, reaching for the car seat. “I’ll take little Caleb, if that’s alright.”
Shay just looks at me with wide, terrified eyes.
This woman looks like she’s seen some shit.
Judging by the little bit Oske told me about her past, I’m sure she has.
I’m also not terribly sure how a bastard like me stands a chance of making her trauma any better.
I want a wife for wifely things, but I’m not a fixer.
Not emotional. Not the kind of man a woman finds her healing in.
For now, Shay doesn’t seem like any trouble. Oske turns the Jeep off and the two of them follow me into the house. The baby is light. And sleeping, so not much trouble for now, but as I’m carrying him towards my house, my heart pounds.
What the hell am I thinking?
An arranged marriage with a black single mother of a biracial baby.
A woman with trauma. Without legal status.
With every reason to poison me and run off with my money, if I really think about it…
But she agreed to stay here in my house and obey my rules.
Oske says that I should trust her and that she has a good reason for wanting to be here.
Truth is, I don’t trust anyone.
The Hollingsworth boys tend towards the hot-tempered and paranoid, I’m no different. We also tend to be staunch disciplinarians. I’m no different there, either. For now, I sense that Shay is a good woman – the kind that I need. We’ll get along just fine so long as she obeys my rules.