Chapter 19 #2
“You’re a quick learner, just stay to the outside.
We’ll cut the herd in half as best we can and lead them down the hill to the west side of the ranch, where it gets more sun and less snow.
” I point in the direction I’m talking about, just in case she has no idea where we are, but she nods in understanding, and I smile up at her, proud as I slap Gus’s side gently.
It takes her a few stray cattle, but eventually she gets the hang of pushing them back inside with Gus, the two of them making the funniest pair.
He’s such a massive, grumpy horse that seeing her tiny body, messy blonde hair, and bright smile saddled up with him never fails to bring a smile to my face.
Once she figures out exactly what she’s doing, she becomes efficient at it, and we end up moving way more cattle than expected. Nearly three-quarters of the herd is in the new pasture as we work back up the hill, racing against the setting sun to set up camp.
I stop, nestling into the side of Gus, and hop down, reaching up to her. “Down you get, Wildflower,” I say, and it warrants a funny look from her but she allows me to help and I don’t let go until I know her boots are planted in the snow.
“What happened to ‘city plant’?” She says as I loosen my grip on her waist.
“Wildflower is just for us,” I whisper to her, and I watch as her cheeks turn a different shade of pink.
“Just us,” she agrees, a tiny smile forming on her lips.
I start unrolling the camp, setting up the tent and allowing her to arrange her bed and belongings inside while I build a good fire.
She pulls out the dinner Dot made for us— soup to keep us warm, and sandwiches to keep our bellies full.
She always knew how to pack a dinner. Even inside were two sugar cookies, lightly dusted and wrapped in parchment.
The silence is filled with the cracking of firewood and the light brush of the breeze pushing through the evergreens that surround the pasture. I know the likelihood of her shutting me down is high if I ask her what is going on in her head, but the silence will be my death.
“Da used to bring our asses up into the mountains on our birthdays before he died, you know, sometimes I think he’s still around when the wind picks up real fast like this,” I say into the night air, and Maggie looks up from her half-eaten sandwich to offer me a smile.
“That sounds nice,” she says.
“It was,” I agree, “until he fell off that horse and never got back up again. Then birthdays stopped, and so did everything else.”
I don’t look at her because I know she’s staring at me with that sympathetic expression she does so well, and I didn’t say it so she’d pity me.
I said it because I want her to understand that I grew up looking out for my parent too.
Maybe if she hears this side of my story, she’ll stop feeling so alone.
“So now,” I say, tipping my chin to the sky and breathing in the icy air to slow myself down. “When I’m feeling overwhelmed or like I can’t handle everything, that’s been thrown at me, I come up here and I let the mountain fix it.”
“You took care of Levi, too?” she says after a while.
“Stubborn as a mule, he watched Da hit the dirt same as me and still wanted that life, so I made sure he had it.” I think back to all the times I spent with my breath held and my hands wrapped so tightly around my hat I could have torn it in half watching my brother ride broncos.
But he was good, he is good. Really good.
And I can’t even imagine what his life would be like without the hot rodeo lights.
“Levi always needed more attention than I could give him. He gets it from riding, and I keep my mouth shut.”
“You’re a good brother. I don’t think I could do that. Watch him go out and do the one thing that-” She stops, not wanting to say the rest, but the intention is there. The one thing that killed our Da.
“He doesn’t see no harm in it, always said that going out hard and fast was better than dying on a ranch at five am, cursing cows,” I laugh, and Maggie laughs with me.
“I might have to agree with him there,” she huffs. It’s clear she wants to say something to me, and I just hope that maybe I’ve given her enough to feel comfortable sharing with me. “You’d make a good dad, you know, the way you aren’t afraid to let him make mistakes.”
“I don’t know about that,” I laugh. “Levi almost died a couple of times under my care.”
“Kids are like rubber,” she giggles, and I lean into the sound.
“What about you?” I ask her. “Do you want kids?”
Maggie opens her mouth and closes it again.
“Come on, tell me,” I encourage her.
“I do… I just,” she hums, the wind kicking up her hair around her face. “I never wanna be in Mama’s shoes… I never want my kids to be in mine.”
I understand more than she knows. The idea that one day Levi might become Da haunts me. The idea of him getting hurt badly enough that it’s him dying in that chair at home twists in my gut painfully.
“You think you’re going to get sick?” I ask her.
“There’s a thirty percent increase in my chance of having Alzheimer's because she does.”
“Thirty percent is nothing,” I say to her, just trying to ease the discomfort she’s feeling around the subject.
“It’s ten percent for everyone else, it’s forty for me.” She corrects.
“That’s still less than half,” I say.
“Since when are you Mr. Sunshine?” Maggie looks at me with daggers in her eyes, and I can only laugh at her.
“I’m sorry, I know it’s got you tangled up…”
“Watching Mama slowly lose her mind, it’s agony.
” She swallows tightly, and her hands tighten around the sandwich.
“My whole life she was there, she was strong and smart and now…” The breath she takes sounds painful.
“She’s just nothing. She sits in that greenhouse with her fingers in the soil because it’s the only thing she knows anymore. Not me, not Aunt Dot… just the dirt.”
“I don’t believe that,” I shake my head, turning to look at her fully. I straddle the log we’re sitting on and move closer to her. “She knows you, you’re all she has straight in her head. She only trusted me to help because you told her it was okay. Doesn’t mean it isn’t hard, but you’re doing it.”
Maggie looks at me finally, her jaw tight and her lips pressing into an unfamiliar frown.
“Frowning doesn’t suit that pretty face,” I reach out and tap my finger under her chin, and the touch brings an instant soft and heartbreakingly sad smile to her lips.