Chapter Three #2
“Is that what the kids are calling it nowadays?” Linc enquired, took a swig of beer, and glanced at Bella sweeping through with Ollie at her side.
“Hey, is that my beer?” Ollie asked before Bella tugged him to the living room where Dahn could be heard muttering about the poor internet signal.
“Are we done?” I asked. No one said a word. “I need to go.”
“Where are you going in such a hurry?” Linc enquired before downing his beer in one long pull.
Wow. Impressive. I’d not seen him drink much since we’d arrived.
Mostly, he did tea infusions, mixes of rose petal, lavender, and something Egyptian blue lotus.
All very chill, hippie, mellow stuff to aid in focus, self-reflection, and flower-power mind-cleansing liquid.
Or was it colon cleansing? One of the two.
He was really into meditation, tai chi, and yoga.
“I need to get to the vet clinic for a job interview,” I replied into my glass of tap water.
Baker leaned a denim-covered butt cheek to the counter, one brow arching slightly. “Job interview? With Aiden?”
“Yeah, I told you all about it at dinner last night. He’s impressed with my paperwork for the goats and asked if I could clean up his notes. I said yes. Why are you all looking at me so weird?”
Baker said nothing for the longest time. Ollie and Dodge were busy with Dahn, trying to get a better signal in an area where if you got one solid bar, things were looking good. Linc meandered off to find Bella, probably while Hanley was tuned into something else.
“No reason, just wondering why he couldn’t hire a woman to come in and do his transcriptions. Wendy is there three days a week,” Baker mumbled.
“That’s pretty sexist,” Linc pointed out. Baker tossed him a dour look before shifting his attention back to me. “Just saying. If Bella heard that she’d—”
“She’d what?” Bella asked, arriving on a cloud of soft perfume and dusty jeans. Baker’s lips flattened. “Was someone being an oinker in here?”
I pointed at Baker then reached over to arrange the empty bottles of beer beside the sink into a row.
Bella tsked Baker soundly and began to recite something from Gloria Steinem about gender roles.
I knew it was Gloria Steinem because she said so before she began giving Baker hell.
Using the feminist speech to my advantage, I eased back out of the kitchen to find Dodge, Ollie, and Dahn fiddling with the modem sitting beside the television.
Dahn was not impressed with anything right now.
“Hey, I’m leaving. I have an appointment. So you’ll be out to see your goats on Sunday, right?” I asked Dahn, who nodded sullenly from his slouch on the sofa. “Cool. They’ll be happy to see you.”
“Stupid that I can’t bring them here,” Dahn grumbled. He really worked the sullen teenager thing well. I didn’t remember being quite so grumpy, but maybe I had been. I’d have to ask Mom the next time I snuck a call back home.
“We’ve been over that. There are no farm animals allowed in the city limits. Not even chickens,” Dodge reminded his son.
“Thanks for helping out,” Ollie said as he offered me his big hand. We shook. “I owe you one. Oh, and are you coming to the next poker game? Despite what Baker says, you all are invited to play.”
“Baker’s a toad,” I whispered.
Ollie chuckled. “His bark is worse than his bite.”
That was true, I’d learned. Baker had this rough exterior, but once you stripped away the bark, his tree meat was soft. Eww. Tree meat. It sounded awful.
“What do you call the part of the tree under the bark?” I asked because it would eat at me if I didn’t know the right term.
People would think I was dumb, just like the teachers back at PS 804.
I’d always hated being thought of as slow.
I wasn’t slow. I was just detail-oriented, Mom always countered.
“Cambium,” Dodge rattled off like the college guy that he was. The only one of the four Bastian brothers who had a degree in something hard like dentistry. Linc maybe went to school for cocktails? Was there a class for bartending? “It’s like the dentin layer under the enamel of your teeth.”
“Thanks. I have to go. I have a job to try out for,” I softly said and slunk out the front door.
With the keys to the farm truck in my pocket, as I’d driven the last trip from the storage unit outside town, I climbed in, rolled the old gal over, and left the chaos of Ollie and Dodge’s new shared house behind.
Moving days were hectic. They made me stress some, so I turned on the radio and adjusted the knob to find a local station playing soft classic rock.
Country music, which dominated most of the stations out here, made me twitch.
Something about the sound of a steel guitar set my teeth on edge, so I avoided it.
I really liked female singers. Carly Simon was on now, singing about someone being super vain, so I left it on as I made my way out of town.
Aiden’s office was about ten miles west of town, an old farmhouse—from the 70s, by the looks of it—with a breezeway leading to an office that was probably a garage at one time.
A flat rock sat by the drive, with Hennessee carved into the large slab of shale, beside a solar lantern.
Someone had put an orange mum and a fat pumpkin by the rock.
Not sure who, but it looked nice. Granny did that too, putting out flowers and pumpkins for decoration.
Fancying up the place, she called it. My mom did things like that too.
Pulling in beside Aiden’s truck and small green Hyundai, I took a moment to pull my fingers through my hair.
Bella kept at me to cut it but wearing it longer made me look kind of different, which was good.
She understood. I liked it shorter too, but with the cowboy hat, maybe evil people wouldn’t pick me out so fast. There were split-rail fences around the side of the garage/office, but I saw no animals milling around in the pen.
Maybe he used those for really sick farm animals he kept here to observe.
Or not. I had no knowledge of large animal veterinary techniques.
Wish I did, though. Maybe if I were here a few hours now and again, I’d learn stuff to help with the goats.
A chilly fall wind blew past, making a set of wind chimes in the breezeway ring out. Nerves nibbled at my empty stomach. Steeling myself to meet someone new—Bella always told me to smile and be my most polite—I made my way to the office door and tugged it open to hear a buzzer sound go off.
The office was small, not very sunny, and smelled of disinfectant.
No sounds of dogs barking or cats meowing, as he didn’t usually deal with small animals, he’d said.
The same soft rock station I’d been listening to on the way over was playing behind the welcome desk.
Seated at the reception desk, a woman with small glasses and tight, curly brown hair peeked over the shelf holding business cards and pens in a canning jar.
Behind her was a corkboard with flyers for various farming supplies, missing pets, and community events.
They rustled in the wind that followed me through the door.
Remembering the manners Granny drummed into our heads, I whisked my hat from my head before I approached the lady behind the desk.
“Can I help you, hun?” She had kind brown eyes.
“Yes, ma’am. My name is Ford Bastian, and—”