1. Lo
— ? —
Lo
The fence line runs three miles before it hits the creek, and I’ve walked every inch of it today.
My boots are caked with mud from the south pasture where the spring gave out last month and turned fifty acres into a swamp.
My hands are raw from rewiring the section near the old Miller property line where some idiot’s cattle pushed through looking for better grass.
My back aches in the specific way it aches when you’ve been lifting things you shouldn’t lift because there’s no one else to lift them.
Fourteen hours. That’s what the barn clock said when I finally hung up the mare’s tack and admitted the day was done.
Fourteen hours of checking stock, mending wire, hauling feed, pulling a calf that didn’t want to come and a mama that didn’t want to help.
Three weeks since Jesse left for this leg of the tour, and every day feels longer than the last.
Cal meets me at the barn door, his own day written in the dust on his hat and the set of his shoulders.
“You look like hell,” he says.
“Thank you. That’s exactly what I needed to hear.”
“I’m not paid to make you feel good. I’m paid to keep the cattle alive.”
“And how are the cattle?”
“Alive.” He pulls off his gloves, tucks them in his back pocket. “The heifer in the east pen is looking better. Whatever that vet gave her is working.”
“Good. What about the water situation in the north section?”
“Miguel’s on it. Thinks he can patch the trough by tomorrow if the hardware store has the right fittings.”
“If they don’t?”
“Then we improvise. Same as always.”
Same as always. That’s the ranch motto now, apparently. Improvise. Make do. Figure it out with half the hands and twice the work because the man who’s supposed to be here is somewhere between here and Nashville pretending to be a star.
“You should go home,” I tell Cal. “Get some rest.”
“I could say the same to you.”
“I live here. This is my home.”
“Then go inside and sit down. Eat something. You’ve been running since before dawn.”
“There’s too much to do.”
“There’s always too much to do. That’s what tomorrow’s for.” He squints at me in the fading light. “When’s the last time you had a real meal? Not coffee and whatever you could grab standing up?”
“I had lunch.”
“Did you?”
“I had… something that might have been lunch. There was bread involved.”
“Lo.”
“I’m fine, Cal.”
“You’re not fine. You’re running on fumes and stubbornness, and sooner or later one of those is going to give out.”
I want to argue with him. I want to tell him I’ve been doing this for a year now and I’m perfectly capable of managing, thank you very much.
But Cal’s known me since before Jesse and I got married.
He’s watched the whole slow-motion disaster of the last eighteen months unfold. And he’s earned the right to worry.
“He’s coming home tomorrow,” I say.
Cal’s expression doesn’t change. “I heard.”
“Two weeks, he said. Two full weeks with no shows, no appearances.”
“That’s what he said last time too.”
“I remember.”
“And the time before that.”
He’s quiet for a moment, looking out at the pastures going gold in the sunset.
Four hundred head out there, scattered across land that’s been in Jesse’s family for three generations.
Land I’ve been running essentially alone while my husband’s face appears on billboards I have to drive past twice a week.
“I remember when he used to be out here with us,” Cal says. “Before all this. He was a good hand. Not the best roper I ever saw, but solid. Reliable.”
“He was.”
“He’d be up at four with you. Work till dark. Sing in the barn while we sorted cattle.” Cal shakes his head. “Feels like a different person now.”
“Maybe it is.”
“Maybe.” He puts his hat back on, adjusts the brim. “Or maybe he just forgot who he was for a while. People do that sometimes. Get lost in the noise.”
“That’s very philosophical for a man covered in cow manure.”
“I’m a complicated man.” He tips his hat. “Get some rest, Lo. Whatever’s coming tomorrow, you’ll face it better if you’ve slept.”
He walks to his truck, and I watch him go, and I stand in the barn doorway as the sun drops below the horizon and the first stars appear and the ranch settles into the quiet of a place where nothing moves without purpose.
***
The house is dark when I go inside.
I don’t turn on the lights. I know this house by feel now, every creaky board, every doorframe, every piece of furniture that Jesse and I picked out together back when “together” meant something other than phone calls that get cut short and promises that don’t get kept.
I stand in the kitchen and I listen to the silence.
It wasn’t always like this.
Eighteen months ago, Jesse came home from a gig at the Lazy Star, the bar in Ridley where he’d been playing Thursday nights since before we got married, and he was buzzing with something I didn’t recognize. Not excitement exactly. More like the beginning of excitement, the possibility of it.
“Someone put a video online,” he said, sitting on the edge of our bed, still smelling like beer and bar smoke. “That song I’ve been working on. The one about your eyes.”
“Honey Eyes?”
“Yeah. Some kid in the crowd recorded it. Posted it on his page.”
“That’s nice.”
“Lo, it’s got fifty thousand views.”
“Fifty thousand people watched you sing?”
“Fifty thousand in six hours. It keeps climbing.”
I remember the way he looked at me then.
The hope in his face, the barely contained joy.
I remember being happy for him, genuinely happy, because this man who’d been singing in small bars and at rodeos and in our barn at four in the morning was finally getting recognized for something I’d known all along: that his voice could break your heart and put it back together in the space of a single song.
I didn’t know yet what that recognition would cost.
My phone buzzes on the counter. I don’t have to look to know who it is.
“Hey,” Jesse says when I answer. “How was your day?”
“Long. How was yours?”
“Press stuff, mostly. Radio interview in the morning, then a thing with the label, then-”
“Sounds busy.”
“It’s always busy. But I’m coming home tomorrow. Finally. Two whole weeks.”
“So you said.”
There’s a pause. I can hear the road noise behind him. He’s in a car somewhere, probably being driven to another hotel in another city. The life of Jesse Cooper, country music’s newest sensation.
“You sound tired,” he says.
“I am tired. It’s been a long day.”
“The fence situation?”
“Among other things.”
“Cal said the south pasture’s been a mess since the spring gave out.”
“Cal talks to you more than I do.”
Another pause. Longer this time.
“Lo…”
“I’m not trying to start a fight. I’m just stating a fact.”
“I know things have been hard. I know I’ve been gone too much. But after this tour cycle, things are going to slow down. We’re going to have more time.”
I’ve heard this speech before, word for word.
“You said that six months ago.”
“I did.”
“And four months before that.” I keep my voice level. Barely.
“From where I’m standing, ‘more time’ keeps getting pushed back further and further, and I’m still here running this ranch by myself while you-”
“While I what?” He almost sounds hurt. I don’t let it stop me.
“While you become someone I don’t recognize.”
The silence stretches. I can hear him breathing, hear the faint sound of the driver saying something in the background.
“I’m the same guy who couldn’t get his ring on at the courthouse because his hands were shaking.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
“Then why does it feel like I’m married to a stranger?”
He doesn’t answer. What is there to say? We’ve had this conversation a dozen times, and it always ends the same way: with him promising things will change and me believing him because I don’t know how to stop.
“I have to go,” he says. “We’re pulling into the venue.”
“Of course you are.”
“Lo-”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Jesse.”
“Okay.” His voice is small. Defeated. “I love you.”
“I know.”
I hang up before he can say anything else.
The phone feels heavy in my hand. I set it on the counter and stare at it like it might explode.
That phone has been the primary way I’ve experienced my husband for the past year: his voice compressed into digital signals, his face pixelated on a screen, his presence reduced to text messages that arrive at odd hours and end abruptly when something more important demands his attention.
I think about my birthday.
I was turning thirty-one. Not a milestone, not a big deal, just a day I thought my husband might be present for.
I made dinner, actually made dinner, not just reheated something or grabbed whatever was in the fridge.
I set the table with the good dishes, the ones we got as wedding presents and barely ever use.
I bought a cake from the bakery in town and put a single candle on it because I’m not a complete optimist.
He called at eight. FaceTime, not just a call, which felt like a gift until I saw the venue lights behind him and the sweat on his face and Sloane’s hand on his shoulder.
“Happy birthday, babe.” He was distracted. His eyes kept sliding to something off-screen. “God, I wish I was there.”
“You could be.”
“Lo…”
“You’ve got three days off next week. I checked the schedule. Sloane sent it to me, remember? So I’d know when to expect you.” I’d circled them on the calendar in red.
“Those aren’t days off. Those are recovery days. There’s press lined up, and there’s this radio thing in Memphis-”
“A radio thing. On my birthday week.”
“It’s not on your birthday. It’s the day after. And Sloane says it’s important for the album rollout-” There’s her name again, tucked into every sentence.
“Sloane says.”
“She’s my manager, Lo. It’s her job to-”
“JESSE!” Someone off-camera. Male voice, probably a tech or a roadie. “Five minutes to soundcheck!”
“I gotta go, babe. I love you. Happy birthday. We’ll celebrate when I get home, I promise.”
He was gone before I blew out the candle.
The anniversary was worse.
The anniversary, he didn’t call at all.