Chapter 40
THE COW DIDN’T TRY TO RISE when Dodge stepped into the stall. Her labored breathing, sunken eyes, and fever-twitching body told him all he needed to know. He knelt beside her, Remington in hand.
“It’s not your fault, girl. I’m sorry it’s come to this.” He smoothed a gloved hand over her forehead and down her nose. Though she’d calved twice, there was still youth to her face, as if she hadn’t yet learned the weight of the world. “But you feel it now, don’t you? Down deep.”
She shuddered, and he exhaled, hating this part of the life he’d chosen. But every life carried moments like this—maybe not with a rifle in hand, but with decisions that clawed at a man’s gut. Crossroads you wished had never landed at your door.
He was learning those reckonings weren’t rare interruptions. They were woven clean through a man’s days. Part of the fabric. And it took both joy and pain to make a full life.
Kathleen had been right. The more you care, the more you hurt. No way around it.
“When you give your heart to someone like I’ve given mine to Bethie,” she’d said on her deathbed, “it feels like part of you starts living inside them.” Tears had slipped down her temples.
“You want to protect them, but you can’t.
Not from everything. And that wanting to shield them from the bad things, without the power to stop the hurt .
. . it rips at something inside you.” She’d managed a ghost of that sassy smile she’d given him almost before she could walk.
“You’ll do good by her, Dodge. I know you will.
But you’re going to have to trust her to God.
I wished I’d learned that earlier on. You won’t always be able to be there.
But he will. Just like he was for me, even when I did wrong.
And just like he still is.” She’d breathed her last a few hours later.
Dodge rose, blinking hard, grateful for the memory and weary of how it still cut so deep.
He looked at the suffering animal and wished—foolishly—for a cure.
Some way to stop this. His father’s counsel returned from across the years.
Animals are a gift, son. They feed us, work beside us, help us provide for our families, then one day they’ll help carry us to our resting place.
Treat them with respect, like God himself placed them in your care. Because he did.
Holding that treasured guidance foremost in his mind, he took careful aim—and a single shot rang out. As he left the barn, farmhands entered, no words exchanged. He’d done his difficult job, now they would do theirs.
As he walked back to the cabin, patches of blue sky peeked through tufts of gray clouds, and he figured rain was coming, probably later rather than sooner. Either way, they’d likely get a good downpour before they got back from shooting this afternoon.
He’d seen Josephine briefly at church—and had done a fairly good job of not staring at her from two rows back.
While he wouldn’t say she’d seemed excited about going shooting with them this afternoon, she hadn’t backed out.
Which would have saddened Bethie. But only because Bethie wanted to show a citified woman a thing or two about real life, as Bethie had said.
Even if the shooting didn’t pan out, the afternoon promised to hold fireworks.
He spotted Bethie seated on the front steps of the cabin, arms wrapped around her knees. Jessie lay close beside her. The cattle dog’s ears perked up when she saw him, but she stayed right by Bethie as he’d commanded a while earlier. At least one female in his life heeded what he said.
As he drew closer, Bethie’s gaze dropped to the rifle in his hand. “Don’t bring that one today.”
Hearing what she wasn’t saying, he shook his head. “I won’t.”
He could tell she’d been crying but knew better than to ask. She, like her mama, would tell him when she was good and ready. Until then, he just laid the rifle on the porch and sat down beside her, like he’d done with his sister so many times through the years. And in this very same spot.
A long moment passed.
Bethie sniffed, sat a little straighter. “You ever think about Mama?”
“All the time.”
“Yeah, me too. But—” Her voice caught. She swallowed hard, her little jaw working hard as she held back the sadness. “Straight shooter?” she whispered.
“Straight shooter,” he answered, loving this girl with a fierceness he couldn’t find words for. He only knew that if anyone ever tried to hurt her, he’d use full force to stop them. Either that, or take her place if it came to it.
“I wish we were still leaving here, Uncle Dodge.”
“Honey, I know you do. And so do I. But I’ve explained why the two of us can’t—”
“No, I’m not saying it because of why you’re thinking.
I mean, I still would’ve liked to have seen those mountains you talked about, and the rivers so clear you can see almost to the bottom.
What I mean is . . .” She shook her head.
Her face scrunched up. “It feels wrong thinking this, much less to give it voice, but . . . I still see Mama everywhere around here. No matter where I look, she’s standing there, or sitting over there in the swing, or washing dishes at the sink, or walking back from the barn.
Only . . . she’s not. And she never will be again. ”
She bowed her head and—just like her mother, who never liked for people to see her cry—fought to hold it in.
And did. Until he reached over and drew her close.
She wrapped her arms around him and wept into his chest. He pulled her closer and kissed the crown of her head as he’d done since the day she was born.
She drew a shaky breath and leaned into him even more.
How had he missed that she’d been struggling with this, too?
With seeing Kathleen everywhere. He knew she was hurting.
She’d lost her mother, after all. But in his own disappointment of not going to Wyoming, it had never occurred to him that part of her grieving the loss of that move was that staying here in Lynchburg meant living with the constant reminders that the most important person in the world to her was never coming back.
Not that moving would have solved everything. Not by any means. But a change of pace would have done her good. Him, too.
Sighing, he kissed her head again. “It’s not wrong for you to feel this way, Bethie. Or to have those thoughts.”
“Sure feels like it. Feels like, if she could know what I’m thinking, she’d reckon I don’t love her anymore.”
She shuddered as fresh tears came.
“Come here, sweetie.” He pulled her into his lap.
A couple of workers walking by the cabin looked over then changed course, giving them a wider berth.
“Honey, I don’t know everything about the hereafter but I do know this .
. . That Bible in there on the table beside the fireplace .
. . the one she always read to you from? ”
Bethie nodded even as he realized that was an area he’d fallen short in, both in his vow to Kathleen and in his care of Bethie, and he determined right then to change that. To read from it with her like his sister had done.
“God says in there that we’ll be with him when we die.
So your mama is with Jesus. There’s no doubt about that.
And I firmly believe that people who have trusted him and then have passed on into the next life .
. . they see things more clearly from that side than we do from ours.
So don’t you worry one whit about your mama thinking you don’t love her because you wish you could stop hurting from missing her so badly.
She understands that, Bethie. Nobody likes to hurt, honey.
And it’s natural to want the pain to stop.
But there’s no getting around it.” A sad smile came to him.
“Sometimes we have to go through a storm to get to the sunshine.”
She pulled away slightly and peered up. “Mama always said that.”
“Yes, she did. And she was right.”
Bethie didn’t say anything for a minute, then leaned close again. “Do you think we’ll stay here forever, Uncle Dodge?”
The sadness in her voice tugged at him and his eyes watered.
He looked toward the hills in the near distance, wishing he knew the answer to that question.
Because, in all honesty, he asked that same question, too.
He wished the two of them could start over again somewhere.
Far away from the memories. A place where Bethie wouldn’t be raised smack dab in the middle of a distillery.
Where she wouldn’t be reminded at every turn that her mother was never coming back.
He was grateful for his job and that word was spreading about Uncle Jack’s Old No. 7, and that the business was growing, but there was still a restlessness in him. And he feared there always would be.
Bethie had asked a similar question of Josephine last night, however inappropriately phrased the first time, and he thought of Josephine’s answer.
She hadn’t hesitated to say no, that she wouldn’t be staying in Lynchburg forever, as though she already had a plan in place to leave. That news saddened him.
Feeling Bethie’s attention, he gave her a little hug. “I don’t know if we’ll stay here forever, sweetie. But would staying here be such a bad thing? I mean, we have a good life here, right?”
“Yeah, we do,” she finally said, her hollow tone reflecting his own melancholy.
Hoping their outing would cheer her up, he rose. “You about ready to go? I told Mrs. Dunham we’d pick her up around now.”
“Just let me grab my .22 and my satchel. And some of the jerky in case we get hungry.”
“Get your jacket too. Looks like rain.”
Dodge had loaded things up earlier and noticed Jessie seated on the wagon bench, panting and watching his every move. “Don’t worry, girl. You’re going.”
She barked and wagged her tail.
Bethie hurried back out. “Okay, I’m ready!”
Dodge took the rifle, satchel, and bag of jerky from her. Then stared.
“What?”
“Your jacket?”
“I couldn’t find it. But I’ll be fine.”
Dodge didn’t move.
She huffed a sigh that—had he not known how badly she was hurting inside—he would’ve corrected. As it was, he let it go, and she trudged back upstairs into the cabin.
Jessie whined, her focus on the bag of jerky. Dodge gave her head a rub and pulled out a piece. He bit some off and tossed it to her. She went for it and missed—a rare occurrence—and it fell beneath the bench. Jessie started to jump down to get it but Bethie’s satchel and gun blocked her way.
“Okay, girl, we don’t let good jerky go to waste.
Not when it’s got Old No. 7 baked in.” He climbed up and moved Bethie’s satchel and rifle to the back bed then leaned down.
He’d made a fresh batch of jerky a few days ago, and he never ate it now but what he didn’t think about Josephine and that trip with her from Tullahoma.
And she’d recently asked him for the recipe. If the woman only knew . . .
He felt around for the piece of jerky, couldn’t find it, so finally peered beneath the seat. Something shiny between two floorboards caught his eye. He got down on his knees for a better look. Seeing the bit of meat, he fed it to Jessie, then tried to pry the object free.
Finally, with the help of his pocketknife, it flicked right out. And he couldn’t believe his eyes.