Chapter 10 #2
When he had just promised Cody that he would conduct himself as was good and right.
“I’d better head out,” he said.
Cody nodded and waved Zane off. Zane got into his truck and saw that he had three text messages from Cara asking questions about what she was supposed to wear.
“Not a dress,” he said out loud as he typed his response to her.
Then he threw the phone back down on the seat and drove quickly back to his place.
It was only a five-minute drive on the back roads from this part of Painted Ridge up to his property, but it was an additional five minutes up the hill to his house.
The house had been on the property when he moved in, in its ramshackle glory, and he really quite liked it.
It had been the house that had kept the property from selling for quite some time, because without a full plan in place to get a house that would pass code, it was one of those homes that was impossible to get a mortgage on.
But he had bought it with cash outright, and he had no intention of changing the place.
He liked it just the way that it was.
It suited him.
It would never suit another person, he knew that, but since he intended to live by himself for all his days, it was just fine.
The shower in the back of the house was tiny.
And there was a reason that he preferred the river.
But he decided to take a quick run through the shower before Cara arrived.
He ran the water cold and washed away the sweat, then got dressed in a different pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and grabbed his pack, got out of the house just in time for her to drive up.
He felt something that was close to pride when she got out of the car, and that was the strangest thing of all.
But she was wearing a pair of jeans, some sensible hiking shoes, a T-shirt, and a baseball hat. Her dark hair was back in a ponytail that was shoved through the hat, and her expression was one of glimmering determination.
“I’m ready,” she said.
“Good,” he said. “Because this is what we’re taking.”
Just their backpacks, and themselves.
“I don’t even like tent camping,” she said.
“After this, you’re going to think that a tent is a luxury.”
“Why am I doing this again?”
“Adventure.” He shrugged. “Well. And safety.”
“I guess it’s better than staying home,” she said.
“I’m going to drive us out to a starting point. Because we aren’t going to camp on my property.”
“Oh?”
“Nope. Neither of us is going to be familiar with it.”
“I hate that.”
“You won’t. I promise you.”
A very reluctant Cara loaded herself up in his truck, and he got into it, starting the engine and pulling out of the driveway.
She was looking back at her car longingly.
“It’s fun,” he said.
But he realized that nothing in his tone sounded light or fun at all.
But then, he wasn’t sure if his gauge for fun was intact.
His internal compass was permanently pointing due east, most likely. Off-kilter from everyone else’s.
“Fun, fun, fun,” she said. “I should’ve brought my knitting.”
“You could have. Knitting is a good way to pass the time.”
“Do you knit?”
“No. It’s just, I know people like it.”
“I do. It’s nice to sit and relax and still be making something.”
“You’re one of those people who doesn’t know how to relax, aren’t you?”
“I never really thought of myself that way. Because knitting and baking are kind of analog pursuits, so it feels like I’m slightly out of step with the rest of the world sometimes. Not like I’m in some kind of rat race.”
That was it. The thing he hadn’t been able to put his finger on earlier. Why she seemed different than her age. She was analog. Not as connected to her phone or to the Internet as a lot of people were these days.
“We have that in common, I guess,” he said. “Ranching is a pretty analog pursuit.”
“Not that I don’t get a lot of information from the Internet,” she said. “My hands are usually covered in flour, so it isn’t like I can be on my phone all the time, but I can get information that I need when I need it. And stream all my favorite British TV when necessary.”
“Oh, you’ll get no argument with me about the usefulness of modern enhancements. I was just using the Internet to find a potential stud horse.”
He had no one to blame but himself for offering up this information. He was the one allowing this to become a personal conversation. Just a decent thing for him to remember so that he didn’t eventually get annoyed at her.
“Did you?”
“Yeah. Just dipping my toe into the beginning stages of what I want my place to be like.”
“It makes sense,” she said. “You don’t seem like the kind of guy who would be happy to have a boss.”
“Who wants a boss? Especially not their friend. Though Cody is a good boss.”
“How did you actually become friends? I know that sounds mean, and I don’t…”
“I think we’ve already established I’m not all that sensitive about this.”
“I just don’t see how that happened.”
He thought about her. Her leaving sweet rolls out for him every morning as a form of payment. Them doing this survival thing together. Maybe that was how their friendship had been made.
Was this a friendship?
He had so few. It was hard to say.
“I didn’t really hang out with anybody, and Cody would make an effort to come and talk to me.”
“What event did you do in the rodeo?”
“Saddle bronc.”
“I just assumed you were a bull rider. Because of Cody.”
He shook his head. “No. Horses are my thing. But Cody kind of took pity on me, being all by myself most of the time. It was nice of him.”
“How did you get into the rodeo?”
This was complicated. And not his favorite subject. Because it linked back to too many things that hurt.
“I grew up on a horse ranch, and I was exposed to the rodeo when I was a kid. I did some youth events when I was young. Got away from it when I got older. I joined the military, and that was like having this intense, forced brotherhood. I got really close with a few guys. One of them was also from Texas. And he rode in the rodeo professionally. He was a few years older than me. He went back and forth between deployment and the rodeo. His life was fast-paced and exciting. It sounded great. We had a mission to rescue some schoolgirls who had been kidnapped by a terrorist group. I was coming to the end of my second enlistment, and I was sure that I was going to re-up because it gave me purpose. But that mission went to hell. By the end of it, we had rescued half of the girls successfully, and lost more than half the men that had come to save them. I survived.”
Those shouldn’t be painful words. He knew that. They should be words of triumph. But they weren’t. They never had been. Not for him.
He survived. But why? Nothing could ever answer that question. When he looked up at the sky and demanded answers, he was met with nothing but heavy silence.
He survived.
It was what he did. He just couldn’t figure out why.
“Sergeant First Class David Altman died on that mission. All I could think about was how he had wanted to get back to the rodeo. Back to his horse. Back to his family. I paid them a visit. After I got back. While I was deciding what I wanted to do. Deciding if I wanted to go back into the military or not. I decided not. I… His widow gave me his horse. I decided that I would take that horse and go into the rodeo myself. I was twenty-six. Rusty at that, and not very good, but I got good. But anyway, that’s how I got into the rodeo. ”
There was nothing but silence in the truck, the sound of the tires on the gravel, then the paved road as they headed off the ranch property and up into the mountains.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s… Awful.”
“Yeah. It was. It’s also just part of life.” And he didn’t even mean that lightly. Death was something he had to grapple with from an early age. He wouldn’t say that he’d made any kind of peace with it. He just often expected it to be there.
“I can’t believe you did all that by the time you were twenty-six. I’m twenty-four.”
He looked at her profile, taking his eyes off the road for just a moment.
She was so young. Pretty and her face didn’t have any lines on it.
Not because she hadn’t been through things, she had been.
She had been through a hell of a lot, actually, and stacked up against anybody else, she would probably win if you were counting up adverse experiences.
“It’s a good thing to have been spared some of that. But I know you’ve been through enough.”
“I guess. But it doesn’t feel like anything. I went out and… What you’re describing is all the decisions that you made. You went into the military. You went on these missions. You saw terrible things, but you did it because you were being brave.”
He bit his tongue. Didn’t get into the truth of it. Because he really didn’t want to do that.
“Anyway. Enough about me and my terrible past,” he said. “We have a camping trip ahead of us. And the point of this is survival.”