Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
RYE
Could you really claim you had a legacy if someone else owned the land, if it was their name on the deed, not yours? If all a man did was work for his daddy, could he even really say he had a job? Or was he just his dad’s bitch?
And was he even a man? By most Wyoming standards, that would be a hard no. By my own standards, it was a big, fat fucking no.
“Dammit, Ryder,” my dad complained. “The west fence is still down. Didn’t you do anything yesterday?”
Focusing on the sunrise behind him, I thought: Yeah. Dug holes for a mile of new fenceposts. Managed thousands of cattle. Thought about Aubrey George. Patched up the hole in the east barn wall where a raccoon ripped through it to make a nest. Fed and watered horses. Thought about Aubrey again. Jacked off to thoughts of Aubrey on my lunch break. Exercised the horses. Fed and watered yet again.
“That goddamn fence is the most important task I gave you. Get to it, now.”
“Yes, sir.”
My old daddy didn’t trust but a handful of people, which meant many of the jobs that should’ve been done by ranch hands landed in my lap every day.
Dropping his head to stare at the clipboard he kept clutched close to his heart, he continued to peruse the paper proof of all the money he’d made on our latest cattle sale. They’d just been picked up to be transported to slaughter.
He mumbled, “Lazin’ about all damn day when there’s work to be done.”
“‘ Lazin’? Old man, I work my ass off for you and this ranch, but?—”
He speared me with a look, peering over the rims of his glasses. In the shade of his hat, they darkened like sunglasses.
He shook his head. “Don’t, Ryder. Don’t start. I don’t need to hear about regenerative agriculture one more time. I’ve heard it all. You never shut up about it. Just get to work.”
Presley pounded me hard on the back, his not-so-gentle way of telling me to move on. To shut my mouth and get to work. He knew when my dad’s patience had worn thin. He’d worked for us long enough to know when to change the subject. It still made me laugh that his mama named him Elvis. I didn’t think anybody even knew his last name was actually Decker.
The problem was, if I shut up about all my ideas for our ranch, there wouldn’t be much left of it when, eventually, it became mine.
My two older brothers wanted nothing to do with the family business, which was probably smart on their parts. Sure, our cattle were fat, but the soil was dead. The only thing that grew in abundance on our land was misery and weeds, so the money my dad liked so much was spent feeding the cattle.
If he would just listen to what I had to say, we could change the direction of G&S Cattle. We could alter Graves & Sons’ carbon footprint on the world, could lessen it by a goddamn mile, which would only make us more money. It might be hard work in the beginning, but didn’t we work our asses off every day anyway?
“Give it up,” Presley whispered.
He yanked his head toward the west fence my dad hadn’t stopped grumbling about since yesterday morning even though there wasn’t a cow anywhere near the breach.
Of course, before we could mount our horses and head out, my dad had to get in one last dig. “You don’t fix that fence, genius, ain’t gonna be no cows left for you to sustainably farm when I kick the bucket.” As he turned to walk away, he added under his breath, “That’s the only way you’ll get your mitts on my ranch.”
Fucker.
“Grady’s in a fine mood today,” Presley said when my dad was out of earshot. “What did you do? Or what didn’t you do?”
“The fence. He pays no mind to all the other shit I got done yesterday,” I said, turning to tighten my cinch. I patted my horse’s shoulder and felt energy buzzing in the muscle. Blue was ready to ride.
“No, it’s more than that.” Presley stepped into his stirrup and pushed up into his saddle. His fifteen-year-old bay mare didn’t bat an eye. She was too busy sniffing the dirt, searching for grass that didn’t grow anymore by the barns. “He don’t talk about dyin’ unless you’ve really pissed him off.”
“I tried talkin’ to him again about changin’ up the way we do shit here.” I sighed, but as I mounted Blue, I winced and then admitted, “And I might’ve, sorta, contacted one of those farms I told you about up in Oregon. The owner called him yesterday to try to talk to him about regenerative farming and all its benefits. You shoulda seen his face. I thought his eyeballs were gonna pop out of his skull. But in my defense, that guy took it upon himself. I didn’t ask him to call.”
Presley laughed. “Oh, Rye. When you gonna learn? Your dad has no plans to change this ranch. You know that. Why won’t you give it up?”
Blue stomped his hooves into the dirt. If the horse could talk, he’d say, “Let’s fuckin’ go!”
“The old man likes money, right?”
“Yeah,” Presley agreed, “he sure does, but he makes plenty the way things are now.”
“I’m tellin’ you, Pres, if we made some changes, there’s a whole world of customers out there who’d pay double what we charge now. Everything’s changin’. People wanna feel good about what they eat. They wanna know their food ain’t killin’ the planet. We should want to know that. We should be able to look out at this land every mornin’ and be proud that we’re protectin’ it and the animals and that we’re doin’ more good than harm.”
I shrugged. “Ain’t like it’s hard. It’s the way things used to be done, before crop yield and numbers became more important than the food we put in our mouths or the air we breathe. I mean, yeah, we’d need to hire more cowboys, and we’d work harder for a few years than we probably ever have, but then it’d pay off. He’s just stubborn, and he don’t wanna pay out the initial investment. He’s bein’ bullheaded.”
“Yeah,” Presley said, laughing, “and he’s got his horns aimed right at your ass this mornin’. C’mon, let’s get to that fence. No sense in makin’ the man irate before the weekend. He’ll stew the next couple days and just be a bigger asshole come Monday.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” I agreed, and I clicked my tongue twice, nudging Blue with my boots into a trot.
My horse knew it was almost the weekend too. He protested the slow pace with a kick of his hind legs and a bratty whinny, but then he switched into high gear, pushed into a run, and we raced west, with the Wyoming Range in front of us calling us forward and the rising sun at our backs.
After work, I headed to my little house half a mile behind my parents’.
I needed a break from my dad’s attitude. He’d been at it all day, and I could only take it so long.
It had been a couple weeks since I’d driven the fifty miles up to Wisper to visit my uncle and see my friends, so that was my plan for the next couple days. If I didn’t get off this ranch and away from the disappointment I knew my parents had in me, I’d lose my shit.
The only thing I’d ever done wrong was being the last son born to a successful first-generation cattle rancher. Apparently, it was a sin I’d never escape. Everyone knew the high accolades and honors went to the firstborn.
I grabbed a shower, pulled on a fresh pair of skivvies and jeans, and as I grabbed my hat from the hook by my front door, someone knocked on it.
Having my own place was the key to being able to work alongside my dad every day. It wasn’t much, just a small living room, an even smaller kitchen, a tiny bathroom with a standing shower, and my bedroom. No damn closet. But it was all mine. That I’d built it with my own two hands and Presley’s and some of the summer cowboys’ help made it even sweeter.
“Ryder?” my mama said through the door, though I knew she was itching to barge in. “You in there?”
We’d had to have several conversations about boundaries and privacy when she walked in on me drinking beer and watching Rodeo championships on TV in my underwear, but another one couldn’t hurt.
“Yes, ma’am. Comin’.”
When I opened the door, she pushed right into my sacred space, holding a metal Thermos and a brown paper bag. She set them on the end table next to my couch, then straightened with her hands on her hips.
“Why do you antagonize your daddy? You know how he is.”
“Antagonize him ?” I said, trying not to show her just how much her lack of trust in me hurt.
She was as supportive of my ideas as my dad was. If either of them had a rational reason for dismissing what I’d proposed, I could understand. But they disagreed because it was me proposing a new idea. Grady and Calla Graves’s baby boy couldn’t possibly have an intelligent thought in his head. No way. His brothers, they were the geniuses of the family. Too bad they’d both ditched their family just as soon as they could have after they graduated from school.
I was the one who stuck around. It was me busting my ass on a daily basis, trying to keep the cash my dad liked so much flowing in on the regular, fixing shit when it broke, caring for the animals. But in my parents’ eyes, I was just the muscle. Another employee.
I could’ve gone off to school like my brothers. The opportunity had been there, but I chose not to. Ranching was my life. I learned it from my dad, lived it with him. I didn’t need a college degree or some professor in a classroom to tell me how to know if an animal was sick or the land was. That shit came naturally to me. It always had. Just ’cause my idea was a little progressive—it wasn’t like I was some environmentalist douche going around spouting off all the ways the world should work but never giving real-life solutions.
Now, the business stuff, that was another matter entirely. But I’d been reading up on it.
It seemed funny to me that my parents looked down their noses at my brothers for leaving, but they looked down on me ’cause I hadn’t.
How did that make a lick of fucking sense?
If I didn’t stand to inherit the whole outfit, minus the shares I’d give my brothers unless my dad really had written me out of his will, I probably would’ve escaped this place too. But was running Graves & Sons enough anymore? My sanity and autonomy kept telling me no.
My loyal heart said otherwise.
“Yes, antagonize,” Mama said. She sighed and dropped her hands, then lifted one to press a wrinkle out of my shirt. “Oh, honey, you know he’s stuck in his ways. But it might go a long way to gettin’ him to listen to you if you grew up a little.”
“‘Grew up’?”
Her eyes rose to meet mine, and the smile and pity on her face made me want to scream.
“Your daddy wants to know you’re headed in the right direction before he gives you more responsibility. A woman in your life would be a good start.”
Here we go again.
“Mama, we’ve been through this,” I said, barely disguising the frustration in my voice. “How the hell would havin’ a girlfriend make a difference to Dad? Besides, you won’t like any woman I bring home. You never have. The last one was too immature. You didn’t like the clothes she wore or the way she did her hair, and you insinuated she wouldn’t be a good mother to our nonexistent children when she accidentally stepped on the barn cat’s tail.”
Never mind that she wasn’t wrong. And never mind the fact that I’d told my mama over and over I didn’t want kids. Never had. My passion was agriculture, and if I was lucky enough to find the woman to do me in, I wanted to spend the rest of my days working my land and loving her, making her laugh long into the night.
What was so wrong with that? It sounded like a good life to me.
Mama didn’t respond. She rolled her eyes and bent to grab the stuff she’d just set down.
“Here.” She pressed the Thermos to my chest, and I took it from her hands and took the bag she held out. “I know you’re leavin’ again, so take some sandwiches for the road. It’s beyond me why you like spendin’ time with your uncle Red, but he’s family, so I s’pose it’s fine. Just don’t stay gone too long. You know how mad that’ll make your daddy.”
She wasn’t wrong about that either. Thank the good Lord for Presley. If he hadn’t been here the last twenty years to keep the place running and bear the weight of my dad’s ire when I took one foot off the ranch, I’d be miserable. Somebody would’ve wrapped me in a straitjacket by now. Besides, Presley was a better cowboy than I’d ever be and he loved the overtime.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, and I leaned down to kiss her cheek.
She smiled up at me. “Good boy.”
It was habit to hold in the groan threatening to rip from my mouth. Boy?
I’m almost thirty-five fuckin’ years old!