Chapter 9
Mackenzie Ford drove out to Boone’s half of the operation on a Thursday in a truck too clean for a working ranch, and I only knew about it because Deacon mentioned it at supper, flat, like he was reporting a weather front.
“Sponsor’s here,” he said. “Talked to Boone an hour on his porch. Left without coming near the line.”
“Wasn’t expecting her to.”
“Didn’t say you were.” Deacon went back to his plate. “Just figured you’d want to know she’s still around. Some wives’d want to know that and some wouldn’t.”
“I want to know everything that happens on either side of that fence, Deacon. Doesn’t mean I’m losing sleep over it.”
I found out later, through the same county grapevine that had delivered Wyatt’s wife’s opinion inside a day, what the visit had been about.
Mackenzie hadn’t come out of any loyalty to Boone, or any interest in the state of his marriage.
She’d come because her company’s numbers were tied to the Teague name on a contract that ran through the end of the season, and half a ranch fractured down the middle by a live-mic scandal was not, in her professional estimation, a good look on a horse trailer.
I met her myself the following week, at the county fairgrounds, of all places, both of us there for separate reasons, me to look at a bull a neighbor was selling, her to check on a display booth her company had paid for.
The booth caught my eye from across the grounds before she did: a slick vinyl banner, TEAGUE CATTLE CO.
in letters twice the size of the feed company’s own name, propped beside a folding table stacked with sample bags and a bowl of hard candy nobody was eating.
She found me at the concession stand, which told me she’d planned the meeting even if she wanted it to look accidental.
“Mrs. Teague.” She said it like a business card, flat, no hand extended.
Mid-thirties, I guessed, dressed for a boardroom in a way that made every other person at the fairgrounds look like they’d wandered in from a different decade: pressed slacks, a blazer despite the heat, boots too clean to have ever stepped in anything worse than a parking lot.
“I wanted to say, whatever’s happening between you and Boone, it’s not affecting the sponsorship. Not yet.”
“I didn’t ask if it was.”
“No. But I figured you’d want to know where things stand.
” She had a clipboard under one arm, the kind of person who brought a clipboard to a county fair.
“The brand doesn’t care about marriages.
It cares about wins and appearances and a name people trust on a bag of feed.
Right now the Teague name’s still worth what it was worth a month ago. That could change.”
“You came all the way out here to tell me you’re keeping score.”
“I came to tell you I don’t have a side in this.
” She said it without a trace of apology, and I believed her, which was somehow worse than if she’d tried to convince me she felt something about the wreckage she’d been standing next to when the mic went hot.
“I’ve got a contract with the Teague name.
Whether that’s your half or his half or both, or neither, come renewal, is a business question. Not a personal one.”
“You always talk like this? Like everything’s a line item?”
“Most things are line items, if you look at them long enough.” She said it without irony, without apparent awareness that it might have sounded cold to anybody standing outside her line of work.
“I’ve found it saves a lot of time, being straightforward about that up front. Fewer misunderstandings later.”
“Good,” I said, and meant it more than she probably expected. There was something almost restful about a woman who wasn’t going to pretend at sympathy she didn’t have, who wasn’t circling for anything softer or more complicated than a renewed contract. “Then we understand each other.”
“I think we do.” She checked something on her clipboard, already moving on to whatever came next in her afternoon.
“One thing worth mentioning, a business observation, nothing more. Your name’s coming up more than his is, this last month.
People asking about the breeding programme.
Whether it’s for sale. Whether you’d consider your own sponsorship, separate from his. ”
That caught me off guard more than anything else she’d said. “Is that an offer?”
“Not today. Might be, eventually, depending how this season shakes out.” She almost smiled, the first real expression I’d seen cross her face the whole conversation.
“I don’t make offers I can’t back up with numbers.
Yours aren’t there yet. But they’re moving in a direction his aren’t, and I notice things like that.
It’s the whole of my job, noticing things like that before anybody else does. ”
“One more thing, Mrs. Teague.” She said it as she was already turning to go, the kind of afterthought that usually isn’t one. “I never asked him to say what he said. Wasn’t my idea, and wasn’t my business either way. I just happened to be standing there when it happened.”
“I believe you.” And I did. Whatever Mackenzie Ford was, she wasn’t the kind of woman who needed another woman’s husband to feel like something she’d won.
She wanted a contract renewed and a name that photographed well.
Boone’s marriage mattered to her about as much as a fence line matters to a hawk. A landmark. Nothing to circle for.
She left without shaking my hand. Felt honest, somehow, more honest than a handshake would have.
I went back to looking at the bull. Good conformation, clean papers, exactly as advertised. Something worth trusting, for once, at face value.
? ? ?
Patsy Ondrak cornered me at the feed store the following week, and I braced myself for whatever version of the story had made it around the county by then, only to find her holding out a casserole dish instead of an opinion.
“I know what people say about me,” she said, before I’d even set my basket down.
“That I’m the one who gets a story moving before it’s even finished happening.
I won’t pretend that’s not mostly true. But I also brought you a chicken and rice casserole, because whatever else is true, a woman running a whole operation on her own through a hard season isn’t eating proper, and I know that because I did the same fool thing myself, different reason, different year. ”
I hadn’t told anyone outside the ranch how thin my own suppers had gotten lately. “How’d you hear about that?”
“My husband runs the feed store, Mrs. Teague. I hear about everything, eventually, whether I go looking for it or not. Doesn’t mean I only pass along the parts that make for a good story.
” She set the casserole dish in my cart before I could argue about it, brisk, no room left for refusal.
“I laughed that night at the supper. I want you to know I’ve regretted it every day since.
Wasn’t laughing at you. Was the kind of laugh that comes out of a body before the mind’s caught up to how bad a thing actually is.
I’ve apologized to myself about it more times than I care to admit. ”
“You don’t owe me an apology, Patsy.”
“Maybe not. Felt like saying it anyway.” She adjusted her own basket, a woman clearly more comfortable delivering gossip than delivering sincerity, working through the unfamiliar territory of it with visible effort.
“I talk too much. Always have. But I’ve also lived in this county my whole life, and I’ve watched a lot of marriages come apart quiet, nobody ever finding out the real why of it, just two people who stopped showing up for each other one ordinary Tuesday at a time until there was nothing left to save.
Yours came apart loud. That’s different.
Loud, at least, gives a person something to actually fight, instead of just fading. ”
“That’s a kinder read than I expected from you, Patsy.”
“I contain more than the feed-store version of myself, same as anybody.” She almost smiled, something a little rueful in it.
“Eat the casserole. Freezes fine if you don’t get to it this week.
And Rosalind, whatever you decide to do about all this, I’ll tell it straight when people ask me.
Not the exciting version. The true one. Least I can do, given I helped make the exciting version travel faster than it needed to. ”
She left before I could figure out how to thank her, and I stood in the feed aisle a while, holding a casserole dish from a woman I’d have sworn, a month back, thought of me as nothing more than a story to pass along.
Most people in this county carried more complication than its gossip ever gave them credit for.
? ? ?
Nate flew in for the promised weekend the second week of October, rental car crunching up the gravel drive at an hour that told me he’d left Denver before dawn just to make good on a promise made over the phone, and he stepped out stretching, city clothes already wrong against the backdrop of pasture and fence.
“You weren’t kidding about the mud,” he said, looking down at his own shoes with visible regret.
“Told you to bring boots.”
“I own boots, Roz. I own boots I bought specifically for this trip, and I left them by my front door in Denver, because apparently forty years of being my sister’s brother hasn’t taught me anything about actually listening to your instructions.
” He hugged me anyway, mud and city shoes and all, holding on a beat longer than our usual quick sibling embrace.
“You look tired. Good tired. Tired like you’re doing something, not tired like something’s doing you. ”
“That’s a fair read.”
We spent the weekend mostly as he’d promised, sitting on the porch, not talking about Boone for long stretches, though the subject came up in time, same as it always did, because you couldn’t spend forty-eight hours with somebody who loved you without the weight of your life finding its way into the conversation.
“Do you remember Mom’s rule about arguments?” he asked, on the second evening, both of us on the porch rail watching the sun go down over pasture he’d once sworn he’d never miss and missed, from the look on his face, more than he let himself admit most days.
“Which rule. She had a lot of rules.”
“The one about not deciding anything big before you’d slept on it twice.
Said most decisions people regretted, they’d made on the first sleepless night instead of waiting for the second one, when the adrenaline’s worn off and you’re just left with the actual truth of what you want.
” He was quiet a moment, turning a glass of tea in his hands, an unconscious echo of a gesture that ran in this family regardless of how far a person moved from the ranch that taught it.
“You’ve had a lot more than two nights now.
Fence, calving, all of it. What’s the actual truth underneath the adrenaline, Roz?
Not the version you’d give Dad, or Consuela, or the county. The real one.”
I sat with the question a long while, longer than the easy banter of the rest of the weekend had required.
“The truth is I don’t hate him anymore,” I said. “Don’t fully trust him yet either. Somewhere between those two things is where I actually am, and I don’t have a cleaner answer than that.”
“That’s honest, at least.”
“It’s the only kind I’ve got left in me these days.
” I looked over at him, my little brother who’d left this place at eighteen and built a different life two states away, and something in my chest eased, grateful he’d come at all, that he hadn’t needed the mud or the cattle to make the trip worth it, just the sister at the other end of it.
“Thank you for coming, Nate. Even in the wrong shoes.”
“Anytime,” he said, and meant it, same as our whole scattered, complicated family had decided, this year, to keep meaning it, one visit and one phone call at a time.
? ? ?
Faye called with news of her own the following week, her voice carrying an unfamiliar lightness I clocked at once, fifteen years of friendship having taught me every register she owned.
“You sound different,” I said. “Good different. What happened?”
“Nothing happened. I mean, something happened. I met someone.” She said it fast, almost embarrassed, which from Faye, who’d never once in our whole friendship been embarrassed about anything, told me how much this something mattered.
“A rancher, actually, if you can believe it, two counties over from my clinic. Brought in a colicky gelding at eleven at night, stayed the whole time I worked, didn’t hover, didn’t get in the way, just made coffee and asked good questions.
His name’s Everett. We’ve had dinner twice since. ”
“Faye Okafor, you’ve been giving me relationship advice all year and you didn’t think to mention you had your own situation developing.”
“Your situation was more urgent. Mine’s just…
nice, so far. Uncomplicated, which after fifteen years of watching me date exclusively complicated men feels almost suspicious.
” She laughed, easy, unguarded. “I don’t know where it’s going.
Might be nothing. But I wanted you to know, since you’ve been generous enough to let me weigh in on your whole complicated year, it felt only fair you got to hear about my small good thing too. ”
“I’m happy for you. Truly.”
“I know you are. I can hear it.” Something in her voice went warmer still.
“Funny thing is, watching you rebuild your whole life this year, the fence, the crew, all of it, taught me something about what I actually wanted for myself. Watching you insist on being treated right, no matter how hard that got, made me less willing to settle for men who were merely fine. So in a strange way, Roz, your terrible year is partly responsible for my nice new one. Feels like it should come with a thank-you card.”
“I’ll take partial credit, if it means you’re finally dating someone who makes coffee instead of just taking up space.”
We talked a while longer about Everett, about nothing. I hung up and caught my reflection in the dark kitchen window, grinning like a fool at nobody at all.