Chapter 17
The heifer died anyway, two days later, an infection nobody caught in time, and I took that harder than I expected to, hard enough that Deacon found me in the equipment shed at six in the morning doing nothing, just standing there, the same as I’d once caught Boone standing at a gate doing nothing at all.
I’d checked her twice the day before, watched her nursing the calf, watched her eating, seen nothing in her that flagged worry.
Whatever had gone wrong had gone wrong quiet, like infection sometimes does in an animal too new to motherhood to show the ordinary signs of trouble until it’s already past the point where signs would have helped.
Reyes found her down in the pasture at dawn, called it in before I’d even finished my coffee, and by the time I got out there she was already gone, the calf standing beside her not understanding yet what stillness like that meant.
I’d pulled that calf myself, one good arm and a cracked wrist and a husband kneeling in the mud beside me. The loss ran heavier than a single animal should have, even one I’d fought that hard for, and I didn’t look too close at what that told me about everything else riding underneath it.
“Wasn’t your fault,” Deacon said. “Sometimes they go down and you do everything right and they still don’t make it.”
“I know that.”
“Doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting.”
I didn’t answer that, because he was right and there wasn’t anything useful to add to being right. We’d saved the calf at least. That was something. It wasn’t enough, standing in a cold shed at six in the morning, but it was something.
Wyatt found me at the barn later that same morning, hat in his hands, and hesitant, which wasn’t like him; Wyatt had never once struggled to say what was on his mind.
“Heard about the heifer,” he said. “Sorry, boss.”
“Thank you.”
He stood there a second longer than the sentiment required, turning his hat by the brim. “I’ve been turning something over since that night. The breech. Wanted to say it to you plain instead of just carrying it around.”
“Say it, then.”
“I don’t regret what I said to him. Still don’t.
But I keep thinking about the look on his face when Reyes handed him the chains instead of me, like he’d expected to get turned away outright and hadn’t.
” Wyatt shook his head, more at himself than at anything else.
“I’ve spent four months hating that man clean and simple, and it was easier that way.
Watching him work that heifer with you made it harder.
Didn’t say I liked that it got harder. Just said it did. ”
“You don’t owe him anything, Wyatt. Not forgiveness, not a change of heart. You’re allowed to keep right on hating him if that’s honestly where you land.”
“I know that.” He pushed his hat back down, done saying what he’d come to say. “Just didn’t want you thinking I’d gone soft on him without telling you first. Seemed like something you’d want to hear from me instead of finding out sideways.”
“Appreciate that.”
He nodded once and went back to his own work. I stood a while longer, turning his words over like he’d turned his hat, because I’d been carrying my own version of that same complication for months and hadn’t wanted to name it.
Boone came to Deacon three days after that, not to me, at my own equipment shed, hat in his hands like Wyatt’s had been the day he’d asked me for work. I wasn’t there to see it. Deacon told it to me straight that evening, no embellishment added or subtracted, same as he told most things.
“I want to work here,” Boone said, according to Deacon. “Not as a favor. Not as a husband trying to get back into anybody’s good graces. As a hand. Whatever you’re paying, whatever hours you need, under whoever you’ve got running the crew.”
Deacon laid it out that evening, flat, sitting across from me at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee he’d earned twice over that day.
“He asked me,” Deacon said. “Not you. Me. Said it straight, no speech attached to it, and then he waited for an answer like a man who actually expected to be told no.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Told him it wasn’t my call to make alone.
Told him I’d talk to my boss.” Deacon held my eye a beat, the closest thing to an opinion he’d offer unasked.
“I’ll say this, and I don’t say it often: I believe he meant it.
A man faking humility doesn’t come to the foreman first. He comes to the wife, where the cameras would be, if there were cameras out here to speak of. ”
“There’s a whole county’s worth of eyes on this operation, Deacon. Might as well be cameras.”
“Might be. But he came to me first anyway.” Deacon turned his coffee cup a slow quarter-turn, the same gesture my own father favored, a whole county’s worth of men apparently sharing one habit for buying themselves a second before they said the next thing.
“I’ve had a lot of men come through this operation over the years, Roz, asking for work for a lot of different reasons.
You get a feel for which ones are telling the truth about why.
Not saying I’d bet the ranch on it. Just saying my feel on this one says he’s not lying. ”
“That’s not nothing, coming from you.”
“No,” he agreed. “It isn’t. Your call, boss. Always was.” He got up to rinse his cup, leaving me alone with a decision heavier than any fence crew had ever handed me.
? ? ?
I drove out to my father’s place the next morning, the decision still unmade, needing to say it out loud to somebody who’d known Boone Teague longer than I’d been alive to the idea of him, back before there was a Boone Teague to know at all, just a boy from two counties over who’d shown up at a junior rodeo with more nerve than sense.
“Deacon told me already,” my father said, before I’d gotten past the kitchen door. Word traveled fast in this family, same as it did in this county. “Boone wants to work the crew.”
“What do you think I should do.”
“Doesn’t matter what I think.” He poured coffee for both of us, same ritual as that first morning four months back, except this time neither of us had a legal pad on the table between us, just two cups and a question with no fence-footage math to hide behind.
“This isn’t a fence decision, Rosalind. Fence decision, I’d have opinions.
Property, boundaries, that’s a language I speak.
This is a heart decision, and I never once claimed to speak that language better than you do. ”
“You told me about Grandma’s orchard fence. Made him earn it a whole growing season before she let it come down.”
“I did.” He sat across from me, turned his cup a slow quarter turn, the same old habit.
“But I’ll tell you something I didn’t say that first morning, because it wasn’t mine to say yet.
She told me once, years later, that she almost didn’t let him earn it at all.
Almost just let the marriage end, quiet, no big blowup, just two people who’d stopped fitting together deciding not to keep forcing it.
What changed her mind wasn’t the letter he brought her, in August, though that mattered.
What changed her mind was she caught herself missing him.
Not the version of him standing at the fence line every evening looking sorry.
The version from before, the one she’d actually married.
She said once you catch yourself missing the man underneath the mess, that’s usually your answer, whether you’re ready to hear it yet or not. ”
“Are you saying you think I miss him?”
“I’m saying I don’t know, and neither do you, not for certain, not yet.
I’m saying that’s the only question worth answering here, and it’s not one I can answer for you, or Deacon either, much as he vouched for the man.
” He held my gaze, that plain directness he saved for the things that mattered most. “You don’t owe him a yes because he mucked some stalls and helped save a heifer.
You don’t owe him a no because he humiliated you in front of half the county, either, not anymore, not after everything since.
You just owe yourself an honest look at what you feel, underneath all the reasons either answer would be defensible. ”
“That’s not much help, Dad.”
“No,” he admitted, and almost smiled, that rueful smile he wore when he knew he was disappointing me with an honest answer instead of comforting me with an easy one.
“Never claimed to be much help with this part. Just claimed to sit here and drink coffee with you while you worked it out yourself. Man can only offer what he’s got. ”
I drove home a while later without a decision any clearer than when I’d arrived, but steadier for having said the question out loud to somebody who loved me enough to refuse me an easy answer.
? ? ?
I called Faye before I called Boone with my answer, needing to say the decision out loud once to somebody who’d tell me plainly if she thought I was making a mistake.
“You’re going to say yes,” she said, before I’d even finished laying out the terms I was planning to set. “I can hear it in how careful you’re being about the conditions. Nobody builds that many guardrails around a decision they’ve already ruled out.”
“I haven’t decided anything yet.”
“You have. You’re just making sure it’s airtight before you admit it to yourself.
” She wasn’t unkind about it, just direct, the same bluntness that had carried us both through vet school.
“I’ll tell you plainly, I think the terms you’re describing are smart.
Green-hand pay, no title, fired on sight if it’s a performance.
That’s not a woman giving a man a soft landing.
That’s a woman making him earn every single inch of ground, same as your grandmother did with that orchard fence. ”
“You’ve been paying closer attention to that story than I realized.”