Twenty-nine
Peter
Present Day
“Alright.” Cooper’s voice disappeared into a stall. “Come in here.”
I followed him in, the scent of hay, pine, and manure tickling my nose.
It was only seven thirty in the morning, but already, my mind and body ached for a minute of respite.
My muscles coiled around my stiff joints, tight from yesterday’s workload.
And my brain glitched somewhere between high-alert stress and debilitating depression.
My fight or flight response had been activated by all this madness, and my mental stability flickered.
Being mercilessly dragged from my bed and thrown into the deep end had my nervous system glitching. Day two and, heaven help me, this was hell.
“Here.” Cooper put a pitchfork in my hand. “Take this.”
My hands, stiff with blisters, resisted wrapping around the aged handle. Unable to hide my pain, I hissed a breath as the wood mercilessly scraped my palm.
He chuckled. “Don’t callous much using a keyboard, huh?”
I stifled the giant sigh building in my throat. Cooper was such an asshole, and every minute I spent in Texas with him made me regret my decision to stay. Ignoring his jab about my occupation, I gritted my teeth and asked, “Are there some gloves I could use or something?”
“Nope. We don’t have shit like that around here.”
I rolled my eyes. “Why would a ranch not have work gloves?”
“Cause we only hire men.”
Pressing my lips into a thin line, I fought against all the retorts flying into my head.
Forcing my fingers to grip the handle, I drove my teeth into my tongue, distracting my brain from the way fluid slicked my palms. I’d busted a blister and would probably get staph out here.
Not that Cooper or anyone else would care.
He launched into an explanation. “These stalls all have wood chips in them. And the chips kinda clump together when they’re wet.
“What you’ll do is drag the end of the pitch fork through the chips.
” A light metal scraping sound filled the air as he demonstrated how to do it.
“I would just take it in a straight line all the way to the opposite wall, and then, you’ll dump whatever you have in your fork into the wheelbarrow. ”
“Okay.” I grumbled.
Without more instructions, Cooper got to work, his fork sifting through wood chips.
Clenching my jaw, I stuck the prongs of the pitchfork through the layer, all the way to the ground below.
Then, per Cooper’s instructions, I pushed it.
Once my fork hit the wall, I lifted the heavy scoop of woodchips.
“Okay, where’s the wheelbarrow?”
But instead of answering me, he said, “No. You can’t do it like that.”
“Like what?”
“You’ve got a huge scoop of chips.”
Denying my urge to throttle him, I awaited more instruction.
“You have to bounce the chips around a little.”
“Huh?”
He sighed like I was the dumbest human to walk planet earth. “You gotta shake the fork so that only the manure and clumped chips stay on and the clean chips fall through. What you’ve got is just a scoop of clean chips. And we can’t just throw chips away—they’re cedar and cost a good bit.”
I set my jaw, trying my best to temper my tone. “Well, in case you forgot, I can’t tell if they are clean or dirty.”
He groaned. “Holy hell, you are so annoying. Trust me”—his tone was dramatic and sarcastic— “no one on this ranch has forgotten that poor Peter is blind.”
“Well, you seem to think I can tell the difference, so I have to double check that we’re on the same page.”
“You can tell the difference. Shake it around a little and figure out what you have.”
What I hated more than anything was people acting like they knew what I could and couldn’t do while blind. Everyone said things like “it’s easy” and “you can do it.” Suddenly, I wanted to whack Cooper in the face with the prongs.
I gave the fork a purposeful, jerky pulse, and chips spilled over the side, raining onto the ground and the tops of my tennis shoes. “Yep. Still don’t know if they’re clean or dirty.”
“Alright, smart ass.” He stomped closer to me and the scent of cigarettes and peppermint invaded my personal space. “Since you’re being a child, let’s hold hands this time.” He yanked the fork away, and the pain almost sent me to my knees. “Grab it and don’t let go.”
I hesitated until he poked me in the stomach with the handle. I oofed out a breath.
“Grab…it.” He demanded.
Slowly, I reached out, taking the handle again.
Cooper leaned forward, holding the handle closer to the ground.
With four hands on the pitchfork, Cooper struck the prongs back in, but not as deeply as I had the first time.
“As you go, stop and shake the fork.” He pushed forward a couple feet then stopped, lifting the fork out and shaking it.
Sure enough, I heard the gentle plinking of woodchips hitting the ground and a muted vibration traveled up the stem of the pitchfork and into the palms of my hands.
It felt like something solid was jumping around on the prongs.
“Feel that?” He asked.
I gave a reluctant nod. “Yeah.”
“That’s manure. So, now that you know you got some, reach back and dump it.” He let go of the tool and rapped the side of the wheelbarrow to help me determine its location.
I slowly turned, swinging back with the fork, hovering over where I suspected it was. “Here?”
“Yep.”
I dumped the contents of my fork.
“There. Now shut up so we can get this done.”
To my embarrassment and annoyance, Cooper’s instructions had helped and I was able to find manure using his tactic. Every couple feet or so, I stopped and shook the dry chips out of my scoop and, before I knew it, even my stiff hands had loosened and we were moving to the next stall.
Pretty soon, I had a pattern.
Step, scoop, shake, dump.
After the constant stress of navigation and learning yesterday, being able to autopilot hit my nervous system like a slushie on a summer day—instant relief. My shoulders fell a few inches and my breathing evened out. My chest didn’t feel as tight. And, finally, my mind wandered.
Today was my second day working the ranch. Time had warped in my head. Long yet short, days yet hours.
I stood by the fact that I needed some space from Sarah in order to think things through, but the way I got it?
Man, I ached for a redo. Nothing was supposed to happen like that.
If I could go back and do it all over again, I never would’ve picked up that first beer.
I never would’ve said those terrible things. I never would’ve betrayed her.
She gave me her wedding ring and said she would leave my stuff in the garage.
Did that mean she wanted a divorce? Was she serious about moving back in with my parents?
Did I need to get an apartment? That would be almost impossible without a job.
Or should I just stay at Meadowbrook? I grimaced at the idea of working indefinitely as a ranch hand.
But I didn’t know what to do.
The entire time I worked with Cooper, my brain replayed that awful conversation. My cheek tingled as I remembered the slap, and the hateful comment that caused it. I was an idiot.
It didn’t take Cooper and I long to muck out every stall.
While he wheeled the wheelbarrow out of the barn to dump the manure, I washed my hands in the farm sink which made the open blisters on my palms burn like fire and then I stuck an airpod in my ear and used my screen reader to check my phone. Only one notification got a click.
It was an email update from Google Sheets with the subject line, “Sarah made changes to the Sarah’s Live List.”
As soon as my reader read those words aloud, my heart jumped into my throat. Sarah did a list item without me? No way. She’d never done one without me.
I knew what that list meant to her. It was her life. The life she’d put on hold while I floundered for so many months. And the life she returned to the moment she was rid of me.
See? She’s fine, I told myself. She’s doing exactly what you wanted her to do.
With a shuddering breath, I rubbed my left pec and tried to breathe through the conflicting feelings constricting my airflow. She was out there living and being happy—that was good, right? That was what I wanted for her.
A glutton for torture, I opened the email notification to figure out what she checked off.“Go 80 mph on a motorcycle.”
A motorcycle? With who?
She uploaded a picture to the pic or it didn’t happen column, and I tapped my screen reader to get some narrative about the photo. But, of course, the internet connection lagged and silence permeated the hallway where I waited for Cooper to return. Frantic, I tried again. Then again.
And when Cooper came back into the barn and urged me to the next task, I couldn’t move.
“What’s wrong now?” He snapped.
“My phone’s not working.”
“So? You don’t need it to move bags of feed.”
I shook my head, unable to communicate my worry. “Can you look at this picture for me?”
“Can it wait?”
“No, it can’t.” I thrust my phone toward his face. “Tell me who’s in it.”
Cooper took the phone and silence fell as he studied it. “It’s Sarah and one of your sisters sitting on a motorcycle.”
“Which sister?”
“I can’t remember her name. The bitchy one.”
“Oh. Jackie?”
“Yeah.”
“Where are they?”
Cooper sighed in annoyance. “I don’t know, man. A driveway, maybe?”
“There’s no guy?”
“In the picture?”
“Yes! In the picture.”
He paused to look again. “Wait a second.”
My stomach dropped to my knees and my voice went breathless. “What?”
“There is a guy.”
“Really?”
“He’s got his arms wrapped around Sarah.” His chuckle gave his lie away and sent a fresh bolt of anger skittering through my veins. This wasn’t a joke. I pawed at the air for my phone, obviously missing as he laughed harder and smacked it, screen first, into my sternum.
“Chill, man. She’s just having fun.”
With that, he walked away toward the next chore.