Chapter 27 Brady #2
Going down the ladder seemed a hell of a lot scarier than going up, so I opted out of it—mostly.
I went down a few rungs, then held on to the side of the roof and kicked my feet off the ladder and let myself hang.
The drop was probably only about five feet.
I looked down, took a deep breath, and let myself fall.
I hit the ground pretty hard, but I kept my knees loose and let myself roll. When I looked up, Boone was standing over me and shook his head. “Fuckin’ city folks.”
Then, much to my surprise, he outstretched a hand. I took it.
“We’re going to get more rain tonight,” Boone said. “We’ll see how your fix holds up.”
“The weather says we’re in for a sunny couple of days,” I told him.
Boone shook his head. “It’s going to rain. I feel it in my knees and in my shoulders. Old bones know.”
“Well, I’ll guarantee that roof,” I said.
“We’ll see,” Boone grunted. “And I know Collins didn’t send you. She wouldn’t send a stranger up here.”
I swallowed.
“She already likes you, you know,” he said. “You didn’t have to take pity on an old recluse.”
“No pity here,” I said. How did he know how Collins felt about me? Did she talk about me? “I don’t have anything else to do today,” I said tentatively—trying to figure out the best way to word this, so that Boone would accept the help I was offering. “What should we do next?”
—
A few hours later, Boone and I were replacing his barn’s sliding door. Apparently it had been broken for a few months and wouldn’t close all the way, which was fine for his horses in the summer, but with winter around the corner, I was happy to help him fix it.
Boone was sitting on a barrel near where I was working, sanding down a piece of wood that we were going to use as the door-locking mechanism.
I could see why Collins loved him so much.
He was tough and brash and rough around the edges, but a man didn’t have a gaggle of dogs following him around and horses that nickered when he approached or even chickens that came his way without hesitation unless those animals knew that they were loved and cared for.
“Sage is the newest member of the herd,” he was telling me. “She’s a retired barrel horse—has some problems with her tendons.”
“Just from doing too much for too long?” I asked. I didn’t know anything about horses, but I liked learning.
“Barrel racing involves a lot of turning and stopping,” Boone said. “Imagine running as fast as you can, and having to skid to a stop, speed back up, and stop and turn again.”
“Knees would be shot.” I nodded.
“Right, and barrel horses who are cared for generally love their job—you take care of your horse, your horse will take care of you type of thing, but they’ll tell you when their job starts to hurt, and at that point it’s time to retire.”
“Are all of your horses retired from something else?” I asked.
“Most of them.” Boone nodded. “I’ve got two barrel horses, three bucking horses, and a couple of retired dude horses. That dappled one in the corner stall, though, his mom came to me pregnant, and I didn’t know.”
“I bet that was a surprise,” I said.
“You’re telling me.” Boone shook his head. “I let her free pasture, so the door to her paddock stayed open. One day, I come out, and this tiny dot is prancing around with her.” One thing was for sure, that horse wasn’t tiny anymore.
“What’s his name?”
“Shadowfax,” Boone said.
“Wait.” I paused what I was doing. “Like from Lord of the Rings ?”
Boone raise an amused brow at me. “Just like that, yeah.”
“What does an old rancher know about Lord of the Rings ?” I laughed.
“I read those books long before Orlando Broom or whatever the hell his name is starred in the movies. I’ve still got my original paperbacks somewhere in the house.
I stole them from my hometown library.” I couldn’t be all the way sure, but I think one side of Boone’s mouth tilted a little bit—almost a smile.
“My saint of a brother replaced them years later, though. He was riddled with guilt.”
I looked over at Shadowfax. “He definitely looks like the Lord of Horses,” I said. “Is there a reason that some horses have green names and others don’t?” While Boone was going through his horses’ names, I noticed that a lot them were shades of green.
“Caught that, did you?” Boone said. “My brother does the same thing but with blue. It’s this thing we started when we were kids, and we never really stopped. If they come to me with a name, I usually keep it, but if they don’t, they get a green name—makes them part of the family.”
“But Shadowfax?”
Boone shrugged. “Just fit him. Sometimes I wonder if he would’ve been that big if I didn’t name him that, or if his name had any influence.”
“Classic nature-versus-nurture situation,” I said.
Talking to Boone made me realize how much I’d isolated myself over the past year. But with Collins, I was getting better. It occurred to me that it might be nice—to be more involved in things, to meet new people—to listen to them talk the way I was listening to Boone now.
If it weren’t for Collins, I wouldn’t have even had the courage to come up here on my own, but now, I was happy I did.