25. Julius
— ? —
Julius
Ramona holds the phone between us while I stand on her cottage step. She has her keys in her other hand and the door shut behind her.
“Is that what you wrote?” She turns the screen toward me again. “Read it properly before you answer.”
I look at the screenshot. My name is above the message, but there’s no date and nothing before it to show how the conversation started.
“I remember writing that I waited until you were asleep.” I make myself hold still. “I don’t remember whether those were the exact words.”
She looks down at the screen.
“What were you waiting to tell her?” Her voice stays quiet, but she has the keys pressed tightly against her palm.
“That I missed riding.” I take a breath before continuing. “That I didn’t know how to talk about being unhappy when I had so much to be grateful for.”
“You could have told me that.” She lifts her face toward mine. “You knew I’d wake up if you needed me.”
“I know you would have.” I don’t reach for her when her mouth starts shaking. “I chose the easier conversation. I didn’t have to watch your face while I said it.”
Ramona blinks hard.
“So you let me sleep beside you while you talked about us.” She waits until I nod. “And now she gets to send me pieces of it whenever she wants.”
“We don’t know who sent this.” I glance at the number, then make myself look back at my wife. “But whoever it is has a conversation I should have shown you myself.”
She puts her phone in her pocket. I expect her to turn toward the cottage, but she stays on the step.
“When we tried to get the thread back, I thought seeing it would be the worst part.” She looks at my empty hands. “Waiting for the next message is worse.”
I move down a step so she has room to open the door.
“I’m sorry I’ve left you waiting for that.” I keep my voice steady. “If more arrives, you can ask me about every line. I won’t make you work through it alone.”
She looks up sharply.
“I can’t hear another apology tonight. I need to sleep.” She takes the phone out again, checking the dark screen.
Eventually, she unlocks the door and steps inside.
“You can go home.” She holds it between us.
I nod and start toward the truck. Behind me, the door closes, and I have to stop myself from turning around to see whether she’s still watching.
She asked you to go. Listen.
I leave without asking when I can come back.
***
Ramona agrees to meet the builder at the rescue pens because the older horses need better shelter before winter.
She brings the plans herself. I carry the folding table and set it where she points, then stand beside the truck while she opens the drawings.
The builder has already walked through the pens with her. He knows which horses have trouble turning and where the rain comes under the existing roof.
“Give them more room here.” Ramona marks the entrance with her pencil. “Banner needs to get through without another horse pushing him against the side.”
The builder nods and makes a note.
“We can widen that.” He follows her finger across the page. “Do you still want the covered path to the treatment room?”
“I do.” She looks toward the barn. “I don’t want to take a sick horse outside in bad weather just to get him checked.”
I watch her explain it. Her sleeves are pushed above her wrists, and there’s dirt beneath one thumbnail. She knows what she wants before the man finishes asking.
Then he shows her the cost of doing it all, and her pencil stops.
“We can leave the extra shelter until later.” She draws a line beside it rather than through it. “The treatment room comes first.”
“The ground will already be cleared.” I step closer before thinking. “We should put it up while they’re here.”
Ramona looks at me.
“I’m deciding what can wait.” She puts her palm flat against the plan.
“It doesn’t have to wait.” I look toward the builder. “Keep it in.”
His pencil moves, and Ramona takes the drawing out from beneath his hand.
“Could you give us a minute?” She holds the paper against her chest while he steps toward his truck.
I know what I’ve done before she turns.
“I told him to listen to you.” I rub my hand over my mouth. “Then I gave him a different answer.”
“You did.” She waits, making me finish instead of doing it for me.
“I’m sorry.” I look at the plan she’s holding. “I saw you giving up a shelter the horses could use. I wanted to stop you having to do that.”
“So you stopped me making a decision.” She lays the drawing on the tailgate between us. “I need you to see how quickly you do it.”
I look toward the builder, who is checking the straps on his tool case.
You could make every job on this ranch stop with a sentence. That doesn’t mean you should.
I turn back to her.
“You’re right.” I keep my hands off the drawing. “Tell me how you want to handle it.”
“I want to know what I can spend before I’m standing here with someone waiting for an answer.” She taps the page. “I don’t want to find out the amount changes because you don’t like what I’m cutting.”
“I can pay for what’s on this plan. That won’t change if you don’t come home.”
Her fingers tighten around the pencil.
“You keep saying that.” She glances toward the cottage beyond the fence.
“I know you need more than me saying it.” I take a step back. “Have your lawyer put it in writing however she thinks it needs to be done. Take the time you want.”
“And if I still want to change the plan?” Ramona lifts her chin.
“Then you change it.” I look at the place where she marked the shelter. “You know what these animals need.”
She studies my face before walking back toward the builder.
I follow far enough to get his attention.
“I spoke over Ramona. Her instructions are the ones you follow.”
He nods and returns to the table with her.
This time, I carry a board over for them to use as a weight and keep quiet while she decides.
***
Her spare boots appear under the bench after rain soaks the pair she’s wearing. I move them while cleaning the floor, then put them back in the same place.
When she checks beneath the bench the next morning, she finds them.
“Thank you for leaving them here.” She sits to change, resting a hand on my arm while she frees her heel.
I stand still until she’s finished using me for balance, and she doesn’t let go immediately.
“Would you come look at the shelter before they put the next section up?” She lifts her eyes to mine. “I want another pair of eyes on the opening.”
“I’d like to.” I wait while she gets to her feet.
Her hand slides from my arm to mine as we leave the feed room. She holds on until we reach the builders.
***
A month after the builder first walked the pens with her, the treatment room smells of fresh paint when Ramona asks me inside.
The work isn’t finished. There are covered tools beside the door, and the sink hasn’t been connected, but she walks straight to the window and opens it to check how it sits.
“This is where I’ll be able to watch the smaller pen.” She points outside. “I won’t have to keep leaving an animal I’m working with to see what’s happening.”
I stand beside her, looking where she points.
“You thought of that before they put the window in.” I glance at the marks on the plan she’s carrying.
“I thought of it when I was sixteen.” She smiles slightly. “I just didn’t know how to draw it so somebody else could understand.”
She leans beside me at the sill, and we look out at the pen together until a hand calls her name from the yard.
***
The county fair has a two-man sorting pen behind the livestock barns, and Ramona has an entry sheet in her hand before I’ve finished parking the trailer.
“They’ve got one slot left, after the feed store.” She holds the sheet up instead of handing it over. “I told the man I’d ask you first.”
“You told him you’d ask me.”
“I did.” She waits. “So I’m asking.”
I look at the sheet, then at her. I haven’t sorted since I was nineteen. She’s never done it at all, and I can already see she has opinions.
“Put my name down.”
She has a number on a string in my hand before I’ve finished saying it. “Put that on. We go after the feed store.”
“The feed store is two brothers who do this every weekend.”
“Then we’d better not lose to them.”
Sorting is ten numbered steers in one pen, a gap in the fence, and a clock. The judge calls a number, and you bring them through in order from there, one at a time, and if the wrong one gets past you, you’re done.
“I’ll hold the gap.” She’s already sitting Pearl in the opening before I’ve settled Cash. “You bring them.”
“You want the hard job.”
“I want the job where I get to yell at you.”
The announcer calls our number. The first steer, number four, peels off the bunch easy. I walk him to the gap, and Ramona leans Pearl over, lets him through, and shuts the hole with her horse before seven can follow.
“Seven’s leaning.” I say it without looking away from the bunch.
“I see him.” She doesn’t. She’s watching me.
I cut seven back and bring five. Then six. By eight the crowd on the rail has stopped talking, and I can hear Ramona counting under her breath, which she does when she’s nervous and denies when she isn’t.
Nine is the trouble. He’s a big roan that wants to be anywhere except where I put him, and he breaks left twice before I get Cash on his shoulder. Ramona has Pearl planted in the gap with her hand up, palm out.
“Come on, you ugly bastard.” She says it to the steer. I hope.
He goes through. Ten follows so fast she nearly doesn’t get the hole shut, and then the whistle blows. Seven head before time. The man with the clock reads it out, and it’s one more than the feed store brothers managed.
Ramona takes her hat off and throws it. Not up. At me. It hits me in the chest and falls in the dirt, and she doesn’t look one bit embarrassed.
“That was for the clock.” She’s grinning so wide I can see her back teeth. “I didn’t know you could still do that.”
“Neither did I.”
“You lied to me. You said you hadn’t sorted since college.”
“I said nineteen.”