Chapter 3 Beau
THREE
BEAU
I thought she’d last a week before packing up and heading back to whatever suburb she came from.
But three weeks in, the land looks better than it has in years.
She’s cut back the sweet clover and fixed the corner fences with a focus that’s part wild, part calm.
The vet’s truck shows up at her place twice a week, and I think she’s turning her barn into a kind of animal spa to help her rescues heal.
The only thing that moves between our two ranches without permission is Buck, my blue heeler.
He’s taken to sneaking across at dusk, silent as a coyote, and lies belly-down in her driveway while she sits on the stoop and sorts through her laptop.
Apparently, he loves her company as much as every red-blooded man working on her ranch.
Most nights, I call him back. Other nights, I let him stay. He never strays far. He waits, watches, and always returns. Today, I mean to drag his ass home before she formally adopts him. But when I shut my front door, I track Willa first, moving alive and angry behind the old corral.
She’s alone this time, arms roped up with a coil of mesh fencing, hair shoved into the back collar of that Carhartt I left by her door.
With purposeful steps, she positions herself in the gully, lifts a t-post, and drives it halfway into the ground—each motion deliberate and forceful.
She pauses, breathing hard, holding the post driver upright until Buck, on cue, ambles up and sits at the gate.
I take my time ambling downhill, letting my boots sink in the crusted mud. The sun’s barely above the ridgeline. My shadow reaches her valley minutes before I do. She glances up but doesn’t say shit as I open her gate and let myself in.
Buck’s off at a run, tangling himself in her ankles. She moves him gently aside and wipes her nose on her sleeve.
“You lose something over here?” Willa calls.
“Just making sure he doesn’t eat your chickens.”
She eyeballs me like she knows I’m full of it. “I don’t have any chickens. Yet,” she mutters.
She turns and pounds the t-post the rest of the way in.
My ears ring with every blow. I watch her work.
She sets her feet, rotates her shoulders with precision, and is almost angry.
I’ve never seen anyone outside a union crew swing a post driver like that.
When she’s done, she leans on the handle and pretends I’m not there.
“You here for a reason?” she asks, not turning.
“I was passing by.”
“You’re not much of a liar.”
I think about this for a moment. She’s right. If I’d wanted a real excuse, I’d have brought my own hammer or at least a peace offering of coffee. “You’re out here early.”
“I like the quiet,” Willa says, softly.
I catch a faint perfume under the usual mud-and-sweat stink, something like pine soap and wild mint. “You’ll get quieter by May, when the crew cashes out.”
“I don’t plan on hiring again.”
“You gonna run all this yourself?”
She shrugs. “Once everything’s built, maybe.”
“That’s a lot of work.”
“I know.”
She lets the words hang, then grabs the wire and starts rolling out more fence. Her hands are bandaged in two places, and I notice one nail is black. I want to say something, maybe offer advice or tell her to run posts along the north line where the ground is less rocky, but I keep quiet.
“You hear about the fire up on the Morrison place?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
“Someone torched a hay shed. Probably kids,” he murmurs. The unspoken part is that people don’t always like new neighbors. But she doesn’t react.
She ties back a section of wire with baling twine from her pocket. “If they come for me, I’ll let you know.”
“That’s smart.”
She squints at me. “You think I’m fragile?”
“No,” I say. “I think you live in a town full of morons who can’t mind their own business.”
She almost smiles at that, but stops herself.
She turns and looks off toward the ridge for a moment, then crouches down, digs a flat stone out of the mud, and turns it over thoughtfully in her bandaged hand.
With a flick of her wrist, she skips the stone hard off the gate post. Buck, startled by the sharp noise, jumps up from the hay bale scraps and looks at her, offended.
“He’s a good dog,” she says.
“He’s a dumbass.”
She laughs, smoke curling out in a sharp puff. “I like him.”
“Most people do.”
We stand there in silence for a while. I watch the shadows from the clouds move across her meadow. Now it’s mostly mud, dotted with broken pallets. I wonder if she sees the land as it is or as she hopes it could be.
“You want coffee?”
I nod, so she leads the way inside. The place is full of boxes and plastic bins, with notebooks stacked on every flat surface. There’s a mattress on the living room floor, half-covered in flannel and fleece. I step carefully around Buck, who’s already made himself at home by the baseboard heater.
She fills two mugs and hands me one. Her fingers brush mine, knuckles rough and warm. For a second, it feels almost intimate, but then she pulls back and braces herself against the counter.
“I never thanked you for the jacket,” she says.
“You didn’t have to.”
“I know.”
We drink in silence. The coffee’s strong and bitter, better than mine anyway.
We stand there like two animals trapped in the same pen. She watches me over the rim of her mug, measuring.
“You ever get tired of fighting?” she asks.
I think about this. “No.”
She seems to like the answer.
Buck snaps at something in his sleep. Willa frowns, watching him.
“Why do you keep coming over?” she asks. Not accusing, just curious. “You already know I’m not selling.”
I look at her, see the faint flame of stubbornness in her eyes, the old scar at her temple, white as sun-bleached bone. She’s not going anywhere. Not unless I burn her out myself.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“You’re not very complicated, are you?”
“Never said I was.”
She grins, real this time. “I like that.”
I finish the coffee, roll the bitterness in my mouth for a moment. “I make chili on Sundays,” I say. “If you want.”
Willa’s eyes widen, just a little.
“I get cabin fever,” I say, filling the dead air.
She sets down her mug. “I could come by.”
I start to nod, but Buck wakes and lets out a sharp bark at the window.
Willa moves to the door, squints out at the drive. “You expecting someone?”
“No. You?”
She shakes her head and snaps the deadbolt. “Probably nothing.”
Buck’s hackles flatten, and he curls back up. The tension in the room eases.
“I’ll be by at six,” she says, turning back to me.
“Come hungry,” I say.
I let myself out and walk the edge of the property, heading back to my house. The sky is raw with wind. Clouds move in quickly, stinging my skin that’s already numb from the cold. I watch the blue heeler trot ahead, comfortable in the space between us that neither of us truly owns.
Back at my place, I set a pot of beans to soak and check the freezer. I pace a few laps in the kitchen. There’s a long groove in the linoleum, a black line from the fridge to the counter worn by a thousand tired steps.
At five-thirty, I see her coming up my drive, Buck an eager shadow at her heels. She wears the same jacket, a new gash of dried blood on her thumb. The sight of her in my doorway makes me restless.
I open the fridge and uncork a beer. She’s already at the kitchen table, picking at a stain in the wood with her thumbnail. I ladle out the chili, slice off a hunk of cornbread, and set it in front of her.
She eats like she works—steady, focused, clean. After a few spoonfuls, she leans back and scans my walls, my photos, the old gun rack by the door.
“You ever go anywhere?” she asks.
“Not much reason to.”
“Never occurred to you to try?”
I shake my head. “Someone has to hold things together.”
She watches me, green eyes sharp but not unkind. “You ever wanted to let go?”
I want to tell her what I really want. I want to say I want a life that’s mine, not my father’s or my grandfather’s, not just a set of burdens handed down through the family. But I can’t get the words out.
Instead, I clear the plates and set them in the sink. I deliberately keep my back turned to her, scrubbing at one of the plates so she can’t read the truth on my face.
“You put paprika in this?” she says, breaking the silence.
“Cumin.”
“It’s good.”
I pour her another beer and sit. For a while, we just drink and listen to Buck’s snoring and the wind rattling the branches outside.
She stands to leave but hesitates. “Is it okay if I bring him home tomorrow? He likes your land.”
I nod, careful not to show how much I like the idea.
She grins. “See you in the morning,” she says.
“Yeah,” I answer. “See you.”
After she leaves, her perfume hangs in the air, sharp and hard to ignore. I sit in the quiet and realize I don’t know what happens next.
The next day, I expect things to return to normal. Instead, I catch myself checking the window every hour, waiting for her Subaru. Buck’s out before dawn, tail flagging at every sound of her engine on the highway.
She spends the whole of Monday repairing the foundation on her old barn, a fool’s errand even with three men and a cherry picker.
But she shovels mud and braces the cracked joists herself, never even pausing for lunch.
At noon, I walk over with a thermos of coffee and two cans of soup.
The crew ignores me, but Willa waves me up to the hayloft, where she’s staring at a spray of insulation hanging dead from the rafters.
“Coffee break,” I say.
She takes it, hands filthy, and tilts her head at the work below. “I’ve heard this place is haunted or cursed.”
I nod. “Maybe it’s just unlucky.”
She wipes sweat off her brow. “You believe in ghosts?”
“Not really.”
She shrugs. “Me neither.”
We eat the soup, and she tells me about growing up in the city and visiting her father’s family in Cheyenne and Bozeman, always wanting a simple kind of life.
She talks about the animals she’s saved and the ones she hasn’t, her doubts, her stubbornness, her unwillingness to back down even when she knows the odds look bad.
“I just want to do something meaningful.”
I want to say, you already have, but I don’t. I just nod, finish my coffee, and toss my bowl of soup to Buck, who licks it clean.
It’s dark by the time I walk home. The stars are out in force, jagged against the ink of the hills. I wonder if she’s watching them, too, or just exhausted and dreaming.