Finally, Astrid stood and cleared her throat. At that time, the room fell quiet and she excused the temporary workers—Vonne, Dominick, and a man and woman who Liza said were husband and wife—saying she had business to discuss with the permanent help. She wished them all a good night’s rest.
“I guess this means we get a head start on going to sleep,” Vonne said casually to Dominick as they walked outside. The married couple were walking together ahead toward the bunkhouses.
“Don’t worry, Vonne. The first couple of days are the hardest, but then on the third day you wake up and can’t wait to get started. And it’s like that every day after.”
“Then I sure am looking forward to Monday.”
“Except Mondays are usually pretty tough because there’s extra to do.”
“Then Tuesday.”
“That’s the day we load up for the slaughterhouse.”
“Level with me, Dominick.”
“Okay, you’re going to feel like this every night, and you’re always going to dread getting up.” He laughed at his own joke.
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
“But you’re going to love it here, Vonne. Wait and see.” He bid her goodnight and disappeared in the shadows toward the men’s bunkhouse.
She reached the women’s bunkhouse, walking in to find the married woman, Crystal, getting ready for the shower.
“It’s good she lets us go early sometimes,” Crystal said. “I like having a little privacy in the bathhouse instead of being in there with everybody at once.”
Vonne had peeked in the bathhouse earlier this afternoon and knew it consisted of three small changing rooms, one private shower, and a large communal shower. “Do you want me to wait here while you go?”
Crystal shook her head. “No, that’s all right.”
“You like Sky Ranch?” Vonne made conversation as they walked to the bathhouse.
“Not me. We just came here to work for a little while so we could earn the money to get all the way to Ohio. Our bus ticket ran out in Denver and Lorna picked us up. I’m ready to move on as soon as we get enough money, but Philip—he’s my husband—he likes it here and wants to stay.”
“How come you don’t like it?”
“I don’t like sleeping in a bunkhouse with a bunch of women!” She said it as though it was the most ridiculous question ever asked. “And besides, there ain’t no way for us to get to church on Sunday. Astrid don’t have no use for church.”
“How long before you have enough money?”
“Should be any day now. I sure will be glad to get back on that bus.” They entered the bathhouse together and Crystal went straight for the private shower and pulled the curtain closed.
Vonne continued into the larger room, stopping at the showerhead closest to the door. After a few minutes, the hot water reached the muscles in her shoulders and neck, and she knew she had found the one thing she needed more than sleep. It took all the willpower she could muster to turn it off after she rinsed, figuring there would be hell to pay if the others ended up taking cold showers.
She and Crystal returned to the bunkhouse just as the other women were coming back from the after-dinner meeting. Vonne stowed her gear and climbed up to stretch out while the others went off to bathe. Liza lagged behind in the bunkhouse for a few minutes, leaving for the showers as the other women began to return. She came back a full half hour after the others had turned in for the night.
As a gentle breeze wafted through the bunkhouse, Vonne said a silent thanks for the tip about sleeping next to the window. Liza slept directly beneath her and the other five women—four of them kitchen workers, and one who she learned handled all of the laundry—occupied bunks at the far end of the room. The bunkhouse clusters seemed more practical than cliquish, since only a few of the beds were adjacent to windows. Vonne supposed they all shifted near the big stone fireplace in the winter.
These women led an interesting life, she thought. Working from dawn to sundown and sharing a bunkhouse and showers with others was a lot like being in the navy. She wondered if the hands at Sky Ranch got anything like shore leave. She doubted it.
She rolled her head from side to side, still trying to loosen the knots in her neck. Getting up at dawn wasn’t going to be easy, especially with the one-hour time difference from the west coast. Despite her fatigue, she had lain awake for forty-five minutes, listening as her bunkmates fell asleep. She envied their soft snores and deep breathing. She would join them soon in Dreamland—but not yet.
Careful not to make a sound, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and slid quietly to the floor. Checking one last time to make sure everyone was asleep, she tiptoed to the door and pushed the screen softly. Holding it so it wouldn’t slam, she allowed it to close before stepping off the porch in the direction of the bathhouse.
As she approached the latrine, the odor of disinfectant grew stronger. That explained why Liza had come back a half hour after the other women had turned in. She had probably been the one who stayed behind and cleaned up. Once inside the dark latrine, Vonne closed and locked the door with the barrel bolt. Carefully, she climbed onto the toilet seat to retrieve the cell phone she had stashed in the eaves when she first arrived at Sky Ranch. Her suspicions had paid off, since someone—probably Lorna—had searched her bag while she was out working with Liza. She turned on the phone and waited for it to come to life. With her speed dial, she was connected at once.
“Hey, Jerry. I’m in ... but it’s not the Copper J. They pulled a switch at the airport ... Yeah, she’s here. And your buddy was right—it’s Astrid Becker.” Vonne unlocked and cracked the door so she could peer out at the women’s bunkhouse. “This place is called Sky Ranch.” She could see a woman emerge from the bunkhouse and start toward the bathhouse. “I don’t know yet. Find out what you can on your end ... I’ll call you when I figure out what she’s doing to these people. I gotta go.”
Vonne turned off the phone and stepped onto the toilet seat to set it in the corner out of sight. It was too risky to keep it in the bunkhouse. She flushed the toilet and walked outside in time to greet the woman, one of the ones she had met earlier in the kitchen. Then she continued back to her bunk where she quietly climbed into bed. Sleep came instantly.
yx
Liza backed the pickup truck up to the door of the kitchen. “Everything should be ready by now. We just have to load it and haul it out to the range hands.”
Vonne hopped out and joined Liza at the rear of the truck, where they lowered the tailgate in anticipation of their load. Inside, they found the kitchen crew hard at work on dinner. Four large insulated containers—lunch for the thirty-some range hands—were stacked by the door.
“These all go out to the pasture?”
“No, just the green one. We have to take the others up to the canyon. That’s where most of the hands are.”
Vonne stepped over to help with the load and was surprised to see Liza hoist a packed container on her own. For someone so lithe, she was deceptively strong. Vonne had noticed the muscle definition in her upper arms. That was only one of the many things she noticed on pretty women.
“Ungh!” Vonne grunted as she lifted one by herself.
“Let me help.”
“No way! You think I’m going to let you show me up?”
Liza laughed. “I hope this means you’ll be too proud to whine tonight.”
“You’re evil all the way through, aren’t you?”
“Hey! This is me being nice,” Liza countered.
“Now you’re scaring me.”
In only a few minutes, they loaded the truck and set out on a rutted dirt road that zigzagged up the hillside. Periodically, a trail crossed the road and continued on up.
“What’s that trail I keep seeing?”
“That’s the horse trail. The hands go straight up from the back of the house on horseback, but it’s too steep for us to go that way.”
When they reached a level clearing near
the top of the ridge, Liza stopped and killed the engine. In the center of the clearing sat a wooden frame building with a wide covered porch. Several picnic tables were positioned underneath the awning. The women got out and hauled three of the containers to the porch.
“What’s in there?” Vonne nodded toward the building.
“Supplies, I guess. It’s always closed up.”
And the windows are covered so no one can peek inside .
“We just unload it and leave it here,” Liza said.
“Where is everybody?”
Liza pointed toward a continuation of the horse trail that led into more rugged terrain. “Through that pass. We can’t get the truck any farther, so they have to come down here to eat. We just leave it and come back in a few hours to pick up the empties.”
“So you don’t even see them?”
“Nope.”
Peculiar.
Two rifle shots pierced the air, causing Vonne to jump. “What was that?”
Liza shrugged, seemingly impervious to the noise. “Coyote or something, I guess. You hear a lot of that up here.” She got back into the truck and started it up. “Now we have to drop this one off at the pasture.”
“What’s back up there in the canyon?”
“I think it’s a big herd, because most of the hands go up there every day.”
The herd in the lower pasture numbered about three or four hundred and took only six hands to manage, Vonne remembered. Lorna had said there were a couple of thousand head, so most of them had to be in the canyon.
They followed the zigzag road back down the way they came, and twenty minutes later pulled up to a second building similar to the one near the canyon but not as large. Here, the half dozen hands who managed the lower herd were already gathered on the front porch waiting for their lunch. Vonne recognized one as Philip, the temporary helper who was married to Crystal.
“I can get this one. Just sit here and rest your tired old bones,” Liza said. When she returned, she set a smaller cooler on the seat between them. “This is for us. I usually stop down at the creek and eat.”
“Good! Or is it considered whining if I act like I’m hungry?”
“Nah, you’ve worked hard this morning. I won’t begrudge you a bite to eat.”
“Wow, a compliment from Miss Hard Ass! I’m all misty-eyed.”
Liza chuckled. “Yeah, me too.”
In a few minutes, Liza pulled the truck under a stand of trees where a small creek trickled down from the canyon pass. She grabbed the cooler and walked to a seat on a boulder near the water. “This is my favorite part of the whole day.”
“I can see why.” Vonne followed, soaking up the sensation of being so close to nature—and so far from the commotion of the city. A part of her wished this wasn’t a job, but a real vacation instead. It was easy to understand why some people came to a place like this and didn’t want to leave.
All morning, Vonne had peppered Liza with questions about life on the ranch. At first, she had been interested in learning more about Astrid, but the more she talked with Liza, the more she wanted to understand why she had chosen a life like this. “How long have you worked at Sky Ranch?”
“About six months.”
“So what’s it like here in the winter?”
Liza chuckled. “You don’t want to know.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Nothing changes as far as the work’s concerned. The range hands go out every day, and all the supplies still have to move.”
“Wow. I guess I never thought of it that way.”
“Just because there’s two feet of snow on the ground doesn’t mean the animals or the hands don’t have to eat.”
“That must be hard work.”
“It’s all right. You just do it.”
“Do you like it here?”
Liza shrugged noncommittally. “It’s as good a place as any, I guess.” She picked up her sandwich and walked downstream, crossing the creek to take a seat on a sunny ledge.
Vonne followed her, stripping down to her tank top so she could soak up the sun. From behind her sunglasses, she saw Liza watching her intently, and it was a look that Vonne recognized. She flipped up her glasses to look Liza in the eye. “So where are you from?”
Liza hurriedly looked away, obviously embarrassed about being caught checking Vonne out. “Orange County.”
“Disneyland.”
Liza snorted. “Now you see why I don’t want to go back.” She poured cold water from a thermos and handed a cup to Vonne. “What about you?”
“I’m from the Bay Area ... Sausalito.”
“It’s pretty up there.”
“Yeah, but not like this.” Vonne leaned back against the warm rock. “Lorna might be right. She said two weeks up here and I wouldn’t want to go back.”
“Sure beats ledgers and spreadsheets.”
“So you’re a number cruncher?”
“Used to be. But I’m not going back to that. I’d rather be homeless.” Liza finished off her sandwich with one last bite.
“That would be pretty boring compared to this.”
“Not to mention crooked,” Liza mumbled before swallowing. “What kind of work do you do?”
“I just got out of the navy. Hard to say what I’ll do next. Something where I get to be outside a lot, I guess.”
“I hear you.” Liza began to gather their trash, her signal that their break was over. “It’s time to go back and pick up the empties. You ready?”
Vonne nodded and pulled on her denim shirt. She assumed most of the hands at Sky Ranch were as cynical as Liza about the world outside. What she wanted to know was why, and what Astrid Becker was offering them instead.
yx
“So ... let’s see, where is the greenhorn?” Astrid looked around the room from her seat at the head table, finally spotting Vonne at the table farthest away. “Vonne, how was your first full day?”
“It was great, thanks. My blisters have already started to turn into calluses.”
The other hands laughed in unison, nodding in understanding.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Astrid said, smiling. “Why don’t you start us off with the discussion tonight? I think these folks get a little tired of listening to me”—she looked around the room and smirked—“but they’re all too polite to say so.”
Vonne laughed along with the others, already racking her brain to come up with something to talk about.
Astrid saw her hesitation and rescued her. “I’ll make it easy. Here’s a question to get the ball rolling.”
Vonne glanced briefly at Liza, who gave her an encouraging nod.
“Why don’t you tell us what you think is the most important thing a government should do for its people?”
Vonne set down her knife and fork and swallowed the last of her roast beef. Astrid’s question was in the vein of those she had tossed out last evening, but as a newcomer, she hadn’t been asked to participate in that debate. Her grace period was over, it seemed, and she stood to address the leader.
“Provide justice, I think.”
“Why is that?” Astrid frowned, as though disappointed with the answer.
“Justice gives us a set of common rules to live by. It’s what separates us from barbarians and anarchists.” Vonne was sure she saw Astrid flinch.
“But what if justice isn’t fair?” Astrid barked. “What if it favors one race over another? Or one class over another? What if it favors men over women?”
“Justice isn’t perfect. Few things are. But that doesn’t diminish its importance, since without it none of the other contributions of government would matter. People wouldn’t be safe to come and go, or to keep what they earn. Families wouldn’t be secure ... and the people who take advantage of others would do so with impunity.”
“I think you make a mistake to assume that only the government can hold people accountable for violations of acceptable behavior.” Astrid looked around the room and softened her tone. “Ma
ybe we should go back to the days of the Old West, when justice was worn on the hip.”
The other hands laughed and nodded again, mumbling to one another in agreement. Vonne decided it was all in fun and joined in.
yx
“Don’t be too bothered about Astrid’s questions tonight,” Liza said as they returned to the bunkhouse. “You held your own. She respects that.”
“I don’t know about holding my own. She had some pretty good points about justice being uneven.”
“Yeah, but you had good points too. Astrid doesn’t challenge people to put them down. She wants to make people think. That’s one of the things I really like about her.”
Vonne knew there was more to it than that. In just two days at Sky Ranch, she could tell Astrid’s sway over these people was powerful, much stronger than she had suspected at first. That could be dangerous if Astrid ever asked them to do something illegal, or something that put them at risk.
When they reached the bunkhouse, Liza pulled off her boots and stretched out on her bed.
Vonne opened her duffle bag and took out clean underwear, a fresh T-shirt and the shorts she usually slept in. “Aren’t you going to the showers?”
“I usually wait until the others are finishing up so I can clean the bathhouse.”
“Yeah, I noticed when I got up last night that the place had been disinfected. You should have told me. I would have helped.”
Liza waved her hand in dismissal. “Not a big deal. It’s not my favorite job, but it has to be done. It doesn’t take that long. Besides, you whined so much I hated to ask.”
“If I really thought whining would help, I would do it more.” Vonne sat down on the empty lower bunk across from Liza’s. “But I don’t mind helping. I came here to work, and if I pitch in, it’ll go even quicker.”
Undercover Tales Page 23