by Jaclyn Dawn
“Yeah, nice try,” Nathan said. “Are you okay?”
“I think we may have gone too far.” By we, I meant him. Mostly.
“How far is too far? Is there something else going on I should know about? Are you sure you’re okay?”
I ended up telling him about Dad and the amputation, off the record, which made me feel a little bit better. Once I got off the phone, I changed into my work clothes and pulled on my borrowed rubber boots. I left the pills unopened on the nightstand.
CHAPTER 19
THE NEXT DAY I EXAMINED THE WOLF LIST. I NEEDED TO KEEP busy, to feel like I was doing something constructive. Fix fence on southeast section. That’s where the calf had gotten tangled up. I remembered seeing the gathered supplies: barbwire, a half-dozen posts, U-shaped nails, a post digger, a hammer. It wasn’t like Dad to leave a job half-finished, especially when it concerned the herd. I replaced the rotting posts fairly easily. Pounding in the nails that held the barbwire in place was tricky, but I did it. Then I crossed it off the list.
I was feeling proud of myself until I looked at the list to see what I could do next. Build grain bins. I didn’t know what a grain bin was, let alone how to build one. I wasn’t going to go to the hardware store for advice just to get gawked at either. Clear tree line—no. Service combine and grain truck—no. Resurrect old red. Who or what the heck was old red? Re-side shop—no. Paint fence, barn, dog house, etc. Now this I could handle. There were two ten-gallon buckets of white paint marked fence in the barn.
I decided to start at the front of the property, painting my way to the driveway and then back to the house. The mid-afternoon sun was blazing by the time I had gathered everything I needed, including the cordless house phone and my cell in case Mom called. The dogs followed my Jeep then settled in the shade of one of the tall, skinny Swedish aspens that lined the driveway. Once I finished the part of the split rail fence that ran parallel to the road, I would have a sliver of shade roughly every second post. At least I would return to Vancouver with a nice tan.
Two hours later, I could feel sweat sliding down my back and the house looked like a mirage in the distance. I was considering quitting for the day when the house phone started to ring. I wiped the back of my hand across my sweaty forehead and then noticed the paint on my hands. I tried wiping my hands in the grass, but the grass stuck to my fingers. Touching as little of the black plastic phone as possible, I answered on the third ring.
“Hello?”
“So here’s the thing,” an unexpected voice said. “I am bored out of my mind and need some real conversation, and you’re the closest thing to life out here in the sticks.”
“Hi, Alek,” I said, foolishly grinning into the phone. “Ever notice how your compliments are barbed with insults?”
“What are you doing?”
“Painting the fence.”
“Wow, that actually sounds exciting. I may have to kill myself.”
“I can find another brush.”
“How about you call me when you’re done?” he said. “We’ve got to be able to find something slightly more entertaining to do than paint the fence this evening. Ever try mutton busting?”
“Don’t you mean bull riding?”
“I’m bored, not stupid. What do you say?”
I hesitated. If we were in Vancouver, I would have been showering and planning my outfit by now. With the phone stuck between my shoulder and ear, I picked at the grass stuck to my hands.
“Ouch,” he said, breaking the silence.
“I’m sorry. It’s just …”
“The article in the Babbler? Okay, how about I give you my digits? 555-0986. Call me if you change your mind. We’ll use code names. You’re Moonshine, and I’m Cabbie. No one will ever know we talked. The Babbler will be none the wiser.”
“The Inquirer.”
“Sure. Them, too.”
I laughed. “Okay. I’ll call you when I don’t have paint in my hair.”
“I bet it suits you fine,” Alek said. “You were the only girl in Kingsley who could rock the same ponytail every day and still have half the guys in the school drooling over you.”
“Goodbye, Alek,” I said. I was still smiling after I hung up. His last remark surprised me. I had been Little Miah Williams. The girl with the sandy brown hair, flat chest, and skinny arms. Average looks, average grades, average abilities. Forgettable. Then I had become Mike’s Girl. People knew who I was because of who I was dating, which seemed better than being forgettable. And now, it turned out, someone other than Mike had noticed me.
I started to clean up by dumping the paint in my tray back into the ten-gallon bucket and wrapping my brush in plastic. I was absorbed in overdue self-analysis when Mike’s truck turned into the driveway and parked beside my Jeep. It was just Mike, me, and the dogs.
Mike sauntered in my direction, chewing on a piece of beef jerky. The dogs left their shade in hopes of him sharing. He tossed the remaining jerky aside, sending the dogs off to fight for it.
“Traitors,” I muttered. Wanting to cut this meeting short, I resumed cleaning and bent to pick up Dad’s notebook.
“What are you doing with that?”
“It’s a list of things Dad wants done around here,” I said.
“I know. He made it for me when I started working here last fall.”
Mike had failed to mention that fact last week when we were rescuing a calf that had gotten caught up in the fence he was supposed to fix! I was about to say something—really, I was—but it was the way he stood: hard-faced with his shoulders back, his feet slightly farther apart than usual.
“Judith called me,” he said. “It doesn’t sound like Ray is going to be on his feet any time soon.”
I wondered how much he knew. I pictured Dad in his hospital bed and remembered Mom’s words: Hopefully nothing changes Travis’s mind about the cows.
“I think you’re right. Hopefully the doctor has good news today,” I said. Be agreeable.
“Mm.” He nodded his head a couple times, then looked down the road as if pondering something. “Travis has a lot going on with the three hundred head of cattle he has. Not sure if the timing is right to add more.” The word if hung in the air.
“Well, he’s got your help now,” I said. “You were right the other night, too, about Finley’s moonshine. It’s potent. I felt terrible the next day.” Be flattering.
“We’ve all been there. Drank too much, did things we didn’t mean or don’t quite remember.” He was baiting me again. I bent to pick up the phone, the sunscreen, and my empty water bottle. When I stood, Mike reached for my face and I automatically stepped back. “There’s paint on your forehead,” he said, dropping his hand.
“Oh, sorry.” I looked at my hands and chose the cleanest spot I could to rub at my forehead. “I’m a mess.”
“The dogs don’t seem to mind,” he said.
“Nothing a hot shower won’t fix,” I said. Be pretty.
“Then what? Big plans tonight?”
“No, no plans,” I said, quickly. “There’s plenty of daylight. I may as well put it to good use.”
Mike looked at the empty paint tray and the wrapped brush.
“I was just going to check on Cutlet and fill up my water bottle before I moved onto the next section of fence,” I lied. Be useful.
“Cutlet? I’m assuming that’s the calf Judith asked me about. She wants me to see if it needs meds and can rejoin the herd soon.”
I knew the calf was recovering fine without medication but would let Mike be the one to say so. I had talked to my doctor in Vancouver about this role I played. She called it my survival mode.
By the time Mike finished in the barn, I was back painting the fence. When I lay in bed that night, I wondered what it would have been like to spend the evening with Alek instead.
CHAPTER 20
AFTER ANOTHER TWO DAYS OF PAINTING, I WAS A LITTLE OVER halfway to the ranch house. Relishing a five-minute break in the shade of one of the Swe
dish aspens, I heard the bass of the music before I saw the car. I smiled to myself and hoped I didn’t have paint on my face. Alek parked beside my Jeep and unfolded himself from his small car like a handsome rodeo clown. The dogs lifted their heads, too hot to leave the shade for a visitor without food.
“I thought I’d see if you needed help getting that paint out of your hair,” Alek said. “Wait, that sounded creepy. I was kidding. On the phone the other day, you said you were going to call once you got the paint out of your hair. You stood me up.”
“Sorry.” I couldn’t think of anything witty to say.
“That’s okay. I get it. I was hoping that if I gave a couple-day buffer, I wouldn’t come off desperate and you would be finished painting this fence.” He propped his sunglasses on top of his head and took in the length of the fence. “That’s a lot of fence.”
I noticed he came prepared, not looking so citified in plain jeans and a faded t-shirt, and played along. “It wouldn’t take as long with two.”
“Where’s my brush?”
Alek rolled down the windows of his car and turned on his music. Having half the fence left didn’t seem as bad with Alek there. He worked on the opposite side as me, so we were painting like a mirror. We talked a bit but then fell into what I hoped was a mutually comfortable silence. I peeked at him through the fence rails. He shook his head like he didn’t know how he got suckered into helping, but also like he was glad he did.
“That’s quite the conversation piece you drive,” I said as I dipped my brush in paint.
“My car symbolizes all that is wrong with the world,” he said. He kept his eyes on his brush and made smooth, even strokes as he spoke. “Other people are suffering war, famine, and catastrophic natural disasters while in our society our primary focus is image. We cover up the ugliness within with superficiality like tinted windows and green ground lights, turning a blind eye to the rust and dents, the real issues.”
I stopped painting and stared at him, unsure how to respond. He looked at me sideways and burst out laughing.
“Yeah, I’m full of it,” he said. “The car cost five hundred dollars and is cheap on fuel. Some buddies chipped in and bought me the neon ground lights as a joke for my birthday last year.”
“Probably cost more than the car,” I said, my cheeks burning.
He reached between the fence boards and dabbed my nose with his paint brush.
“Hey!” I slid back and held my own brush up in warning.
“That’s what you get for making fun of my car,” he said.
Our standoff was interrupted by a truck that slowed to a crawl on the gravel road. Mike’s truck. His nephew Austin was in the passenger seat. He grinned, looking back and forth between us and his uncle, who was considerably less amused. Alek and I watched as they passed and turned in to the driveway that led to their houses.
“Whatever attracted you to that guy?” he asked. “Wait. Bulging muscles. Popular. Super-cool pickup truck. Never mind. I guess I always pictured him with a cheerleader or bar star. Not you.”
“Mike could be fun. And—” I stopped, buying time as I wiped the paint off my nose with the back of my hand before it dried. My instinct was to defend Mike in order to defend myself, I realized. Alek resumed painting, waiting for me to continue. Or maybe he would have been okay with dropping the subject, but I didn’t. “Back then, in high school, I didn’t know he picked on you or that he could be the way that he is.” I felt foolish for not having seen it, worse for sticking around as long as I did when I finally had seen it. That’s what I should have said out loud, but instead I asked, “Is that why you started getting into trouble? Because Mike bullied you?”
“I wouldn’t give him that much credit,” Alek said. The air between us had changed. “What would I have had to rebel over? An orphaned boy, living with senior citizens, interested in art, with zero interest in farming or sports, in small-town Alberta where being different was a sin?”
“I’m sorry. I—”
“I’m not interested in getting in the middle of whatever it is you and Mike have going on.”
“He’s just my ex.”
“He’s ticked and despite the easygoing country boy routine, he isn’t someone you like to tick off, remember?” He set his brush on the edge of the paint can. “Maybe it’s time for me to clear out anyway. I have a couple deadlines coming up.”
Maybe I should write the next article in the Love Triangle series: Miah Puts Foot in Mouth.
That night Nathan called. Nathan never called. Scared something else was wrong, I hesitated to answer the phone.
“I ordered the reprint,” he said. “It will be delivered tomorrow. Advertisers ate up the chance for discounted ad space.”
“I’m done.”
“Well, it’s about time. Come home.”
“That’s not what I meant. I can’t leave Kingsley. Not with Dad in the hospital. I meant I’m done with the Inquirer.”
“What do you mean done with the Inquirer? What’s going on? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said, which wasn’t completely true. I had been texting him and talking on the phone with Mom daily, but I had only really been talking to Cutlet. My days consisted of doing chores, painting, researching UBC’s education program, and avoiding my red notebook. “It’s just run its course.”
“I don’t believe you. You sound like the girl I met two years ago in English 101, the old Miah,” he said. Nathan never called me Miah. When he had introduced himself to that shy country misfit, he belted out “That’s Amiah!” to the famous melody of “That’s Amore.” He said my name was too beautiful to shorten. It made me sad to hear him shorten it.
“I’ve got to go,” I said and hung up.
CHAPTER 21
I HAD ANOTHER RESTLESS NIGHT AND WOKE WITH A HEADACHE. After pressing the snooze button four times, I got dressed and skipped breakfast. Instead of checking the cows first like most mornings, I headed straight for the barn to see Cutlet. Not even the smell of the green fields and the warmth of the rising sun eased my inner turmoil. I raised my hand to shove open the broken door in mid-stride, but it didn’t budge. A sharp pain shot through my wrist as it jarred against the wood. I clutched my wrist and conjured up a string of profanity that would make a trucker proud. The knob turned from the inside, and the door opened to reveal Mike Hayes.
“I fixed the latch,” he said. “You can mark it off the list now.”
“What are you doing here? Where’s your truck?”
“I parked on the other end of the barn. I have some hay to unload for Cutlet.”
I didn’t like the condescending way he said Cutlet. I didn’t like how he always had an excuse. And I really didn’t like that he then followed me to where the cow–calf pair was penned.
“You and Rookie sure looked cozy yesterday afternoon. Not as cozy as the night of the fireworks, mind you.”
“Alek was bored at Danika’s. He was just helping paint the fence,” I said. I was a single, twenty-five-year-old woman explaining herself to her ex. How did he make me feel guilty when I had nothing to feel guilty about?
“Ray hired me. If you needed help, you should have asked me.”
“He offered.” Mike drove by and saw me painting that fence every day. He never once offered to help—not that I wanted him to.
I busied myself preparing Cutlet’s bottle. Mike lowered the tailgate of his truck, climbed into the box, and tossed three square bales into the pen. He jumped down and, using the pocket knife he always carried, started cutting the twine that held the bales together. I wished he would hurry and leave.
“Did you hear about that junk on wheels Rookie drives?”
“What are you talking about?”
Mike straightened so he could watch my reaction. “Vandalism.”
“What? Why?”
“Wasn’t me. I was having a beer with RC and the guys,” Mike said with a shrug. “Ask your boyfriend.”
“I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Well, if he’s just a friend, I’m inviting myself on your next girls’ night.”
“You’re one to talk,” I muttered. I knew better. Actions had consequences, and with Mike the consequences were always more severe than the actions.
“Are we really going to talk about Tamara Ennis again?”
“I think I saw her at the truck stop the other day. I didn’t realize she was still around.”
“We had a thing after you left,” he said.
The revelation, even two years later and knowing what I knew, felt like a knee to the stomach. “What happened to ‘She’s not my type,’ ‘We’re just friends,’ and ‘I don’t know why she called my cell at two in the morning’?”
“Maybe all your nagging made me wonder if there was something there.”
I had to remind myself to breathe. I didn’t know what was true and what wasn’t. I only ever had little wisps of information, and if something seemed to solidify and I reached for it, it evaporated before I could hold on. “So you’re saying I’m the reason you went out with her?”
“Maybe. You were the reason I broke it off with her, though. I was still hooked on you. I tried telling you that, but you changed your number.” He gently took the bottle I had prepared from my hand and set it down. “Maybe I still am hooked on you.”
“Don’t say that,” I said. He closed the distance between us. “Just don’t.” My voice was too quiet. My uncertainties about what was best for everyone weighted me to the spot. Mike reached for my face with both hands and kissed me. His tongue pushed into my mouth like a slimy break and enter. Something fragile I had been building inside myself the last two years broke. I couldn’t do anything but wait for the kiss to be over.
After he had left and I managed to unroot myself from that spot, I fed Cutlet. Then I returned to the house and sat in my childhood bedroom. Nothing had changed. The whole point of leaving and the Inquirer was for things to change. I opened the vanity drawer. Among the girlie knickknacks—brush, comb, ponytail holders, ChapStick, mascara, jewellery—was a tube of bright-red lipstick. I had found it in Mike’s truck almost six months before I left Kingsley, but I never told anyone, not even Mike. Tamara Ennis was the only girl I knew who wore bright-red lipstick. Mike had hated questions, hated being questioned. No matter how I had asked, he could never quite answer questions about Tamara the same way twice. I had hidden the lipstick in plain sight at my parents’ house because I couldn’t keep it in our house and yet couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. It was proof I hadn’t been paranoid.