“I understand this must seem inappropriate,” Jack said.
“No,” Reney said. She’d embarrassed him. “It’s the stupid sign. I’m sorry. It’s been a day.” They rode for a while before Reney spoke again. “Why would you do this, Jack?”
“Fair question.” He drummed his thumbs on the steering wheel, took a big breath. “All I can say is you’re strong and bright and you work hard. Of course you’re beautiful.” He raised a hand, and Reney thought he might put it on her knee, but he dropped it onto the gearshift. “I just want more for you is all. And it’s not too late.”
Reney watched as a dust devil moved across a fallow pasture. It crossed the road in front of them and moved over a wheat patch so dry the devil grew darker before sucking itself back up into the sky.
“I’ve been working in the restaurant since I was twelve, you know. I hated my dad for forcing the business on me, but when his heart quit, I was more than ready to run a business. I’ll be retiring before long. I’m going to need a GM, somebody good. I’ve been thinking about what I could offer you to make it worth your while. I know I wouldn’t have to worry about a thing.” Jack looked over to her and tried to smile.
She knew she was supposed to feel something, excitement, nervousness, relief. She felt nothing. She wished she could say something, but Jack rescued her.
“This morning, see. I was running the numbers again, and then you came in troubled the way you were. I just . . . it breaks my heart to think of you here. I know the money would tie you to this place. I understand how that works.”
“This is my road, Jack.”
The blinker was the only sound until the tires bumped over the cattle guard. Reney noticed the rusted-out stock trailer hooked to Wes’s truck. Jack eased in next to it and killed the engine.
“I mean it. The offer is good, Reney. Both of them, I suppose. Think about what you want to do.”
When Reney saw Wes emerge from the barn, she pushed her backpack tightly to her stomach, as if it could hold her together. He had a Coors Light in his hand, and she could see from his walk he’d had a few. He was limping and filthy. She had probably hated him for some time. Real quick, she leaned over to Jack, pressed her cheek to his, and squeezed.
“Thank you, Jack. I don’t know what to say.” She pulled him tighter. “You’ve been good to me.”
Reney pushed her shoulder into the door to open it against the wind. She was surprised to see Wes standing over her. When she let go of the door, Wes caught it and leaned into the car.
“Jack.”
“Hi, Wes,” Jack said. “Some kind of wind out there.” He started the engine.
“Why don’t you stick around? See the ranch.” Wes popped the thin aluminum of his beer can with his thumb. “Give us your businessman’s eye?”
Jack managed a laugh, smoothed his tie.
“Won’t take long.” Wes let the wind slam the car door.
“Wes,” Reney said.
“You don’t want to share your nice little moment with me?”
Behind them, Jack cracked the car door open and eased a foot onto the gravel.
“He offered me a promotion, Wes. I was thanking him.”
“You fix your hair for him? Put on lipstick?”
Jack stood on the other side of the car now, watching.
“Fancy car. Le-Sabre,” Wes said. “That French or Spanish?”
“French,” Jack said, smiling weakly.
“For what? ‘I got a stiffy, but my tie covers it.’” Wes started toward Jack.
“Wes, don’t,” Reney said.
“I think it means ‘the saber,’” Jack said quietly.
“Are you being smart with me?” Wes said.
Reney mouthed “go” over Wes’s shoulder, and Jack lurched for his door. Wes sneered but didn’t go after him. Once in the car, Jack quickly locked the door.
“Are you okay?” he yelled through the cracked window.
“Just leave!” Reney shouted.
“About time you give her a raise. She runs the fucking place,” Wes growled. He kicked in the front fender as Jack fumbled with the gearshift.
As Jack reversed up the drive, Reney grabbed Wes by the arm. He threw her off him, and everything stopped for a moment.
She’d hit the driveway cheek first. She sat up working her jaw. Reney saw Jack stopped at the end of the driveway, squinting into his cellular phone. He pressed it to his ear. She wondered whether she could make it to the car, but Wes started after Jack first. Jack, with one last look at Reney, sped away, spraying gravel on them both. Wes picked up a rock and flung it. He watched it bounce across the highway. Then he saw Reney on the ground.
“You ain’t hurt, are you?” he said, not really asking a question. He squatted over her and tried to pick a speck of gravel from her face.
Reney spit grit and blood as she stood up. Wes was waiting. He needed her to tell him it was okay again.
“We had one job between us, Wes. Jack’s going to make me GM, but I guess you took care of that.”
“One job?” Wes said. He looked hurt. “Your mule’s in the barn,” he said and limped toward the doorway.
Reney thought about leaving, just taking off without another word. There was the truck. She had her keys. She looked around. Her backpack lay in the dirt nearby. What did she need from the house? Nothing she would miss. She could do this now, this thing her mother had never quite pulled off. But of course Reney couldn’t just leave. She’d never been smart or strong or brave enough to just leave.
When she walked into the dark barn, it took a moment to see Rosalee tied up in front of the one good stall. Reney noticed that Rowdy was lying much too close to Rosalee.
“There’s my girl,” Reney said. The mule raised her nose and tried to make her always strange half-horse, half-donkey bray, but it sounded like wind blowing through a hole in a piece of tin. As Reney’s eyes adjusted, she saw that the mule was bleeding from her hocks. She knelt to look closer but recoiled. Wes appeared above her.
“She’s chewed through to the bone, Wes. What happened?”
“I went out to work on the fence and look for the calf. When I found them, there was a coyote with its head kicked in lying next to what was left of the calf. Another one was good as dead. Three or four kept circling until I shot one of them.”
Reney walked to Rosalee’s head. The mule rubbed her halter on Reney’s shoulder. Reney gasped when she saw that one of her ears was a bloody stump. Usually the mule kept working the halter until she got it slipped off. This time, she left her head resting on Reney.
“They got her nose and up under her jaw too,” Wes said.
“I’m so sorry, girl.” Reney leaned into the mule’s neck.
“Vet’s on his way,” Wes said. He pulled a pint bottle from his back pocket and drank. “He said if she’s already taken two calves, she won’t ever be broke of it. But I don’t even care about that.”
He tried to stroke Reney’s hair, but she jerked away.
“Today after I dropped you off, I went on home, and I thought about you and me the whole way. I went out to fix the fence and find your mule. She kicked me in the thigh trying to keep me away from a dead calf. Took me an hour to drag her off it and get her in the trailer. But I called the vet to get her taken care of. All for you, Reney.”
Rosalee began to pull against the rope, and the iron frame of the barn groaned.
“Then I see you hugging on him?” Wes began to cry. “We was going to make better of ourselves. I’ve about got Sammy talked into leasing me a hundred acres real cheap. He’s going to sell me a good bunch of calves. This year was our year, Reney.”
He kicked the stall door. The frame rattled the tin from one end of the barn to the other. Rosalee pulled harder against the rope.
“Easy, girl. Come on, now,” Reney said. She stroked the mule’s shoulder. The wound in Rosalee’s neck had started bleeding badly again. Blood streamed down her chest and both legs onto the floor, pooling in the dust.
>
“Tell me you ain’t fucking him, Reney.”
“When did you find her, Wes?”
“I don’t know.”
Reney steadily moved her hands over the mule’s bloody flesh, calming her. “How long have you left her here like this?”
“I couldn’t do it, Reney. I tried. The vet was tied up, but he’ll be here soon.” He tossed the bottle aside and started for the door.
Finally, Rosalee filled her belly with air and sighed. Reney rubbed the soft middle of the ear that curled forward at the tip.
“I’ll let all this go,” Wes said, appearing in the doorway again, a silhouette with a shotgun for an arm. “We’ll work it out. I don’t want you to serve another man his coffee for the rest of your days.”
Reney patted the mule one more time and straightened. She heard nothing except her own footsteps on the hard dirt floor.
“Give me the gun, Wes.” She put her hand on the small of his back.
“I’m sorry, Reney.” He handed her the gun butt first, crumpling at the waist onto her.
“I know, Wes,” she said, and it was true. She believed that he felt bad. He always felt bad, but right then, the smell of his whiskey breath mixed with the blood and hay and shit was choking her.
The sound of the shot moved across the barn in waves, and the frame shook like it might fall in on them. Rosalee’s legs folded up under her like she was resting, but her head, held tight to the barn by the rope, pointed toward the roof.
Reney walked out past Wes, whose face had gone slack. She found her backpack and climbed up into the big diesel, placing the shotgun next to the gearshift. She drove away slowly, carefully, checking her mirrors as the trailer rattled over the cattle guard.
At the highway, she passed the vet and, not far behind, a deputy who didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry. She checked her watch. Pulling the trailer, she felt the truck’s power. She pushed the engine until it howled before shifting up. This is what the truck was made for, to haul a load, to work. She thought about swinging by her mom and Pitch’s, but she passed seventy-five with ease, then eighty, eighty-five, and ninety into town as she hit the green light. She drove on past the Branding Iron, where some form of Bonita royalty was surely holding court, and didn’t slow at the DQ with its grease stink, blue hairs, and benevolent cowards. On the other side of town, she found the limits of the truck, settled into a steady cruise just shy of flying. When she ran out of gas, she shouldered her backpack and walked.
Then Sings My Soul
Mose Lee’s dearly departed mama had been a shut-in and a woman of tremendous size. He’d spent his twenty-six years at her bedside or close by, with little thought beyond a world where the bluestem grew to the swept porch and the sound of yapping coyotes filled the night air. He carried her signed disability checks to the grocery store and delivered their monthly payments, following instructions she wrote in a pocket spiral notepad. When there was something left, he surprised her with crossword puzzles and Baked Lays for her cholesterol.
Each night, she helped him tally their existence in a composition notebook, reminding him when to carry, when to borrow. Preparing him, she said. They read Scriptures in her room on Sundays. She scratched his head as they watched their evening shows. Neighbors might have said she turned him backward, hiding him from the world with her girth. Neighbors might have said he never had a chance for frontward what with a whale for a mother and such a pitiful moron for a likely father. As it was, the old Birdwell place was the only other house on all of Dump Road, and it sat busted and empty-eyed on the little knob that looked down on Mose and his mother. There were no neighbors to talk.
That is until the morning of the funeral when a big Ford pulled an Airstream up to the Birdwell place, bringing with it the smacks of hammers. Mose hardly noticed the commotion when he was dropped at his doorstep by Justine Barnes, a sailor-mouthed Indian lady who lived on the edge of town and never passed him on the side of the road without stopping to offer a ride. He balanced Justine’s foil-covered Pyrex dishes on his knee and stumbled inside. A black bobtailed cat ran through his legs out the door. A saw screeched up the hill. Someone laughed.
Grief filled all of the spaces inside the small house that was now his. It found its way between the few shirts hanging in his closet, clattered the wire hangers, and blew lightbulbs he’d just replaced. It hovered over the kitchen sink, wilting the little seedlings he had growing on the windowsill, and crept into his outlets, burning the sockets black. At night, it sucked the breeze out of his room. The blades of his fan sat still or ticked slowly backward.
* * *
A white Jeep Cherokee pulled into the bare patch in front of the house where Mose crouched sweating over a rusted tiller. His inclination was to run and hide, afraid somebody was there to talk about moving on after the death of a loved one or to ask him to sign more papers. The driver put large, expensive-looking sunglasses on top of her curly head and waved. Her hair lit up fiery red in the sunshine. “I’m your new neighbor, Marni,” she said. “How you doing?”
“Making it alright,” Mose lied. He wiped his hands on the back pocket of his pants, looked back at the empty house, and dabbed his eyes with a bandana. “Planting beets.”
Marni looked past him to the sad little sprouts he had lined up in a neat row of school-size red-and-white milk cartons. “Beets?” she asked, stepping out.
“Yes, ma’am. They’re supposed to be good for the blood.” He thumbed the sharp blades of his hipbones where a thin leather belt gathered his pants.
His mother had been rolled on the count of three by strangers in blue latex gloves. The two men had talked about a softball tournament as they waited for extra hands to help jam a horrible tarp beneath her body. Mose had shrunk into the corner breathing sawdust as they cut through her bedroom wall and backed the ambulance. At night when he let himself, he worried about who would fetch his groceries, who would put on his socks when he couldn’t bend to do it himself. Though he was a birdlike man, with one leg visibly shorter than the other, he had taken to doing pushups and jogging to the dump and back before the sun rose.
“I’m afraid your sprouts might be drying out,” Marni said. She knelt down in her white capri pants and stuck a finger in the soil. “You’re going to need some shade for them, Mose. That’s your name, isn’t it? Mose Lee?”
Mose gave a slight nod and picked at the side of his thumb.
“Nice to meet you, but honey, I’m afraid beets are a spring plant. That temperature gauge has been stuck on a hundred for a month. Were you thinking to plant anything else?”
He pulled a crinkled store display from his back pocket that trumpeted the wonders of raw beets.
“Well, the first thing to do is get them out of this afternoon sun. Might be too much of a good thing.” Marni straightened and looked around, and Mose noticed a bead of sweat and makeup running down her temple. Spotting a spigot on the side of the house, she gathered up all the milk cartons she could carry and motioned for Mose to follow.
With all of the seedlings cooled and watered, Marni surveyed the yard and asked Mose where they were going. He pointed.
“If you want to give them a chance, you better give them some cover. What about over here on the side? They’ll be closer to water, and they’ll get shade in the hottest part of the day.” Marni dusted her hands. “Tiller trouble?”
Mose nodded.
“Well, if it’ll help you get them in the ground, you can borrow ours. Beets are good for you, but I’m not sure what they’re going to think about this damn clay we got out here, much less August.”
“You said you was my neighbor?” Mose asked.
“Look at me. I get to talking and plumb forget what I came over here for in the first place. We bought the old Birdwell place—my partner, Stevie, and I—but that old thing’s going to need a lot of work. A whole lot if we’re going to be out of that cracker-box travel trailer by the time school starts.”
Mose caught himself staring at a spo
t of red dirt on her thigh. When she repeated herself, he jerked his eyes to meet hers.
“So”—she paused—“we’ll be hauling water from town until we get the well redug, and I was wondering if we might come over and use your spigot sometimes. We’d be happy to pay you.”
“We got good well water,” Mose said. “Don’t need to pay for it.”
“The other thing I was wondering is if you might want some work? Stevie thinks we can do it all.” She leaned in, as if to share a secret with him. “I have my doubts. I thought we might hire you to help with the heavy lifting. Stevie’s the new middle school science teacher and girls’ coach, and I’m going to be teaching special ed. Coach Gilbert recommended I talk to you when I told him where I’d be living. Said you were a real good hand.”
Mose blushed. “I’d appreciate the work. Especially now that Mama’s gone.” The bobtailed cat came running up from behind the house and began to curl itself around Mose’s spindly legs. “I’m sorry you got your pants dirty.”
“Hell, I know better than to wear white pants in the country.” She looked toward the hammering sounds coming from up the hill as she slid into the truck. “But it’s good to be back.”
“Justine Barnes gave me more casserole and brisket than I can eat, if you’re hungry.” Mose picked up the cat and scratched its chin. “She’s the Indian lady in town who gives me rides and lets me use her phone sometimes. Mama always said I’m Indian, too, on my great-grandmother’s side.”
“I remember her daughter. Good ballplayer,” Marni said. “Anyway, it’s real sweet of you to offer, Mose, but I better get up there and see what Stevie’s got tore up.”
After she pulled away with a quick wave and a honk, Mose watched her truck curve over the hillside. Dust lingered in the still heat. He waited until he heard the door slam and the high pitch of her voice float down to him. Then he stomped his feet on the front porch and went inside and pulled a dish out of the refrigerator. The cat meowed and purred against the chair leg.
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