by Lisa Preston
Not long after I found Red and told my mama I’d be staying here in Oregon, she sent me these Australian boots. They have elastic sides and fit great, stay put on the foot, yet slip on and off easily. So, a bootjack was one more thing that I didn’t have or need. Before the Blundstones, I’d needed a bootjack for my cowboy boots. I taught Guy how to be a human bootjack. Straddle my shin, hold the heel of one of my shitkick—I mean, one of my cowboy boots—grab onto my instep with both hands while I put my other foot against his butt and push. That’s the human bootjack position and it’s a crying shame that Guy and me are so flipping different that I had to actually show him how to do it. He was properly Texas-born like me, he should have known.
It means something, the differences between us. The standout fact is we’re likely too different from each other to last.
Guy smiled and offered me his glass of tea. He’s been in Cowdry three years, cooking and assistant-managing the greasy spoon in the middle of town called the Cascade Kitchen, with catering jobs on the side. Sometimes he opens the Cascade and works the early morning on through getting dinner ready, sometimes he does the lunch and dinner rushes then closes up. Sometimes he works a sixteen-hour shift. And all he wants in this world is to open his own upscale restaurant and elevate the local palate. Guy thinks our town’s just close enough to Portland’s farthest ’burbs to get occasional customers from there, the like I call the hoity-toities.
Those city people with their silly clothes and cellular more-than-phones stuck in their ears, they grate on me. Guy has a smart-phone, of course, and tried to talk me into getting one, but the reception at home and other remote places away from the cell towers is so bad, I can’t hardly see how it’s worth big dollars.
Guy plunked on the top step beside me and snapped his fingers as a tiny thought crossed his frontal lobe. “The police left a message for you today. I think they want to talk to you some more.”
I’d forgotten about that call. I was doing poorly on my paying attention promise. I handed him a glare with a growl on top. “All the sudden you’re Mr. Message, are you?”
He looked like I’d slapped him, which might have been a fine idea if I hadn’t Turned Over that New Leaf and all.
“Why are you taking my head off?” He followed me inside.
Clearly, his head was still attached, miracle though it is that no one’s handed it to him yet, so he was talking nonsense once again. Anyone would be tight with the idea that she might be suspected of killing someone. I’d been all distracted with work earlier, but now the reek of Patsy-Lynn’s death and the police questions threatened to smother me.
A tiny ruckus, rustling sounds at the back door, broke my mood.
“I’ve bought some babies,” Guy said.
Iced tea ran up my nose the wrong way and stung like the dickens. I don’t recommend anyone wash their sinuses in strong iced tea. It’ll make the eyeballs tear right up. I wiped my eyes and sniffled to get the gaggy tea out of my nose.
“Hey,” Guy asked, “are you okay?”
It’s best to step outside to spit, as spitting is hardly the most ladylike thing a gal can do. I pushed past Guy, burst myself out the back door to the fresh air of earth and rain and forest, but noticed the lack of house scent. The kitchen had smelled really good.
The ground was moving with little gray dumpling-looking geese babies. I about fell over and Guy was right on my heels.
These goslings were cuter than speckled pups. Soon they’d be broke to hang around and could wander the grass, grubbing for bugs and warning us of intruders. I could like geese around a place.
“I’ll have to keep them out of the herbs,” Guy said.
He’s got all sorts of weeds growing around here. Some, like chives for potatoes, are mighty handy, but the purple flowers he grows for their little middle thingy that he puts in rice and chicken seem like so much work they’re not worth the bother.
I pointed at the flower patch. “What are those again?”
“Crocus sativa.” Guy beamed. He sort of turns on like that when he thinks I’m paying him a tiny bit of attention.
“No, I mean what are they, um, kitchen-wise.”
“Well, I use them in paella and chi—”
“No, I mean what are they called, when you use them for cooking?”
Guy makes me crazy sometimes, he’s so slow to get my meaning.
“Saffron,” he said.
That was all I was asking.
Still, Guy can figure out when he’s making me wiggy or starting to. He sidled up to nuzzle. This late in the day, his jaw’s sprouted enough stubble to Velcro my ponytail to his cheek. By now, Guy knows to arc his head away ’til he reaches the end of my mane and gets loose. I’d had to teach him that, too. Guess he’d never had a plain long-haired girl before me. Probably all styled, fluffy types, Bambis and Heathers and Tiffanys and such. I’m fair to certain Guy’s never before been with a gal who hasn’t got a high school diploma, but I’m not going to put too fine a point on it and ask.
He kissed me all gentle-like. Sometimes it seems like I could tell Guy about the parts of me he’d find so horrible. Thank all he saved me from my own blabbing mouth.
“I’m making you some comfort food, started it earlier today. Will you come back inside? Tagliatelle Bolognese.”
It turned out to be noodles and they were pretty daggummed tasty.
Soon he had some crab-stuffed mushrooms coming out of the toaster oven. That’s what had been making the house smell so good earlier, I realized. And why in the world hadn’t I noticed before? I reminded myself again that I had promised me to pay more attention to everything. Everything. I’d have to remember to call the sheriff’s office tomorrow.
“Smells good,” I said, embarrassed over not noticing before.
He grinned and sort of gave a modest shrug. He has an Oh-Gosh-and-Golly attitude that could make most girls melt. He poured some white wine for himself, filled a wineglass with tap water for me, then explained, “It’s just some gruyère I had left over from the salmon quiche the other night.”
Yeah, he’d had a cheese crust baked onto this fish pie-cake type thing that looked like used food inside but was really fine eating. Guy knowing things like this doesn’t bother me, though I admit it used to raise my eyebrows. Like, the sponge painting bit. Who knew? On some kind of whim, he’d painted his bedroom in this special way. First, he’d painted it purply-blue, then he slobbered a couple middling blue shades on in blotches and then a creamy, barely blue.
We went to his night-sky bedroom together again. On the top of the bed is a huge white down comforter that his folks sent last Christmas. It’s like being in the heavens, covered in a cloud.
A cloud with a bunch of cat hair on it.
The call came in about three in the morning, which is not my finest hour.
Chapter 10
THE HORSE SHARED HER EMERGENCY WITH the owners, the vet, and me. And as far as she was concerned, we were all late.
The mare was right. She’d gotten her hoof caught under the edge of their barn’s foundation and freaked before her family found her. Panic made her tear off a huge chunk of hoof. Top to bottom, the outside of her right front foot was messed up, bad. Bloody through her sole, it hurt my soul to see it. Imagine part of the lateral cartilage sheared from its rightful place, missing hoof wall that’s supposed to hold its share of a half-ton body.
She sweated and grunted, eyes glazed, hind feet shoved under her body to try to get weight off her dying front foot. And she was an old family pet. The couple’d had her before their son, and that now-teenage boy was trying not to go to pieces in front of everybody.
The vet on scene was the new fellow, Nichol. His fancy Ford was angle-parked out front and I’d had to scooch Ol’ Blue by like second-rate help.
Nichol leaned up from the horse, and barely turned his sexy-stubbled face to me.
“Get more ice,” he barked, to no one in particular.
The owners’ boy beat for the house to
fetch.
“They want her saved, comfortable,” he told me. “They’re not asking her to be a riding horse.”
I nodded and made for my tools, getting them into place quick as I could, but bumped into him as I turned around to set my anvil stand on the ground.
“Can you genuinely help her?” Nichol asked through his teeth, tense and sweaty, leaning in so his face was an inch from mine. Genuine worry showed in his eyes.
“I’ll do my best.”
Nichol shook his head. “If there’s no real hope, I’ll let her go now. I can convince them.”
Should I say things I don’t necessarily believe? Hope is such a flighty thing to me, a desperate thing. Past the vet, I could see the family, holding vigil, the boy jogging back with a salad bowl full of ice cubes. The kid’s face was getting younger by the minute, tears dripping out the corners of his eyes, his nose leaking, too.
“I can help her,” I said.
The first contact was going to be the worst, because the old girl’s pain was the killing kind. Before I got there, before Nichol arrived, she’d grown weary. Now she swayed, wanting to go down, but we needed her to stay up. Still, this horse was a gentle soul, the sweet kind who loved her people, let me be one of them, and wanted help. I gave them my plan, not ordering people around like a vet who thinks he’s a general, just letting them know, soft and firm, what to do.
They closed in on her, locking arms and coming together to steady the sedated mare when I got set to ask her to pick up her right front.
I used everything and used it fast. She wasn’t too happy to let me bring that shredded hoof between my knees. I worked quick and careful and complete. I found the one place where she could bear a little touching and got that mare’s weight off bloody tissues. While I shaped the special Z bar shoe at my forge, Nichol worked at the torn tissue, examining and debriding. Then I dressed her out and pulled enough clip so the shoe wouldn’t slide, made it so she bore no weight on her injury. By the time the sun was up, she was standing almost comfortably.
She loved me for it, it was plain to see and hear. I tried not to gurgle back when she planted her flat forehead against my chest and murmured that stressed-horse sound we hate to hear.
Out of earshot of the owners, while we were packing up our gear into our trucks, Nichol made a big point of bringing up something that had apparently been bugging him.
“You refused to shoe for another client of mine.”
I shook my head. “No, I need work.”
“The Frichtlers, with the Walking Horses up on Stag Loop.” He folded his arms across his chest.
“Oh, them. Yeah, I won’t do what they’re asking.” Those poor horses. People want to shoe those gaited horses in an unnatural and painful way, leaving their gaits artificial and no doubt agonizing. I wanted no part of it.
“How’s that?”
I shrugged. It didn’t need any explaining, to my mind. Nichol raised his eyebrows, expecting an answer, and danged if I didn’t spit it out. “I won’t shoe Big Lick.”
“Big words.” He shook his head and tsk-tsked.
“I just won’t do it.”
Nichol lifted his big, hard-looking shoulders in a little shrug. “Sometimes in our professions, we are subject to certain traditions.”
What was he, running for political office? I gave him a growl and said, “Yeah, well if I was a vet I wouldn’t be docking tails and cropping ears just for fashion. I wouldn’t be cutting cats’ fingers off either.”
Mr. I Got Tons of Fancy College Under My Belt and Make Pots of Money looked a tiny bit put in his place. Chagrined even. “Touché.”
Why is it we’re supposed to go all weak-kneed when they talk a little Frenchie?
And why didn’t I half-hate this guy?
Then, proving his small talk runs the range, Nichol put on a somber face and said, “You heard about the Harper woman?”
Wariness fell over me as I nodded and wondered what exactly he’d heard, and whose version of events. That I was the last one there? That she killed herself?
Or did he know about the bloody rasp?
If Nichol knew I’d been questioned and was going to be questioned again, he didn’t let on.
Aside from all that, Nichol’s tag for her—the Harper woman—rubbed me the wrong way. Me and Patsy-Lynn hadn’t been best friends, but it seemed disrespectful to call her the Harper woman, like, compared to the Harper outfit, the Harper spread, the Harper stud.
Her name was Patsy-Lynn.
“She was one of the first to hire me,” Nichol said. “Other folks wouldn’t give me much business in the beginning, but she did.”
I pondered on that but a second. “Yeah, me too.”
“Well, it’s too bad she died.” Nichol made a wry face and gave a sad little shrug to go with it. He put his hand lightly on my shoulder. “Nice work in there.” He nodded at the mare, now hanging her head in exhaustion.
Nichol really was a lot nicer a guy than I’d thought at first bump.
And there’s no doubt he was a big handsome fella and he sort of acted in a way, well, in a way that lets a gal know there could be something there, right there, if she’s willing to do anything.
I wonder a lot about what I’m willing to do.
* * *
Back at Guy’s stoop, I pulled my boot heels against the step and toddled inside. Being bone-tired first thing in the morning is a heck of a way to feel only mid-week, but my appointment book didn’t have anything for the first half of the day, so I could nap. It used to worry me when I wasn’t full-booked, but it turns out a shoer needs some holes in her schedule to accommodate emergencies, referrals, thrown shoe fixes, and whatnot.
The specialty call-out for the old sweetie’s emergency paid better than a couple trims, that’s for sure. Maybe I was going to make my way at this shoeing thing after all.
I waved my check at Guy while I rubbed Charley’s noggin. “That Nichol’s really not such a bad fellow after all.”
The house smelled of cinnamon rolls. Makes a girl waver on whether or not to try and start the day or go to bed. I yawned at Guy, who looked a little tight-jawed about my compliments to the new vet. What I meant was that we’d saved the old pet mare, not that Nichol was a mighty impressive fellow. But I was real tired and distracted.
Patsy-Lynn had gotten new help all around, a shoer, a different barn dude to muck stalls, a part-time day laborer man. But we all got a new vet when Doc Vass retired and Nichol came to town. And he seemed to know what he was doing. I liked him knowing I was good at my job.
Guy put a mug of java in my hands.
He nuzzled me, fairly laughing at my wooziness. “Perhaps you can have a day of rest this coming weekend.”
Imagine him getting biblical. He’s the heretic who says the trinity means green peppers, onions, and celery.
They’re a godless bunch, cooks are.
* * *
And who, please, whaps on a door when Wednesday morning’s barely getting going? Guy opened it right up and let in two men. A man in a suit and a uniformed deputy I’d never seen before, far as I knew.
The fellow in the suit turned to Guy. “Can I talk to Ms. Dale alone?”
“Think I’ll go saw a plank of wood,” Guy announced in this voice of unparalleled manliness on his way to the carport.
Mercy.
There I was, in Guy’s house with the sheriff’s plainclothes detective. Now he was all official and serious, packing a clipboard and a consent form and the like. He was wearing a different sport coat this time. Suit Fellow explained that he’d had the deputy try to schedule an appointment, and thought he’d take a chance stopping in. And he had a socker for me.
“Do you have any other injuries?”
I looked at my hands. “No, don’t think so.”
The uniformed deputy shifted on his feet and rubbed his stubble-free jaw. I could smell his aftershave.
Suit Fellow asked, “Would you be willing to let a female from our department check?”
“Check?” I thought of the three-digit check in my pocket, wages I’d earned on the emergency call.
“Yes, check. Verify that you don’t have any injuries under your clothes.”
Oh. “Can’t say I would.” The words were out before my mind had thought much about what he’d asked, so now I had all kinds of time to blush and sweat.
After all, I just wouldn’t be willing to be given the once over. Scrutiny, I can’t stand.
Suit Fellow gave a bare nod. “Well, I could go make application for a search warrant, but tell me this, would you be willing to give us a blood sample?”
“A blood sample?” Really slow, looking calm as a canoe on grass, I faced the lawman. Po-lice.
“They can do a blood draw at nine a.m. Is that convenient?” He gave me the address of a medical clinic where I was supposed to go give an official sample with a lab technician. Then he asked me to sign a piece of paper giving consent for a blood draw and looked all kinds of satisfied and pleased with himself.
I strode to the back threshold and stared into the carport where Guy had begun the project of constructing a gosling feeder. The saw chattered on the wood plank ’cause Guy wasn’t drawing the cutting edge firm and clean across the wood. A pencil rolled over another plank, coming to rest by Guy’s silly new tape measure. He looked confussed by his own making.
“They want to take some of my blood,” I said. Not that I needed Guy’s advice, it’s just that I was chewing on this notion the police had. I had to chew to get all the flavor out.
“Well, we’re cooperative.” Guy said this with raised eyebrows as though waiting for me to agree.
“I have my moments,” I admitted, twisting my ponytail around with one hand until it was tight as a stick. I turned back and addressed the detective in a voice quiet enough that Guy couldn’t overhear. The uniformed deputy had moved to near the front door and probably couldn’t hear me either.