by Lena North
Paolo didn’t know me very well so he would believe me when I seemed outraged by Hawker’s tats.
Jinx kept moving toward us but I could see a sweet smile form on her mouth, and since Jinx didn’t do sweet, I knew she got my message. I had a big feather tattooed in black and gray on the back of my left shoulder. I got that done when I was sixteen. Willy had signed the papers for me and I think the tattoo artist knew that Gramps wasn’t my legal guardian, but he didn’t care and drew up a beautiful, intricate feather that took two long sessions to complete. It hurt like hell, but I loved it, so it was totally worth it. Jinx knew this, so when I mentioned Hawker’s tats she understood that I was up to something.
“Oh, Wilder,” Paolo murmured. “You don’t have to see him again, you know.”
“Of course not,” Jinx added brusquely. “Paolo,” she added, “I’m sorry about my comment before. I didn’t understand…” she trailed off and stretched her hand out.
He smiled as he shook her hand. Then he turned to me.
“I’m sure you want to start packing up your clothes, Wilder, but you should know – if you want to sleep here sometimes, then you’re welcome to, any time. And if you can’t fit all your things into the car, then just leave whatever behind, in your room or the garage. You can come by and pick it up later, or I can have someone send it to you?”
“Thank you, that is very generous of you,” I said as I started to make my way up the wide stairway.
“Not at all, Wilder,” he said, and the way he kept repeating my name made me uncomfortable, but I just smiled over my shoulder at him.
“Is there anything from your mother that you would like to have?” he asked. “As a memory of her,” he added unnecessarily.
I thought about it but couldn’t think of a thing.
“Maybe some of her jewelry?” he prompted.
“She had a box where she kept some of her trinkets?” I asked, trying desperately to think of something that would seem like something a daughter would like to have from her mother. “You know which one I mean, the one made of wood, with the silver inlays? If you don’t mind, I would really like to have that,” I said. “It reminds me of how pretty she was when she went to dinner parties and grand openings,” I added, hoping that I hadn’t laid it on too thick.
He smiled gently and nodded. I sighed with relief. The box was beautiful, so I didn’t mind having it, but I didn’t really care.
“It’s in her room, on the side table. Take it with you, both the box and its content,” he said jovially.
“Thank you,” I replied.
“I’ll be leaving for the office now, but we’ll stay in touch, Wilder?” he said and started walking toward the door.
“Absolutely, Paolo,” I replied, and moved as quickly as I could toward my room.
As we packed, Jinx and I talked about how nice Paolo had been, and how good it would be for us to have a relationship now that Mother was gone. We’d pretended to be sincere and not even with a glance betraying that we were lying through our teeth, both of us. We hadn’t heard Paolo leave so we kept it up just in case he was lurking around.
“That was weird,” Jinx said when we were finally in my car, on our way up to Double H.
We’d taken as much as we could with us, but some we had to leave in the garage, and I’d go back another day to get it. She was right, of course, that had been totally weird.
“He’s up to something,” I murmured and focused on moving the car in and out of traffic.
I probably wasn’t supposed to drive with my cast, but it worked so I did it anyway. I didn’t want to end up in an accident, though, since I suspected strongly that my insurance wouldn’t cover such behavior.
“Well, duh,” Jinx said.
“I don’t know what it is all about, so I figured it would be good to wait and see,” I said.
“Okay,” she agreed, “just let me know if I can help you out somehow.”
“Sure. I’ll see you all the time in class, so we’ll talk about it when I know more.”
“You’re coming back?” she asked.
We had less than a year to graduation so why wouldn’t I come back? I was surprised she even asked, and she noticed.
“You hate engineering, Wilder. And you suck at it. I’m super happy that we met, you know that, but I never got why you even started.”
“I had to get a degree in something, didn’t I? Figured it’d be useful,” I murmured, but if I were honest – I didn’t quite know why I’d started either.
“Why?”
“Engineers are needed all –”
She cut me off immediately.
“No. I meant, why do you have to have a degree? Almost everyone else in this world needs one. You? Not really?”
“What are you talking about? Of course, I have to earn a degree. It’s not like I’m going to live off Double H,” I stated.
“Why not?” she asked.
“What?”
“Why would you not live off Double H? It’s yours, isn’t it?”
“But –”
“Willy gave it to you.
“But –”
“And you love it.”
“God! You’re just like Hawker,” I yelled.
“Really? I guess I’ll like him then,” she said calmly and unwrapped a piece of candy. “What are you going to do about him?” she asked then, through a mouthful of chocolate.
“Don’t know,” I replied sulkily.
“Do you want my advice?” she asked and, true to herself, didn’t wait for me to reply. “If he has a good explanation for why he left you with the clowns, then you forgive him. If he hasn’t, then you don’t.”
We had stopped at a red light, and I turned to stare at her. She grinned and took another huge bite of chocolate.
“It won’t get any greener,” she said and indicated the lights with her head.
I thought about what she’d said as we drove through the foothills and turned off beneath the gate with the familiar insignia. The ranch was called Double H, but our symbol was two H’s, so this was what we branded our cattle with and also what was on top of our large gate.
I didn’t say anything until I’d parked the car.
“It isn’t that simple, Jinx,” I said.
“It’s just that simple, Wilder,” she snapped immediately as if she’d been waiting for my words. “You’re the one making it complicated. Just let the man explain, and then you decide.”
I opened my mouth to argue with her, but the front door was suddenly thrown open, and Mary came bouncing through it, followed by Mickey.
“Hey! I was running late so I figured it’d be better to just go straight here,” she shouted. “I’ve cooked, and Mickey has started up the grill. Come, let’s eat!”
Chapter Eight
Do you have the keys to the gun safe?
When my phone buzzed, I jumped, like I did every time it indicated that I got an email. I’d sent a short reply to Mac, but he hadn’t replied and, not wanting to seem too eager, I hadn’t been in touch with him again.
This time, it was an email from Aunt Gwen. It was almost as brief as Mac’s, just saying that they loved me and she hoped that we could talk when they got back to Double H. She didn’t make any apologies and offered no explanations, and at first, that annoyed me, but I also realized that trying to have that particular conversation over email would be stupid. She was right, though, we should clear the air, so I sent her a message back saying that I was still in a sour mood, but I loved them and, yes, we would talk. I got a smiley back, which felt good.
A couple of days later, our family doc took off my cast. Then he got the sour, elderly nurse in his practice to do an x-ray.
“Huh,” was his initial medical opinion on the status of my foot, but then he turned with a smile. “You’ve always healed quicker than anyone I’ve ever met, Wilder. This is not an exception. I’ve compared x-ray images, and the crack was small, but it was
there. Now, it isn’t. We’ll give you some exercises that’ll build the strength back up, but in essence – you can do anything you want, as long as it doesn’t hurt.”
My smile was wider than his. I’d been increasingly frustrated with the cast, and all the questions I’d had to field from my classmates had been annoying. They’d been beyond impressed to hear about how I out skied an avalanche, but I didn’t like the attention and had downplayed it as much as I could.
“Fantastic,” I murmured and wiggled my toes.
“I’m sure you think so, Wilder, though I must say that the cast was done exceptionally well. My compliments to the doctor in Norton,” he said. I choked and started coughing, but he just went on, “Try to stay out of trouble in the next week, will you? Annie and I are celebrating our twenty-fifth anniversary, and we’re doing that at a secret location,” he said with a wink.
“Congratulations to the both of you,” I said, and I meant it.
Annie was our Vet, and the couple had managed medical concerns for everyone on Double H, both humans, and animals, all my life.
“If you only share it with Annie, then as an anniversary gift I’ll tell you a little secret,” I added, leaned closer, and whispered, “The Doc was away when they brought me down from the mountain. It was the town Vet that put the cast on my foot.”
He burst out laughing, so loud the nurse opened the door to frown at him, hissing that there were patients in the waiting room. He just made a shooing motion with his hands, still laughing.
“Awesome, Wilder, I’ll be sure to tell Annie. It’ll make her day.”
We chit chatted a little bit, but he had patients waiting, so I thanked him again for taking off the cast, and got into my car to go to the city. I had class, laser technology with a special focus on free-space optical communication, and I could have skipped it on account of the doctor’s appointment, but I’d missed several weeks already so I’d decided to go.
As I sat in class and listened to the teacher drone on and on about something I couldn’t find it in me to care even a little about, the question Jinx had asked echoed in my head.
Why was I even there? I’d done courses in all kinds of other topics on top of the engineering stuff, and I realized that I’d done this to keep myself from dying of boredom. The past couple of years I’d focused more and more on history, archeology, and my latest favorite, anthropology. If I dropped out of engineering, I could do more of that. I could also do more work on Double H, and they might need me there with Willy gone. There’d be time to visit Norton more too if I wanted.
Without exactly knowing how it happened, I found myself walking toward the door. I had my bag on my shoulder, but the books and my notepad were still on the desk.
“What are you doing, Wilder,” the teacher asked sharply.
“Leaving,” I said. “This is too boring, and I’m sorry, but I can’t do it,” I clarified.
Jinx gave up a whoop and gave me two thumbs up. When the teacher glared at her, she just said casually, “Yeah, yeah.”
She could get away with that because she was probably the best student the university had seen in the past hundred years, but she obediently settled back into her chair, although still grinning and wiggling her phone to indicate that we’d talk later. I nodded and walked out of the room, feeling ten pounds lighter.
Mickey made the same whooping sound as Jinx when I told him, and it made him look ridiculous, but he gave me two thumbs up too. I just shook my head, and since Doc had told me I could do whatever I wanted, I decided to go for a ride on my bike.
When it came to motorcycles, I favored the old fashioned cruisers, but I had a dirt bike too. I used it mainly to get around off-road on Double H, and in the winter season, I put studded tires on it.
“You’re sure Doc said it was okay for you to go out on the bike?” Mickey asked for the third time.
“Yes, Mickey. He said I could do anything that didn’t hurt. If it hurts, I’ll come back,” I replied for the third time, and added, “I’ll only go for a short spin. Half hour, max.”
“I can come with you,” he offered.
“No, please, Mickey. You have to study, and I’ll be fine,” I said.
Mickey was a much better biker than I was under normal circumstances, but I was way more competitive, so if he came with me, we’d end up racing. I guessed this would make my foot hurt, and knew that it wouldn’t stop me, so I wanted him to stay in the house. Finally, he gave in, and I set off through the snow and into the forest.
I went up the mountain on easy trails for a while, and then I veered off through the trees to wind my way down in a huge semi-circle. The air was cold, and it felt good to be out on the bike, off-road with no time to think about anything but the snow and my tires.
After a while, I stopped and turned off the engine. The skies were clear, and the smell of winter and pine trees was soothing, so I stood there for a while. A bird called out high above me, and I raised my face to look, but I couldn’t see it. I suddenly had a strange feeling of remembrance. Like this had happened before. I frowned but then a cracking sound came from my left, and I wheeled around to look.
On a branch, a short distance away sat an enormous bird. I’d never seen anything like it before, and as I looked at it in awe, it spread its wings and flew off through the forest. The body was almost as white as the snow, but the wings looked mostly black or perhaps patterned in dark gray. I followed its slow flight, but then I narrowed my eyes, not sure if what I saw was correct.
Right underneath where the bird disappeared, there were cattle. My back straightened, and I started to turn my bike, starting it at the same time. There wasn’t supposed to be any cattle up here. In the silence before my bike roared again, I also heard them. When I got closer, my blood froze. At least one cow was down, and several of the others showed clear symptoms of distress, mooing and staggering.
To the side, there was a huge pile of something that looked like pellets. A few empty sacks were tossed to the side, and I jumped off the bike and pushed the cattle away to take a look. Then I roared, making the animals back off a little. The text on the sacks told me what the content was, and when I got closer to the pile, I also recognized it clearly.
Fertilizer. My cattle had been poisoned.
At first, I froze, but then I sprung into action. I realized that we were quite close to where a big old bathtub stood. We placed tubs out here and there on our land so that they'd collect rain and give the cattle fresh water, though we filled them occasionally in the dry season. The herd would know where the tubs were located, and stay in the area around them, so placing the fertilizer near one was logical.
I drove over to the tub, dug out a short chain I had in the equipment bag at the back of the bike, and hooked it around one of the feet of the tub. Then I used the force of the bike, running next to it, to drag the tub in front of the pile. A few cows were still eating, and I roared at them to get out of my way. When I’d gotten the tub in place, I unhooked the chain and started to push, trying to turn the tub over so it would cover the fertilizer. If I could manage, it would prevent more cattle eating it, until I could get help.
The tub was heavy, and the edge had rusted up, so it was brittle and sharp. I had thick gloves, but I could feel the edge cutting right through them and scrape against the palm of my hand.
“Fucking shit,” I roared.
The tub didn’t move no matter how hard I pushed. Suddenly the cattle got spooked by something and started to move in my direction. I heard the bird shriek loudly, probably scared from the sudden commotion, and this made the cattle run faster until one of them ran straight into the side of the tub, giving me the help I desperately needed. The tub teetered on two feet, and I pushed it with everything I had in me until it finally turned and landed on top of the dangerous pellets.
“Oh, shit,” I whispered wildly as I looked around.
Knowing that I couldn’t do anything for my animals and with a heart that ble
d for them, I jumped up on the bike and flew down the mountain as fast as I dared to go.
As I drove up in front of the ranch, I shouted loudly for help, and for Mickey. Men came running, and as I jumped off the bike in front of my house, I saw that Mickey was standing on the porch. So was Uncle Andy and Aunt Gwen, and neither of the three looked happy.
“What happened, Wilder?” Mickey shouted and ran down the steps toward me.
I ignored him and turned to Uncle Andy.
“Give me your phone,” I barked.
“Wh –”
“Shut the fuck up and give me your phone, now,” I yelled in his face.
He got his phone out immediately. I pulled it out of his hand and started searching through his contacts. As I expected, Hawker was on the list, so I pushed his name and then I waited for him to pick up, putting a palm in the faces of the others when they pressed in.
“Yeah,” Hawker rumbled.
“I need Mac’s number,” I barked.
“Wilder?” he asked.
“This is a fucking emergency, Hawker. I need Mac’s number, and I need it an hour ago,” I growled.
There was a scraping sound on the other end of the line and then I heard Mac’s voice.
“What?”
“My cattle are dying, Mac. My Vet is out of town, and I don’t know what to do,” I yelled. Then I pulled in air and continued, slightly calmer, “I found fertilizer, planted up in the hills, and part of my herd has eaten from it. Don’t know how much. Don’t know when it was put there.”
“Shit,” he barked. “Can they still get to it?”
“I pulled the water tub over there and turned it on top of the shit. Some will still be outside but most is contained.”
“Okay. Right. Your Vet is out of town?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’ll get someone to try to find her replacement, but I don’t know how long it will take to get someone up here,” I answered.
Just hearing his calm voice settled me down, and I started planning for what to do.
“I’m on my way,” he said, and I could hear how he was moving.
“Mac,” I called, afraid that he would hang up on me.