Cowboy Take Me Away

by Jane Graves

  He touched the gas pedal and turned onto the property, inching down the gravel drive and rounding the bend. The moment he saw the house, his hands tightened involuntarily on the steering wheel. He swallowed hard, only to realize his mouth had gone dry.

  It was even worse than he remembered.

  Overgrown shrubs grew halfway up the windows, one of which had a starburst crack, as if somebody had smacked it with a brick. The roof was shot. One side of the iron porch railing leaned at a crazy angle, looking as if a solid gust of wind would knock it down. Sunburned paint peeled away from the trim in irregular chunks. The old live oak tree out front was so dry its limbs had turned a dull, lifeless gray, sending dying leaves to their final resting place on the brittle grass beneath. Only one kind of person lived in a place like that.

  The kind who had already died inside.

  For a moment, he wondered if the front door would be open. Then he realized he already knew the answer. His old man had never locked it. What was the point when he had nothing anybody would want to steal?

  Luke killed the truck’s engine and stepped out. He started toward the house, gravel crunching beneath his boots. The porch decking was shrunken and weathered to ash gray, and as he walked up the steps and across it, the boards moaned and squeaked. No doubt they were chewed halfway through by termites.

  He put his hand on the doorknob, only to stop short. He stood motionless for several seconds, his heart hammering in his chest. Just go inside. Have a look around. No big deal.

  He closed his eyes, gathering conviction, telling himself that seeing inside this house again would put everything into perspective and drive the memories from his mind once and for all.

  But then he remembered other things. Things he didn’t even realize had been lodged in his subconscious. Days of misery. Nights of heartache. Years of despair. All of it as fresh in his mind as if it had happened yesterday.

  He gripped the doorknob. As he turned it, he heard the raspy squeak of old metal, tripping a memory that sent a chill snaking between his shoulders.

  Cursing his own weakness, he let go of the doorknob and stepped backward. All at once, one of the rotted boards he stood on gave way beneath his foot. He tried to grab the doorknob to keep himself from falling, but it slipped from his grasp. As he fell, his knee slammed against the jagged opening. Then more of the board broke and his leg slid the rest of the way through, scraping against the shards of wood, twisting as it went.

  Then came the pain.

  It was as if lightning had struck his knee, sending shockwaves up and down his leg. With a strangled groan, he righted himself, then put a palm on either side of the opening and hoisted himself up until he was sitting on the rickety porch. Slowly he eased his leg back through the rotted boards, gritting his teeth against the pain that rocketed through his knee. He paused for a moment, breathing hard, and then he swung his weight over to his uninjured leg and stood up. But the instant he put weight on his other leg, he almost collapsed all over again.

  He leaned against the door, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps. Walk it off. Just walk it off.

  He tried. One step, two. But the pain was so intense that he limped to the porch stairs and lowered himself to sit. He dropped his head to his hands for a few seconds, trying to get a grip on the pain. Then he pulled off his boot. Eased the leg of his jeans up. When he saw his knee, the sickening sense of impending loss he felt almost drowned out the pain. He fell limply to one side against the porch railing, closing his eyes, imagining the worst.

  This had been his year, the year everything finally came together and he seemed to be able to do no wrong. After spending his entire adult life getting tossed around like a rag doll by two-thousand-pound animals hell-bent on killing him, he was finally going straight to the top. He’d racked up so much prize money that it would qualify him for the World Championship even if he never rode another bull until then. The championship had been his to lose.

  And he had the most gut-wrenching feeling that was exactly what had just happened.

  He slowly opened his eyes again and looked at the landscape beyond. The view of the valley had always been perfect from this porch, another irony that had never escaped him. The rainstorm had cleansed the air, sharpening and enhancing the beauty of the valley as if he were looking through a high-definition lens.

  And there it was. A rainbow.

  A fucking rainbow.

  And he swore he could hear his father laughing.

  Shannon pulled her truck to a halt in front of the small farmhouse that served as the office of the Rainbow Valley Animal Shelter. True to its Victorian roots, it was painted a creamy yellow with dark rose trim. Intricate scrollwork framed the front steps, with paired Doric columns supporting the wraparound front porch. Hanging baskets full of pink periwinkles swayed lightly in the breeze.

  She thought about the downtown loft she’d owned in Houston, with its soaring ceilings, exposed duct work, and stair railings made of industrial pipe. It had been the height of chic and trendy, a perfect place to entertain clients who were equally chic and trendy. But now it seemed as if the woman who’d lived that life was seeping out of her body one breath at a time, soon to be gone forever.

  Shannon got out of her truck, and Goliath leaped out after her. He followed her through the front door, then slinked over to his favorite spot in the corner behind her desk.

  Freddie Jo sat at her computer, her fingers flying over her keyboard. She wore a shirt that was working overtime to harness her ample chest, and she’d stuffed the lower half of her plus-size figure into a pair of jeans that hugged every bump and bulge. She said the best day of her life was when they’d started putting Lycra in blue jeans.

  “So how was lunch?” she asked, never looking away from her computer screen.

  “Good,” Shannon said. “Rosie has a new avocado and bacon burger. Try it next time you’re there.”

  “Rita okay?”

  “Yeah. She’s going to pop by in a few days to say hi.”

  Freddie Jo hit one last button on her keyboard and her printer began to hum. She kept the business end of the shelter running with a smooth efficiency that had always astonished Shannon. But because Freddie Jo wrapped every word she spoke in a heavy backwoods Texas twang, a lot of people were lulled into thinking she couldn’t possibly be as competent as she was. Big mistake. Beneath that pile of Texas big hair was more than just a set of false eyelashes and mammoth turquoise earrings. There was also a brain that never slept.

  “So what did you decide?” Freddie Jo said.

  “About what?”

  “The funeral.”

  “Oh. That.” She shrugged nonchalantly. “I decided it would be better if I didn’t go. After all, we didn’t really know each other all that well, so…”

  Her voice trailed off. She opened her lower desk drawer and deposited her purse inside it.

  “I heard he was a real hell raiser when he lived here before,” Freddie Jo said.

  “Who did you hear that from?”

  “Just about everyone who lived here back then. Soon as his father died, the gossip started.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Shannon said. “He’s gone now.” Thank God.

  Shannon turned to find Bridget sitting in her chair, as usual. And, as usual, when she tried to lift the hefty calico tabby, she protested by turning onto her back and transforming herself into a spineless two-ton weight.

  “My chair,” Shannon said, grunting with the effort of picking her up and depositing her on the floor. The cat looked back over her shoulder with extreme kitty displeasure, then sauntered away.

  “I think she just flipped you the bird,” Freddie Jo said.

  “Hey! Do I curl up on her rug? Pee in her litter box? Play with her toys? No, I do not.”

  “You’re forgetting cat psychology. What’s hers is hers, but what’s yours is up for grabs.”

  Which was why Shannon had once found Bridget sleeping inside her open purse, with nothing but her head, he
r tail, and one paw hanging out. How she’d managed to cram her colossal feline self in there, Shannon didn’t know. She was still picking cat hair out of her purse.

  Shannon had adopted Bridget as a kitten from a shelter in Houston, and she’d been the queen of Shannon’s townhome. But now she knew Bridget would be much happier wearing that crown at the office rather than being home alone all day. Here there were plenty of people coming and going to give her all the attention she was entitled to.

  “Anything happen while I was gone?” Shannon asked as she sat down.

  “Uh…yeah,” Freddie Jo said. “I opened the mail.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “Which do you want first? The good news or the bad news?”

  Shannon cringed. “I hate it when you say that.”

  “Your choice.”

  “Better give me the good news first. That way I can enjoy it for a whole ten seconds before the bad news comes.”

  Freddie Jo handed her an envelope. “You remember that grant we applied for from that pet pharmaceutical company? Check this out.”

  Shannon took out the letter and scanned it quickly, feeling a rush of pure joy. Times were tough, and grants were competitive. But this one had come through. Five thousand dollars wouldn’t go very far, but every little bit helped.

  “Oh, thank God,” she said, putting her hand on her chest. “This gives us a little breathing room.”

  “Don’t take that breathing for granted just yet. You haven’t heard the bad news.”

  Freddie Jo handed her another letter, and when Shannon saw who it was from, she felt a horrible sense of foreboding.

  “No,” Shannon said. “No, no, no. Don’t you dare tell me Henry Stockton is the bad news.”

  “Just take a look at it.”

  Shannon opened the letter, and as she read, her body grew weak with disbelief. Bad economy…difficult times…maybe next year…

  “He’s giving us nothing this year?” Shannon said, feeling as if she’d been kicked in the stomach. “Not a crying dime?”

  “The guy is made of gold,” Freddie Jo muttered. “He could singlehandedly keep this place running and never miss the money.”

  Shannon closed her eyes, feeling more dejected than she had in months. “It’s my fault.”

  “Your fault?”

  “I didn’t make a good enough case this year. I didn’t explain how much we needed his contribution. If only—”

  “Now, you stop right there,” Freddie Jo said. “You turn yourself inside out going after donations, and that man knows quite well what things are like around here. Stop beating yourself up.”

  But it was her responsibility to ensure the financial health of this organization, and she had the most terrible feeling she was falling down on the job.

  “Don’t worry,” Freddie Jo said. “The festival’s coming up soon. We always see a bunch of donations then. And a lot of animals get adopted. It’s like this every year.”

  No. This was worse. Shannon wanted desperately to be the savior these animals needed, but with every day that passed, she felt less and less certain she was living up to that.

  When she’d left her job in Houston as an accounting manager at Marks, Wentworth and Halliday, she’d been on the fast track to a partnership. When she told her boss she was quitting to return to her hometown to take a pitifully low salary at a struggling nonprofit, he had literally questioned her sanity. But she’d been full of hope. Confidence. Audacity, even, thinking that if she could handle the accounts of multimillion-dollar clients, surely she could keep a place like this in the black. But she hadn’t counted on a depressed economy, runaway pet food prices, and an out-of-control population of homeless animals that seemed to expand before her very eyes.

  She grabbed an Excel spreadsheet from the corner of her desk, which was Freddie Jo’s weekly report that listed information about every animal on the premises. She flipped through it and shook her head. It was always more painful to see it in black and white.

  “Don’t worry,” Freddie Jo said. “We’ll just do what we always do. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.”

  Shannon nodded glumly.

  “You need the Wall,” Freddie Jo said. “Go look at the Wall.”

  “I don’t need the Wall.”

  “The Wall. Now.”

  With a heavy sigh, Shannon rose from her chair and went to the wall beside the front door, which was covered with photos of animals that had passed through there and the people who’d adopted them. Sometimes on the hardest days, she’d stand there in front of it, her gaze going from one photo to the next, just to remind herself for the umpteenth time that nothing was impossible. And now, as she looked once again at the down-and-out animals that had gotten their second chances, she felt her conviction coming back.

  Failure was not an option.

  Shannon heard the back door open, and a few seconds later, Angela Cordero came into the office. She was a seventeen-year-old girl with an unprecedented love of animals and an uncanny ability to identify a problem and solve it, sometimes before Shannon even knew there was one. Angela wore a T-shirt with the shelter’s logo on it and a pair of khaki shorts, which was normal for her. What wasn’t normal was the lead rope and muzzle she held in one hand and the bucket of oats she held in the other.

  “Oh, no,” Shannon said. “Don’t tell me—”

  “Manny got out again.”

  “That’s impossible! I tied a rope around that gate to keep him from flicking the latch with his nose!”

  “He chewed through it.”

  Shannon couldn’t believe it. Another jailbreak? She didn’t need this today. She just didn’t.

  “Did he take anybody with him this time?”

  “Nope. Everybody but Manny thinks they have it pretty good around here. You want me to go after him?”

  “No,” Shannon said, taking the rope, muzzle, and bucket of oats from Angela. “If somebody’s going to get bitten, I want it to be me.”

  Manny was part miniature horse and part escape artist, and hardly a day went by that he didn’t pose some kind of challenge. Fortunately, he was also part pig, so sooner or later she’d be able to lure him with the bucket of oats as long as she didn’t make any sudden moves. Once he had his head stuck in there, she could grab his halter and slip on the muzzle so she could walk him back home without losing a few fingers.

  “You guys hold down the fort,” Shannon said. “I’ll be back soon.”

  On her way out the door, she glanced at the Wall one last time for a little moral support. How many more tightwad millionaires and tiny runaway horses would she have to deal with before things got easier around there?

  She hurried up the drive, knowing if Manny had gotten out of the paddock, he was free to walk right out the open front gate. Last time he’d merely strolled along the highway, stopping now and then to graze. She’d had to follow him for a good quarter mile before he realized she was holding a bucket of oats and turned back. And the entire time she’d held her breath that he wouldn’t suddenly decide to cross the highway and get hit by a car.

  She reached the road. Looked left and right. No little horse. He’d been out such a short time that if he was walking the shoulder of the road, she’d see him. So where—

  There.

  He’d crossed the highway—safely, thank God—and wandered down to Glenn Dawson’s property. Now he was making his way down the gravel road toward the house. Clumps of grass grew up through the gravel, and he stopped now and then to chomp on a few.

  Shannon waited for an aging Toyota to speed by, then dashed across the highway and down the shoulder of the road until she reached the rickety gate. Manny saw her coming and went from a walk to a trot, rounding a large stand of trees and disappearing from sight. She hurried after him, hoping he hadn’t ducked into the trees where it might take her forever to find him. She rounded the bend. The decrepit old house came into view, and what she saw there astonished her.

  Luke was sitting o
n the porch steps. Manny was standing fewer than three feet in front of him. The little horse took a step forward and stretched out his neck. Luke put his hand out and Manny sniffed his fingers, his little nostrils flaring. After a moment, he eased closer and sniffed again.

  Shannon didn’t know which to be surprised about first—seeing Luke sitting on the steps of his father’s house, or Manny getting that close to someone who didn’t have a bucket of food. Then Manny came closer still and Luke rubbed his nose, telling her disaster was only seconds away.

  “Luke!” she shouted. “Don’t!”

  In that instant, Manny sank his teeth into Luke’s hand. Luke yanked it back, but the damage was already done.

  “Holy shit!” he muttered, holding his hand and grimacing in pain. Manny shied away and trotted to the edge of the house before turning back to watch them warily. Shannon hurried over, praying Luke still had all ten fingers.

  He spun around. “Why the hell did you shout like that?”

  “Because he bites! I didn’t want you to get bitten!”

  “Yeah? Did you notice he didn’t bite until you yelled at me?”

  “Oh, all right,” she muttered, dropping the bucket and other stuff to the ground. “Let me see your hand.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Luke. Let me see it.”

  He held it out. It was already starting to bruise, but at least there was no blood.

  “Does it feel broken?”

  Luke flexed his hand. “No. It’s fine.”

  “Still, I think you should get some ice and—”

  Then she saw something that made the bruise on his hand seem about as significant as a paper cut. The leg of his jeans was pulled up, revealing a knee swollen at least twice its normal size. Dark bruising spread from his calf to his thigh, along with a deep, bloody scrape.

  “Oh, my God,” she said, her hand sliding to her throat. “Your knee. What happened?”

  “I fell through the porch,” he muttered.

  She spun around to see a jagged, gaping hole in the porch decking. Good Lord. This place was falling down around his ears. She looked back at his knee, and her stomach twisted at the sight.