Last Chance Llama Ranch

by Hilary Fields

  I want Steve Spirit Wind in my next cuppa, wrote PennyPetticoat from Brixton, UK.

  “Way ahead of you,” Bob said to the screen. For the first time, Merry noticed the tray Bob held in one hand. Two wide-mouthed coffee cups rested atop it, and in each one, a mound of stiff foam had been sculpted into the shape of a tiny person, arms draped over the side of the cup, as if bathing in a hot tub. The detail was perfect, down to the chest hair on Steve, and Mazel’s long braids. “Gotta get these to our friends over there before the magic melts,” Bob said, nodding over his shoulder. Merry followed his gaze and saw that Steve and Mazel Tov had taken the booth two down from hers, and were pulling out bottles of stevia and assorted vials of spices from Mazel’s macramé bag.

  “Oh no,” Merry whispered. “They haven’t seen the bit I wrote about…”

  Bob’s beard parted to show his smile. “Oh, we’ve all seen it,” he said. “It’s getting to be quite a thing, to come over my way of an evening and check out the latest from our esteemed guest.”

  Merry shrank down in her seat, but the two hippies had already seen her. They waved enthusiastically, and Merry waved back, half apologetically. They don’t look mad, she thought. But she’d better start remembering that Aguas Milagros was a small town. She’d be bound to see the subjects of her articles daily, and she needed to keep that in mind when she wrote about them.

  “Speaking of evenings at Café Con Kvetch,” Bob said, breaking into her thoughts, “you coming to the happening this weekend?”

  “Ah…‘happening’?” Hippies and “happenings” could be a lethal combination.

  “Music, poetry, dancing; that kind of thing. Pretty much the whole town’s going to be here,” Bob told her. “Might make great material for your column,” he added.

  Merry noticed Bob never said “blog,” and she loved him just a little bit more for getting it right. And he was correct. It sounded like exactly the sort of thing her readers would relish. And terrify me, she thought. Parties weren’t exactly Merry’s forte, to her Mother’s endless exasperation. “I wish I could,” she said, not quite honestly. “But I promised Dolly I’d join her and some of her friends for this craft night thing they do.” That is, if I survive this “experience” Sam’s got cooked up for me today.

  “No need to split Schrödinger’s cat,” Bob said. “The two are not mutually exclusive.”

  Merry looked up at him, pirate brow raised.

  “Dolly’s troupe does their stitchery over here at the café,” he explained. “It’s the most central location for the ladies. Unlike Dolly, some of ’em live really far out in the rural areas, and this is the only chance they get at enjoying a spot of civilization. All the better for everyone when craft night coincides with our local talent slam.”

  Merry smiled. Dolly’s ranch is not considered rural? She could scarcely picture Aguas Milagros’ idea of “far out.” “Cool,” she said to Bob. “Two birds—or quantum zombie cats—with one stone, I guess. Catch you later?”

  “You got it, Lady Hobbit. I better let you get back to your work, and get back to mine as well. Mini Mazel’s melting from the heat.” He hefted his tray of foam-born hippies and headed for the real hippies’ table. “Don’t let the rascals grind you down today!”

  And on that baffling note, Bob left Merry to her own devices. Specifically, her laptop. She scrolled back to the entry she’d done on the hot springs, and smiled to see one of her top commenters had left her a note filled with her usual enthusiasm.

  GrlyGrl: Best trip everrrrrrrrrrrrr! I’d totally get “tainted” with you, Merry!

  So how’d things end with Steamy Sam? another commenter wanted to know. Don’t leave us hanging!

  Merry wasn’t surprised her readers were falling for him—she could fall for the fictitious version of her host herself, if she hadn’t had the reality to keep her firmly fed up. But she had to admit, Sam had shown a softer side lately—slightly. Why, he’d been almost decent to her these past few days, keeping the razzing, snarking, and sarcasm to a dull roar as Merry learned her way around the ranch. But it hadn’t been all that hard to stay civil—he’d mostly stayed out of her way since their axe-wielding encounter, leaving Merry to work with Dolly and Jane while he guided guests on overnight excursions with his llamas.

  Today, however, she’d be one of those overnight guests. If she ever finished catching up with her correspondence.

  Merry slugged her rapidly cooling coffee and hunched over her computer.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, laptop safely stowed in her satchel and sufficiently fortified with caffeine to face anything—even bearding Sam Cassidy in his den—Merry rose and tossed a tip roughly double the pittance Bob had charged her for her coffee on the chipped Formica. But she wasn’t getting away that cleanly.

  “Hey, hey, Merry-Berry,” Steve called, waving her over to the booth where he and his woman were up to their braids in chiles and cheese, their cappuccinos drained to thin films of froth on the edges of Bob’s capacious cups.

  “Come gift us with your inner light,” invited Mazel.

  Merry hesitated. So close… she thought, looking longingly at the bright sunlight just beyond Bob’s diner door. But she owed the hippies their chance to give her hell for her post about them. Despite their smiles, she couldn’t quite believe they were cool with their portrayal on DDWID.

  Until Mazel got up from the table, sliding from the booth with the grace of a true flower child, and engulfed Merry in a full-body, patchouli-redolent hug.

  And Steve clamped himself to her other side and made panini di Merry.

  “You’re not mad?” Merry asked.

  “Mad?” Steve’s face was a mask of incomprehension.

  “About the whole, um…”

  Steve let loose with a guffaw that shook dust from the ceiling fans. “The taint thing?” He laughed.

  Merry blushed.

  At his side, Mazel Tov grinned, answering for him. “Steve’s been tellin’ me his junk’s newsworthy for the past forty years. He’s pleased as punch to rub my nose in it now.”

  “Rub everybody’s nose in it, according to Mer-Ber,” Steve said, waggling her in his embrace as if trying to unscrew her from the earth. His eyes were alight with pleasure.

  “Oh, well, um…I’m glad you weren’t offended…” Merry extricated herself with the deftness of someone who’d once had groupies.

  “Takes a whole lot more than that to offend Steve,” Mazel assured her.

  “Hold on now,” Steve interrupted, pasting a cunning expression over his delight. “What if I was offended? How would you make it up to me?”

  “Well, I…” Merry was at a loss, but she sensed Steve already had a few ideas up his sleeve. “What would you suggest?”

  His grin widened. “Mazel and I just so happen to have a bit of a side business going on. A hobby, you might say, but we think people would really dig it—if they heard about it.” Steve fiddled with the end of one of his long gray braids, and if Merry hadn’t become intimately familiar with his complete dearth of self-consciousness, she might have thought he was feeling shy. “Me and the old lady, we were talking about it the other night, and we wondered if maybe you could help us spread the word? Like, maybe you could mention it on your blog?”

  “Column,” Merry mumbled.

  “Right on,” Steve said, clearly not appreciating the difference.

  “Our product makes a perfect holiday gift,” Mazel put in brightly. “But really, it’s great for any time of year.”

  “What is it?” Merry asked, wondering if she’d regret it.

  “Come by our pad some night, dear, and we’ll give you a demo.”

  But Merry had another pad to visit first.

  Or yurt, or tipi, or earthship or whatever, she thought. Sam’s lair was sure to be something out of this world.

  In a hole in the ground there lived a Cassidy…

  * * *

  “I should have known,” Merry sighed.

  Sam Cas
sidy had himself a gen-u-ine hobbit hole.

  Into the banks of the cottonwood-lined creek that bordered the far side of Dolly’s property, Dolly’s nephew had dug himself a Tolkien-worthy den, complete with round wooden door and sloping turf roof. Merry looked down at Cleese and sighed.

  “Well, boy, shall we see what quest awaits?”

  The turtle, along for the ride in its clear plastic travel terrarium, nodded slightly. He seemed more ready for their excursion than Merry was. She hadn’t wanted to leave him to his own devices overnight, though the truth was she didn’t know what might be in store for the terrapin—or for herself—on this mission.

  “Alrighty then.” And Merry grasped the brass knocker set into the middle of the green-painted door. It swung open upon the first strike, all of its own accord.

  “Oh, for the love of literature,” she sighed. “First Tolkien, now Lewis Carroll?”

  For a bunny stood, nose twitching, at the door of the hobbit hole. A plain brown bunny, with one lop ear, rather fat.

  “Aren’t you going to invite me in?” asked Merry—as she thought, facetiously.

  “Come in already,” it boomed.

  Merry staggered backward, unbalanced both by the enormous picnic basket Dolly had sent her over with and by the travel terrarium she carried. And, oh, yeah, by the rabbit that had just talked to her.

  “Are you deaf? I said get in here. Time’s wasting.”

  What was it with bunnies and time? She searched for evidence of a top hat or pocket watch, but the rabbit was pretty ordinary, not counting its powers of speech. It turned and hopped back into the house, and, bemused, Merry followed.

  Cassidy (presumably the actual source of the irritable command) was nowhere to be seen, but that was okay. Merry needed time to take in his habitat. She gaped around her. The great room’s central feature was a tree. A huge, knobby-barked tree—a cottonwood, Merry thought—whose ancient branches, no longer living but no less imposing for that, arched toward the ceiling, while a clever spiral staircase climbed its bole. At the top, what looked to be a loft bedroom had been nestled into the fossilized tree’s crown, and hanging plants trailed down from the railings that bounded the little aerie.

  Rough-hewn latillas wove chevron patterns along the ceiling, while thicker beams of gnarled wood with the bark still on supported walls of whitewashed adobe that had clearly been plastered by the loving hand of an expert. Free-form archways made from more plaster-and-tree-branch construction led off in several directions toward what looked to be a kitchen, a bathroom, and storage closets. The living room sported padded benches tucked against the thick-paned passive solar windows that made up one whole wall of the house, offering views of the creek, the not-so-distant mountains, and the rolling, alpaca-dotted pastureland of Dolly’s ranch.

  It was Wonderland meets Middle Earth.

  “Hoooo, boy, Cleese,” she muttered to her turtle. “We are not in Kansas anymore.”

  Merry could swear the turtle snorted. Sorry, boy. Too many metaphors, I know.

  “Where’ve you been, Wookiee?” Sam appeared in the doorway of what looked to be the kitchen, judging from the copper pots hanging from a ceiling rack behind him. His ever-bare feet were so quiet on the packed-earth floor she hadn’t even heard him approach. He was wearing a shabby pair of Oshkosh overalls over a faded yellow western shirt that had what might once have been tiny flowers or horses or cowboy hats printed on it. His hair formed a nimbus of I-don’t-give-a-fuck around his head. He had the bunny in the crook of one elbow, and he was stroking its lop ear absently as he scowled at her. “Half the morning’s gone already.”

  Merry ignored his surliness, too amazed by his abode to let him rile her up. “Holy crap, Sam. How on earth did you ever find such a house? Was the ranch built around it? Did Peter Jackson film a scene from LOTR no one knows about here?”

  Sam eyed her as if he couldn’t tell whether she were complimenting or insulting him. He shook his head. “I didn’t find it, I made it,” he mumbled.

  “Like, made it, made it? With tools and all that?”

  He rolled his eyes, but he still looked a bit shy, as if nervous about her reaction to the home. “With tools and all that,” he confirmed.

  “Daaaamn, Llama Boy.” Her pirate brow rose. “You’ve got some seriously hidden talents.”

  He snorted. “Seriously hidden, or seriously talented?”

  “Bit of both,” Merry said, her lip curling up.

  Sam let the bunny down gently at his feet and crossed his arms, but he was only reluctantly scowling now. Merry didn’t fail to notice how his biceps and pecs stretched the fabric of his shirt. He turned and gestured for her to follow him through the house, bunny hopping at his heels as if carrots would sprout from them. They might too, thought Merry. Sam swiped his hat from a hook on the wall and smashed it over the haystack on his head. “C’mon, we’d better get out back and greet our guests. I’ve already kept them waiting too long because of you, and they’re probably getting hungry.”

  She hefted the substantial wicker basket as she hurried after him. “Who’re we feeding today anyway, a pack of ravening wolves?”

  “Pretty much,” Sam said. “Come meet them.”

  And he led the way through the kitchen, past the mudroom, and out the back door. Where the hungry wolves awaited.

  Merry’s guts went cold.

  When confronted by wild adolescents, make no sudden moves. They can smell a fogy a mile away. And woe betide the fool who betrays uncoolitude for even a microsecond. For she shall be heaped with scorn such as the world has never known…

  * * *

  Teenagers.

  She was surrounded by teenagers.

  Sullen, scowly teenagers.

  Is there any other kind? Merry thought. Her feet had grown roots in the doorway (appropriate enough, given that the doorframe was practically woven from roots). But Sam was having none of her hesitation. “C’mon, Wookiee, the kids are waiting,” he said, and shoved her out into the sunlight.

  Merry barely had time to take in her surroundings—a well-tended vegetable patch, with a lattice of climbing grapevines overhead providing shade for the motley crew who stood, in various poses of studied nonchalance, under it. Five sets of eyes narrowed on her. Five sets of arms crossed over chests that ranged from underfed to overstuffed. Five chins lifted, and five mouths made moues of distinct disdain.

  “Whoa, Sam. Where’d you find the Brienne of Tarth look-alike?” asked the meanest, nastiest, snottiest-looking one. Merry, who’d endured more than her fair share of bullying, zeroed in on the source of the snark unerringly. It was the lone girl who had spoken. She had piercings in lips, ears, and nose, and a purple-dyed ponytail shellacked up high on her head.

  Merry shot a glance at Sam, uncertain that it was her place to tackle this offensive, but he just gazed back, blasé as could be. Thanks for throwing me to the wolves, she thought. Of course, he probably didn’t watch Game of Thrones—she’d seen no TV inside the hobbit hole—so he’d have no cause to catch the reference. Not that he’d be likely to come to my defense anyhow. Nope, I’m on my own here. So what would Brienne do?

  She’d face her opponent head-on, is what she’d do. With a broadsword. Merry took a deep breath, pasted on the most engaging grin she could dredge up, and stood up to her full height, facing the teens. The boys, she saw, were all snickering, following the example of what was obviously their ringleader. All except one, a runty-looking kid with dark circles under his eyes and acne scars, probably about sixteen. He was staring at Merry with particular intensity. No, with recognition.

  “Hey,” he said, venturing forward hesitantly. “Aren’t you…?”

  “Hagrid?” one of the other boys quipped, flashing a look at the girl for approval. She high-fived him.

  “Naw, more like Optimus Prime,” said another. More snickering. But the skinny kid shook his head, peering up at Merry with something close to awe. He shot his compatriots an impatient glare. “Don’t you dweebs know
anything? This is Merry Manning.”

  Blank looks and sneers.

  “Duh. She was in the Olympics.”

  Well, just the once, Merry thought. She shifted uncomfortably under the teens’ scrutiny, aware as well of Sam at her side, looking at her with baffled interest.

  The kid was gazing up at her with mingled adoration and astonishment. “Right? You were that skier, who won all the medals a few years ago?”

  For a second, caught in the spotlight of all those adolescent eyes—and worse, Sam’s—Merry was tempted to deny it. Dealing with fans—or anything to do with her now-faded fame—had always been the worst part of Merry’s former career. But she sensed the kid was low man on the totem pole, and his peers would turn on him in a heartbeat for any perceived weakness.

  “Yes, that was me,” she said, ratcheting up her smile to professional strength and striding forward with the entirely fake confidence her mother had drilled into her. She extended her hand to shake the boy’s. “It’s nice to meet you. What’s your name?”

  The kid looked starstruck, and it seemed to be going around. The other boys—including Sam—were looking uncertain. Even Purple Hair had lost her sneer. “I’m Joey,” the kid said bashfully.

  “Hey, Joey. It’s nice to meet you,” she said again. “And how about you guys?” She spread the smile around to the rest of the group, watching their faces transform from hostile to halfway human.

  Sam came forward, gathering the kids together with a gesture like a mother goose chivvying her goslings into order. “Survivors, let me introduce you to our temporary ranch hand, Merry Manning. She’s visiting from…” He paused, looking at Merry with a certain chagrin. “Uh, I guess I never asked where you’re from, did I?”

  No, you didn’t. That would have required pleasantries. Merry had grown up all over the world, and didn’t particularly identify with any one place. “Chicago, most recently,” she said.

  “Right, Chicago, and she’s a travel writer. She’s working on some stories about the Last Chance for her online magazine.” Another pause, more chagrin. “You kids cool with being in a magazine article?”