“So did I,” Jed said. “Had to work at it— languages never came easy to me—but I’ve never regretted it, especially now, with NAFTA.”
“I didn’t think NAFTA had much effect on the ranching industry. Uncle Jed. According to Gavin . . .”
Tessa turned back to the severed cabbage. Lips tightening, she began slicing it into shreds. Since when had ranching become an industry? Made it seem like one of those filthy, noisy, iron and steel foundries back East. She tried to recall the name of the city she’d been whisked through on the way from Marshall Field’s in Chicago to Cincinnati. Had a man’s name . . . Harry? No, Gary . . . Gary, Indiana. Couldn’t see it for the goddamn smoke.
She turned to her daughter, knife in hand. “I’m expecting the calves to be delivered in a couple of weeks, Garland . . . you want to help me take them up to summer pasture?”
Garland and Jed exchanged amused glances. “Sure, Mom,” she said. “Fact is, I’ve been looking forward to it— “ She broke off. “Just what were you intending to do with that knife if I’d said no?”
Tessa looked down at the brandished blade, then smiled sheepishly. “Lord, I don’t know. Slice the buttons off that pretty blouse of yours, maybe.”
Garland rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her breasts. “What? And leave me naked as a babe?”
“Some babe,” Jed said, winking.
“Nobody but me and your ‘shir onkle’ to see you,” Tessa muttered.
Garland raised her eyebrows at Jed. “As I was about to say, Mom, it’s nice to think of those little fellows fattening on our good green grass instead of in one of those ghastly feed lots. You planning on taking the Longhorns up, too?”
“I sold them.”
“Sold them? But your plans— “
“For God’s sake, Garland, that bull killed your father!”
“But it wasn’t— “ Garland caught Jed’s warning shake of his head out of the corner of her eye. “I’m sorry. Mom. I wasn’t thinking straight. You were right to sell them.”
“If you’d heard the Wagners going on and on about it ... kinda drove my plans for crossbreeding them out of my mind. Gram Wagner I can understand, but since she and your grandfather moved down to Brownsville, all I hear about them comes second-hand.”
“From Uncle Lloyd and Aunt Pauline, you mean.”
“Yeah. ‘Course they thought it was a damn fool idea from the start. By the time the Wagners started ranching, at the turn of the century, Herefords were the way to go. But the Hattons— Lord, Garland, we go back to the days when Longhorns were the only animals hardy enough to travel a thousand miles and more to market!
“They prowled the gullies for water, browsed on brush when the grass gave out, rubbed the ticks off of their hides before anyone thought of dipping vats, and raised sturdy calves without benefit of vaccines. The Texas Longhorn kept more people fed—and more cowmen from going broke— than any other breed. I was just trying to help keep ‘em from becoming forgotten.”
“That’s sentiment talking, Tessa,” Jed said. “Sure, the Longhorns filled a real need in their day, but I remember your father saying, more’n once, that it was ‘Hereford on the range, Shorthorn in the feed lot, and Angus on the table.’ “
“That wasn’t original with Dad, Jed.”
Jed shrugged. “Doesn’t alter the truth of it.”
“Well, no point discussing it. The Longhorns are gone and so is Barry—that’s a truth that won’t be altered either.”
Tessa’s harsh statement discouraged further comment about her disposal of the small herd. While Jed fished in the pocket of his leather bomber jacket for the cork puller he had brought with him, Garland held the wineglasses up to the light and polished away a few water spots. Tessa, her head bowed, vigorously stirred a ranch-style dressing into the coleslaw.
Barry died early on a Sunday morning, two years ago. It was the Labor Day weekend, and on Saturday he had started drinking even earlier than usual. Although he drank too much every day come sundown, he confined his all-day bouts to the weekends. Not that it made any sense, given the seven-day schedule of a working ranch, but it allowed him to convince himself he could still control his growing habit.
The Labor Day rodeo was the biggest county event of the summer. Barry had tried to argue the twins into staying for it instead of heading back early to Boulder for the fall semester. But, pleading a sensible reluctance to buck the end-of-holiday traffic, they left as planned, which in Barry’s disgruntled, already booze-hazed mind was yet another example of behavior unnatural to any gen-u-wine kin of his. He spent the rest of the day tipping a bottle to his lips, at first hiding the bottle in a paper bag; later, he didn’t bother.
By the start of the bulldogging event— at which he had himself excelled long years before— he had become belligerent, shouting insults at the competitors, flailing out at Tessa when she tried to calm him. His brother Lloyd, alerted by pals that Barry had exceeded the bounds of locally tolerated macho behavior, marched down to his seat in the stands, manhandled him out to his pickup under cover of a boys’ll-be-boys grin, tossed him in the back, and advised Tessa to get him the hell home.
By the time she did, he had passed out.
She covered him with a horse blanket; later, while she was washing her supper dishes, he swaggered in, stinking of vomit, and demanded she get him something to eat. When Tessa suggested he bathe first, he cursed her and stomped out to the barn and the cunningly stashed bottles she’d long since given up trying to find.
Disheartened and disgusted, she had taken a long hot bath and gone to bed. A single shrill scream roused her during the night, but thinking it was a bobcat, Tessa soon drifted back to sleep.
The next morning, alerted by the restiveness of the horses in an adjoining corral, she spied Barry’s familiar figure sprawled in the bull pen. Above him, the big Longhorn trotted to and fro, huffing and pawing nervously at the blood-soaked earth, his neck still encircled by the braided bulldogger’s rope Barry had somehow managed to secure around the animal’s thick neck.
As she approached, the bull snorted, lowered his head, and warningly presented the long graceful curves of his red-stained horns.
Ride ‘em cowboy.
At the time, the unfeeling sentiment, flashing unbidden into her mind, had appalled her; remembering it now, two years later, it merely seemed a fitting epitaph.
* * * *
Jed raised his glass in a toast to Garland’s return. Tessa sipped, then sipped again. It was lovely stuff, rich and fruity, yet dry.
“Yum-yum,” she said.
“You’re spoiling me, Uncle Jed,” Garland lamented. “How do you expect me to settle for jug wine after this?”
“Gives you something to set your sights for, young’un. Speaking of which, what are your plans for the summer . . . aside from helping your mother with the calves and her horses, that is.”
Garland’s eyes lit up. “The horses’ll have to wait their turn this summer, Uncle Jed, on weekends mostly. Mom got me a job up in Telluride.”
“Is that so,” Jed returned cautiously. “What doing? Not table-waiting, I hope.”
“I could do worse— the tips are outta this world up there— “
“That’s not the only thing that is,” Jed muttered.
“I’m going to be working with the Chamber Resort Association, you know, on all those festivals they’ve got going? Probably more as a gofer than anything else,” she admitted, “but if I get my toe in the door this summer, who knows?”
“This your idea, Tessa?”
“So what if it is?”
“I don’t suppose hearing about Shelby being back had anything to do with it.”
“Is that a question, Jed?”
“Not really,” Jed said, “more like a comment.” He popped a forkful of tender meat into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “Best pot roast in the San Juans.”
“Scott’s being here was just a coincidence. I still have contacts in Telluride . . . what’s
the harm in using them? After I gave the Chamber Garland’s academic average, all they wanted to know was if she looked as good as me. Better, I said.”
Jed frowned.
“C’mon, Jed,” Tessa said, bridling at his obvious disapproval. “This is the real world we’re talking about! So far, Garland’s life choices have been limited to horses, cows, and Boulder’s pizza parlors. She needs more’n that to base a lifestyle on.”
Jed leaned back in his chair, raising the front legs off the well-washed vinyl tile floor, and folded his arms. “Sounds like you’ve been reading those magazines in the rack at the Cottonwood Mart’s check-out counter. Life choice, lifestyle . . . next thing you’ll be talking about is life experiences. Godalmighty.”
Red flared in Tessa’s cheeks. She opened her mouth to snap out a protest, but seeing her daughter’s stricken expression, thought better of it. She took a slow sip of wine. “No-o-oo, I was thinking of past life experiences, actually.”
Garland hooted at the look of shock on Jed’s face. “Gotcha!”
He grinned sheepishly. “Yeah, I guess she did.”
“Like another helping?” Tessa offered.
“Generous in victory, too,” Jed said, lowering the chair legs back to the floor. “What a woman.”
Tessa arrowed a sharp look at him as she collected his plate. Although relieved for Garland’s sake that open warfare with Jed had been averted, she sensed a quickening of the complex, ongoing undercurrent that had become all too familiar.
Jed’s resentment had first surfaced the summer after she and Barry eloped. Aware by then that “happily” was the wrong adverb to apply to their married state, he had lashed out at her.
They were on Hayden’s Bald, replacing fence posts. She’d carried over a preservative-soaked length of cedar bare-handed, driving a splinter into her palm when she set it down in the hole he had just dug. He’d stripped off his gloves, taken her hand in his, and deftly extracted the sliver with a single sharp tug. She supposed it was the touch of flesh on warm flesh that triggered his outburst.
“Damn it, Tessa! Why’d you want to run off with him like that? I thought we had an understanding!”
She remembered pulling her hand from his and licking at the trickle of blood. The sight of it seemed to inflame him further.
“Maybe you can fool everyone else into thinking you’re happy, but not me.” At that, she had turned away. “Look at me, Tessa! You never could fool me!”
She whirled to face him, eyes blazing. “You thought! All you ever did was think, Jed Bradburn, and whatever you thought was right, huh? Wrong! Barry’s a doer, and what I wanted done had nothing to do with thinking.”
Jed was shaken. “I suppose,” he muttered, “what you’re talking about is a toss in the old hay. “
“‘Whoo-ee. Give that man a great big see-gar.”
“But you didn’t have to go and marry him! God, I’d’ve thought— “
“There you go thinking again, Mr. College Graduate.” Tessa, finding herself on a roll, was relentless. “I imagine you’ve heard about the greater fool theory . . . well, okay, maybe I’m not sure about the theory, but I know a prime example of a fool when I see one! The only genuine understanding we ever had was about this fence, and even that didn’t start with us. Tell you what, Jedidiah, from here on out you stay on your side, I’ll stay on mine, and you can keep your damn thoughts to yourself.”
In due course the wounds had healed—they shared too much history for them not to—but the underlying ache persisted. Ten sour, childless years later, too proud to admit she had made a wrong choice, Tessa grabbed the offer Scott Shelby held out to her, finding it as tantalizing as the carousel’s gold ring that had glittered just beyond her six-year-old reach at the Colorado State Fair.
Her merry-go-round whirl with fame didn’t last long: one heady year and a six-month phase-out to normality. But it was long enough to lace Jed’s rankling hurt with disapproval.
Not that he ever said anything directly. It was the way he frowned when she resigned as coach of Cottonwood’s barrel-racing hopefuls, even when she assured him it was temporary. Temporary for you, he’d said, but not for the current crop of contestants. And his reaction the next summer, when she sent her ranch foreman up to Hayden’s Bald in her stead. She knew damn well Miguel would do whatever needed doing in the way of fence-mending better and faster than she could, but afterwards Jed just pulled that long nose of his and allowed as how it wasn’t the same.
Remembering, Tessa glared at Jed. Wasn’t the same ? Jesus! What the hell was ?
Jed, looking up from his bread-mopping-up operation of the gravy on his plate, was unprepared for the hot resentment he saw in her eyes.
“Tessa?” His voice was anxious, bewildered.
She scraped back her chair. “I’ll get dessert. I found a jar of peaches left from that batch Jeannie and I got up in Fruita last summer.”
“You gave Pop and me a half-dozen jars for Christmas . . . that and some apricot preserve.”
“No wild raspberry?”
“Right! Raspberry! That was his favorite. He actually smiled when he tasted it.”
“I’m sorry, Jed,” Tessa said quietly.
“I’ll come over for a visit real soon, Uncle Jed,” Garland promised, apparently thinking it was Walter Bradburn’s famous orneriness her mother was referring to.
“You do that, honey,” Jed said, wiping his mouth. “Can I help clear?”
“Nope,” Tessa said. “Let someone wait on you for a change.”
Fifteen minutes later, Jed declined a second helping of peaches, pushed his scraped-clean bowl aside, and stirred his coffee. “So, Garland, decided what you want to do yet? Assuming, of course, that your summer of high-life in Telluride doesn’t turn your head.” He smiled broadly, defusing Tessa’s defenses. “A couple of years ago you were talking about training as a nurse practitioner . . . that means graduate school, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, it does. But so does veterinary medicine. There’s this whole new field of orthopedics focused on athletic injuries, and I was thinking, what about animal athletes? Why not a veterinary practice dealing with the treatment of physical stress peculiar to them? It could be combined with preventive medicine— Mom’s been practicing that for years with her quarter horses.”
Tessa looked at her, astonished. “Me?”
“Sure, Mom. A lot of trainers—and owners, unfortunately—think only of the short term. You know, more bang for their bucks. They van their horses all over creation, competing the hell out of them, ruining their legs, and what’s worse, breaking their spirit.”
“A lot of that’s the fault of the system, Garland,” Jed said. “Too many dollars at stake over too short a season.”
“Look, I know there’ll always be greed and abuses, same way there is with human athletes and team owners, but maybe, with a little education— “
“You know what they say, honey,” Tessa broke in. “A little education is a dangerous thing.” Jed and Garland frowned at her. She threw up her hands. “Hey! I’m just quoting! Truth is, I agree with you.”
“Of course you do, Mom—who do you suppose put the idea in my head?”
“Glad to know I’m good for something besides selling a line of clothing the world could very well have done without.”
“Now, Mom ...”
“C’mon, Tessa . . .”
“Gotcha!” she said, grinning wickedly. She got up, lifted the coffeepot off its hot plate and refilled Jed’s cup. As she straightened, holding the pot out in one long-fingered hand, she tilted her head thoughtfully. “Actually, I sort of fancy myself as the Mother Teresa of American equines . . . God knows I’m old enough,” she added, looking down at herself with a rueful eye.
There was no denying she was no longer as slim as she was at twenty, or even thirty, but Jed’s brown eyes saw the generous curve of hip revealed by her jeans and the thrust of breast outlined by the soft drape of her silk shirt as appropriate to the handsome woma
n she’d become. Unfortunately, Tessa’s blue eyes did not.
Sure, Jeannie Disbrow could disguise the gray in her sun-streaked hair, but she had yet to find a foolproof way to mask lines gained through almost fifty years of squinting against a summer sun untempered by city haze.
Twenty years ago, Scott Shelby had hailed those lines as a rancher’s badge of honor. Real and honest and true, Tessa recalled him saying, but then Scott always did tend to repeat himself. Today they were deeper, longer, wider . . . pleasing only to a cosmetic surgeon.
Jed looked up at her, smiling. “Can’t say I’ve ever thought of you as a Mother Teresa type, Tessa . . . fact is,” he added with a nod towards Garland, “despite this beautiful, intelligent, all-grown-up evidence to the contrary, I still have trouble thinking of you as any type of mother.”
“Oh, yeah?” Tessa declared, planting her fists on her hips, “Dare I ask what you do think of me as?”
Jed’s smile faded. He spread his fingers out on the red-and-white checked tablecloth; his eyes dropped to study their drumming tips. “As just Tessa, I guess,” he murmured.
He raised one finger and slowly rubbed the tip of his nose. His eyes, solemn now, lifted to hers. “Just Tessa.”
Chapter Four
Late on Sunday afternoon, as Jed poured the shot of whiskey his father looked forward to at the end of each day, he heard Tessa’s truck drive in. He went to the door and peered out through the screen door. It was Garland.
He screeched the door back on its dry hinges and waved her in. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“I start work up in Telluride tomorrow, Uncle Jed. My hours are ten until five, so I thought I’d better come visit with Pop before I started. Mom says he goes to bed right after supper.”
“And Mom, as always, is right.”
“Always? C’mon! You’ve been friends too long to believe that!”
“Usually?” he offered. She shook her blond head. “Sometimes? Now and then? Once in a great long while— “
Garland threw up her hands, laughing. “Actually, she’s right more often than I wish she were.” She looked askance at the bottle clutched in Jed’s hand. “Am I interrupting anything?”
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