“I don’t know,” Aiden called back, smacking his hat against his jeaned thigh to dust it off. “I don’t know what he’s got up his butt today.”
“Not like Mather to be that way,” Derek said.
“No. It’s not.”
Aiden jumped in front of the horse on the next pass and extended his arms on both sides. The beast skidded to a stop. Aiden took hold of the reins just behind the bit.
“Stop it,” he said, leaning close to the horse’s ear and speaking low. “Work with me here.”
He moved down the gelding’s left side to mount. But no sooner did he put his foot in the stirrup than the horse crow-hopped away again, leaving Aiden yanking on the reins with one hand and struggling to half run along, half get his foot back. He pulled free of the stirrup just in time—just as he was about to be taken off his feet. The gelding yanked the reins out of his hand and ran off, still dragging the calf in the dirt behind.
Aiden leaned on his knees and breathed for a moment. Then he looked up. No one was laughing. Everyone had stopped doing what they’d been doing. No one’s hands moved. The women had stopped buttering garlic bread and marinating tri tip. The men had reined their own mounts to a halt or knelt frozen in the dirt, hovering over downed calves.
Just about everybody who lived in these parts was staring at Aiden. As though they couldn’t possibly understand the difficulty. As though they felt sorry for him. They seemed to know they should look away again but just couldn’t bring themselves to stop staring.
Even their horses stood still and watched, far too mature and professional to let the panic of one misguided cow pony throw them off their game.
Aiden grabbed the reins of his gelding, who had stopped by the pipe fence and was standing with his head down, blowing through wide nostrils, neck foamed with sweat. He undid the rope at the saddle and let the calf loose. With slack in the rope, the animal kicked free and stumbled to his feet, plainly traumatized.
“I’m gonna put Mather away and get Turbo instead,” Aiden said loudly. Not to anyone in particular.
“Okay, so this isn’t going well,” Aiden told Turbo as he saddled the big bay. “Not even as well as I thought it would, and I didn’t have what you might call high expectations. So cut me a little slack today, huh, buddy? Pay me back for all that hay I fed you all these years.”
Aiden looked up to see the bay’s eye open wide, showing a hint of white all the way around.
“Crap,” Aiden said out loud.
Nothing is much worse on a horse than a scared rider, and Aiden knew it well. Had known it since he was a child. Only, normally it did not apply to him. Aiden did not ride his horses scared. Or at least, he never had before. A horse is a herd animal, and Aiden’s horses looked to him to be their leader. If they sensed fear in him, it stood to reason they would assume there was something to fear.
Aiden put his foot in the stirrup and swung up from the ground. The horse jerked forward before Aiden could even swing a leg over, nearly leaving him in the dirt. He yanked the reins back too suddenly, and Turbo planted his front hooves and stopped, throwing Aiden down over his neck.
Aiden sighed. Straightened. Swung into the saddle.
“Damn it all to hell,” he said out loud, more or less to the horse. “This’s gonna be one long damn day.”
The second time he fell off his horse and hit the dirt—twice shattering a seven-year record of staying on, including while breaking these good horses—Aiden simply handed the reins off to his neighbor Roger’s teenage granddaughter. Then he did what he had inwardly vowed he would not do: he joined the team working the calves on the ground.
The team that had to inflict the big hurt.
He felt the sickening panic roil in his gut as Derek dragged a calf to where he and Trey waited. Somehow Derek had the calf by the front legs, which was an unusual way to rope one. As soon as Derek reined his horse to a halt the calf struggled to his feet. Aiden body-slammed the animal and wrestled him onto his side again. He wrapped and tied the back legs together with one lightning-fast motion of his rope. Then he pulled back just slightly, sat halfway up—and made a colossal mistake.
That is, if it was accidental at all. Later he would look back on the moment and wonder.
The most important element to his current task was to keep the rope taut at all times. Keep the hind legs not only tied together but drawn back. Immobile.
Aiden allowed the rope to slack.
The calf thrashed his hind legs violently—tied together into one lethal club—and kicked out, striking Aiden hard in the side. Breaking more than one of his ribs. No one had to tell Aiden his ribs had just been broken. No X-ray required. Aiden felt at least two of them give.
He landed on his tailbone in the dirt and just sat. Just froze there, immobile, experiencing the pain. Allowing it. Because there was nothing else to be done about it. No point trying to do battle with something that’s already won.
Everything stopped around him. All activity ceased, at least from the sound of things. Even the cattle seemed to settle, now that the ropes and the horses held still. Aiden figured everybody was staring at him again, but he might have been wrong. He never did look around.
It’s unlikely that he was wrong.
“You okay, buddy?”
Aiden looked up into the hot sun to see Derek peering down at him from the back of his horse.
“Not so much, no.”
“He break some ribs with that kick?”
“I believe he did.”
“Okay, then,” Derek said, swinging down from his mount. “You win the award for worst single day ever. While we get your trophy ready maybe Livie can drive you over to that county hospital and see what they can do for your situation.”
“Livie won’t even be here till she gets off work,” Aiden said, surprised at how much it hurt to talk.
“Okay, then,” Derek said again. “I’ll just have to take a break and do the deed my own self.”
He reached a hooked elbow down, and Aiden took hold of it with his left arm—the less broken-up side. As he pulled to his feet he felt jolted by the pain, which made him so nauseous he thought he might vomit. When the feeling passed, something else replaced it. Something entirely different.
Relief.
Aiden had just gotten out of roundup day the only way possible. You either worked roundup or they carried you out on a stretcher. Now Aiden was out. Guilt free. Explanation free.
Gone.
At least, Aiden himself was free. He could still feel the fear and pain of the young steers long after Derek drove him off the ranch.
Aiden looked out the truck window, breathed as shallowly as possible, and watched the land roll by. It all looked pretty much the same. Board or wire fences. Rolling golden hills. Scrub oaks. Patches of thick evergreen forest.
“Those hills were green about a minute ago,” Aiden said to Derek. Probably just to have something to say.
“Yeah, and that’s how long they stay green, too. About a minute.”
“This drought’s gonna be the death of us.”
A silence. Derek pulled a cigarette out of the pack with his teeth and fired it up with the dashboard lighter.
“What the hell happened out there today, buddy?” he asked Aiden after a time.
“Anybody can have a bad day. Horses and humans both.”
“Kind of a coincidence, though. Don’t you think? You and two of your horses? All having a bad day at the same time? Those horses are solid as the hills. All the years I been working with those two I never once seen ’em so much as spook big. If my daddy was here he’d say if two of your horses are having a bad day on the same day, you’re having a bad day.”
“Glad he’s not here then,” Aiden said, speaking quietly so as not to jostle his injuries with too much breath.
“You can talk to me, you know, Aiden.”
“No, I can’t.”
He hadn’t planned to say it. But all he could think about was the pain, and in the midst of t
hat distraction other issues slipped through the gate.
“Why would you say a thing like that?”
“Last week when I brought that buck home. You said to me, you said something like ‘Livie’s gonna kill you if she finds out you shot it and she doesn’t get to eat it.’ If. If she finds out, you said. Not two hours later she comes by my house and sets a trap for me to walk into, and she already knows everything. Everything. How many points that buck had. How I didn’t dress it out.”
It was a lot of words for Aiden. A lot of truth. More than he sometimes said in a day. If he could help it.
“I didn’t tell Livie.”
“You didn’t have to. You told Trey and he’s like a telegraph wire right into her ear, and you know it. He loves any excuse to talk to her, the less flattering to me, the better.”
Derek smoked in silence for maybe a mile. Maybe two.
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” he said at last. “I figured we were friends.”
Aiden opened his mouth to answer, but he was in too much pain. And it was too much trouble.
It was just all too much.
At least four hours had passed by the time Aiden made it back home to the ranch. Maybe closer to five. They had stopped at a pharmacy near the hospital and filled the prescription he’d been given. He’d popped two of those pills in the truck on the ride home. To say he was feeling their effects would be understating the case.
He climbed gingerly down from Derek’s truck. Walked in what he hoped was a more or less straight line to the pipe corral, relieved to see that all the work had been done and the crowd had moved on to the barbecue portion of the proceedings. He had skipped breakfast due to nerves, and his hunger added to that lightheaded feeling. And it might have been exaggerating the effects of the drug.
Of course, he was grateful the roundup was over for much larger reasons than just barbecue.
Something caught his eye, though, and he stood at the pipe fence a minute, trying to make sense of what he saw.
That calf was still down. The one that had kicked him. At least, Aiden thought it was the same calf. He was hog-tied, all four of his legs lashed together in one desperate bundle. He lay on his side in the sun, in the hottest part of the afternoon. His tongue lolled out, touching the dry dirt. If not for his heaving sides, Aiden might have assumed the animal was dead. The rest of the herd had been released from the pen. They had moved on up the hill to nurse their fresh wounds and ease away their terror, leaving this one calf unable to follow.
Aiden could clearly see that the calf had not yet been gelded.
Trey walked up behind him and clapped him on the shoulder. Aiden winced silently.
“We saved him for you,” Trey said.
“What?”
“We saved him. We figured after he broke your ribs you’d want to take his manhood personally. Or . . . his bull-hood, I guess I should say. So we left him for you to do.”
“You left him lying tied up in the sun for almost five hours? With the other cattle stepping on him and nothing to drink?”
Aiden heard his own voice coming up to a shout. But he couldn’t seem to stop it. He was outside himself now, watching from afar. His emotion was a rubber band wound up until it snapped. The ends would fly. Nothing would come back together. Not now. Not anymore.
Aiden looked up to see everyone staring at him. A little bit of déjà vu in that. But now they were all at rest, sitting in lawn chairs and on blankets, guzzling beer and watching the tri tips cook. And all eyes had turned to Aiden.
Derek appeared from nowhere, hooking an arm around his shoulder and leading him toward the house.
“All righty, then,” Derek said. “Somebody’s a little hopped up on pain meds and needs a good old-fashioned lie down. He doesn’t know what he’s saying, folks.”
“I know exactly what I’m saying,” Aiden shouted, ducking out from under the arm. “What the hell is with you people? Not one person here spoke up and said this is wrong?”
The silence rang out. Sharp and clear. Growing. Taking on a life of its own.
“He broke your ribs,” Trey said in time. He sounded hurt. Like a little boy whose gift was received with less gratitude than he felt it deserved.
“We tied him up so we could cut him, Trey. With no anesthetic. If I came at you to do the same, would you kick me if you could? And then how about if I’m extra violent with you because you tried to get out of it? He’s a freaking calf! He doesn’t know any better! Besides . . . he’s right!”
Aiden pulled the buck knife out of its sheath on his belt and marched back to the pipe corral. There was pain on each step, but it felt almost as though someone else were having it. He ducked between the pipes. With his ribs compressed with a wrap, it wasn’t easy.
The calf had been panicked for so long that he had exhausted himself. The animal could feel nothing anymore, because he had not an ounce of energy left to burn. Or at least that seemed to be his situation as Aiden approached him. But as Aiden leaned over him, reaching out with the knife, the calf bucked up from the dirt, committing to a spasm of motion in what he thought was one last attempt to save his own life.
Aiden slid the blade of the knife under the rope and sliced through it. All four wraps of it. The calf lurched to his feet, leapt forward, fell again, then stumbled up and ran away as best he could.
“There,” Aiden said, turning back to the crowd, most of whom sat with their mouths open. “That one gets to grow up to be a nice big bull. Who the hell cares? Who the hell cares about any of this? Why do we even do this? There must be a better way to make a living than torturing cattle all day.”
He threw the knife down in the dirt, point first, and walked into his house.
It was several degrees cooler inside, and he cranked up the air conditioning and drank his fill of water from the faucet.
He could hear the hooves of visiting horses clatter up onto the floors of their stock trailers. He could hear pickup truck engines start up and run.
Several minutes later, when he felt he had calmed himself enough, he stepped outside again. To apologize to any remaining neighbors. Maybe clarify what he had meant to say.
The tri tips lay burned to crispy black charcoal on the barbecue.
Everyone, even his ranch hands, had gone.
Aiden ate garlic bread for his combination lunch and dinner, popped two more pills, and put himself to bed at three in the afternoon with the air conditioner roaring. Still fully dressed and filthy.
He slept until morning. Livie never showed.
Chapter Seven
The Falling Down
Aiden woke suddenly to a burst of light through his eyelids and a violent ache in his skull.
“Rise and shine, sleeping beauty,” a familiar male voice said. “You got fences to mend.”
He opened his eyes to see Derek standing by his bedroom window, pulling back the drapes.
Aiden tried to swing up into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. It didn’t pan out at all. He had forgotten about the ribs. He let out a pained grunt and lay back down again.
“I don’t think I’m in much of a fence-mending condition.”
“I wasn’t referring to actual fences. Oh, that too, coincidentally, but it’s just one little section on the north property line and Trey and I can get to that today. I meant mending fences with your neighbors.”
“What’s wrong with me and my neighbors?”
“Uh-oh. It’s like that, is it? Okay, I’m gonna go on in the kitchen and fix you a great big pot of my famous coffee. Only you don’t wanna know what it’s famous for. Couple cups of that and we’ll check back again and see what you recall.”
“Two words,” Derek said, settling on the other side of Aiden’s kitchen table. “Damage control.”
“Okay. What’s that look like in your head?”
Aiden sipped the blazingly strong coffee. Unfortunately he remembered now. Everything.
“Let’s say I drive you around to the ranches in question
. And you have yourself a little sit-down talk with the people involved. What’re you gonna say? Just gimme a light preview so I can see where we stand.”
“Hmm,” Aiden said. He sipped at the coffee again. His head hurt fiercely. More than his ribs. He wanted to ask Derek to find his painkillers, but he couldn’t seem to peel his attention away from the disaster at hand. “I guess I’d say I didn’t ever intend to demean their livelihood.”
“That’s a damn good start.”
“I know most of what we do to these calves is just what needs doing. They all can’t grow up to be bulls. Whole breed lines would be ruined. I mostly was upset about that one calf lying tied up all that time. And the idea I’d want to take some kind of revenge on him—that seemed like cruel and unusual punishment to me. The rest of what we do is mostly . . . although . . . you know, really, when you think about it, cutting them without any kind of painkiller . . . isn’t that almost the dictionary definition of cruel?”
They both knew it was legal to castrate without painkillers in calves up to two months. They also both knew Aiden wasn’t talking about legalities.
“We’re moving in an undesirable direction here,” Derek said.
Aiden set his head gently in his hands. “I think I have a concussion.”
“Okay, that’s good. That’ll help explain a lot.”
“No, I mean I think I have a concussion, Derek. I’m not rehearsing anymore. I’m telling you, right now.”
“You didn’t get kicked in the head, though.”
“No, but I landed on it twice.”
“Oh, that’s right—you did, didn’t you? My brain was so focused on the grand finale of the disaster that was our roundup yesterday, I almost forgot all the ways it sucked early on.”
“Go and see where my painkiller pills got off to, will you?”
Derek sighed. Pulled to his feet. “Why do I have a feeling this’s gonna be another crap day?”
The Wake Up Page 7