by Leslie North
Mona Rose was a simple woman. Always had been. She grew up the only child of a naval engineer who made it his mission to take things apart so she could puzzle them back together. There wasn’t one piece of equipment, large or small or obscure, that Mona couldn’t fix, blindfolded. Most days, motor grease was her makeup, and she looked more like Rosie the Riveter. In January’s younger days, her mother had been a source of embarrassment, but more than a dozen times in remote places, January wished she had a fraction of her mother’s skill for fixing what was broken.
“So long as you’re here,” her mother added, “you’ll make yourself useful. Busiest time on this ranch. Nat needs all available hands pitching in.”
“Oh no. No-no-no. I can’t be around him.” Her feet itched to reverse course across the open field, back to the moment she told Stan-who-smelled-like-shrimp to pull over near the next tangle of live oaks.
“You can, J-Rose, and you will. Nat gave me a place to live, rent-free, when that apartment in town went up in flames a couple years back. Never takes a dime from me, despite my monthly offer. So, if Nat says aliens are landing at dusk and he wants a barbeque buffet delivered on a homecoming float to greet them, by God, I’ll make it happen with ten minutes to spare.”
“I don’t know how much help I’d be.”
“Didn’t you herd sheep in Australia?”
“No, orphans.”
“Cattle aren’t all that different from kids.”
January’s gaze drifted to the postcard tree. Some of the photographs had charred edges. Her mother had written her that she had run out of the building that night with two things—her father’s naval box and every single one of January’s postcards. Until now, she had forgotten her mother had risked her life for the breadcrumbs of contact she sent. The least January could do now was make an effort.
“Until the money comes in.” January laid down the law in the firmest tone she could muster, though she was at a serious negotiating disadvantage with the cash in some far-off fund. “Not a day longer.”
Breakfast passed with enough carbs to power through the Great Wall marathon and enough town gossip to remind January why she’d fled, though if she had learned anything in her travels, the people defined the place. Liberians were generous of spirit and humor. Brits were guarded but genuine. Pacific Islanders, grateful and spiritually elevated. Close Callers? Content.
Content suffocated. Content was pinning butterflies through the thorax until their wings stopped beating and life slipped away. Content was the last thing January Rose wanted from life.
Until it wasn’t anymore.
* * *
Nat wasn’t above utilizing modern trappings to work the ranch—drones, tagging animals with GPS and tracking herds in real time, genetic panels and artificial insemination for complete control over stock quality. Hell, he’d even fantasized about learning to fly a helicopter so he could be one of those bird-cowboys. But there was something grounding about climbing into a saddle, setting out to corral thousand-pound animals with wits and instinct and a few good men, Australian shepherds nipping at the heels.
And Nat could use a bit of grounding.
At the south end, he had left Austin with the assurance he’d get his money, on time, paid in full, then beat a hasty retreat. Everything after that snagged in a barbed-wire fantasy that involved January Rose sprinting toward him, their embrace a spinning hug like that erection pill commercial that came on during rodeo broadcasts. By the time he had climbed back on his ATV, sans all his equipment, and reached the main house, she was wearing a lacy baby-doll dress and cowboy boots, carrying a bouquet of wildflowers, and saying I do.
Nat went straight to his kitchen sink and doused his face with cold water.
God in heaven, he was fucked.
He unpinned the Community Bank and Trust calendar from the wall and stared at the horse-faced-maidens-milking wallpaper that his grandmother had put up in the 1950s. Much to his grandmother’s dismay, ranch hands over the years had taken to naming each one with a unique moniker, usually in permanent ink: Moxie Crimefighter, who packed heat in the form of two well-drawn pistols in hip holsters; Boomqueefa, who expelled a suspicious cloud of dust in her wake; Abstinence, dressed in a nun’s habit; and Tiara Rose, the maiden January had coined her “compliant twin,” complete with homecoming scepter and a chain tethering her ankle to an X in the ground marked Close Call.
The day January doodled on the wallpaper had been the day he’d read the writing on the wall. Literally. They’d spent an entire summer tangled in the bed of his grandfather’s vintage 1939 Ford truck, scratchy wool blanket from Mexico against their heated skin, sometimes dancing the horizontal two-step, nearly always making plans—her, to explore the world, him to explore her wilds every day for the rest of his life. Nat knew she would leave, but he fell for her anyway. He just needed a visual reminder that one more time of being a moron and the fall would likely kill him.
He poured a fresh cup of tar coffee and headed out to the barn with a resolve to avoid the bahiagrass pasture, Mona’s stomping ground. Willie already had the saddle blanket on Poe, nine hundred pounds of black horse flesh better than any modern trapping. Instinctual, orderly, symbiotic. Horse and ranch foreman. Being around the grizzled old hand, a touchpoint to Nat’s grandfather, the most respected patriarch to the Meier clan, felt comfortable. Nat’s pulse stabilized for the first time since a plastic prawn coughed up trouble in a gypsy poncho.
Nat generated some noise on his way to the stalls so as not to startle Willie.
“Morning, Nat.”
Willie didn’t bother to turn in greeting. His dark hands skimmed the gelding’s hind-quarters as if memorizing the contours afresh; his eyes remained on a fixed point somewhere in his mind. A toothy smile lit his expression. Guy was the happiest person Nat knew. Nat asked him once how much vision he had left. More than you had been his response.
Nat hadn’t doubted that for a minute.
“Looking entirely too chipper this morning, Willie.”
“Got a replacement for Jared.”
“On such short notice?”
“Mmm-hmm.” Willie’s cheeks were like plums—all raised and rounded the way he got when he was dealt a good hand with the special deck—braille for Willie, nude women splayed on farm equipment for the rest of the crew. Guy had a terrible poker face.
“What?” Nat dragged out the word, all suspicion and good humor.
January rounded the far stall.
2
Nat’s good humor died.
January wore jeans and boots and one of his extra work hats he kept on a peg in his stable office. Infinitely flawless.
“Jesus, Willie.”
“Don’t get mad at him,” said January. “Mona’s idea.”
“We need the help,” added Willie. “Even if it’s to flank. She can ride.”
“She knows nothing about herding. What if one of them balks?”
“She’s right here.” January approached, her walk more assured than he remembered. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk around me.”
“Fine. You can’t go,” Nat said, pointed, direct. The kickback of authority in his voice bolstered his dogged determination to not get distracted by her ass bouncing against the saddle all day.
The ranch’s second-eldest hand, Mack, poked his head around the corner. “Clay’s wife went into labor twenty minutes ago, boss.”
Nat felt the wind knocked out of him. He yanked his hat low, so low that the silk band cinched his eyelids closed, a blessed counter-pinch to the headache forming behind his brow. “Perfect.”
January’s sultry-low voice filled the stalls. “Looks like you don’t have much choice, Hugo.”
His cheeks flamed. He hated the nickname Hugo, given to him by his English teacher after he witnessed Nat running down Main Street in nothing but a gray shawl early one Sunday morning when Wes stole his clothes after a night of drinking. Though Victor Hugo had, according to legend, managed to write a masterpi
ece while wearing nothing but a shawl, Nat only managed to flash the Baptist choir filing in for Sunday services.
He repositioned his hat, approached her like he was considering a duel but she had all the pistols, and stared the sass right back out of her.
She pressed her lips together, effectively erasing her grin.
Her face was different. Contour replaced fleshy, youthful cheeks. Shadows dusted the delicate skin beneath her green eyes. Lips he once had to coax into ripe, plump shades of fruit now came naturally full. Sun-kissed waves tumbled down to rest on her shoulders. She was sexy, seasoned with time. And the reason he nearly lost his mind a decade ago. He would let that happen again when his cold, dead corpse was pushing bluebonnets up through the dirt.
“No noise. No yelling unless you’re in trouble. Calm and steady movement to minimize stress on the herd. Mack’s the lead, I control the direction. Hang back. Do what you’re told. I won’t have my men getting hurt.”
She blinked too much, at an apparent loss for words. Something else different. Maybe in the ten years since she disappeared without a proper goodbye, she had learned that empty last words held little power. Her gaze drizzled below his chin. She nodded.
He felt like a USDA, prime-cut asshole.
Nat took Poe’s reins, led the horse out like the barn was on fire, and rode until he was satisfied January would hightail it back to Mona’s trailer and consult her prized map for another place to spread her heartache. But at the target pasture, he found her among those assembled. Atop his steadfast mare, Brontë, her chin tipped defiantly, spine erect, hat brim obscuring her eyes, she was beautiful.
And he was sixteen ways of gone.
* * *
Goats, January had discovered, are like best girlfriends. Brush the hair, have a good heart-to-heart about the shortcomings of males—any species, really—belt out a favorite tune alongside them, deliver on great food and drink, and there wasn’t anything they wouldn’t do for you. January knew this because of a two-week jag to New Zealand. After many days of failed whistles and yelling and skipping-by-example like a madwoman down the Waikato hillside, she had collapsed in a valley, belted out a few lines of David Bowie’s Always Crashing in the Same Car, and one particularly sassy goat named Dolly nudged her elbow and started to follow her everywhere. Others soon followed.
Cattle?
More like that arrogant jerk you once dated: prefers firm strokes, dislikes the sound of your I’m-serious voice, shies away from a pointed stare, and has the potential to kick when you’re unaware. January’s backside alternated between numbness and pain, and she wanted nothing more than to climb down from Brontë, drag herself to the hump trailer, and take a pre-shower to her shower. But there was something about a particular cow and calf that had her thinking all day, well past the time they had moved and sorted a hundred head, well past a long day’s work when she did more watching than doing—something she hated. Nat said to forget them—the cow and calf they had tried to keep with the herd for an hour—but January couldn’t forget them. What if the calf was injured and the surly mom was showing protective instincts? What if a coyote came in the night? On the New Zealand hillside, her job had been to count then sleep at the pen’s opening—no animals in, no animals out. No animals left behind.
The memory came on like a nightmare: entrails, blood, black and white and gray hair. An unfortunate lesson in adulting, nothing more. Most likely, the predator struck so fast, Dolly was gone before she awoke.
January’s throat squeezed closed. She wanted to go back.
“No,” said Nat. “We’ll try again at first light.”
Nat had already dismounted Poe and was in the throes of a surprisingly intimate exchange between rider and horse that involved strokes, scratches and lip puckering. Horse, too. An odd sensation squirmed deep in January’s belly. For most of the day, she had convinced herself that Nat had turned into a bitter, small-minded person incapable of seeing anything but the bottom dollar on his ranch. His all-business demeanor, his absence of humor, and his steadfast determination to hold on to anger where she was concerned pointed to a completely different person than the easy-going boy she had loved at eighteen. She had hurt him. She owned that. But it wasn’t as if he hadn’t been warned. On a hundred different days in a hundred different ways, she had made it clear this town would not hold her.
“I won’t sleep tonight.” January shifted Brontë’s reins toward the north pasture and gave her a nudge.
Nat called after her a few times by his old nickname for her—J—then let loose a few choice cowboy words before she heard Poe eating huge stretches of pasture with his strides to catch up.
She braced for a tirade that didn’t come. What the sun hadn’t leeched out of Nat’s new cactus personality, aching muscles had finished off. At a greater-than-usual distance apart, they rode in silence, nothing between them but the cadence of Poe and Brontë leaving their mark on the world. Turns out, first light wasn’t needed. The harvest moon lit the open spaces and branches like a lantern always hanging from the next tree.
They spotted the bovine pair near a mesquite tree whose lowest branch stretched wide like a park bench. Nat tucked Poe beside Brontë.
“True north,” whispered January.
“What?”
“The internal compass in all animals. Take away factors like weather and social herd impulses, animals align themselves north and south. Humans, too, if we weren’t restricted by bed placement.”
“You learn that from some meditation guru in Tibet?” His tone was flippant, judgmental, as if to say that someone on the other side of the world couldn’t possibly understand his slice.
“No. Your grandfather.”
Nat tucked his chin. His hat brim eclipsed his moonlit jawline.
“On that Meier trail ride when we were fourteen. I asked him how the cattle decided where to stand. He said some decisions are just inevitable, beyond control.”
“Beyond impulses?”
Hairs along her neck and arms prickled. “Why don’t you tell me what you need to say now, what you’ve been holding on to for ten years?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, J. While you were off building mud huts in Africa, life here moved on without you. People married, had babies, lost everything in hard years, and leaned on their neighbors until they found a new definition of everything. People lived and people…”
“Died. I know, Nat. Did you get my letter?”
He nodded.
“Did you read it?”
“Made for good kindling.”
She supposed she couldn’t blame him. Her leaving had still been raw—ten months or so—when they found Clem Meier lying in a pasture, exactly how everyone knew he would have wanted to go, part of his land, according to her mother. January hadn’t been building mud huts in Africa when she found out. She had been in a bus terminal in Copenhagen. Alone. She hung up the pay phone, slid down the wall, and emptied herself of tears. Clem had been the closest thing she had to a grandfather. And, at that moment, leaving Close Call felt like the closest thing to a mistake. She didn’t learn Nat’s father, Robert, died of a heart attack one week to the day past Clem until she disembarked from a boat in the Philippines three months later. Dockside in Cebu, she penned an apology letter. For Clem, for the burden of the ranch that shifted to a very young Nat who had to leave college, for doing what she had to do to stay sane.
“There wasn’t one day away that I didn’t think about this place. When travel isn’t exciting, it’s lonely. Always saying goodbye.”
“Why didn’t you come back?”
“I hadn’t found what I was looking for yet.”
Nat had perfected the hardened squint, even in moonlight. He stared at something, at nothing, in the distance. His defined jaw shifted slightly as if he were steeling himself for a right hook. “And now?”
January operated in two modes: avoidance and honesty. Even when each hurt like hell. She delivered the punch in a full-on confession. “Maybe it doesn’
t exist, but I have to keep trying.”
She dismounted Brontë and handed Nat the reins.
“What are you doing? Meier cattle are used to men on horses, not on foot.”
“That might be the problem.” With calm, deliberate strides, she sliced the distance to the cow in half.
“J, stop.” His voice was part ranch boss, part warning hiss.
But January was all focus. She approached the animal without making eye contact, because what female wants the stare-down when she just wants to be herself?
The cow licked her nose and looked at January askance. Sure, it was because the animal had eyes on the side of her head, but January detected brains and attitude in abundance. This cow wanted no part of the herd mentality. January could relate.
Nat peppered instructions to her: they can kick to the side, too and move in an arc, not a circle and something about a point of balance—all of which she tried to block out in favor of getting to know this animal.
She had soft, brown eyes that blinked in sleepy intervals. She raised her head, but her ears stayed forward and her jaw circled in a chewing motion. Her attention never strayed far from her calf a short distance away.
January altered her proximity then varied quiet moments with soft, one-sided conversation, mostly confessions she hadn’t told anyone—that the open ocean terrified her, that she wasn’t certain there was a God, that she feared she was becoming her father, a person who never once thought of others before his agenda. January called the cow beautiful and named her MooDonna because she had light hair that glowed in the moonlight. By the time January had drawn close enough to give the cow firm strokes beneath her chin and confided in her that the sight of Nat in his frayed jeans and dusty boots made January question her entire life’s plan, they had become fast friends.
“I need you and your boy to come back with us,” said January softly. “For Dolly. Okay?”
MooDonna licked her wet nose again.