Dead Blow

by Lisa Preston

  A day of pounding something as strong and malleable as hot steel can set a girl to rights. I worked for those horses, is who I worked for. I worked hard for them. Finer feet were never presented as when I finished those horses. I was about beat by the time I leaned against Ol’ Blue’s tailgate to quit sweating before I washed up in my cooling bucket.

  The kid who’d been fetching and holding horses for me all day wasn’t done working though. He pulled his hat down hard and licked his lips as a big hay delivery came in. Bucking hay’ll make a man out of any lad. I didn’t even want to think about hauling two hundred bales of sweet-scented mixed grass into that loft for restacking.

  The hay truck driver had the same thought, left her cab with a Pepsi in one hand and came to the shade by me, social as a dog. An older lady, she wore a work shirt, straw cowboy hat, and jeans, looked just like a female Hollis Nunn. I saw him and a couple other young fellas dripping sweat, moving the hay.

  “Glad that’s not me,” I said.

  “That’s a job for youngsters,” she snickered, inclining her head toward the guys working at the unloading. I looked over at Hollis again then back at his . . . wife?

  They had the same set to their jaws, the same broad pale foreheads over tanned faces that show they’re outside aplenty but wearing hats while they’re there. Both had the thick iron gray hair thing going, too, and were built the same wiry way, in medium.

  Scary, the way a couple starts looking like each other.

  I scheduled my client’s next shoeing and heard a “Thanks, Rainy,” as I got my check. Those are all good to get.

  “Oh,” the woman from the hay truck said, looking up from the paperwork Hollis brought her. “You’re Rainy Dale? I’m Holly Nunn.”

  What are the odds? They look alike and their names . . . it’s too much.

  Guy and I don’t look alike. I’ll never be blonde. He’ll always have his angular face and Thoroughbred legs. Me, I’m a good old ranch type, some softness and more hardness to me.

  Holly Nunn about scared me then, raising her voice like she had to, like I was just so deep into some crevice in my mind.

  “I said, nice to meet you.”

  I nodded. “Likewise.”

  “I didn’t know you worked this far up the county,” Holly added.

  Did she think I was too far from home?

  “Really,” I said too loud, “it’s not all that much longer to drive out here than it takes me to get to, say, the Buckeye.” Those were my two longest drives. I’m fortunate to have most of my clients within ten or fifteen miles. This barn and Donna’s place, at better than thirty miles, take driving time.

  “Ah, the Chevigny place. Yep, Hollis said you were working there.”

  “I’ve done some shoeing for Donna,” I said immediately, “I never knew Cameron Chevigny.”

  “You didn’t know him?” She asked like there was more than one meaning.

  “No, he died before I moved here. He shod his own. She did too, for a while.” I was talking horseshoeing only.

  Holly’s voice stayed friendly. “Hard workers, the both of them.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Then she nodded toward Hollis and raised her voice enough to say, “Would have been fine if it had worked out.”

  He turned back toward us—nothing wrong with his hearing—and shook his finger at the world. “Well, it didn’t.”

  “The rodeo stock business?” I ventured.

  She nodded. “Hollis was going to handle the trucking. Cameron’s end was going to be keeping the broncs and bulls.”

  “Interesting work,” I said, not sure what else to say for it.

  Hollis snorted. “That man worked beyond his ranch, if you get my meaning.”

  “Now, now,” Holly chided. “He’s dead and gone.”

  This made me wonder how far along in their business Cameron Chevigny and Hollis Nunn got. If one owed the other money, if there’d been bad feelings when their partnership died short. If, if.

  Hollis ducked his gray bristles away from Holly’s scolding and my scowl. I knew I looked puzzled.

  Holly Nunn put it plain for me, shaking her old head and whispering when Hollis couldn’t hear. “Well, it is true that Cameron Chevigny was a man with a married wife.”

  I cocked my head like Charley looking at Guy’s blender whirring away. Holly nodded like she’d said something real and gave a little tip of her head to go with the little truth she mentioned. “There are plenty of men like that, men whose wives are married. With some fellows, it’s just the nature of the beast.”

  Chapter 21

  MEN WITH MARRIED WIVES.

  That’s a heck of a thing to think on. Grabbing feed was my last errand in town, and I studied the notion of Holly Nunn’s words without rest as I pulled Ol’ Blue into the Co-op parking lot, went in for fifty pounds of alfalfa pellets—horses need their lysine and the local grass hay doesn’t have enough—paid and bulled on out of the store, my body spent by the time I hurfed the load onto my truck’s passenger seat.

  “You’re the little girl who shoes horses, aren’t you?”

  I turned to see a couple of middle-aged ladies, one beaming at the other, then both gawking at me.

  “Isn’t that right?” the one in a blue pantsuit asked, looking from me to the other busy bee. “You’re the girl who shoes horses?”

  Breathe. “Yes, ma’am. I shoe.” I closed the truck door and stepped aside enough so the door decal with Dale’s Horseshoeing in an arc over the house phone number showed plain.

  The little girl who shoes horses. What am I, five years old?

  The two women wearing polyester looked at me all expectant. They’d come from some office next to the co-op and clearly, one was introducing me to the other.

  I sort of nodded.

  The other woman said, “Well, they’ll need a horseshoer when they move over here. And a veterinarian.”

  “Everything’s convenient here,” the first lady nodded, like she was selling the second one on the town of Cowdry, metropolis that it isn’t. “I’m sure we can find suitable properties for you and for your son.”

  “My daughter-in-law does love her horses,” Other Woman said, waving at the woman buzzing around her and then at me, with a smirk that said we’d all grow out of it someday.

  Little does she know, some of us horse-crazy girls never grow out of it.

  In the way a mammal likes air, yeah, I like horses.

  The hive mate said her own daughter was spared that pining. She smiled at me like she was a friend, like she knew me.

  Then I placed her. She’s a realtor at the one podunk office in Cowdry. Her and an old coot partner. I don’t know how they stay busy. Maybe by dragging out a property showing by introducing the prospective buyer to everything in sight. There’s the grocery store. There’s a vet’s office. See that church? Looky, there’s a horseshoer. Having just chucked fifty pounds of feed into my truck, feeling like a real woman in jeans, with no polyester in eye-watering colors, I was ready to be clear of these gals prattling about one of the properties being a bit of a fixer-upper.

  Other Woman sighed happy with her wad of papers the first lady gave her. “Vince can fix anything. He takes things apart just to see why they don’t go.”

  She got in her sedan as I went around to the driver’s side of Ol’ Blue’s cab. Queen Bee realtor stood near me like we were going to have a word when alone with our consciences.

  “That was Mrs.—”

  The name this realtor lady mentioned didn’t even make it far enough to enter my ear.

  “Mmm,” I said, looking around for a way to excuse myself. Made no sense for her to be jabbering to me.

  “Oh, my daughter’ll hate it if that woman moves in from Gris Loup, you know.”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Well, my Melinda said she’s friends with you. Anyway, that other woman’s son would move here if he gets the deputy job out here in Cowdry. Which means Melinda will stay a clerk. Not t
hat we’d mind that. Maybe she’d go back to college and do something more white collar. More regular.”

  I’d just learned more about Melinda Kellan than I’d ever wanted to. At least I now knew who the other woman’s horse crazy daughter-in-law was.

  “But maybe a move would be good for her son and his wife,” she went on, holding up my end of the conversation real well. “They had some trouble. The wife, you know. It doesn’t do to talk.”

  I suppressed a snort. Can’t be good for the sinuses, that kind of pressure.

  “They were getting it on like bunnies,” the realty woman said, tittering and pinking just enough as she whispered, “Her son’s wife and that gentleman who died in the farming accident year before last.”

  “Ma’am, farming accident?” I began.

  “Mr. Chevigny, at that place way back behind the forest land.” Her voice grew stern.

  I thought about Vince Pritchard’s wife having an affair with Cameron Chevigny, that older rancher whose appetite seemed to have known no bounds. I chanced to ask, “Ma’am, who else knew about that affair?”

  “Besides me and you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All of Butte County, honey.” She had more to say, but I only half listened, busy thinking.

  Loretta Pritchard was less than married but was a woman with a married husband. Cameron Chevigny took up with his neighbor Arielle Blake, as well as Earl Delmont’s sister over at the bank as well as Loretta Pritchard over at the Saddle Up tack store in Gris Loup. Poor Donna. I didn’t mean to, didn’t want to, but I thought about Guy talking up Melinda, running sprints with her. I thought about Donna saying it’s what we get for loving someone who’s not centered on the heart, and Holly Nunn telling me about the stupid beasts’ stupid nature.

  I needed a shower in the worst way. A person oughtn’t be able to smell herself standing out in the breeze. I thought about Melinda sizing me up like I was the competition.

  And I got madder by the minute.

  * * *

  When I got home, Guy saw the angry all over me, dripping off. He backed up when I bailed out of Ol’ Blue.

  Trading off between shaking a couple fingers at him and gripping my hips, I railed about his stinking gender—I called ’em rat bastards and didn’t excuse myself for breaking my oath against foul language—for a while, then got down to having him explain his own self to me.

  That pure perplexion look of Guy’s? That gets old.

  “What?” he asked again.

  “You tell me what’s it gonna be.”

  “Well, fine. I will.” And he waited, looking all expectant even though I was the one truly waiting on words. We trundled inside and plopped down at the dinette.

  “Well?” I prompted him.

  “Well,” he began, “Rainy, I don’t know what we’re talking about.”

  What is he, begging me to kill him?

  “Figure it out,” I said.

  “You’re being pretty disagreeable,” Guy said. “It’s a little hard to take. I feel like you’re upset with me for no reason.”

  “Poor you.”

  “Yes.”

  “You want me to feel sorry for you?”

  “Well, sure. That would be fine. I would welcome your sympathy.”

  “If you run around on me,” I told Guy, drawing a finger up from my fist in a way I know I’d hate to be pointed at, but it felt right natural all the same. Then I didn’t know what more to say or do.

  “First of all,” Guy said. “I won’t. It’s just not my nature. Second, if I do, well then, what? And third, what in the world brought this on?”

  “Go back to second of all. You want to find out what I’d do if you run around?”

  He shook his head. “No—”

  “You said you did, just one second ago.”

  “I’ve changed my mind, thought better of it. Don’t need to know.”

  “Then why’d you ask?”

  “Because my sweetheart was being a bit cantankerous and I bit back.”

  My dander and my red face rose, as well as my butt, right out of the chair, even as Guy waved me down with both palms, fingers spread, asking for another minute.

  I took one good breath, gave him nothing other than, “What’s the matter with you?”

  Guy shrugged like he was fixing to give up. He stepped to the kitchen counter, pulled out one of his kitchen gizmos, and started pulling the green rind off a lime. I watched the pile of curly strands build, felt our tension grow as he reached for a couple more limes. “Scurvy.”

  It’d been so long, I was a little lost in the conversation now and was obliged to do some fast thinking to place the comment. I tried again with, “What are you doing?”

  “It’s a margarita key lime cheesecake.”

  Well, this needed no response. He knows that I don’t partake of the demon medicine known as alcohol.

  “We could take marriage classes,” Guy said, like he’d just been dropped into the room from Outer Space. “There’s a session starting in Gris Loup. It meets once a week for eight weeks.”

  Pfft, I lost that breath I’d taken. “Do what?” My mouth fell open again in pure appalledness at the words that escaped his mouth.

  “Marriage classes.” Guy said it like he was trying to muster a little dignity for the idea.

  Please. It didn’t merit looking into, this come-from-a-ditch idea. It didn’t deserve a response or repeating but, oh no, try and tell Guy that.

  He said again, “We could take marriage classes.”

  “We could pull our toes off with rusty pliers, too.”

  He rubbed his jaw. “Well, technically, yes, we could.”

  “So?”

  “So. You’re not big on the idea?”

  My breath channeled out for half a minute. “Donna Chevigny’s husband was bedding half of Butte County.”

  “And you thought I’d do the same?” His wrist whisked away, beating lime rind into creamy something in a bowl.

  My head dropped. Calming down, I could smell the tang of the citrus. “I’d no reason to think that of you. I’m going to feed the horses and come back in a decent mood.”

  Guy kissed me. Charley followed me out to Red and The Kid. I told them that soon we’d have Bean to creep feed. I told them I’d picked a fight with Guy. They nickered their blessings. I told them about Cameron and Loretta playing post office or house or whatever they played last year, while Donna Chevigny and Vince Pritchard were knowing and hating.

  Like Arielle, Loretta was young enough to be Cameron’s daughter.

  Running my hands over Red, feeling the warmth and muscle tone, the thickening of his chestnut coat brought on by our days getting shorter, I recalled more of what the realtor had said.

  “Yes, it would be good for the Pritchard family to get a change of pace, have a move, but my Melinda will sure be sorry if they move here. She is in a mood about me showing them property.”

  Right, I had to remind myself, this realtor was Melinda Kellan’s mother.

  And Melinda Kellan’s mama left me thinking on Vince Pritchard, his wants and his ways. He was with the Outfitters.

  Vince’s wife wasn’t the only one who might have been riding that Paso with the funky footy.

  The big reserve deputy’s mama said he took things apart.

  Maybe Vince should have tried that with Cameron Chevigny.

  Maybe, come to think of it, he did.

  Chapter 22

  IN THE MORNING, I WOKE UP alone.

  It’s happened before. The Cascade’s breakfast crowd is a hungry bunch. Guy goes in mighty early to prep stuff, lots of baking. But he usually smooches me howdy before he leaves. A good enough smooch to remember. I’d wear Guy out if I kept my bad attitude up. Six kinds of stupid is what I am.

  Someone should do something nice for Guy, cook for him. I am that someone and if I pried myself out of bed now, buying and making a quick-cook dessert could be accomplished before I went to shoe for the day. He’d come home to a treat.


  The little grocery store in the strip mall coughed up marshmallows, peanut butter and a box of cereal. My mama used to melt the first two, add the third and that’s how treats happened.

  In the parking lot, I saw her, Melinda Kellan, getting out of her little car. Surely her mama had shared with her what she thought everybody knew, Vince Pritchard’s wife knowing Cameron Chevigny in the biblical sense. If Vince Pritchard went sling blade on anyone, his likely pick last year would have been Donna’s husband. Given that Melinda was aiming to edge Vince out on the deputy job he wanted, and Melinda’s mama is the county’s biggest gossip, maybe the police clerk would be Vince’s current choice to take apart.

  I expected Melinda was maybe thinking about dallying with my man, even if Guy wouldn’t behave like Cameron Chevigny. Ol’ Blue seemed to idle in the parking lot, like my truck wanted me to defend my home front. My fiancé’s track-running partner and who-knows-what-else looked flat startled to see me.

  Her face softened.

  Not at all the way a face ought to go if she was angling for my man.

  “Hey.” She smiled.

  “Hey, yourself.” That’s exactly how my daddy spoke and it’s a fine way for not getting to the heart of any matter, what was running through my head. Are you even thinking of dinking with my supposed Intended?

  “Are you going shoeing? I’d still like to watch that sometime, if you don’t mind. But I’m going to work now. Off at three.”

  Diesels are so loud, they’re hard to talk over. I killed Ol’ Blue’s ignition and the comparative silence let my words mean more. “I met your mama.”

  Her eyeballs took a few laps around their sockets. “Oh, Jesus.”

  My master plan that developed a second earlier was working. Melinda was unsettled by her momma chatting with me, which made it a fine time to put a fine point on the real question at hand.

  “So, you got a boyfriend?” And stay clear of my patch, I thought. And get your mama to shut her trap. And—

  Her mouth fell open and she pinked up. “You did meet my mom. Jesus.”