Vetted Again

by K'Anne Meinel

  “Hmm,” she said, thinking the question through. “I think you should go to college even if you don’t know what you want to be. It will be a good experience. You don’t have to declare your chosen major until your junior year. Some don’t declare until even later, but it might mean an extra year or two of college. I think college gives you a well-rounded life experience.”

  “Did you like college?” Traci asked her sister, looking on curiously.

  Fey nodded as she remembered back to those days. “I did, but as a doctor I had to go longer, and I knew what I wanted early on. I didn’t know Grandma and Grandpa had sold all their cattle to pay for my college or gotten involved with Charlie Hutchins.”

  “Who is Charlie Hutchins?” Sean asked, frowning.

  Allyssa quietly shook her head at Fey, trying to get her to stop talking, but Fey was lost in her memories and was a little agitated. “He was the bank manager, who tried to steal the ranch.”

  Although neither child knew the full story, they had heard snippets. They both knew that Fey and Allyssa had taken up guns, engaged in a shoot-out, and had killed some men.

  “Fey,” Allyssa said in a strangled voice, paling at the name and unable to stop her wife from talking.

  Fey looked at her wife, focused suddenly, then reached across the table to grab her wife’s ice-cold hand. “I’m sorry. I forgot myself for a moment.”

  Allyssa looked down at her unfinished meal, her appetite vanishing at the subject of discussion. “Excuse me,” she said, getting up and heading for the bathroom.

  “What’s wrong with Allyssa?” Sean asked, his look following her.

  “Allyssa was the one who shot the banker with a shotgun,” his older sister told him, looking directly in his eyes.

  Sean looked at her in horror. He’d seen what a shotgun could do. Fey had insisted that he learn how to use the guns on the ranch but take a class to understand that guns were not toys. They did have predators around the ranch, so he must be prepared to use a gun, if it became necessary. He’d kind of liked the class, but at the same time, he didn’t like the noise or the destruction the guns caused.

  “Can I learn to shoot someday?” Traci asked Fey.

  “When you are a teen, I want you to take the same course Sean took, okay?” Fey told her and then looked back to where Allyssa had gone. She’d not been thinking and probably shouldn’t have told them it was Allyssa who killed the banker. She had killed some rustlers too, but she knew how deeply it hurt Allyssa’s soft heart that she had been forced to kill anyone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “I do not like how dry everything is becoming,” Brock complained to Allyssa when he came to check on his crops, something he tried to do weekly or sometimes more often, depending on the crop and the time of year. He’d expanded his crops exponentially on the lands that the Herriots owned. He had a lot invested in the various fields he had plowed, and without rain, everything was going to dry up and die. Already, parts of the prairie were turning brown. “Could I pump from your creek?”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Let me discuss it with Fey. What if your pumping dries up our well? We need water too,” she pointed out.

  “Well, the lake is too far away to pump from there,” he mentioned musingly, trying to think of how he could save his crops.

  “Are you the only farmer with this problem?” she asked, thinking how her own garden was being sprinkled nightly from an automatic sprinkler they had put in. Fey had pointed out that watering it at night gave the water time to soak in, so it wouldn’t burn off until the next day, giving the plants lots of time to grow their roots deep. She must be right because the garden looked fantastic.

  “No, there are a lot of farmers complaining,” he told her, looking worriedly at the hills around the ranch and taking in the brown patina of the plant life.

  Allyssa discussed Brock’s concerns with Fey, and she agreed he could take water from the creek that flowed through their area, but he was not to pump it from the well house. Brock used a clever device to water his fields. He put it in the creek, backing it up a little to catch the water in a basin and then, the filter pumped the water to his fields on both sides of the creek. He also watered in the evening to allow the water time to soak into his fields. The fields that were farthest away were starting to wilt, and he watched the clouds anxiously for any signs of rain. Occasionally, they got dry lightning, which was a worry since they’d heard of fires starting from that.

  “I’ve heard the ranchers talking about culling their herds to save on grazing,” Fey confided.

  “Maybe we should start watering around the house too? Make a fire line like Molly and Erin did?”

  “I’m sure we have nothing to worry about,” Fey laughed. Those journals had made quite the impression on her wife. She was angry that Peter and Trever had tried to have their ownership of the ranch overturned based on Erin’s deception, and she was grateful for Henry’s legal help in straightening that out. He had certainly earned his fee, but she was convinced he would have to resort to collections to get it from the two brothers. Henry told them the brothers wanted to try other legal means to obtain the children and their money, but nothing ever came of it, so their lawyer must have changed their minds. Fey also looked up at the clouds every single day as she drove to visit her various clients in the RV. The two interns this summer were a man and a woman. One of them was black, which seemed to surprise the ranchers and farmers in this predominantly white area.

  “I was told not to bring Kenisha onto the Browards’ ranch again,” she told Allyssa. “Just strike them off our client list; I won’t be going there anymore.”

  “Holy moly! Did they really tell you that?” Allyssa asked, incredulous at such an open display of prejudice.

  “They said I was welcome, and Vaughn was welcome,” she said, mentioning the other intern, “but that black girl wasn’t. That’s what they said, ‘that black girl.’”

  “Wow.” She shook her head, imagining what might have bred such hatred.

  “I get it all the time. People wonder that a woman, much less a black woman, would go into veterinary medicine,” Kenisha told Allyssa a few days later.

  The family was sitting around the burning pit roasting marshmallows on a night that Fey had no calls, and the interns had been welcomed into the circle. They were all watching the babies, who were toddling around on the brown grasses, holding onto chairs, logs, and anything within reach while learning to walk. The babies all learned at different rates, and their different levels of expertise were amusing. There seemed to be a healthy competition between the babies as each attempted to do what the other could do. They were also watched closely as they tried to put anything and everything in their drooling little mouths. Already, a few teeth had sprouted in their mouths and they were constantly teething.

  “So, why did you go into veterinary medicine?” Sean asked Kenisha as he caught Erin and prevented him from falling in the dirt. He distracted the baby and steered him back to his mothers, who held out their hands to encourage the babies to walk towards them.

  “There are black farmers where I come from in Georgia, and I want to help them. Fortunately, not everyone is racist, prejudiced, or ignorant.”

  “Sounds like a constant fight,” Allyssa mentioned.

  “Don’t you sometimes get that treatment...where they assume you don’t know anything since you are a woman?”

  Allyssa nodded and saw Fey was doing the same.

  “Hey, we aren’t the enemy,” Vaughn raised his hands in surrender. His marshmallow burned when it fell into the fire, giving off a sweet smell as the sugars bubbled up, then turned to ash.

  The summer days continued to be uncomfortably hot, and the babies all developed heat rash. Allyssa bought a plastic pool for the children, but the ducks, geese, and bugs seemed to spend more time in it than the children. Heating the water in the sunlight left the small pool open to an onslaught of unwelcome visitors, and Allyssa was fighting a losing battle
trying to keep them out.

  “I’d give up,” Fey laughed when she saw Allyssa chasing a duck out of the pool for the third time in one afternoon. She was loving this time with the children. All of them were getting more interesting by the day as they started garbling some words and trying to walk. She loved her family and frequently smiled at Allyssa for no reason but because she was so happy. Fey’s father’s money finally arrived in late July, and they were able to pay off all their bills and apply monies to the trust as required by her father’s will.

  “Fey, there is someone on the phone that wants to talk to you about the empty lot in Portland,” Allyssa told her one hot day in August. They were all sweltering in the heat, only going outside when they had to. Fey had treated more than one animal for heat exhaustion.

  “Empty lot?” she asked as she came to take the phone, then realized that the arson investigation was closed, and they must be talking about the lot where her father’s home had been. “Hello?” she answered the phone and listened as the person on the other end spoke about her listing the empty lot. That was just the first of several such phone calls in the coming days. She understood that an empty lot in that section of Portland was prime real estate, so she discussed it with Allyssa, and they hired a real estate agent recommended by Henry to list the lot. Trever and Peter tried to interfere when they saw the real estate sign go up, but Henry put a stop to that. He also filed a suit for harassment, which he knew wouldn’t go anywhere, but he hoped it would keep the brothers too busy to interfere. The Kapatrick brothers still hadn’t paid his fees in full and probably wouldn’t, so Henry put a lien against all property they owned, although he realized that probably wasn’t anything more than their vehicles. Part of their attraction to Keith Herriot had been that he owned property, at least they thought he had. It turned out the house in Portland was all he owned, and he shared ownership of that property with Rosemary.

  The sale of the lot happened quickly, and Fey earmarked those funds to go into the trust. This sale was sizeable but Fey had some of the monies from her father’s life insurance, which she considered blood money. She wouldn’t touch her siblings’ trust funds, unlike their brothers, who wanted to grab all the money. “You are entitled to maintenance funds,” Henry kept reminding her.

  “I’ll let you know when we need it,” Fey countered.

  Henry knew her pride might be the end of her financially, if she wasn’t careful; teenagers could be very expensive.

  “What’s that?” Traci asked one evening when they were out riding. She was next to Fey, Allyssa, and Sean as they took their horses on a walk in the cool evening air. The day had been a scorcher. Last week, they had gotten some rain but that had only accelerated growth and that new growth turned brown almost immediately.

  “Fire,” Fey said in response to her sister’s pointing finger.

  “Should we worry?” Allyssa asked, squinting at the distant puff of smoke.

  “That’s probably thirty miles away,” she countered, but she was worried. The farmers and ranchers were all complaining. They couldn’t remember having this hot a summer in years. After the harsh winter they’d had, they should have had a good summer, but the rains simply hadn’t come, and everyone was concerned. Already, a couple farmers were going to be late on their bills, and Fey warned Allyssa this weather would make her job harder. Collections were never fun at the best of times.

  The fair was happening in a couple weeks, and the children had entered their horses, photo albums, and about ten different entries into the judging for 4-H. They were all looking forward to the carnival now that the three babies had graduated to a larger stroller, the other one already too small for their pudgy bodies. All were healthy and happy, and Fey and Allyssa had already started shopping for the next size in car seats for them.

  “Whew, this is bad!” Brock stated when he saw the two women. He had already lost a couple fields. The two he had watered were faring well, but now, the creek was too low. He wanted to ask about drilling, but he knew that Fey would refuse. He was going to lose his shirt since he had plowed up so many fields on the ranch, using the fields that her grandfather and great-grandfather had used in years past. He’d even plowed up fields on the north section that were once owned by someone named Roberts, or so Allyssa had told him.

  “I’m sorry, Brock,” Fey said. She knew he was in a bad situation. She was glad they had collected the rent before he planted rather than after his harvest because there had been no guarantee of harvest. Seeing the dying crops just proved her point—pay up first. She knew he’d put in a lot of work to make it happen, and hiring a larger plow, so he could get in as many fields as quickly as possible. And then, there was the cost of fencing to keep out animals from the open range.

  Last year, his larger plow had backed into Allyssa’s fountain, damaging one edge and causing her to swear up a storm. If it hadn’t been so tragic, it would have been funny. The fountain had been repaired, but all the water had poured onto their driveway and made a muddy mess that the ducks, geese, and even the escaping chickens had enjoyed. The dogs and her siblings had also played in it. Allyssa hadn’t filled it this year, saying it would have to wait until they had rain. She didn’t feel it was right to have a water fountain in their yard when some people didn’t have enough water. People coming into the yard for veterinary services didn’t need to see that display when there were so many worse off than they with respect to water.

  Allyssa had told Fey that the Feldmans were about to lose their apple crop. Even if it rained today, they would be lucky to have even a small apple harvest.

  “The apples would be woody anyways,” Fey pointed out when she heard.

  “Should we be watering around the yard?” Allyssa asked, not for the first time.

  “If we have a green yard when people pull up, what kind of impression does that give?”

  “That we watered our yard to keep down the dust?”

  Fey smiled and shook her head. “I just hope our well is deep enough to weather this dry spell. With Brock losing the creek water, I’m worried.”

  “Should I be conserving water?”

  “Not yet, but soon maybe.” Fey knew some areas where she traveled were already on water rationing. Many animals were suffering, and she’d had to put a few out of their misery. There were also fires to the south of them. Some idiot had set off firecrackers and started a fire on one ranch, burning nearly one thousand acres before it was brought under control.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Make sure you bring that bag there,” Allyssa ordered Fey as they packed up the Suburban in preparation for their trip to the fair. Juanita’s new beau was coming out to take her to the fair, and Juanita was blushing over the fact that she had a date. She had met him when he brought his dog to the clinic. She had been walking the children in their stroller at the time, trying to tire them out in the fresh air.

  “Come on, Allyssa,” Sean tried to hurry her. He was carrying Erin, who was wiggling to get down. He boosted the baby into the car seat and quickly strapped him in, so he couldn’t get out. Sean climbed into the back seat, eager to be on their way.

  Traci helped with Tom and climbed over the seat too. She loved to sit in the back and make faces at the rear-facing babies to make them smile and laugh. Her niece and nephews were happy little guys.

  “I swear, she would go back to breastfeeding in a heartbeat, if I let her,” Allyssa complained to Fey as she strapped Molly into her car seat and handed her a bottle.

  “A girl knows boobs,” Fey said in a low voice as she put one of the two diaper bags onto the floor of the back seat.

  Allyssa laughed as she got into the passenger seat.

  “Nuh uh. You’re my chauffer today,” Fey told her, knowing she usually drove but liking that her wife wouldn’t mind taking a turn.

  “Okay, you asked for it,” she said as she got out and headed to around the SUV to the driver’s seat. Allyssa waved as the two interns drove off in the Jeep. They were planning to
head for the fairgrounds and enjoy their evening as well.

  The dogs watched, their tails drooping as they realized they were home alone. One headed for the cabin steps while the other headed for the farmhouse and lay down with a loud sigh. The cats looked at them and then sought out cool shadows around the farm to hide.

  “Oh, look at that,” Fey said proudly when she saw the blue ribbon on Traci’s photo collage. She’d used Allyssa’s camera to take many digital pictures and arranged them in an attractive way that had obviously caught the judges’ eyes.

  “Good for you,” Allyssa clapped the young girl on her shoulder, happy for her.

  “This is boring,” Sean said, eager to go find his friends. He had some money Fey had given each of her siblings for rides and treats, and he was ready to go spend it.

  “Hey, we agreed to look at your entries and see how they did,” Fey warned him, not willing to let the teen ruin things for their sister. The dynamics of their family relationship were weird to her. After all, she was their older sister, not their mother. Sometimes, she knew Sean didn’t wish to obey her; that was all part of being a teenager. The school psychologist, who had talked with him at Allyssa’s suggestion, had helped him more than he knew. He wasn’t as angry over his parents’ deaths, and she was going to suggest Allyssa ask that he continue with the therapist next year in school. She wondered if Traci needed help too, but so far, the kid seemed well-adjusted. Traci was sad now and then but so were Fey and Allyssa. Leslie had warned them of the postpartum depression but the happy pills helped.

  “How many more?” Sean asked, dragging his feet. He perked up when he saw a red ribbon on one of his own projects and smiled as he was praised for his efforts by his sister and her wife and by one of the other 4-H moms.

  “Hi, Lorna,” Allyssa greeted her friend, smiling.

  “How do you manage with this herd of children?” Lorna asked, laughing down at the trio of babies, who were smiling happily, looking about at the sights and sounds and bright colors that caught their attention.