by Naomi Niles
I rose slowly and got out of bed. Only twenty-five and fresh out of college, I wasn’t used to going into work on Saturdays. As a veterinarian’s assistant, I normally only worked five days a week, but lately, my boss had been asking me to come in on the weekends. “Dogs and horses don’t stop being sick just because we take the day off,” he had said.
I groaned at the thought. Something told me the welfare of animals wasn’t his main concern. Reaching for my phone, I found he had called three times in the last hour—apparently to make sure I was really coming in as I had promised.
I dashed off a quick text to let him know I was on my way, then set the phone on vibrate and flung it down on the bed. Walking into the bathroom, I splashed cold water on my face and arranged my long dirty-blonde hair in a crown braid. Everyone said I looked younger than twenty-five; when I went clubbing (not that I went out that often), I was still regularly asked to show my ID. Bouncers couldn’t believe I had already reached the legal drinking age. It had actually been an issue in my last relationship.
“I don’t know how I feel about dating a girl who looks seventeen,” Toby had said one night as we were walking through downtown Boston. It was that tone of voice he used when he wanted me to think he was joking, but he obviously meant it.
“Why not?” I asked. “I’m not actually seventeen; I just look it.”
“I know, but not everyone knows that. We get weird looks whenever we go anywhere, like I’m babysitting you.”
As if to prove his point, just then three girls wearing camisoles and khaki shorts and a guy wearing a dark vest and fedora walked past us. (It was late spring, about the only time of year you could get away with that ensemble in Boston). Two of the girls turned to look at us as they passed, and I could hear them whispering.
“Does it really bother you what others think about us?” I asked. A pained look flashed across his face. “Because we don’t have to keep doing this if you value their opinions more than mine.”
Sometimes I wished I looked older. Looking at me you wouldn’t have guessed that I had graduated summa cum laude from a small private liberal arts college in New England with an advanced veterinary degree. Smart guys could usually tell, after we had been talking for a minute or two, that I was more literate and better educated than your average person. Unfortunately, most guys never got that far. All they could see was an innocent face, a dimpled chin, and a pair of large blue eyes. And that was only if they kept their eyes at neck level or higher.
I moved out here shortly after graduation because Shadow Ranch Veterinary Clinic in Sulphur Springs was looking for a veterinarian’s assistant. I hadn’t wanted to leave Boston, had never planned on moving to rural east Texas, and—I’m not gonna lie—the first few months were a bit of a culture shock. Nobody down here knew about Elliot Smith or Bowie or Nick Drake or the Decemberists. One morning, I was on my way to the farmer’s market when a guy drove past me in a big, honking pickup, one of those trucks you see at monster truck rallies on TV, with a Confederate flag decal on the back window, blasting the song “God Blessed Texas” so loud the windows were rattling. I mean, I thought that kind of thing only happened in movies.
But they weren’t all like that. I started taking some art classes and met a couple of girls my own age. The two women who run the Sulphur Springs Library happened to follow River on Twitter and asked me to bring her in one morning so the kids could meet her, but mostly I think because they wanted to meet her. Of course, she escaped from her kennel into the stacks, and it took us about an hour to find her. But while we were looking, we got to talking about our favorite Netflix documentaries, and they invited me over to their house for dinner and wine.
So it hasn’t been all bad.
When my mom found out I was moving to Texas, bless her heart, she about had a panic attack. “You sure you can’t find anywhere else in the country you’d rather move to?” she asked. The way she talked, it sounded like the place was just full of hillbillies carrying guns and having tailgate parties at football games, not a book or theater in sight. But I’d been pleasantly surprised by most of the people I’d met here.
Of course, there’s always that one exception.
Dave Thompson was my boss, a trained veterinarian at least fifteen years my senior. He had been married twice, divorced twice, and lived alone in a two-story McMansion on the far side of Sulphur Springs with a parakeet and three cats. The only other paid staff at the clinic was Sarah McAllen, a pretty girl of about my own age. It only took me a couple of hours there on my first day before I realized we had both been hired for the same reason.
Pretty quickly, Sarah and I had come up with our own code words to signal when Dave was horny. When I walked into the clinic that morning, I paused for a moment in front of her desk where she was feeding Tomas, the parakeet that lived in the office.
“Morning, Sarah. How are the horses?”
“They’re neighing,” said Sarah. She gave me a pointed look. There was no mistaking what that meant.
I rolled my eyes and walked reluctantly into his office.
Dave was seated at his desk flipping through a men’s recreational magazine. He looked up excitedly as I came in and shoved a box of doughnuts across the desk.
“Morning, Dave,” I said as I set down my purse. “What’ve we got going on today?”
“Well,” said Dave. He took off his glasses, breathed on them, and began cleaning them with the front of his shirt. “I just got a call from the Winspears. Apparently, they’ve been having some trouble with their cows, and they want us to drive over there and take a look at them.”
I’d gotten to know the Winspears well in the three months I had been living here. As the owners of one of the largest ranches in the Dallas area, they were in the clinic every other week. “What’s wrong with ‘em?” I asked.
“Sounds like the same sickness that’s been going around,” said Dave. He put his glasses back on and looked at me for just a second too long. “And we’ve got a woman coming in later who wants us to look at her dog. He got attacked last night, probably by coyotes, and his leg’s injured.”
“Seems like we would have fewer coyote and wolf injuries if the farmers actually got together and did something about it,” I said as Dave rose from his chair.
“Yeah, but then we’d be out of a job, wouldn’t we?” Dave laughed and threw me his keys. “Go ahead and turn on the AC in the truck; I’ll be out there in a minute.”
***
Gary and Sarah Winspear lived in a one-story adobe-style ranch house on the other side of the train tracks. I phoned her to let her know we were coming over. By the time we arrived, she had a pitcher of sweet tea and a rhubarb pie ready for us.
Here’s the thing I’ll never understand about Texans: why they feel the need to fill their tea with loads and loads of sugar. Where I come from, tea is a once-a-day beverage at most, and we would never dare defile it by putting ice in it. What they call “tea” here is really just a sugary brown drink, kind of like lemonade.
Sarah could see me hesitating as she offered me the pitcher. I’ve never known what to do in situations like that. As a guest in her home, I guess she expected me to drink it. I smiled and thanked her politely as I held out my mug.
“So how long have the cows been acting up?” I asked her, taking a sip of my tea and then conspicuously setting it down.
“It’s been about three days now,” said Sarah, reaching into a drawer and pulling out two forks, which she offered to me and Dave. “Gary came in the other morning and said there was somethin’ wrong with the cows, said they had fevers and he couldn’t get ‘em to move from beneath the shrubs. Urine’s not the same, either—it was dark, dark yellow, so yellow it was almost brown. Right now they’re all hanging out in the shade on the other side of the barn.”
We found the cows resting in a knee-high patch of clover at the back of the barn. They turned their leathery necks and looked at us with sunken eyes. Dave reached into his bag and pulled out a rectal
thermometer, which he held up to the blazing sunlight.
“If this is what I think it is,” he said, “then there’s not a whole lot we can do for ‘em.”
I waited, wishing I could be of more assistance, while he checked the temperature of the first cow. Just when the silence was threatening to become awkward, the back door creaked open, and Sarah came out carrying two glasses of that awful sweet tea. It was so hot, and I was so thirsty, I would’ve drunk pretty much anything at that moment. I drank it all down in one gulp.
“You dating anyone, Allie?” Sarah asked, looking impressed.
I shook my head. “No, not at the moment.”
“That surprises me, a pretty young girl like yourself. I bet you had loads of boyfriends back home.”
“A couple,” I said. “Nothing too serious. I think a lot of boys feel threatened by a woman with professional ambitions. Plus, I was so focused on getting through school and working two jobs I didn’t have a lot of time for dating.”
Dave retrieved the thermometer and held it up again. “That’s what I thought. With summer coming on, it looks like your cows are getting overheated. They’re not sick, but they could be in serious trouble if the rest of the summer is like this.”
Sarah bent down, looking worried. “When I was a girl, I don’t remember it being this hot all the time. Not even during the summers. Last couple of years, it seems like it’s been warm all year round, even at Christmas.”
“I don’t get it, either,” said Dave, rising slowly to his feet. “I just hope it eventually swings back in the other direction, or nobody around here will be able to farm. And I’ll be out of a job.”
***
On our way back to the office, we had the conversation I had been dreading since I walked into the office that morning.
“You doing anything tonight?” Dave asked.
I didn’t like the tone of the question. It felt like a trap. “I’ll probably stay in and hang out with River and Phoenix,” I said, trying to sound casual. “They haven’t really seen me all week because I’ve been putting in so much time at the office.”
“Well, pets are important,” he said in the tone of a father offering wise advice. “If you get lonely, I think I’ll be heading out to the Flying Saucer at around seven. Drinks are half-off between eight and nine tonight, but you’ve gotta get there early if you want decent seats.”
“I’m good, thanks,” I said, too quickly. “Like I said, I’ve been out all week.”
A frosty silence fell between us. It was obvious he hadn’t cared for my answer.
“You know, here’s what I don’t get about you,” he said after a lengthy pause. “You’re human; I know you have to get lonely. Yet for as long as we’ve known each other, all you’ve seemed to care about is your work and your pets. It’s like you were born blessedly free of the longings that bind the rest of us mortals.”
I could feel the heat rising in my face. Since when was it appropriate to talk about this with my boss? “Just because I don’t bring my sex life into the office,” I said—
“So you do have one?”
The worst part was, I was trapped in the car until we reached the clinic.
“I don’t see any reason to dignify that question with a response,” I said in my lowest voice, the one that meant, “Danger: you had better stay back.”
“Well, I’m just looking out for you,” he said, smiling. “I try to look out for my employees. Once when I found out Sarah hadn’t eaten in three days, I went over there with a couple bags of groceries. Turns out she had spent half of her last paycheck on a new transmission for her Honda and the other half on rent. I told her, ‘Sarah, you’ve gotta eat. You’ll die if you don’t!’”
He didn’t bring up dating again, not for the rest of the trip and not later when we were stuck in the office together trying to calm an anxious labradoodle. It was a relief to walk out the door at the end of the day to know that I wouldn’t be coming in in the morning and wouldn’t have to worry about him or my job or my apparently lackluster love life for the rest of the weekend. It was a relief to go home, take off my sweat-stained shirt as the cats crowded around me, warm up a frozen dinner in the microwave, brew a kettle of warm tea, and, sink down into my armchair in front of the TV, thinking to myself, “It doesn’t matter what he or Sarah or anyone else says. This is my life, and I can do what I want with it.”
And if that meant watching House Hunters on Netflix on a Saturday night instead of going out—well, that was my right.
Chapter Three
Curtis
After church on Sunday, I spent most of the afternoon down at the bar on Fifth Street. I ordered myself a plate of potato crisps and chicken wings and a couple tall glasses of warm ale. There’s nothing like a good ale on a quiet afternoon to get your mind off things you’re better off not worrying about. Old Vic from the motorcycle repair shop came and sat down next to me, and we talked for about an hour. His son just enlisted in the Marines. He wanted to know what it was like when Zach went overseas.
“Couldn’t rightly tell you,” I told him. “I love the guy, but he’s my brother, not my son.”
Vic looked disappointed. I gave him a reassuring pat on the arm. “Look, he’ll go over there for a bit, and he’ll come home when he’s ready. Might even bag himself a girl in the process.”
“Is that what happened to Zach?”
I shook my head. “No, but hope springs eternal.”
Vic laughed. “I’ll drink to that.” We clinked glasses.
I went home, watered my plants, and turned on the radio. It was one of those old-timey country stations, the kind that you listen to late at night when you’re driving through Texas on your way from one middle-of-nowhere town to another. Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton were singing a duet, and it made me think of those long lonely nights just after Christine’s death. “I won’t tell them how lost I am without you,” Porter sang, and I went over to turn it off. There are some songs you just can’t listen to in the same way after going through a thing like that.
The next morning, Mama was back at it, asking me when I was going to get married again. “It’s been over a year now,” she said. “I think you ought to at least start thinking about it.”
I rolled my eyes; I wished I could turn her off. “Feels like it’s only been a few days, to be honest. I wake up some mornings, and the weight is still heavy on my chest. If I asked a girl out right now, that’s the kind of thing they’d have to deal with, and I don’t want to put anyone through that.”
“She could help you through it,” said Mama, as if it was that easy. “I can’t always be there for you, but someone else could.”
I thought about Saturday night, about waking up in the middle of the night to find a girl in my bed, and shame blossomed on my face.
“Anyway,” she said, “what have you got going on today?”
I took off my hat and set it down on the linoleum countertop. “Well, Dad and I are going out trail riding. I’m not looking forward to it, as hot as it’s been.”
“It’s a shame you can’t stay inside today where it’s cool.”
“If I thought I had that option, I would, believe me.” I poured myself a glass of iced tea from the pitcher that Mama had just made. “Anyway, a bunch of us are heading us toward Rio Pass. They say the temperature is supposed to get up into the hundreds, so I hope Dad brought a lot of water.”
Hearing his name called, Dad came shuffling out of the back room. He was wearing a pair of faded denim jeans with torn knees and a cactus-print t-shirt. “Yeah, I bought water,” he said. “You think I’m stupid?”
“It’s getting bad out there,” I said. “They were saying on the radio this morning that there’s been reports of livestock dying because they can’t take the heat. Farmers going out to feed their goats, and all the goats have died. This keeps up for too long, and you might not have to worry about keeping the hogs penned.”
“Well, they got out again last night,” said Dad, scowlin
g. “Between the heat and the coyotes and them digging holes in the yard, we’re not going to have ‘em for much longer. I’ve tried, but there’s only so much I can do.”
He covered his face with his balled-up fists and sank down into his chair in frustration. I recognized that look: it was the look of a man who had thrown all his energy into a problem only to be defeated by it.
“And I don’t care what Darren says,” he said, “I’ve tried penning them up, and it don’t work. They either knock down the pen, or they dig their way out of it. I might just have to sell ‘em and cut my losses. At least we’ve still got the cows and the goats, and they’re not trying to escape.”
He led me outside into the back pasture. Sure enough, there were holes all the way down into the dirt, as if the hogs were trying to dig their way to China. “You know, Dad,” I said, “you ought to do what we used to do with the dogs when they got loose: get some rope and tie it around their necks and tie the other end of the rope to a fencepost.”
“Ain’t got enough rope,” said Dad.
“I’ll get some when I go to the store on my way home tonight. I guarantee you those hogs will never get out again, not if they can’t move more than twenty feet.”
I went back into the house and drank the rest of my tea. Through the kitchen window, Mama and I could see Dad kicking the fence-posts in frustration.
“Might be time to start thinkin’ about putting him out to pasture,” I said quietly.
“He knows it’s about time for him to hang up his spurs,” said Mama. “He just can’t bring himself to do it.”
“Well, keep working on him. One of these days, that heat is gonna catch up with him. I’d rather he quit before it got to that point. Honestly, I don’t even know why he insisted on going on this trail ride. A man in his health, at his age, nothing good can come of it.”
“I wish both of you would stay in and spend the day with me,” said Mama sadly. “I hate to think of my boys out there in the blazing summer heat, being set upon by rattlers and chiggers and fire ants.”