Which was another thing he didn’t need to think about right now.
“I guess,” Owen said. “I don’t know. I like a logical woman.”
“Doesn’t mean she isn’t logical,” Harlan said. “She can be logical and lateral. Trust me. Three sisters here. I’ve had a lot of opportunity to observe.”
“God knows that’s true,” Owen said. “I’ve observed you observing. And your vast experience is saying: Hawaii.”
“Hawaii,” Harlan agreed. “She gets to buy that swimsuit, do all that body preparation, go someplace totally different, get him focused on her there. Oh—and tell him you’re actually glad he doesn’t want to go to Yellowstone, because now that we’re out of it, you kinda want to spend the day doing anything else but watching the game.”
Owen made a face, and Harlan said, “Yeah, you’ll be giving him the edge on this one. Man, don’t you know how much edge you already have?”
“It’s not that,” Owen said. “It’s that I’m going to have to admit that you’re right. I hate that. Fortunately, there’s the skiing. Which I know how to do, and you don’t.” He sighed. “I just hope my phone camera works in the cold. Can’t get enough shots of that.”
The next day, Harlan spent a riveting morning in and out of the calving shed, during which he considered the possibility of hypothermia, forked a whole lot of clean and nothing-like-clean bedding straw, and didn’t cut the heavies out of the herd on horseback or reach into any cows to hook a chain around a hoof, since he (A) didn’t know how to ride a horse, (B) didn’t know how to get a cow to go through a gate, and (C) in a stroke of extreme good fortune, didn’t know how to reach inside a cow. After that came a pause to wash up and eat a hot lunch prepared by Owen’s mom, Joan, which rivaled the size of any NFL training camp meal Harlan had ever seen. Once they’d worked their way through most of it, Owen’s dad, whose name was, believe it or not, Waylon, looked Harlan over and said, “You didn’t do half as bad as I expected.”
“Thanks,” Harlan said. “I guess. I figure I’ve got just about enough skills to dump a bale of hay out of the back of a truck, though.”
“Nope,” Waylon said. “More like you’ve got enough hard work in you not to wander off after an hour, since nobody’s paying you any ten thousand bucks to be there. Owen brought home this old boy once, kid from Seattle or someplace. A couple of the cows were having some real trouble, and he just about threw up. And then he went inside and took a shower.”
“He did throw up,” Dane said. “Nose tackle. You wouldn’t think a nose tackle would be all squeamish like that. It’s just fluids. And some solids, of course, but that’s how everybody comes out. I know that, because I’ve watched all four of my boys come out the same way. Only difference is, for once I wasn’t the one with my arm up there.”
Joan said, “It’s a good thing Amy’s at work. If you say that in front of her, you’re going to be sleeping on the couch for a month. A woman wants to believe that’s a moment of awe for a man, not that he’s thinking how much she reminds him of a heifer.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t a moment of awe,” Dane argued. “Just that it was messy, but that I was used to it. That’s actually more romantic, because I could look past the heifer aspect and see the beauty.”
Waylon shook his head slowly. “Son,” he said, “no. Any time you’re using the word ‘heifer’ in a sentence when you’re talking about your wife, that’s a moment you’re going to want back.”
“Then how come she still loves me?” Dane asked.
“A question we ask ourselves constantly,” Owen answered.
Dane said, “Yeah? Where’s your wife?”
A moment of silence, during which Owen looked at his brother, the red flush mounting on his cheekbones, and then Joan said, “That’s enough.”
“Time to get back out there anyway,” Waylon said. “Harlan, you want to take a break, you go on. Ranching’s hard work if you’re not used to it.”
“I’m good,” Harlan said. “I do have an errand to run, but I’ll head back out there afterwards.”
Maybe everybody needed a break from having a visitor, keeping them from being able to say the bad stuff. Or maybe they’d never say it. If you asked him, though, it needed to be said.
Owen’s wife had taken off a year or so ago. “Didn’t like the ranch,” Owen had said. “She thought it’d be different, I guess. Wyoming dude ranch. Billionaire ranch, like in the movies. I’m not sure she liked me that much, either.” And that was all.
Owen had met her in a bar, which wasn’t always the best start, but you had to meet people somewhere, and an NFL career wasn’t the best for daily social interaction. She’d been tall, willowy, beautiful, and as animated as Owen wasn’t, and Owen’s eyes had followed her around the room whenever he’d been with her. When she’d smiled at him, he’d lit up like Christmas. Harlan had gone to the wedding, but he was lousy at telling who’d make it and who wouldn’t. He’d seen women stay with men you’d never imagine could hold them—his mom, for example, until she hadn’t, or the ones married to the guys with a different girl in every town they played—but a solid guy like Owen, who never did a crappy thing off the field and knew how to be there for somebody, couldn’t do it? Didn’t make sense to him.
The others headed out into the cold again, and he changed into a clean pair of jeans, then drove into Wheatland and scouted the wide, windblown, empty streets a while without finding what he needed. After his third pass by the Cut ‘n’ Yak, he gave up, parked the SUV outside Betty’s Diner, and headed inside.
It was quiet, like you’d expect, except for a table full of old guys in the corner, looking like the same guys you’d find in every farm town in the country. Their joints a little stiff from a lifetime spent outside, their shirts plaid, their arms ropy with the remnants of lean muscle, their battered caps advertising seed or farm equipment. Their sons would be working the ranch now, leaving them not much to do but sit around, drink diner coffee, and criticize the government. They took a look at him, summed him up as a big-city guy with suspicious hair who’d probably made a wrong turn off the interstate, and turned away again.
Harlan sat down at the counter, and when the waitress came over, told her, “Cup of coffee, please.”
“You bet,” she said, and headed off. Brunette, mid-forties, cheerful, and wearing the kind of shoes that told you she’d spent a lifetime on her feet. When she came back with the pot, she asked, “Come to see Owen Johnson, huh.”
Harlan ran his hand over his scruff of beard and asked, “Is it that obvious?”
“Well, yeah, hon. It’s the hair. You don’t see a lot of hair like that around here.”
“That’s what I was wondering.” He had the top part pulled back as usual, out of the way. If you bought your hair elastics by the package, it was definitely suspicious hair. He knew that. It was probably why he did it. He asked the waitress, “Is there a barbershop around here? I thought about the Cut ‘n’ Yak, but …”
She laughed. “Not that you wouldn’t make those girls’ day, but maybe you don’t want to have to put out that much charm. Head on out of town, past the courthouse and the Moose Lodge, and you’ll see Al’s. Almost to the highway, brown building, sitting all alone with the barber pole out front. You can’t miss it.”
Which usually meant that you could miss it, but never mind. It wasn’t that big a town.
When he and Owen headed over to Amy and Dane’s for dinner that night, Amy said, “You cut off all your gorgeous hair!”
“Yeah, he actually looks semi-normal,” Dane said.
“Yep,” Harlan said. “I’m not as pretty, but I blend better in Wyoming.”
Matt, who was six and opinionated, scrambled into his chair at the dining-room table and said, “You can’t be pretty. Boys aren’t pretty.”
Ethan, who was eight and literal, studied Harlan judiciously. “Maybe if they have long hair, they are. I don’t know, though. I never knew anybody else with long hair.” Not too surprising. The
boys and Dane clearly did their barbering via the home hair clipper method. Dane probably used the clippers on the family dog afterwards.
Ethan wasn’t done, either. “You don’t look the same,” he said, “but I don’t know if you’re pretty or not. I don’t think you can be pretty if you have a beard.”
“Sure you can,” Amy said. “Except that it’s not the same. Surprisingly different, in fact.” She put her head on one side and studied him, and Dane sighed, took the meatloaf dish from in front of her, cut off a piece, and set it on her plate.
“You’re still ridiculously handsome,” Amy went on, “but you look tougher. You lost that swashbuckler thing, but now you’ve got some … harder edges happening. Post-apocalyptic. That’s the look.”
She was sparkling again. She was sparkling like crazy. Usually, that meant a woman had had great sex the night before and was feeling powerful in her femininity. Which wasn’t something you should be thinking about your hostess, but Harlan couldn’t help it. He noticed stuff. It was his gift. Or his curse.
“Swashbuckler?” Dane asked. “What does that mean?”
“Pirate,” Amy said. “Thor.”
“Thor has short hair in one movie.” That was Ethan, being literal again. “So you still look kind of like him. But you look more regular now too, I guess.”
“If you had some lines shaved on the side of your head,” Matt piped up, “you could still be Thor.”
“What do you think?” Harlan asked Amy.
“Nah,” she said. “That would be trying too hard. You’re edgy, accidentally dangerous.” She did some more smiling.
Dane was paying attention to her now. He was paying attention like crazy. He wasn’t going to be thinking about heifers tonight.
He proved it by saying, “If I knew I could make you happy just by not shaving, I’d have done it.”
“Mm,” she said, and now, she was looking at him. “Sounds nice. Do that.”
“Want to go to Hawaii with me?” he asked her. “When calving’s done?”
She stopped in the midst of dishing up green beans and sat up straight. “Oh, man. Do I ever.”
“We could try snorkeling,” he said. “And you could buy a new bathing suit.”
“Or I could buy two.” She smiled at him, he smiled back, and Harlan thought, My work is done here.
Tomorrow, then. One short, anonymous trip to Yellowstone, but only to keep Owen company, since he was getting the feeling that it was necessary. It was clearly time to do something for somebody else, considering that he hadn’t been able to do it so far. He’d walked out on his dad once again, his baby sister was still stuck there, and he didn’t know what to do about that.
One weekend. After that, he was going somewhere warm. He’d figure out the rest later.
That was a plan.
5
Drama Llama
Jennifer’s breath was coming out in frosty puffs of air, and with some difficulty, because she was skiing. She hadn’t wanted to, but she was doing it, right? Day One of the new, braver Jennifer.
Not that she’d started out that way.
“I don’t know how to ski, remember?” she’d told Dyma when they found the rental place in the Snow Lodge. As she was looking at the snowshoes. Which had been the whole plan.
Dyma said, “Lame. We should get skis instead. You want to strap tennis rackets on your feet, then pick them up and put them down awkwardly for ten miles? Way too boring and hard.”
“Maybe I want to pick up my feet for four miles,” Jennifer said. “And then drink an Irish coffee.”
Dyma sighed. “What animals are we going to see, two miles out from the lodge? You can go so much faster skiing, and it’s easy. We won’t do anything hilly, I promise. You just glide along, with a whole lot less effort than snowshoes.”
The rental guy, who looked to be in his early twenties, confident, athletic, and clearly possessing zero clue about normal people, said, “That’s right. Cross-country skiing’s super easy, no worries, and you get to see a lot more. Try the Lone Star Trail first off. It’s flat, and it follows the Firehole River, which means you’re more likely to see something interesting. No way to get lost, and you can do that on skis and be back well before it gets dark. And hey—I have the afternoon off tomorrow. I could go out with you and show you the best spots for wildlife.”
“See?” Dyma told Jennifer. “Now that we’re here, shouldn’t we do everything we can? Even though you’re scared.”
“I’m not scared,” Jennifer said. “I’m up for an adventure. It’s why I’m here. That doesn’t mean I have to do anything stupid.”
“There is no greater illusion than fear,” Dyma said, “no greater wrong than preparing to defend yourself, no greater misfortune than having an enemy. Whoever can see through all fear will always be safe.”
“Well, no,” Jennifer said, just as the guy, whose name was Peyton, according to his name tag, said, “Awesome. What’s that from?”
“The Tao,” Dyma said. “Lao Tzu.”
“That’s awesome that you memorized it,” he said. “Carpe diem. Seize the day. You’re both right. If it’s not new, if it’s not a little scary, it’s not an adventure, right? I’d be happy to guide you. Both of you. From noon tomorrow until whenever, I’m yours.” He glanced between them and smiled.
“You’re kidding,” Jennifer said, when the lightbulb finally went on. “I’m her mom.”
“Oh.” He looked startled for a moment, then recovered. “No worries. I can deal.”
“You … can deal,” she said.
“No,” Dyma said. “Seriously? Dude. That’s not even close to appealing. It’s just gross.”
“Hey,” he said, “I didn’t mean that. I just meant, whatever happens, happens.”
“Because we’re both hot,” Dyma said. “Mom. That’s what he means. Oh, my god.”
“I didn’t say that.” Peyton was looking a little worried now, and no wonder. “Hey, I’m just here to rent you skis. Or snowshoes. Whatever. If you don’t want a guide, that’s cool too.”
Jennifer was having trouble not getting the giggles. The kid looked like he wished he could backpedal into last week, and Dyma looked so … mortified. What, it was beyond the bounds of possibility that somebody would think her mom was hot?
Not that she would have done anything about it. She absolutely wouldn’t have, and she needed to have a talk with Dyma about older guys who flattered you and came on strong, and how that was only because you were easier to impress into bed than a woman their own age. But still. It was pretty funny to think that she could be the kind of older woman that a younger man was irresistibly drawn to.
“Doesn’t the Tao have anything to say about this situation?” she asked her daughter.
“A good traveler has no fixed plans,” Peyton said, sounding a little sullen, “and is not intent on arriving. But never mind.”
Now, she slid her skis cautiously along the established track, shoved her scarf higher over her mouth and nose with a not-warm-enough gloved hand, because it was freeze-the-insides-of-your-nostrils cold out here, and looked out at mounds of cold, dry snow that sparkled like they were full of jewels, at dark-green lodgepole pines with their pincushions of needles, and at steam rising from a river that was still flowing, because it was thermal. She watched a bald eagle soar overhead and just about fell over doing it, listened to the wind in the pines and the rush of the water, and also listened to Dyma saying, “So. You said you’d explain later. OK, it’s later. We’re finally here, so tell me why I had to come with you on this vacation, or whatever it is. What happened with Mark? Tell me the truth. I’ve already endured the most awkward move in the history of moves for you, not to mention missing a whole day of AP classes, and I’ll miss another day on Monday. You should care, because if I need to remind you, those are four more classes we won’t have to pay college tuition for. Plus there’s my scholarship and all.”
Jennifer said, “Wait. Is this the same girl who’s always telling
me she’s got this, and I should quit worrying?”
“Of course I’ve got it.” Dyma was leading the way on the single-track trail, clearly holding herself back from whooshing on ahead. “It’s a grand total of two school days. I’m just trying to make you feel guilty.”
“Well, congratulations,” Jennifer said. “And I’m not sure it’s appropriate to explain too much about what happened. Why I asked you to come, that is.” She hadn’t told Dyma she was getting laid off yet. She had two weeks before the axe fell. Maybe she’d have a new job by then, and Dyma didn’t need to be worrying about that.
Her daughter turned around to look at her, not falling over, and sighed, trying to appear martyred. It wasn’t a look that came easily to her. Her hair still stuck straight up around her ear-warmer headband, but the black hair she’d been born with had fallen out and come back pale blonde, her pixie face was impish, she had a dimple in each cheek, and her whole five-foot-two-inch self radiated the kind of confidence and vitality that only came from inside you. And then there were the piercings.
“Mom,” she said. “We’re bonding. That’s clearly why you wanted me to come. I’m turning nineteen in three months, I’m about to leave home forever, and we’re forging a new relationship based on possessing equal adult status. Really equal, if that guy wanted to hook up with both of us. Mother-daughter? That is so squick-worthy. That’s the ultimate squick. But as we’re seeing, our new relationship can be difficult to navigate, which means open communication is vital.”
“Except that I’m still the mother,” Jennifer said.
“A mother with a story to tell,” Dyma said. “Come on. Look how quickly you picked up on Peyton. You have wisdom to impart, clearly. Who knew?”
“Gee, thanks. And that’s supposed to be general advice I’m offering, not my specific experiences.”
Dyma sighed again. “Mom. We’re having a moment. You’re having a moment. You look awesome, probably because you’ve been working out more. Besides, your ski pants are tight, and you have that booty guys are always talking about. Peyton sure thinks you look awesome. Hey, you’re a cougar! And you took me on a sort-of spontaneous sort-of vacation. All right, it wouldn’t have been my first choice of place and it’s only for three days, but it’s cooler than I thought, and it’s free, so who’s complaining? And you’re about to have an empty nest, which means new possibilities. Change is good. The Tao says, ‘If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.’”
Shame the Devil (Portland Devils Book 3) Page 4