❂
I tossed back the last of my coffee and set my travel mug in my cup holder. I was almost starting to get used to this ‘getting up at the crack of dawn’ thing, and I was gaining confidence. I’d hardly even noticed the terrifying signs as I’d typed in the gate code and driven onto the Tipped Z.
I stepped out of my car. The three wire-haired dogs were standing near the barn, sniffing politely in my general direction. They had never barked at me since that first time.
Nora’s truck was not in evidence, and this made me hesitate in a way the ‘by appointment only’ signs had not. This was my first Sunday out at the Tipped Z, and I had no idea what to expect. I walked slowly towards the barn, half hoping Nora’s old truck would rumble around the bend, and half hoping it wouldn’t.
As I neared the barn, I heard voices. I paused outside the small door that led into the area where the hay was stacked. I listened for a moment. When I recognized Clint’s voice, a small surge of adrenaline shot through me. I could hear his end of the conversation, and I realized he was talking on the phone.
“…another bad one yesterday. No, no. Nothing like that. Just a lot of tension.”
A pause while someone on the other end spoke. Clint gave a short laugh.
“She’s got her daddy’s looks, that’s for sure.” His tone was appreciative.
The comment sent a little chill through me. I wondered who he was talking about. Not me, certainly. For one thing, Clint had never seen my father.
One of the wire-haired dogs came and sat at my feet. I squatted down to rub its ears, giving myself an excuse to continue to eavesdrop.
“I don’t know what her deal is, though. We spend all this time working on our communication, then at the first sign of trouble it all goes out the window.”
He stopped again and said, “uh huh” a couple of times. He sighed. “There’s no doubt when she’s relaxed and loose she’s something to feel. I just don’t know if she has long-term potential, you know?”
There was another pause as Clint listened. The dog gave a small sigh.
“Yeah. Good point. There’s no real rush. There’s not necessarily a downside to keeping her around for a while.”
I realized what he must mean as I felt my cheeks go red with some strange blend of embarrassment and shock. I don’t know why I was surprised. Ranchers weren’t renowned for their progressive views on women.
Clint’s tone changed as the conversation shifted towards wrapping up. “Sure, sounds good. Thanks Kev.”
There was a beep as he turned off his phone, and I realized I was squatting in the doorway in a position to have overheard a rather intimate conversation. I also felt like someone had placed a thirty pound boulder in my stomach. To learn Clint was both not single and sort of a chauvinist in one fell swoop was a lot to take.
I scrambled to my feet and stepped through the door, trying to make it look like I had walked straight up from my car.
The inside of the barn was dim. The large doors on the other side were open, letting in the morning light. Clint was leaning against the stack of hay, one booted foot propped up behind him, a dog sprawled at his feet. With the light of the door in the background, he was mostly silhouette. I felt that fire run through my veins even as I berated myself for being such an idiot. I don’t know if he favored his mommy or his daddy, but one of them had sure passed on the right stuff.
He’d been staring down at the dirt floor when I entered, but now he looked up. He heaved himself off the hay. “Erin,” he said by way of greeting.
Every time he said my name, I was impressed he remembered it, although the more I was around the Tipped Z the more obvious it became that Nora didn’t exactly have a crush of students. From what I could gather, I was her only one.
I said hi in a squeaky voice that sounded like it belonged in a cartoon character.
Clint looked at me. There was no trace of embarrassment or concern that I might have caught what he’d been saying a moment before. His tone was even and relaxed. “My sister should be here any minute.”
I could see he was on the verge of walking off, and even after what I’d just heard, I wanted to talk to him. Maybe if I could talk to him more, he would come tumbling off his pedestal and I could see him as a normal person instead of some enticing, half-shadowed specimen of manhood. At the same time, that phrase ‘when she’s relaxed and loose’ stuck in my mind like a burr, conjuring up truly pornographic thoughts of how relaxed and loose I would prove to be for him, if I was ever given the chance.
I felt my opportunity slipping away as my mind remained resolutely empty of anything remotely conversation-worthy.
Clint took a step towards the door, then turned back as if remembering something. “It was your dogs that were stolen, right?”
I grasped at this conversation topic like a life preserver. “Yeah, my mom’s. My parents live across the road from you, you know, if you go through the new subdivision and across the wash. There’s an older neighborhood back there.”
Clint nodded. “We had some taken once.” He thrust his chin at the wire-haired dogs by his boot. “Must have been ten, fifteen years ago now. These dogs don’t look like much, but they’ve been bred for ranching for generations. They come from this one little area where my dad grew up, and in some circles they’re pretty sought after.” Clint shook his head. “We had a litter posted for sale and someone came in at night and took them all. Makes your skin crawl, thinking of someone sneaking onto your land that way. My only consolation is those pups probably ended up in pretty much the same lives they’d have had anyway. People don’t want these dogs for their looks.” As he spoke, Clint stooped and ran a gentle hand down the dog’s back.
I tried to reconcile the Clint who talked about stolen puppies with genuine concern with the one who had just been saying he was only with his girlfriend for the sex and wasn’t sure she was long-haul material. “These were my mom’s show-dogs. Bull Terriers. She got them when I left for college. She couldn’t have been more attached to them. I guess someone took them because of their bloodlines.”
Clint gave a little grimace and kicked at a stray pile of hay with his boot. “Some days the world makes you sick.”
Behind us, I heard the sound of a rumbling engine and the crunch of tires on sand. Clint straightened. “That’ll be Nora. I best bring the horses in.”
❂
“You take this,” Nora said, offering me the rubber handle of a metal rod with a flag on the end. It was like the flag I’d seen Clint using that first day I’d seen him as he’d sat in the middle of the road at dawn.
I was sitting on Duke, feeling like I may have made a mistake. In theory, I accepted that some horses were okay with things like flags flapping around their heads. My personal experience with horses, however, told me quite another thing. I’d once been unceremoniously dumped by the horse I was supposed to be learning to run barrels on because I’d unzipped my sweatshirt.
Nora must have recognized the expression on my face. She gave a little laugh. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Duke is as broke as they come.” She raised the flag and pumped her arm. The flag snapped and crackled in the air, inches above Duke’s ears. I tensed, trying to organize my reins enough to contain the flare-up I was certain was coming. But Duke just sighed and cocked a hip.
Nora jigged the flag a little more. In a quick series of movements, she whacked Duke all over his body with the fabric. She wasn’t hitting him hard, but the flag was noisy. I’d never seen a horse in my life who would tolerate that kind of chaos. Still, Duke stood like a statue.
Nora reached up and placed the flag in my hand, closing my fingers around the handle like a mother handing out lunch-money. “These are working ranch horses,” she said. “They know the drill.” That was all well and good for Nora to say, but I knew enough about horses to also know their behavior could change dramatically depending on who is on their back.
She turned away from me and swung onto her horse. She wasn’t riding Sally today. Inst
ead she was on a gleaming bay gelding named Paul who she road with a thick woven rawhide band around his nose instead of a bit. Once she was on board, she looked over at me. I was aware I was holding the flag like a grenade with the pin pulled. “Flap it around a little,” she said. “Get used to it.”
I flexed my wrist so the flag dipped approximately one inch, then brought it back up. Nora’s laugh was so loud Duke’s head came up a little and his ears swiveled in her direction. “Erin, I promise. He won’t dump you. Now shake that flag or I’m going to leave you behind.”
I shook the flag. Duke stood still.
There was the jingle of tack behind us. I turned in my saddle to see two men approaching. One was Clint, and he was leading the most gorgeous horse I’d ever seen. It was a few inches shorter than Duke, and beautifully proportioned, with square conformation and striking coloring. The unbroken black of its legs faded into the creamy tan of the coat. A buckskin.
The other man was a slightly taller, rangier version of Clint with perhaps an extra 25 years under his belt. He was leading a red horse with four tall white socks. Two of the wire-haired dogs walked beside him. Nora looked over as the two men swung into their saddles. “Dad, this is Erin. Erin, my dad, Hank.”
Hank tipped his hat, but said nothing. Both his horse and his son’s horse stood quietly. I had always imagined the sort of horses that had the spunk to work cattle would be fidgety and restive, but these four were the picture of relaxation. Both Hank’s horse and Clint’s horse, however, were wearing heavy ornate bits, and it looked like Clint had two sets of reins, one attached to the bridle and the other to a little band of rawhide that went around the horse’s nose, like Paul’s, but skinnier. Maybe they got uppity when they got around the cattle.
Then I noticed something else. “Hey,” I said. “Why am I the only one with a flag?”
❂
Twenty minutes later, I was sitting alone near an open gate. Just behind me was a large, bushy mesquite tree. To my right was an unbroken expanse of dried grass and sagebrush. To my left was the fence-line and the new pasture the cattle were supposed to go into.
I reviewed Nora’s instructions in my mind. The cattle were going to be coming from my right. Most of them knew the drill, and would go through the gate without trouble. Every now and then, however, one of the young ones would get a bit agitated and would dive for the cover of the mesquite tree. It was my job to sit on Duke, far enough away from the gate that I wouldn’t interfere with the cattle going through, but close enough I could turn one back if it got on the wrong trajectory.
I practiced shaking my flag, glaring into the eyes of an imaginary cow who was thinking about trying to squirt past me. Nora had told me to be confident and firm, and everything would be fine.
I was not confident. Sitting on Duke’s back in the gathering heat, I could feel the ill-advised third cup of coffee I’d had adding extra pressure to my bladder. I tried to ignore it, vowing to myself that however this day turned out it would not include a scene involving a herd of cattle charging over the ridge to see me squatting in the bushes.
“Relax,” I said, reaching down to pat the mottled gray of Duke’s neck as if he was the one who needed reassurance.
We waited. The sun rose higher. I started to wonder if this was some sort of sick hazing ritual: a joke the ranch folk played on the greenhorns to see how long they’d sit alone in the sun before realizing what was what.
I had myself half convinced I’d been cruelly tricked, when a change came over Duke. He’d been half-dozing in the shade of the mesquite, but now his head popped up and the energy in his body changed so dramatically, I grasped at the horn with the same hand that held the flag. But he didn’t move. He pointed his ears at the horizon, and stared.
I stared too. I couldn’t see or hear a thing.
Then I saw the dust, and a moment later, the cattle. For a second I thought it was going to pan out like a scene in the movies – panicky animals stampeding among dust and boulders, riders galloping and calling as they cut off the lead heifer again and again, steering the spooked herd away from cliff-faces and canyons and bandits and whatever other terrors a screenwriter could come up with.
In fact, the cattle came over the top of a nearby ridge at a slow shamble. One dark red cow was in the lead, walking with purpose but not anxiety. More reddish bodies clustered up behind her. One horse and rider paced her on the left, keeping her from swinging into the open country. I couldn’t see the others.
I sat up straighter in my saddle, and took a deep breath. I practiced shaking my flag one more time.
In no time at all, they were there. The lead cow spared me only the briefest of glances before walking confidently through the open gate. The rest of the herd followed on her heels, most of them appearing not to see me at all.
It was not a huge herd, maybe 20 or 30 animals, total. Half of them were through the gate in no time.
I was beginning to think I’d been spared, when a group of three young cattle that had lagged came sprinting up from behind, pursued by Clint on his trotting buckskin and one of the dogs. Clint brought his horse down to a walk as the three youngsters plunged in among the rest of the herd. He spoke a word to the dog, and it dropped to the ground, eyes intent on the cattle. Two of three young animals slotted right in with the others, but the third seemed to have too much forward momentum. It continued straight, missing the gate and coming at me.
Duke saw the calf at the same time I did. I could feel his body coil beneath me like a spring. “Oh shit,” I muttered.
The calf trotted closer, hesitant now that it had taken a few steps away from the herd. I could see its wide-set brown eyes assessing us, trying to determine if it could dodge around on one side or another. I felt frozen, paralyzed by the stony gaze of an adolescent bovine.
“Erin, the flag,” Nora called. She, Clint, Hank and the dogs were all watching me now. The potential for embarrassment was huge.
Her words, and the fear of making a fool out of myself, snapped me from my trance. I shook the flag, giving Duke a little squeeze with my legs and tipping him one step forward.
The calf stopped walking, eyes growing even wider.
I shook the flag some more and asked Duke for one more step.
The calf turned tail and ran, its red haunches disappearing behind one of the fully grown females as the last of the herd ambled through the fence.
I felt a sudden flush of pride as Hank stepped his horse up to the open gate and executed a perfect 180 degree side-pass maneuver, first swinging the gate out from where it rested against the fence, pushing it halfway to closed, then spinning his horse on the haunches and continuing to side-pass until the gate was closed. He flipped the latch down, and patted his horse’s neck.
My sense of accomplishment faded a little at that, but then I heard Clint say, “Nice work.”
He was behind me and to my right. I had to turn my head to look at him. I was certain he was talking to his dad. Instead, he was looking at me with his little quirk of a grin.
I felt myself beaming at him.
Nora said, “Alright, let’s get out of this bloody heat already.” She led us all down to the valley at an extended trot I knew I would pay for the next day.
❂
“You sound like a real natural.” Ben’s tone was ironic, and he was grinning as he regarded me from a few cushions away. I’d just finished recounting my adventure with the stray calf and the flag, complete with the part where Nora had to remind me what to do.
We were on my couch, and my feet were in Ben’s lap. He’d been giving me a foot rub while I’d told him about my day. It was only the fact that his strong hands were still squeezing the ball of my left foot that kept me from kicking him.
“Even some of the most gifted actors suffer terrible stage fright before the curtain call.” I tried to make my tone lofty, and I stuck my nose in the air to drive my point home.
“What would you call this then? Cow fright?”
I decid
ed it was worth the risk. I kicked him, gently, in the arm, then placed my foot back into position for rubbing.
“Hey,” he protested. “I’m trying to develop a complete understanding of your morning.” But he continued the massage.
It was Sunday evening. Outside, the light was failing. Inside, we’d consumed most of a bottle of wine. I had returned to my apartment that morning and, as I’d promised myself, devoted the rest of my day to writing. But after last Tuesday’s disaster, I hadn’t silenced my phone. Which meant when Ben had texted at five asking what I was up to, I’d invited him over even though I hadn’t met my target word count.
The problem was, even though I’d ostensibly been writing all day, I hadn’t produced more than a few hundred words. I hadn’t produced more words because of Clint. I had been distracted enough by the rest of the morning’s events that I hadn’t had time to dwell on the conversation I’d overheard while I was still at the Tipped Z. But as soon as I’d gotten home, my mind had seemed intent setting a single scene on repeat in my head, dissecting each word and phrase, trying to parse the underlying meaning of his half of the conversation.