Stuart left another message. He has some work for me in San Francisco. Unfortunately, as much as I’d like to earn some quick cash modeling, it wouldn’t be enough to justify taking time away from the ranch. Right now I’m worth more if I stay here and work. Plus, we’re less than a week away from the bank’s deadline. I need to move the last hundred-thousand-dollars’ worth of cattle to auction on Wednesday and transfer the money by Friday. The only reason I’ve been avoiding calling Stuart back to turn down his offer is because it means talking about Della if I do, and I don’t think I’m emotionally strong enough to do that right now
I climb up on the small wheel loader to get back to work. The engine clicks. Nothing happens. Try again. Nothing. Damn it.
Seriously?
Of course the tractor would choose now to breakdown. What’s one more kick to the nuts? I climb out on the hood and stomp my foot down, leaving a dent with the heel of my boot. Then do it again, and again. Good thing it was already beat up because I’ve got enough pent up frustration to do this all day. Piece of crap. Why does every single thing in my life turn to shit?
I try to do the right thing. I work my ass off. And for what? Nothing. I want to switch feet and stomp again, but I can’t because my bum knee will give out. And the reminder that I need knee surgery at some point, which will lay me up and put me out of commission, pisses me off more. There’s no time for surgery. I don’t have time for anything, good or bad. Why is it that whenever I make progress with one thing in my life something else goes wrong? All of the successes I’ve ever achieved have been paid for with some sort of heartache. I’ve never complained. I’ve always just fought harder. The problem is I’m tired of fighting for every single damn thing only to end up right back where I started. I close my eyes and shout at the wind as I drive my heel into the hood again.
“Everything all right?” Tracy asks as she leans out the open driver’s side window of her truck. I didn’t hear her drive up during my stomping fit.
“Perfect,” I mumble and jump off the loader to lift the hood and figure out why it won’t start.
“You sure? You sort of did a number on the hood. And since I’ve never, in all the years I’ve known you, seen you lose your cool, I’m going to assume things are not going that well for you right now.”
There’s no way I’m going to talk to her about it, but I could really use her help. Her uncle trained her to be a mechanic and she knows more about engines than I do. As I stare blankly under the hood, she gets out of her truck and hops the fence to take a look.
“Try to start it again. I want to hear what’s wrong.”
Wiping the sweat from my forehead with my sleeve, I climb into the cab. It makes the same dead clicking sound, which feels like poetic irony. She leans under the hood and signals with her arm for me to try it again. Despite my encouragement, when we were still in high school, she never got her mechanic’s ticket because she didn’t want to end up working as a grease monkey for the rest of her life. She’s also a qualified aesthetician, she completed a baker’s apprenticeship, and she’s a registered massage therapist, but she lasted less than a year in each of those professions. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. At least she has options. I just wasted five years focusing on one goal and still have nothing to show for it.
After a few minutes of tinkering, she sends me to get the tool box out of the back of her truck. Then she ties her hair into a braid and leans over the engine. I sit on the fence and drink water as a truck flies down the gravel road and kicks up dust in its wake. The driver slows as the truck approaches us and then stops. “Wow. Lucky guy.” My dad’s friend Phil hangs out of the driver’s window. “When my mechanic bends over, all I see is crack,” he barks out in a chesty laugh.
“Shut up, Phil,” Tracy hollers.
“What? That’s supposed to be a compliment.”
She pops her head up from under the hood. “That type of sexist remark is exactly why I’m not a mechanic. I’m a midwife.”
“You’re a midwife this week.” He laughs. “What are you going to be next week? An astronaut?”
She gives him the finger and then gets back to work.
He winks at me, but I don’t encourage him because I need her to not get pissed off and leave. “By the way, kid. The auction on Wednesday is cancelled. You’re not going to be able to sell anything locally until the week after next at the earliest.”
“Why?”
“It’s a damn scam. Someone, AKA a person who has a vested interest in the Lewis family forfeiting on the loan, made an anonymous tip to the town hall to complain that the electrical in the auction hall isn’t up to code. They shut it down until the work is done to upgrade it.”
“Are you being serious?”
“Yup. I was just heading over to talk to your dad about how to come up with the rest of the money that’s owing to those bank cocksuckers. There’s another auction about three hours away, but it’s not until Saturday.”
Tracy glances over at me nervously. Surprisingly, I don’t feel anything. Not shocked or angry or worried. Nothing. I must be too emotionally exhausted to care about another setback.
Phil waits for me to respond. I just don’t have the energy. Eventually, he says he’ll see me at the house and drives off.
Tracy wipes her hands on a rag before she closes the hood. “I can’t fix it right now. It needs a part. Good news, it’s an inexpensive part. Bad news, it needs to be ordered, so might take a few days to get here. I’ll order it for you and come by to put it in once it’s here.”
I nod and stare out over the pasture. Maybe it doesn’t even matter. We don’t need a working loader if we don’t own a ranch. It’s hard to imagine not owning the land since all the memories of my mom are attached to it. It will kill my dad to leave here. Literally. He’ll give up and let the cancer take him. But me? I can start over somewhere else. Wherever Della is. Great, now I’m choked up again. I guess it means I’m not completely emotionally dead inside. Yet. I can’t give up. If my mom were alive, she would be devastated that we lost it to a greedy corporation with questionable ethics. Actually, she’d be livid. They’d have had to get past her shotgun before they removed her from the land. There’s got to be a way to save it, for her.
“Havie?” Tracy waves her hands in front of my face to pull me out of my daze. “Do you want me to give you a lift back to the house?”
Without answering, I hop off the fence and walk around to the front of her truck and slide into the passenger seat. “There must be a way to uncover the collusion between the bank and the commodities company,” I say to her as she slides in behind the wheel.
“Probably, but not before Friday. The only way to screw them at this point is to pay off the debt.” She glances at me before she turns onto the driveway. “The town will pull together if you want to ask for help.”
“They wouldn’t be able to raise a hundred thousand by Friday.”
“Every little bit will help.”
I don’t respond.
It’s obvious she wants to say something else but doesn’t until she stops in front of the barn to drop me off. “I know you think it was all my fault that we broke up.”
Really? She wants to go there when I’ve got a shit ton of other problems on my mind? I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “You cheated.”
“I know I cheated, but have you ever thought about why I did it? There were two of us in the relationship. When things got hard, you stopped talking to me. You shut me out and pushed me away. That’s why I panicked.”
“What difference does it make? We’re ancient history. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Taking off on Della at the rodeo was a shitty thing to do. She drove all that way out there to see you and you shut her out because you were in a bad mood. That’s exactly what you did to me. And sorry for getting in your business, but I just thought maybe you wouldn’t want to make the same mistakes again.”
What the hell? “Della was at the rodeo?”
“Yeah, dummy. And she started to cry when you abandoned her there.”
I glance at her and jump out of the truck. “Thanks for the ride.”
Damn it. Della must think I’m a complete dick. I hate to admit it, but Tracy’s right. I did push her away. I know that. I’ve always known that, even though it was easier to blame her for cheating than admit that I played a part in it. But I didn’t mean to push Della away. I didn’t even know she was there.
I grab the banister and lunge to head up to the loft to call her but then stop because Chuck steps out of the tack room.
“Hey, buddy,” he says with a big grin. “What do you want me to do? I’m all yours until tomorrow night. I’d stay longer, but I gotta to go back for Cavendish’s class on Wednesday.” He winks and points at me. “Word on the street is she kicks assholes out if they don’t show up for her lectures.”
At first, I don’t know what to say because I’m surprised he would drive out to help. “Did Della send you?”
“Sorta. She hinted at it like sixty-five times before I finally clued in that she wanted me to offer to lend a hand.” He laughs and picks up a shovel to muck a stall. “I’m still slow on the uptake, but I’m trying to think of other people. Which reminds me.” He reaches into his shirt pocket and hands me a folded check. “I told my dad what you’ve been going through and asked him for a loan. This is all he would give me. Hopefully it helps.”
The check is made out for twenty thousand dollars. I’m stunned. “Wow. Thanks, man. I appreciate it.” I cross the floor to hug him. The sentimentality makes him uncomfortable, so he shoves me away and throws a rough-housing punch at my shoulder.
“You’re welcome.”
“I’ll pay your dad back as soon as I can.” I glance at the check again in shock. I can already imagine Della’s face glowing with pride from whipping Chuck into a half-decent human being. “I’m sorry I got on your case about Della. I was wrong.”
“It’s fine.” He punches me again. “We’re cool.”
“Thanks. I’ll be right back. I just need to make a quick phone call.”
He nods. “Tell her I’ve been working my ass off, and I’m the best ranch hand you’ve ever had.”
“I’ll tell her you showed up. You’ll have to prove the rest,” I grin as I take the stairs two at a time.