PLACEMATS WERE ARRANGED ON THE dining room table, silverware laid out, napkins folded. Lee Ann re-counted chairs and took glasses from the buffet. Despite attempts to decorate, the house lacked frilly touches. Men lived here and she catered to their interests and needs. A narrow print of a southwestern landscape with a too-bright sunset ran the length of the buffet. Hunting magazines, work gloves, and equipment manuals formed sloppy piles between vases of dried, dusty flowers. A canning jar ring Dee had tossed when he was twelve was looped on a pair of elk antlers hanging over the doorway to the kitchen.
She laid her palm on the carrot cake and mixed softened butter and cream cheese, adding two cups of confectioner’s sugar and a splash of vanilla. As a girl she’d balanced on a stool in an oversized apron sprinkling chocolate chips and pecans into a batch of cookie dough in this same turquoise Bauer bowl. Chocolate chips had been her favorite, but Walker had once thrown up from gorging himself and couldn’t stomach the sight of them. Since then, Mother had limited her repertoire to oatmeal crinkles, brownies, and lemon bars.
She licked her finger and spread the icing, raising her head to activity outside. Between the binoculars and geranium above the sink, Walker galloped up the road past the house. Lee Ann put down the spatula, wiped her hands, and rushed outside. Before she got fifty yards, the tick-tick-tick of the big Kubota tractor sounded from behind the barn, Walker driving at full speed.
She waved both arms from the middle of the road. Leaving the engine running, Walker dashed into the gunroom. She chased after him, but before reaching the house, he was back, stuffing Eugene’s .45 ACP revolver into his belt.
“There’s been an accident,” he said, jumping back in the seat, shifting gears.
“Wait. What?” she said.
“Out on 34. You’ll want to get Dee to the hospital. He’s broken his arm or dislocated his shoulder. Take the Blazer. I’ll lead Howard back.”
“I’ll be right there,” she said. Dear Jesus, let him be okay.
Dee held his right elbow to his waist. Sonny raised his head and stretched his neck and lowered it again. She crouched beside Dee, her eyes darting from the horse to her son, her body as immobile as theirs. Toby Utley, in a green Forest Service truck, and Emilia Holguin in her white Malibu, had pulled over. Toby took hold of Howard’s reins and led him down the road, talking low. Emilia reached for the sobbing woman’s arm and guided her and the man away from the horse and faced them toward Solitaire Peak, as though the mountain would offer consolation. The tractor ticked. Walker bent over and pointed the gun between Sonny’s left ear and inner canthus and pulled the trigger.
The shot stilled the leaves, silenced the birds. Lee Ann lost touch with where she was, where the house was, that Dee was injured, that Sonny had died. When she came back, Toby was tying Howard to the fence. Cows wandered down the road, the calves roaming from side to side. Worn out, Butch nipped at the ones that drifted too far. Emilia asked Toby if she should drive to the store and call the sheriff.
Walker yelled, “No!”
Lee Ann picked at a loose piece of skin on her ring finger with her thumbnail. One thing at a time.
She asked Dee, “Where’s Eugene?”
“Coming down Salida Canyon with the rest,” he said.
“If you can get up, we can make it to Silver City by 3:30.” The clinic in Brand wouldn’t be open today and even if it was, she didn’t trust the staff. She reached under Dee’s good arm and helped him to his feet.
Walker lifted Sonny in the tractor’s bucket and steered to the side of the road, as solemn as she’d ever seen him, face and neck shiny with sweat, his shirt soaked. He took off his hat, wiped his brow with a forearm and said, “Toby, I’d sure appreciate it if you’d stick around and help me with these cows.”
Lee Ann sent Emilia on, asking her to call Lyle when she got home. She settled Dee into the Blazer and adjusted the seat. Forget the seat belt. She pulled onto the road. In the rear view mirror, Toby was untying Howard from the fence. The woman stood beside the SUV while the man got inside. The tractor inched along the highway, turned, and crossed the cattle guard to the ranch.
An hour later, the sun fell behind the pines on Saliz Pass as she maneuvered the sharp hairpin curves through short stretches of shadow and sunlight.
Dee shivered in spells that shook his legs and head.
“Are you cold?” she asked.
He didn’t answer.
The ponderosas closed in, the road narrowed to a ribbon. The twinge that preceded a migraine traveled from her shoulder to behind her left eye. Sonny had been Dee’s horse since childhood—a strong, proud animal whose soft color belied an energetic temperament. His suffering was as real as if she’d been injured herself, the gash in his chest a slice in her own. His blood mixed with hers, swirled and surged, concocting a vile substance, and she pulled to the side of the road and vomited between two clumps of bear grass and slumped to the ground. She wiped the bitter taste off her tongue with the back of her hand. Get up. No time to cry.
The road descended into the Gila Wilderness and the land opened with prickly pear and yucca growing out of soft sand against purple mountains. She stopped in Los Olmos to fill up and use the restroom, where she wet her face and rinsed her mouth. Goodness, her apron was still on.
Dee’s eyes stayed closed when she got behind the wheel.
“Walker is an asshole,” she said. God forgive me.