Aaron and Flora Feldmark had a little side business of providing lunch during brandings. As I came out of the branding pen, I noticed Mayor Edith Brescoe had driven in and was helping the Feldmarks. After I got my plate filled, she sat down beside me while I ate my salad, beans, and macaroni and cheese. “Don’t you ever crave a good steak, Mike?” she asked.
“All the time,” I said. “Why be a vegetarian if it’s easy?”
“You’re a nut,” she replied with a smile. Then, she said, “Did I make you happy, Mike?”
“Sure.” What else was I going to say?
“I’m glad. It’s good to be happy.”
She got up and went to help Aaron and Flora, leaving me to wonder if I’d made her happy, too. If so, she hadn’t mentioned it.
After lunch, I traded places with Ray for a while. Amelia and I were putting some branded calves back with their mamas when one of the calves, for no apparent reason, turned around and started running back into the branding pen. I blocked its way, then pushed it at the shoulder to turn it around. The calf bawled its unhappiness and its mom, hearing this, decided I was required to pay for this affront. She came running, knocking down the other cows between me and her like bowling pins, threw herself into the air, turned halfway around, and kicked me square in the nuts. I went down in a crumpled heap while she flounced off, her head held high and the other cows cheering. Yep. Like Bill Coulter used to say, things can get a little “western” out here.
After I limped over to the fence to lean against it for three seconds of rest, Jeanette swung by long enough to remark, “Lucky she didn’t kick you anywhere it mattered.”
I almost replied, “I adore you.” I know, I know. I was sick when it came to Jeanette Coulter.
Edith also swung by. “You hurt, honey?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She whispered in my ear. “I hope the best part of you didn’t get itself bent.”
She sidled away while from the corner of my eye, I saw Cade Morgan slither out of the shadows (actually, he was sitting at the picnic table drinking lemonade). Edith walked past him and I almost missed what she did. A flick of her hand, just trailing for an instant across his shoulder. Now, what the hell did that mean? I might have walked after her to ask but my balls hurt too much.
Ray came by. “Need anything?”
“Ibuprofen and two weeks off.”
“I can get the pills,” Ray said, “but you’ll have to ask mom about the time.”
A couple of hours later, when all the cows and calves were happily reunited and released to pasture, I lounged at the picnic table, gone to beer and ibuprofen with the prospect of a g&t later on. Jeanette was touring Pick, Laura, and Tanya through the barn. Edith had left in her pickup, and Aaron and Flora had finished their catering chores, cleaned up, and likewise departed. Amelia had also left with her dad, leaving Ray so depressed he was changing the oil on his mother’s tractor even though it didn’t need it. Cade Morgan was still around, for no good reason that I could discern, although he was entertaining Jeanette’s bum calf, reaching in its stall and allowing it to chew on his fingers. This surprised me. I would have thought him more squeamish than that. He gave the calf a pat on its head, then nonchalantly strolled in my direction, got a beer out of the cooler, and sat down at the table across from me. He took off his fancy straw hat, wiped his brow with his shirt sleeve, and said, “I learned a lot today. Maybe I’ll get me some cattle yet.”
“Around here, Cade, we say cows, not cattle,” I instructed, adding, “Red angus. They’re small, they’re docile, and they market well.”
“I’ll try to remember that,” he said. “Or maybe I could just hire you to buy them for me.”
“Sorry. I already have a job.”
“Working for peanuts for Jeanette and living in a rented trailer without a telephone?”
“Or a computer or the Internet,” I added. “But I do have a refrigerator and a microwave.”
“And probably a lot of good books,” he said.
“Yes. A lot of good books. It’s all a man really needs.”
“Some men.” He took a long swig of beer. “Me, I need my comforts.”
This comment from the Californian kind of interested me. “Then what the hell are you doing at the end of Ranchers Road?”
He smiled. “I have a nice place.”
“Yeah, but it’s not the Ponderosa.”
“Close enough.”
There was a burr under my saddle that I didn’t even know was there until it came out. “What’s between you and the mayor?”