Dead Stop (2 page)

“Uh huh. Is it
the job hunting, or your mom?”

“It’s just the
same old thing. No big deal. How about you, any luck on a job?”

“Sort of,”
Harley slowed to a stop as a toddler in overalls chased a dachshund across the
street in front of them, with his mom screaming bloody murder not far behind.
She caught him on the other side, scooped him up, and started whaling away at
his butt while glaring in all directions as if daring somebody to say anything
about it. Neither Harley nor Deke were so inclined. They drove onwards, leaving
the scene behind.

“Sort of?”
Deke pressed.

“Yeah. County
Electric told me I can have old man Foley’s job reading and installing meters
when he retires. Of course that’s still not for about a year. So I guess I’ll
just hang loose and pick up a little here and there till then.”

“County
Electric? Sounds pretty good. I hear working for the county can be a sweet
gig.”

“It suits me,”
Harley nodded. “I’d get to get out and drive around, not be stuck indoors all
day. And the county pays benefits. I’d be pretty much set.”

“Yep,” Deke
agreed with little conviction. “I guess you got it made.”

The truck
turned onto Main Street and the boy watched in silence as the row of ancient
brick buildings glided past. About half were boarded shut, and the other half
all owned by people in their sixties or seventies…people hanging on simply
because they didn’t know anything else to do. The recently opened Superstore. six
miles to the north in Craigsford, now got most of the business anyway. Deke
figured in ten more years the whole street would most likely be deserted.

“You betcha,”
Harley mused cheerfully aloud, “The house is already paid for and so is my
truck.” He gave the door an enthusiastic pat that reverberated through the cab.
“But you know what I mean…you got the same sweet setup coming.”

Deke realized
it was true, as far as it went.

The little
house he had been born and raised in had been paid off long ago. And the same
held true for the old Ford four-door sedan his mom let him drive to go shopping
or hunt work.

Yep, lucky
me.

He pictured
the little ramshackle house on the quarter acre lot in his head. The porch
already had a bit of a droop at one corner, and the shingles were now bleached
white and starting to curl with age.  The paint was lumpy and flaking off
in places because his Dad had simply painted it directly on top of the old
paint a few years back…right before he left for parts unknown. The wood revealed
underneath was gray, and the whole place shook if somebody stomped their feet.

“Oh yeah, lucky
me,” Deke muttered half aloud. “One day all that will be mine.”

Harley cast a
sidelong glance at his younger passenger.

“Okay, dude,” he
sighed, then squinted narrowly at Deke, “I can tell this has gotten serious.
You have let this whole bummed out thing take over your world and it’s time for
an intervention.”

Suddenly Deke
wished he had kept his mouth shut.

“Forget it,
Harley. I’m fine.”

“Nope, it’s too
late for that. Ol’ Harl is here to help, and he has a plan.”

“A plan?” The
young redneck cast a nervous look at his companion.

“Yessir, a plan.
It’s time to get you focused on other things, and I know just how to do it. All
I need from you is to make a leap of faith and agree to go along with it…right
now.”

“Right now? I
haven’t heard what the plan is yet.”

“Yep, right now.
I promise it ain’t anything illegal, physically dangerous, and it won’t even
get you in trouble with your Mom. Now you can’t complain about terms like
that!”

Deke considered
those conditions with deep suspicion. They ruled out most of his usual worries
when it came to hunting something to do, but still…”

“C’mon Deke, I’m
your friend. Right?”

“Right,” he
agreed with slow caution.

“And you trust
me, right? You understand I would never have you agree to something harmful to
you. Okay?”

“Okaaaayyyyy…”

“So, I’m saying
it’s leap of faith time. Promise me you will go along with this idea, and I
promise you will be a better man for it.”

Now
that
sounded ominous. Things involved in becoming a “better man” had a way of
including unpleasantness.

“I don’t know…”

“C’mon Deke.
Promise me. You got my word you will be okay.”

Deke tipped up
his hat up and stared at his smiling friend. He didn’t trust this, but at the
same time didn’t want to offend the only friend he currently had.

“And you promise
this won’t get me in trouble with either my Mom or the law?”

“Word of honor,
my man. Hell, your mom might actually approve.”

This pretty much
eliminated anything objectionable Deke could imagine, but he hated committing
himself like this. Still, if it wasn’t dangerous, illegal, or going to get his
mom on his ass…why the hell not? It wasn’t like he was doing anything else
important anyway.

“Okay, Harley,”
he sighed. “I can’t believe I’m doing this…but okay.”

“You promise?”

“Yes.” He closed
his eyes and swallowed. “I promise.”

“Great! I’ll
pick us up some Cokes and we’ll go up to the old water tower where I can tell
you the plan.”

“Swell,” Deke
grumbled. “Somehow I bet I’m just going to looooveee this.” 

###

Afternoon -
Rachel

“Well, Doc? Is
she going to be alright?”

Rachel stood up
from the injured lamb, wiping her brow in the humid Texas heat with her
forearm. Her normally blonde hair lay dark and sticky against her head. She
still hadn’t got used to how late in the year the heat lingered down this far
south.

The other ewes
milled about her and their fallen companion. They filled the pen with their
woolly bodies and made the hot day seem even worse.  Their proximity,
their combined body heat, and the smell of lanolin that came with it,
threatened to make her head swim. The approaching storm with its cooler weather
couldn’t come fast enough for her.

She looked over
and grimaced at the old man asking the question. Normally, she would have
composed an optimistic but professionally guarded response to the query,
however Clinton Hollis was one of her best clients and about as good a friend
as a professional relationship would allow.

 “Well,
I’ve sewn her up.” She indicated the bloody mass of wool on the ground in front
of her. “Which is pretty much all I can do. And you know how it is with sheep.
When you’ve got one down for pretty much any reason, things don’t look
promising…and this one has been chewed up pretty good. Did you see what did
it?”

“Yeah.” The old
man leaned rested his arms on the top board of the fence and watched as she
started to pack her equipment. “It was a dog. Black and white. Looked like one
of those collie type dogs. Kind of sad and ironic, if you know what I mean.”

Rachel nodded in
understanding.

Sometimes people
didn’t want an animal anymore, and for some reason they thought turning them
loose out in the countryside was the best way to deal with the situation. Or as
far as she knew, maybe it was their way of not dealing with the situation at
all. Either way, the result was the same. Cold, starving, and with none of the
experience or instincts necessary to successfully hunt for wild game, they
invariably turned to attacking livestock…even the ones who had originally been
bred to protect sheep.

“Did you get
it?”

“Yeah.”

 There was
no hint of braggadocio in the farmer’s voice, the type she had so often seen in
men who successfully fired a bullet into something and caused it to die…which
counted as another of the things she liked about Clinton. He didn’t think
compassion and manliness were mutually exclusive. He had an old fashioned
courtliness to him which ran deeper than mere manners.

After Matt had
died, he had found reasons to do business with her going above and beyond the
call of good animal husbandry. She had been new to Masonfield at the time, and
most folks didn’t quite know how to approach their new veterinarian whose
husband had been killed only three weeks after their arrival. Both grief
stricken and financially locked into a new clinic she had borrowed heavily to
build, it looked at the time like both her personal and professional lives were
about to implode before they ever got truly started.

But then Clinton
Hollis saved the day.

When everybody
else had drawn back in consternation, not knowing how to deal with this tragic
stranger in their midst, Clinton stepped forward and started sending her
business. One week after the funeral he had showed up in her driveway with a
horse needing its teeth floated. Three days later, he called her out to palpate
his entire herd of cows in order to see which were pregnant and which needed to
be rebred…a practice few farmers bothered with anymore.  Then it started
to become obvious something was up when he called her out again and probably
became the first farmer in the entire United States to get all his barn cats
caught up on their vaccinations. But by that time other farmers and clients
caught the message and started sending her work too.

Suddenly, so
many sick animals descended on her office it seemed like the entire town had
either a farm animal or pet needing something done for it.

For a while
there, Rachel had been so busy and tired she hadn’t known what to do with
herself. All of her kennels had been full, and she had been run ragged with
farm calls. In hindsight, she knew the deluge of business was what got her
through the worst of the grief and despair. At the same time it also broke
through the discomfort a lot of people had in dealing with her. Over the course
of the next eighteen months she found a community she could be part of, and it
embraced its new veterinarian with open arms.

As far as Rachel
Sutherland was concerned, Clinton Hollis had saved her life.

 “The body
is around back of the barn, if you want to see it.” The farmer gestured with
his thumb.  “I don’t think it was sick though. Just hungry.”

“I’ll pass,” She
peeled the bloodstained gloves from her hands and dropped them into a little
baggie to throw away later. “Unless you want me to dispose of it for you, that
is.”

“Naw. I’ll take
care of it, Doc. I just put it back there in case you needed it for testing or
something along those lines.”

She pursed her
lips in thought, then shook her head.

“No, I don’t
think so. From the way you said it behaved, and from the looks of this, there
aren’t any signs of something neurological going on. Like you said, it was just
hungry.”

She picked up
her bag from the packed ground of the animal pen, and headed for the gate
Clinton had already pulled open for her. He was dressed to leave for a dinner
at the Knights of Columbus Hall. She knew if that hadn’t been the case he would
have been right down on the ground with her in the pen beside the ewe. As it
was, she was well aware Kirstin Hollis was waiting for him, and figured she
could do him a favor by wrapping this up and getting him on his way.

“Speaking of
hungry, Clint, you might want to feed poor Kirstin before she takes off without
you. There isn’t anything else we can do here.”

“You sure?” He
closed the gate after she walked through and peered over the top at the wounded
animal.

“If it gets back
on its feet by the time you return tonight, it will probably make it. If not,
it most likely won’t make it through the night.” She glanced over at Clinton’s
truck where she could see Kirstin’s silhouette in the window. “On the other
hand,
you
might not make it through the night if you keep your wife
sitting in that truck much longer.”

“Well, if you’re
sure…”

“Go!” she urged
and pointed firmly at his truck. “I’ll follow you two out and close the gate
behind you since I’m already dirty.”

“Okay, okay,
young Missy,” he huffed in mock indignation as they walked towards their
vehicles “I’m going. It’s a sad state the world has come to when a young lady
insists on closing the gate for
me
.”

“It’s the
twenty-first century,” she chuckled back. “You have to let us ‘young ladies’
practice a little chivalry now and then too. It’s good for us.”

“Oh, well if
it’s good for you...” he rolled his eyes then grinned at her as he opened the
door to his truck. “So, are we going to see you tonight at the dinner? Kirstin
and I can see to it you have a place.”

“Not tonight,
Clint,” Rachel called back as she rounded his truck to get to her own. “I’ve
still got a dental cleaning on Miss Tatum’s cat waiting for me back at the
clinic. After that I think I’ll just go out to the truck stop and grab a bite
before hitting the bed. I won’t be fit for anything but the Textro tonight
anyway. You two have a good time, and let me know how it works out with the
ewe.”

“Will do.”

She waved and
got into her own truck.

The offer to
have dinner with them had been attractive. Clint and Kirsten were good company
and it had been forever since she went out and had a nice dinner with people
she liked. But she really did have the dental to do, and there just wasn’t time
to clean up and change into a nice outfit afterwards.

Besides, the
Knights of Columbus dinner would be filled with a lot of her clients, many of
whom would be eager to corner her and ask questions about their pets and their
various ailments. Most didn’t realize it was hard for her to remember all of
their pet’s different needs and conditions without her charts for reference. On
the other hand, the Textro mainly served out-of-towners, truckers and kids
hunting a place to eat out late, meaning the likelihood of her getting to eat
her meal in peace would be much higher.