The Sweet Spot (5 page)

“Um. Yes. Well, thank you again.”

“Hey, Charla Rae. You wanna have coffee sometime?”

“Oh.” She pictured herself sitting in a booth at the coffee shop, every eye in the
place glued to the two of them. “I’m sorry. That would be nice, but I’m so busy. I
have the cattle to care for, and my father…”

Bella’s voice could freeze meat. “Yeah. Whatever.”
Click.

Char’s conscience pricked as she closed the phone and tucked it into her shirt pocket.
The woman was brash and dressed like a floozy. But… Char recalled the rush of relief
she’d felt when Travis pulled up in the yard. Her mother had taught her better.

Topping a hill a quarter mile from their land, Char slammed on the brakes. In the
middle of the road, not twenty feet from her bumper, stood a cow. It turned. Not just
any cow.
Her
cow.

She didn’t know many of the stock on sight. Mighty
Mouse, of course, and Kid Charlemagne, their best buckers. Most of the heifers didn’t
even have names, just numbers. But not this one. Tricks chewed her cud, staring at
the truck as if wondering what it was doing on her road. Jimmy had spent too much
money to buy this granddaughter of the legendary Houdini. So far, all she’d lived
up to was her granddaddy’s name, escaping from an intact fence.

“Dadburn it!” Char actually reached for the phone in her breast pocket to call Jimmy,
then let her hand fall to the door handle. She stepped from the truck, keeping the
door between her and the massively pregnant black-and-white spotted cow.

“Shoo!” She waved her arms. “You get home now, y’hear?” When the curious cow walked
over, Char scooted into the cab, slammed the door, and yelled out the rolled-up window,
“Get off the road, you dumb broad!” She beeped the horn, but Tricks just sniffed the
windshield, smearing green drool. She strutted like a bovine diva to the opposite
side of the road to partake of the high grass in the bar ditch.

“I do
not
have time for this.” Char put the truck in gear and hit the gas. She had to saddle
a horse and get back here ASAP. Jimmy had artificially inseminated Tricks with semen
straws from Dillinger, the two-time PBR Bull of the Year. Just as the heart to run
was passed down in Thoroughbred horses, the urge to buck could be passed down in bulls.
She knew they’d be able to sell the calf for big dollars, even before it was old enough
to be bucked. But Jimmy had no intention of selling. He had visions of standing in
the arena, accepting the Bull of the Year award at the finals in Las Vegas. Char’s
wants were
smaller. They revolved around an orange bottle on the kitchen windowsill and the oblivion
of bed.

When she got home, she jumped out of the truck, ran for the barn and horse bait. She
jogged to the yard, eyeing the shaggy horses grazing in the field. Standing outside
the fence, she banged the bucket of oats on the slats to get their attention. Char
gulped as they trotted over. Jimmy had always teased her about it; she’d grown up
on a ranch, the daughter of a champion barrel racer and an all-around champion cowboy,
yet she was afraid of horses. She forced her shoulders back. She knew how to ride.
She wasn’t afraid, exactly. They were just so—large.

Jimmy had even bought her a horse as a Christmas present a few years ago, figuring
the petite palomino would help her get over her aversion. Char had gotten on Buttermilk
a few times, but her house chores and Benje had come first, so her mare mostly languished
in the pasture, getting fat. That blond head was the first through the fence to grab
the oats, and Char slapped a hackamore on before she could bolt. “Come on, Pork Chop,
we’re on a mission.” Jimmy’s nickname had stuck to the rotund, pint-size mare.

Char cross-tied her horse in the barn aisle, gave her a quick brush, picked out her
hooves, then went in search of her saddle. She found it, in a dark corner of the tack
room, dusty as an antique in the back of a curio shop. One more thing to put on the
list of things to be done, a list that would surely be as long as her arm by now,
if only she had time to write it down.

“Oomph.” Dang, why did these things have to be so heavy? Her arms shook, holding Western
saddle high enough that the stirrups wouldn’t drag in the dirt. It took her two tries
to throw it over Pork Chop’s broad back.

“Now, you’re going to be a lady, right?” Char lectured while tying the cinch. “Ladies
have good manners, mince their steps, and never, ever run.”

The horse’s ears pricked when Char unsnapped the tethers. “There’s a sweet girl. You
and I are going to get on famously, I have no doubt.” None she wanted to express,
anyway.

Char squashed the bugs flying around in her stomach, gathered the reins, and put her
foot in the stirrup. The palomino sidestepped, swinging her hips away. Char took a
startled hop, clutching the saddle like a lifeline. The mare stepped away again. Char
hopped after her until she could wrestle her boot out of the stirrup. They now faced
the back of the barn. Char put a hand to her chest to slow her galloping heart. If
something bad happened, there’d be no one looking for her for hours. Visions of being
dragged through the brush, one foot caught in the stirrup, did nothing good for her
courage quotient.

I could call over to the Sweeneys’. They said if I needed anything
… She imagined word getting around town, people
tsking
and shaking their heads. Poor Charla Rae. The banked fire flared.

“Now listen, you.” She grabbed both sides of the hackamore, pulling the mare’s face
to hers. “I don’t want to do this either. But it has to be done, and by God we’re
going to do it, if I have to drag your fat butt at the end of the reins the whole
way.” She tugged the mare by the head to stand alongside the stalls and, gathering
the reins once more, crammed her foot in the stirrup and swung aboard before the nag
could escape.

“Now
move
, Pork Chop.” After a not-so-gentle nudge in the ribs, the mare clopped out of the
barn. Char neck-reined
her to the right at the bottom of the driveway, and they ambled along the side of
the road.

A breeze brushed Char’s face, bringing a rich scent of tilled earth from the field
across the road. She closed her eyes and breathed deep the pungent perfume. “Now,
this isn’t so bad.” The horse’s ears swiveled, listening. The rhythmic clopping lulled
Char’s tense muscles. She’d forgotten how much you could see from horseback. The gentle
hills dressed in early spring green, dotted with towering oaks, rolled away. Looking
down, she spotted her first bluebonnet of the year, bravely flowering all alone at
the fence line. Her mouth twisted.
That counselor was right about one thing. Life
does
go on. Whether you want it to or not.

Before she’d gotten pregnant with Benje, Jimmy would push her to ride the herd with
him as the sun went down. She sighed. Those days seemed a different lifetime now.
The sun on her body melted the tautness, freeing some unnamed emotion to well in her,
rising painful and glorious. A single tear spilled over, running to her smile.

The horse’s head came up and her ears pricked. Tricks stood in the bar ditch, not
fifty yards ahead, making good inroads into the deep grass.

“Yippie ki-yay, Pork Chop.” Char nudged the mare to a faster walk. Tricks eyed them
warily when they ambled past, ignoring her. Once by, Char reined the horse around.
Pork Chop snapped from somnolence. Char felt muscles cord under her. The mare strained
at the bit, taking mincing steps. “Easy now.” Char tightened the reins, alarmed at
her lazy horse turned charger.

Tricks took one look at them and bolted straight across the road. Pork Chop galloped
after her. Char panicked,
lost a stirrup, and grabbed for the horn, sawing at the reins with the other hand.
She whipped her head in both directions. The road lay blessedly empty.

Tricks turned left, away from the ranch. Ears laid back, Pork Chop gained on the lumbering
mama cow. Char, a frightened, flopping observer, clung to the horn with both hands,
scrabbling for her lost stirrup, heart beating in her ears louder than the horse’s
hooves.

Pork Chop galloped alongside the straining cow and, leaning in, turned her neatly
toward the ranch. About the time Char gained her stirrup and gathered the reins, the
cow gave up and dropped to a walk, sides heaving. In the onslaught of adrenaline pouring
into her bloodstream, Char’s giddyup got up and went. Her mount slowed, and within
a few steps morphed once more to her pudgy, staid horse. “Wow, Pork Chop, who knew?”
Char relaxed a bit but kept a tight hold on the reins and the saddle horn, just in
case.

When the ranch drive came up on their left, Char touched her heels to the horse’s
sides and Pork Chop broke into a trot. Char actually helped this time, reining the
horse to show her where to lead the now-docile cow. They clattered once more across
the road and up the drive. Tricks’s ears perked when she spied her compatriots in
the field, and she trotted to the gate as if she’d been lost all this time, trying
to find her way home.

Char reined the horse to the gate, leaned over, and opened it. Tricks sauntered in
with a swish of her tail, ignoring the peon who held the door for her regal highness.
Char shook her head. Another hour gone, and not one chore on her list checked off.

“Why couldn’t we have owned a hardware store, where the inventory sits on a shelf,
not running around trying to
commit suicide?” She checked twice to be sure the gate latched.

Reins tight, in case the palomino got a mind to wander, Char kicked her feet out of
the stirrups and slid from the saddle. As her feet hit the ground, the long muscle
in the right thigh seized, a bolus of agony shooting to her groin.

“Arrrghh!” She clung to the saddle, frozen, until the knot loosened. She waited another
few minutes to be sure it was gone. Running a light hand down her thigh, she assessed
the damage. It felt like a half-thawed chicken: nasty mushy on top, rock hard underneath.

She leaned her forehead against the saddle, kneading her thigh, the fear of another
cramp all that kept her from running to the cocoon of her kitchen and the little orange
bottle that called to her.

Scenes of what could have been flashed in her mind: a car on the road, Pork Chop slipping
on the pavement and going down, Tricks going into labor from all the running. Char
raised her head and pushed herself upright. “Thank you, Lord for watching over this
poor fool.”

A docile Pork Chop followed as Char limped to the barn.

Jimmy would never believe she’d attempt this, let alone get it done. She patted the
blond mane bobbing beside her. “Stallions. We don’t need them, do we girl?”

JB smacked a palm to his head and reached for the cell phone in his breast pocket.
He hit speed dial, ignoring Wylie’s raised eyebrows across a table littered with dirty
breakfast dishes. JB put a finger in his other ear to block the babble from the busy
restaurant. “Come on, somebody answer.”

“Junior’s Feed & Seed,” the Yank-slang voice barked.

“This is JB Denny. You’ve got a pallet of feed on the dock for me. Can I get it delivered?”
He checked his watch. “Today?”

“No.”

“Oh, hell. Come on, New York. Help me out here.”

“What kinda man leaves his wife alone, no help, no feed?”

Too late.
JB felt the back of his neck heat. How could he have forgotten? Busy with recriminations,
his automatic answer of the past months slipped out. “Not my wife any longer.”

“Oh. Well then, why didn’t you say so?”
Click.

The heat spread up his neck. He deserved that. “Shit.” He flipped the phone closed.

“You ready to talk about it, JB?” Wylie shot a knowing look over his coffee cup.

“Nope.” He took a mouthful of coffee, more to have something to do than for the caffeine.

Wylie seemed to consider his words before he spoke. “Look. Everybody knows what happened.
On the outside.” His friend leaned in. “But I’ve known you for ten years. Leaving
his wife, then messing around on her, is not something the JB Denny I know would do.”
Wylie’s eyes bored into his. “Either I don’t know you as well as I thought, or there’s
more to this story. So I’m asking you: Are you ready to talk about it?”

JB remembered the warm nights, moonlight turning the room into a stark negative photo.
The two of them lying in bed, neither sleeping, but pretending to, the long white
strip of sheet between them an impenetrable wall. JB knew, because he’d beaten himself
bloody against it so
many nights.
There’s more than one way to leave a marriage.

“Nope.” JB put his cup down and grabbed his hat. “But thanks.”

Later that afternoon, JB shot the last bolt to the trailer and turned to sign the
release form held by a coliseum employee. He patted the side of the trailer on his
way to the cab. His bulls had brought the goods this weekend. Even the youngsters
bucked well.

Futurity events gave stock contractors the chance to see how their youngsters compared
to the competition by attempting to buck a small robot off their backs. A bull might
be born to buck, but they all needed training. These competitions also helped them
get used to traveling, disruption of their routines, and crowd noise.

JB reached for the door handle of the cab, his glance falling to the stickered logo
on the door. He could still see the shadow of “& Son” in an outline of glue between
“Denny” and “Bucking Bulls.” He tried to ignore the surgical stab of guilt between
his ribs and climbed up into the rumbling cab, then cranked the A/C and put the truck
in gear. The adrenaline of the event had burned off, leaving the dregs of exhaustion
pulling at the last of his energy. He wasn’t sleeping well.

It was always the same dream. It started out good, in the beginning. He’d actually
put the chores off and built Benje the tree fort he’d pestered for. He let the boy
help, and the memory of his earnest face, red hair falling in his eyes, tongue caught
in his teeth as he pounded a nail tightened JB’s chest. Then the dream spiraled into
the nightmare of reality. It had been a day like many before it but none after. He’d
been in the barn, repairing tack, when
he’d heard her scream. He knew then. Not what had happened, but that life had just
irreparably been altered.