Wrangler (11 page)

Her enthusiasm is lost on me as my heart cracks a little thinking of how Rachel must be hurting right now.  I’m still debating if we should take off after her.

Courtney and I are just friends, but Dove doesn’t know that. I don’t know what she must be thinking, but whatever it is it’s not good.

“Let’s go.”  I open the door and drop into the passenger seat.  “You suck, you know that?”

“That’s what Daddy said too!”

She howls and hits the gas, and I want to tell her to go straight so we might be able to pick up the tail lights on Dove’s truck, but she’s long gone and I’m fucking more pissed about it than is appropriate.

“Shave. Like tonight.”  Courtney looks over with a scowl.

“Why?  I like it.  I’m more anonymous.”  I let out the breath I’ve been holding.  “People leave me alone.”

“Give it up. Your asshole brother does not define you. No one around here even knows about that shit.  All that hair just makes you look like you haven’t been down off the mountain in years.  Clean up your face, cut your hair; I want my friend back.”

“I’m back.”

She shrugs. “You’ll feel better.  Fresh start.  Just do it okay?”  She looks over at me with a wry grin, then back at the road.  “Or Imma blow your phone up with every nasty, naked, old lady picture I can pull off Tumblr, you hear?”

I groan at her.  Pissed and desperate with the taste of my Dove still on my tongue.

“Maybe, tomorrow. No promises.  I’m going to go hit the feed stores around here in the morning.  Look for some temporary work.  Clear my head for a while.”

Trying to make conversation hurts.  All I want to do is go find Dove and set this straight.  But it’s late and I decide I’ll get back over to Crutches tomorrow night and track her down.  Fix this.

“No one’s gonna hire you looking that that.  You know they like ‘em clean cut in these parts.”

“Fine.”  It’s clear she’s not going to give up.  “I suppose you’ll do the honors.”

“Gladly.  I’ll even use the good sheep sheers, not the old ones we use to castrate the bulls.”

“You’re sick, you know that?”

She pounds on the steering wheel with another hearty laugh, then clicks the radio back on so loud my beard shakes. 

RACHEL

T
oday is my nineteenth birthday, and the fourth one I’ve celebrated since I came to live permanently with Aunt Jessie. All the yelling, the name calling and the other horrors of the tin can trailer park I called home before here are long behind me. Not that I was able to leave on my own; the law had to intervene and help things along.

When Aunt Jessie took me in and sheltered me, it was the first time in my life I found some peace. I finished high school and then stayed on here at the sprawling farmhouse, working in the quiet corn fields and rolling meadows.

From my place in the garden Jessie’s silhouette decorates the kitchen window as she works away at the sink.  Her lips are moving, but not at anyone in particular. She’s just singing away washing up the breakfast dishes.  Her face never loses its smile.  I kneel down and pick the ripe tomatoes off the vines, filling the basket at my knees. 

Aunt Jessie was fifteen years older than my mom, her sister.  We never visited much.  My mom didn’t get along with many folks unless they were men and wanted to pay the electric bill that month.

Jessie’s strong in so many ways, but these days she relies on her cane for stability, leaning to the left on her good leg, desperate to keep herself out of the wheelchair. 

I tend to the garden, but, overall, the farm is more than we can handle just the two of us.  Uncle Daniel, Jessie’s husband, passed away going on ten years now, and Jessie has run the show ever since.  She’s taught me a lot about work, farming and life.  But we always have workers to help with the fields to plant early spring and harvest come the end of summer.  It is simply more than we can manage on our own. 

I brush the dirt off my hands onto my jeans and stretch up, working the kinks that always form in my back from bending over in the garden.  The breeze carries a faint hint of a chill now. Fall is at hand and it’s time for the harvest.

I’m nineteen years old and until last night even my first kiss had proven to be elusive, let alone some of the other things that happened in the back of ol’ Clifford. 

I don’t count the kisses and other things that had happened before with one of my mom’s boyfriends.  I pretend none of that happened.

My heart skips a few beats thinking about who that girl was that did those things last night.  Spreading my legs like that, the memory making me shiver.

It is so unlike me.  Having my first orgasm from someone other than myself on the side of the road? And with some guy I don’t even know? What was I thinking?

It never ceases to amaze me just how naive I can be. If his girlfriend hadn’t come along when she did, who knows what else might have happened? I lay down and let him do those things to me, and I guess I can chalk that up to hormones and wishful thinking, but I’m just glad it didn’t go any further.

I mean, is it in my genes or something? Even as I was doing those things I knew it was too good to be true, but I just kept on rolling along. I’m my mom’s daughter after all, it seems, ready to throw my heart at any man that turns on the charm.

And it makes me even angrier that I let him in like that, actually believed the lies. Even now it’s like my heart is broken, like I wanted so badly for it to be true. Boys are not my thing, and I should just wake up and realize it, because I’m not their thing either.

Growing up with my mom and her many male friends, the ones who’d move into our place at the trailer park and then move back out again, I had the opportunity to be kissed more than I care to remember, believe me.  But God, that was nothing you would wish for. Some of her male friends would flirt with me, put their hands on my knee, and that was bad enough, but one of them did more. 

Leander. Just the name makes me shiver.  I still hear his thick, intimidating voice.  I remember his size most of all.  And not in like a buff, hulk kind of way. No, this was in a four-hundred pound-bring-me-another-Big Mac kind of way.

I remember the sound of his thick breathing behind me, the stink of sweat, beer and cigarettes, the touch of his fingers on my lower back, making little circles, sliding his hand lower and lower. 

I remember feeling frozen that first time, like in a nightmare.  But a voice in my head told me to
fight
...so I flung my head around and bit him, hard, right on the shoulder. Then I ran.  The memory of his screaming after me, calling my name, still echoes in my nightmares. 

He didn’t stop after that, mama didn’t do anything, and he just waited.  There was more.  Later.  But I don’t ever think about that.  It’s done and over.

Memories of school are a fuzzy blur.  I kept my head down and tried to make it through.  It didn’t help that I carried more fluff that most of the other girls.  I still do.  I don’t care as much as I used to about my extra curves though.  I grew into myself the last couple years.  But, school was hell.  Kids are mean.

I still hear the boys making ‘moooooo’ sounds behind my back.  One boy, David Collier, asked me to the harvest dance in eighth grade.  I should have known better when he did it right in front of a crowd of other kids. 

My heart nearly beat out of my chest, my stomach filled with butterfly wings; I so wanted it to be true, that maybe he liked me.

“You want to go to the dance Friday?”

“Uhhhh, sure, that would be nice.”  I caught the little smile on his lips as soon as the words left my mouth. 

“I’m sure you do!  I’ll see if anyone wants to milk a cow and take you as their 4-H project!”

The hallways filled with laughter, my face turned red, my stomach knotting into a ball. Just another day in paradise for the ugly, fat girl. 

The thing is, I don’t even think I’m really that big.  I mean, there were plenty of other girls as big, or bigger than me in school.  But, somehow, I got the ‘Cow-girl’ nickname young, and it just stuck.  Lucky me.

“Rachel!  Come on in for lunch, honey!”  Aunt Jessie’s voice drifts over from her place on the porch, catching in the white sheets strung on the line and picking up the low bellow and clip as they flap in the wind.

“Coming...”

This farmhouse we call home could sure use some love.  The porch is crooked, the paint chipping, and the windows either won’t open or won’t close.  She’s done her best, but keeping up on everything requires more hands than we have. 

Leroy is hopping along beside me, his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth.  It takes more effort to get around on three legs than four and Lord knows how old he is by now.  I figured him for near ten the day destiny threw us together.  The hint of grey around his snout and some bad teeth gave me some clue as to his age.

“You coming too?” I say to him and he gives me the eye; he knows when and where lunch is served. It doesn’t matter if he’s been hiding under the porch all morning sleeping off his night activities, come noon he’s right by my side hoping I’ll usher him inside for some scraps.  “You’re shameless, you know that?”

The smell of simmering corn, baked cornbread, and roasted garlic potatoes assail my nose as soon as I pull open the squeaky screen door that leads from the porch into the wide open kitchen.  I scoop a glass from the Hoosier cabinet just inside the door humming “Ring of Fire”, then snap open the silver handle on the ancient Frigidaire and pour a huge glass of sweet tea from the pitcher inside.

I gulp it down, closing my eyes looking like a Lipton commercial.

The sweet, cool liquid renews me; I’ve got one glass down in thirty seconds and do a quick refill and close the ice box.  Leroy sniffs the air, the decadent scents that fill the room making both of us drool.  He hops forward and heads straight for his place under the wooden table that centers the room, nose in the air. 

“Ready?”  Jessie looks at me, then looks down at Leroy and shakes her head. “And what do you think you’re doing in here?”  She spikes her fists to her hips, giving Leroy a playful stern stare.  She pretends he’s a nuisance, but I know it’s an act.

He bats his sad, beagle eyes at her and she leans down to grudgingly pat his head.

She thinks I don’t see the grimace on her face when she stands back up, but I know she’s not getting any younger. Humming as she turns back to the stove doesn’t cover anything.

A moment later, a heaping plate of hot country food slides across the table and settles in front of me.

“Thanks, Aunt Jessie.”

“Happy birthday, sweet girl.”  Her face is tired, but she winks and I’m amazed at how positive she always is.  “You sure you just want a gift card from the bookstore?  It don’t feel like much of a gift.”

I grin, gazing down at the overflowing plate.  She loves to feed me.  Whenever I grouse about my size or never having a boyfriend, Jessie just waves her hand like she’s shooing away a fly.

“It’s the perfect gift Jessie.  I don’t want anything else.  I’ve read everything I have at least once.  Next week maybe you and I can go together, have lunch maybe.”

She sees me at every turn.  Even right now, she knows what I’m thinking and points her cane at me as she leans at the sink edge.  “You need to love that body, Rachel.  You are a gorgeous girl.  The right man is gonna come along and scoop you up. You wait and see.”

I look down. “Thanks for the food.”

“Listen.”  She tosses her head to the window above the cast iron sink.  “I stopped by the feed store this mornin’ and wouldn’t you know, Enrique was in there getting ready to head our way.  I met another set of hands there so he headin’ out as well this afternoon. They’ll get started on the equipment then get the harvest rolling.  It’s that time again.  They gonna stay out in the cabins as usual.  Don’t go wandering around showing too much, ‘cause we gonna have men folk around next few months.”

Men folk. Like they’d ever bother me.

“You’re a woman now, Rachel, a fine young woman. And when you’re good and ready there’ll be a man for you. But, you know, some men won’t take no for an answer.”

I’d argue that I’m a bit old to have this talk, but after last night’s events I can hardly complain. “Sure, I know.”

“Good girl.”

I finish up my plate in silence, then go about my chores. Nobody needs to tell me what has to be done any more, I’ve been working here long enough.

By late afternoon, I’ve got the garden tended and I head over to gather the eggs from the chicken coop.

I enjoy being with the chickens to tell you the truth. They have the right idea. Eat grain, lay eggs, poop, go about their own business.

The sound of a vehicle coming down the road brings me outside though. I recognize Enrique’s unique taste in music even from this distance, and the loud engine that could do with a muffler. The old Toyota throws up dust as it speeds down the dirt road followed by another silver pickup, then I hear the crunch of gravel as they both pull in and slow down on the drive.

Jessie shouts a greeting coming down from the porch at Enrique with whomever else she’s got pulling in to help this year. There’s too much work here for just one man, so each year brings new faces.