I laughed. “Good point. I just um . . . well . . . you’re doing a great job. I think I’ll let you handle this.”
“Redman would have a field day if he saw your expression.”
“Please don’t tell Redman I let you do this. He’d hang me by my balls.”
She laughed. “He’ll do worse than that. You better get used to this kind of thing though, Nate. You’re on a cattle ranch after all.”
Ah, the irony.
After we had cleaned the fish, we headed back to the ranch. I finally got up the courage to run Tequila for a short way back. It was freeing to be out in the crisp and clean air. Surely there must be more pure oxygen in the air in Montana. Growing up in L.A., there was this idea that breathing in the air-conditioning was actually healthier than going outside into the smog-filled air. People didn’t dare drive with their windows down or dance in the acid rain in the streets of Los Angeles.
In the barn, I wordlessly helped Ava brush the horses. Bea came down from the house and shuffled around in the shed. Ava went to her and handed over the bag of fish.
“Here. Trout.”
“Thank you, sweetie. I hadn’t a clue what I was going to cook tonight.” Ava nodded.
After Bea left, I asked Ava, “Do you like Bea?” in a placid, neutral tone so it seemed like idle curiosity.
She looked up immediately. “Yes, of course, I love her.”
“Oh. Sorry, I just . . . um, it seems like a struggle for you to talk to her.”
“It’s a struggle for me to talk to anyone.”
“Is it a struggle for you to talk to me?”
She threw the brush in a bin, walked past me, and replied, “Yes, but not as much.” As she left the barn I called out to her, “Are you going to be at dinner?”
“No.”
More than a week went by during which I only saw Ava in passing. I would see her truck and horse trailer going down the long driveway almost every other day, but at dinner she would be absent or sitting alone with the ugly dog on the back porch.
One morning, while I was performing the glamorous task of shoveling shit with Caleb, Ava passed us in her truck. I stood waiting for her to look over so I could wave but she didn’t. She just zoomed down the hill, leaving a large cloud of dust in her wake.
“Where does she go?” I asked.
“She teaches kids.”
“Teaches them what?”
“Astronomy,” he deadpanned.
“Really?”
“No, dipshit, she teaches ’em how to ride horses.”
I laughed. “Okay, okay, you got me. That was a stupid question.”
He huffed and shook his head, looking away.
“What?” I said with an edge in my tone. His smug shit was getting on my nerves.
“Nothing, it’s just, you’re so interested in that bitch. I have no fucking clue why.”
I straightened and leaned my forearm on the top of the shovel. “Why do you think she’s a bitch?”
“She just is. She doesn’t give anyone the time of day.” He continued shoveling while he talked. It was obvious that Caleb had some resentment toward her; he was more than just irritated at her indifference.
“You know her story, right?” I asked.
“Yeah, her husband blew his head off. Probably couldn’t fuckin’ stand living with her anymore.” He stood, mimicked a gun with his finger under his chin, and mimicked the sound of a gunshot.
“You’re a dick, man.”
“What? Why don’t you say that to my face?”
“I just did.” Why in the world I would antagonize a three-hundred-pound man who towered over my six-foot frame, I’ll never know. Some deep-seated sense of chivalry surfaced in me.
“You better mind your business.”
In an utterly calm and matter-of-fact voice, I said, “How long have you worked here shoveling shit, my friend?”
“Long enough to know you’re barking up the wrong tree. She won’t even make eye contact with me, so your chances are slim.”
“So that’s what this is really about? What, you came on to her? Maybe you’re not her type.”
He threw the shovel effortlessly across the corral into a pile of tools. “And you are, faggot?”
“Neanderthal,” I shot back.
“Pussy,” he said, walking away.
“Maybe in another three thousand years when you’ve evolved we can have this conversation again. Do you even have opposable thumbs?” I yelled the last part as he disappeared from view.
In the evening, when Ava was unloading the horses from her trailer, I snuck up on her. “Boo.”
She didn’t startle.
“Wow, you’re no fun.”
“I’ve been told that before,” she said.
She backed Dancer down the ramp toward me. “Move out of the way, Nate. Never stand behind a horse unless you want to get kicked in the noggin—or another part of your body.”
I moved away and followed her into the barn where she put Dancer into a stall. “How was your day? What have you been up to?”
She threw a chunk of alfalfa into Dancer’s food trough and petted her head. When she finally turned to face me, she leaned against the short stall door with a brazen smirk, a look I had never seen on her.
“I give horseback-riding lessons to some kids on another ranch, but you already knew that, I’m sure.”
She was on to me. She must have known I had been asking about her.