We reach the feed store and I pull open the door. The heat inside rolls out at us — corrugated iron and July, it turns into an oven by ten every morning and there's nothing you can do about it. I pull the cord on the single bulb even though it barely helps.
The store is lined with metal shelving and plastic bins, hay bales stacked at the back. There's a narrow aisle down the middle and a table with paperwork against the side wall. Pig pellets on the left, goat and sheep on the right, chicken on the lower shelves, supplements in a locked cabinet because I had a raccoon break in two years ago who ate his way through about forty dollars of vitamin paste, and Hank's horse nuts in theirown bin because he's picky and won't touch them if they pick up another smell.
Room for anything else: none.
"Okay," I say, looking at it all. "So we stack the chicken feed up higher, push the sheep pellets across, and the new feed can go —" I point at a section of the lower shelf that holds a pile of old tack nobody's used in years. "Along here. We just need to shift all that first."
Sloane looks at the shelf. "Sorry. New feed for what?"
"We've got two emus arriving. Sisters. That's why we're filling up the pool."
She stares at me. "Emus." The laugh starts in her throat and works its way up. Her hand comes up to cover her mouth. "Like — the big flightless bird. Six feet tall. That emu."
"The very same."
"You're winding me up." She's still laughing but it's starting to tail off into something else. Her face is catching up to the fact that I'm not joking, that I'm wiping down a shelf and taking stock of bin capacity and being practical about all of it. The laugh stops.
"Wait," she says. "Are you serious?"
"Their names are Thelma and Louise. They'll bunk in with the goats at night. Dale is making the door higher so it's easier for them to get in and out." I gesture in the direction of the shed and see a vehicle coming up the drive.
It's a white truck. TULARE COUNTY ANIMAL SERVICES on the side in green. It pulls up and the driver swings down from the cab. He told me eleven on the phone. It's barely gone nine.
"Damn it," I say. "That's their feed. He's two hours early."
I come back inside. "Right. Change of plan. If you can start bringing the sacks in from the truck, I'll finish clearing space in here. Take the wheelbarrow. They'll be heavy."
She looks at me for another beat, still confused. Then she sets down the box she was holding and walks past me out into the sun. I hear her mutter "emus" as she goes.
21
SLOANE
The truck reverses through the gate just after four and Maggie stands a few feet back from it, waving the truck in. The driver — a man in his fifties with a gray beard and mirrored sunglasses — has his head twisted around watching his mirrors. He inches back. Stops. Pulls forward. Inches back again. Hank is watching from the far end of the paddock with his one good eye.
"Bit more," Maggie calls. "Bit more. Stop. That's it."
The truck stops right against the paddock gate and the driver cuts the engine and climbs down. He stretches, pulls his cap off, runs a hand through his hair, and puts the cap back on.
"Afternoon," Maggie says. "Are you Don?"
"Yeah. Maggie?" He smiles when she nods, then wipes the sweat off his brow. "It's a hot one today."
"Sure is."
I'm standing off to the side feeling useless. This is not a situation I know how to be helpful in.
Maggie walks over to Don and they have a quiet conversation. He hands her a clipboard and she flips through it,nods, signs at the bottom. He takes it back and slots it into a pouch on the side of the trailer.
Then Maggie walks past me, disappears around the side of the barn, and comes back two minutes later carrying three folding chairs under one arm and, in her other hand, a six-pack of beer and a can of soda.
She sets up the chairs in a loose semicircle about fifteen feet from the trailer doors. Near enough to see, far enough not to be in the way. Don walks to the back of the trailer, slides out a metal ramp from underneath, and sets it against the open tailgate. He unhooks the bolt on the rear doors and swings both of them open, then steps away from the opening and comes back to the chairs. Maggie hands him the soda without a word. He cracks it open one-handed.
"Sit," she says to me, and holds out a beer.
"Are we — sorry, are we just going to watch?"
"We're going to wait. Could be ten minutes. Could be an hour."
