Page 4 of Grab The Bull

Chapter 4:

Ryzer

“Yeah, feel little bit like an asshole now, don’t ya?” Deidre sneered at Ryzer as he poured the poor, rattled thing in their guest bed a bowl of chili.

“Shut it,” he huffed.

The reason his aunt and he worked was due in part that they were more like siblings than aunt and nephew. She was only about 9 years older than him. His mom was the eldest daughter to the Bitterroot herd, followed by one younger brother that didn’t make it long enough to have any young of his own, and then Dee-Dee a while after. It was a complicated mess, but they didn’t know any other way. Because they were so close, she didn’t get disappointed when he was mean to her. She got even.

Which came in the form as a wooden spoon upside his noggin. Ryzer hissed, “Son of a goat’s ass! Dee-Dee!”

“What? Slipped.” She dropped the wooden spoon onto the kitchen counter. He glared at her, thinking up all the ways he could drop kick her or toss her off the porch into the chicken pen. Then, not giving into impulse, he took up the plate of cornbread, the bowl of chili, another glass of water, and stacked it all on the tray. While he didn’t expect Daisy to meet them at the dining table in her state, she couldn’t starve in the backroom.

He turned and found her hobbled up against the side of the doorframe. Ryzer sighed, setting the tray on the table then grabbing the wobbly legged woman by the armpits. She couldn’t writhe or fight him too hard with ribs as bruised as hers. Didn’t stop her from mean mugging. Daisy glared holes through his skull as he sat out her dinner then sank into the chair near hers. Deirdre, however, suspiciously didn’t sit with them. He watched, speechless, as she took her bowl with a fat chunk of corn bread out onto the front porch.

As the screen door creaked open, he watched his aunt saunter out into the afternoon sun and sit among the sleeping pups and the other farm hands spread out on the porch, their bellies full already. The screen door thwacked against the frame, essentially putting a curtain between the pair inside and the crowd outside.

“I was making my way,” Daisy muttered under her breath.

“To an early grave,” he rolled his eyes. Scooping up a hefty spoonful of beans and vegetables, he sprinkled some of the crumbly bread onto his bite. He could feel her eyes on him, and he waited for her to decide her fury wasn’t worth missing out on a good meal. While he did feel like an asshole, beating an already down-trodden pup, nothing he said was wrong. Maybe it was his bias, or maybe he was just stewing too long on all the sour things in his mouth, but Daisy didn’t deserve to have a mean ole bull jump down her throat. Even if she is the one who decided to fly a broken ship alone into the back field. She eventually bent her head and ate her chili. There they sat, two bull-headed people, shoveling food in their maws and not biting each other’s heads off. It was something close to peaceful until he finished his bowl first. Ryzer climbed to his hooves. Glancing at her for the first time in several minutes, he found her hunched over her bowl. Shoulders rising and falling in soft shutters, tears speckled the tablecloth. He shifted, like he might ask if she was hurting, when she swiped at her face with the back of her hand.

Ryzer slumped away, putting his bowl into the already sudsy sink and then leaving out the front door. I can’t help with those tears, little flower. He’d already spent all his tears on dead parents long ago. All he had left were the good memories, funny stories, and the occasional sting when he thought of something he wished one of them was there to witness. It was a good sting. The kind that reminded him they were there, that they still meant something, and he’d never be alone even when he was the last Bitterroot in the ground.

Morning came just as bitter and cold. The sun broke over the horizon, turning the field of wheat into golden waves. Roosters belting out the song of their people was the only alarm Ryzer ever needed. His hooves were against the groaning floorboards, making his way to the bathroom. The main house was a singular floor with four bedrooms, a kitchen that was more of a dining room, and a massive wrap around porch. The bunk house attached to the porch was a three-story, barn-like building full of bunks of varying sizes. It had its own kitchen and showers, yet most of his farm hands just ate whatever Dee-Dee cooked.

Once his horns, teeth, and hooves were brushed to his liking, he headed to the kitchen to find his aunt leaning over her morning coffee like it might steam life back into her. He gave her shoulder a good morning squeeze, taking his already filled thermos from next to the coffee pot. The screen door groaned but rattled shut behind him as he stopped dead in his tracked. Sat on the edge of the porch with a thermos of her own was Daisy.

“What are you doing up?” he huffed. She craned to stare up at him with blue eyes framed by dark circles. Didn’t sleep, huh? He bet it was weird to sleep on a farm where everything breathes and the gusts of wind make everything groan. Unlike the mechanical, synthetic life of a ship that recycles the very air it blows on your face. Daisy climbed to her feet and he furrowed his brows at the boots strapped to her ankles. “Where’d you find boots?”

Daisy’s gaze flickered to the door behind him and he sighed loudly. Twisting on his hooves, he growled through the screen. “Dee-Dee.”

She shooed him with a flap of her hand from the kitchen table. While he wanted to complain…he also wanted not-burnt bacon for breakfast. A scowl firmly in place on his face, he returned to face Daisy.

“I wanted to go see my ship, if you don’t mind.”

“Well, not like it grew legs and walked away,” Ryzer harrumphed. Stomping down the steps, he avoided physically brushing past her. Don’t want to bruise more of her ribs. Not that it stopped her as the short, pink lady raced to keep up by his side. “Why don’t you go lay back down. Yer still hurtin’, and it’s a long trek out to the back field.”

“I’m not asking you to give me a tour. Just point and I can walk out there.” She rolled her eyes and Ryzer’s face scrunched. No sass mouthin’; you’re just gonna be mean and she’s already said sorry. He could feel his left eye twitch. Inhaling sharply, he cleared the ire out of his system. It’d been forever since someone back-talked him. Even the farm hands that didn’t stay all were cordial. Yes, sir, right away, sir, you got it, boss! And yet, she put a hand to her hip, tinsel hair falling to the side as she stared up at him with belligerence.

“Fine,” he grunted, pointing south, directly over her shoulder and past most of the pastures and barns. “Head straight south, when you get to the edge of the wheat fields, follow the road east, there’s been enough traffic in and out of that field, you’ll find your way. Just follow the trampled, dried out husks.”

“Thank you,” she grumbled, raising her coffee thermos to him in fake cheer. Ryzer watched her saunter off, thermos in hand and truly considered just going back to work. There was cattle to move from paddock A to paddock B. They needed to bundle and palletize the wheat they harvested for the warehouse. A hundred things loomed over his head.

“Hey, boss,” Dallen yawned from behind him, another Taurian in rust orange with white spots. He stopped beside Ryzer, following his employers gaze to the pink woman waltzing her way to a sore rump. “Oh, where’s little miss space cadet going?”

“To go look at her ship,” Ryzer grumbled.

“Pfft, why? It grow legs and walk off overnight?” Dallen snickered, waving as Eddy came shuffling up to the pair in the yard. “What up, kid?”

“The sky, I hope.” Eddy yawned hard, smacking his chops as his gaze, too, followed Ryzer’s out toward Daisy. “Where she off to? Hope she’s not gonna try and wrestle that ship back together.”

“Ha! That’d be fuckin’ ludicrous; that bucket o’ bolts fell apart at the seams!” Dallen laughed even harder, but Ryzer’s eyes widened.

No. She wouldn’t. But he didn’t have any fucking proof that Daisy was the kind to be reasonable. Grief wasn’t exactly a clear head—it was a heavy fog that clouded judgement. Ryzer would know best of all that she might try anything to get an ounce of her father back. He slapped a hand against Dallen’s chest, causing the younger bull to hack up a lung. “Both of you go get the herd ready to move. I want them in paddock B by the time I get back.”

“And where are you going, boss?” Eddy called out. Ryzer didn’t answer.

He was charging ahead. Catching up to her took actual effort, he would give her that. She marched fast and she didn’t break a sweat. Between walking a mile in those borrowed boots and chugging her coffee like it air, she’d nearly gotten through the first field. Ryzer slowed to a jog, then to a walk beside her. “What’s on the ship you need? I can get it.”