Page 3 of Hoofin’ It

I loved the sound of silence. It meant my mother had short-circuited and her brain was in process of rebooting. Smiling at having dumbfounded her for a rare change, I buckled up and started the van, fiddling with the temperature controls until it was cooler than I liked but tolerable for my new companion.

“You have an alpaca.”

“It’s like a demonic miniature spitting llama. The vet told me she’s female, she needs to be sheared soon, and he gave her all of her important vaccinations. We’re both in dire need of a bath, too. By the time I reach the house, I’m sure we’ll be ripe for your enjoyment.”

“I’ve raised a terrible child. What did I do to deserve you?”

“But they were going to euthanize her. I couldn’t let that happen, Mom. When she isn’t trying to spit on me or kill me, she’s kinda cute. She’s white and fluffy, and she has these adorable little fluffy ears. If she’ll let you pet her, she’s really soft. I’m thinking I’ll teach her to sleep in bed with me. It is possible to housebreak an alpaca, right?”

My mother choked. “You’ll do no such thing, Shane Gibson!”

“But you’re always saying how you want me to come home and visit you. Does this mean you don’t want me? I even found a cute little lady to keep my bed warm at night. Isn’t that what you wanted for me?”

“A human lady, not a sheep on stilts!”

“Does that mean I have to try to convince my landlord to let me keep an alpaca in my teeny tiny apartment rather than at your nice big farmhouse? You even have a paddock she can run around and play in.”

“That paddock is for my horses, young man.”

“Mom, your horses are almost thirty years old. I’m sure they can share with a hundred and ten-pound alpaca.”

“I don’t have a spare stall.”

“They had her hogtied with duct tape on the back seat of their car. And the one cop was going to shoot her for spitting on him.”

There was a long moment of silence. “You manipulative brat. Fine. You’ll clean up after her without complaint, and you’ll be in charge of my horses for the next twenty business days as payment for your room and board. Her fleece is also mine. You can’t have any of it. I expect you to clean and take care of her so I get the most spectacular fleece. Am I understood?”

Knitters. I could talk them into just about anything with a bribe of soft yarn. I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed. “Yes, Mom.”

Chapter Two

I drove most of the night before I found a roach motel willing to look the other way when I told the desk clerk I needed to bring in an alpaca for a much needed bath. Securing a reservation took a lot of patience and a bribe of a hundred bucks, much to my disgust. It was a good thing I wasn’t a cop anymore because I was pretty sure I was violating health codes in some fashion or another. Mom would turn a blind eye; she liked animals almost as much as she liked yarn, and it hadn’t taken her long to figure out I was bringing home a living supply of yarn fiber.

One thing would have to change, though: at the rate I was spending money on an animal that didn’t even like me, I’d blow through my disability pay within a month.

In the best-case scenario, it’d be a year before I could reapply to join the force for any form of field job; in a few months, I could apply for a desk job. Unless I could afford a custom glass eye, one able to grant me clear vision, my days in the field were over. Since I didn’t have a spare two million kicking around, I’d have to put an end to my pity party and hunt down some form of meaningful work.

According to my insurance company, my right eye had a dollar value of fifteen thousand, paid out by the city of Chicago. I also got paid medical leave for two months; if I passed the rest of my physical, I’d get the lowest paying desk job my chief could find. The only good news was I didn’t have to pay taxes on my income until after my leave ended. I sighed, shook my head, and led my four-legged companion out of the van, keeping a tight hold on her halter so she wouldn’t make a break for freedom.

Neither one of us liked the next four hours of our lives, which involved her standing in the rust-stained bathtub while I cleaned blood out of her fur, used a flea comb to check her fleece for any unwanted hitchhikers, and otherwise transformed her from a disheveled mess to a silky beauty.

I took my time cutting away the duct tape, trying to do as little damage to her coat as possible. Ice helped; chilling the adhesive reduced its effectiveness, which let me pick off the fibers bit by bit. If the motel didn’t like me decimating their ice supply, they’d have to deal with it. For the rate I paid for the room, I deserved it delivered in a silver bucket.

Before I finished grooming her, she fell asleep on the bathroom floor, so I covered her with the spare towel and took a shower. It took me an hour to get the gunk out of my hair and feel clean. I barely had enough life left in me to stagger to the bed and flop onto it.

Waking up with an alpaca using me as a pillow wasn’t my idea of a good time. Her front legs stretched across my chest while her hind legs flopped across my knees. As though worried I’d escape, she was using my forehead as a chin rest.

Maybe she was warm, soft, and fluffy, but she was heavy, had a drooling habit, and snored worse than my father.

When I had told my mother I was going to teach my alpaca to sleep with me in bed, I’d been joking. Groaning, I squirmed from beneath the sleeping animal, who didn’t budge an inch, much to my relief. According to my phone, I had an hour to clean the room and leave. I checked the bathroom and discovered the alpaca had a rather negative opinion of the bathtub. While I agreed with her, I grimaced during the cleanup, grateful for the nearby trash can.

Hopefully, the roach motel staff would realize cleaning a clogged toilet was worse than emptying a plastic bag full of alpaca crap. Besides, the front desk clerk had gotten an extra hundred to deal with any problems.

I resolved to ignore my guilt, cleaned the rest of the room, and petted the alpaca to wake her up.

Sleepy alpacas enjoyed cuddling; I spent ten minutes trying not to laugh while she determined she was too big to fit on my lap. It took work and a bribe of grain to get her moving, but she scrambled into the van readily enough, and since she was behaving, I laid down the back seat to give her some extra space. I secured her lead to the bracket to keep her out of the front, and she seemed happy to stretch out and take another nap.

Two days later, I pulled into my parents’ driveway in Lincoln, Nebraska. With a population of over two hundred thousand, there was always a need for cops, even crazy ones like my mother and father. But even the police departments of major cities like Chicago wanted someone like Dad on the force.