Bitsy came rolling over. I looked her in the eye. “That’s just rude to leave a guest sitting in a piddle puddle with a serious injury. How do you live with that man?”
“Blah!” she shouted in my face, nudged me with her head, and then raced off to visit the llama, who, it should be noted, was glowering at me with evil intent. I averted my gaze. The day was off to a great start and the clock hadn’t even hit seven a.m. yet. Stupid barn dwellers.
ChapterFive
I didn’t thinkthat first day would ever end.
We worked so hard every muscle I owned was strained and protesting. Loudly.
After I’d checked my knee—it was just a little red, but the pain had been terrible, and I stick by that—I limped back into the barn. Acosta barked things at me like a drill sergeant right off the bat. Mentally, I began calling him Sergeant Meanie.
The day was filled with mundane and physical work, including giving the llama, whose name was Millicent and was insulin resistant, a shot of insulin. How Acosta did this alone, I had no damn clue because Millicent did not like to be poked. At. All.
Not that I blamed her. I was no big fan of shots either, but I’d never tried to kick my GP when I went for my flu shot. And I certainly had never spit on the back of his head after getting said flu shot. Acosta snickered about the spitting incident for a good half hour. Flipping him off whenever I could do so—unseen—felt marvelous. We worked like demons mucking out pens. That was just the absolute worst. Tossing soaking wet bedding into the back of a disgustingly dirty manure spreader was hard. I mean, come on, would it hurt to wash the manure spreader after every use? The stink that rolled off it rivaled Dynamite the goat buck.
My shoulders were burning before I was halfway done with the goat buck pen. Also, just as an interesting tidbit of information…goat bucks pee on themselves. Like, I kid you not, they run out their dicks and urinate on their beards. The first time Dynamite did that I gaped, fork filled with dirty bedding, and simply stared in total disgust.
“Excuse me, Mr. Melios?!” I shouted across the barn. Acosta was forking cow manure into the shit spreader. The stink in this barn was graphic and violent. It accosted your nose like the infamous Ralph kills Tracee scene fromThe Sopranos.“Uhm, your goat buck is displaying some unseemly behavior over here.”
“Is he humping you?” he shouted back, not turning to see what the unseemly behavior was. Which was just downright rude. What if Dynamite was goring me as we spoke? Wait. Humping me? My sight flew from Dynamite—who was now making lip-smacking noises at Bitsy as she stood outside his pen looking cute and a little coy—to Acosta.
“Humping me? As in humping like a dog?” I yelled over the steady grunting of hungry piggies in a pen nearby. “Will he ride my leg?” I waited and waited for a reply while I leaned on my manure fork. “Excuse me, Mr. Melios!”
“What?!” he barked, spinning from his work to scowl at me.
“Did you say this goat would hump me like a horny Peke-a-Poo?” I glanced down at a few hens parading past with the rooster bringing up the rear. They moved freely from one pen to the other it seemed, digging and scratching in the bedding, with no supervision at all.
“Just pretend I didn’t ask.” He returned to his work. I snuck a peek at Dynamite. He looked back at me, his beard wet with pee, and then smacked his lips.
“Do not even think about it,” I warned him, waving a finger that had a blister on it. Oh hell! I brought my finger closer to my face as the slap-slap-slap of forkfuls of dirty bedding hitting the manure spreader filled the barn. “Oh no, look how big this is!” I studied the water-filled sore intently. “Mr. Melios! I have suffered a work-related injury!” I held up my poor pointer finger and heard Acosta’s hearty sigh from way over here. He slowly turned to look at me, sweat dotting his brow. Huh, I hadn’t worked up much of a sweat yet. Maybe he just had a higher thermostat setting than I did. I generally seemed to run a little chilly most of the time.
“You do realize that every time you call me, I have to stop working?” he asked tersely. I nodded. “Okay, and every time I stop, the workday grows longer. I still have to plow out the barn, the driveway, and all the lanes so I can haul the manure to the pumpkin patches and garden plots. Then I have to check the honeybee hives, feed hay and grain, water the animals, and throw together something for dinner. Unless you plan on cooking?” I shook my head. “I didn’t figure. Are you bleeding from a severed artery?” I shook my head. “Do you have any bones protruding out of your flesh?” I shook my head again as the idea that he was now sinking into sarcasm poked me. “Are you sucking in what may be your last breath?”
“No,” I yelled as I shook my finger in the air. “I have a blister. The skin is dirty. I think I may get an infection if it pops. Do you have a Band-Aid I can borrow?” He stared at me as if he wished the planet would crack open and swallow me up. “Or I can keep forking poo and risk a staph infection.”
“Where are the gloves I gave you?”
“They were covered with dirt.” I waved my injured hand at the cloth gloves lying over the fencing. “Also, they smelled like a dirty goat.”
His lips flattened. “You know what? Why don’t you go tend to your blister?”
“Really?”
“Yep. Take your time. Make sure it’s all sanitary and then come back and I’ll find something else for you to do.”
“Oh, okay! That sounds nice. Thank you. I hate to be annoying, but I have a delicate constitution, and germs seem to like festering in any weak points I have.” He stared at me openly. “Once, when I was ten, I fell down while skipping rope with my brother. Well, he said we were going to jump rope but in actuality, he was trying to lasso me like a cow calf. Calf? Is it just calf, Mr. Melios, or is it cow calf? Oh, I bet it’s bull calf if it’s a boy cow, right? Anyway, Frank Jr. threw a rope around me and yanked my feet out from under me. When I found Nanny Annie, my knees were both abraded and had small bits of grit in them. I came down with an ear infection the next day and Mom swears the germs got into my body through the scratches on my knees. She made sure that Nanny Annie always took immediate care of any cuts I got from then on to prevent further infections or buggy boos entering my system.”
“Uh-huh.”
Man of few words. “Well, I’ll go clean my blister neatly, then come back. Do you have any clean gloves? Maybe some of those white cotton ones the ladies wear at night after they apply their moisturizing balms to their hands? I could slide a pair of those on under the soiled gloves!”
“Oh yeah, I haveboxesof those white cotton gloves the ladies wear at night after they apply moisturizing balm to their hands.”
I shot him a flat look after a brief moment of elation. “You really don’t have any white cotton gloves, do you?”
“Not a fucking one.” With that snarky comeback, he returned to work, his forking even more speedy and deliberate.
Huffing along, I left the goat buck pen, Bitsy coming along with me to the great displeasure of Dynamite. My Birkenstocks were a fright. Moaning internally over the state of my boots, I bent down to untie them and toed them off outside of Acosta’s little living area. The milking room was chilly, but the inside of his space was toasty warm. My clothes were damp under my coat. The barn was humid despite the cold. Acosta had even cracked open one of the doors to ensure some fresh air came in for his charges. Bitsy followed me to the bathroom but couldn’t navigate through the doorway with her buggy, so she rolled off to get into something else troublesome, I was sure. She seemed to be a mischief maker, but I liked her. She had a sparkly spirit much like mine. Nothing was going to get her down for long. That was my motto as well. Don’t let the world dampen your sunshine. Or was the saying something about a basket and a light? Whatever. I was always optimistic or tried to be. Drove my father and brother nuts.
