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I laughed and went back to the cow, getting settled to milk her more. She gave me a good quarter bucket, and I patted her side. “Good girl! Maybe Noah will make some cheese. I don’t need the calories anymore, but it’s too good not to eat it.”
No, I definitely didn’t need the calories. I’d filled out all right, being I ate and worked and enjoyed life much more than before I’d arrived. I no longer had a gym rat body, not that those were bad. Instead, however, I was like Noah, built to work on a ranch.
After checking on the corral, making sure the mud wasn’t too bad for the horses, I started taking each out of the barn so they could enjoy the warm day. Snow one day, sixty degrees the next. I tried not to think about climate change, but it crossed my mind more than once.
While I was thinking about what more we could do around the ranch to recycle, I caught more movement. Around the corner of the barn, I saw a jean jacket, which was new, being Joel’s coat was a beige Carhart that he loved.
“Joel? Come on! Noah and I aren’t even together today, so you won’t see anything!”
Nothing. Joel wasn’t the shy thing I thought he was at first, now that he was used to me, so I didn’t understand. I called him quickly, expecting to hear his ringtone, but I didn’t. And he answered after three rings, so I would have heard it, or his voice. “Joel? Where are you?”
“I’m in town. Had to come pick up some stuff for my mom. What’s up? You guys need me?”
“No, no, we’re good, but… you’re not here?”
He laughed some, but said, “No, sir. I’m at the feed store right now. They got a sale on some things she needed, so she sent me out first thing.”
I watched where I’d seen the figure moving, and absently told Joel, “Um… okay. Joel, someone’s here,” I said low. “Can you… call Noah for me?”
“Sure thing! There are guns in the house. Go to the house, Eli!”
“I will,” I lied. I hadn’t held a gun since the army. I’d even talked about it some with Brian, but I had no intention of going for a gun.
Maybe it was my curiosity, maybe it was me being unwilling to let someone intimidate me, but I didn’t go to the house even to hide. I went right to the barn. The only horse I hadn’t taken yet was Spirit, as I wanted to take him to the round pen to work with him.
Noah wanted that, being he would eventually be my horse, and if I was to ever ride him, I had to get him used to me putting on the saddle and getting on his back. Sure, I wouldn’t do it alone, but I could get him out to the corral alone and get him inside. Knowing that someone was there, possibly ready to hurt the horse I’d gotten so close to, it was infuriating me.
I went to Spirit, who was jumpy, as Noah would say. There were three people that came into contact with Spirit, those he trusted. Joel, Noah and me. That was it. Around anyone else, even Damon and Burke, when they’d come, he got anxious. I knew then there was someone in the barn.
I pet him, got him out of his stall, but he was ready to bolt. I felt it in the way his body was twitching. I wasn’t a horseman like Noah or even Joel, but I’d worked with Spirit enough to know his tells.
“It’s okay, boy. I gotcha.”
My eyes scanned every corner, every other stall, and I saw no one, but I knew, even if I hadn’t seen the denim coat, that someone was there, just by Spirit’s reaction. I led him to the barn door, opening it with a push of a button, but the heavy clang of it made it hard to hear, so I turned to the inside of the barn to wait for it to fully open, and then, that’s when I saw him.
“Harvey.”
“Hey, Eli. How the hell have you been?”
He was holding a gun on me, a 45 he’d bought when there were break-ins near our building a couple of years before I left. I never saw him touch the thing once it was in the apartment.
“What are you doing here?”
“Got the address from my lawyer. By the way, that lawyer you got? Fucking brilliant. What? Did you have to suck his dick, too? No way could you afford him.”
He was thinner, his face covered in a blond beard. That wasn’t like him at all. He loved getting up each morning and have me get his shaving gear out and ready for him to use. Maybe that was it, no houseboy to do his work for him.
“Pro bono,” I said, and with each step he took toward me, the more Spirit got antsy.
I gripped the reins tightly, the barn door fully raised. I could try to run, but likely, I wouldn’t get far before getting a bullet in my back. I tried to use reason. “You’ll get caught if you hurt me.”
“By your Noah? That old man? I’m not afraid of him, Eli, but that doesn’t matter, anyway. See, I’m going to kill him, and, well, you’re going to take the blame.”
He’d stopped his movement toward me, and I froze, hearing the words and not believing them. “What? Harvey, I’ll tell the world what you did!”
“Will they really believe you, though? I mean, I’ve already reported my gun missing, and told the cops that you must have taken it when you took my watch. They have already spoken to your sheriff about it, and he will be out here soon to question you about it.
“Then there’s the fact no one knows you, and I’ve spread the word that you are insane, that you went off on me many times, that your PTSD kicks in all the time and you become violent.”
