“She teaches kids.”
“Teaches them what?”
“Astronomy,” he deadpanned.
“Really?”
“No, dipshit, she teaches ’em how to ride horses.”
I laughed. “Okay, okay, you got me. That was a stupid question.”
He huffed and shook his head, looking away.
“What?” I said with an edge in my tone. His smug shit was getting on my nerves.
“Nothing, it’s just, you’re so interested in that bitch. I have no fucking clue why.”
I straightened and leaned my forearm on the top of the shovel. “Why do you think she’s a bitch?”
“She just is. She doesn’t give anyone the time of day.” He continued shoveling while he talked. It was obvious that Caleb had some resentment toward her; he was more than just irritated at her indifference.
“You know her story, right?” I asked.
“Yeah, her husband blew his head off. Probably couldn’t fuckin’ stand living with her anymore.” He stood, mimicked a gun with his finger under his chin, and mimicked the sound of a gunshot.
“You’re a dick, man.”
“What? Why don’t you say that to my face?”
“I just did.” Why in the world I would antagonize a three-hundred-pound man who towered over my six-foot frame, I’ll never know. Some deep-seated sense of chivalry surfaced in me.
“You better mind your business.”
In an utterly calm and matter-of-fact voice, I said, “How long have you worked here shoveling shit, my friend?”
“Long enough to know you’re barking up the wrong tree. She won’t even make eye contact with me, so your chances are slim.”
“So that’s what this is really about? What, you came on to her? Maybe you’re not her type.”
He threw the shovel effortlessly across the corral into a pile of tools. “And you are, faggot?”
“Neanderthal,” I shot back.
“Pussy,” he said, walking away.
“Maybe in another three thousand years when you’ve evolved we can have this conversation again. Do you even have opposable thumbs?” I yelled the last part as he disappeared from view.
In the evening, when Ava was unloading the horses from her trailer, I snuck up on her. “Boo.”
She didn’t startle.
“Wow, you’re no fun.”
“I’ve been told that before,” she said.
She backed Dancer down the ramp toward me. “Move out of the way, Nate. Never stand behind a horse unless you want to get kicked in the noggin—or another part of your body.”
I moved away and followed her into the barn where she put Dancer into a stall. “How was your day? What have you been up to?”
She threw a chunk of alfalfa into Dancer’s food trough and petted her head. When she finally turned to face me, she leaned against the short stall door with a brazen smirk, a look I had never seen on her.
“I give horseback-riding lessons to some kids on another ranch, but you already knew that, I’m sure.”
She was on to me. She must have known I had been asking about her.
“Well, how’d the lessons go?”
“Excellent. What did you do today?”
I smiled really big. “Shoveled shit.”
“How was that?”
“Pretty shitty.” We both laughed but she looked down, almost as if she were too embarrassed to really let it out. “I also got to know Caleb a little better.”
“I’m sorry,” she said seriously.
“Why don’t you two get along?”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t like me . . . ,” her voice trailed off. She looked away and her mood changed.
“Why don’t you think he likes you?”
“Well, one night . . . he tried . . .” She took a breath through her nose and looked up to the barn ceiling. “One night he tried to kiss me. I don’t know why. I didn’t send him mixed signals, I swear.”
“I believe you.” And I did believe her. She didn’t give anyone any signals, good or bad; she rarely looked up from her feet. “Keep going.”
“He caught me on the steps, just as I was coming down and he was going up to the main house. He grabbed my hips and leaned in. I slapped him.”
“What did he do?”
“He called me a bad word and said I was the reason for, um . . . for the stuff that’s happened in my life.”
“Nothing is your fault. I know what happened.”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes it does. That fucking oaf has no right to treat you that way.” I looked up pensively. “Just wondering, what word did he call you?”
“The c-word.”
“I’m going to kill him.” Even as I said it, I couldn’t believe my reaction. Apparently there’s something in the Montana water that instantly transforms an agnostic, Starbucks-loving, vegetarian pacifist into a God-and-country-loving protector of all women and cattle.
She laughed through her nose. “You would be wasting your time.”