17
It might have been a thunderclap that woke Beth from her nightmare. When her eyes popped open in the darkness of her bedroom, the sound of driving rain filled her ears. It trampled the roof of the house like stampeding cattle and flailed at the window like a flock of trapped birds. The fright of her dream lingered, though the images and story line had evaporated.
She thought she’d been dreaming of Levi.
Salt tracks from dried tears cracked on the surface of her cheeks.
At the foot of Beth’s bed, in the trench between Beth’s and Lorena’s legs, Herriot was also awake. The dog’s eyes and ears were alert to the closed door until Beth rose to her elbows. Herriot gave her a glance, but when Beth didn’t offer instructions, the dog resumed her watch.
Lorena was dead to the world, having exhausted herself with sobbing past midnight, as if Abel had been her best friend rather than a man she barely knew. Beth had awkwardly and ineffectively tried to comfort her.
But now a noise Beth couldn’t hear over the clatter of the rain brought Herriot to all four feet. Her ears, soft triangles bowed over the sides of her face, lifted, but her tail, which usually curled like a snail’s shell up onto her back, drooped.
Beth pushed the sheet off her legs and slipped out of bed. When her toes touched the floor, Herriot jumped down and waited for her. The clock on the nightstand said it was after four.
She pulled the door open onto a pitch black hall and Herriot trotted out ahead of her, toenails clicking down the flight of stairs to the left of Beth’s door. Danny’s room was a black cave opposite hers. To her right, at a distance, was the master bedroom. Levi slept downstairs, near the kitchen, in a room originally designed for the housekeeper.
The Blazing B hadn’t had a housekeeper for twenty years.
Beth followed Herriot down the stairs without turning on any lights. The stairway turned back on itself halfway down and dropped into the great room, where the red brick hearth was cold.
This room was the family gathering place from October through spring. This was where the five Borzois would assemble during rainy days, and on Christmas morning, and on winter Sundays when Pastor Eric would bring church to them. The comfortable space was spread with handwoven rugs and cracked-leather reading chairs, tables for chess or puzzles or hot coffee, an old faded pool table with several patched holes in the felt, and cues of varying lengths that Levi and Danny never put away.
The rain sounded distant on this lower level of the house. Less threatening.
Beth needed no light to cross this area. The shadows had not changed in her lifetime. She had spent years in this room looking after Danny, rolling balls to him and building Lego trains with him and reading stories aloud for him while their parents worked.
Today it was nothing more than a bleak room that harbored ghosts. She didn’t reminisce, but followed Herriot’s urgent trot and passed straight through, into the home’s formal entryway and then the dining room beyond. The dining room was connected to the kitchen. Off the rear of the kitchen were the housekeeper’s room and a mudroom. At the side, through a sliding door, was a porch enclosed by a roof, a half wall, and screens.
From the dining room she couldn’t see where Herriot had gone. All was dark except for a gold glow on the porch, an oil lamp’s flame held steady by a bubbled hurricane lantern.
The brass lantern held some special meaning for Danny and their dad, though the men had never told her why. She guessed it had something to do with the one time they went camping alone together and lost all their gear in a flash flood—all their packs and food and bedding, everything except a cell phone, their horses, and an old Coleman lantern. How that might have turned into a positive memory for them was a private story between father and son.
Beth emerged into the kitchen. The sliding glass door between the kitchen and porch stood open, and the new-earth scents kicked up by the rain came into the house on a breeze.
The lamp formed a halo between Rose and the screens, reducing her to a dim, bowed version of her strong self. She sat on a wicker chair facing the sleeping morning.
Beyond her, Herriot’s forelegs were propped against the low wall, nose twitching against the flimsy wire mesh, as if to detect what the humans’ senses couldn’t. Her tail waved calmly. Outside, the distortion of rain transformed the nearby barn’s moth light into a bobbing firefly.
Beth hesitated in the kitchen, unsure if it was the right time to approach her mother, and if it was, what the proper posture would be: Comforting? Penitent? Grieved? Reassuring?
“Beth’s up.” Her mother was looking at Herriot, and her chilly tone rooted Beth to the floor.
Half of Levi’s face came into the lamplight. The other half, like the dark side of the moon, stayed in shadow. Levi was looking at their mother with barely veiled impatience. He didn’t seem to care if Beth was up, but she withdrew into the kitchen shadows.
“Don’t bury him here,” Levi said.
“All the Borzois who ever set foot on American soil are buried here,” her mother replied.
“You’d put him in the very ground that you intend to sell?”
“Maybe I don’t want to sell it after all. The insurance—”
“By the time you pay for the hospital and the funeral, you won’t have enough left over to buy that fat jockey Darling a breakfast!”
“Levi. Watch your volume.”
He complied but stood up and leaned over her, trading one form of intensity for another. Their mother seemed unaffected by his show.
“Don’t tell me a measly life-insurance policy changed your mind.”
“My mind was never made up. I only thought that selling this place would be essential to his recovery. But now—I can’t help but wonder if the very suggestion was what killed him.”
“Beth killed him,” Levi said.
Her mother didn’t defend her.
Levi’s voice dropped so that it was difficult for Beth to hear. “What does it matter? He’s gone now. Danny’s not old enough to take on this piece of hell on earth, and I don’t want it.”
“No one’s making you stay, Levi.”
“You can’t make a go of this place without me.”
Yes, we can, Beth thought. We have Jacob and Roy, Emory and Eric. We just don’t have any money.
“Now’s not the time to be making such big decisions,” Rose said.
“When will it be right? Eighteen months will find us without our shirts in the middle of winter, and we’ll all pretend to be surprised by that. Unless we act now.”
“What do you propose? You want to sell this place just so you can get your investment out of the dirt and run off to your own life? Where would you go? What would you do?”
“I’d make a living. What kind of life is this, breaking our backs day in and day out? I pour my sweat and blood into the filth of this land, and it’s never, ever satisfied.” Levi’s voice was filled with disgust. “I want wealth. That’s all I ask for.”
“You have no idea what true wealth is,” Rose said.
Levi changed his approach. He squatted next to his mother’s chair and took her hand, softened his tone. “Every day we hold on to this ranch we get deeper and deeper into the money hole.”
Rose shook her head. “Men rely on us. We can’t pretend they’re not a factor.”
“How do you expect to take care of them or pay Beth’s debts if we don’t do something drastic?”
At the screens, Herriot went still. A low growl vibrated at the bottom of her throat. Beth watched her dog through rising tears. Levi and Rose were too wrapped up in their own dilemma to worry about Herriot’s distraction.
“The market for selling might be better next spring—”
“Mom, this trouble is bigger than we are.”
Rose supported her forehead with her other hand. “Who wants a ranch these days? It’s too big for the romantic types who think ranching is a dreamy life; it’s too small for the commercial ventures.”
“We’re sitting on prime real estate.”
“Parts of it are—what are you suggesting? That we subdivide it? What a nightmare. I wouldn’t have what it takes. It would be like dicing up your father’s body and feeding it to vultures. I’d rather try to reach an agreement with a single buyer. Even Darling. Maybe he’d let the four of us stay here, work the place for him.”
Levi recoiled, and Beth felt nausea shake her by the shoulders.
“This land isn’t going to Darling,” Levi said, and he spoke it like a vow.
His tone jarred Beth’s forgotten nightmare loose from her sleepy memory. In half a second she recalled everything: She and Levi standing at the creek. A wolf with a bloody muzzle sleeping at her feet. Levi raising the rifle to his shoulder and taking aim.
At their father dressed in white, standing on the opposite bank.
The rifle shot and impact were silent and weightless. The weapon didn’t recoil when it was discharged. Her father didn’t reel when hit. But his blood was gushing and noisy, falling into the creek water like a sudden heavy rain.
Dream and reality tangled long enough for Beth to believe Levi had murdered their father, which was ridiculous. Her eyes darted through shadows of the kitchen and porch, looking for a rifle, for blood. Of course, there was neither in this space. There was only the notable absence of any sorrow for the man who had loved them all so much.
Beth shook off the horror of the dream but couldn’t shed her rising wariness of her big brother.
“I can’t leave this place,” her mother said. “I can’t even think of it now. Maybe if your father were with me—I thought I could, but I need . . . I need time.”
“What if I told you that you wouldn’t ever have to leave it?” Levi said. “That I know a way to keep you here forever, without another day of worry about how we’re going to make it?”
Her mother’s profile was like a child’s in the lamplight, with a hopeful, lifted chin.
“I called Sam Johnson today,” Levi said.
The name filled Beth with as much dread as Darling’s did.
“The developer?” Rose’s voice reflected Beth’s shock. She stood now, nearly as tall as her firstborn. Between them, Herriot’s growl rose a notch and the glistening tips of her fine fur rose off the back of her neck.
“Of course the developer.”
“We can’t sell the land Sam wants to buy.”
“We can sell it, it’s just that no one wants to.”
“Don’t act so dense. It’s prime,” Rose argued. “Two thousand acres of our best land—the best irrigated, the best soil. We sell that, and the cows can’t survive. The ranch can’t survive. If you think I’ll parcel off little plots to that man and give up the Blazing B just so I can live in this house”—she stomped her foot on the drum-like floorboards—“you don’t understand my love for it at all.”
“Settle down. He doesn’t want those acres anymore.”
“Then what on earth does he want?”
“Sam’s a generous man, Mom. He only wants what’s best for us.”
“That’s not how I would have characterized the proposal he presented to us last year.”
“But this time I was the one with the proposal. And he was very interested in my thoughts.”
Beth leaned in, placed her hand on the cool metal door frame of the open slider, not wanting to miss a word. If Levi was about to be her savior, she’d be stunned. Grateful, but stunned. And a little frightened of what he might demand from her in return.
“Is it too much to ask that you share those thoughts with me before you go around making business proposals with the world?” Rose asked.
Levi took a step back and pretended to look wounded. “What’s wrong with you? I’m standing here with a plan to bail us out of an impossible situation, and you’re treating me like I’m still a kid. We all have to grow up now, don’t we? Dad’s gone and I’m the only one who can see straight. It’s you and me now, just the two of us to save this place.”
Rose took a deep breath, silenced whatever words bubbled on her lips, and turned her palm up toward him. Fine. Continue.
“I asked Sam to become an investor.”
“No sane man would pour his cash down a drain like this.”
“Not an investor in the Blazing B, per se. But a partner of sorts.”
“In what, Levi?”
“In the Blazing B Resort.”
Beth’s mind crawled with an image of fat city slickers in shiny new cowboy boots and too-tight jeans riding Hastings and Gert.
“A dude ranch?” Rose’s tone was disbelieving. “You want to turn our home into a dude ranch?”
“That’s such a bad label for a full-scale resort. Do you know what we can do on sixty-five hundred acres? In eighteen months we can have condos up on the river and be taking reservations for pool rides in the mountains. We can have seasonal events, offer classes, spas, cookouts—”
“No. No. I can’t believe you think that’s a good idea.”
“It’s been done before, right here in this valley. How do you think ranchers are making it? Even the ones who aren’t staring down the throat of a monster lawsuit have come up with all kinds of creative ways to make ends meet.”
“It can’t work.”
“The model works. The numbers work. In fact, they work so well that Sam will tackle Darling’s money for us. Wipe it off the charts.”
Rose’s hands were on her hips now. “At what cost to us?”
“A very small one.”
“How small, Levi?”
“It’s a partnership with him or lose the land entirely. No price would be too great.”
“Levi. Give me a number.”
Levi looked at Herriot, who dashed along the wall to the corner of the room, ears and tail alert. “We’d get to live here, with guaranteed employment for as long as the resort was operational.” Rose’s hands fell to her sides. Her son would not look her in the eye. “Negotiable salaries, benefits, free housing.”
“He’d take the land,” Rose said. “All of it.”
“We’d keep a fifteen percent stake in the profits.”
The insulting number dropped a smothering silence over the room. Rose had no ready reply, no retort. She sank back into her chair.
“Sam would incorporate everything. You’d get a voting seat on the board,” Levi said. “Or I would, if you don’t want it.”
“That’s why you don’t want me to bury your father here. The family cemetery—”
“It will probably have to be . . . relocated. It’s in a bad place. For a resort.”
“You never pretended to love your family legacy more than you loved profitable thinking,” Rose whispered. “The men who count on us now—there’s no room for them in a place like the one you’re describing. You’d throw them out.”
“It’s time to save ourselves, Mom. We’re the ones who need help this time. Sam’s offering it.”
Herriot barked once, then growled again. But whatever was out there—a fox looking for shelter under the porch, a cottonwood tree bent into villainous shapes by the rainfall—was less of a threat than what was going on in this small screened room.
Beth stepped into the reach of the oil lamp’s light. “What about Garner?” she asked.
Levi flinched. Beth looked at Rose.
“Dad thinks—thought Garner could help us out.” Her mother’s face was unreadable.
“Who’s Garner?” Levi asked.
“I think he’s our grandfather,” Beth said. “Grandpa Remke.”
“He’s dead,” Levi said. He looked at Rose. “You told us he died.”
“But he’s alive. Isn’t he, Mom?”
Rose pushed herself out of the chair. The wicker creaked and squeaked. “He’s dead to me,” she said.
Levi’s expression might have been distorted by the shadows of the flickering flame, but Beth thought he was relieved by this proclamation, as if Garner’s very existence might undermine his carefully laid plans to do business with Sam Johnson.
“Dad thought Garner could help—”
“Sam can help,” Levi said.
“But maybe Garner could help us”—Beth groped for words—“less . . . commercially. More personally.”
“Your father meant well,” Rose said, “but he was always an optimist.”
“But what if we could keep Sam’s fingers out of the ranch?”
“I don’t think you have too much wisdom to offer us at this point, little sister.”
“Why not? Because what the rest of us might want will mess up your precious business deal? Cut you out of a nice little profit? What perks are Sam going to give you for cooking up this brilliant scheme, Levi? How’s he going to line your pockets with gratitude?”
“That’s enough,” Rose said. “That’s enough. Fortunately a deal like this takes awhile to draw up. Long enough for all of us to have time to settle down. We’ll pay respects to your father, and then we’ll move on. Levi, call Sam in the morning and tell him I’m ready to take the next steps, on one condition.”
“We’re not really in a position—”
“One condition. I will make your life so much harder if you want to argue with me. You’re still my son, and this ranch is still mostly mine.”
Levi crossed his arms across his chest.
“Your father will be buried in that cemetery along with his father and grandfathers, and the daughter we lost before Beth came along. And Sam will just have to deal with it, because it’s not going to move, and neither am I.”
“Done,” Levi said.
Beth wanted to blame Levi for this terrible turn of her life, and yet she was to blame for all of it.
“I think Danny should have a say in this,” Beth said, and at the same time, Herriot’s posture shifted and caught the corner of Beth’s eye.
Divided attention, when combined with darkness, could be a deceptive thing. Her mother looked like she might agree with Beth, but before she could say so, Herriot’s growl became a disturbing snarl. As Beth turned her head, the light and shadow created illusions. She thought she saw, beyond the screen, the glassy green flicker of wild-animal eyes catching the lamp’s glow.
Her brain suggested wolf at the same time that Herriot’s hind legs launched her high onto the screen. All three people in the room turned as one to the dog. Her thick claws penetrated the lightweight mesh and shredded it like newspaper as she dropped back to the floor.
Beth shouted, lunged for the dog’s collar, and missed. Teeth bared and fur electrified, the Appenzeller leaped again and this time went through the fresh hole.
A terrible tumble of snarls and snapping jaws ensued.
A crevasse of dread opened up in Beth’s mind. In one motion, while Levi and Rose were still statues, Beth grabbed the cool handle of the oil lamp with one hand and ripped out a floppy panel of screen with her other so that the opening was large enough for her to follow. She leaned into the wall with her hip and swung her legs over the edge, screaming at the dog fight as if words alone could break it up.
As her weight shifted forward and she felt herself slipping off the wet sill toward the ground, she remembered she was barefoot.
A ground cover of chipped granite rocks bit into the balls of her feet and, on the right, cut deep. Her disruptive shouts became a cry of pain. She fell forward into a smacking belly flop on the damp ground.
Her elbow and the oil lamp hit the ground at the same time. Her fingers released the handle. The lamp tipped, and the glass globe protecting the flame shattered.
In the whoosh of flame that flared to campfire size, Beth saw the dogs unfurl from their tangled ball of mud and tails into two distinct animals that were unevenly matched. Herriot had the disadvantage of a smaller size and unrestrained boldness. Rain sizzled and raised some smoke as it hit the puddle of spilled oil, but it didn’t quell the flames.
Through the barrier of fire, Beth’s eyes met the wolf’s. The wild animal shuddered, as if shaking itself off of the encounter with Herriot, then bolted. The Appenzeller gave chase, ignoring Beth’s commands that she come back.
The porch door hit the side of the house as Levi walked out with a blanket. He approached the mess without urgency, then unfurled the blanket and dropped it on top of the small pool of flaming oil. The fuel was trapped by the boundaries of the soaked ground and would burn itself out shortly. Her brother crouched next to her body.
“You’re a drain on this family,” Levi said. “Expect me to do my best to boot you out of it.”
She lowered her forehead to the mud.