Page 11 of On the Land, We Shoot Straight

“H

ave you got some treats?” Cole asked.

He was on Chloe’s other side, brushing her down, her body rippling as she allowed it.

“Whaddya mean, like sweets?”

“No, like some apple or carrot.”

Cole patted Chloe’s neck. He whispered to her that she was a good girl and he couldn’t wait to do that again tomorrow and he’d get her a treat.

Grady rolled his eyes. He muttered to Red that he didn’t understand getting her a reward for doing her job, doing what she got kept for in the first place now since she wasn’t much good for social riding, but he’d go on in and get it.

“Thanks,” Cole said when Grady came back, handing him the cut-up carrot and apple. Chloe took it eagerly from Cole’s flat palm before lifting her head and glaring at Grady.

“All right, all right.” Grady wandered over to Red, gave him some treats as well.

They shuffled back to the house together, and Grady reckoned he hadn’t ever seen Cole smiling this much.

“Thanks,” Cole said as they got to the back door.

“For what?”

Grady figured he’d thank him for the place to stay, but what he said was, “For lettin’ me ride her.”

“I reckon you’re the first person that’d be sayin’ thank you for the gift of ridin’ that horse.”

“She’s great.” Cole was standing near Grady in the kitchen, toeing his boots off.

He smelled like horse and sweat, and he finally looked alive, powerful; his shoulders back, head held high, eyes bright as he looked directly at Grady.

Seeing him like this made Grady see what he couldn’t see before.

The weariness. Grady had seen it, of course, but maybe not the depth of it.

Weariness that deep came from something that went deeper than just living off the land for a while.

“You’re the only one who’s ever thought highly of that horse.”

Grady went to the fridge and pulled out the water jug. As he turned back, Cole was there, getting the glasses down. He poured and they both drank, wiping the sweat off their brows with their shirts, letting the heat seep out of them in the dark coolness of the kitchen.

“Where’d you learn to ride like that?”

Cole shrugged and accepted the refill. “Just back home, you know.”

Grady didn’t know why he was so curious about it, or why he was going to push on this, of all things, but he’d never heard anything about the Cole boys riding.

“Jack was in my year at school. You know it,” Grady said.

“Yeah, course.”

“He ain’t never talked ’bout no horses.”

Cole snorted. “He wouldn’t.”

Now that Grady thought on it, maybe he wouldn’t.

Jack was loud, always talking shit, and so if there was something to know about the Cole boys, Grady had figured he’d know it from Jack.

But his conversation ran to football more than anything else.

And then girls. And then what he was going do with girls and football once he got to the city and away from this damn place.

Still, Grady reckoned they must’ve been using horses if the kid could ride like that.

“I had a horse,” Cole said.

Grady glanced at him from where they were standing side by side against the kitchen counter, their ankles crossed over their socked feet, their hands holding their glasses.

“We all did, but I don’t reckon the others…” He shrugged, but it was forced. “You know.”

Grady didn’t know. He was looking at Cole, his eyes adjusting to the dim of the kitchen; he thought Cole’s eyes looked watery, like maybe he was going to cry. Grady had no idea what to do if the kid started crying. But he reckoned he was getting what Cole was trying to say.

“Do you know where he is?”

Cole shook his head, cleared his throat.

“She.”

Cole took a long drink and set the glass aside. “She. And I don’t know. Slaughterhouse probably.”

Grady nodded because what else could he do? Horse was probably dog food by now, and there weren’t words to make that better. Make any of it better. And none of it was Grady’s business anyway.

“I’m gonna shower,” Cole said and pushed himself off the counter, his back to Grady. “Unless you want?”

“No, you go on.”

And Cole went out, his shoulders slumped and head down. And Grady wished he’d never asked and vowed not to ask anything else about that business ever again.