Page 26 of On the Land, We Shoot Straight

T

he landline was already ringing when Grady walked up the front steps. He laughed under his breath. Cole raised an eyebrow. Grady shook his head. He went inside and over to the side table in the hallway and answered it.

“Grady speakin’.”

“Grady! I been callin’. That damn dog of yours—”

Grady held the phone away from his ear and smiled at Cole where he was standing in the entryway, leaning against the hallway wall with his arms crossed over his chest. Jacobs’s voice was clear as a tinny bell coming out of the phone: “Jeanine can’t even get out of the house, he’s been on our porch for days… ”

Grady brought the phone back to his ear.

“I’m on my way.”

He hung up.

“Dog?” Cole asked.

“Who else,” Grady replied around a smile. He squeezed Cole’s hip as he passed him, and then went out and drove over to the Jacobses’ place.

Dog raised his head slightly from the porch and wagged his tail in slow thumps when Grady walked up. Grady shook his head and hid his smile. Dog let his head fall back and tracked Grady with his eyes, tail still thumping.

“You gonna get yourself shot one of these days.”

Grady leaned down and gave his belly a rub as Jacobs came out.

“Where ya been? I been callin’ for three days.”

Grady stood.

“Bringin’ the sheep in.”

Jacobs let the screen door slam shut behind him, crossed his arms above his large belly and muttered something unintelligible. Jeanine was behind the door, her hand at her chest as she shook her head in disapproval.

“Jeanine.” Grady nodded.

“Grady.”

“You don’t check your messages?” Jacobs asked.

Grady shrugged. He didn’t want to get into how he’d been out camping it with the horses; even the old timers like Jacobs thought he was crazy for doing it that way nowadays, and Grady couldn’t be bothered hearing it.

He couldn’t give a shit what they thought of him, he just thought it was more economical of his time to not have to hear it.

“You ready, Dog?”

Dog’s ears pricked up at his name, but he didn’t move otherwise.

“And I thought your daddy was difficult to deal with,” Jacobs said.

Grady looked at him. He had the look of a man who’d been wanting to say that for a long time, and now he finally had the words out there he wasn’t sure if it wouldn’t have been better to take them to the grave.

Grady turned so he was facing the garden and spat. He surveyed the perfectly pruned rose bushes and manicured lawn. They’d had some of the driest years on record, were staring down the barrel of another drought, but that garden sure looked like it didn’t know what it meant to be thirsty.

“C’mon, Dog.”

Dog got up and walked down the steps. He made his way to the truck and leaped up before sprawling down again like he’d just been running for miles.

Grady turned back. He nodded at Jacobs, then Jeanine behind him.

“Jacobs,” he said, and then he followed his dog out. He could hear Jacobs grumbling something behind him.

Grady walked around to the driver’s side and rubbed Dog’s head. He got in and drove home.

Cole was waiting on the porch, and Dog leaped down to greet him. Lady intercepted him, her body wriggling as she sniffed Dog’s rear, and he returned the favor.

“Hello, Dog,” Cole said around a bright grin.

Dog meandered over, tail wagging slowly as he accepted Cole’s head rub. He went to the door, and Cole got up to let him in.

“All right?” Cole asked as he turned back to Grady.

Grady snorted and shook his head. “Damn dog.”

“He’s all right.” Cole patted him as he went by and into the house.

Grady shook his head again. Cole opened the door to let him pass, his eyes still crinkling with a smile.

Grady stopped. He put his hand on Cole’s hip and cupped the bone, his fingers slipping up to touch the bare skin under his shirt.

He dragged his fingertips across the flat of his stomach, kept his eyes on Cole’s as he teased his skin.

Cole’s smiled changed from amused to sly.

He slid his hand down into Grady’s back pocket and tugged him inside.

The far-off drone of a car stopped them before the screen door slammed. Cole took his hand back and moved away so Grady’s hand was forced to slide from him. Grady frowned. He went back out to the porch and waited.

A red sports car appeared at the top of the driveway, engulfed in dust, and Grady felt a slither of unease. It was an unfamiliar feeling to have at the sight of his wife’s car. He could still feel Cole behind him at the door.

“It’s the missus,” Grady said before Cole could ask.

“Oh.”

Charmaine pulled up, put it in Park and got out. She was beaming at him, dressed in what she called her “farm clothes”—white button-up, fitted jeans, cowboy boots—her long blonde hair styled in an artful bun.

“Hey, babe,” she called as she popped her head up before leaning back down to get her purse from the passenger seat.

Grady went down the path and met her at the front of the car. She leaned up to kiss him, and he pressed his lips to hers. He drew back.

“You got a bag?”

“In the trunk.” She smiled, ran her hand up and down his arm.

Grady heard the screen door slam, and Charmaine looked over his shoulder.

“This is my hand.” Grady gestured with his chin as he said it. Cole was standing there, hands jammed in his pockets, head nodding before he looked down at his boots. “Cole.”

“Since when do you hire hands?” Charmaine let his arm go and went up the path. She shook Cole’s hand and introduced herself.

Grady got her suitcase, went up to the porch and said, “Since I don’t wanna be seedin’ in the rain.”

“Finally, he sees the light!” She grinned conspiratorially at Cole, and Grady watched him try to give a weak smile in return.

“Where’s Lady?”

Charmaine was looking around, her gaze drawn to the sound of the dogs behind the screen door, their nails tapping on the floorboards and the door as they tried to get out and say hello.

“Inside?” Charmaine was surprised. And rightfully so. Grady shrugged.

She went to greet them, and Grady tried to catch Cole’s eye, but he was mumbling about checking the horses. Then he looked stricken, as if he was thinking maybe he couldn’t do that now.

“Go on then, Chloe’s probably wonderin’ where you been for an hour,” Grady said.

Cole nodded and then took off.

“You let him ride Chloe?” Charmaine asked from behind him. “Is that safe?”

“Kid can handle it,” Grady replied as he ushered her inside.

Charmaine studied him for a moment, but then dropped her reply and went into the kitchen with the dogs, nattering about how she couldn’t believe they were inside, while Grady took her suitcase upstairs.

Dinner that night was awkward in a way Grady reckoned he’d never experienced in his life.

It wasn’t like the time his mama found out his daddy had been cheating with the other Jacobs’ widow—the wife of the deceased older brother of the current Jacobs.

No, that dinner had been charged with awkward animosity.

Animosity for obvious reasons, awkward because his mama didn’t want Grady to know what he knew well enough from her shouting the night before.

But this awkwardness was perhaps all in Grady’s head.

He didn’t get it. Charmaine was his missus, and Cole was his hand, and they helped each other out on account of that just being what you did out here.

So why did he feel so self-conscious? Cole wasn’t helping matters, barely speaking more than a syllable.

Grady knew he wasn’t the world’s biggest talker, but he could get going if a subject interested him.

And Charmaine was trying, asking him about the book she saw he had out, about riding Chloe.

And now, Grady knew Cole loved that damn horse, but you’d have thought Charmaine suggested taking her to the glue factory with the way Cole blanched when she asked.

“Do you want dessert?” Charmaine asked Cole and stood up.

Bless her good breeding , Grady thought. If the weird atmosphere was bothering her, you’d never know it.

“I’m good,” Cole said and stood. “Gonna turn in.”

And then he was gone. Charmaine stood with the plates in her hands, Grady still sitting, as they listened to him thundering up the stairs.

“Something’s off with that one,” Charmaine said as she turned to do the dishes.

“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with him,” Grady said, and got out his cigarettes.

“I never said there was.” She turned back. “Since when are you smoking?”

“Since I felt like it.”

She rolled her eyes, came over to him and propped her hip against his chair. He ran his free hand around her waist, met her eyes and smoked.

“I can think of something better than dessert,” she said.

Grady hummed and crushed his cigarette. It’d been six months since he’d been up to the city to see her.

And they were always great in bed together, even if every other aspect of their marriage had gone askew in a way they’d never outright acknowledged but was pretty damn obvious given that she lived in a townhouse in the city and he stayed out here.

As they climbed the stairs together, her ass swaying in front of him in those ridiculously tight pants—not right for farming at all—Grady had a fleeting thought that he wasn’t as excited as he normally was.

He figured he’d been getting a hand on the regular, and so maybe he just wasn’t as desperate as usual.

Problem was, once they got to it, Grady couldn’t get hard.

Charmaine was spread out beneath him, her hand working his shaft the way she knew he liked, and he was sporting a semi, but not rock hard.

He could see her questioning look and didn’t want to answer it, so he went down on her.

That usually turned him on like nothing else, and he dove in.