Page 31 of On the Land, We Shoot Straight

C

ole was leaning against the counter when Grady went into the kitchen at five a.m. He was dressed and ready to go in all but his boots, one socked foot rubbing his calf, two mugs of coffee steaming by his elbow.

“Morning,” Cole said. He gave Grady a cautious smile from under the fall of his black hair, his face still sleepy.

Grady crowded into his space and kissed him.

Cole made a little sound but then brought his hands up to Grady’s biceps tentatively and kissed him back.

It was a slow kiss, morning lazy. Their lips brushed, parted, met again and lingered.

Cole tasted like coffee and toothpaste. Grady kissed him one more time before pulling away.

“Morning,” he said and grabbed his coffee. He quirked his lips as he sipped.

Cole huffed a shy laugh, his eyes crinkling at the edges.

He grabbed his mug and they went out to the porch, the horizon still dark in front of them.

Grady listened as Cole said he’d always loved shearing time when JP and his crew came to the farm, how they made shearing seem effortless, like art, flowing through the flock as one.

The morning began to wake up hazy, the clouds a light-gray vapor wrapping around the house and the shed on the hill above them, the swarm of cover engulfing the fields and pastures and trees on all sides.

It was cooler, but the cloud cover felt warm nonetheless, the whole effect making it feel like they were cocooned in a mirage.

The birds began to get up—twittering and cawing as they soared around the house before landing and taking some issue with one another, then turning to forage for food.

The air was permeated with the comforting smell of sheep manure from having the whole flock so close, and as Grady listened to Cole’s words breeze over him—the soft yet serious cadence of his voice—he felt, and was surprised to feel it when he paused on it, content.

It was as if he hadn’t realized he might not have been, and now here he was, seeing every decision he’d made up to this point as right, and he was only just now realizing it, seeing it in that new light.

It was a feeling tinged with unease—these particular conditions made him content?

What were these conditions?—but he wasn’t one to dwell, so he got up and said, “C’mon,” and tossed the dregs from his mug in the garden. “Let’s move some of them in.”

Cole said, “Yep.” He pulled his boots on, laced them, then stood and followed Grady out, a content smile on his lips, too.

The two weeks of shearing passed in a blur of weary-boned satisfaction. Grady stretched out with his legs on the coffee table, his head tilted back against the back of the couch on the night before the final day. Cole lounged lengthways next to him, reading a book.

Cole had been digging his heels into Grady’s thigh for a while.

“You wantin’ somethin’?” Grady asked. He rocked his head to the side and grinned.

Cole didn’t bring his book down, just dug his toes in.

Grady leaned over, grabbed him by the hips and hauled him up to straddle his waist. Cole blustered like he was annoyed, but his smile betrayed him.

He tossed the book aside and got to kissing Grady like they’d done every night since shearing started.

Grady was thinking it was a good thing they’d gotten into this kissing thing, since they’d been too tired to do much else at the end of each day.

Well, that’s what Grady was telling himself.

He kissed Cole now, slow and deep, noting all the ways Cole had learned how to kiss and become demanding in his own way since they started.

Braced over Grady, he brought his head down and kissed him like he too was happy to settle in and do it until they couldn’t put off sleep any longer.

And Grady didn’t want to acknowledge that maybe they weren’t just making out for hours every night because they were too tired to take it further.

Like, it just felt damn good.

“You good?” Grady asked when he came upon Cole the next morning on the porch steps. He was sitting there, looking out at the horizon like he was about to lose the dawn for good to the sunshine.

Grady expected the usual platitude, but Cole surprised him with his honesty.

“I’m sad.”

Grady wasn’t sure what to do with that.

“Why?”

Cole rested his chin in his palm and tipped his face up to look at Grady.

“I always get sad when it’s the last day. It’s just… good, you know, havin’ JP around. It wasn’t always…”

He looked away, shook his head like he was being stupid and stood. “It’s nothin’. Come on.”

Grady grabbed him by the arm, maybe a little rougher than he meant to, but Cole stopped and looked back at him.

“It wasn’t always?” Grady insisted.

Cole’s expression shifted as he shook off the mask he’d briefly slipped on, the recognition that Grady was seriously asking registering there.

“It wasn’t always good, back home.”

Grady also wasn’t sure what to do with that.

He figured it mightn’t have been, given that it must’ve been years of managing debt and fending off the banks.

But Cole was the youngest, how much of that could’ve been on him?

Surely Old Man Cole would’ve protected the boys from the worst of it.

Grady only knew about his daddy’s affair when he was older because his mama had finally lost it that night in the kitchen before she left for good, shortly before his daddy died.

Otherwise, he would’ve thought everything was coming up roses.

“But—” Grady started.

He let go of Cole’s arm and looked out at the horizon.

“But?” Cole said into Grady’s inability to go on. Then the words found him, the words to match the feeling.

“But it’s all right here, isn’t it?” Grady asked.

He looked back at Cole standing on the step below him, still tall enough to be at his shoulder. The wide grin he gave Grady was answer enough.

“It’s all right here,” Cole agreed. Grady could tell he was trying not to laugh at Grady being sensitive to a feeling for the first time in his life.

Grady knocked his shoulder with Cole’s and told him to hurry up.

JP sure knew how to make the last day count, though. The crew arrived in their two trucks in the usual bustle of jibes and greetings, and then JP was plugging in the stereo and cranking 70s disco.

“Nooooo,” Carson booed.

“I hate to agree with him, but c’mon, JP, not that,” Keith said.

JP did a little jig on the wooden floorboards, grinned at them all like a lunatic, his wild curls flaring out, moves terrible.

“That,” JP said firmly, and fist-bumped Cole. “Get to it.” He shimmied over to his position and everyone else groaned, but Grady saw them bopping along eventually.

“Thank fuck,” Milly said when they sat down to lunch and JP turned the music off.

“Don’t get too excited. I got another boxset.”

“Whaddya mean, you got another one? You only just got that one!” Marcel exclaimed. JP smiled wryly at him.

“Yeah, but then the missus got me a new one for my birthday.”

“It was your birthday?” Cole said. “Happy birthday.”

“It was his birthday a month ago.” Milly narrowed her eyes at JP and bit into her sandwich.

“Little Cole.” JP turned to him. “Littlest Cole.”

“Oh, shut up.”

But Cole was grinning at the attention and ducking his head to try to hide it. Grady couldn’t help smiling over at him.

“My missus got you something, though. The tenth, right?”

“How do you remember that?” Cole asked.

Grady looked between Cole and JP.

“The missus remembers the day you were actually born, son,” JP said, the usual infliction on son like it was a joke between them.

Cole shook his head, still trying to hide that pleased smile in his hair.

“She packed your lunch anyways, but she also sent this.” JP pulled a wrapped present from his bag, rifled through the cooler and pulled out a cupcake and a longneck of beer.

Cole was blushing something fierce, but he took the present like it was something precious.

“You never told me it was your birthday,” Grady said.

The tenth. That was before the shearing started. Just before. Why hadn’t Cole said anything?

Grady watched him now as he ran his hands over the wrapped present and sucked in a sharp breath.

“You better not fuckin’ cry,” Keith said and shoved him.

“Shut it.”

Cole wiped his eyes, though.

“Leave him be,” Milly said as JP said, “Might wanna open it first. Geez, could be shit.”

“Bonnie would never get me a shit present, c’mon.” Cole rallied and unwrapped the present with careful hands, really taking his time on the Scotch tape. He let the paper fall open and gasped.

“What is it?” Carson asked.

“It’s a book,” Cole said.

“We can all see it’s a book, son. What book?” Marcel asked.

Cole held it up. It looked like some fantasy book.

“That’s the third one, isn’t it?” Paulo asked.

“Yeah,” Cole said. “How’d she”—he looked at JP in disbelief—“how’d she remember?”

JP shrugged. “Said you’d be needin’ it after she saw you had to be leavin’ before you mighta got to that one.”

Now Cole really did look like he’d burst into tears.

“None of that,” JP said and cracked the beer and handed it to him. “Finally legal. Well, in Mexico.” He laughed and went on, “But that means no cryin’ over damn presents.”

Cole laughed wetly, took the beer and had a big swig.

As they were filing back to work, taking it nice and slow because it was clear they’d be done before mid-afternoon, Grady bumped Cole’s shoulder.

“You never said.”

Cole glanced up at him. He dropped his gaze quickly around a small roll of his shoulders like it didn’t matter.

“You should’ve said.”

“You were busy,” Cole replied into the curtain of his hair.

“Busy?”

“You girls gonna help me finish this, or you gonna have a fuckin’ tea party?” Milly asked, and Grady left Cole to it. He went to the outer pens with Lady to drive the last of them in.

JP gave Cole the biggest hug as he left, lifting him clear off his feet.

“You come and stay with us if you need to, all right?” he said as he set him back down.

Cole nodded.