Page 42 of On the Land, We Shoot Straight

Tom smiled, smiled like he finally had something on Grady. “See you soon.”

“Hope not.”

“Later, Grady, Jesse.”

He went over to his car, opened the door, and paused before he got in. He zeroed in on Cole, lips ticking up in another smirk. He finally took his seat, turned the ignition, all the while smiling out the windshield, before making the U-turn and driving off.

Grady watched as the water splashed around the tires from the puddles, the engine droning in the smooth way of city cars as Tom headed back up the driveway. He looked to Cole once the car was out of sight but could still be heard.

“It ain’t what you think!” Cole yelled.

Grady raised both eyebrows. He wasn’t sure he took Cole’s meaning, even though he was thinking a whole lot.

Cole looked down at his hands where they were shaking on the saddle.

“Not sure how many times I gotta tell him,” Grady said. He was hoping it’d be a neutral enough thing to say, but Cole tensed. He kept his eyes down, and Grady was at a loss.

“It don’t matter how many times you tell him,” Cole murmured. “He’s just gonna keep comin’. Especially now.”

“You wanna go work for him?” Grady didn’t think Cole did, didn’t think that was even a remote possibility, but he had to ask on account of that remark.

Cole though, Cole looked up at him like Grady had suggested he wanted him to kill his mama.

“I ain’t gonna do it, not again, not even for you,” he hissed, eyes blazing.

“Whoa.” Grady raised his palms like he was gentling a spooked horse. “I ain’t said—”

“I can’t, I can’t. Don’t make me—”

“I ain’t—” Grady started, but Cole was turning Chloe and looking over his shoulder like Grady had betrayed him for good. He took off at a gallop and disappeared over the hill at the edge of the pasture before Grady could get another word out.

Grady watched the space where Cole had disappeared for a long time.

Red shifted on his hooves and faced the same way, watching too.

Grady had a sinking feeling that whatever work Cole had done for Tom, it wasn’t on the level.

He couldn’t parse it, though, couldn’t get the feeling to give rise to words.

It’d started to rain softly by the time Grady turned Red and took him in. When Cole came back, Grady was going to—

Well, Grady thought as he shortened his stirrups and unfastened the girth and slipped the saddle and the blanket off, the rain a steady hum on the roof now, Grady didn’t have a clue in hell what he was going to do.

He brushed Red, got his feed out, and watched as he ate.

And then he got Chloe’s feed out and went inside.

It was dark by the time the back door opened and Cole came in, wet through like a drowned rat, his eyes red-rimmed but his face set like a thundercloud.

“You want coffee?” Grady asked.

Cole looked like he was about to yell something, but he deflated right there in the middle of the kitchen, all the fight dropping out of him, and in its place was just a broken bag of wet, shivering bones.

“Yeah,” Cole said.

Grady got up, poured it and handed it over.

Cole took it with shaky, pale fingers and Grady nodded at him.

He went out to get him some towels. When he came back, Cole was still standing there shivering, sipping his coffee, eyes fixed on it like it held the answers to questions he wasn’t even sure of.

Grady brought the towel around his shoulders, and then brought the other one up over his head.

He stepped back, sat down, and picked up his own coffee.

He was on his third. He’d been sitting there waiting on Cole and thinking what he’d say to him.

Then, when he didn’t come back, he debated whether or not he should ride out and look for him.

And then he’d started worrying Cole had left for good, and he wasn’t sure what to do with how that made him feel.

The only thing he’d known for sure was that he’d be getting up and looking for him in the morning.

“Sorry,” Cole said after he’d placed his mug on the table.

Grady looked up at Cole drying his hair.

“What for?”

Cole shrugged. “Yelling.”

Grady sat forward, laced his fingers together and looked down at them. “’S all right.”

“No, it ain’t.”

“I don’t know much about much, but I reckon you weren’t yelling ’cause of me.”

Grady could see Cole nodding out of the corner of his eye.

“But I want you to know somethin’.”

Cole didn’t respond, but Grady felt him still like he was stilling the room with it.

“I weren’t tryin’ to send you away. I mistook your meaning, is all, and I just wanna ask…”

“You wanna ask what?” Cole whispered when Grady didn’t go on.

Grady met his eyes. Cole stared down at him with hope and fear warring in his pale face.

“I wanna know if you’re gonna be leavin’. I ain’t got no hold on you.” Grady sat back and waved his hand. “You’re a free man. But I reckon I’d like to know it if you’re plannin’ to bolt.”

Cole was nodding along as Grady spoke, but something about it was both sad and disappointed.

“I wasn’t leavin’.”

Grady nodded. “All right.”

“I wouldn’t steal your horse.”

Grady looked up at the bitterness in Cole’s tone.

“I ain’t talkin’ about the horse.”

Cole nodded, eyes down; he nodded like he didn’t believe him.

“Hell, take the goddamn horse,” Grady said and stood up.

Cole startled. Grady gripped his shoulders, and even through the towel they felt cold. Cole was searching his eyes like he was waiting on something and scared of what it might be.

“This ain’t about the horse,” Grady said.

Cole looked back at him steadily, his body losing its tension in Grady’s grip. Grady tightened his hands and flicked his eyes from Cole’s to his lips and watched them part. Grady leaned down and kissed him, soft and gentle in answer to the invitation. He pulled back and met Cole’s eyes.

“You let me know, ya hear?”

Cole nodded. “I will.”

“All right.”

Grady let him go, told him to get warmed up in front of the fire and he’d get his dinner.

“I can do it,” Cole said.

“Go on in and sit. I’ll be needin’ you come harvest, and if you get pneumonia, you gonna put us right in it.”

Grady smiled in the hopes Cole took his real meaning, and Cole rolled his eyes and tugged the towel close and muttered, “Yeah, yeah,” and went on in to the fire. Grady opened the fridge and exhaled long and slow.

He started fixing a plate, turned the stove on to heat it all up and thought back on how he’d reckoned this was a bad idea when Cole turned up on his doorstep.

As he placed the steak in the pan and listened to it sizzle, he felt a smile spreading on his face, a quiet thing, and reckoned he’d been right, it was a bad idea. But the feeling he had when Cole walked in the back door just now? Well, he reckoned it might’ve been the best bad idea he’d ever had.