Page 44 of On the Land, We Shoot Straight

I

t was well into spring, every shoulder bordering the pastures and fields brimming purple with flowers, and Cole was halfway through the build, directing Grady this way and that, sending him into town to get this supply and that one, before they heard another car coming down the driveway.

Cole stopped lifting the beam, his body in front of Grady where he was holding the other end, frozen by the sound of the drone on the horizon.

Grady watched as Cole set the beam down in a jerky movement.

He couldn’t see his face, just the back of his neck exposed from his hair up in one of those messy buns, the skin of his nape and shoulders, bigger since he’d arrived more than six months ago, slick with sweat from working.

“Ain’t expectin’ anyone,” Grady said and stepped in front of Cole.

Cole didn’t say anything. Grady listened.

City car. He didn’t need to say it, Cole knew the distinction as well as he did.

Grady planted himself right in front of him, felt his panic from behind him; it was in his breaths going short, but it was more in his stillness.

Cole, Grady was learning, was flee or freeze, wasn’t no fight in him.

Grady reckoned he might need to teach him a thing or two on that score.

The puff of dirt appeared and emerging from within the cloud Grady made out the red of the sedan. Charmaine. Grady exhaled in relief and then felt all twisted up in a way he couldn’t explain. He’d almost forgotten he had a wife. And he reckoned that wasn’t a thing a man should be forgetting.

He heard Cole exhale behind him. Grady still spoke to Charmaine about once a week on the phone, and he noticed Cole made himself scarce when those calls occurred, but he reckoned the two of them would get along just fine if given the chance.

So Grady wondered why he was wondering when she’d be leaving as soon as she came to a stop and got out of the car.

“Hey,” she called and waved at Grady walking up.

“Hey yourself,” Grady said and met her at the trunk. She leaned up and kissed him. Grady returned it, but it felt wrong.

“Hi, Cole.” She leaned around Grady and waved.

“Hi,” Cole said.

“Didn’t know you were comin’ this week.” Grady helped her with the bags.

“I said.” She gave him a once-over. She was smiling but frowning too, like she knew something was off, but she wasn’t sure what. She looked at the barn. “What’s all this?”

“Expanding.”

“Why?” But she was walking off as she said it, leaving Grady to her luggage, going over to Cole and inspecting the build.

Grady looked after her and thought about the bedroom—about Cole’s clothes strewn all over the room—and while he knew Charmaine must’ve known about guys helping each other out in an abstract way, that might be difficult to explain.

He got her things, went inside, heard her asking Cole a bunch of questions in her lawyer way and Cole answering in one-word answers like he did when he first got here.

Her arrival made everything feel… wrong.

Grady couldn’t have pointed at one thing from that afternoon and evening, it was like everything was out of sync, just a fraction.

Cole must’ve felt it too because he stayed out on the front porch most of the night instead of tweaking his plans and talking Grady’s ear off about how each little bit could be improved.

Grady caught Charmaine shooting him looks, then looking pointedly at where Cole was sitting outside.

Grady shook his head at her. She shrugged and opened the bottle of champagne she brought.

“You win that case then?” Grady couldn’t believe he didn’t know. He wondered if she’d told him on the phone and he just couldn’t remember.

“No,” she said and poured. “But if I only drank champagne for winning those, I’d never drink champagne.”

She poured him a glass too and got one out for Cole. Grady shrugged and even that was off. He knew his face was creased in concern and his voice was stilted when he said, “Go on and ask him, then.”

“Okay?” She went out and then came back. “He said ‘no, thank you.’” She rolled her eyes.

“His mama raised him right,” Grady replied defensively.

Charmaine raised her eyebrows. “I never said anything that she didn’t.”

“All right, well, I’m just sayin’.”

“What’re you just sayin’?”

“Nothin’. Tell me about the case.”

She sat, sipped her drink and looked out the back door like she wasn’t going to start talking about the case. Grady really didn’t want to talk about anything else.

“You lost?”

She looked at him, shifting from distracted to defeated, and Grady sighed with relief internally. She told him about it. The defense attorney ripped them apart, like she expected.

“I prepped them. Prepped them as thoroughly as I could. They were telling the truth.” She shook her head and finished her drink. Grady got up to pour her another one.

“Thank you.” She sipped and looked at the liquid bubbling up and bursting at the surface.

“Beyond reasonable doubt. I’ve always agreed with that, you know?

It’s what I love about the law. Ten guilty go free, but if one innocent man also goes free?

Then, yes. But now…” She shook her head again in disgust and twisted her lips.

“Now I’m not so sure.” She drained the drink, sat forward and looked at Grady. “How does a boy display the assuredness of a man that would go beyond reasonable doubt when he isn’t even sure who he is yet?”

Grady nodded. “He doesn’t.”

“Exactly. And it’s all the worse for these boys who’ve had their foundations shattered by these pricks.” She got up, went to the fridge and poured another drink. “What’s the story with this one, anyway?” She pointed with her glass at the front porch.

“Whaddya mean?”

She drank. “What’s his story?”

“He ain’t got one.”

She smiled, drunk and a little mean. She always got a little mean after a case went bad. It wasn’t personal, it was her way of dealing. Still, Grady didn’t mind being on the receiving end of it, but he’d be damned if Cole was.

“Everyone’s got one.”

“Leave it.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. He stared back, his finger tapping his full glass.

“Okay,” she said and drank.

Later, when Charmaine had passed out on the couch and Grady had carried her up to bed, she woke up as he lay her down.

Grady watched her bleary eyes hone in on him, her hand coming up to stroke his face.

She leaned up, kissed him, and slid her other hand down to his crotch and rubbed.

He wasn’t hard, and the more they kissed and the more she rubbed, the less he got there.

Grady broke the kiss and sat back.

“We gonna talk about this?” she asked.

“Not right now.”

She blew out a breath, and Grady thought she was going to say something else, but then she was breathing deeply, loudly, and he knew she was asleep.

Grady got up and knocked on Cole’s door. No answer. He opened the door, poked his head in, and saw the bed perfectly made and empty, the same way it’d been for months. He went downstairs, out to the porch and stood for a minute, the night quiet and cool. He headed for the barn.

Sure enough, Chloe was there, her head swinging to him as he walked in. Grady went up and saw Cole lying back on the horse blankets in the stall next to hers. Chloe moved and put her head over the edge as if she were guarding Cole, giving Grady the stink eye.

“Ain’t too cold tonight,” Grady said.

“It’s cold enough,” Cole replied.

Grady braced his arms on the stall door and looked down at him, at where he’d made himself right at home with a makeshift bed and his horse—who should’ve been in the pasture for the night.

“You ain’t gonna come in?”

Cole snorted.

“She’s asleep,” Grady said and didn’t know why he said it, why he was explaining anything.

“I’m all right out here.”

“All right,” Grady replied. He didn’t move. Everything felt off. But then Grady realized that no, only one thing felt off.

He couldn’t recall what it felt like not to kiss Cole as the last thing he did in a day.

Cole was watching him, steady but guarded in a way Grady wasn’t used to from him anymore.

Grady knew he couldn’t go into the stall and kiss Cole because for one thing, he wouldn’t be able to stop, and for another, he had his wife asleep in his bed, and even accounting for what happened last time, that was before.

And before what, exactly, Grady couldn’t have said, but it was before something shifted between him and Cole, between him and Charmaine.

“You be needin’ anything else tonight?” Cole asked after a while. It sounded forced and hopeful all at once.

“I ain’t sure,” Grady said and heard the honesty in it.

“You ain’t sure,” Cole replied bitterly.

“I’ll see you in the morning then.” Grady pushed himself up and went out.

Grady went in, sat on the couch, leaned back and blew out a breath.