Page 47 of On the Land, We Shoot Straight

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urned out, it was going to take longer than a day.

Grady turned Red for home after nightfall, the dogs on their heels.

He’d set out when he could still hear the drone of Charmaine’s car in the distance.

He reckoned Cole would’ve taken the front driveway like he’d done last time, and being on foot again, well, the dogs would sniff him out even if he’d run and hid in the thicket of trees lining the road.

But after riding until noon, he reckoned he might’ve misread that.

He’d turned and rode hard for the other side of the farm.

Red never let him down—setting a fast pace, he never looked like he wanted to stop as Grady rode out for the road.

Then there was deciding which way to turn at the fork.

But something told him Cole wouldn’t have turned for the way that led to the city.

Even if he wasn’t planning to go to the city, Cole wouldn’t have even wanted to act like he was making his way in that direction.

But he found no sign of him.

As Grady rode home and unsaddled Red and led him back to the pasture, Chloe watched him approach like she was peering around him as if to say, Well, where is he?

“I dunno,” he said to her. “But I’m gonna find out.”

He slapped Red on the rump and went into the house to get something to eat. When he went to bed that night, the house felt emptier than it ever had, emptier than when he’d lived here all those years by himself.

He went over again in his head what Charmaine said. About whoring. Grady wasn’t no fool, he’d known Cole had been up to something. Kid fucked like a porn star and kissed like a virgin. But something didn’t add up in it. Something he reckoned he’d been circling around and didn’t want to face.

He didn’t sleep. He got up before dawn, got in the truck and drove. It wasn’t as good on account of not having the dogs, but he knew all the places in a hundred-mile radius Cole could be camping and he searched every single one. Nothing.

It was night again when he pulled onto the shoulder before his driveway and thought about it.

No way Cole would’ve gone into town. But before he’d arrived at Grady’s, he had to have been doing some work and asking for work somewhere else.

Tom drifted through his mind, but Grady dismissed it—no way was Cole was taking the banker up on his offer.

There was JP, but Grady had the feeling Cole didn’t want to head that far from the county, and JP’s town was closer to Redbo than the center of Freeson; he didn’t know why, but there was a reason Cole had been sticking close to his old home.

And no way was he in town. But someone in town might know something.

Grady made a U-turn. The high beams swept the road and the brush bright white between the blue-black of the night around him. He headed for town.

The streets were empty, and the whole place had the same cool blue feeling of night as everywhere else, the few street lights dropping an orange ball on the ground here and there.

Grady parked in front of the grocer, got out and made his way to the one building where light and noise filtered onto the street.

As he walked in, all heads turned to him as one.

A few nodded before turning back to their beers and conversation.

Grady nodded at Donna when she smiled at him and went to pour.

Grady sat. Floyd inclined his head at him as he did so.

Grady didn’t mind Floyd. His farm neighbored Grady’s to the east, and when Grady said he didn’t mind him, he meant he was tolerable among the majority of the townspeople because he kept to himself.

He was tall, thin, and older than Grady’s daddy had been; he had a son on the land with him, who’d be double Grady’s age and waiting for the old man to die so he could take over.

Grady had the feeling he’d be waiting a while longer.

“Grady,” Floyd said.

“Floyd.”

“How’s the missus?”

Grady sipped the beer Donna placed in front of him. “Gone.”

Floyd nodded.

“Already?” Donna asked.

Grady looked at her. She was wearing a bright pink shirt and had lipstick to match. The whole look was too much, and if Charmaine were here, she would’ve said so to Grady on the side.

“Already,” Grady replied.

“Ain’t sure why she married it if she don’t like the land,” Donna said and smiled, her teeth big and gummy under the lipstick.

Grady grunted. He looked past her to the other end of the bar and saw Joel, who met Grady’s eyes and smiled.

Joel was talking to the usual crowd of farmers and ranchers, and Grady noticed them all glance his way and then look back to Joel as if they had something on their minds but weren’t willing to share it.

Grady got the feeling then they knew all about Cole and might know where he was at now.

The problem was Grady didn’t know how to raise it without straight-up asking, which he was about to do when he heard Donna saying to them that “Grady’s missus done took off already.

” She glanced back at him, and they all followed her look and looked away again.

“She ain’t comin’ back,” Grady said, and then wondered why he had.

Floyd stirred beside him and looked up from under his bushy gray eyebrows. “Never marry a city one.”

Grady shrugged.

“I reckon she didn’t like what you had goin’ on out there, Grade,” Joel called from his spot at the other end of the bar.

Grady shifted so he was looking right down the bar and head-on at him. Joel met his look, his face flushed with booze and his smile sleazy.

“Not sure I take your meaning,” Grady replied.

Joel laughed, and the men around him shifted like a flock of birds rearranging their feathers, looking anywhere but at Grady.

“But I reckon she’ll come back now he’s gone,” Joel said, his face amicable like he had just provided Grady with a welcome solution.

Grady spun fully and looked right at him. “Still not sure I’m takin’ your meaning.”

Joel grinned, like they were sharing a joke. “Old Man Willy was in here bragging on it not thirty minutes before you came in—”

Grady stood and walked out. He could hear Joel calling his name in bafflement and ignored it. He got in his truck, started the engine and reversed, heading out of town in the opposite direction from his own farm towards the Willy place.

It was a good hour to get to there, and Grady made it in forty minutes.

He navigated the dirt track to the farm house and saw the porch light was on.

Old Man Willy’s wife was standing there looking at who might be driving up at this time.

Grady stopped, got out and walked to the bottom of the steps.

“Grady?” she said, unsure and surprised as she tugged her dressing gown closer to herself.

“Willy here?”

She pulled the gown tighter and pursed her lips.

“He was checkin’ on that new hand.” Her voice was full of disdain, and she glanced over Grady’s shoulder for a moment at the shed and the barn a fair distance from the house.

Grady had a feeling the disdain was meant for Cole, and he told himself it wasn’t worth it to punch an old lady in the face.

He turned and headed that way.

“Where are you goin’? Willy isn’t expecting you…”

Grady ignored her and beelined for the shed.

He came up to the door and heard what sounded like a fifty-five-gallon drum slapping the wall, and the unmistakable groans of an old man fucking.

So, Grady was prepared for it when he went in and found them at the back of the shed.

What he wasn’t prepared for was the look on Cole’s face—pinched in pain, he was bracing himself against the drum while Willy slammed into him and spewed all manner of filth.

Grady caught “whore” and “slut” before Cole opened his eyes like he must’ve felt Grady’s presence.

His lips parted and his eyes widened. He pushed up to get Willy off him, and Willy shoved him down hard with a hand on the back of his head, cracking Cole’s skull into the drum.

Grady felt a blinding rage and moved before he could’ve thought to do it. Willy had a moment to realize he was there a second before Grady punched him across the face, blood showering out of Willy’s nose as he tumbled sideways onto the wooden floor.

Cole scrambled up and yanked his pants up. Grady looked to check in with him and saw him terrified.

“What the fuck! What the actual fuck, Grady!” Willy was shouting, holding his nose and getting up, his fat gut hanging over the edge of his open pants.

“Go on and get in the truck,” Grady said to Cole.

Cole was breathing hard and still looking scared.

Grady softened his tone, looked straight at him and said, “Go on now. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Cole nodded, reached behind the drum for his duffel and went for the door.

Willy was standing now, and he looked at Cole booking it for the door. “Ya not finished yet. Get on back here, I reckon I made a deal, and you better be payin’ it!”

Grady saw Cole stumble, but he couldn’t see his face under the curtain of his hair.

“Go on, Cole,” Grady said and moved so his body was between Willy and the door.

Grady heard the door slam and the sound of boots on gravel receding.

“What the ever-livin’ fuck, Grady? I made a deal with that whore.” Willy spat blood after he said it.

“I ain’t sure why you think you can be callin’ him a whore. Thought he was your hand.”

Willy laughed. He started fastening his pants as he spoke. “That there is a prime-grade whore who’s been sellin’ that ass to keep his daddy’s place afloat for years.”

Grady heard the words but couldn’t make sense of them.

“Years?”

Willy finished doing up his pants, looked at Grady and smirked. “Done made a deal with the banker, cost a pretty penny to fuck that when he was fresh. Now”—Willy shrugged—“he’s still a sweet fuckin’ ride.”