Page 22 of The Mountain Echoes

Lard for everything holy!

“Instead of a fool from California,” she muttered.

I spent a lot of time in the kitchen growing up, probably because Mama never came in here.

It’s the heart of the house.

Big, open, with a butcher block island and a thick farm-style table that’s seen more fights than any bar in town.

There’s a stone fireplace off the breakfast nook, and expansive windows that look out onto the back pasture.

My limited inspection of the house suggests that it needs a facelift,desperately. The plumbing groans, the stairs creak, some of the windows are too weathered, the bathrooms look beat up, and the floors need a polish.

But the house has a strong foundation.

It’s still standing. Still holding.

Just like me.

Earl comes in and, with ahowdy,makes a beeline to pour himself coffee. Tomas follows him and does the same.

“Where does Vera stay?” I ask about the woman who works around the house and has taken over most of the cooking. She’s better at it than Nadine. It’s a blessing.

“In the old bunkhouse.” Nadine sets a plate of sausage and bacon in the middle of the table.

Both Tomas and Earl get plates, knives, and forks and sit down to eat.

I don’t know Vera well. Like Tomas, she came here after I left, about three years ago, I think. She has a son whom I haven’t seen yet.

“She comes in late,” Tomas interjects, taking a break from shoveling food. Ranching is hard work. You burn everything you eat. I work in vineyards, and I feel the same way. “After she drops her kid off at school.”

I nod.

“Benji,” Earl says as he chews. Then he washes the bacon he just crunched on down with coffee. “Kid’s a menace.”

Nadine rolls her eyes. “Don’t be listenin’ to him. Earl adores that boy. And Tomas is teaching him how to ride. We’re goin’ to make a cowboy out of him, real soon.”

“How old is Benji?” I muse.

“Five,” Tomas says with a smile. He, obviously like everyone else in the house, has a soft spot for the boy.

I have a little information about Vera from Nadine.

She’s in her early twenties—a kid, really, and she has a kid. Her boyfriend, the father of her kid, used to beat her up on the regular. He did that until Sheriff Hugh Dillon arrested the ‘sumbitch and tossed his behind in jail, where it belongs.”

I remember the sheriff. He was and still is known to run the sheriff’s office with an iron fist. I remember how it was a scandal when he took over and forwent the traditional uniform for jeans, cowboy boots, a button-down shirt, and a Stetson, a sheriff’s badge gleaming on his belt.

“Tomas, can you run up to the attic, and you’ll see two suitcases…the only ones? Bring them down and leave them outside Aria’s room,” Nadine instructs him when he goes to put his plate and coffee cup into the dishwasher.

“Yes, ma’am. I can do that.”

Nadine takes a seat next to Earl. They’re both facing me.

“He’s the only hand we have?” I pose it as a question, but I know the answer. Most of Longhorn’s hired hands left four years ago, back when the drought hit and the cattle thinned to nothing but bone.

Now, there’s just Earl—Papa’s right hand for over forty years, too old to fix fenceposts but too damn stubborn to stop trying. He walks like his knees are grinding gravel, but he’s still up at dawn, feeding the chickens and muttering about how everything was better in ’86.

Right!