Cowboy Rebel--Includes a bonus short story Page 4

  “Thanks.” Tag twisted the top off his bottle and took a long draw.

  All three of them sat down on the ground on the shady side of the truck. Levi removed his straw hat and wiped sweat from his angular face with the tail of his T-shirt. His brown hair was plastered to his head. Even his eyelashes had droplets of sweat on them.

  “I’ll be glad to get this all in the barn. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow. Looks like we only got one more trailer full after this.” Levi downed half his bottle of water before he came up for air.

  “I appreciate the offer of the bunkhouses, but we’d just as soon stay over on our place. The cabin isn’t far from the fence separating the Longhorn Canyon from our ranch, so I thought I could make a gate and”—Tag hesitated and took another drink before he went on—“and kind of go back and forth that way if you was willin’ to rent to me. I’d be the only one livin’ there and it wouldn’t be for long, just until we can get a bunkhouse thrown up over on…” Another pause. “Dammit! We really need to get a brand and a name to the place.”

  “I can’t rent to family. Wouldn’t be right,” Justin said. “But you’re welcome to use the cabin as long as you want. Soon as we get moved out, consider it yours. I can’t imagine being cooped up with three other grown cowboys in that little house. And if you want to put in a gate or a stile, just go right ahead.”

  “Thank you.” Tag held out his hand.

  Justin shook with him. “Remember, now, that bathroom is tiny.”

  “I can live with it,” Tag said.

  “You got any ideas for your ranch name?” Levi asked.

  “A few but none we like. We’re Longhorn fans, but y’all already got the Longhorn Canyon brand,” Tag answered.

  “Canyon Creek runs through your property as well as ours,” Levi said.

  “I like that. Has a nice ring. Canyon Creek Ranch,” Tag said. “I’ll have to talk to Hud about it and get Maverick and Paxton’s thoughts. But I sure like it. Let’s get this trailer taken to the barn, and I’ll help y’all stack it before I get back to my fencin’ business.”

  Justin stood up. “Thank you. Three of us can get the job done quicker than two. We got our hired help out workin’ on fences and doin’ some plowin’.”

  “Ranchin’ ain’t for sissies,” Levi chuckled as he got to his feet and dusted off the seat of his jeans. “But it gets into the blood and nothing else satisfies a cowboy.”

  “You got that right,” Tag agreed.

  After they’d unloaded and stacked the hay, Tag drove his four-wheeler back over to his ranch. He stopped at the entrance, where a wooden sign with JOHNSON RANCH emblazoned on it used to hang, and imagined one with Canyon Creek up there. The brand could be two Cs, back-to-back with a wavy line under them for the creek that snaked through his property. He liked it, but now he’d have to convince Hud, and dammit, his brother had to mull over everything for days before he made a decision.

  Hud barely glanced up from driving T-posts when Tag hopped off the vehicle. “Where’d you disappear to?”

  “Went over to face the music with Emily.” He picked up a post and stepped off eight feet.

  “How’d she take it? Is she goin’ to tattle to Mama?” Hud chuckled.

  “I’m not sure. Nikki had already told her,” Tag answered. “I talked to Justin and he said whichever one of us wants to can use the cabin when they move out. It’s not that far.”

  “I’m not living over there,” Hud said. “Have you been in that bathroom? You have to practically take a shower on your knees. Besides, me and the guys have been talkin’ this mornin’. We think we should turn the house into a bunkhouse until we can get one built. We can use the living room as another bedroom.”

  Tag drove the metal post into the ground. “Emily suggested the same thing, and I’m willing to move into the cabin.”

  “All it’s got is that little window air conditioner. Remember how hot it got when we went over there for supper with Emily and Justin?”

  “I’ll take the living room,” Paxton said from twenty feet ahead, where he was taking down the old wooden fence posts and rolling up the rusty barbed wire. “But only if I can have the tack room in the barn when I get lucky on Saturday night.”

  “What makes you so sure you’ll get lucky?” Hud asked.

  “Just feel it in my bones.” Paxton grinned.

  “No A/C out there. I guess old Eli Johnson never got frisky in the barn,” Hud said.

  “I’ll be glad to have a bedroom to myself. I’ll get rid of those twin beds and put in a king.” Maverick stretched new barbed wire between the posts. “And y’all are gettin’ too far ahead of me.”

  Tag finished with the post he was driving and went back to help Maverick. “Guess you are stringing five wires to our every one post.”

  “Can we store the twin beds in the barn?” Paxton asked. “I’d like to buy a bigger one too. Hey, I just thought of something. You’re not doing us a big favor by moving to the cabin. You’ll have it all to yourself. Talk about a chick magnet.”

  Tag’s mind flashed on Nikki again, and in this picture, a heart-shaped magnet was glued to her scrubs. When he crooked his finger, it pulled her straight into his arms.

  Yeah, right, he thought. Like she said, I’d have to change my ways. You can’t teach an old dog like me new tricks, especially when they mean changing a whole lifestyle.

  Chapter Four

  Nikki drove between the concrete pillars on either side of the arched wrought-iron sign for Hogeye-Celeste Cemetery. She always made the trip out east of town to visit her brother’s grave on his birthday, September 30; at Christmas; and on May 8, the day he died. She parked on the gravel road closest to his grave and reached over into the backseat for the gerbera daisies she’d gotten at the florist that morning. Flowers for a twelve-year-old boy hardly seemed appropriate, but daisies were better than roses—at least in her way of thinking.

  She sat down in front of the small headstone and laid the flowers at the base. She traced his name, Quint Grady, with her fingertip and then the birth and death dates. Not much to say about a little guy who’d fought so hard to live. She could tell stories about his humor, even when everyone finally accepted the fact that even if by a miracle a bone marrow donor did show up with a match, his body wasn’t strong enough for the transplant.

  She pulled a few weeds, wiped tears away with the back of her hand, and said, “I’m sorry. I promised I wouldn’t cry for you when you were gone, but I still miss you.” She pulled up the tail of her T-shirt and dried her face. “Let’s try this again. You always made me laugh, Quint. We had to stick together to survive all that tension in the house between Mama and Daddy. I missed you when you left us. Daddy left that next week after your funeral and Mama went to bed. For a whole year, Quint, and I was only fourteen. The cooking, paying bills, shopping for food, and all that fell on me. I used to spend hours in your bedroom unloading my problems on you.”

  The crunch of car tires on gravel caused her to look over her shoulder. It wasn’t her mother’s fifteen-year-old vehicle, but then Nikki wouldn’t expect it to be. She’d never known Wilma to visit Quint’s grave even once after the day of the funeral. Wilma was so wrapped up in her own ailments, real or imaginary, that she had little time for anyone else. Looking back, Nikki realized that’s the way it had always been. Wilma was always sick or dying with something. When Quint died, she’d convinced herself that she was coming down with leukemia. She’d taken to her bed and only got out of it at meal time and when she had to go to the bathroom. A year later, she declared that she was in remission. Nikki didn’t have the heart or energy to tell her that wasn’t the way things worked. She was just glad that her mother was willing to take over some of the cooking and the housework again, even if it did mean that they ate at exactly the same time every day and the house had to be spotlessly clean at all times.

  The vehicle stopped and the window came down partway. A man wearing a baseball cap and mirrored sunglasses stared her way for a f
ew minutes before he moved on. Most likely he was looking for a specific grave site, she thought, and it wasn’t in that area. She moved around behind the tombstone to take care of the weeds back there.

  “There now,” she said when she finished and stood up. “I’ve got you all prettied up for another few months. I miss you, Quint. Even yet, I miss you.” She wiped a tear from her cheek and blew a kiss toward the big white fluffy clouds in the sky.

  When she got into her car and drove away from the cemetery, the same vehicle that had been looking for a grave pulled in behind her. It followed her to the snow cone stand, where she ordered a rainbow with cherry, grape, and orange—Quint’s favorite and her own little tradition on the anniversary of his death. On his birthday she bought a cupcake, put a candle on it, and sang the birthday song. At Christmas, she made iced sugar cookies and ate the Santa one in his memory.

  She handed the girl behind the window two dollars when she handed her the snow cone and told her to keep the change. Then she drove straight to the park where she and Quint had spent so much time before he got sick. Sitting on the bench under a shade tree, she could picture him over there on the slide. He’d always been small for his age, but he had a big heart and a smile to match it.

  Eating the snow cone, she noticed that same car from the cemetery passing slowly on the far side of the park. Had it been a pickup, she would have figured it was Tag, pretending to stalk her as a joke. But it was a fairly new shiny black sedan. Maybe a Lincoln or a Caddy—all cars looked alike to Nikki these days. The window rolled down but only for a moment; then the car slowly moved back out onto the road and disappeared.

  Nikki looked up at the pale blue sky and sent up a short prayer. You could send me a friend today, Lord. I could sure use one.

  Tag was on his way back to the ranch from Bowie with a trailer loaded with fence posts and rolls of barbed wire. They’d run out of both in the middle of the afternoon, and he’d been sent to get more while the other three guys began to clean out the barn. In a couple of weeks, the east pasture would be ready to cut and bale, and Tag would sure like to have new fences up on one side of the ranch by then.

  The radio was blaring and he was keeping time to the music on the steering wheel with his thumbs and singing along to Clay Hollis’s song “Can’t Let a Good Thing Get Away.” Listening to the words, he wondered how many good things he’d let get away from him somewhere along the bumpy road his life had been on for more than a decade.

  He grinned and didn’t even wince when it hurt. The next song was “Live Like You Were Dying.” That told him that no matter how many good women might have slipped through his fingers, he’d sown lots of wild oats for both him and his friend Duke Fields, who’d died in a motorcycle crash when they were both only seventeen.

  He was singing along with the lyrics about riding a bull named Fumanchu when his phone rang. He turned the volume down and answered, “Hey, Billy Tom, what’s up?”

  “Lots of good things. Want in on some fun and make some money at the same time?” Billy Tom slurred his words.

  Tag glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “Little early to be hittin’ the bottle on a weekday, ain’t it, Billy Tom?”

  “Man, I ain’t drunk. I’m high,” Billy Tom said. “And me and the old boys are back in town, ready to romp and stomp. You with us?”

  “Sorry, man, I’ve left the panhandle. I’m out here in”—Tag hesitated—“another part of the state tryin’ to turn a ragged-ass ranch into something profitable.”

  Billy Tom chuckled. “The boys will be real sad if you don’t join us. We’re ready to ride again. Meet us at the old stompin’ grounds on Saturday night. Surely you can take a weekend off and hear our proposition. It’ll only cost you a thousand dollars. We just need to rent a truck. It’ll be a…” He paused so long that Tag thought he’d lost the connection.

  “You still there or did that weed knock you on your ass?” Tag asked.

  “Nah, man, where was I? Oh, we need a little investment. We got a new guy who can turn a thousand into ten thousand,” Billy Tom said.

  “No thanks. That buys a lot of fence posts and barbed wire. I’ll pass. Y’all go on and have a good time,” Tag said.

  “Your loss, man, but just in case you change your mind, I’m going to tell the gang that you’re with us. Just think of what a rush it’d be to have some fun like the old days when Duke was still with us.”

  Tag heard the roar of a motorcycle coming to life and then the call ended. He’d cut ties with Billy Tom and those guys more than five years ago. Tag lived close to the edge, but those guys went beyond that. They’d ride their motorcycles off a virtual cliff into the water thinking they could go so fast that they’d never sink. They were downright crazy and sometimes even illegal in their stunts, and Tag was glad he hadn’t told Billy Tom exactly where he’d moved.

  He turned up the radio to an old song from Vince Gill, “Go Rest High on That Mountain.” He took the next right and found himself in a small parking lot at the city park. He pulled into a space, turned off the engine, removed his sunglasses, put his head on the steering wheel, and let the tears flow. What he was feeling was as fresh and raw as what he’d felt the day they’d lowered his best friend’s casket into that deep hole while that same song echoed through the flat country of West Texas.

  In spite of being named for John Wayne, Duke had been a small kid until they were juniors in high school. At the beginning of the school year, he’d barely reached Tag’s shoulder. By the end of that same year, he’d outweighed Tag by thirty pounds and was an inch taller. That summer, the two of them used a big chunk of their savings from hauling hay to buy motorcycles. And that’s when they got tangled up with Billy Tom and his posse of four other guys who all owned motorcycles.

  Tag finally raised his head, dried his eyes, and put his sunglasses back on. That’s when he realized that Nikki was sitting out there on a park bench eating a snow cone. He picked up his hat from the passenger seat, settled it on his head, and started the engine. But another song on the radio caught his attention and he stopped to listen to Vince Gill sing “Whenever You Come Around.”

  “I get it, Duke, I get it,” he whispered as he shut off the engine, got out of the truck, and headed toward Nikki. She waved at him and smiled. That was a good sign, wasn’t it?

  Lord, this was not who I was thinkin’ about, Nikki thought as Tag made his way across the playground toward her. But, hey, if this is all you can do on short notice, I’ll try not to bitch.

  Tag sat down beside her on the bench and she offered her snow cone. “Not much left, but it’s cold and tastes pretty good on a hot day like this.”

  He took it and ate several bites before handing it back to her. “I left a little so you could have the last of it. What’re you doin’ out here?”

  “I might ask you the same thing.” She finished off the last bite and tossed the empty cup at a nearby trash can.

  “Missed that shot,” he said as he stood and picked up the cup and trashed it.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “It wasn’t a three-pointer, but at least I made the basket.” He sat back down.

  A full foot of space separated them, but the temperature rose by ten degrees. She wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. “Hot, ain’t it?”

  “It’s Texas. We have four seasons. Hot, Hotter, Hottest, and Hot as Hell. We’re just now to Hotter, but Hot as Hell is comin’,” he chuckled.

  “What in the world are you doing here, Tag?”

  “It’s a long story, but the truth is that a song on the radio brought back some tough memories. I couldn’t drive with tears in my eyes,” he said.

  Nikki reached up and removed his sunglasses. His eyes were red and faint streaks were still visible down his cheeks. “Did the tears burn when they hit the stitches?”

  “Little bit.” He took his glasses from her fingers and put them back on.

  “What was the song?” she asked.

  “Vince wa
s singing ‘Go Rest High on That Mountain.’ It gets me every time,” he answered.

  A lump the size of a grapefruit formed in her throat. They’d played that song at Quint’s funeral, and even the guitar and piano lead-in made her cry. She quickly wiped at her eyes.

  “Gets you, too, does it?” Tag asked.

  She tried to swallow down the lump, but it wouldn’t budge. A vision of her precious little brother lying in that blue casket flashed before her eyes as the song played in her head. “Yes, it does,” she whispered.

  “My best friend and I bought our first motorcycles between our junior and senior years of high school. It wasn’t a gang, but it was a rough bunch that we got tangled up with. They’d robbed a convenience store and were speeding out of town on their cycles. I learned later that they were going to an old cabin that Billy Tom’s great-grandpa had used to run moonshine out of years before.”

  Another tear ran down his cheek, but he didn’t even flinch when it pooled up in the stitches. “I’ve never told anyone this before. Don’t know why I’m doin’ it now. Guess after all these years, I just need to get it off my chest. You won’t tell Emily, will you?”

  “Not if you ask me not to.” Nikki’s mind flashed on another picture of her brother the first time he had gotten a nosebleed at the park.

  “Don’t tell Mama,” he’d begged. “She won’t let us come back if you do. She’ll think I’ve got something horrible that she’ll catch.”

  He was only seven that year, and yet the two of them already knew their mother’s problems too well. At that age, kids shouldn’t have even been at the park alone, much less worried about their mother’s reaction to a bloody nose. But Wilma hadn’t cared where they went or how long they were gone.

  “I’m asking you not to, then.” Tag’s voice caught in his throat. “My friend Duke and I were riding our cycles out on the dirt road and being reckless when we saw the other guys. They came down the road five abreast, riding so fast that they were a blur with a cloud of dust behind them. We pulled off to the side to let them pass.”