“If I could get the keys to the office,” said Austin. “I thought I’d catch up on some work I missed this week.”
“Surely.” Leland reached to the row of hooks behind him and grabbed the keys. Then he paused, still gripping the keys in his fist. “You look a mite troubled,” he said. “What’s up?”
Austin thought to ask how Leland knew, but then Austin already knew the answer to that. He was holding himself like a stiff board, the way he did when having confrontations with Mona, as though he figured that doing that might help him resist her barbs, her hard-flung words. But Mona wasn’t here and wasn’t likely to ever be anywhere near the ranch, so why was he holding on to old habits that were no longer of use?
When Leland waved to the other chair, Austin sat down.
“Everything all right with Bea?” asked Leland, as he laid the keys on the desk like a promise. “She’s a sweet little gal, for certain.”
“That she is,” said Austin. “She’s at the forge right now, lighting fires with her bare hands and sifting flour to make some kind of can bread.”
“That’s campfire bread,” said Leland. Then he shook his head and smiled as if at some inner memory. “It always burns on one side, somehow.” He straightened up and focused on Austin once more. “So Bea is well. What about you? Liking your job? Happy at the ranch?”
“I love it here,” said Austin, and he meant it.
Not used to having someone to talk to about these things, he didn’t quite know how to proceed, or how much to share. But Leland had been good to him, and really seemed to care about the well-being of people on his ranch. Clay sang his praises almost every day, and Austin knew Clay well enough to know that couldn’t be faked. Leland was a good guy. Austin should just tell him.
“My wife, I mean my ex-wife, called this morning,” he said, settling into the chair, then leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “She wants to give me full custody of Bea. I agreed. The papers are coming this week.”
“Well, that’s wonderful.”
Austin looked up. Leland’s smile was broad and seemed to encompass all the good this would mean for Bea.
“Only it means changes.” Austin straightened up, rubbed his bejeaned thighs with his hands, and took a deep breath. “I’ve got to get a job in the city, get an apartment, get Bea ready for a new school in the fall—”
“Why a new job?” asked Leland. “Seems to me you already got one right here. Working for me.”
“I do have a job and I love it, but—” He sighed. “I’m a single parent now. I need to do what’s best for Bea. There are no close schools, no close hospitals, or libraries. No—” He stopped himself from sayingno culturebecause that would be out and out rude, not to mention judgmental. He wanted to kick himself for thinking like that, but wasn’t he looking out for Bea? Trying to do his best by her?
“Well, there’s an elementary school in Chugwater,” said Leland, slowly. “Or if you’d rather, there are several good ones in Cheyenne. Junior high and high schools there, too.”
“But that’s an hour commute each way.”
“No more’n people drive in the city,” said Leland, quietly, as if to counter Austin’s agitated state. “There're ways around that such as long distance learning and such. At any rate, let’s stop right here and look at this more sensibly before you go running off to Denver or some such place.”
“Okay.”
“The ranch shuts down in the winter, did you know that?” asked Leland.
“Yes,” said Austin. “I’ve seen the records.”
“Sometimes Quint stays over the winter, but mostly it’s Brody, looking after the animals, keeping an eye on things.” Leland ran his hand through his hair, making it stick up behind his ears. “With that laptop, you can work for me from anywhere, or maybe stay at the ranch in the winter. And in the summer, why, it’s working out fine for you and Bea to live in that cabin. And we can put her to work, too, keep her busy and out of trouble.”
“Work?” asked Austin, half sputtering at the thought of Bea digging fence post holes or lifting hay bales like a man. “She can’t do that kind of work.”
“Easy now,” said Leland with a laugh. “Not grown up work, mind. Something a kid can do. She’ll have plenty of fresh air and good food, and she’ll grow up straight and tall with the wind in her hair. Ride all the horses she wants. She’ll learn more and have more fun than any classroom, any day care you’d like to think of.”
Austin found his eyes growing hot with tears at the thought of such a life for Bea, and scrubbed at them hard while Leland, rather than pretending he didn’t notice, looked at Austin straight on.
“You can’t always know what tomorrow will bring,” said Leland, quite gently. “So just think about today. Think about what you want, and what Bea might want. Come back tomorrow. You still want to leave? That’s fine. I’d pay you for the entire month, on account o’ you did such fine work so far. But think about it, will you? Now, get. I have to go help the boys with those fences.”
Taking his hat and putting it on firmly, Leland got up and strode out of the office. Which left Austin sitting there looking at an empty chair that rotated slightly with the energy of its former occupant still in the wood.
Across the way, Brody clomped around in the tack room, whistling tunelessly under his breath while in the box stalls horses stomped their hooves and blew out breath and genially ate their high quality alfalfa hay. The smell of leather oil mixed with horse sweat and hay dust, stirred together by the fine, light breeze in the open double doors of the barn.
Austin could see out to the blue sky and the grasses waving and the thin layer of white clouds along the horizon. He got up and walked out of the barn, out of the shade, standing in full sun while Leland’s words worked their way into him. And thought about Bea as a young woman, riding up on horseback, the wind in her hair, her eyes full of joy, and how maybe she’d lean down to him to tell him about her day and how maybe she’d not be too old to sayDad, Dad, Dad,full of excitement to see him.
If he took that opportunity away from her, he’d be thinking very small indeed. If he limited them both to a life in the city, simply because it was what they were used to, then he’d be cutting her off from the grand adventure that life could be, that is, if he didn’t make her afraid simply because he was afraid.
