“This it? He went through all of it?”
“Far as I know. Said he’d be in touch if anything else came up, and to come in with the letters as soon as possible,” Jake replied. “The temp cards are for us to use until the new ones come in the mail, we need to cut up the old ones.”
“Do we have to put new PINs and stuff in?”
“Yeah,” Jake replied. “You can do that online. I have the logins.”
Tanner swore under his breath. It was obvious he didn’t like change one bit. Jake looked around at Brady’s mostly unused desk, organized like he was living in the ’50s with a pen in a weird marble holder—complete with ball chain—and a green blotter. Tanner’s was crowded with a screwdriver, a hammer holding down an unorganized heap of paper, and an ancient dusty computer—the 1990-era tower case slightly yellowed—and a set of broken flat metal clippers with duct-taped handles balanced on top.
These guys needed some help; needed to get dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century, that was for certain. Jake wondered if the computer even ran.
“All the books, where are they? I should probably look at them and get familiar with the ins and outs if I have to sign for a few days until we can square you away. Be a pain to find you every time I need to make a transaction.”
Tanner glanced up and frowned. “Yeah,” he muttered, and pointed at Brett’s desk. “All of it’s there.”
Jake wandered over, cataloguing the cluttered desk. Invoices, ledgers, scattered receipts, fingerprint-smeared copies of work orders. A bank statement peeked out of a creased folder. Jake looked around.
“Where’s the filing cabinet?”
Tanner pointed behind the desk at a rusty, lopsided cabinet painted the same dusty green as the wall. It had a Shur-Gain sticker on one drawer front and a 1978 calendar magnet from the local feed store on another. Detritus of a life lived, gathered over time. Jake felt strange looking at his father’s things, overt hints at who the man had been. He put a hand on the top of the cabinet, and a dealership’s business card with a picture of a Chevy truck from decades ago slipped off and hit the floor.
“Seriously? Have I been transported back in time? Is Jed Clampett going to arrive in a moment to tell us he found oil?” Jake muttered to himself, and yanked the first drawer open, the rails screeching.
“Look, assh—” Tanner’s voice cracked. “If you don’t like it, you can leave it to me, and all you have to do is sign shit. I don’t need your help.”
“Oh my god,” Jake muttered, faced with file folders jammed every which way, years scrawled across the tops, pasted on with white labels. None of it was in order. “Did he do any of the books on a computer, or did you transfer it all for the accountant like this?”
“I have the year-end files on my computer,” Tanner said tersely. “But all the current year paperwork is in that cabinet, and on the desk.”
Jake desperately wanted to sit down for a moment, but he wondered if Tanner would drag him out by his balls if he did. It was his father’s chair, so sitting might be crossing yet another line. He leaned on the desk, his arms crossed, looking at it. At one point the fabric had been dark green. Now it was faded, the wood polished to a sheen by umpteen pairs of denim-sleeved coveralls. Jake ran a finger over the top of one armrest.
Tanner shook his head as he let out a frustrated growl, and Jake caught him rolling his eyes. “Sit in it or don’t, I don’t give a shit.”
Their eyes met. “Didn’t want to assume,” Jake murmured.
Tanner snorted.”You’re too sensitive, City Boy. It’s a chair, not a shrine. Fucking thing squeaks.”
Jake closed the cabinet door and straightened, restless and tense. He wanted out of this room; his father was everywhere. It was as if he needed to take the reminders in doses. Too much and it overwhelmed him.
“I should get back to the house. I promised to help Rosy. You going to join us tonight?” Jake asked, hopeful that Tanner might let the chip fall off his shoulder. He knew it was hard to ask Tanner to do that, with everything that had happened, but it hurt the others when he didn’t join them. Jake could see it when they’d gotten the text back every night so far.
“Doubt it,” Tanner grunted back, not looking up. Jake let it lie, and left the office, walking back out past the big cattle barn entrance and into the graveled space of the barnyard. He stopped, looking around him. One of the crew—Rowan, he thought—drove past on an ATV, and waved as he skidded around the corner, accelerating between the main cattle barn and a smaller lower barn that ran perpendicular to it. The buzz of the ATV faded, and the relative quiet returned except for the distant lowing of cattle in one direction and a whinny coming from the stable on the other side of the yard.
Jake felt out of place and alone, the big sky around him a marked difference from the glimpses he normally got between high-rises, the sounds organic with no rhythm. Instead of being able to tune them out, he heard every single bird, every single tractor as it trundled by. There was no predictability in it.
“You’re being an idiot,” he muttered to himself, annoyed that everywhere he went he noticed the differences, and it made his brain turn. It was exhausting.
He was just walking past the stables when a door slammed and shouting started from inside. Looking up just in time, he saw a big gray horse barreling out the door, right at him.
“Whoa, whoa!” he yelled, and waved his hands, trying to remember all the rusty horse knowledge he had. The horse stopped, snorting, the lead rope dangling from its halter, and looked curiously at him, the reason for flight forgotten. Jake walked up to the horse carefully, making soothing noises, and snagged the rope as Liz and another man ran out. Liz held a cloth to her face, blood seeping through it.
“Thanks,” said the man as he reached them and took the lead from Jake. “Shithead got away from us while we were trying to give him worm medicine.”
Jake nodded and caught Liz doubled over, the cloth still on her face. When she looked up, her eyes glittered like a pissed off cat, and he swept his eyes over her. She was hurt, but she was mad about it. He curbed his impulse to grab her and look her over.
“Liz?” he called over. “What happened?”
“Nobed me in by fabe,” she mumbled through the cloth, and then lifted it off her nose to look at it. He could see blood was still leaking out of one nostril, but there was no telltale swelling of broken cartilage, at least not yet. He’d been in plenty of situations at the boxing gym to know what that looked like. Face protectors didn’t always work when the other guy put in a good hit.
