Page 21
Every thread I have, Lot 118, Lot 206, the dormant accounts, runs through the same intake week seven months ago. That week’s state inspection sheet has a blank where the inspector’s initials should be.
Garrett comes in carrying a plate: eggs, toast, and an apple cut into four precise quarters. He sets it on the only clear corner of the table.
“You need food.”
“I have coffee.”
“Coffee isn’t food.”
“That sounds like an opinion rather than ranch policy.”
“Eat before I make it policy.”
He’s in yesterday’s jeans and a clean shirt, and exhaustion has cut a line beside his mouth. The urge to put my thumb on that line is inconvenient. So is the memory of how he listened when I told him where not to touch me.
I take a piece of apple. “Did the usual inspector miss a week seven months ago?”
He looks at the sheet, not at me. “He had surgery. His replacement didn’t come till Monday. Mott covered the office. I was at the west pastures after a water line failed.”
“Did any cattle leave before the replacement came?”
“The records say no.”
“The records also say three hundred tags were destroyed.”
He pulls out the chair across from me and eats the toast I’m ignoring while I call Mercer. He listens to the pattern without asking me to soften it for his family.
At four, I take my ranch truck to the north records annex. Security knows because I log the gate.
What they don’t know is that on the way back I pull over beside the black water tank.
It sits out of sight of the main road, black metal holding the day’s heat, insects working the brush around it. I leave the engine running. I put my forehead on the steering wheel.
For the first time in four days, nobody is watching me.
I let myself think about him. About his hand at the back of my head. About the way he said my name into my neck, like it cost him something. About how badly I want to walk into his room tonight and how many ways that could end with me paying for it later. I think about the manager who moved files behind my back while I trusted him with my work, and the year it took to prove what he’d done.
Seven minutes. I sit there and breathe and let myself want something, and then I wipe my face with the heel of my hand and drive back.
The stop doesn’t go in any log. It’s mine.
At seven, Garrett finds me carrying my case into the rekeyed guest room he had inspected while I worked. New seals on the windows. Both keys in my envelope. An unopened battery alarm on the dresser, registered to no one yet.
“This room is yours whether you speak to me tonight or not,” he says.
“You practiced that sentence.”
“Counsel practiced it at me.”
“Worth every dollar.”
He leaves the doorway clear. I put my case inside, lock the door, and keep both keys.
Then I follow him down the hall to his bedroom, because a safe room and the man I want are separate decisions.
His room is spare in the way rich men call practical. A wide bed. Dark wood. A chair built for boots. The only photograph hangs near the closet: Calvin beside three younger men in front of a sale ring, one hand on Garrett’s shoulder as though confirming ownership.
“You sleep under supervision,” I say.
