Page 74 of On the Land, We Shoot Straight
Cole looked down at his hands where they were shaking on the saddle.
“Not sure how many times I gotta tell him,” Grady said. He was hoping it’d be a neutral enough thing to say, but Cole tensed. He kept his eyes down, and Grady was at a loss.
“It don’t matter how many times you tell him,” Cole murmured. “He’s just gonna keep comin’. Especially now.”
“You wanna go work for him?” Grady didn’t think Cole did, didn’t think that was even a remote possibility, but he had to ask on account of that remark.
Cole though, Cole looked up at him like Grady had suggested he wanted him to kill his mama.
“I ain’t gonna do it, not again, not even for you,” he hissed, eyes blazing.
“Whoa.” Grady raised his palms like he was gentling a spooked horse. “I ain’t said—”
“I can’t, I can’t. Don’t make me—”
“I ain’t—” Grady started, but Cole was turning Chloe and looking over his shoulder like Grady had betrayed him for good. He took off at a gallop and disappeared over the hill at the edge of the pasture before Grady could get another word out.
Grady watched the space where Cole had disappeared for a long time. Red shifted on his hooves and faced the same way, watching too. Grady had a sinking feeling that whatever work Cole had done for Tom, it wasn’t on the level. He couldn’t parse it, though, couldn’t get the feeling to give rise to words.
It’d started to rain softly by the time Grady turned Red and took him in. When Cole came back, Grady was going to—
Well, Grady thought as he shortened his stirrups and unfastened the girth and slipped the saddle and the blanket off, the rain a steady hum on the roof now, Grady didn’t have a clue in hell what he was going to do. He brushed Red, got his feed out, and watched as he ate. And then he got Chloe’s feed out and went inside.
It was dark by the time the back door opened and Cole came in, wet through like a drowned rat, his eyes red-rimmed but his face set like a thundercloud.
“You want coffee?” Grady asked.
Cole looked like he was about to yell something, but he deflated right there in the middle of the kitchen, all the fight dropping out of him, and in its place was just a broken bag of wet, shivering bones.
“Yeah,” Cole said.
Grady got up, poured it and handed it over. Cole took it with shaky, pale fingers and Grady nodded at him. He went out to get him some towels. When he came back, Cole was still standing there shivering, sipping his coffee, eyes fixed on it like it held the answers to questions he wasn’t even sure of.
Grady brought the towel around his shoulders, and then brought the other one up over his head. He stepped back, sat down, and picked up his own coffee. He was on his third. He’d been sitting there waiting on Cole and thinking what he’d say to him. Then, when he didn’t come back, he debated whether or not he should ride out and look for him. And then he’d started worrying Cole had left for good, and he wasn’t sure what to do with how that made him feel. The only thing he’d known for sure was that he’d be getting up and looking for him in the morning.
“Sorry,” Cole said after he’d placed his mug on the table.
Grady looked up at Cole drying his hair.
“What for?”
Cole shrugged. “Yelling.”
Grady sat forward, laced his fingers together and looked down at them. “’S all right.”
“No, it ain’t.”
“I don’t know much about much, but I reckon you weren’t yelling ’cause of me.”
Grady could see Cole nodding out of the corner of his eye.
“But I want you to know somethin’.”
Cole didn’t respond, but Grady felt him still like he was stilling the room with it.
“I weren’t tryin’ to send you away. I mistook your meaning, is all, and I just wanna ask…”
“You wanna ask what?” Cole whispered when Grady didn’t go on.
