Page 2 of On the Land, We Shoot Straight
The boy frowned and skittered his eyes away like he was embarrassed.
“It’s Jesse, but everyone calls me Cole.”
“Everyone don’t call ya Cole.” Grady shook his head again. “Got to number eight and wanted a girl so bad ya mama gave ya a girl’s name.”
The boy’s jaw clenched, and he muttered about them being seven, not eight. He fixed his gaze on his socked feet, face set even though he looked like he wanted to go tumble over.
“All right,” Grady said. “Go on up and use the shower if you want. I’ll get you somethin’ to eat before I head out.”
The boy nodded, shoulders loosening. Grady couldn’t have said what made him do it, but he added, “Cole.”
The boy darted his gaze up, and Grady nodded at him. Cole smiled; it was a small delight on his face, like he wasn’t used to accepting a kindness. But he smothered it quick, mumbled a thanks and went on up the stairs in that same quiet way he’d taken the porch steps.
Grady shook his head and went into the kitchen.
Such a bad fucking idea.
2
G
rady sipped his coffeeand listened to the sounds upstairs. It’d been a while since he’d had someone else in the house. The pipes rattled as the water started up, an almighty clang like a cannon was being loaded. It’d settle once the kid, Cole, figured out he needed to turn the taps just so. Grady listened to the banging and took another sip. The rattles petered out as Cole must’ve worked it out, the sound of water gushing through the pipes filling the kitchen. He ought to get the damn thing fixed. His missus had been on about it, but since she hardly ever came out here, he hadn’t bothered, and he didn’t reckon this Cole would give a shit.
Grady finished his coffee and set about getting his stuff together for the night. He figured Cole would come down soon, and he got to fixing him a plate alongside the sandwiches he was making for himself. The water went off with a final clang just as Grady was screwing the lid on his thermos.
He set the plate for the boy on the table and headed into the foyer to get his boots on. As he sat on the bottom step of thestaircase and tied his laces, he debated if he should wait until the boy came back down before leaving. Then he felt annoyed to be thinking on it. He went back into the kitchen, got his bag and thermos, looked at the plate and the coffee next to it, and thought about how quiet the house was. He set his stuff down, went back out and up the stairs.
The door to the spare room was open, and Grady looked in. Cole was there on the bed, hunched up in a little ball and dead to the world.
“Fuck’s sake.”
Grady went out again and down the stairs. He got the plate and the coffee and cursed Old Man Cole. He went back up, his tread softening as he crossed the floorboards and set the food and the coffee on the bedside table. He glanced down at the boy. He was out of it, all right. He hadn’t bothered with a shirt, and his pants had seen better days, the material so worn it’d only take a gust of wind to shred them off his waist.
Grady glanced back up at Cole’s face; his lips were parted, and he breathed softly, as if even in sleep he was trying to be quiet. Grady frowned.
He went out again, resigned to doing the whole field himself.
Grady whistled up the dogs. They launched themselves into the back of the truck, their nails clicking on the bed as Grady swung himself into the driver’s seat and put his bag on the passenger seat. He turned the key and set off for the nearest field. He could’ve walked it even with the tractor parked on the far side, but he wanted his bed too much at the end of the night to be making the walk back to the house.
The horizon was bleeding bright pink as he pulled up next to the fence and got out, the blackness above it streaked with the last of the light. It was still hot, but it was damn cooler than it had been. The dogs jumped down, scurried around sniffing the dirt and the trees flanking the field, checking that everythingwas just as they’d left it twelve hours ago. Once they settled their accounts with the land, they’d fall into step with the tractor wheels and make the trek at a slow pace up and down the rows until dawn.
Grady got in the cabin with his stuff, turned the key, and made a start. His missus used to ask how come he never got bored out here. Grady never answered her. He didn’t know how to say it was his time to think—or not think, as it were. Only problem that night was, as the sky shifted from black to blue with the moon heavy and full on the far horizon, his mind kept playing over what in the fuck he’d been thinking, taking that boy in.
Seventh born and there weren’t no way that kid had a skill. His life would’ve been a foregone conclusion. Finish school. Move to the city. Work construction or go to college if he was bent that way. Not the farm. Even if the eldest hadn’t wanted it, the second would. Or hell, the third. The fourth.
Not that it mattered much because Grady knew he was doing this field and the next one on his own. Now he just had to figure out how to kick the kid out without having to think too much on bleeding hearts and where the boy could possibly go. It was eating at him more than it should.
Grady hadn’t got his mind to working on much else when he was slamming on the brakes at the appearance of a dark figure in the headlights.
The dust and wind whipped around the boy as he held his hand over his eyes and tried to peer into the cabin against the glare.
Grady cursed, turned the key, and got out.
“Whaddya doin’ gettin’ in front like that?”
“I been tryin’ to get you to stop.”
They stood in the halo cast by the tractor’s lights in the field.
