Page 7 of On the Land, We Shoot Straight
Cole was stretched lengthways along the couch, but he still had that way about him like he was trying to make himself small. Arms over his chest and legs slightly curled. His breathing was soft and quiet, and his eyes darted behind his lids like he was busy dreaming. Or having a nightmare. He had the look of the other Cole boys but also didn’t. Jack, the second eldest, had been in Grady’s year at school. Cole had that same dark hair and classic features, the dark eyes that looked black, but where Jack and the others ran to harsh, manly, something about Cole was pretty. Eyelashes that were too long, eyes that were too big, something about them sad and beseeching in the fine angles of his face. He had a full-lipped mouth that looked on the cusp of a sneer that never came.
Grady reckoned it was probably wise to never tell Cole he was thinking all this, and anyway, looking like he did with seven or whatever it was older brothers, he’d probably heard it. He cracked his beer on the corner of the buffet behind him and took a drink. He turned back, and Cole’s eyes flicked open. Grady felt caught. They stared at each other for a moment before Cole satup. Grady cleared his throat, said he’d gotten Cole a beer and handed it over.
“Thanks.” Cole took the beer. He leaned down and picked up the book where it’d fallen on the ground when he sat up.
“You studyin’?” Grady asked.
“Huh?”
Grady indicated the book on the coffee table with his beer and cracked a smile.
“Fuck off.” Cole smiled down into his lap. He went to twist the beer lid off, realized it wasn’t a twist top and turned to get up, but Grady stopped him and took the beer back, cracked it on the buffet and handed it over.
“Reckon I might sit on the porch.” Grady looked out the window at the turned dirt of the front field, the tall trees on the fence line turning black against the dying light. He felt Cole’s presence, the space he took up in the high-ceilinged and airy living room as he stood to follow Grady out, and Grady tried not to notice it but failed.
There was an old swing chair on the porch, but Grady never sat in it. Instead, he took the top step. Cole held the door open for the dogs to come out, then sat on the porch step below Grady instead of taking the chair.
Grady stretched his legs out and leaned against the post. He saw Cole from the corner of his eye where he was sitting with his legs bent, his elbows resting on his thighs as he took small sips of beer. It was an awkward silence and yet it wasn’t at the same time.
“How long do you reckon it’ll take to move the sheep?” Cole finally asked, his eyes on the label he was peeling off his beer.
Grady took a long drink and thought about it. “I reckon those ones take us about a week. Then after that, I’m lookin’ to move the ones from the other farm back to this one. Then mightget the cattle movin’ before we have to start the big move for shearing.”
Cole was nodding, his shoulders hunched in a way that seemed like a tense kind of hope.
“Could take a while. To do all that,” Cole said.
“It could, yeah.”
Cole glanced over his shoulder. Grady was struck again by how pretty the kid was. Those wide eyes and full lips, all that bravado that hid a quietly naïve core, that had to. Cole gave him a quick smile before glancing back out at the skyline. Grady smothered his exhale with a long drink.
“You want another?”
“Uh, yeah, all right,” Cole replied.
Grady got up to get it and wondered for a second if the kid was even legal. It wasn’t like he was paying all that much attention to the progeny around the county, but he reckoned he’d seen a Cole boy in every year from the first to the seventh grade, so he figured this one’d be seventeen at the very youngest. That’d be all right if he was just drinking under Grady’s roof.
He grabbed two beers from the fridge, the bottles clanging as he pulled them out, the chill from the fridge a puff of relief into the heat of the room. Grady wondered again how the kid had managed to do all that driving through the day and admired for a second the tough little core he was hiding, because fucked if even Grady wanted to do that job in this heat.
Cole was draining his first bottle when Grady came back out and handed over the new one.
“Thanks,” Cole said.
Grady grunted and sat back down. They drank in silence and watched the sky shift. When it was dark, the blackness was so complete there was nothing until your gaze trailed up to the litter of stars filling the night. Grady got up to flick the porch light on before sitting back down.
“What happened to your dad?” Cole asked. It felt like it came out of nowhere; like they’d been quiet for so long, the presence of words was downright unexpected. Especially those words.
“You didn’t hear?”
Cole shook his head. “Well, I mighta, but I don’t remember.”
Grady nodded. “You woulda been too young. Just got sick. Cancer.”
“Sorry,” Cole said.
Grady shrugged. “Happened quick, which was the weirdest or, I dunno, jarring part of it. One day he’s here and I’m finishing up school and then he wasn’t.”
“So, you were still in school when you took over this place?” Cole asked.
