Page 31 of Cabins Cows Critics
“Denver was busy with his goats today. I got everything done on my own and had time to shower, thank you very much.”
Denver is the eldest son of the farm next door. He helped out on Beaker Brothers last year after Dean broke his leg, and just never stopped coming around, even after he set up his goat herd.
“How is the young Royal going with his goats? He has seventeen of his girls expected to have their first babies in late winter, early spring, right?”
“Nineteen, actually, last Preston checked.”
“What did I check now?” Preston asks, walking in and sitting opposite Nial. Since they moved in, he’s taken the seat on Dean’s right, Perry is happy to move down one, two when Poppy is here and not at her grandparents’ or mother’s place in Savannah. Her mom moved there last year to pursue her art. She put it all to the side when she had Poppy, and given Preston only found out he was a father when he retired to town almost a decade after her birth, he was more than excited at the idea of her staying with him so that he could really get to know her better. He’s a great dad, and Poppy is an amazing kid. I never thought I’d want any kids. I mean, I was always told I would have to have children, and basically, as soon as I was married, too, so maybe that played a huge part in my distaste of them, but since spending more time with Poppy, I can actually see myself maybe having a kid of my own one day.
Sally-May walks in, and I immediately push forward, my arms flailing a little as I try to steady my seat, so that she doesn’t catch me leaning back on the chair.
“Denver’s goats. Nial said he’s up to nineteen kidding in a few months.”
“Yeah, maybe twenty-five if we’re lucky.”
“That’s almost his whole tribe,” Nial exclaims.
“He has two pretty keen bucks there. We divided the tribe between them, so it’s nice to see an almost identical success rate. Now we’ll just have to see what kind of ratios they produce to prepare for the next heat cycle.”
“Fuck, I remember when we had a bad season and delivered more bulls than heifers. Sending the majority of them off to the cattle ranch was tough,” Nial says, and I nod in agreement.
We’re all ranchers, and we eat meat, well, all of us except Preston and now Poppy. Since moving to the farm and seeing all the animals up close, she quickly decided to follow her father’s footsteps in that regard, too. But even though we’ll eat it, sending off your own animals to a ranch where they’re bred for slaughter is hard. I’d spent my life on those ranches learning the business I was supposed to take over. You never forget the way those places smell. There was one cattle farm that did its own slaughtering, and when I tell you that you never forget the smell of death, I mean it. It has been twenty years since I first visited that place, and even just thinking about the sickly sweet scent turns my stomach.
“Oh shit,” Nial says, sitting up straighter, bringing his phone toward his face, the light illuminating him in its white glow.
“Language,” Sally-May says, but Nial doesn’t apologize, he’s too wrapped up in whatever he’s reading.
“What is it?” Preston asks as Dean and Poppy walk in, Cuddles and Lulu following close behind with their tiny hooves pitter-pattering down the hall. I dropped her off here earlier for a playdate. Poppy has obstacle courses set up in a spare room upstairs for them to play with, and they love chasing each other around it. Whatever helps wear Lulu out is okay in my book.
“Why are we all looking at Nial?” Dean asks, sitting down as Perry and Atlas join us and take their seats.
“What’s up?” Atlas asks, reaching for a bread roll, but Sally-May swats his hand away without even looking his way. Nial doesn’t answer; he’s still too engrossed in his phone.
“Nial, what’s going on?” Dean asks. Still no answer. Dean looks to me, and I shrug.
“Nial, dear, what is it?” Sally-May asks, and he finally lowers the phone with a deep frown etched in his brow.
“Theodore Richmont and his grandson were killed in a plane crash yesterday.”
“What the fuck?” I think my pulse doubles its pace as my chest tightens and I struggle to draw breath. I have to have hallucinated just now. No way did I just hear that name spoken at this table.
“What happened?” Dean asks.
“The Richmont private jet went down over the Atlantic,” Nial reads, and my stomach sinks like a black hole has formed within me, and slowly all my organs will sink into the abyss.
“They could still be alive, like washed up on some island somewhere, right?” Preston asks, but Nial is shaking his head.
“They’ve already recovered the wreckage, only the co-pilot survived, and he’s in critical condition. They said he jumped from the plane as it was nearing the water; the others didn’t get the chance. They were found still strapped in their seats.”
“That’s terrible,” Sally-May says, sitting down beside Perry. She glances my way, lips pressing together in a tight smile, like some silent apology. But that would imply she knows who I really am. Who they were to me. She can’t. She would have said something before now, wouldn’t she? Her attention turns to Perry. “You met the Richmonts, didn’t you, Hun?” she asks him, and my pulse quickens. How do I not know this?
“Only once, he tried to buy the ranch when it was still your grandfather here running things,” Perry says.
“No way Gramps thought about selling,” Nial replies.
“It crossed his mind, like it does all ranchers at some time or another. We were struggling, and Theodore Richmont knew it, offered pennies on the dollar, and I bet you can imagine what your gramps’ reply was, too.”
“Probably a few words we can’t say at Sally-May’s table.” Dean laughs.
