Cindi Myers - Her Cowboy Soldier

“Charla, you’re supposed to be chaperoning, not dating,” Bobbie said.

“In this town, I’ve learned to take my opportunities where I find them. I hear the garage has a cute new mechanic. I think I’ll see if he’s interested.” She fluttered her fingers in a wave and left them.

“Why did you turn her down?” Bobbie asked as she and Amy returned to work. “I doubt the kids would give you any trouble, and you could enjoy an evening with the other chaperones.”

“I just don’t think I’d be comfortable. I’m not ready for that kind of socializing.”

“It’s a small-town prom—not a grand ball. And you’d know almost everyone there. Josh, for instance.”

“I’m not Josh’s favorite person right now. He’s still upset about the story I did for the paper.”

“Yet you’re going to the science bee with him.”

“That’s different. That’s for the paper. I’m not really volunteering—I’m writing about the event for the Herald.”

“There’s more to life than work, you know. You can’t let things get so out of balance.”

Amy knew her grandmother meant well, but she didn’t understand how important work was to Amy right now. The right work would build a good future for her and her daughter. “I’d rather spend time with you and Chloe,” she said.

“Don’t use us as an excuse for hiding from life,” Bobbie said. She put one bony hand on Amy’s shoulder and looked her in the eye. “Just because Brent isn’t here to have fun doesn’t mean you have to punish yourself by never enjoying anything.”

“I...I’m not doing that.” Was she?

“I’d better take these peppers out to the truck,” Amy said. “We need more up at the stand.” She made her escape from the greenhouse, but her grandmother’s words echoed in her head. Was she avoiding the prom out of guilt over Brent’s death? Maybe that was part of it. And maybe she just needed more time before she was comfortable with a social life. She had work and Chloe to keep her occupied; she wasn’t ready to add more.

And maybe, despite her mother’s training, she was a coward. After losing so much, she didn’t want to take more risks. She was afraid to open her heart to pain again.

* * *

ON SATURDAYS, JOSH helped his dad with whatever work needed doing around the ranch. When Josh had first come back from Iraq, Mitch had been hesitant to let his son do anything, as if the loss of his hand also meant the loss of all his skills. Josh had had to prove he could handle the job—that he could still ride a horse and string fencing and haul feed and all the jobs involved in keeping a big ranch going.

This Saturday they were shipping calves to the auction house in Junction. Josh worked with his dad and the two hands, Tomas and Ben, to round up the calves and confine them in the holding pens. From there, they’d be loaded onto a livestock trailer for the trip to the auction. It was hot, dirty work, the air filled with the bawling of the calves and the shouts of the men, dust rising in choking clouds around them.

Josh’s horse, Pico, had thrown a shoe on the way out of the corral this morning, so Josh was riding one of his dad’s mounts, a cantankerous sorrel called Pete, who wasn’t happy with the unfamiliar rider on his back. Josh had to work to keep the horse in check.

“Don’t know what’s up with him,” Tomas remarked as the horse danced back from the open gate of the pen as two calves streaked past.

“He don’t like that hook,” Mitch said. “Some animals are wary of anything that isn’t as it should be.”

Was this another subtle reminder from his dad that Josh “wasn’t as he should be?” No—Mitch was too plainspoken for subtle. He said what he thought without a lot of concern for other people’s feelings—certainly not his son’s. Part of Josh was glad his dad hadn’t coddled him after he came home from the war. If only Mitch trusted Josh to do more.

“You’re probably right,” Josh said. “But I can handle him.” He’d ridden practically since he could walk; a nervous horse and a missing hand weren’t going to defeat him.

At ten they stopped to water the horses and themselves, resting in the shade of a gnarled piñon.

“Bart Ogleby’s driving over about eleven and we can load ’em up,” Mitch said. “They ought to bring a good price over at the auction.”

“Snow’s melting fast this year,” Ben said. “Another month we can take the herd up to the high pasture.”

Moving the herd was a spectacle the whole neighborhood—and more than a few tourists—turned out for. The cowboys, including hands from neighboring ranches who came to help, drove the herd through open gates onto the highway, which had to be closed for the purpose. In a parade of cows, horses, ATVs and ranch dogs, all led by county sheriff SUVs with their lights flashing, they traveled a mile down the highway to gates leading to other pastures that fed onto high ground watered by winter snows. The cows would spend the summer in these lush pastures, then the whole process would be reversed in the fall.

The operation required precision, coordination and a little luck to run smoothly, but it was one everyone on the ranch looked forward to.

“Your mom tells me you got corralled into chaperoning the prom this year,” Mitch said to Josh.

“I did.” He’d planned to dress as he did for class, in a plain shirt and khaki trousers, but his mother had insisted he wear a suit and tie or she’d never be able to hold her head up in town again.

“You couldn’t pay me enough to spend the night in a gym full of teenagers,” his dad said.

“The prom isn’t at the gym. It’s in the ballroom, upstairs at the Opera House.” The Hartland Historical Society had restored the old Daniels Opera House five years previous, including redoing the upstairs ballroom, which hosted various community events.

“I guess that’s better than having all those kids drive into the city for their party. Where did they have it when you were in school?”

“The Bellflower Hotel.”

Mitch shook his head. “I’d forgotten all about that place.”

“It burned down the summer after my prom, so mine was the last class to celebrate there.” Josh had taken Sarah McKenzie as his date. She’d broken up with him a week later and had eventually married an accountant she met in college. They lived over in Durango, according to a letter that had gone out for their tenth high school reunion while Josh was over in Iraq.

The men grew quiet again. Ben and Tomas moved away to smoke, leaving Josh and his dad alone, the silence stretching awkwardly between them. For all the angry words they’d exchanged over the years, simple conversation came harder, as if neither was quite sure what to make of the other.

“So, you liking teaching?” his dad asked after a while.

“Yeah, I like it. The kids are interesting. Good kids, most of them.”

“I never figured you for a teacher. I always thought you wanted to be a rancher.”

Josh told himself that wasn’t a note of accusation in his dad’s voice. “Most ranchers these days have day jobs, don’t they?” he said.

Mitch nodded. “A lot of them. I’ve always managed without that, though your mom worked at the bank for a while.”

Josh remembered those years, the house empty when he got off the school bus in the afternoons, his mom at the bank and his dad working on the ranch. He hadn’t minded having the house to himself for those few hours, hadn’t even minded starting dinner and doing the chores his mom assigned him. But his father had minded. Mitch’s pride had suffered from knowing his wife had to work to support the ranch. The day cattle prices rose enough to cover their debts without her salary, he’d ordered her to give up her job, and she’d done so, though Josh sometimes wondered if she missed that taste of independence.