Arlene James - Love in Bloom

Smiling, Tate went in and picked up the burgers and fries while Lily and Isabella waited in the truck. As he climbed back in a few minutes later, he heard his daughter saying, “And Dad doesn’t ever do anything fun.”

Imagining what else she’d said, Tate reached into the bag and took out a cardboard cup of fries, passing them back to her, along with a bottle of water. “Here. Eat these.” That ought to keep her little mouth busy.

Instead of heading on down Bronson Avenue and then taking a left on Church Street, Tate chose to head east on School Drive. That way Lily got to see Bronson Park, with its pretty pond, gazebo and playground. They turned back south on Granary Road and passed by the old Bronson Homestead. The house now contained the Public Library. Behind the Homestead, on property donated by the Bronsons, stood Bygones Community Church, which fronted on the aptly named Church Street. They passed a few residential streets and then drove over a cattle guard onto Bronson property.

“So it’s the city limit on one side and your place on the other,” Lily clarified. “You’re practically in town then.”

“Nope. House is still a mile or so away.”

She lifted her eyebrows at that, quipping, “This is quite a yard you’ve got here.”

He chuckled. “You could say that. It’s part of the original holdings. My folks’ house is about a half mile east of mine. We’re country folk. Wouldn’t know how to get along in town.”

“I’m a city girl,” she said. “Bygones doesn’t really feel like town to me.”

“All a matter of perspective, I guess,” he said.

“Yes, it is,” she agreed, looking around her.

He tried to see it as she did, the wide-open spaces, the fields gilded by the rising moon. It looked like peace to him. It looked like the whole world. It looked like home. He hadn’t prayed in a long while, but if he was going to pray, he would ask God to make this crazy scheme to save Bygones work out, for Lily Farnsworth’s sake as much as anyone’s.

* * *

Nothing Lily had seen thus far had prepared her for what she found at the end of the road. She had already discovered that the topography of the plains was deceptive. Though seemingly flat as pancakes, they were, in fact, low undulating hills, wherein lay small hidden valleys, so that what looked like shrubs in the distance gradually became trees tucked into broad, rolling folds. It came as no surprise then that, as they topped a shallow rise, a wide shady hollow spread out before them. No, the surprise was in how Tate had adapted his home to the natural beauty of his glade.

Lily’s gaze fell first on the barn in a field of golden, knee-high grass. Constructed in the shape of a large rectangle, the building’s walls of native stone supported the weight of its steep sheet-metal roof, while the upper diamond-shaped end walls were made of wood painted a deep, rich red. Corrals of stone, wood and metal pipe surrounded the barn, as well as several smaller outbuildings of the same dark red.

The two-story house mirrored the barn in construction, with the lower walls built of native stone and the upper portion of cedar planking stained a deep red. Even the roof was made of shiny corrugated sheet metal and extended to cover a deep porch that surrounded the house on three sides. The builder had somehow managed to tuck the house, which couldn’t have been more than ten years old yet managed to seem ageless, into a grove of mature hickory trees. Stone walkways completed the picture.

The whole place seemed to have emerged naturally from its surroundings, as if everything had grown there organically. God might have designed the land for these buildings. Certainly, whoever had designed the buildings had done so with the land in mind. To Lily’s thinking, the only thing the place lacked was flowers.

She wouldn’t have planted formal gardens. They would have looked out of place and ruined the natural ambience. Instead she would have added a rosebush here or there, and some hanging pots of flowers, a splash of color to draw the eye. She couldn’t think of another thing that she might have added, especially when she saw the rocking chairs and swing on the porch.

“It’s beautiful, Tate,” she whispered reverently, “just beautiful.”

He tossed her a smile as he guided the truck around a curve in the pebbled drive and toward the back of the house. “Thanks. It’s been a work in progress.” He glanced into the rearview mirror, addressing his daughter. “Pumpkin, will you take Lily and the food into the house? I need to get to the barn.”

“Sure, Daddy.”

“Can I help?” Lily asked.

He brought the truck to a halt in front of the open garage. “Ever feed livestock?”

“No, but I’m willing to learn.”

He turned to look at Isabella in the backseat. “What about you, Buttercup?”

“I’ll show Lily what to do.”

“Okay, then.”

He backed the truck out and headed for the barn. Two minutes later they were walking along a graveled path. Tate closed a gate at the back of the barn then went into a small room just inside the building.

“Open the stall doors. We have an automatic feed and water system for the horses that I can activate in here. We’ll have to feed the cattle up front by hand after I drive in the horses.”

Isabella showed Lily how to slide the gates open. They would have to quickly roll them closed again after the horses were inside. Once the automatic feed system started dumping grain into the bins, Tate grabbed a rope and walked out to one of the corrals. Soon hooves thundered through the barn. Isabella hopped up on a post and advised Lily to climb up behind her. Perhaps a dozen different horses swung into six stalls and dropped their noses into feed bins. Isabella plopped down to the straw strewn floor and started whisking the gates closed. Lily followed suit. Tate jogged up, coiling his rope, and helped finish the job.

He slung the rope over one shoulder and returned to the small room at the back of the building, reappearing a few moments later with a laden wheelbarrow. The girls followed him to a pen at the front of the barn. While Isabella and, belatedly, Lily, dumped feed into a bucket, Tate crawled over a fence and dropped a loop over the head of a good-size calf, which he then snugged to a post.

“Sugar, bring me the kit,” he said, running a hand down the calf’s flank to its belly. Isabella picked up a black zippered bag and handed it to Lily, who then carried it over to Tate. “Grab his tail,” he instructed, “but watch those back legs and don’t get yourself kicked.”

“Uh. Okay.”

He glanced up in surprise at Lily then shot his daughter a speaking glance before turning his attention back to the calf. “Pull on his tail. Just stay well back while I doctor him.”

Lily looked at Isabella, who nodded encouragingly, and grabbed hold of the swishing tail, stepping back and leaning away from the animal. It jerked and bawled, but Lily held on, reasoning that if Isabella could manage such a feat then she surely could. Crouching down next to the animal, Tate crooned a steady stream of encouraging words as he unzipped the kit, prepared a syringe and then irrigated a wound on the calf’s underside, explaining his actions as he went along. The animal didn’t really put up much of a fight. Apparently it had been through this process several times already. Tate ended by giving the ungrateful beast an injection, then he waved Lily away, released the calf’s head and chuckled as it trotted to the bucket to feed.

He and Lily walked to the fence. After helping her climb over, he passed the medical kit to Isabella and easily vaulted the fence himself. Lily and Isabella sat in the truck while Tate tossed bales of hay into the back before driving around to the corral in front. He cut the wire on the bales, and the three of them tossed the hay into the corral to feed the few head of cattle penned there for one reason or another.