Eileen Wilks - Cowboys Do It Best

“You hungry this morning, champ?” she asked dryly as she entered the kitchen. Ricky was already at the table piling cereal into his mouth with that dribbly, rapid-action motion of his, greedy as any baby bird. The part in his dark hair was crooked, but he’d remembered to put on clean jeans as well as a clean shirt. The crumbs scattered around the cereal bowl told her he’d had one or more of the leftover muffins and hadn’t bothered with a plate. As usual.

She skipped the plate lecture and went to the cupboard for a coffee mug. When she reached up, though, even with her good arm, the motion pulled on the muscles attached to her collarbone.

Damn damn damn damn...

“Mom? You okay?”

“Sure,” she managed to say, and got the mug. “Did you feed Amos?” Since the huge orange tabby was sitting in her chair, daring her smugly to move him, she figured Ricky had already taken care of the cat. She just wanted to get his attention away from her for a minute, until she got her breath back.

How was she going to get through half the things that had to be done that day? Some of it she flat couldn’t do, like cleaning the kennels. She’d have to hire someone. Only there was no way she could afford it. The electric bill was due. Her quarterly tax payment was coming up. Then there were the property taxes, which had doubled this year. They were past due.

About the only thing paid up-to-date was the note she’d been forced to take out on the land when she inherited a rundown stable operation and a pile of medical bills after her father died. Summer paid that bill religiously. Maybe her priorities had been screwed up when she was eighteen, but not anymore. Nothing could be allowed to endanger her land.

“One twenty-five,” Ricky announced suddenly. “You owe the box a buck twenty-five, Mom.”

“I guess you got me.” She ruffled his hair with her good hand, making him duck and grimace, as she brought her coffee over to the table.

Fifteen minutes later Ricky tore out the back door, his backpack slung over one shoulder, making his usual mad dash for the school bus stop down the road. She glanced at the clock and sipped her second cup of coffee. Seven-thirty. Normally she’d start cleaning the dog pens about now. Today...well, she didn’t think she could shovel poop one-armed, but maybe she should try. Fortunately, the kennel only held five dogs right now. January was slow.

Well, she thought, pushing away from the table, sitting here brooding didn’t accomplish much. She’d do what she could and let the rest go, then come back to the house and find some way to squeeze enough from her budget to hire someone.

Summer grabbed the keys to the kennel from their hook by the door, stepped out onto the wooden porch at the back of her house, and got assaulted. Kelpie knew better than to jump up, so she ran in tight little circles and yipped. The black-and-white Border collie mix was supposed to be Ricky’s dog, but she adored everyone impartially. Two years ago Summer had found Kelpie huddled outside her fence, obviously abandoned. The dog had needed food, love and 132 dollars’ worth of trips to the vet to regain her health, and she’d been rejoicing ever since. Summer smiled and managed to stroke Kelpie’s head a few times before the animal raced off in delight.

At the end of the porch, Hannah, the aging bloodhound who had belonged to Summer’s father, limited her greeting to a dignified thump-thump of her tail.

A breath of wind stirred the sign at the main gate, the one that read “Three Oaks Kennel and Stable” with the little drawing of the oak tree on it. Summer inhaled deeply, enjoying the slight bite in the air, even enjoying the smell of the nearby stable—a smell that meant horses and home.

Some people liked to wander, she knew. Not her, not anymore. Running off with Jimmie had taught her that much. Summer needed roots. She needed to be on her own land, in her own house, with the people who were important to her nearby.

She was a lucky woman, Summer thought as she started across the big, grassy yard, heading for the kennel. She was living the life she wanted, she had a bright, wonderful son she loved more than her next heartbeat, and she’d learned a valuable lesson while still young.

Men were too damned much trouble. Period.

She had just reached the paddock that lay between the house and the kennel when a huge old Buick pulled up next to the chain-link fence that surrounded the front part of her property. Summer slowed and shook her head. She knew that car.

The woman who got out was as tiny as her car was big. She was a dried-up little dab of a woman in a faded cotton dress, with a face like crumpled tissue and thin white hair scraped back in a bun. “Summer!” the little old lady bellowed. “What do you think you’re doing? Didn’t I tell you I’d come over and take care of those dogs this morning?”

All bones and mouth, that was Maud Hoppy. Summer stopped. “Yes, you did. And I told you not to.”

Maud slammed the door of her tank shut and walked over to the small gate, the people-sized one just west of the big, truck-sized gate. “Don’t know what difference you thought that would make.”

Exasperated, Summer propped her good hand on her hip. “You’re nearly eighty, Maud. You don’t need to be shoveling dog poop.”

“I’m seventy-one.” Maud always lied very positively. She closed the gate behind her. “And I’m not going to shovel poop. I’ll just feed the silly things. Do you need me to feed the horses, too?”

“Ricky and I already fed the dogs. As for the horses, I got hold of Raul last night. He’s already been and gone.” Raul usually worked in the afternoons during the week, but he’d agreed to come early that morning to take care of the stable chores before school. He wouldn’t do the kennel, though. The strapping sixteen-year-old hunk of Latin machismo was afraid of dogs. Not that he’d ever admit it, of course.

“Good, then you and I can go back inside and drink coffee while you figure out how much you can afford to pay a hand for the next two months.” Maud took Summer’s good elbow and pulled. Her snowy white head barely reached Summer’s shoulder.

“Two months is impossible,” Summer said, towed reluctantly back towards the house by her tiny friend.

“The doctor said two months.”

“Dr. O’Connor doesn’t have to pay my bills,” she retorted. “I have to pay his.”

Still, somehow Summer found herself seated at her kitchen table with her checkbook, a pad and paper, and a computer printout of her current bills and projected expenses in front of her. Her shoulder throbbed in rhythm with her pulse as she added up a column of figures while Maud darted around the kitchen like a hummingbird, looking for things to clean.

Summer hoped Maud found something to clean soon. If she didn’t, she was apt to start cooking, and Summer really couldn’t afford to throw out whatever mess resulted. “Sit down and drink some coffee.”

“In a minute.” Maud pounced on the toaster, unplugging it and taking it over to the sink to shake the crumbs out. “Have you figured out how much you can afford to pay?”

“Yeah.” Nothing. That’s what she could afford. But by making a partial payment on her property taxes and putting the rest off another month or two—they weren’t going to seize her land, she assured herself, even if she was late—she could pay everything else that was due and hire someone for a while. “It’s not going to be easy finding someone, though. Getting someone who knows horses and doesn’t mind that the job is temporary—”

“Now there,” Maud announced in her raspy, Mae West voice, “I can help.” She turned around, toaster in hand, polishing it as she spoke. “You know Will Stafford?”