Chinook

Supper is pot roast and silence.

Imogene talks enough for four people, which is the only reason it isn't unbearable. Ysidro tells a story about a bull in Pendleton that you've heard twice before and laugh at anyway. Bartholomew eats with his head down and his hat on the peg by the door, and every time you look at him, he's looking at his plate.

"How much did you pay for him?" you finally ask.

The fork stops. "For who."

"Ransom."

"Eat your potatoes," Imogene says mildly.

"I sold him for eighteen hundred dollars," you say, "to a guy in Billings who wore a turquoise bolo tie and called me son. How'd he end up in your barn?"

Bartholomew sets the fork down. Wipes his mouth with the napkin. Stands.

"Thanks, Ma," he says, and takes his plate to the sink, and walks out the back door into the dark.

The screen door taps shut.

Ysidro whistles low through his mustache. "You been here four hours, Ethan."

"I know."

"That's a record."

You can't sleep. The bunkhouse is too quiet after ten years of motel ice machines and truck stops and arena PA systems. Your shoulder throbs in time with your pulse. Somewhere past midnight you give up, pull your boots on one-handed, which takes about a year, and go out to check on Ransom.

The barn light is on.

You hear it before you see it: a mare groaning, low and awful, and a man's voice under it, steady. "Easy. Easy, Dolly. Easy, girl."

The sorrel mare is down in the foaling stall, sides heaving, sweat dark on her neck. Bartholomew is on his knees in the straw behind her, sleeves shoved past his elbows, jaw tight.

He looks up. Doesn't look surprised.

"Leg's back," he says. "Foal's got one leg back. I need somebody at her head."

You don't ask questions. You go in.

You kneel by Dolly's head and get your good hand flat on her neck. Her eye rolls white at you. "Hey, mama. Hey. I know. I know it hurts."

You've done this before. Right here, with him, ten years ago, the night a heifer calved backward in a snowstorm in May and the two of you laughed so hard afterward you couldn't stand up. You don't think about that. You think about Dolly's breathing, and keep your voice soft, and talk her down the way you'd talk a bronc in the chute.

Bartholomew works. You can't see what he's doing and you don't need to. You can hear him breathing through his teeth. You can see the muscle in his forearm stand out.

"Keep her down," he says. "Keep her still, Ethan."

"She's still. Aren't you, mama. Good girl."

"There," he breathes. "Got it. Got it. Come on, Dolly. Push."

The mare heaves. Once. Twice.

And then there's a rush and a slither, and a wet, dark, impossible tangle of legs is lying in the straw, and Bartholomew is clearing its nose with his fingers, and the foal sneezes.

You laugh. You can't help it. It comes out of you cracked and too loud.

He looks up at you from the straw, sweating, his hair stuck to his forehead, and for one second he smiles.

The real one. The crooked front tooth. The smile that wrecked your whole life at twenty-two.

Then he remembers who he's smiling at, and it's gone.

"Filly," he says, checking. He sits back on his heels. "First live foal she's carried in three years."

You watch Dolly lift her head and nicker, deep in her chest, and the foal answer with a tiny, outraged squeak. Your eyes sting. You blame the hay.

"She needs a name," Bartholomew says.

"Your ranch, your horse."

"You were at her head." He wipes his hands on a towel, not looking at you. "Name her."

You look at the filly. Dark bay, wet, one white sock, big ears she hasn't grown into. Outside, the wind has changed. It's coming down off the mountains warm and strange, the way it does in spring, melting the last snow in a single night.

"Chinook," you say. "Like the wind."

He's quiet a moment. "Chinook," he repeats, like he's testing it.

Then he nods once and goes to get the iodine.

You sit in the straw for an hour watching Chinook try to stand. She folds up like a lawn chair four times. On the fifth she makes it, wobbling, and noses under Dolly's flank until she finds what she's looking for.

Bartholomew leans on the stall door beside you. Not close. Not far.

"You were good with her," he says, to the foal.

"I've been on a lot of horses, Bart."

"I know." He pauses. "I watched."

You turn your head. He's not looking at you. His profile in the lantern light is all hard lines and gold stubble and long lashes, a face that has no business being out here in a barn at two in the morning with nobody to see it.

"You watched what?"

"Go to bed, Ethan," he says. "Six o'clock."

He walks out before you can ask again. That's twice in one night.

You sleep three hours and wake to gray light and the sound of a car door.

Through the bunkhouse window you see a sensible maroon sedan parked by the porch. A woman in a quilted vest and slacks, fifties, short brown hair, a leather folio held against her chest like a shield. Bartholomew comes out of the house with two cups of coffee and hands her one.

You shouldn't listen. You know you shouldn't.

You crack the window anyway.

"I hate driving out here for this," the woman says. Her voice carries in the cold, still air. "You know I do."

"I know, Marla."

"The board met yesterday. I fought for you, Bart. I want you to know I fought." She opens the folio. Closes it again. "They won't extend. Not after the second mortgage. Not after last year's calf prices."

Bartholomew doesn't say anything. He's looking out at the ridge, the cup steaming in his hand.

"Ninety days," Marla says quietly. "July thirty-first, Bart. If the note's not paid in full by then, the bank takes Rennard Creek."