Cooksin

by Rick Alan Rice

  Tory shook her head, feigning disgust, as if hating a woman rival was beneath her. "No, I don't hate you," she said. "I think you're making a big mistake."

  "Why?" Lily asked.

  "Because I'm with Jake every day and, that being the case, I can't see how he can be anything good for you," Tory said. "This might sound strange, but I wouldn’t want to see you get hurt."

  "You don't even know me," Lily said.

  "Yeah I do," said Tory. "You aren’t what I expected, but you aren’t that different either. Let me tell you straight, as someone who's been around a little, whatever you've had with Jake is best left to your memories. He's from another time, honey.

  Jake's more my world than yours. I suppose you imagine some long-term relationship, but I can tell you it wouldn't work. He'd just be robbing from you, in the long run."

  Lily seemed to be listening, if not fully understanding. "But it's different for you?"

  Tory nodded in a way that seemed definite. "The stuff I'm talking about losing – it's already gone, for me. I've already put behind me everything I had to take. That's the good part about getting older – after a while, after you've gotten used to the fact that you aren't a kid anymore, you start to grow in ways you couldn't have dreamed of before. That's why Jake and I should be together, because that's the place he's at in his life, too. He's ready to grow, now – and I want to be there to grow with him."

  Lily's brain seemed to go on hold for a moment, as she digested what had been said. "But . . . I love him," she said hesitantly, as if that should be enough.

  Tory smiled. "Of course you do, honey. I do too."

  Lily just stood there, staring blankly. There were feelings racing through the windows of her eyes, but only the most observant could have seen them, and then it would have been impossible to decipher their meaning. Even Lily couldn't. She just looked, as her words swam like fishes in her head. Somehow the feelings Tory had expressed, the way she had stated them – they were beautiful to her. Somehow they resonated and told her something about the world that before she could not have comprehended.

  Tory stood looking at her, wondering what was happening there in that perfect, sweet face. She was a good kid, that's all she could tell for sure. Young, confused, maybe even lonely, but she could tell there was heart there, and goodness. "Well, that's all I had to say," Tory finally said. "Just . . . think about it, okay. Just think about what I said." She smiled kindly, then turned and starting walking away up the sidewalk.

  Lily watched her for a moment, amazed to discover that a part of her didn't want to see her go. She watched as the older woman made her way on up the street, noticing the way she held herself, the strength about the way she moved. Then, for some reason, she did something even she could not fully understand. "Tory!" she yelled, loud enough to turn a few heads on the street.

  More than fifty feet away, Tory turned around and looked back at her. "You don't have to worry – you have them!" Lily hollered.

  "Have what?" Tory yelled back.

  "The looks!" Lily yelled. Then she turned and walked on to her waiting car.

  CHAPTER 27 – Another Idea

  Jake's telegram was short and final:

  FILER * STOP

  MUST SCHEDULE MEETING * STOP * PLANS CANCELED * STOP

  JAKE

  He had gone to town the first thing this morning, after managing to avoid Tory and the others all yesterday. He hadn't been able to stop thinking about what had transpired between he and Lily – not the intimacy, but the deceit. There had been a dozen such rendezvous between the two, several in that same setting. They were all exciting in a carnal way, though exactly why was the very thing that made this last encounter now feel so abominable. Their sex had always been more sweet than libidinous. Jake liked Lily, though now he kicked himself for it, for this affection was at the root of how she had become so disastrously entangled in his predicament. He'd noticed her looks – there was no way not to – but the thing that had fogged his thinking was what he had seen behind that face. A bond of loss and sadness had connected them in a way that beauty alone never could. It had caused Jake to forget his most basic rules – including, to some degree, the reason he was at Walker Ranch in the first place – and there had been no previous time in his life when this had happened. He had become intoxicated by Lily, and now he cursed himself for it. Too heartbroken over the loss of his own youth to willingly steal it from another, Jake feared this was precisely what he had done.

  It had happened the first day he entered the employment of Frank Walker. Jake was getting acquainted with the other hands, introducing himself as they went their different ways, some to tend cattle and range, and others crop and equipment. He couldn't help but notice the beautiful young girl with the long blonde hair – the boss' daughter, as he would soon come to know. He watched as she tried to get her father's attention. Frank was working summer calves in a calf-cradle out near the hay barn, outside the equipment yard. There cowboys were running calves up an alley between two larger pens, chasing them one at a time into a chute, which collapsed down around them, holding them still for castrating, vaccinating, dehorning and branding. A quartet of cowboys was handling the task, production-line fashion. Frank Walker handled the castrations himself, splitting the bags with a knife, and then using an emasculator tool to sever the cords above the testicles. He was particular about how this was done, preferring a hygienic method that left the animal aesthetically intact and kept blood from flowing to the open wound.

  Jake had watched as young Lily walked around the home spread, asking several hands if they had seen her father. She started to ask Jake, then realized he was a new face, and unlikely to be of help. That's when he first noticed her eyes, the way they flashed blue, and her rural electrification smile. She wasn't unpleasant, but paid him no mind as she continued her search for her dad. Jake found himself wandering into the yard after her, curiously drawn to see where she was headed. "You better stay away from that one," Harve Tate had said baldly to him, noticing his fixation. Jake had thought to defend himself to this stranger, who thought he knew so damned much about what he was thinking, but Harve's voice resonated like the bottom-end of a good piano, so Jake just gave him a glance and then ignored him. Lily saw her father, working the calves, and went to where he was, crawling up and sitting on the tall fence surrounding the cradle.

  Jake ambled over too, leaning inconspicuously against another side of the fence, peering between the rails to watch the operation.

  "Daddy – I need to be going," Lily said, perched atop the fence, her legs dangling.

  "So get going, then," Frank Walker said gruffly, not looking up from his work. "You finished?" he asked Wayne Morrison, who was handling the vaccinations, and he nodded that he was. "Okay, get back!" Frank said, and Willy Bushnell, running the cradle, cranked it open, allowing the calf to run startled from the incarceration, fleeing up the alley and into a waiting pen.

  "I need money for Job's Daughters," Lily said, a little impatient.

  "You guys ready?" Jarvis Lang, working the alley, waited for instructions to run the next calf into the work area. "Bring him up," Frank said, and Jarvis culled a handsome young Hereford bull from the nervous crop stacked up behind him and drove him to the doctors.

  "Dad, I'm already late," Lily said. "I've got to have ten dollars for dinner and installation fees."

  Frank didn't seem to be listening. He stood back away from the collapsible panels, as Jarvis and Morrison headed the bull-calf into the lockup. "Okay," he said, signaling Bushnell to spring the trap. The sides of the cradle crushed in around the little animal, locking him in place, and Frank and the others immediately starting working on him. They were running calves in and out of there at a rate of one every two minutes, which was about what they were hoping to do. At that pace, Frank figured he could have his summer crop turned out by tomorrow, midday.

  "Dad – I've got to go!" Lily said sharply, frustrated.

  Her father looked up at her, obviously
annoyed. "Well can't you get the Goddamned money from Rosa?"

  "She doesn't have ten dollars, daddy," Lily said, her voice indicating that they had been through this a hundred times before. Frank leaned heavily on the family's retainer to handle the day-to-day needs of his daughter, but his expectations were often unrealistic, especially where money was concerned. He always expected that Rosa could dispense petty cash which he could later reimburse her for. He signed her paycheck yet still seemed to have no idea how poor she was.

  Frank shook his head, aggravated at being pulled away from his schedule. "God damn it! Why didn't you tell me about this last night?"

  "I did!" Lily said. "I told you last night at dinner that I needed money for Job's." She added, "I didn't think you were listening," just loud enough to be heard.

  "Shit!" Frank said.

  "I can cut a few," Jarvis Lang offered, "if you need to do something." Frank hated leaving this particular chore. "Okay, take it Jarvis," he said, sweeping his arm across his face to wipe the sweat from his brow. He repositioned his cowboy hat and then crawled over the fence and started walking to the house.

  Jake had, once again, followed with curiosity, as Lily jumped down off the fence and hurried to catch up with her father. Frank stomped away furiously, not making it easy for her to catch up.

  That's how it had all started, at least in Jake's mind. He had watched as that beautiful young girl hurried after her dad, unable to keep pace with his huge stride, half seeming to want to be with him, half-seeming to be afraid to get near him. Frank had seemed overly annoyed by her intrusion, his tone with her unnecessarily rough. And she seemed so tiny and delicate, compared to him, no match at all. Jake's heart had gone out to her, because it didn't seem to him that a father should be so hard with his kid. It was parental instinct that first smote Jake. The desire part came later.

  Maybe it was parental instinct that tortured him so now. He had been able to trick his own mind into thinking that his relationship with Lily had not been an abusive one.

  That had worked when he was being honest with her, and his conscience had been cleaned when he stopped seeing her, several weeks ago. He truly had no intention of continuing the relationship, though doing so just for the sex might have been understood in some quarters. Jake was glad to have it over with, his gratitude for having Tory enter his life almost compelling enough to make him want to thank God, though such acts of religiosity were not within his nature. Now he felt rotten about everything: about Lily, because for the first time he was not being honest with her, and about Tory, with whom he shared an unspoken trust, which he had violated. He couldn't have hurt more had he neglected his daughter and his wife. The worst part about it was that, to follow through on his agreement with Pico, it had to continue. Jake was astounded at how much information he had learned from Lily, even without subterfuge. It had almost been more than he wanted to hear. Conversation about old lady Douglas' money had led Lily to tell Jake all about the exquisite jewelry that had been her mother's, and that Frank now kept in a safe somewhere in the house. It was a safe other than the one of which Jake had been aware. In further casual conversation Lily talked about a plan to ship four semi-trailer loads of beef to market in Denver, and this only a few days before the planned strike on Walker Ranch. She told him about the Wilkerson family, and how Betty Wilkerson's father had become wealthy through oil leases in Oklahoma, and how they continued to live simply, but were in fact soaked with cash, much of which they kept in their house.

  And there was the Weinstock equipment yard, way back on County Road 3, where Lily first had intimate relations with a high school kid named Brent. They had chosen the spot because it was so secluded, and because it was tough to spot their car among Mr. Weinstock's array of tractors, implements, combines, trailers and grain wagons. It went on and on, a virtual shopping list of things to steal, and Jake hadn't had to probe for any of it. It was all in the naive blather of a young girl, trying to make a pet of a wolf by stringing a trail of raw meat between his lair and her front door.

  Jake had thought about it every second since he and Lily had parted, and it just felt too terrible to be allowed to continue. It felt like child abuse, and it sickened him so inside that it outweighed the fear he felt of Lorenz Pico's wrath. He would report what more he had learned – that's what their proposed meeting would be about – and that would be it. It would have to be his bargaining chip to release him from further involvement. He had sent the telegram believing it could work, that somehow Pico would come to his senses and see that it was better this way: that Jake was a dangerous liability, should he continue to be the point man in this hit.

  * * * * *

  Jake didn't see Tory standing inside when he walked through the open door of his little bunkhouse, and the shot came out of the dark.

  Tory's balled fist landed square on the point of Jake's sore nose, still discolored from his run-in with Frank. She pulled all of her one hundred twenty pounds into the charge, and Jake's head snapped back when it landed.

  He staggered back from the blow, falling toward the open door, but Tory quickly rushed around behind him and pulled it shut. She didn't want her father or Py to see this. Then she started wailing on Jake with both fists, pummeling him around the head and shoulders, poking him in the stomach, kicking him a few times in the shins.

  Her blows rained upon Jake with more quickness than he had ability to defend, and he tried to cover as best he could and weather the storm. It was as if he had awakened to a living nightmare, and he could hardly comprehend what was happening. It seemed like it went on for minutes, though after fifteen seconds or so of furious flailing, Tory had gotten it out of her system and stopped.

  Jake started to speak, to ask why, but Tory cut him off. "Don't even try playing dumb with me, Jake. I talked to Lily Walker and I know all about it. I haven't told dad or Py, and I don't plan to. But you got some thinking to do, buster. I don't want to see you – I don't want to talk to you – until you've got it clear in your head. I want you to think awhile on everything you stand to lose." She then turned and left, closing Jake inside, with his darkness, to massage his freshly re-aggravated bruises.

  CHAPTER 28 – Murder

  Three days passed and the rejuvenation of Parker Ranch continued. Pete completed his negotiations with Jess Willingham and plans were made to move a small herd of his Hereford brood cows over to Pete's place the following Tuesday. Py was put to work refurbishing the cattle trap next to the barn, on the far side of the main corral, where Cooksin was fenced. Tory stayed out of sight, for the most part, keeping herself busy fixing up the house. She had decided to repaint her bedroom, declining anyone's help in moving furniture and removing doors, and the work kept her engaged and isolated. Jake stayed out on the range, watching over Pete's yearlings and replacing old sections of fence. There was a windmill out by the pond, near the one box canyon on the property, and it was in need of repair, so he set to work on that. The pond was not spring fed, depending rather on the water from several small streams that emptied into it, so it occasionally dried up altogether. A well and had been sunk there, which was powered by the old windmill, and when things were running properly it supplied a steady supply of cool, fresh water that was collected there in pitch-lined, wooden troughs. It was the only way to get water to the yearling when the streams ran dry, so Jake's dedication to the task was understandable, and neither Pete nor Py thought anything about his absence at the lunch and dinner tables. He ate where and as he worked, chewing on strips of pemmican that he kept in his pants pocket, drinking water from the trough.

  Pete's excitement over the arrival of a brood herd for Cooksin had rippled through the surrounding farm community. Several neighbors, who hadn't had reason in years to visit the Parker spread, dropped by to take a look at the prized bull. Pete was happy to show him off, and he spent a considerable amount of time cleaning and grooming the animal, readying him for just such callers. Cooksin had become the centerpiece of the ranch, and Pete was thrilled
over the attention it was getting him. One neighbor suggested that Pete have an artist paint a mural, featuring the bull, on the steeply angled side-roofs of his hay barn, which was clearly visible from the road. Another thought an archway should be erected at the entrance to the ranch, bearing carved images of the Charolais. The bull's image was becoming Pete's, at least in the minds of his neighbors, and Pete was enthusiastically embracing the connection.

  None of this escaped the attention of Frank Walker, who made one more visit to Parker Ranch in an attempt to talk Pete into reconsidering his plan. "Keep the bull, Pete," he told him. "Nothing has to change with regard to that. If you want to get back into business as a commercial breeder, selling the land doesn't prevent you from doing that.

  Hell, Pete," he told him, "you'd be better off to invest some money in a stock trailer and deliver your Charolais to your customers. Let them maintain the property and have the headaches. Hell – let them feed your animal! You could have your security guaranteed, be a respected commercial operator, and give up most of the hardships." But it didn't wash, not with Pete. He didn't have any interest in being half a rancher, a "gentleman farmer," as he referred to it, hiring his breeding bull out like a piece of farm equipment, never having any reason to go to auction. He didn't want that. He didn't even want to be rid of the headache of fixing fence, straightening out calves, and shoveling manure. It was just the opposite: Pete wanted to do the things he had done his whole life. He wasn't looking to avoid work. In fact, he was looking forward to it, and he sent Frank away as frustrated as ever. As long as Pete had this big white ship to sail – this huge Charolais breeding stock – he was captain of his own destiny, or at least that's the way he saw it. Frank Walker, on the other hand, had run out of ways to talk Pete out of his land, and he was bewildered over what to do about it.

  Jake checked with Western Union each day since he sent his telegram to Pico, driving each afternoon to town, unbeknownst to Tory and the others, but no response came. Each trip took him past the tree where he and Lily stowed their messages, but he didn't stop to see what might be there. Lily stopped by on each of those three days to find that the flattened stone she had deposited was still there. She didn't know when she would be seeing Jake again, but checked the tree religiously. Should that rock be missing, she'd know what to do, and she'd be ready. So far, however, nothing seemed to be happening. Lily tried to keep herself busy with school, to not think about how much she yearned for Jake, and tried not to give in to the voice inside her head that said it was all over, that she would never be with him again. It was panic which she tried not to let show.