Down Range

by Taylor Moore

  Asadi smiled but didn’t respond. He was too enthralled with the massive eighteen-wheelers gassing up at the truck stop pumps to pay much attention to anything else.

  Feeling his own hunger pangs, Garrett tapped the brakes, turned the steering wheel right, and eased into the parking lot. He pulled into a spot by the door, held up an index finger, and gave a head tilt toward the store. “Wait here. I’ll be back in a flash.”

  Getting an understanding nod from Asadi, Garrett hopped out, charged into the store, and grabbed two bottles of Mountain Dew and a couple of Bandit burritos from under a heat lamp. The whole process took about a minute, if that. With the gold standard of junk food in hand, he stepped outside and raised the loot in a display of triumph. But his pulse raced when he realized Asadi was no longer sitting in the passenger seat.

  Darting to the driver’s window, Garrett looked inside the cab but found nothing. He circled around the truck bed, passed the tailgate to the passenger side, and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Asadi standing in the next parking spot over. He was wrapped in the green woobie, looking up at the Flying Bandit sign, captivated by the cowboy and his neon horse.

  Garrett felt a little guilty that his first reaction was to give Asadi a good scolding. The poor kid just wanted to get a little air and stretch his legs a bit. They should’ve done that a hundred miles back.

  Feeling his heart rate return to normal, he moved beside Asadi and stared up with him. “If you like that one, you’re gonna love the real ones. We’ve got the best around.” Garrett made a sweeping motion with his arm that spanned the snowy plains before them. “Lots of room to ride and beautiful scenery to boot. Especially above the caprock.”

  The Caprock Escarpment wasn’t easily explained. This two-hundred-mile-stretch of caliche canyons and mesas jutting from the earth a thousand feet high in some places was either beauty or a blemish depending on your stewardship.

  Created by millions of years of runoff from the Rocky Mountains, this geological oddity, with its serpentine creeks and rocky ravines, scarred the smooth flatlands with exposed rock ranging from desert tan and pale gray to blood red. Garrett had traveled all over the world but had yet to see a work of God’s hand that was anything like it.

  When Asadi looked to him, puzzled, Garrett steepled his hands and drew them into a ninety-degree angle. “It’s kind of like a one-sided canyon or a plateau.” He racked his brain trying to think of the right words in Dari but came up short. “Ah hell, forget it. You’ll see soon enough.”

  He opened the passenger door and helped Asadi back inside. Roads were getting icier the later it got. And the last thing he wanted was to go off in a ditch and get stuck in a snowbank this close to home. His old man would have a field day with a move that boneheaded, and Garrett didn’t want to start things out with a fight.

  Of course, Butch Kohl was a cantankerous old son of a bitch, so avoiding a run-in with him was like avoiding the IRS. Somehow or another, they always got you in the end.

  6

  Garrett continued on for another hour before pulling off the highway and turning onto the dusty caliche oil field road leading to the ranch. Atop the hardened white surface of natural cement, it was a bumpy fifteen-minute ride—one he’d cursed a million times. But it was a welcome change from the smooth hum of the asphalt. The chuckholes and growl of rock beneath felt and sounded like home.

  He was finally back to a spot that filled nearly every childhood memory, and there was a peace that settled over him. It was the feel of belonging to the land, being grounded, connected to something unchanged. For better or worse, the Kohl Ranch was a place where time stood still.

  The first property they passed on the way to the house was Shanessy Farms, a place owned by the same family for over a century. They grew alfalfa hay under four center-pivot irrigation circles and used the rest of the land for grazing their registered Hereford cattle. A small single-story home with chipping white paint, green trim around the edges, and a chimney that puffed smoke nearly year-round was the centerpiece of the farm.

  Garrett’s favorite thing about their place though was the large cottonwoods surrounding it. If trees were gold in the Texas Panhandle, then this was Fort Knox. He could make out the dim lamplight coming from the west window, which gave him hope the owner, who’d been widowed for as long as he could remember, was at least still alive.

  The farm had always been a showplace, but it was clear now those days were over. The children had never taken much interest in it and money was tight. Kate got around to fixing things whenever she could.

  Like the Kohls, she had plenty of oil beneath the surface but didn’t own a drop. During a drought in the 1950s, the mineral rights were legally severed from the surface, and the royalties sold to a wealthy family out of Amarillo with the last name Kaiser. All but a few of the heirs had moved to Connecticut and New York, and probably couldn’t point to this place on a map.

  The Kohl Ranch was fourteen sections of ranchland, just shy of nine thousand acres, or fourteen square miles, and there were at least a dozen drill sites on the property. That meant they had the hassles of dealing with energy company operations, but hardly any of the benefits. But that’s just the way things were and there was nothing to be done about it.

  Over time, Garrett had learned to accept it. And truth be told, he’d rather have the land than the minerals. Everything that meant anything to him was right there before his eyes. It was all his best memories and what made him the man he was. He could see, touch, and smell what they owned. And you couldn’t put a price tag on that.

  Garrett opened the window to get a whiff of home, but quickly reversed course as a flurry of icy snowflakes blew in and pelted his face. With a full-body shiver he adjusted the temperature controls, resulting in a blast of warm air from the vents. The farther north they traveled, the colder it got, and the more the wind howled.

  The old joke around the Panhandle was the only thing between us and the North Pole is a barbed wire fence, and Garrett was apt to believe it. Gusts were over thirty miles per hour and the temperature gauge on his truck read fourteen degrees, which meant with the wind chill it was somewhere around five.

  As they pulled up to his house, he was a little disappointed. With its chipping white paint and sagging porch, the place looked shabbier than he remembered. Of course, everything was covered in snow, making it difficult to tell for sure. Like Kate at the Shanessy place, there was a good chance his dad was letting things slide. On top of getting old, Butch Kohl was rough as a cob, and had pushed away pretty much everyone. Managing the property all on his own couldn’t be easy, even for a man half his age.

  Garrett watched his dad open the front door, step out on the porch, and scowl. He was wearing a red flannel shirt, blue jeans, and his house slippers. His white hair all tussled looked like a tumbleweed. If the old coot was cold, he didn’t show it. Instead, Butch just stood there, sullen as a man about to get a prostate exam, a procedure he’d testily refused for decades.

  Pulling up by the front porch, Garrett slowed, put the truck in park, and stepped outside. He left the diesel engine running and the heat on, not knowing how long the awkward homecoming process might take. Before he could even get out a hello, his dad fired the first salvo with his growling voice.

  “What are you doing here? Obama send you to take my guns?”

  Garrett shook his head. What the hell else could he do? He hadn’t seen his father in over three years, and this was the old son of a bitch’s idea of a welcome wagon. “Obama’s been out of office for years now, Daddy. And I work for the DEA. Don’t have nothing to do with your guns.”

  Butch grunted and leaned left. Beneath his ratty old slipper, a board creaked. “If you say so.” He peered around Garrett and eyed the truck for a good ten seconds. “Who’s that?”

  “Just a kid I need to keep out of sight until things get sorted out.”

  Butch chuckled to himself. “You knock up one of them senoritas down in Old Mexico?”


  Garrett turned toward Asadi, who was looking a little nervous. “He ain’t mine, and he ain’t Mexican. He’s from Afghanistan.”

  Another grunt from Butch. “They all steal, you know.” The old man spit a stream of tobacco juice off the porch and turned to walk back inside. “Keep him out of my stuff.”

  Garrett didn’t know if the stealing comment was referring to Mexicans, Afghans, or kids, and wasn’t about to ask. He’d been baited into too many asinine no-win quarrels with his dad to get roped into another. Instead, Garrett stepped back a few steps and took in the view of their old farmhouse in its entirety. There was a long row of eight-inch icicles dangling from the roofline.

  He turned back to Asadi and raised one finger to indicate he’d be a minute. The boy nodded, seeming to understand. From there Garrett crunched through the snow and walked inside to find it in the exact condition he expected. It was a little grimier than his last visit, but the place was still bare bones. No photographs on the wall. No knickknacks on the table. Only a few necessities. If loneliness was a picture, this would be it.

  “Daddy, what exactly are you worried about him stealing? That old mop you never use or them magazines you never read?”

  Butch ambled over to a faded green La-Z-Boy recliner in the living room where Fox News was blasting at full volume. He plopped down, carefully maneuvered into the grooves of the cushion, then jerked the lever on the side with the force and intensity of a fighter pilot in a dogfight. “Make all the fun you want, but this is like a palace to those people.”

  He clicked on a reading lamp that shared the end table with about a half dozen yellowing issues of Field & Stream and American Rifleman. There was a Bible there too, covered in a layer of dust.

  Garrett would never concede it, but his dad was right. He’d seen the village where Asadi was from. No electricity. No running water. In some ways, this was a palace.

  “Well, it’ll do for what we need. If you’ll allow us to stay.”

  Butch sighed. “Suit yourself.” He picked up one of the magazines, just to prove a point, and narrowed his eyes on an article about mallard ducks. “This is still your place too. At least until the government takes it. Puts us all in one of your work camps or shoots us.”

  Again, Garrett knew better than to take the bait, lest he get sucked into a fight. But he almost would’ve welcomed the distraction, as he sunk into sadness thinking back on how things used to be when his mother was alive. Warm and bright. The smell of fried chicken. Vegetables from the garden lying out on a chopping board. Fresh-cut flowers in the spring. At one time, it was a real home. But after she passed, his dad threw out everything that reminded him of her. Apparently, bare walls and an empty house were better than painful reminders.

  His dad had struggled immensely and getting rid of her things was the only way he could cope. The problem wasn’t what he’d done, it was the fact that he hadn’t bothered to ask Garrett, his sister, Grace, or his brother, Bridger, if they wanted any keepsakes. That incident marked the beginning of the downfall.

  As usual, Butch had taken it upon himself to fix what needed fixing. And in this case, the fixing involved cutting short the grieving process by ridding the family of his wife’s memory. He also aided the recovery process through some liquid healing with his old buddy Jim Beam, leaving his sons alone to fend for themselves. Grace had already graduated and moved off to Stillwater to go to Oklahoma State University.

  Garrett was about to thank his dad for the invitation, half-hearted as it was, when something caught his attention. Something damn strange and way out of place in the lonely home of a sad old man. It was a sight Garrett hadn’t seen in years. Butch Kohl was wearing a smile.

  Garrett found his room how he’d left it, albeit dust covered and a little musty. The twin beds were still made up in camouflage goose down comforters and there was a full-size American flag hanging on the wall between them. Every other square inch of the shared space was covered in high school memorabilia and old posters of Sports Illustrated swimsuit models like Tyra Banks and Heidi Klum.

  Bridger’s side of the room was crammed full of football trophies and rodeo buckles, and plastered with academic awards. Garrett’s was mostly bare, save a few pairs of deer and elk antlers, some old photographs, and three Catalena custom cowboy hats hung on nails.

  But his prize possession was displayed prominently in a twelve-by-fourteen-inch wooden box with a glass lid. It was sitting atop the end table by his bed. The case had been a Christmas present from his mother, custom-built to hold his collection of hunting knives. He blew the dust off and opened the lid. Inside was a treasure trove of memories, as each blade held some special significance. He had everything from Case to Kershaw, but Moore Maker out of nearby Matador was always his favorite.

  He pulled out the eight-and-a-half-inch stag-handled Damascus bowie knife and unsheathed the blade, which was still sharp as a razor. His mother had given it to him as an early birthday gift just a couple of weeks before she died. For opening day, she’d said, always proud of his ability to bring home wild game. She’d never said it, but he always wondered if it had something to do with her Comanche ancestry. Garrett looked more like her than anyone else and he always figured he was kind of a reminder of his grandma. She had died when he was a baby.

  Garrett studied the knife a little more, sheathed it, and stuck it in his belt. He grabbed a Moore Maker pocketknife and slid it in his pocket. He probably would’ve sat there all night had he not remembered why he was there in the first place. Asadi needed a fresh set of clothes.

  He set the box back on the nightstand, knelt by a trunk at the foot of his bed, and opened it. It took a little digging, but he found what he was looking for, a black-and-gold Canadian Wildcats jersey and his blue-and-silver Dallas Cowboys jacket. Both he’d worn when he was about Asadi’s age, maybe younger.

  They might be a little big, but they’d keep him warm and help him blend in. Nearly every kid in the Panhandle wore football paraphernalia of some kind, so it was at least a good start. Garrett fished around some more and found his green John Deere stocking hat with the yellow ball on top. The iconic running deer logo was emblazoned across the front. It was a little dated looking, but it’d work for now.

  He grabbed the gear, went back outside, and stood on the porch. Asadi’s uneasy eyes were trained on the door. Of course, Garrett couldn’t blame the kid for being anxious. In the past forty-eight hours, he’d lost everyone in the world who mattered and now he was sitting in a foreign land with Rob Zombie as his chaperone and Archie Bunker as the innkeeper. Who wouldn’t be worried? But when Garrett approached the truck, clearly bearing gifts intended for a young boy, Asadi donned a big toothy grin.

  The reaction warmed Garrett’s heart. He walked to the truck, opened the door, and handed over the coat and hat. “Hope you’re a Cowboys fan and a John Deere man.”

  Apparently, Asadi was both, given his satisfied look. Garrett helped him out of the cab, where his feet landed in about four inches of fresh snow. No sooner had he hit the ground than he took off through the powder hooting for joy. The boy was clearly ready to play and appeared to be coping with all the changes better than expected.

  Feeling the chill, Garrett zipped his Carhartt jacket and pulled up the fleece-lined hood. He rotated his body to keep the frigid north wind from blowing down the front. Although he wanted to get inside to warm up, he knew he’d better let Asadi play awhile. It was exactly what he did with his horses on a cold morning—turn them out, let them run, buck, fart, and get the hump out of their backs before getting down to business. The kid had been sitting in a truck for nearly seven hours, so there was no doubt he had some pent-up energy to spend.

  After about ten minutes, Garrett could tell Asadi wasn’t going to wear out or get cold enough to cry uncle, so he called it himself. “Hey, Outlaw!” The boy, kicking a valley through a two-foot snowbank, looked up and smiled. “How about we go inside and get some grub?” Garrett pointed to the house and made the gesture of hold
ing something to his mouth.

  For the first time since the day at the village, Asadi spoke. “Grub?” He walked over to Garrett wearing a curious expression.

  When the boy got closer, Garrett could see he was shivering. His little brown hands were a pinkish-red. “Yeah, grub. Something to eat.” He made a chewing gesture. “Food.”

  Asadi glanced at the house, clearly worried about Butch. The old man was harmless but wore the sourest of expressions no matter the occasion. If something impressed him, he never showed it. Been that way for years.

  “Don’t worry about him.” Garrett smiled. “He ain’t as mean as he is ugly.”

  Asadi, who appeared to mull over Garrett’s words, gave a little laugh and turned toward the house. He stepped onto the porch, opened the door, and walked right in like he owned the place. At the sight, Garrett couldn’t help but laugh. If nothing else, the kid had balls. And he figured he’d better grow a pair himself. If they were living with Butch, he was sure going to need them.

  Garrett walked back into the house and stomped the snow from his boots on a mat in the kitchen. He looked into the living room to find his dad dozing in the La-Z-Boy. The old man probably hadn’t had visitors in over a year and there he was buzzing and snorting like a Briggs & Stratton with a bad carburetor.

  Asadi was sitting on the couch staring at Butch in awe. It was hard to imagine how one little old man could create so much racket with his nose. Garrett took his boots off and tossed them by the door, creating a louder than intended thump that echoed through the house.

  Butch’s eyes popped open and he turned toward the kitchen groggily. “Oh. It’s you.”

  Garrett made a big show of looking around. “Who the hell else would it be?” He walked into the living room and sat by Asadi. “I’m guessing you don’t do a whole lot of entertaining these days.”

  Butch picked up the TV remote and lowered the volume. “I get enough company.”