Tell Me When It Hurts

by Christine Whitehead

  “Good idea.”

  Connor replenished the ice pack and then began assembling ingredients. After a sprint around the little cabin’s great room, the dogs settled down together on an old sofa near the front window. Archer pulled a rocker from the living room to the edge of the kitchen to watch Connor cook, and soon the scent of sizzling garlic and herbs filled the cabin.

  A half hour later, he put on an Ella Fitzgerald CD and set the pine table with cutlery, candles, and napkins. He lit the candles and served dinner.

  “I see you’ve got gobs of linens and candles,” he said as he sat down at the table. “Do you use candles and cloth napkins when it’s just you?”

  “Yeah,” she admitted. “When I moved out here I got into the habit of making a nice meal most days. Gives my day a little focus.” She gave a sheepish shrug. “Soon I’ll graduate to setting a place at the table for Hadley, and from there it’s only a short step to getting a party hat for her and adopting seven cats, I suppose.”

  Connor gave her a puzzled smile, not sure how much of this was self-effacing humor and how much cut to the truth of her life.

  “So, who are you actually, and what are you doing up here?” she asked, changing the subject and taking a bite of pasta.

  He pulled out his wallet and handed her his driver’s license. Archer pulled her glasses from her shirt pocket and read aloud: “Connor McCall, Rural Route Twenty-two, Three Chimneys Ranch, Little Tempest, Wyoming.”

  “This is who I am, and I’m here ostensibly to decide whether to keep or sell the three hundred acres next to you. I planned to come here for a few weeks and turn around, but I’m liking it and may stay a few more weeks.”

  “Were you born in Wyoming, then?” Archer asked, handing back his license and taking her glasses off to lay them on the table.

  “God, no! Boston originally,” he replied, pivoting slightly in his chair to put the wallet back in his hip pocket.

  “How did you end up in Wyoming, then?”

  “Long story, but the short version is, I was a displaced businessman looking for a new beginning, and I’d always wanted to be a cowboy. I went out there seven years ago to start over. I have a two-thousand-acre ranch—small by Wyoming standards, but it’s big enough for my needs at the moment.”

  “Hmmm. And what exactly do you do on this little two-thousand-acre ranch?” asked Archer, stabbing a shrimp.

  “I raise sheep.”

  “Ah, you mentioned that. So you slaughter animals for a living, then?”

  Connor shot her a half-annoyed, half-exasperated glance. “Not exactly. I raise Rambouillet sheep for their wool. It’s the softest wool in the world, and I have one of the best herds in the West. Lots of people who are allergic to other wool can wear ours. Shetland’s good, but Rambouillet is the Tiffany of wool. We sell a lot to European markets, and I go to Scotland once a year to sell to one of our agents there.”

  Archer had the grace to redden and looked genuinely embarrassed. “Oh . . . sorry.”

  “No big deal.” He took a bite of shrimp. “Needs some salt . . . So are you one of those fish-eating vegetarians?”

  “No. Actually, I’m one of those fish-eating assholes.” She paused and bit her lip. “I . . . seem to have lost any semblance of conversational skills over the past few years.”

  “Oh.” Connor wiped his mouth. “How come?”

  “Long soap opera of a story.”

  “That’s okay. I’ve always kind of liked soap operas myself.”

  “No.” She shook her head, then, to lighten the sting of her answer, added, “I warned you that I’m up here because I’m not good at being with people.”

  “No, actually you said you’re up here because you don’t want to be with people. That’s different from being here because you’re not good at it.”

  Archer didn’t reply. The cordial energy circulating when Connor was cooking had been sucked out of the room, and her ashen face suggested that she knew she’d done it.

  After a few feeble efforts at small talk, they finished dinner in silence. Connor cleaned up hastily. After putting the last dish away, he asked, “So, you okay for tonight?”

  “Fine. And thanks. It was . . . nice of you. And I like Alice.” She almost smiled. Connor grabbed his jacket, thinking that this evening couldn’t end soon enough.

  “Well, okay, good night.”

  “Good night.”

  He ambled into the woods toward his camp, black dog a few steps ahead of him, lantern lighting the path. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw Archer watching him from behind the kitchen window.

  * * *

  Archer woke at 3:30 in the morning to the sound of Hadley panting loudly. She propped herself up on one elbow and clicked on the lamp on her bedside table. She squinted, then found Hadley standing in the doorway. The sight revved her to full alert.

  “What’s the matter, Haddie?”

  The dog stood staring dully, her breathing labored, drool stringing down from both sides of her mouth. Grabbing her cane, Archer hopped to the kitchen and grabbed her cell phone before collapsing onto a kitchen chair to dial the vet’s emergency service.

  “Berkshire Emergency Animal Clinic. May I help you?”

  “Yes. This is Archer Loh. My lab, Hadley, is a patient. She has Jordan disease and gets shots every six months. She isn’t due for another month, but she’s panting and can’t seem to get comfortable. She had something like this about a year ago. If you look at her chart, you’ll see it there.”

  “Can you hold, please?”

  Do I have a choice? “Sure.”

  Hadley stood in front of Archer, tongue out, head hanging. She walked to the back door, sat, struggled back up, and shuffled awkwardly back to Archer, still panting.

  “It’ll be fine, girl, just fine.” She stroked the dog’s head, then scratched above her tail. She was rewarded with a slight wag.

  “Archer?”

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “Hadley needs to come in. Dr. Jensen looked at her records, and it’s the Jordan, for sure. A shot should fix her up, but he said the sooner the better, given her age.”

  “Uh, do you think it can wait for a few hours? I need a ride and I’m not sure . . .”

  “No. If she’s already panting, that’s not good. He said she has to come in now.”

  “Okay, I’ll have to . . . see about a cab, I guess. Well, thanks. I’ll get her there.”

  Archer clicked off. She held the phone to her mouth for a minute, then gazed at Hadley. For a cab to get up here, she’d have to unlock the gate—all well and good if she could drive to the gate, in which case she could as easily drive to the vet. But with a sprained right ankle, she could barely hobble with a cane, much less use the gas and brake pedals.

  “Damn it. I can’t believe this,” she sputtered to herself, rubbing her forehead.

  Then she remembered. Glad to hear cell phones work up here. . . . Just dial c mccall. Staring at the phone keypad, she decoded the number from the letters of his name. Got it! 262-2255. But the area code? What area code? Then she remembered his driver’s license. Little Tempest, Wyoming. Who could forget that name? She quickly called information, got the Wyoming area code for Little Tempest, and hoped he had enough cell phone battery left to pick up one quick call.

  Archer hesitated, remembering dinner’s chilly end. She glanced at Hadley, then tapped out the numbers. Please answer. The phone rang four times. She slumped, losing hope of reaching a live person. Then a voice broke in.

  “Hello?”

  “Uh, is this Connor McCall?”

  “Yup.”

  “This is Archer Loh.” Dead silence. “You know . . . uh, your neighbor.”

  More dead silence.

  “Hello? Hello? Are you . . .

  “I’m here. I’ve been told I don’t have any neighbors, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want any neighbors at three thirty in the morning . . .” He stopped and asked, almost as an afterthought, “Are you okay?”

  �
��Um . . . not really. My dog has to go to the vet, and I can’t drive yet. She’s got this condition, and I know it’s terrible calling you like this, but I didn’t know . . .”

  “I’ll be right over.” The line went dead.

  * * *

  Connor was at her door in fifteen minutes.

  “What’s wrong with her?” He bent to pet Hadley, who was now lying down but still panting and drooling. “It’s okay, Hadley. We’ll fix you up.”

  “She’s got this endocrine condition that’s treated with shots every six months, but I guess it didn’t last, or something. When I woke up, she was like this. The vet said she needs the shot now.”

  “Okay, well, I better take your car. My truck’s down by the road on my property. It would take at least a half hour to walk down to it, and I know you have a locked gate—I can see it from the road—so I couldn’t get up here anyway. You’ll need to give me the combination.”

  “I can come with you,” she said, struggling up. “Just need to throw on some jeans.”

  “No offense, but I think I’d move faster without you.”

  Startled but realizing it was true, Archer nodded. She wondered, though, if perhaps he just didn’t want her company.

  “Right . . . you’re right.” Archer limped to the basket on the kitchen counter where she kept her keys. She handed them to Connor. “Here. The combination to the gate is nine one two three three. Turn to the right first. The vet is down on Route . . . ”

  He cut her off. “I know where the vet is. Berkshire Clinic, right?” She nodded. “The first thing I do when I go anywhere with Alice and Millie is find out where the closest vet is, just in case. You have a leash?” Archer pointed to a flowered leash hanging from a peg on the wall. Connor grabbed it and clipped it to Hadley’s collar. “Come on, puppy. Let’s get you fixed up.” Hadley looked back at Archer, then walked out slowly with Connor.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He turned and left.

  Archer watched them head down the driveway. She wished she’d said more. She wished she’d had more to say.

  * * *

  Two hours later, Connor returned with Hadley, who had stopped panting. She took over her end of the couch and promptly fell asleep.

  “Thanks so much. I really appreciate what you did. Can I make you some coffee?” Archer offered.

  “It’s okay. No problem. Animals and kids get to me. Take care.” He tipped his hat, gave a thin smile, and left.

  Chapter 8

  Early that evening, Connor McCall showed up at the cabin door with Alice and a sack of groceries. He knocked, then called out, “It’s me.”

  Archer limped over and opened the door to find him there grinning.

  “Let’s start over. Hi, I’m Connor McCall, your new neighbor, come to cook you dinner in light of your unfortunate plight.”

  Archer smiled, hesitated for an instant, then unlatched the screen door. She held out her hand. “Archer Loh, uncouth mountain woman.”

  Connor shook her hand. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

  In twenty-five minutes, sautéed lamb chops, a tomato salad, and pasta were on the table. As he sat down, Connor looked meaningfully at the chops. “These aren’t part of my herd, by the way.”

  Archer reddened. “I’m sorry, I just . . . ”

  “Forget it. I was teasing you, not fishing for another apology.”

  Archer smiled and cut her chop.

  “Actually, Jordan Hayes, my best friend and vet, tried to convince me to raise cattle like everyone else out there—skip the wool thing. He thought we’d die on the vine the first winter.” Connor paused, took a sip of wine, and hoped he was putting her at ease. “‘Boston Bean and his little lambs,’ he called us.” Laughing, he shook his head, and was rewarded with a faint smile.

  “You said you were a businessman before Wyoming. Did you know a lot about ranching before moving out there?” Archer asked between bites of lamb chop.

  Connor shook his head again. “Hardly. I grew up in south Boston. I did work summers picking berries at a farm, but there wasn’t a sheep in sight. After I lost my corporate job, I decided to try something completely different. Between the Internet and the library, you can learn almost anything, given patience and time. Well, I had lots of time and a decent amount of patience. By the time I bought my ranch, I was darned knowledgeable about the industry—book-wise, anyway. You name it, I studied it: soil types, sheep breeds, fleece microns, the marketplace. Decided to try this French breed. Turned out the books were right, too. Rambouillet sheep are tough, and they adjusted beautifully to everything about Wyoming.”

  “Still, it sounds like a lot more work than the lamb chop game.”

  “Well, it is, in a way. I mean, isn’t it always harder to keep something alive than kill it? Totally different investment in the outcome. But if there is one thing I know, it’s me. When push came to shove, I just couldn’t see myself spending twelve hours a day raising some animals just to kill them off.” He paused reflectively, then said, “Hey, I love a steak or a chop as much as the next guy, but, hypocritical as it is, I like it all cellophaned over at the grocery store. I’d rather work with my animals and get to know them than kill them off each season.” Looking a little embarrassed, he twirled some pasta onto his fork. He saw her looking at him and said with a shrug, “It’s one of my Colleenisms.”

  Archer raised an inquiring eyebrow.

  “‘Colleenism,’ after my mother. She was a great dreamer. Always hoping for drama and romance in our little south Boston hovel. She read a lot of Thomas Hardy, that sort of thing. She had these notions that fate would always make things come out the way they were meant to, that man and animal are partners in life, valiantly facing nature together—totally unrealistic stuff like that. My crazy notion, courtesy of Mom, is that my little crew and I are working as a team with these dopey sheep to provide the best wool around, for the good of mankind. Must be my destiny, right?”

  Now it was Archer’s turn to shrug. “There are worse ways to spend your days. It sounds as if you like what you do and you do it well.” She took another bite of tomato salad.

  “I do like it in a lot of ways. Sheep aren’t as dumb as most people think—at least, my sheep aren’t. They have personalities, and I like the life. It’s simple. I mean, we’re always busy, between foot trimming, tail docking, ear tagging, and shearing. And except for lambing season, my days are pretty predictable, and I’m only answerable to me. Before the ranch, I worked for a bunch of corporations, traveled a lot, put mergers together, things like that. I had stockholders, comptrollers, everyone and his brother with their hands in my pockets, ready to pounce if profits weren’t good enough, and ready to see if I could sustain the growth if they were. I can tell you, I don’t miss it.”

  “Yeah,” Archer said, nodding, “I practiced law for a while, and it was pretty dog-eat-dog. I was into it myself at the time, just as bad as everyone else. It’s only since I moved away that I can see what it was doing to me—and what it does to everyone who’s part of it.”

  “So what do you do now if you’re not practicing law?” Connor asked. “Or are you doing mountain law out here?”

  She stiffened. “I don’t do much, I guess. My daughter died six years ago, and I needed to get away. I found this place, quit my job in Connecticut, and moved here.” She seemed a little surprised and added, “I . . . I don’t usually talk about that. It’s something of a conversation stopper, as I guess you can imagine. It’s customarily followed by an awkward silence, an unwanted question, and then a comment about the weather.”

  Connor looked up. “Well, I’m not silent a lot and I won’t ask you any questions. I’m just real sorry. That must have been horrible. You must have had the mean reds bad for a long time then.”

  Archer glanced up, holding a forkful of pasta. “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” she said, smiling just a little. “Yeah, you could say I had the mean reds real bad for quite a while. And how do you know the film so well that you remem
ber that bit of trivia—Holly calling her black moods the ‘mean reds,’ I mean?”

  “Well, for about twenty years the only way I escaped my work was by going to the movies. It was the only way I could stop my mind from racing, at least for a few hours. I became a real movie buff. I saw my favorites over and over—can quote whole passages of dialogue from them. Weird, huh?”

  “Not really,” Archer replied. “I did the same thing after Annie died. I’d go just so I wasn’t alone with my head—spent hours at the movies. “Sometimes I’d go in at two o’clock and go from theater to theater until they closed. And the ones I liked, I saw again and again, too. I guess there was some comfort in knowing what’s going to happen next.”

  For a few minutes, they ate in comfortable silence.

  “Do you know how to use that thing?” Connor asked, nodding toward the Winchester propped behind the kitchen back door.

  Archer’s eyes followed his gaze. “Yeah, I do. I took some self-defense after Annie died, and learned to shoot a bit.” No need to add that she was such a crack shot that when the Group had gotten an appeal for help and the client asked for the best man available, Gavin chuckled and replied that the best man was a woman. Archer had flown to Hong Kong and returned four days later, mission accomplished.

  Archer looked down and quickly changed the subject. “So, do you have any children?”

  Connor hesitated. For years he’d answered yes or no to this question, depending on the circumstances. No outnumbered yes by a huge margin, since a yes required a hell of a lot more explanation. “Yes, a daughter—Lauren. She’s . . . uh, nine, I guess. I’ve never met her.”

  Archer looked up. “Come again?”

  Connor swallowed a bite of pasta and took a sip of Merlot. “Just that: I’ve never met her.”

  “Okay, you’ve got to explain that.”

  “Oh, God. The whole dreary soap opera, or can we just do the synopsis here?”

  “I’ve always liked soap operas, myself,” Archer said, settling back into her chair, wineglass in hand, eyes wide.

  “Hah! Guess I asked for that one.” He sighed. She was watching him expectantly. “Okay, well, I guess that’s fair. So, here it comes. I already told you I ran different companies over the years. At one of them, GenTech in Chicago, I met a really great woman—Sarah. We dated on and off for a few years, but to tell you the truth, I never wanted the picket fence thing with anyone. I went to Harvard Business School so I could run the world, or a little part of it. I didn’t want a wife and brood of kids tying me down.”