by Amy Simone
“How do you do that?” Annie asked in wonder. “Such a pretty color. I’d like to…”
It was too late. Both women got transported.
This isn’t good, Cassie thought as she felt the surge of the pop resonate through her body. She cursed under her breath.
They found themselves inside of a You Tube cartoon of sorts. Something had transformed both women into stick drawings.
“Coach, Coach,” Cassie called out. “What are you doing? Where are you?”
Annie’s face looked vaguely familiar to Cassie—as a drawing—and Cassie hoped Annie recognized her.
Annie, the stick figure, looked at her drawn gloved hand and her straight black line for an arm, then screamed hysterically. “What have you done?” she began, then followed that up with a wail that seemed to last forever.
The surroundings they were in were also cartoonish. They stood on a flat green landscape with a brilliant azure blue sky. Two dimensions was all that was available to them.
“Coach! Help!” Cassie yelled.
“You both need to simplify,” the Coach boomed above them. Cassie tried to look up but couldn’t see above the drawn horizon.
Meanwhile, Annie still screamed next to her.
“Oh my God,” Cassie yelled. “Get us out of this!” Off in the distance she heard Josh laughing and clapping his hands. She turned to Annie and barked, “Quit screaming in my ear!”
Annie’s cartoon glove hand was gripping Cassie’s stick forearm.
“Simplicity, simplicity,” the Coach kept intoning as if speaking a mantra.
“Stop it,” Cassie told him. “Just stop! You’re frightening her.”
“You ladies need to learn a lesson.”
After a few minutes he relented. Something popped Annie and Cassie right back into Annie’s shop. Josh stood before them, hopping up and down and gleefully clapping his hands.
“Do it again, mommy! Do it again!”
“You saw all that?” Cassie became annoyed. Annie was still gripping her arm.
“I want to draw you, mommy!”
“Coach, wherever you are, you are supposed to shield my son. What the heck happened?” Cassie said to the air.
“I haven’t screamed like that ever!” Annie cried with a flushed face and overly bright eyes. “It was glorious!”
“Glorious?” Cassie asked her as she plucked Annie’s hand off of her arm.
“I feel invigorated!” Annie looked younger. The yelling had done her some good.
“I can’t wait to get home and see my husband! If you know what I mean!” She playfully poked Cassie in the ribs and winked.
Mildly alarmed, Cassie plucked Josh off from the floor and scooped up her laptop and purse. “I will go now.” These strange computer trips had not affected her like that at all.
“We’ve got to do that again!” Annie followed her to the front door. She had already dialed her husband and was speaking into the phone. “Greg, you need to meet me at home for lunch!” she sang into the phone. “Get ready!”
As Cassie left the shop and turned to wave goodbye, she saw Annie flipping the sign on the front door to read “Closed for Lunch.” Annie flashed her a huge smile and gave her a thumbs up.
All the way home Josh peppered her with questions about her transformation into a stick figure. He wanted to do the trick too and needed her to show him how. She did her best to come down from all the excitement. Then, in typical organized fashion, she posted her garage sale announcement all over social media and spent the rest of the afternoon labeling the bins in the shed with prices.
Later, Annie heard Josh trying to describe to his brother about what he’d witnessed at Annie’s store. Caleb scoffed.
“Liar,” was his reaction.
11
The Garage Sale
Cassie made things easy on herself. She pulled dragged the bins from the shed to the carport early Saturday morning. Ralph had dropped the boys off at her mother’s the night before. Catherine sent her nanny, Fran, over to help. They set things up on benches and tables. She only held back a few things she already had committed to eBay buyers. She wanted it all to go away as fast as possible.
“Huge Liquidation Sale” read the sign she hung on the front fence. Many people showed up, and she was glad to see how fast they emptied the bins. Whatever didn’t sell, she’d donate. Ralph couldn’t complain if she got rid of everything, right? It was a fire sale done in anger. After lunch, when the flurry had died down, she had Fran help her load the residuals into the horse trailer.
They counted the money. She’d made close to two thousand. She peeled off two fifties and gave them to her helper.
“You want some of these bins?” she asked Fran.
“That’d be great. My boyfriend and I are moving at the end of the month into a new apartment.”
“Take all you want.”
A dark blue late model pickup slowed as it drove along her fence, then turned in. A man got out and walked up the drive. He walked with an erect spine and smoothly from the hips as if he did a lot of sports. HIs head was neatly set on a muscular neck.
Cassie couldn’t make out much about his face because his wide-brimmed Stetson shaded it from the noontime sun. He wore faded but well-fitting jeans. She didn’t recognize the light-colored sand that covered his well worn dark brown leather boots because she was used to dark mud. Whenever it got wet in this part of Louisiana, which was often, that dark mud covered everything near ground level.
“I saw your sign,” he said.
“We’re wrapping it up,” Cassie admitted.
“Okay.” He still walked towards a few of the bins and idly poked into a couple.
“Mostly ladies’ clothes, I see,” he said.
“Yes.”
Fran was in the trailer dragging bins deeper to make room for more.
Cassie stared at him. He looked familiar—much like the man who kept calling her Timmie at the strange dressage show.
“Aren’t you Bob?” she asked suddenly.
“My name is Bob. How did you know?” He stepped back, surprised.
“I think I met you before,” she said.
“I don’t rightly recall. But I go to a lot of places and see tons of people.”
“My hair is different.” She touched her head. “New color.”
Fran huffed and grunted inside the trailer.
“I better go help,” Cassie told him. “Look all you want.”
“You ladies seem like you could use a hand.” He tossed one bin on his developed shoulder and carried it to the trailer.
“That’s okay. We got it.”
“No problem,” he said. Once he saw the inside of the trailer filled with the residuals of the sale, he gave a low whistle. “Wow. Heck of a liquidation.”
Cassie also carried a bin. She slid it onto the floor, pushing it towards Fran. He did the same.
“I don’t mind helping,” he told her. “My work day is done.”
“What do you do?” she asked him.
“Train horses. Riders.”
“Really? What kind?”
“Western—reiners mostly. The kids like barrels.” He walked back to the array of bins and picked up another one. “Just got done with my lessons for the day.”
“I used to ride. It’s funny, but I thought I saw you at a dressage show lately.” She peered at his face to see his reaction. He showed none.
She stopped. “Really, you don’t have to do this,” Cassie said. She felt embarrassed and sad now. So much of the clothing had gone for fractions of what she hoped to earn on line. All she could allow herself to do now was to see to the short term. Clean out the house. Get things flowing again. Try not to think about Ralph. If she had to, she’d move in with her mother. She didn’t want to have to get a nine-to-five job. That seemed pointless.
“My name is Cassie Owens.” They faced each other at the open door of the large stock trailer. “This is Fran. She works for my sister.”
“Bob Badea
u,” he told her and extended his hand. “I don’t normally come this way but one of my kid students needed a ride home today.”
“Where’s your place?” Cassie asked. “You probably know my husband if you have horses.”
“Owens, right? Dr. Owens? No, I don’t use him. We usually just go to vet school at LSU if we have anything major happen. I still use my old vet from the other side of town for the smaller stuff.”
“Well, he’s good at what he does,” Cassie professed with a weak smile. She fought to keep up her spirits.
Bob appeared to read her mind. His dark brown eyes rested on her face for several moments too long. He said nothing but looked mildly quizzical for a beat, then turned to retrieve another bin.
With his help they had the trailer all loaded in under an hour. Fran stacked several bins in the back seat of her car, told her goodbye and drove off.
“Want some tea?” Cassie offered him. “That’s the least I could do. Or a beer?”
“Beer.”
“After that I need to drive this stuff to Goodwill.”
“Looks like you’re making some big changes,” he said. He waited in the carport, sitting on a bench, surveying the front yard.
Cassie sat down next to him. “I know. My yard needs attention.”
“Tell me about your riding,” Bob asked.
“I had a horse as a kid. Rode dressage. He’s buried out back here. Soldier Boy is how I met Ralph, my husband. He had colic and Ralph pulled him through one night. Soldier lived to his mid-twenties. Funny enough, when my dad died, my horse passed away real quick. It’s like he knew dad was gone. My dad loved that horse possibly more than I did.”
Bob took a swig of his beer. “Some horses bond like that,” he agreed.
She turned and looked hard at him. “Bob Badeau… so where are you from originally?”
“Up near Alexandria. Spent some time apprenticing under a California guy. That was after I got out of the Army.”
She nodded and pulled out her phone. “I better run. They close at five.”
“Sure thing.” He took one pull from his beer, set the half-filled bottle on a bench and pulled out his wallet. “Here’s my card. It looks like you all have kids—at least from the toys I see—if you ever want them to have some lessons, just holler. My school horses are super safe.” Then he emptied the beer in the grass and put the bottle in her outdoor garbage bin.
He held up a finger to said “shh. Don’t tell anybody. I’m not real good about recycling.”
Cassie laughed. “With kids, I have to say I’m about where you’re at on all that, too. Hard to keep all the trash separate sometimes.”
Bob walked towards his truck. She liked how he carried himself. He seemed like he enjoyed the world and everything in it. If only she could say she felt the same.
12
Bob's Barn
Bob pulled into his facility’s yard. He kept twenty-four horses stalled with runs and the other fifteen in pastures. A few boarders rode their horses in the two arenas. He had both an indoor and outdoor. A radio softly played near the wash rack set at the end of the covered arena. He greeted two college students—Amanda and her boyfriend Carl—who kept their horses with him. They were finishing up, so they were hosing off their horses.
“I’m going in for a siesta,” he told them. “Y’all have fun?”
“Pep did real good,” Amanda told him, flapping the tail end of the lead rope against her free hand. “We worked on the pattern you gave us.” Cassie could tell the young woman was pleased.
Bob nodded. He walked over to one stall. Inside stood a flashy chestnut mare, up to her knees in clean shavings. She was in foal to a famous Quarter horse reining stallion and would deliver any day now. The mare stuck her head over the stall door and sniffed his hand gently.
“Hello mama,” he told her, stroking the side of her neck near her ear.
“See you later,” he said to Amanda and Carl, then walked to his cabin that stood separate but adjoined the covered arena. He’d outfitted his place like a log cabin inside—masculine with lots of leather and wood furniture. He left his boots on the front porch and entered his house in his stocking feet. The worn wood floor felt good. Strong sunlight streamed through a window above his kitchen sink. His old brown-black hound dog, Whomper, thumped his tail from where he laid on his pallet near the front door.
“You okay?” he asked and gave him a pat as he walked towards his bedroom. After his nap he’d get up and feed everybody. By now this was a well-honed routine. During the week his students did most of the chores but Saturday evenings many of them had other plans. As a married person, his ex-wife helped him but that the past. She’d run off with a roper, leaving him with the business.
Lately he’d been building up a following as a traveling barrel racing clinician. There was a hunger for the knowledge he dispensed. Top competitors in that sport could win big bucks.
Deliberately he undressed and took a hot shower. Sitting in the truck too long stiffened his back and legs. He preferred movement when he was working. The blond dust kicked up by the morning lessons in his arena covered his body. His mustache was mostly dark although he’d seen peeks of gray. His sideburns had started to turn too. He accepted this. He’d earned the right, he figured. He had a few long white scars transversing his forearms and entire chest—residuals from an unfortunate meeting with a barbed wire fence. They’d come from his wild and woolly years as he liked to tell it—back when he drank and took big risks. All this was before he witnessed much harder realities overseas.
A small bookshelf in his bedroom bulged with titles like Thoreau, Shakespeare and the Bible. He’d read late at night when he couldn’t snooze. Wartime left him with the night terrors. He switched on the TV down low, letting let it lull him to sleep. An alarm would sound at six.
He woke up at dusk. Filling a side-by-side four-wheeler with buckets of grain and bales of hay, he drove down the aisles and gave everybody their dinner. Then, he proceeded outside to feed the pastured horses and check their water troughs. Nowadays he had to help his dog up into the vehicle so Whomper could ride along with him.
Things were quiet. He liked it this way. He drove to the front gate, secured the massive chain and padlock, stopping at the pregnant mare one more time, then returned to his cabin and started dinner. The sun was close to gone. He sat out on the small front porch and indulged in a pinch of snuff while watching the shadows grow into dark. It was the only true vice he had left. Tomorrow he’d shred a couple pastures with his tractor or else the overgrowth would take over. He might attend church—or not.
As he sat there, Cassie Owens came to his mind. She seemed sad, perhaps lost. He wondered what made her get rid of all that stuff at once. It reminded him of an animal shedding its skin, a reptile sloughing off its old outer casing. Her wary green-grey eyes showed someone had hurt her. Why? Shrugging, he left the porch and turned up the television so he could hear it over the stove vent. Steak occupied his mind now. Whomper stayed at his side, looking for the occasional handout. Bob did not disappoint his dog.
Sleeping remained difficult. Sometimes he resorted to Ambien although he hated that. A girlfriend he’d had for a while kept pushing Melatonin on him. It helped, but he’d forget to look for it at the store. Bob was a diffident shopper. Unless something involved horses, he didn’t pay much attention to it.
He put his feet up and ate while sitting on the couch. Then he answered a few emails and booked to teach a clinic for the next month up in Oklahoma. There wasn’t much excitement going on these days for him. He needed this letting down, this quietude, this farm. There was always something flat out wrong with combat, he figured. It’d messed with his head. He didn’t use to have trouble sleeping—not until he’d gone to Iraq. Around eleven, he made one last barn check and took his flashlight outside to listen and run it along the pastures just to make sure nothing unusual was happening.
Now inside for the night, the dog joined him. He kept a second mat for Who
mper in the bedroom.
The mare foaled overnight. He summoned his vet over just to ensure everything was okay. His clients would be excited to see the foal. A new baby represented hope and promise—a good thing. It’d taken him a long time to learn to give things their due time. Likewise, it’d taken him many years to learn his craft. He didn’t want to weigh the creature with too many expectations. He’d seen what happened when others spouted off their over-inflated dreams. Bob preferred to keep things low key, centered, focused on the present—tight and quiet. What had happened to him in the Middle East schooled him.
He’d had a name for the new baby. If it was a boy he’d call it Puck; a girl Desdemona. This was a colt. So, Puck it was.
13
Library Time
On Sunday as she got up, Cassie texted Ralph the good news about the money she’d made during the garage sale. She planned to put it in the bank on Monday and mail a check to some credit card companies that afternoon. She figured he’d at least send her a thumbs up; but he didn’t respond.
On Monday, after she hearing nothing, she tried calling his cell, then his office.
Verna answered.
“Hi, Miss Cassie. Your husband isn’t in right now.”
“Okay. Where is he?”
There was a long silence. “Can I take a message?” Verna asked sweetly.
“Verna, you know we are separated.”
“Yes, Miss Cassie. I’m so sorry to learn that. Those poor little boys…”
“Where is Ralph?” Cassie was growing more concerned.
“Took off for a conference,” Verna said. “At least that’s what he told me.”
“Where?”
“Houston.”
Cassie just had to know. “Did he go alone?”
Verna paused again. “No, he didn’t. Miss Susan went with him.”
