Dream On (Stories of Serendipity #2) (8 page)

“Thanks, butthead.”
 Her face contradicted her words, as it crumpled and silent tears started streaming down her cheeks.  “He’s not gonna be around long, Dalton.”

He pulled her into his arms for a bone-crushing hug.
 He kissed the top of her head.  “I know.” Dalton wiped the tears from his own eyes before pulling her away from him.  “Now, go to bed.  You can’t help Mom, if you can’t keep yourself awake.”

“I’m going to go home and sleep in my own bed tonight.
 Can you keep Kelly here?  She’s in my old room, I’m assuming you’re in your old room.  I can’t sleep in Mom and Dad’s room.”

“What about the guest room?”
 Dalton asked her.

“Mom turned it into a hobby room.
 The bed’s gone, it’s full of scrapbooking stuff and her sewing junk.”

“Take my room.
 I’ll sleep on the couch.  It won’t kill me, I’ve done it plenty of times before.”

“Are you sure?
 If you’re working tomorrow, you’ll need a good rest.”

“No big deal.
 You need the rest more.  I can work the cows in my sleep.”  He was exaggerating, but he knew his sister needed a bed more than he did.

The next morning, Dalton
got up at 4:30 and fixed eggs and bacon before waking Kelly.

“Rise and shine, dumpling cakes.”

“Wha--?  It’s too early Uncle Dobby...”  She covered her head with the comforter before Dalton yanked it off from the foot of the bed.

“You promised to help me.
 Ranchers get up before the chickens.  Today we’re ranchers.  Get up.  Breakfast is ready.  I’ll fix you a cup of coffee.”

“Coffee?”
 The allure of this forbidden fruit got her in an upright position.

“A
shower will help wake you up.  Just don’t take too long.”

“‘Kay,” she grumbled as she slid her legs out of the bed.

They ate breakfast in groggy silence, left a plate for Renae, and headed out to the truck.  Dalton’s dad had installed an old train bell in the barn for feeding time and had the cows trained Pavlovian style to come running when the bell was sounded.  Dalton made Kelly stay in the truck while he pealed the bell a dozen times, then got out of the way.

A hundred or so head of cattle came meandering from all directions towards the barn.
 Dalton managed to get them into the sizable corral connected to it, before shutting the gate on them, effectively trapping them inside.  The cows munched lazily on the cubes he had poured out for them, and he hopped into the cab of the truck, while Kelly climbed into the bed.

They spent the next thirty minutes picking up stragglers, Kelly dropping handfuls of cubes while Dalton honked the horn and whistled out the window.
 The cubes were like candy to cows.  Tasty grains and grasses pressed together with molasses made them irresistible to the cattle, who followed the truck as if Dalton was the pied piper.  They managed to get the other fifty or so cows back to the barn area in this manner.

“We’ll put these guys in this small pasture by the barn until we turn the
rest out into the big pasture and make some room for them.  For now, though we have them in the area, so we don’t have to go searching for them later.”

Buddy showed up about that time
and they got busy with the cows.  Buddy and Dalton would herd ten or so cows into the shoot, locking in the first one.  When they were finished with that cow, they let it out of the shoot to go into the inner area, before opening a gate to whichever pasture they wanted it to be in for the next month or so.  

The entire property was divided into several pastures, four of which were fenced from the barn.
 One pasture was for the steers, castrated bulls that were fattened for auction.  One pasture was for the heifers, young females who were not old enough to breed.  Another was for the regular herd, all females plus one lucky bull.  The last pasture was open.  Fences surrounded each pasture with a gate or two to other pastures, to rotate the herd around as they ate all of the grass.

Dalton, Kelly, and Buddy easily fell into a routine.
 Each cow was vaccinated and wormed.  They applied a tight rubber band to the testicles of the male calves, which would cut off circulation to the area, and effectively castrate them.  Females with horns were dehorned with an instrument which looked a lot like bolt cutters, and then the bloody stumps were cauterized with a searing hot iron.  Cows who didn’t have numbered tags in their ears were tagged.  Calves were branded with the Colt ranch’s "tattoo," a capital C over a stylized revolver---Richard’s own take on his name.  

Dalton and Buddy did most of the work to the cows, while Kelly kept up with the records, writing
down the number on the ear tag and what was done to each animal.  Then, once the animal was released from the chute, the three of them would shoo the flustered cow through the appropriate gate into their pasture.

They worked hard that day, taking few breaks.
 Dalton needed to do this for his dad, and Kelly and Buddy understood his feeling of urgency.  Nobody complained when he pushed them harder, longer, between breaks.  They managed to get all of the cows finished and separated by dusk.

When Renae got back to the house that night, Kelly and Dalton were asleep.

“Ugh...”  Alyssa really wished she had remembered tonight was Open House.  She might not have had that last shot of tequila.  She might have actually dressed up today.  As it was, she was hung over, wearing wrinkled khakis and a sweater, with no time to go home and change.  The principal had called a staff meeting at 4:30, and parents were supposed to start arriving at 5:30.  

She understood the reasoning behind these events, but nobody ever showed up.
 She saw it as a supreme waste of time.The parents who needed to check their child’s progress in school didn’t come to these events.  That was almost always the case.

Alyssa’s hangover hadn’t really been as bad as she thought it would be.
 A few aspirin relegated the pounding in her head to a dull thud, and her energy level was low, but she managed until her conference period, when she had to call her mom.

“Mom, I’m sorry.
 I forgot, I have Open House tonight.  I can’t come over.  Can I fix that stuff another time?”  Her mother’s constantly evolving honey-do list had the new addition of weeding the flowerbeds.  The list always consisted of things Pat attached a high level of importance to for completing.  Alyssa didn’t see what it mattered that the baby trees were taking over her mom’s flowerbed.  She honestly had other things to worry about.

“That’s okay.
 You can do it next week when you have the kids.  I can watch them for you.  And you can get my Halloween decorations down then.”

“Thanks mom.”
 Crap.  She had forgotten all about the decorations.  She hated that she didn’t like doing stuff for her mom because Pat did so much for her, but she squashed the rising guilt.  

After disconnecting the call, the last night caught up with her.
 She was exhausted.  Remembering she had duty out in front of the school for the car-riders, she heaved herself from behind her desk and trudged down the hallway.

 
 She was back behind her desk in twenty minutes, where she hit a proverbial brick wall.  Laying her head on her desk, she decided she could just rest her eyes for a few minutes before the staff meeting.  She had time.

Within seconds, she was dreaming of Denny’s, overwhelmed by the emotion of loneliness, even though she was sitting there with a pre
tty woman, who kept eating her French fries.  She managed to tamp down the annoyance by her actions and engage her in meaningful conversation, but it was going nowhere.  She could hear herself saying, in a decidedly masculine voice, she had a degree in agricultural science but was bartending for a while.  Alyssa almost couldn’t control the disappointment Dalton was emitting, although she wasn’t sure what he was disappointed about.

A knock at the classroom door interrupted her dream.
 Jerking her head up, she realized it was Coach Ridley, leaning against her doorjamb, all tall and lanky, with a slight smirk on his face.

“I’m sorry to wake you, but Dr. Cahan asked me to come get you for the meeting.”

“Already?!”  Alyssa yanked herself into a standing position, and tried to smooth her clothes, in vain.  “Is he mad?”

“No, you’re not the only one missing in action.
 Come on.  I’ll walk with you.”  He stood back from the doorway to let her out, waiting for her to close the door and make sure it was locked.

Still muddled from the dream, she walked with the coach to the cafeteria, where the rest of the faculty was waiting.
 Dr. Cahan was standing in the front, pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger.  Alyssa still hadn’t figured out if that gesture meant he was annoyed or just deep in thought.  He did it a lot.

As soon as she sat down, he looked at her pointedly and asked, “Are we all ready?”

She nodded, not sure if he was speaking specifically to her, or to the audience in general.

“Good, then we can start.
 First of all, I would like for everyone to have a sign-in sheet for their parents to put contact information on.  I would also like for each of you to schedule a conference with all of the parents who come tonight.  In addition to that, in the next week, you need to have thirty conferences scheduled with parents who didn’t show up, whose children are at risk of failing your class.  This is mandatory, and I expect documentation.  If thirty parents show up tonight, and you schedule conferences with them, then you are done for the week.  Otherwise...”

Alyssa tuned him out.
 She knew the drill.  Dr. Cahan wanted contact with every single parent each six weeks, and Lord knows she had tried.  Most of the parents would talk to her on the phone, but a lot of the phone numbers she had were used for telemarketers, and the “mailbox is full” every time she tried to leave a message.  Very few parents actually showed up for conferences instigated by the teacher, unless their child was accused of doing something wrong.  Then they showed up, ready to fight.  Alyssa hated those conferences, and avoided them at all costs.

When Dr
. Cahan finally stopped talking and released the teachers to go to their rooms, Coach Ridley caught up with her.

“Hey.
 Um...I don’t have a classroom and parents never come to my office in the field house.  Would it be okay if I hung out in your room for this?  I’ve already told Dr. Cahan, and the other coaches, in case somebody is looking for me specifically.”

Annoyed by his assumption that it would be okay with her, she stupidly said, “Okay.”
 Then she mentally slapped herself.  What if an angry parent showed up and berated her in front of him?  It had been known to happen, and as many times as she had been yelled at by angry parents, she never got used to it.  And she never reacted the way a teacher was supposed to.  She always managed to let them under her skin and get upset by the experience.  She really didn’t want witnesses to that, if it happened tonight.

Fortunately, it didn’t happen.
 The parents who did show up to see her were very cordial and talked about how much their child enjoyed her class.  She was relieved, and her mood had brightened by the end of the evening.

Coach Ridley had no parents visit him in her classroom, although most of the ones who visited her also had a child in his athletic program, so they got to kill two birds with one stone.

They spent the time between parents visiting, and Alyssa found Coach Ridley to be charming, if not a little too smooth.  

At the end of the night, she was locking up, and he was walking her out to her car.
 He pulled on her elbow to get her to turn to face him.

“Can we go out to dinner Saturday night?
 Please?”

“I don’t know.
 I-I don’t really date much.”

“How about lunch?
 That’s not really a date.  It’s just lunch.  Please?”

She hesitated.
 This was a small town, and going out anywhere fed the gossip mill.  She only went to the Gin on Wednesday nights because there was hardly anybody ever there.  She couldn’t think of a single restaurant that wouldn’t be crowded on Saturday at lunchtime.  The last thing she needed was Steven on her case about a boyfriend.

Thoughts of Steven made her angry.
 He didn’t have a right to dictate who she went out with on her non-custodial weeks.  She could do whatever she wanted to, as long as it was legal.  She looked at Coach Ridley, seeing a tall, good-looking man who wanted to go out with her.

“Sure, why not?
 Where do you want to meet?”

“Can I pick you up?”

“Um...I guess.”

His face relaxed into a childish grin.
 Suddenly, he looked like a teenager.  “Great.  I’ll pick you up at noon.  Is that okay?”

“Sure.”

“Goodnight, Alyssa.” He turned to walk away.

“Um.
 Coach?”  He turned back to her, with a look of fear in his eyes.

“Yeah?”