The Territory A Novel - By Tricia Fields Page 0,64
to go—people to see. Josie owes me for the bill. Just ask her to settle up with you. You take care.
Much Love,
Beverly
Josie felt her face flush and tried to keep the surprise from showing. She reached into her back uniform pocket for her money clip and pulled out her Visa card.
He held his hand up. “If you didn’t know about this, then you don’t owe me a dime.”
“I’m happy to pay the bill.” She slid the credit card across the counter and stared as her mother’s signature on the note she’d written to Manny. Much Love.
* * *
Josie turned the radio off and rolled the windows down to listen to the wind whip the sand and grit around the floor of her jeep. She had developed a taste for bourbon on bad days, a taste that she knew was not healthy mentally or physically, but she could already imagine it sliding down her throat and heating up her belly. Some days she craved the burn more than human conversation or touch.
But at home, she bypassed the bottle of bourbon in the kitchen cabinet and changed into shorts, a T-shirt, and lightweight hiking boots and set off walking behind her house toward Dell’s. The bitter smell of the sun baking the earth and trees, and the sprawling view of the brown and white Hereford cattle roaming the field made it one of her favorite places on earth.
Dell lived in a small cedar-planked house at the foot of the mountains overlooking his cattle. He got by on what he referred to as common sense rules for living. He didn’t believe in charity. People either provided for themselves or they perished. “We didn’t need Darwin to explain survival of the fittest. Spend a week in the desert, and you’ll see it quick enough.”
She found Dell’s banged-up green pickup truck parked in front of the horse barn, and while it signaled he was home, he could be nearly anywhere except inside the four walls of his house.
Josie found him behind the barn with a massive cigar hanging out of his mouth, bare chested, his cowboy hat cocked back at a forty-five degree slant. He wore dusty cowboy boots and cutoff jean shorts that revealed his bowlegs. A shotgun hung from a tool belt. The tip of the shotgun almost touched the dirt as Dell bent at the waist, peering into a hole in the ground.
Dell waved as Josie walked toward him. “Go slow. Don’t want to wake them till I’m ready.”
Josie pointed to a mason jar filled with a translucent yellowish liquid that she recognized as gasoline sitting beside Dell. “You think you ought to put the lid on that?” she asked.
Dell pulled his hat down to shield his browned faced from the sun. “You think I’m going to blow my damn self up pouring fuel with a lit cigar?”
Josie smiled. “What’s up?”
“Damn rattlers killed another calf yesterday. Found her dead in the creek. Bit in the head. Probably grazing and stuck her head down to sniff out something moving in the grass and the rattler got her. I never seen them so bad as this year. It’s like the lack of rain has dried up their holes and made them crazy.” He pointed to Josie’s feet. “Take your boots off.”
Josie gave him a wary look.
“Take your damned boots off, you pansy. I won’t light up the hole until you got them back on.”
Josie did as instructed, trusting Dell over common sense.
He pointed to a patch of dirt several feet from the hole. “Walk quiet and stand right there.”
Josie did so, and a shiver ran the length of her body. She could feel a slight vibration under her feet.
“You’re standing on top of a whole colony of rattlesnakes roiling around under your bare feet.”
Dell laughed at the look on her face.
“I’ve seen them get to be five feet or better.” He pointed at the hole, lowering his voice. “They all come out of that hole, and you’ll be a dead woman in five minutes. Might be a hundred snakes or better in that den.”
Josie cursed Dell, shoved her feet in her socks and boots, and walked backwards with a wary eye on the hole.
He told her to move back another thirty feet and stubbed his cigar out. He stuck a three-foot-long PVC pipe into the hole with a funnel on the top and dumped the gas down the pipe. He pulled up the pipe and backed up ten feet, hollering that the sons of