CHAPTER 1
Colt
December 22
“Howdy Cowboy.”
I tip my hat at the girls and they start giggling.
I don’t know if they’re interested or if they’re just pulling my chain. That’s the thing about big city folk. Never really did understand them.
I’m a cowboy. Only games we’ve got time for are bronc riding and calf roping. When it comes to other people we don’t play games. On the ranches that line this great country you need to be a straight shooter or people won’t take to kindly to ya.
And the big city don’t take to kindly to me nor me to it. It’s just like these two young fillys I just passed.
First of all they’re too young for me. They couldn’t handle life on the ranch. No way they’re waking up at zero dark thirty every morning to feed the animals, mend the fences, and just get ready for the day. I’ve done more by eight a.m. on Monday than they’ll do all week.
Pick up a new phone at the mall? How ‘bout picking up a shovel and getting to work. This younger generation is too soft for my liking.
Second are the connections you make in the city, or lack thereof. Everybody’s just interested in each other for their money and their business. Yeah, maybe you can partner with some fella you don’t even like, and maybe you’ll make a pile of money doing it, but would you trust that same fella to watch your land while you were away? Can you leave knowing he’s as loyal as a sheepdog or always wonder if he’s really just a coyote in disguise?
Luckily I know which camp my friends fit in. Everybody I know back in Santa Fe I’ve known since I was just a boy.
Colt and Volt. That’s what they used to call us as kids. Colt’s my real name, but Volt’s real name…well, I can’t hardly remember anymore. But I sure remember how he got his nickname that’s stuck with him ever since.
We must a been about seven or eight and pa warned us not to touch the electric livestock fence. Well, as you can imagine ol’ Volt there just had to go and give it a try. He got some volts all right, and he got a nickname that’s stuck with him ever since. Certainly didn’t help that he licked his finger first. I reminded him what happened to Flick when Schwartz triple dog dared him to lick that flagpole in A Christmas Story. Guess he never saw that movie, or just didn’t believe that it was real.
I smile as I walk down the massive streets of Chicago. It’s the only smile I’ve had since I got off the plane a few hours ago at O’Hare. I’ll be right back there tonight for the redeye back home. I try and make my trips to the city as quick as possible.
But I am a bit intrigued by this place. What made Volt’s daughter Carol want to come all the way up here just to go to school? We’ve got good programs in New Mexico and Texas, not to mention Arizona is full of fun places to learn.
But she wanted to come up here to the bright lights and big city. She’s up here somewhere more than likely. Wonder if she graduated by now. How long has it been? Maybe four or five years since I last saw her.
She was a hard worker. Earned her stock. Busted her butt from sunrise to sunset and then some down on the ranch. Helped out a few days a week just to earn a bit of walking around money and maybe some of it went towards helping her pay for that degree. I can’t imagine the University of Chicago is cheap knowing how prestigious it is and all.
I wonder how she’s adapted to all of this. I just can’t see her fittin’ in up here. She’s a simple girl. Give her a pair of cowgirl boots, a pair of Levi’s, a T-shirt, and a flannel in the morning if it’s cold out and turn her loose and she’ll work circles around all the boys her age, and most of the men too!
If she applied half the work ethic she had back then up here well then I’m sure she’s probably doing well for herself. I know Volt’s proud, but I know he sure misses her. Shoot, I miss her. Wish I had her back on the ranch, but ain’t no way I could ever expect that. She’s too good to work on a ranch for someone else. She could run a ranch of her own.
But her ranchin’ days are long gone, just like the bank’s threatening to make my ranch a distant memory.
And that’s why I’m here. They say I need to hedge my loan, whatever that means.
I didn’t even want that damn loan, but it was the only way. I would take it again in a heartbeat. I mortgaged the entire ranch to get the best medical care I could for ma and pa, but it just didn’t work out in the end. At least I know I tried everything.
And now the bank’s trying everything it can to make my ranch their ranch.
They say in-between all the horse riding lessons, bronc riding lessons, and selling my crops to the farmers’ markets I’m not making enough. That and this winter’s supposed to be a really cold one. Could even run long and affect the planting season next year.
The wheat and soybeans we grow on the back forty have been an absolutely lifesaver these last few years. Bumper crops combined with the drought in California have pushed the prices up. But California looks like New Zealand now with all this rain and the market’s flooded with crops which is driving the prices down, and taking my ability to pay back this loan with it.
I enter the skyscraper where this broker fella works. I leave one skyscraper where the banker works, only so he can refer me to another skyscraper where his buddy the broker works. What kind of business is this? Why can’t we just all meet at once over three cups of black coffee and settle this like men right there on the spot?
Not how they do things in the city I guess. Either that or I’m just like those dinosaurs that used to live in the American West, as I do now. I thought forty was the new thirty, but I guess forty-two is the new…well, a lot older. Times are a changing and I’m not keeping up so fast.
I take the elevator up and some girl who’s showing so much leg she could have freelanced at the saloon back in the day shows me to this broker gentleman’s door.
And gentleman is exactly the right word, which I realize once he puts that limp, wet, dead fish of a hand in mine for a handshake. I guess pounding a keyboard all day doesn’t come close to pounding nails when it comes to building hand strength. I thought they had those fancy gyms in these cities? Then again, overhead presses are no competition for lifting rocks out of the gulley and tossing them into a John Deere front loader. Rocks do make a great fence for the perimeter of my land.
But it’s apparent that this fella’s got rocks in his head the minute he opens his mouth.
“So, Mister McCoy. My associate Mister Snidley over at the Fifth Federal Bank says you’re looking for some wheat and soy futures.”
“I’m not looking for nothing of the sort, but Mister Snidley says that’s what it’s gonna take for me to keep the ranch.”
“Well, right then.” He pauses and flashes me a smile that’s about as plastic as the “World’s Best Lover” coffee mug on his desk. Who drinks coffee out of a plastic mug? I’d heard hot liquids out of a plastic container are bad for a man’s testosterone levels, but I thought for sure that no man in his right man would even do such a thing…especially not out of a pink cup with “World’s Best Lover” on it.
“Oh, you like my cup,” he says as he notices me taking a look at it. “We got a bunch of these made. We actually asked for them to print “World’s Best Loaners” on the cups, but they made a mistake.”
“World’s best loaners?” I ask. My eyebrow surely raises a good inch above my right eye. This fella sure is a bit of the curious type.
“Yeah, you know. Being that we’re in the finance industry. We don’t exactly loan but…well, you get the picture,” he says as he waives his hand at me with about the limpest wrist I’ve ever seen in my life. If that thing were any limper it would be a spaghetti noddle. Only spaghetti I need is a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western, and right now this guy appears to me to be far from being the good, but he’s definitely the bad, and his business is the ugly.
“A cup of coffee for you, sir.” I turn to see the receptionist holding a steaming drink in her hands…in one of those plastic cups.
“We’re matching now!” the guy who still hasn’t even introduced himself yet says.
“Thank ya, ma’am,” I say, and take the drink. I hold it in my hand out of respect for her gift, but I’m not about to drink this “coffee.” It smells like pumpkins and all I can see is a cup of foam in front of me.
“So,” the man says. Why does he start out his sentences like that? “I’ve already drafted up the contract. We just need you and your lawyer to review it and sign it and we’re all set.”
“I ain’t got a lawyer,” I say, as he hands me a stack of papers that are as thick as the anvil I make horseshoes on.
“So,” he says. There he goes with that so-ing again. “Right, so, um…yeah.”
“If you got something to say mister, just say it.”
“Uh huh. Well, it’s, just that, uh. It’s probably good to have a lawyer or a legal professional take a look first.”
“I told ya, I ain’t got a lawyer and I definitely don’t have a…what did you call it?”
“Legal professional.”
“One of them either.”
“Okay then. Well, I guess um…”
“Listen, mister whose name I don’t even know. Mister Snidley sent me over here because I want to keep my ranch. If this contract is fair, and signing it lets me keep my ranch, then I’ll sign it. If it’s not fair you just tell me and I’ll be on my way. But, if you tell me it’s fair and I find out later it’s not you can best believe the cavalry will be a’coming for ya. Comprende, amigo?”
“Right. Certainly then. Well, yes I would say it’s definitely fair for someone in your position. If you’d like to sign it—“
“Fair for someone in my position? What kind of position do you think I’m in, mister? Is it fair or not?”
Now I know just what Hank Williams Junior was talking about, because I’d sure love to spit some Beech Nut in this dude’s eye.
“Well, just that you want to keep your ranch. That’s all.”
“You haven’t answered my question. Is the contract fair or not?”
“Yes, it’s fair,” he says.
I don’t have anymore time for this guy’s games, and I sure don’t have time to read through a stack of papers when I’ve got work back home to do. Not to mention it’s the holidays and I want to get to O’Hare early and get on that plane and back home where I belong. I’m sure this guy’s thinking the same, although I don’t know if they have flights to the moon or wherever he’s from.
I see a line on the first page and I reach for the pen on his desk and put a big “X” right there on the line and hand the stack of dead trees back to him. Maybe I need to get into supplying these sorts of people with lumber by the looks of how they’re killing an entire forest with all this paperwork.
“That’s your signature?”
“How I’ve been signing it since I was five years old. Accepted everywhere I go, and it’s good as gold. If you see that “X” then you know Colt McCoy’s gonna deliver what he says.”
“Alllll righty then,” he says.
I stand to go.
“One second, sir. My assistant will be right in with your copy.”
“I don’t need a cop—-” Good lord sweet mother of Mary!