Wyoming Fierce

* * *

THE APPOINTMENT WITH the specialist had been set up for the following Monday. It was quick work, the receptionist said, because the specialist was usually booked months in advance. But Rafe Mays’s heart problem was so worrying to the doctor that the specialist had promised to work him in.

Meanwhile, she went to the bank and drew out the rent money. Her small savings were wrecked in the process. She’d have to try to get a part-time job here until school started again. Then there would be more medicines to buy, groceries....

She felt like crying, but she couldn’t let her grandfather see how despondent she was. There was no money. They lived from check to check, with no luxuries, not even a hot dog and fries on occasion from a fast-food joint. Bodie cooked plain fare, the cheapest food she could prepare, and planned one dish to last at least two days.

It was a frugal, painful existence. She frequently felt guilty at going to college at all. But when she graduated, she could at least get a job that paid a professional wage, so the sacrifices now would be worth it. Master’s work might have to wait a bit, though. In June, after graduation, if she got her bachelor’s degree in anthropology, she was going to get a full-time job and see if she could catch up the bills a bit before she went back to school. She might have to do the work/study thing, and work one year and study the next. Plenty of people did that. She could do it, too, if it meant leaving Granddaddy better off and less worried. She knew that their financial situation was as frightening to him as it was to her.

He’d suggested asking the Kirks, but reluctantly. She didn’t mention that Tank had offered to help and she’d turned him down. She couldn’t even ask Tank right now; he was on an extended trip to Europe on ranch business. Mallory and Morie had gone somewhere out of the country, as well.

“You’re friends with Cane, sort of,” he reminded her. “Wouldn’t hurt to just ask him.”

She shifted uncomfortably. “He’s really sensitive about people asking him for money, especially lately.” She didn’t add that Cane had almost been a victim of a woman who wanted it, when she’d tried to pick him up in the bar.

“I guess he is. With his disability, likely he thinks that’s all women see in him now,” he conceded.

Not for worlds would Bodie have mentioned that no woman in her right mind would turn down a man that attractive, disability or not. Cane was so sexy that memories of their brief encounter still left her tossing and turning at night. Her whole body glowed when she thought of him touching her.

She cleared her throat. No reason to go down that road, especially when Cane didn’t even remember what had happened. That was a mercy, for a lot of reasons.

“We’ll get by,” Bodie promised her grandfather.

His eyes narrowed. “Don’t you even think of giving up college,” he instructed firmly. “Worked too hard, too long, to have one person in my family with a degree. I didn’t even finish high school. Had to go to work when my mother got sick. It’s a trap. You think you can go back and finish your schooling, but once you make money, all sorts of things come up that needs it,” he added solemnly. “You leave now, you won’t go back. And that would be a pity, Bodie. A real pity.”

She smiled, went and hugged him tight. “Okay.”

He chuckled and hugged her back.

“You and me against the world,” she said when she drew away, her pale brown eyes were smiling as well as her lips.

“That’s how it goes, I reckon.” He sighed. “Don’t want to go see any specialist,” he said heavily. “I don’t like people I don’t know. Suppose he wants to throw me in a hospital and cut on me?”

“We won’t let him,” she lied.

He seemed to calm down then, as if he thought she could see the future.

“One day at a time, Granddaddy,” she said gently. “Step by step.”

He hesitated. Then he nodded.

* * *

THE SPECIALIST WAS A MAN only a few years younger than Bodie’s grandfather. To the old man’s surprise, he was led into an examination room where he was hooked up to some sort of machine that looked right at his heart through his chest. They called it an echocardiogram, a sonogram of the heart.

“Damndest thing I ever saw,” he told Bodie while they waited for the cardiologist to read the results. “They let me look at the screen. I could see inside my body!”

“New technology really is amazing,” she agreed. She was sitting nervously on the edge of her chair. She’d had a long talk with the receptionist while her grandfather was having his test, about monthly payments. The bill was going to be staggering. It was a testament to Bodie’s salesmanship that the payment plan had been agreed on. There was no question of further education after this next semester. Then, too, she had to make sure that her grades held up, so that she’d pass all her subjects and be able to graduate. So many worries. She wondered how in the world she was going to manage any of it.

“Don’t chew on them nails like that,” her grandfather instructed. “You’ll have them gnawed off into the quick.”

“Oh.” She drew her finger out of her mouth. “Sorry. I’m just nervous a bit.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

She got up and found a magazine to read, something about hunting and fishing that she then passed to the old man, who seemed to find it much more interesting than she had.

While they waited, she looked around the waiting room at other people. Some of them had the same worried, drawn expressions that she and her grandfather were wearing. It gave her a sort of comfort, to know that they weren’t the only people here with anxieties.

Time dragged on. She stopped watching the clock. There were so many people in the waiting room. Then, suddenly, time sped up and people started going back into the examination rooms. And finally, the nurse called her grandfather’s name.

Bodie went with him, prepared to fight her way in if she had to. But the nurse only smiled and put them both in the doctor’s office, in front of his desk and padded chair.

Dr. McGillicuddy came in, preoccupied, reading a tablet PC on the way. He glanced at the two worried people facing him.

“We’re not going to recommend operating on you,” he told the old man at once, and this message was received with great sighs of relief and tears from Bodie.

“Not that it isn’t a fairly bad situation,” he said as he sat down and put the tablet aside. He clasped his fingers in front of him. “It is heart failure,” he said.

“Oh, no!” Bodie burst out, horrified.

He held up a hand. “Not what you’re thinking. Not at all. It can be treated with medication and lifestyle changes. It doesn’t mean he’s a candidate for a funeral home.”

Bodie shivered. She’d been so afraid!

Her grandfather smiled at her. “She’s my right arm,” he told the doctor. “Orders me around, takes care of me. Feeds me good, too.”

“No fried foods,” the doctor said. “Everything low fat. Go easy on beef and fatty meats, especially salty meats with preservatives. Lots of vegetables and fish.”

The old man made a face. “I hate fish.”

“You can learn to like it. I did,” the specialist said, glowering. “Anyway, my nurse will get the relevant information from you on the way out. You’ll have three heart medicines to take. I want you back here in two months, sooner if you have any unusual symptoms. We’ll see how the drugs work, first. If they arrest the progress of the disease, we’ll be in good shape. If they don’t, we can make decisions then about how to proceed.”

That sounded ominous, but Bodie didn’t react. She just smiled. “Sounds good.”

“Yes, it does,” her grandfather said heavily. “I hate the thought of hospitals and being cut on. I’m not much keener on some of those tests my regular doctor mentioned.”

“I know, I spoke to him earlier,” the other man replied quietly. “He said you’d fight tooth and nail to prevent me doing a heart catheterization.”

“No, I wouldn’t fight, I’d just go home and take the phone off the hook.” The older man chuckled.

“So I heard. You know, it’s the best way to find out exactly what’s going on. If you have clogged arteries or any other problems…”

“Your technician said my arteries looked fine on that thingabob machine,” he returned.

“They do,” the specialist conceded. “I won’t insist on a catheterization right now. But we did a baseline measurement of your heart in an X-ray and we’ll take others as we go along, to compare. If your blood pressure shoots up unexpectedly, if your heart enlarges, that will mean the road ahead is dangerous and we have to take precautions.”

The old man shifted. “Flying horse.”

The specialist blinked. “Sir?”

“Old story I heard,” he said. “The king was going to execute this guy, and he said wait, if you let me live for another year, I’ll teach your horse to fly. The king was dubious, but he said, well, okay, what have I got to lose? Guy walks out, and his friend says, are you crazy, you can’t teach a horse to fly! The condemned man laughed. He said, in a year, the horse could die, I could die, the king could die…or I might actually teach the horse to fly. Moral of story, time can bring hope.”

“I’ll remember that,” the specialist said with a smile. “Nice story.”

“It was in a series I watched on television, about that King Henry VIII of England, a long time ago. Never forgot it.”

“I can see why.” The specialist stood up and extended his hand. “You go home and take your medicine and call me if you have any problems. Better yet, call my nurses,” he said with a chuckle. “They know more than I do!”

Bodie and her grandfather laughed.

* * *

“WELL, THAT WAS A RELIEF,” he told Bodie on the way home. “I was scared stiff he was going to want to operate on me.”

“Me, too,” Bodie confessed. “It’s such a relief!”

* * *

AND IT WAS, UNTIL they got to the drugstore and presented the prescriptions. She asked her grandfather to go and get a can of peaches to take home for supper. While he was diverted, she asked the clerk how much the medicine would be.

She almost passed out at the figure. “You have got to be kidding,” she exclaimed in a horrified tone.

“Sorry, not,” the young man replied sympathetically. “Look,” he said softly, “we can fill the generic version of all three of them. It will still be a lot, but not quite as much.”

He gave her a new figure that was the whole rent amount for the next month. She felt sick all over.

The clerk winced. “It’s hard, I know,” he said. “I have an elderly mother who has a bad heart. We have to buy her medicine. If it wasn’t for my job, and my wife’s, she’d have to go without. Her social security won’t pay for more than a fraction of them, even though she gets them filled at a discount pharmacy and for a small amount of money.”

“People shouldn’t have to choose between heat and food and medicine and gas,” Bodie said in a haunted tone.

“Tell me about it,” the clerk agreed wholeheartedly.

She drew in a breath. She was thinking about those two expensive pieces of jewelry at home and how far the money for them would go toward paying the rent and medicine bills. She couldn’t let her grandfather die for lack of money. She wouldn’t.

She lifted her chin. “Go ahead and fill them,” she said quietly. “I have some heirloom jewelry I can sell. It will more than pay for them.”

“I hate that for you,” he said. “I had to sell my grandmother’s engagement ring to pay for a car repair.” His eyes were sad. “It would have gone to my daughter one day.”

“In the end, they’re just things, though.” She glanced at her grandfather down the aisle and smiled gently. “People are much more important.”

“I can’t argue with that. We’ll have them for you in about a half hour, if that’s okay.”

“That will be fine,” she assured him.

* * *

SHE DROVE HER GRANDFATHER home. Then she dug the necklace and ring out from under her bed, where they’d lived in a photograph box since she moved in. She looked at them lovingly, touched them, then closed the box. Sentiment was far too expensive at the moment. She’d rather have her grandfather than pretty things from a different day and age, even if it was going to wrench her heart to sell them. Her mother had loved them, shown them to her from her childhood…explained the legends that surrounded them. Bodie had grown up loving them, as well, as a connection to a long-ago place somewhere in Spain.

But it was unlikely that she’d have children. She didn’t really want to get married, not for years, and she wasn’t sure about having a child even then. Or so she told herself. It made it easier to take the box into town, to a pawn shop, and talk to the clerk.

* * *

“MISS, ARE YOU SURE you want to do this?” he asked. “These are heirlooms…”

“I have to,” she said gently. “My grandfather is very ill. We can’t afford his medicine.”

The man grimaced. “Damned shame,” he said.

Bodie stared at the jewels, vaguely aware of someone coming into the store behind her. “Yes,” she said. “I know.” She was fighting tears.

“Well, I promise you I won’t sell them to anybody,” he told her. “I’ll lock them up tight until you can afford to get them back. How about that?”

“You would…do that?” she asked, surprised. “But it might be months…”

“So I’ll wait months.” He smiled.

She had to fight to speak, past the lump in her throat. It was so kind! “Thank you,” she managed to say.

“You’re welcome. Hold on to that,” he added, sliding a ticket across to her. “You’ll need it.”

She smiled. “Thank you very much.”

He counted out a number of bills, more than she’d expected to get for the jewelry. “You be careful with that,” he added.

She stuffed it into her pocketbook. “I will.”

“See you in a few months,” he said, and smiled again.

“Okay. That’s a deal.”

She turned, almost colliding with a cowboy. She didn’t look up to see who it was. Plenty of ranches in the area. She didn’t know who worked for most of them.

The cowboy watched her go out of the shop and frowned. “Wasn’t that Bodie?” he asked the clerk, who was his brother-in-law.

“Sure was. Her granddad’s in bad shape. She couldn’t afford his medicine so she pawned her family treasures.” He showed them to the other man. “Hell of a shame.”

“Yes. It is.”

The cowboy opened his cell phone and made a call.

CHAPTER FOUR

BODIE BOUGHT HER grandfather’s medicine with part of the money she’d gotten from the jewelry. The rest she hid under her bed for an emergency. She would have to find a part-time job while she was out of school, anything to help bring in a few more dollars.

But she scoured the want ads and couldn’t find anybody who was hiring, even temporarily, for the holidays. She could get a job up at Jackson Hole, maybe, in one of the shops, but the sudden snows had closed everything down and at least one road into the area had been shut down. So driving up there even to apply was out of the question now. Not that her junky old pickup truck would even make it that far, she mused darkly, or that she could afford the gas to go back and forth.

She checked at the two local restaurants and the fast-food joints to see if they needed anyone, even to wash dishes, but nobody was hiring.

She went back home dejected, having wasted twelve dollars worth of gas that she could ill afford just to look for work. She did put in applications in a couple of places, but the managers weren’t encouraging.

In desperation she looked for ranch work. Not on the Kirk place, that would be too humiliating even to ask, but on two other area ranches. One rancher did have work, driving heavy machinery. But Bodie had no training and it wasn’t a skill she was eager to learn. So she went back home in defeat.

Her grandfather seemed to react well to the medicine after the first few days. He perked up and had more energy, and he was less breathless. Bodie smiled and pretended that everything was all right, but she was very worried. She worked part-time at a convenience store in Billings near the college she attended, but that was a long commute. She couldn’t even afford the gas. She didn’t know how they were going to afford the medicine next month, or pay the increased rent that Will Jones was demanding, or even have enough for Christmas presents. She went into her room, closed the door and cried. She’d never felt so despondent, and she didn’t dare let her grandfather see how worried she really was. It was like the end of the world.

But she dried her eyes and went into the kitchen to cook, resolved that God was in control of everything, anyway, and would provide somehow. It was faith that kept her going through the worst of times. Often, it seemed that faith was all she had to hold on to.

She went out into the backyard and cut down a small spruce tree, found an antiquated old tree stand and put the tree in it. They had decorations that her mother had stored, some of which were three generations old. Decorating the tree cheered her up and the tree made the living room look alive with color.

At least, it cheered her up until Will Jones came to the door and demanded money for cutting down one of his trees.

“Your trees?” Bodie exclaimed. “My mother planted those trees before she got sick…!”

“It’s my house, my land and my trees, and you owe me fifty dollars for that tree,” Will Jones said haughtily. “That’s what they charge in those tree lots.”

Bodie felt the blood drain out of her face. She hadn’t even thought about cutting the tree. They’d done it for years. In fact, her mother had planted them for just this purpose.

“You can add it in with the rent,” the man said coldly, and he smiled. “How are you managing, anyway? You don’t have a job. I guess all that education makes you too good to get a real job, don’t it?”

“I’ve applied for jobs all over town,” Bodie said in a quiet tone.

“I guess all the boss jobs are taken, huh?” he taunted.

“You’ll get your money,” Bodie said coldly.

Jones looked around the room, trying to find something to complain about. “Needs dusting,” he muttered when he drew a finger across the dining room table.

“I haven’t cleaned house today. I was looking for work,” she reminded him.

“Not many jobs going, I guess. I got one.” He gave her a leering stare. “You get desperate, you just come see me.”

She could guess what sort of job it was. “I can manage.”

“My friend Larry really likes you,” he said. “A lot. He’d like to spend some time with you, at my place. You’d be chaperoned, if that’s what worries you.” He laughed as he said it, and Bodie felt sick to her stomach. She could imagine what he was talking about. He’d mentioned in the past how he’d love to film her with his friend Larry.

“You can pick a woman up on a street corner for that sort of work,” Bodie said coldly.

He gave her a hard look. “You’re so lily-white, aren’t you?” he scoffed. “Upstanding young woman, never put a foot wrong, won’t play around with any men. You gay?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “But I wouldn’t be ashamed to admit it, if I was.”

He made a sound in his throat. “Everybody knows about you college girls,” he said sarcastically. “You’re like them—you just don’t want anybody around here to know it.”

“I’m not like that,” she said. “I’m a person of faith.”

“St. Bolinda,” he muttered. “Well, you might get a shock one day. It wouldn’t hurt you to learn a little humility. Looking down on other people, making out like you’re so much better than they are, with your sterling morals. You need taking down a peg.”

“And you’re just the guy to do it, right?” she asked with a bite in her voice.

“Maybe I am,” he shot back. “You’re only allowed to stay here if you pay rent and do what I say.” He looked around the house. “Maybe the house needs fixing and you and your old family member will have to leave while it gets done. Maybe it will take a year or so to do it, too.” He was thinking aloud. He smiled with contempt. “Nobody would say you’d been evicted if I did that, and you wouldn’t have a legal leg to stand on.”

“Anybody could see that the house isn’t in that bad a shape!” she shot back angrily.

“Middle of the night, something could happen to the roof,” he said, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “Couldn’t prove a thing, either.”

She felt her blood run cold. She couldn’t afford the rent here, how would she afford it someplace else? The cost of moving alone was out of her reach right now. She had just a few dollars, barely enough for groceries and gas. She felt the terror all the way to the pit of her stomach.

And he knew it. He smiled even more widely. “Scares you, don’t it?” he mused. “Good. You think about that. You don’t keep me happy, why you could have to move tomorrow. It could be an emergency.”

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