9
The sun was barely a pink sliver cresting the tree line when Ryan marched into the snow wearing a pair of two-sizes-too-small muck boots. He’d already ruined one pair of shoes in this winter wasteland.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he grumbled to himself. At home, he was an early bird by nature. He liked to be in the office by seven thirty most mornings to enjoy the stillness before phone calls and meetings and “quick questions” overtook the rest of the day. The important delineation being that usually he was sober West Coast Ryan. Not Hungover Jet-lagged Ryan.
Sucking in a breath of lung-stabbing, icy air, he tromped toward the barn. The boxy, white structure looked like it could use a few coats of paint and maybe a new roof. A rusty tractor and a jumbled collection of metal farming implements resided in the open bay to the far right. The frozen ground was uneven and rutted with patches of gravel and weeds popping out of the melting snow.
Farming seemed like a dirty, disorganized job. Exactly the opposite of what he was comfortable with.
Sammy whistled for him from the door. “Nice hat,” she called with a grin.
Not everyone could look like her in the morning. He refused to be charmed by the picture she made. Lavender blue eyes framed by those honey blonde waves under a green knit hat. She wore a scarf—more green—around her neck. Her vest was a pop of red against the gray-white of the barn wood. Just looking at her made him feel warm, which then annoyed him.
Pulling his stupid rainbow hat lower over his brow, he plodded toward her, toes scrunched at the ends of the boots. “Reluctant farmer reporting for first and last duty ever,” he grumbled.
With that saucy grin, she tweaked the puffball of his hat. “It’s a good look on you.”
He batted her hand away, well aware of just how ridiculous he looked. Not that it mattered since she’d already seen him muddy, drunk, and naked. If this were a relationship, it would have taken him at least six to eight months before she saw all of those sides of him.
She dragged the old door open and he followed her inside, boots scuffing on the relatively clean concrete floor. There were stalls to his right and a bigger enclosure on the left. More rusty implements of questionable purposes hung on the far wall above a workbench of sorts. Bare lightbulbs hung from alternating rafters, casting light into the murky darkness.
Stan, his sheep buddy, clamored at the door of a stall, looking thrilled to see him.
“Hey, pal,” Ryan said, reaching in to scratch the sheep’s head.
Stan baa-ed a sheepish greeting.
“He really seems to like you,” Sammy noted.
Ryan grunted, not wanting to acknowledge that it was kind of nice being greeted enthusiastically just for walking in the door. Maybe that’s why people got dogs.
A flurry of activity in the enclosure caught his attention when Sammy pried the lid off a plastic bin. A dozen of the scraggliest chickens Ryan had ever seen clucked and pecked behind the wood of the fence.
“What’s wrong with them?” he asked, eyeing them in horror.
“Nothing now,” she said, shoving a metal scoop into a bin. “At least, nothing a little TLC won’t fix. They were rescued from a neglect situation a few towns over. Carson’s keeping them here for me until their permanent home is ready.”
He eyed a particularly bedraggled chicken perched in the corner. It looked groggy, as if life had just delivered a surprise one-two punch. Ryan could relate.
“Pellets in the morning,” Sammy lectured as she dumped the full scoop into a metal trough on the floor of the enclosure. The chickens reacted like kids after a broken piñata. “Just in case the snow is still too deep for hunting and pecking.”
She pointed at the smaller bin outside Stan’s stall. “Give our sheep friend a scoop of those in his feed bin. He should have plenty to graze on in the pasture with the snow melt, but we don’t know how long he’s gone without regular meals and this’ll top off his tank for the day.”
Because it was easier than arguing, Ryan obediently did as he was told. In the stall, Stan muscled him out of the way and shoved his face into the bucket after the pellets. “Now what?” he asked, watching as a dozen googly-eyed chickens squawked and pecked at the trough through the wooden slats in their enclosure.
“Now we put the free in free-range,” she said, securing the lid on the chicken feed. “We’ll let the chickens and your woolly pal out to pasture. They can graze and forage for the day.”
“Is that safe?” he asked.
“It’s a small pasture with double fencing. They’ll be fine,” she explained. She pointed to the side door. “Open that, will you?”
He tromped over to the door in his too-tight boots, and after a few false starts, managed to shoulder it open. A small, square pasture rolled out before him, running between the back of the farmhouse and the tree line. The sun cast a pinkish-purple glow on the icy crust of snow. Tall blades of grass broke through the surface in tufts.
“Heads-up,” Sammy called. He jumped back as two NBA teams’ worth of poultry raced past him.
“Poor idiots,” he said, watching them scatter into the open. “They think they’re free but it’s just a bigger cage.”
“Think of it this way,” Sammy said, “that bigger cage keeps them from being fox or coyote food.”
“Nature is fucked up,” Ryan mused.
“Nature doesn’t do anything for personal reasons. It’s not purposely cruel. But people can be. Someone out there purposely starved these guys, kept them locked in a dark pen twenty-four hours a day,” Sammy pointed out.
“People are fucked up,” he said.
“A small minority,” she said, watching the chickens flutter and race around in the open.
He caught a glimpse of something glittery on her face but before he could take a closer look, Stan bleated plaintively from his stall.
“Want to do the honors?” she offered, nodding toward the sheep.
“Sure,” he said, then paused. “Wait. Won’t Stan eat the chickens?”
Sammy’s laugh was as bright as the early morning sunshine. If he weren’t still hungover he might have appreciated it. “That’s adorable,” she said. “And no. Sheep are herbivores.”
“Will the chickens organize and attack him?” The sheep had been through enough trauma, in his opinion. A sneak chicken attack would just be adding insult to injury.
“They’ll be fine,” she promised.
He opened the gate to Stan’s stall and watched the sheep trot for the door. Once his hoofed feet hit the snow, the woolly little guy jogged in an enthusiastic circle.
“I’ve never seen anything frolic before,” he observed.
“Look how happy you made him,” she said, stepping into the pasture.
He followed her, and they stood shoulder to shoulder watching the sheep and fowl enjoy the obscenely early morning. She was grinning and he guessed it probably felt pretty good to liberate animals from horrible situations and watch them thrive. To be the one on the front lines, instead of the one in the conference room or behind the computer screen. But there was room for all kinds of heroes in life. Some of them were just more… heroic.