Page 5 of Baker
Ollie snorted softly at the mention of the Brian Dennehy character fromRamboand then ran a hand through his short, black hair.
“I try not to view anyone as anunwanted element,” Ollie said with a wink at me. “Otherwise Baker would have been run out of town years ago.”
“Ha.” I chuffed like an angry bear. “Nice to meet you. I’m kind of in the middle of burying my father, so we can talk later. Come to the house.”
“Sure, yes, I’m sorry to have intruded on this sad moment,” Hanley whispered as the wind twisted and pulled at his overgrown hair. He did look a bit unkempt but in a way that I found kind of appealing. I rarely looked as spiffy as my half-brothers. Jeans and dirty cowboy boots were my wardrobe.
“Nah, it’s not all that sad,” I replied. Ollie flattened his lips. Hanley’s brows shot up, but he recovered quickly.
“I’ll just go meander around while you tend to your father. Again, my sympathies,” Hanley said, nodding at me and slipping around the back of the tractor, large backpack complete with a tightly bound pop-up tent resting on his strong back. I watchedhim break over the knoll and disappear into a gully that took him out of sight.
“He’s what he claims.” Ollie’s deep voice broke into my vapid moment. I glanced at our lawman. “I ran a background on him when I found him poking around on private land. Seems he worked for some big wildlife organization before being signed by a publishing house in New York to make photo books. He wanted to do this part of the country. No criminal record other than an arrest about three years ago during a protest at a lab in Georgia that tested on animals.”
“Okay, cool, as long as he’s not a drunken fool like me.”
“There’s only one like you, thank the gods.” He clapped my shoulder, then turned deep brown eyes to the other three chumps in suits. “Orusedto be only one Bastian boy to keep an eye on. They staying long?”
“I hope not. I plan to offer them some cash to sign off and get them on planes back to whence they came.”
“Whence? Holy shit, two hours with the big city boys and you’re starting to sound like Jane Austen.” He chuckled before ambling over to rest a hand on Granny’s shoulder as Mike shot me a look that said he was beyond ready.
Squaring my shoulders, I took a deep breath and moved to my truck to grab the straps I had tossed in to lift the casket from the bed and place it in the ground. It took a while to get things rigged up. The weight of the coffin made the tractor want to tip more than I liked, but with some patience and help from the other men, we lowered Cash into the cold Oklahoma soil.
Mike led some prayers. We all huddled around Granny, who was the only one who felt compelled to pray along with the funeral director. None of us guys cared one way or the other if God carried Cash onto his bosom. I secretly—or not so secretly, I guess—hoped Cash went south for an extended stay at Satan’s Resort & Spa. A man who abandons numerous women and kidsshouldn’t receive any kind of blessings. Call me vindictive if you wish, but I never felt better than when the short prayers were over and I could scoop up big maws of rocky soil and dump it on my father’s coffin. Not a tear was shed. Not even Granny wept, and she cried at laundry soap commercials. Guess it says a lot when your own mother doesn’t shed a tear at your funeral.
After we properly covered him, we all gathered up and rode back to the house for some coffee, cookies, and the reading of Cash’s will. Hopefully by nightfall, all these men would be a few grand richer and jetting back to their lives, and I could start planning how to turn this ranch back into something that my great-grandfather would be proud of.
3
Chapter Three
As with most important things, the will was read around the kitchen table.
Granny had a chicken roasting in the oven, carrots and potatoes stuffed into the old metal roasting pan with the meat. Bread had been baked yesterday to sop up the gravy she’d make from the drippings. We’d hauled a few folding chairs in from the hall closet but left the card table stashed away. Granny liked to host poker parties once a month with the old gals from the Lilac Hills Home for Independent Living. Noreen Piller’s wheelchair didn’t fit through the narrow kitchen doorway, so they played in the living room. Our old house was built way before people cared about handicapped folk.
Crippling silence hung in the air like fetid smoke as we waited for Milton to find his glasses and then stir some cream into his cup of coffee. My siblings all looked tense. Bella, seated next to Ford, seemed at ease, but then again, she should be. Nothing discussed here today would affect her at all.
“I can bring out more cookies,” Granny offered as Milt removed a legal document from inside a leather case that was cracked and faded from age and the sun.
“We’re good.” Linc smiled at my grandmother nervously.
“Well, shout if you want something to snack on,” she tacked on and settled back into her seat.
“Milton, you think we could get to it?” I asked, eager to clear the table—and my house—of these reminders of what a shit my father had been. They, too, seemed ready to get things rolling.
Rheumy blue eyes glanced at me over the top of smudged glasses. “You can’t rush the law.”
Dodge and Ford exchanged looks.
“Right, but maybe we can goose her? It’s going to be dark soon,” I threw out in the hopes that Milt would not want to drive home in the dark.
His eyes rounded. “Oh damn, well, we best get going. I’ve not had my cataract surgery yet, so driving at night makes me squint.” Bella gave me a tiny smile as the ancient lawyer began to read from the paperwork in front of him. The tension in the room was as thick as wood smoke.
“I, Cashman Delaney Bastian, of Rural Route 89 Box 4, Bastian Grange, Oklahoma, am of sound mind and not under duress or undue influence. I fully understand the nature and extent of all my property and its distribution.” Milton took a moment to slurp down some coffee and cough a few times before continuing. “I am making this my final will and testament. In lieu of leaving the ranch named at the address above to any one child, I leave it to all four of my sons—Studebaker, Dodge, Lincoln, and Ford Bastian—to oversee its care and steward it into the next generation of Bastians with one proviso: My mother, Eleanor Alice Bastian, wife of William Frank Bastian, is to be allowed to live at the ranch until she passes over or wishes to move to the Lilac Hills Home in Bastian Grange.”
“He wasn’t all bad,” Granny whispered as a few tears ran down her weathered cheek. Linc handed her his hanky as Bella rubbed her bowed back. “Just mostly,” she threw out at the end.
“So there is a small personal note at the end,” Milt uncomfortably said while glancing at the four Bastian brothers sitting at the table. “If you wish to read it yourselves…”
