Page 14 of The Auction
If there were any credits to give, (I was giving none to a man who basically stole my farm), the one thing I would commend Creed for was his willingness to learn. He’d satby Herb’s side for as long as Herb had energy to talk, peppering him with questions about the farm. How and when to rotate the crops. The best time to plant and harvest.
Either he didn’t trust me to tell him the truth, (I probably wouldn’t have), or he didn’t think I knew anything about farming, I wasn’t sure.
He’d bought books. He was studying. But it had been clear that while he’d been born in Montana, he hadn’t known much about working the land. His ethnicity had been confirmed in an offhand comment he’d made when I’d asked about his name.
White father, Cree mother. By his grandfather’s assessment he was bastard half-breed. So, fun for him. He’d spent time both with his father going to “white” school, as he called it, and with his mother on the Res.
Appreciating neither life for himself, he’d enlisted in the military when he was eighteen.
When I asked him why the Navy, (I didn’t ask many questions if I could help it. I didn’t want to know too much about the man I was about to inflict psychological warfare on), his only answer was that no one on either side of his family knew how to swim.
Turning on the truck’s bench seat, I was about to school him in biology. “Do you know what’s involved in having a cow that produces milk?”
“Big tits,” he quipped. Then looked over at me and dropped his gaze to make a point. My tits were not big, they were appropriately B-cup sized and he knew it.
That’s how these past four months had gone.
Mostly we didn’t talk. Only basic communication to split the chores in order to run the house and farm.
However, sometimes he looked at me in a way thatsuggested he didn’t see me wholly as the sexless caretaker of my dying father, but rather, as his wife.
When he did, I would give him mynot going to happenlook and he would back down.
But there it was again. It was his subtle reminder of what he wanted this situation-ship to ultimately become.
Roommates with bennies.
“A cow has to give birth to produce milk. That means a calf. That means we have to decide if we’re going to have multiple dairy cows if it’s female. If it’s a male, we have to sell it. And who doesn’t love selling babies for slaughter? Then, once the milk dries up on our momma cow, we have to do it all over again. Which means either leasing a bull to try and impregnate her or buying bull semen to inseminate her. You ever inseminate a female cow, Creed?”
His jaw ticked. “You’re fucking telling me female cows need to be pregnant all the time to produce milk?”
I pushed both hands under my breasts to lift them up under my black dress, my only other dress besides my white one, which I was never wearing again. “You think I walk around making milk all the time, Creed?”
He blinked, then laughed. “Fuck me. Shit, I don’t know.” He paused for a second then added. “Put those tits away, Jules, or you’ll get me thinking you want me to see more of them.”
“Stop calling me Jules.”
“No,” he said. “But I still think we should do it. Ran into a neighbor in town. He’s got a cattle ranch. They’ve probably got a plethora of bull semen at their disposal.”
“Bull semen in these parts is no joke. They pay top dollar to breed the best meat. That being said, we don’t have space in the barn for a cow and we don’t have enoughpasture for it to graze. We’ll stick with the chickens for now.”
“The barn is more than big enough to be fitted for a horse stall. Looks like there was one at some point, but it was broken down. Why don’t we have any of those either?”
“Stop sayingwelike we’re an actual couple,” I snapped.
“Weare.”
I brought my hand to my chest and tried to rub away the sudden pain there. “I had a horse. She was perfect. But then she got hurt and Herb wouldn’t take her to the vet in town…he put her down. After that, I didn’t want another one.”
“Well, I was at that auction because I thought maybe the place to start being a cowboy was to buy a horse. Got a wife, instead. I’m not complaining, but I’m thinking we either use the barn as intended, or we make that space more purposeful and add a cow.”
“You’re not touching the operation,” I spat. “Herb is dead. This little charade between us is over.”
“I got a marriage certificate and a deed to the property that says otherwise,” he said, unfazed.
“You’re going to divorce me,” I told him.
I hadn’t wasted a second of the last four months figuring out what came next. I went so far as using some of my precious savings to pay for an hour long consultation with a lawyer from Billings over a Zoom call.
