Blacklake-Book4-1 Three Cousins

Chapter 34
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By afternoon I was up to eatin’ a bit. Thankfully, Ezra brought in better stuff than the cafeteria downstairs managed. Been told that’s a universal truth about hospitals. Another truth, they are very loud places to try to sleep.

I kept my mouth mostly closed except to gnaw on a rib bone or whatever, as cousins meandered in and out of my room, the nurses keepin’ on their toes to scurry off those lingerin’ longer than they believed proper.

The entire time Ezra visited, she and Mama stood at the foot of the bed holdin’ hands. Not something we’re big on doin’, last I gave it some thought. They tried to act as though things were natural, talkin’ about trivial stuff, but somehow I could sense they looked down on me like they might not get a chance to tomorrow. Maybe I need to have another conversation with my doc cousin. What hadn’t she told me?

When Ezra left, pushin’ with her five other cousins, and it was somewhat quiet for a moment, I asked Mama, “Did the surgeon tell ya something different than what she told me?”

“Don’t know what ya mean,” she blathered.

“Yes ya do. Ya expectin’ me to die any moment or something?”

“Of course not. If anything, I’m concerned about the projects I haven’t checked on the last twenty-four hours or so. Keepin’ ya out of trouble has been taxin’ on yar papa and me. Hope ya feel terribly guilty about puttin’ us out.”

That’s more the mama I know. “Ya don’t need to be sittin’ here holdin’ my hand,” I said. “Not that I don’t appreciate yar company. But if I’m honest, ya’re creepin’ me out a little.”

“That has to be the oddest thing ya’ve ever said to me, and prolly the cruelest. Leave it to a spoiled bully to insult his mama, lendin’ her youngest a bit of emotional support.”

“It’s actually the whole emotion thing creepin’ me out,” I said softly. “Doesn’t fit with those mornings years ago, shouting that if ya found a single thing on my bedroom floor that shoulda been put away somewhere proper, ya’d skin the skin off my skinny ogre hide.”

“Tough ogre love,” she said. Guess that was meant to explain a lot.

“I haven’t thrown up in an hour,” I said. “They haven’t rolled me to the operating room in—” I gave it a quick calculation. “Twelve hours. I’m prolly not gonna die. Go home. Get some rest. Take a shower. Ya prolly stink a bit.”

“Where’d ya get that razor sharp, evil tongue of yars?” she asked. “Not from my side of the gene pool.”

“Had to be those early summers, Grandpapa Klow made me follow him in the deep scrub pushin’ cattle further up into the hills. My backside throbs thinkin’ about the hives, rubbin’ against a poorly-fitted saddle.”

“Pushin’ cattle gave ya a nasty mouth?” she challenged.

“Prolly more the invective Grandpapa might spew, gettin’ smacked in the head by an unseen, low limb.” Horses don’t necessarily go where ya want em to go. They can be mean, intentional.

“Don’t lie,” she warned. “Klow’s a consummate gentlebull, to borrow a human expression. Don’t suggest otherwise.”

“Ya clearly never followed him into a switchback, challengin’ a two-thousand pound steer.”

She snorted a short growl. “I tend to remember Klow complainin’ that ya never got off yar laptop. Not ever once complainin’ about ya taggin’ along into the hard scrub.”

“Prolly complainin’ about Kriz,” I suggested. “I’m the harder worker of the two of us.”

“Did the ranch own a saddle that fit his skinny shiny butt?” she asked.

“Think they always tossed him on a human saddle, on a puny quarterhorse.”

She laughed hard. I waited for the growl to finish, since a good story hinted. “Ya know my grandpapa worked the ranch.”

I nodded.

“He was first generation, after what the humans call draft horses, that could accommodate an ogre physique, made it into the Range.”

I waited. Mind twirled around with favorite stories, about the origin of BR, Birs Ranch, over four hundred years ago, the human saddle horses that feared us giants generations ago, when we hated them back with just as much energy. Mama’s eyes leveled at the machines fillin’ the wall behind me, but she was seein’ a totally different canvas I think.

“And?” I pressed.

“I earned my college tuition,” she said slowly, “cookin’, cleanin’, shovelin’ manure, herdin’ horses for their annual vaccinations, on the ranch. Doin’ every other nasty task worth hatin’.” While her eyes oddly tinted red, I sensed a wistful mood about her.

My head expanded a bit—hoped it wasn’t a new bleed. “I didn’t know ya worked on the ranch. How could I not know that?” A quick mental review, and I couldn’t think of any personal stories from her prior to meetin’ Papa at university. How could that be?

“Was no gilded d Birs,” she said softly. “To get all the cushy jobs, under a blue sky followin’ around steers and heifers in the rollin’ hills of the Eastern Slope.”

“My ridin’ ten hours straight in a saddle didn’t feel all that cushy,” I said, a grin forcin’ itself between my tusks. And after a bath, sittin’ and codin’ on something to near sunrise. How did I get by with no sleep, those short summers?

Her eyes flipped, kinda focusin’. Chin lowered and took me in, holdin’ on my eyes. “Never fail to appreciate yar roots. All ya know are the d Birs in the Valley. Not all of the folk who migrated from the West shared the success of Birs and his brood.”

“Yar folk—”

“To a one benefited from me scorin’ the big fish, matin’ a d Birs—in the direct line of succession.”

I laughed. “The big fish. Papa see himself as yar big catch?” I asked.

Her expression turned a bit angry. “Yar papa has never failed to appreciate his roots. Not an air of attitude ever graced him. He never looked at me—as I cleaned the tables in the Commons where he ate with his buddies—as beneath him. Never considered himself better.”

“Didn’t mean—”

“I was ten shades past dirt poor,” she hissed. “Dirt had more opportunity than most of my folk. From a clan that couldn’t sweep together the hopes for a better tomorrow.

“Yar grandmama took me under her wing when she met me pitchfork bound for the stable, and kept me safe among the riffraff ya can find on an enormous commercial ranch. Think I was twelve, then. Ensured I had a job every summer after that, a bed in the main house away from the bunkhouse, with jobs in the Valley durin’ the school year.” Her eyes had turned glassy. Never seen that in Mama before.

I lay, stone-still, prayin’ to the gods she’d keep talkin’. Had never heard this side of her life. Don’t know why my chest expanded, a bit like I’d forgotten how to exhale. All her years on the ranch, and Papa didn’t meet her there.

“We got time,” I said after a couple, long minutes of silence. “I would appreciate if ya—”

“I had a bull sibling,” she said so softly I barely heard her, “was strung up for stealin’ food for the family. Before I was even born.”

I had an uncle on that side of the family?

“Parents died early, because of the hard life they lived, before I had the means to take them out of poverty. They worked themselves to death to give me a future.”

I’ve never met, I don’t think, an ogre in the Range that wasn’t well above poverty. How did the spark of success that originated in the Valley, not work its way further into the far flung clans? How did the Valley become so affluent, compared to—

The council has ensured trickle down wealth in the Valley and beyond, as far as I’ve experienced. I closed my eyes, tryin’ to imagine the world Mama described. Hangin’, for stealing food? Didn’t fit with the history taught in school. Or what I’ve experienced.

“We may not have the sposed freedom,” Mama started up again, “that democracy has given the folk of the North. But we’ve been very lucky that our culture more than not, by the hands of our wise clan leaders, has allowed most to thrive and succeed.”

As long as we don’t tick off the wrong clan leader. Occurred to me, this may have been the first political-edged comment I’d ever heard from the mate of the council leader.

~ Ezra ~

The sound of tires rollin’ across the gravel outside made me mark my place and close my current bodice gripper. We don’t get visitors. We’re all pretty much deep-dyed-introverts. Mama would be in her office. Papa wouldn’t be gettin’ home for more than an hour, so no reason anyone should be stoppin’ by. As I made it to the terrace, the car was already backin’ out of the drive. Daze’s SUV. Maybe I rolled my eyes.

The knock downstairs echoed through the house, and I headed down the stairs for the front door, shouted at Mama that I’d get it. Thomas hadn’t suggested he was droppin’ by. And I hadn’t invited him over. Not that I wouldn’ta, if he’d texted me this afternoon like he claimed he would.

Had decided he musta gotten a better offer, since I hadn’t heard from him. It’s proper for the bull to initiate certain things, afterall. But then, maybe he was initiatin’, just not in the way a proper ogre bull would.

I wrenched the door open, maybe feelin’ a bit irritated. Glowered down at the fool. A grin pulled those thin lips of his east and west. “Hey,” he peeped.

“Hey, yar own self,” I growled.

“Was that a happy I’m here growl, or a why are you here growl? I haven’t truly gotten a grip on the whole ogre manner of expression.”

“Ya could have texted me,” I growled.

“So, a why are you here growl,” he said, without the silly grin slippin’. He reached up and grabbed my smock. Pulled me downward, toward him, and planted a peck between my tusks.

I pushed him away hard enough he stumbled three or four steps backward. I growled, “What are ya doin’, fool?”

The idjit laughed. “Have to say I’m excited to see you. Thought I’d just try that and see if it got me dead. I see that it didn’t, so you’re probably ecstatic about seeing me too.”

“Ya’re the biggest idjit I’ve ever met. Any normal culturally astute hen woulda ripped yar head off.” Maybe I was sharin’ an angry ogre growl.

We maybe stood quiet a moment, him with the idjit grin, me glarin’.

I finally waved him in. “Can’t believe ya did that.”

“Considered overly forward around here?” he asked at my back. The door clacked shut hard, his footsteps scurried to catch up with me. Never figger out why humans, orcs, and goblins have to bind their feet.

Orcs and goblins originated from the hot sands of the Eastern Desert. Must explain that part. Humans—prolly just because they’re wimps.

I led Thomas into the day room, without askin’ if he’d care for tea. He was rude. I could be too.

~