Reece (Stud Ranch 4)

I couldn’t imagine not seeing this sight every day.

Just more sentimentality. Of course I felt close to this land, this place. It was the first place I’d felt good feelings and experienced even the slightest bit of happiness after ten years in hell. The first place I’d felt any touches of human kindness. Where I’d learned to reconnect with my body, to trust that I could do difficult things and have other people trust me instead of criticize and tear me down all the time.

It had only been six weeks, but it felt like a year, or longer even. After being stagnant and stuck so long, terrified I’d never be free… everything from the last six weeks… I didn’t think any of that could ever be possible for a woman like me.

And yet here I was. Mud-spattered, wild-haired. No makeup, no masks. No one had kept tabs on me all day and I’d roamed.

Free.

Some days it even felt possible that this could be my life now. That maybe I could keep forging ahead with these new connections I was making, both with these people and this land and with trying to build a new life for myself.

And other days… well, there were mornings it was hard to get out of bed. I couldn’t say there wasn’t a part of me that thought about how if I left, I could retreat back into myself. Maybe I wasn’t ready for all this. Maybe I’d take a break from making close friends like Ruth, someone whose very nature demanded vulnerability and realness.

If I left, I could re-cocoon. Because maybe, in reality… I was terrified of all it meant to fly. Maybe crawling was a perfectly fine mode of travel for people like me…

I frowned, all of it spinning around and around in my head, only confusing me more. I yanked the keys out of the four-wheeler. My eyes searched out the heifer. Her water bag had been expelled at last check two hours ago.

I hopped off the ATV, my boots squelching in the mud. I grabbed the tagging gun and walked closer, expecting to find a baby calf on the ground by the heifer whenever I located her. This would be calf #88. I wouldn’t say I was a pro at tagging the little buggers, but I was far more comfortable with the entire process.

But when I got closer, I found the big, pregnant heifer on the ground, small calf hooves sticking out the back end of her.

My stomach sank. Oh no, she’d been in labor too long. The calf should have been born by now.

I blinked, feeling out of my depth all of a sudden, where moments before I’d been all confidence.

I’d been so sure the calf would be born already… because, well, all the births had been going so well lately. But that was stupid. I never should have gotten complacent. I should have been by an hour earlier, but I’d had to go to town for gas.

I had chains on the ATV, but remembering the first night I’d arrived, I didn’t dare try to pull the calf myself.

I turned around and ran back to the ATV.

This pasture wasn’t too far out, the house was only a ten-minute ride in, but I felt frantic thinking of the mother and calf I’d left behind.

The ride in seemed to take an hour, not ten minutes, and I was terrified of getting stuck in the mud again. Yesterday, Jeremiah’d had to tow me out of an especially slushy pit I’d gotten the four-wheeler stuck in. But finally, finally I made it.

Jeremiah was working on the stables today so I drove the four-wheeler that direction, but on the way there, I saw Reece stepping out of the barn.

“Reece!” I stopped the ATV and jumped off. “One of the heifers is having trouble. I need your help to come and pull the calf.”

He immediately stood up straighter. “Do you have chains?”

I nodded, twisting my hands together frantically. “But not the big calf-puller.”

He nodded and turned, jogging back into the barn and returning moments later with the big T pole. Without a word we both hurried back to the ATV. He slid the pole through some straps on the back and then climbed on behind me.

I immediately took off, my stomach in knots thinking about the calf stuck in its mother’s birth canal. Those little hooves.

The ten-minute ride back out to where I’d left them felt so much longer than the ride in, but finally, finally we were there. I all but leapt off the ATV, yanking the chains out of the bag before Reece had even climbed off.

I showed him where the heifer was, praying by some miracle she would have delivered the calf by the time we’d returned.

But no, she was exactly as I’d left her, on the ground, occasionally letting out distressed noises and kicking at her stomach with her own hooves.