Want to hear something real crazy?
The day we brought Sevyn home from the hospital, Vader showed up and never left. We don’t know where he came from, but there was this little black feisty kitten at our doorstep. It’s weird that she’s so into everything creepy and the fucking cat showed up, isn’t it?
When I turn around to take the plates off the counter, I notice what Camdyn is wearing. A crop top. That she clearly made herself by cutting the bottom part of her shirt off. “What are you wearing?”
“A crop top,” she tells me, as if I didn’t know, and goes back to loading her backpack with shit I don’t think she needs at school—like ten hair ties and just as many hats. Maybe she’s going to change every hour, but knowing Camdyn, she’s a pack rat. I say that nicely, but she can’t let go of anything. She’s lost four teeth, and she talked the tooth fairy into giving her them back. They’re in our junk drawer next to her first lock of hair. Twice Sev has tried to steal them to make another, nicer sister by casting a spell.
I know… my kids are weird. Believe me, I know this.
Sev eyes her sister, pushing her curls from her face with syrup hands. Sighing, I reach for a wet rag on the counter to wipe her face. “I’m aware that it’s a crop top. I’m asking why my five-year-old daughter is wearing it.”
Camdyn looks down at her shirt and a good portion of her stomach hanging out. “I like it.”
“I don’t care if you love it. Little girls cover their bodies.”
The frown digs deeper. “Why?”
“Because I said so,” I growl, annoyed she’s questioning my rules. “When you’re eighteen, you can wear what you want. Until then, your shirt covers your belly button.”
Her face scrunches in annoyance as she turns to stomp to her room. “You have too many rules!”
I know exactly what boys think of girls wearing crop tops. And though she’s a child, I’m not about to have any grubby little boys befriending my daughter because she’s half-dressed.
If you haven’t guessed it by now, I’m fucked. I have one kid who’s into witches and one that’s looking like she might grow up to be a whore.
After breakfast, I get the kids into my truck. Thankfully Camdyn is dressed in a regular shirt and her belly button is covered.
I drive a late ’90s beat-up Ford 350, and while the heater works, forget air conditioning. Even with heat, it takes a long time to warm up.
“It’s cold,” Sev notes, shivering in her booster seat as she yanks her gloves on, her voice barely heard over the hum of the diesel engine.
“It’s always cold.” I rub my hands together, watching her and Camdyn get buckled, and set the envelope with the papers in it on the seat next to me. I smile to myself, anticipating her reaction. I know why she keeps sending them back, hoping I’ve changed my mind about signing them, but I haven’t. She doesn’t get to dictate any of this. After everything she put me through, she’s not calling the shots any longer. I am.
“My nose is chilly.” Sev rubs it aggressively.
I look back at her and hand her the blanket she kicked on the floorboards. “Stop doing that. It’s going to fall off.”
Amarillo in December… cold. Our summers are hot and dry, but those winters, they make you question why you live here. It goes from 106 to -6 in the blink of an eye. The wind never stops blowing the awful smells from the cattle yards, and somewhere between the flat dry land and the city is the Grady Ranch, where my family and I have lived our entire lives. Before that, my grandparents and great-grandparents. This ranch has been in my family for over a hundred years, and why I will never leave it.
The drive to Camdyn’s preschool isn’t long, but it’s the other direction of the shop I work at, which is literally within walking distance of my house on the ranch. A business handed down from my dad, we repair mostly tractors and heavy equipment there, but we get the occasional ranch vehicle and local customers who don’t want to take their cars into the city. While we live in Amarillo, we’re out in the country away from Route 66 and amusement parks. Can’t see Cadillac Ranch from ours, and if I don’t have to go into the city, I don’t. I hate traffic, other drivers, and would rather ride a four-wheeler than a horse. There, you know a bit about me. A little more than you did last night.
“I fucking hate people too,” Camdyn says when I yell at the tractor that decides now is a great time to cut us off. We may not have traffic out on these country roads, but we do have tractors and those motherfuckers think they own the road.
I glance in the rearview mirror. Hell, even Sev stares at her in silence. My girls, they are being raised to say “sir” and “ma’am,” had whiskey on their gums to numb teething, skinned-up knees, and dirt on their cheeks. Their hair is wild, they can throw a line, and clean a fish without help (don’t count on eating it), make a buckshot (not accurately yet), and smile every time I call them “darlin’.”
They know I cuss. They’ve grown up around cowboys. Fuck, asshole, pussy, cunt, motherfucker, cock sucker, douche, suck my dick… all things they hear daily by the guys in the shop or in the cattle yards. They know if they so much as form the lips to say the word, they’re spending some time in the chair that pinches their butts.
With my eyes heavy on hers, I turn to look at Camdyn. “What did you say?”
“Sorry.”
I hit the brakes again as the tractor slows, a cloud of dust kicking up behind him. “Where did you hear that? Who said they hate people?”
“You. Yesterday when that guy hit your truck with his cart in the parking lot.”
Right. I did say that.
Why is it my girls can’t remember to flush the damn toilet but if I call someone a cock sucker, they remember that shit for months?
Camdyn stares at Sev as she’s laughing uncontrollably. “Can we watch a movie tonight?”
“Sure,” I mumble, turning down the road to Camdyn’s preschool. “It’s spaghetti night.”
“Yummy!” Sev yells with no volume control, and her eyes glued to my phone where she’s watching Hocus Pocus for the third time this week. Which explains the laughing. “I love getti!”
I eye Camdyn in the mirror, a warning to shut the fuck up and not start a fight with her baby sister. Instead, she sighs and rolls down the window, letting in a blast of cold air into the truck. “Roll that up.”
“It’s cold!” Sev whines.
“It’s too hot in here.” As a lover of the cold, Camdyn refuses, dancing her stuffed bear along the edge of the window. I can see from the side mirror it's dangerously close to falling out the window.
“You drop that out the window, and I’m not going back to get it this time,” I warn.
Just as I say that, the wind blows it right out of her hand and into the field we’re passing. Our eyes meet. “Get that words out of your head,” she snaps, eyebrows bunched together in pissed-off five-year-old attitude.
I fight off laughter, knowing it will only spark a wildfire in her. “What words?”
“I told you so,” she mocks, scrunching her nose.
I may have said that a time or two.
Shaking my head, I blow out a breath. “I told you if you hung it out the window again, I wasn’t going back to get it.”