Home on the Ranch: Oklahoma Bull Rider
Autorzy
Christine Wenger
Lektury
17,5K
Rozdziały
16
Chapter 1
“Jesse Daniel Beaumont, will you stand and approach the bench, please?”
Jesse did as instructed.
Justice Richard Connor leaned over his huge oak desk, looked down upon him from a high platform and whispered, “Jess, a bar fight?” He sighed. “I remember those days. Your brother Luke and I got into some doozies.”
“Ricky, technically, it wasn’t a bar fight. It was outside the bar in the parking lot.”
“You bull riders and bronc riders have to stop fighting, for heaven’s sake.” The judge kicked up the volume of his voice, probably for the benefit of the spectators in the courtroom.
Judge Connor couldn’t show favoritism to one of the town of Beaumont’s leading citizens and one of his oldest friends.
Ricky continued, “Mr. Beaumont, this matter is a violation of the law, not a felony or misdemeanor. A lawyer is not necessary in this court, but this matter will be adjourned should you wish to obtain one.”
“No, thanks, Your Honor. Let’s just get this over with. The bronc riders decided to blow off some steam, and—”
The judge raised a thick black eyebrow and whispered, “I don’t care who started it, but I have to hold you to a higher standard since Beaumont—”
Jesse nodded. “Was founded by my ancestor.” Jesse had heard it all before, many times. “And you need to make an example out of me. Right, Ricky?”
“Sheesh. Keep your voice down, Jess.” The judge looked stern, but still whispered. “Camp Care over in Conifer Hill needs some wranglers to live and work with the horses and the kids. You’d be perfect.”
“What are you saying?” Jesse shook his head. “You want me to wrangle kids?”
“No, I don’t want you to wrangle kids! Shut up, Jess, and let me finish. In July, Camp Care opens for boys with special needs. You know, equine therapy. Riding horses strengthens their bones, gives them confidence, responsibility and a great role model in the form of a bunkhouse ramrod for a month. Well, maybe you’re not a great role model right now, but you’re a natural with kids. They love you.”
“They like me because I’m a sports figure, but aww...c’mon, Ricky. A whole month? I have things to do at the ranch while I’m on summer break from the Professional Bull Riders. You know, the Beaumont Ranch is still rebuilding after Hurricane Chloe and my brothers are building houses, and I’d like to help them.
“Can’t you just let me go?”
“Sure. If you promise me that you’ll work at Camp Care and that you’ll stay away from bronc riders.” Okay, one more try to convince Ricky that he wasn’t the right cowboy for the job.
“Speaking of bronc riders, after they were arrested, all you gave them was a fine.”
“I know, but you’re a great horseman, and Camp Care needs you.”
“But those bronc riders practically live on horses! They would have been perfect for Camp Care.”
“Nope. You’re the one. You’d be a terrific bunkhouse ramrod and horse wrangler,” Ricky said quickly. “C’mon, Jess, will you do it? Camp Care needs the help.”
“Bunkhouse ramrod? Does that mean what I think it does, Ricky?”
“Eight kids to a bunkhouse with basically the same needs and one bunkhouse ramrod. That’ll be you. You’ll be given extra training by the best psychologists, school and medical personnel. And they will always be available to assist you.”
“I know that Camp Care is a special charity of yours, and I’ve been promising to help you out for a couple of years now.” Jesse took a deep breath. “I’ll be glad to help out during July.”
There went his plans to help his brothers build their houses.
“Yeah. Okay. And I’ll assist the kids when they ride horses, too.”
Maybe he was sweating for nothing.
Jesse regularly helped out whenever the Professional Bull Riders sponsored equine programs for the kids before an event in various states, and he took a training class on the side. He figured he could handle whatever Camp Care needed him to do while standing on his head.
Yeah, right. Who was he kidding?
But Jesse was trapped and he knew it. He didn’t mind helping the kids ride, but living with a bunkhouse full of them for a whole month? That would try the best counselors, and he wasn’t a counselor by a long stretch. In fact, he was more nervous about living with the kids and counseling them than he was straddling a two-thousand-pound bull with baseball bats for horns. He needed to help his family build their houses. The Beaumont brothers had always stuck together, since their days of playing musketeers.
The judge nodded. “Oh, and would you mind autographing one of your riding gloves for Stevie? You’re his favorite of the Beaumont Big Guns. His birthday is coming up, and he’d be higher than a kite if he got one of your signed gloves.”
“Sure.” Jesse grinned. “I think I have a riding glove in the car or in my gear bag at home. I’ll get it to you.”
The judge motioned for him to go back to his seat, then spoke in a booming voice. “Mr. Beaumont, please return to your seat and face the bench.”
“Mr. Jesse Daniel Beaumont, how do you plead, guilty or not guilty?”
Jesse ground his teeth. Okay, he did throw a couple of punches, but he’d tried to break up a couple fights, too.
“Guilty, Your Honor.”
“Jesse Beaumont, you are hereby sentenced to a conditional discharge with the condition that you complete a month of community service at Camp Care on a full-time basis during the month of July. When your community service is satisfactorily completed, your charge will be dismissed. I will appoint an individual at Camp Care to report back to the court as to your progress, or lack thereof. If you fail to complete your community service, the charge against you will be reinstated and you’ll be sentenced to a period of time at the Beaumont County Jail.”
Jail time at the same institution that proclaimed his family’s name in blazing metal letters over the entrance? The same institution that his father spent some time in? If he was incarcerated there, too, the walls would come crumbling down!
“Thank you, Your Honor,” Jesse said respectfully. “I will do my best.” He felt like he was participating in a play, but only he and Ricky were in on the secret.
“See that you do, Mr. Beaumont.” He tapped his index finger on his bench. “And no more fighting, please.”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
As Jesse walked out of the courtroom and down the steps, he convinced himself that he didn’t have to worry about his community service at all. It wasn’t as if he were a rookie; he’d had some practice with the PBR, and he had a whole Camp Care staff to help him.
He knew about horses, and damn, he sure knew about bulls, and he knew how to handle just about every other livestock animal on the planet. His mom had been famous for bringing injured animals home and letting her three boys nurse them back to health.
With kids, he was a rookie; with horses and bulls, not so much.
Whenever he thought about his mother, he remembered how he lost her when he was sixteen. It seemed like only yesterday that she’d been kicked by a horse and had died in his father’s arms on the way to the hospital. Big Dan Beaumont hadn’t been the same since.
But after long years on probation, a diligent probation officer, and months in alcohol rehab, at least Big Dan was sober now instead of being the town menace.
Someday, he’d like to find the love that his parents had. So far, he was busy dodging buckle bunnies and making sure they didn’t sneak into his hotel room when he was on the road or corner him at one of his autograph events.
As Jesse got into his big black pickup truck that he’d received as a gift from one of his corporate sponsors, he chuckled. Big Dan and he had both been accused of fighting, only the difference was that Jesse hadn’t been drinking, and he hadn’t wrecked a couple of bars like his father.
Jesse had been coming out of a charity event at the fairgrounds, he and a bunch of other riders. He didn’t know who said what or who threw the first punch, but they’d all scattered like the wind when the cops came. He hadn’t moved, because the thought of running from his sister-in-law, Beaumont County Sheriff Amber Chapman Beaumont, seemed ludicrous.
But it wasn’t Amber who was on patrol that evening. On duty were two deputies and two rookies who were so fast they must have won gold medals for track and field in the Olympics.
When Sergeant Jay Prestin whizzed by, he said, “Jesse, stay put. Don’t move a muscle.”
So he stayed put and didn’t move a muscle.
“Jay, cut me some slack, will you?”
“Aww, Jess. I wish I could, but I arrested six bronc riders and couldn’t very well let you go.”
While handing him an appearance ticket, Jay apologized to him. “Sorry, Jess. Normally, I wouldn’t have even made any arrests for disorderly conduct, but one of the bar patrons had complained that two combatants had landed on his opened-top convertible and were brawling on his front seat, then flipped to his back seat, and vice versa and crushed some of his opera CDs like potato chips.”
“That wasn’t me, Jay. I did my fighting in the parking lot.”
Jesse shook his head at the memory and turned left onto the “highway,” Trish Perkins Road, which was posted at fifty miles an hour. That was a lot of speed for Beaumont with Trish’s twists and turns.
He turned right onto—what else?—Beaumont Road, which led to the ranch. He drove under the wrought iron arch that said—what else?—Beaumont Ranch with B’s and some tasteful scrollwork.
Whenever he drove under the arch, he thought about the unbelievable history that he’d inherited. With that history came responsibility. He and his brothers did what they could to help fellow ranchers and neighbors get good prices for their stock, and when their neighbors found themselves in financial trouble, a windfall suddenly appeared.
Sure, the homestead was founded when Ezra Beaumont was alleged to have jumped the gun a little too soon and first claimed this parcel, but throughout the years, his ancestors had added land, horses and cattle to the ranch, and established the town.
A sense of responsibility to his heritage had been instilled into him on a regular basis. He always felt the pressure to live up to Beaumont family standards. That was why it had hurt him to see his father become the local drunk and the town joke. But many of their good neighbors and friends knew that Big Dan had been mourning his wife with liquor and bar fights.
To this day, the schoolchildren of Beaumont had to learn the history. They also received tours of the grounds and the historic ranch house every two years along with a barbecue and a singalong with the Cowhand Band.
When he wasn’t on the road riding bulls, Jesse enjoyed being home. Right now, both of his older brothers were building houses on their land, and Jesse planned on helping out. He loved construction work, but now in a couple of weeks, he had to be heading for Camp Care. It was at the upper left corner of Beaumont County, and he could commute back and forth, but he had a sinking feeling that he’d be staying at the camp around the clock unless he could talk his “handler” into letting him go home.
It all depended on how he took to his job of a bunkhouse ramrod and horse wrangler.
Sara Peterson drove the gray rental car onto the rutted Camp Care driveway. Her budget only allowed her to keep it for a week, but she was sure that she’d know if this place was going to help Mickey by then.
If the answer was “no,” she’d ask for a refund and the two of them would fly back immediately.
The instruction booklet, which she’d almost memorized, indicated that she should check in at the administrative office. There it was, on her left. In keeping with the cowboy theme, a sign said “Assay Office. Miners Welcome. File your claim here.”
She pitied those who hadn’t read the booklet carefully. They’d be looking for a sign that said Administrative Office instead of an old miner’s shack...ahem...assay office.
She had to look up “assay.” Basically, it was an office set up to examine rocks for gold, silver or copper and to file claims on property. These valuable metals were what the miners strove for in an attempt to hit it big. Some did, most didn’t. Sara looked around at all the rustic buildings that seemed as if they all could use new paint and even newer roofs. Was this derelict mess what she’d scrimped and saved for? The place that she’d lost her job over because Charles Ryan and Son Appliances wouldn’t give her a leave of absence? Was this the place that was supposed to help her ten-year-old son speak again?
She saw some kids in wheelchairs and recumbent bikes. Some had guide dogs and walked in pairs of two or three or more. She hoped that Mickey would find friends here.
Her once talkative and joyful Mickey, now silent and so alone for more than two years.
She loved to run her fingers through his black hair, so soft and shiny. His big brown eyes, once twinkling, were now dimmed with sadness and melancholy. Mickey, who used to do wheelies on his bicycle and raced his bike with his friends, now sat silent and isolated. His spindly legs and knobby knees, which once propelled him to make basket after basket, now were under his desk while he played on his computer.
Sara pulled into a parking space, shut her car off and looked at Mickey. He was staring straight ahead at the assay office.
“Mickey, let’s get you registered and then you’ll get a cabin. Isn’t this going to be fun?”
No answer.
It wasn’t as if Sara had expected one, but she could always hope.
If this ramshackle place could get her son to talk, then losing her job and working off some of Mickey’s tuition in the camp kitchen would be worth it.
“Okay, Mickey. Let’s go check in.”
As she walked up the stairs, which were surprisingly sturdy for the old building, she silently cursed Charles Ryan and Son. Since old Charlie Ryan retired and his son took over Charles Ryan and Son Appliances, Ryan Junior wouldn’t hear of her taking leave in the summer. He said that was their busiest time. Even when she explained about Mickey and how she was going to work in Camp Care’s kitchen in exchange for having some of her son’s camp tuition waived, Charlie Junior stood firm.
How much business could an appliance place have during the summer in little Henderson Falls, New York? That was when most took their vacations.
She’d worked there since she was eighteen, designing spreadsheets, entering all kinds of appliance information, ordering stock and parts and putting in orders for repairs. In all of those ten years, she’d never noticed a spike in appliance sales in the summer. In fact, business declined.
Then Junior had let her go, saying that his wife was going to take over Sara’s job anyway to save him money.
She was outraged and stormed out of the place, but not before dumping her “things to do” basket all over Junior’s desk. Then she combed the classified ads and went out for numerous job interviews. Nothing had come through. When she’d called Lori Floyd, the business manager of Camp Care, and told her that her insurance had been terminated and that their round-trip airline tickets from Syracuse to Beaumont, Oklahoma, took up the last of her savings, the wonderful woman told her that the cost of Mickey’s stay would be covered, and would she like to work in the kitchen?
Absolutely!
Maybe, Charlie Ryan Junior would figure out that he couldn’t get along without her and ask her back.
But she wouldn’t go back to Charles Ryan and Son Appliances. She’d take great pleasure in turning Junior down. Especially when she’d been treated miserably and left crying and wondering how she’d get the money for all of Mickey’s counselors. Where would she get the money for their next round of groceries when they returned to New York? Unemployment and food stamps were a blessing, but they didn’t cover everything she needed.
She wasn’t going to ask her parents for money anymore. As it was, they were paying for a lot of Mickey’s psychiatrist fees. They were on a fixed income. She wouldn’t ask them for one more cent.
Sara’s meager savings paid for his other counselors and whatever else he needed, like specialized doctors who all said that there was nothing physical wrong with Mickey’s ear canals or his throat nor any other sign of trauma from the accident.
So the diagnosis was PTSD and selective mutism from the accident.
The last psychiatrist that she’d taken him to endorsed Camp Care very highly. So, clinging to her recommendation, she started the wheels turning...or should she say wagon wheels?
Sara had to think positive. Maybe being let go was a sign that it was time for a change. Charles Ryan and Son Appliances was a dead end anyway.
They walked into the Assay Office, where the theme continued. Yellowed “Wanted” posters littered the gray, wooden walls. There were signs detailing the prices for a bath. She had to smile at the descriptions. A tub of water and a sliver of soap, could be had for fifty cents. A clean towel was an extra twenty-five cents.
“Hello and welcome to Camp Care! I’m Lori Floyd, Camp Care’s administrator. Who is this young man? Is he going to be one of our wranglers?”
Mickey stared straight ahead oblivious of Lori Floyd’s cheerful demeanor.
“I’m Sara Peterson, and this is my son, Mickey.”
“Hi, Sara! And welcome, Mickey. Let me check you in. I love checking in our wranglers.”
Mickey was seemingly oblivious to her excitement. Tears stung Sara’s eyes when she remembered how Mickey used to play any game that involved a ball or stick. Now, he just sat and watched TV. Even with the crazy comedies on, Mickey never cracked a smile.
“Just call me Lori. We’re pretty informal here at the Double C.”
“Okay. Lori it is. And please, call me Sara. We spoke on the phone. And I’d like to thank you for everything you’ve done. I’m sure that Mickey’s thrilled to be here.”
Lori waved the air dismissing her gratitude. “No problem.” She picked up a sheet of paper. “And you’re going to work in our chuck wagon, right, Sara? You’ll have a great time with everyone, especially Phil. He’s the chef, also known as Cookie. I’ll check Mickey in, then Mickey can go to his bunkhouse for a bag lunch. We do that on moving-in day. After you drop Mickey off, go to the chuck wagon and have some lunch, and you can let Phil know you’re here and pick up your schedule. You’ll be serving dinner tonight. Did you bring your cowgirl duds to wear?”
“Yes. I brought jeans and boots and a couple of long-sleeved blouses,” Sara replied.
“Perfect.” Lori turned her attention to Mickey. “Mickey, a chuck wagon is what accompanied the trail drives in the old days. Usually, the cook drove the wagon and all his supplies were there—pots and pans, flour, coffee, bacon, tin plates and cups. That’s why we call our food hall the chuck wagon.”
There wasn’t any visible interest from Mickey.
Lori kept talking. “And, Mickey, we have a wonderful cabin for you with a wonderful ramrod. That means he’s the boss of the bunkhouse, just like a ramrod was the cowboy in charge of the cattle and the cowboys in the old days. Everyone had to listen to him. Your ramrod is a little new, but you can break him in.” She giggled.
“He’s a local guy,” Lori said, typing on a laptop. “Oh, and, Mickey, he’s a top bull rider with the Professional Bull Riders. You are going to like him a lot. He’s definitely cool.” Lori had a dreamy expression on her face.
“Sara, you are in Bunkhouse 16. Mickey, you are in Bunkhouse 13.” Lori scribbled on a yellow piece of paper. “And, Mickey, your ramrod is Jesse Beaumont. He is volunteering to serve out a sentence of community service. The town and county of Beaumont was even named for his ancestor, who founded the town. And you two flew into the Beaumont Airport, I’m sure.”
“Jesse Beaumont,” Sara repeated. She was betting her last cent on the skills of this...um...bull rider to help her son?
A bull rider?
“Oh,” Lori puffed up her hair, and hurriedly slid on a bright slash of lipstick. Then she looked out the window as if she were expecting someone.
“You’ll love Jesse,” Lori continued. “So, Sara, drop Mickey off at Bunkhouse 13 and check in with Cookie at the chuck wagon.”
Sara nodded woodenly. A bull rider serving a sentence... She couldn’t wait to meet this guy.
