Let Those Ponies Run

By Andy Femino

Life doesnt always go as planned. Young Jacob learned this the hard way. Disappointed in his dysfunctional family and alcoholic father, Jacob finds refuge in a dilapidated bunkhouse on a run-down ranch. As a young buckaroo without a penny to his name, he soon finds love in a tough, outspoken cowgirl who also happens to be his neighbor.

Grieving over the loss of a loved one, Jacobs pain sends him down a slippery slope. By joining the army in the height of a war, he sets off on a journey to get himself killed. Battling depression and alcoholism, Jacob is forced to reassess his life after a random encounter with a stranger. Looking for peace in any way he can, Jacob returns home to the ranch he loves only to become a virtual prisoner of his own heartache.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514404799

Andy Femino

Andy is a still livestock inspector in Northern California and loves every minute of it. Not amused by the way he smells after a day of working cattle or his poor attempt at humor, his wife and kids still kindly accept him with muffled grumbles and uneasy smiles. “Let Those Ponies Run” is Andy’s second attempt at fleeting stardom and elusive dreams of recognition as an author. Finding success in his first book “Good Night! John Doe,” Andy is grateful to his fans for encouraging another outing in the literary circus.

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 by Andy Femino.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015914433

ISBN:               Hardcover                     978-1-5144-0481-2

                         Softcover                        978-1-5144-0480-5

                         eBook                             978-1-5144-0479-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 09/03/2015

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

Home

Randi

A Christmas to Remember

The Grange

Taking Chances

The Tank House

Understanding

Oil and Water

Soon Baby, Soon

Further Understanding

Well-aimed Shots

Rings and Better Things

A Good Hand with a Nasty Clerk

Making Plans

Getting It Done

On One Knee

Commitments

Making Plans

PTSD

The Big Day

Settling In

A New Colt

Saying Good-bye

Old Metal Fences

Sad Good-byes

Pushing forward

Fort Carson

A Pit Bull in a Uniform

Becoming Government Issue

Chatter

Fort Drum

The Shower

Dodd’s Farm

Shae

Pink Helmets and Complications

Looking for Carla

The Sand

Giving In

Facing My Demons

Not Like Him

Hurricanes

Homestead

Giving In

Times Square and That Day Forward

Finding a Happy Medium

Another Deployment

Home

Finding Peace

Julip

The Realtor

A Little Cabin in the Woods

Repatriating Schurz

Juniper Bench

High Society and $300 Plates

A Visit from Paige

Neighbors

Conservation, Preservation, and All Things Pretty

Saying Good-bye

Rejection

Changes

Cody

A Break for Bailey

Squandering the Years

An Unexpected Guest

A Spittin’ Image

Far Too Soon

Ceteris Paribus

Time Heals

Dedicat.ion

Kelly, somehow I have to believe that you had a hand in this. If Colie is anything like you, you must have been one heck of lady with undeniable strength, wisdom and tenacity.

To those battling grief and loss. May you find peace and comfort in your journey.

To those with unimaginable scars, seen and unseen, you are not alone.

To all of the back road loving, muddy corral-stomping buckaroos that love what you do and do what you love, this is for you.

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, my family for putting up

with my never-ending craziness.

Caitlin Schwerin for your inspiration. Your art transcends.

Colie, Hollyn, Bre, and all the buckaroos who graciously lent me their

spirit for the words in this book. I am deeply humbled eternally grateful.

Preface

The cool weather of a late spring evening closed a long day of setting fence. Standing in a field of tall grass, I looked out over the tranquility of the grazing sheep and wondered how I could be so lucky to live in such a place. A friend turned to me and asked, Is it possible to love a place in the same way that one loves a person? I thought about the question and the complexity of it. On the surface, the general premise of associating a person with a place is fairly easy. Sure! I said. That is easy. My friend gave me a peculiar look and said, No! Really think about the question. Waxing philosophical, I explained that as humans we attach certain memories of those we love with places that we may have shared with them. That in itself would cause us to love that place. Without giving me the answer, my friend said, Sort of, but not exactly. It is more than that.

I left that day with that question in my mind, and for months and months, I thought of the perfect answer. However, I found that it is just too complicated to answer in a few short sentences. Questions like the one that my friend posed are answered in long drawn-out discussions better contemplated over bottles of wine. Though I love wine and deep conversations about life and all things relevant, I decided the question was better served through a book. So, my friend. Wherever you are, here is the answer to that simple yet complicated question that you posed so long ago.

This book is built on love and the idea that our personal connections with people and places that we love are intertwined. Jacob is a bit of all of us. He is the part of us that is searching for a solution, a place, maybe a reason to continue in the midst of hardship and a way to let go.

Jacob’s survival is much like any of our own. We do what we have to do to survive. Bad, good, or self-destructive, we don’t always think about the long-term effects of our actions. At that time when we are at our lowest point, we are simply just trying to stay afloat.

This book is about conservation as well. It is not just about conservation of our true selves, but of the places that we love that the relationships and memories that took us there.

Home

In this little town, the dirt roads stretch for miles. The pot holes long left neglected are little reminders that I live in a rural area, far from the civility. Like any place, this little town has its ups and downs. Life is slow here, and at the same time, it is fast with the hurried drama of small problems that bloom with the help of the local gossip queens and kings. Everybody knows everybody, and with that, everybody knows what the next person is doing, factual or not.

For the most part, everyone just tries to survive the best that they can. It is a long way from city life and the instant gratification of a six-dollar coffee on every corner. Somehow, the people of this little down do just fine without all of the city perks. Because they have been doing it for hundreds of years, they just accept the trade-off of a twenty-four-hour superstore for the peace and quiet of the oak-covered hills.

The smell of cow shit is as prevalent in the air here as the smell of car exhaust in the city, but nobody seems to mind. In late fall, all of the cattle are being shipped back from their summer range in Oregon. The green trails of watery green muck that spill out of the cattle-hauling semis signal shipping season is here. The locals are used to it, but for the city slickers that stop for gas on their way through, they fan their noses in disgust. If it is not the smell of shit that gets them, the mosquitos will.

This is no place for the faint of heart, and it takes a special person to accept the lifestyle. The family names are as old as the state, and some of the patriarchs and matriarchs of those scions let you know that. The kids graduate and move away, but they eventually come back. One can drive away, but sadly enough one can never leave.

I found this out the hard way. After packing the only clothes I had in an old army ruck sack, I said good-bye to the shit-stained streets and said hello to the smell of moth balls, itchy wool blankets, and army life. I traveled the world like a vagabond in camo boots, living from a duffle bag. At the time, that green canvas duffle bag was the only home I knew. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew home was where my family was, and what I found later was that home is really where your heart is.

Home is where one finds comfort. It is a place that connects our souls to peace and tranquility. It is a place that we love, though we may not have the ability to fully explain why. Home was Mom’s kitchen and the smell of fresh-baked apple pie. Home was a bunkhouse and the smell of burning cedar and shitty boots. Home was a field of wildflowers in a spring meadow, and home is anywhere when a person you love is beside you.

The years away from home had left me empty and cold, and I found comfort in willing arms of strangers, only to even feel emptier as I crept out the door in the early morning light. It was an ever-dissolving patch on my heart that I would consistently coat with heaps of booze and promiscuity. I wondered more than once when that pain would end, but deep down I was only building a scar that would take decades to heal.

After my stint in the army, I was bruised and hardened by things that no one person should ever see. The black-and-white world of military service is hardscrabble and unforgiving. It is triumph and heartache rolled into a burrito of fried goodness. One that looks super good on the outside, but on the inside, one is not healthy.

The day I pulled my old truck into Mom’s house, I sat in the driveway of the place I grew up in and looked around. It looked the same as it did six years earlier, but I knew it was different. It had to be.

In the driveway, the snow was three feet high and growing taller with each flake that fell. For a moment, I looked in the rearview mirror at the piles of crap that I had so hastily packed in my truck and thought about driving away. It wasn’t that I wanted to run, but I had to. That deep-seated need to go as far and as fast away from that house and the memories of Randi weighed hard on my fractured soul.

Randi wasn’t my dog or a brother who so mercifully beat me, but she was the blonde-haired, sparkly-eyed misfit that destroyed me. Long ago, I was an eighteen-year-old ranch hand fresh out of high school, and home was a solitary bunkhouse and a creaky metal bed. It wasn’t as much of a home as Mom’s sugar cookies on a cold fall day, but it did the trick.

Randi

Though I didn’t know it then, Randi was my home too. Her family had six hundred acres adjacent to the little ranch I worked. During brandings, the nearby families would pitch in to help, and she would be right in there with the boys getting filthy. Whether she had a rope in her hand or mud on her face, she still looked amazing. I had no notions of grandeur on my mind at the time though. I was a dirt-poor kid without a pot to piss in, and I fully recognized that I had no hope of landing a girl like her.

Most of the other cowboys would ohh! and aww! about her, but she would blow them off. I kept my head down, but every once in a while I would catch a rope; and she would pretend it was an accident, but her laugh told me different. One day as she sat across from me in the cookhouse eating lunch, I felt a piece of corn bounce off of my brow. Now food fights were strictly forbidden when perfectly good food was on the table. The cookhouse boss made this perfectly clear with a large sign over the door. I knew better than to look up to see where the errant piece of corn had come from as it might have instigated a larger ruckus. Somewhere in that rickety shack was a cowboy with a grin on his face, having some fun at the expense of my calm nature.

I strategically tilted my cowboy hat down in order to deflect any further flying corn kernels. A few moments later, another piece of corn hit me in the mouth. After a quick calculation of the trajectory of said corn, I came to the conclusion that it came from someone nearby.

Slowly, I tilted the brim of my cowboy hat up until I could see the nature of things at 180 degrees. From the corner of my eye, there was no outward snickering at my expense. In front of me, Randi had her head down and was deeply involved in her stew. To my left, all was quiet. I looked back at Randi, only to see the smirk on her mouth just below the brim on her palm hat. I could see her fighting to keep food in her mouth as she snickered. Slowly, she lifted head to reveal the tears in her blue eyes. I had found the cowboy with the good aim. I shook my head and smiled with disappointment. She smiled back, and at that moment, my heart took three leaps like a doe startled in a meadow.

Over the next several months, we talked here and there. With each conversation, I was more assured that she was the one I would marry one day. Of course I didn’t tell her that though I think she already knew.

One day in early fall, I rode fence several miles from headquarters. As I meandered along the barbwire through the whistling pines, Randi nonchalantly rode up on the other side of the fence. What are you doing here? I asked with a smile. Randi smiled and then buried her face in her wild rag to block the chilly, spring breeze.

Coming to babysit you! she said sarcastically. Me! Well, at least you could have brought me a sandwich, I said jokingly

Randi reached into her saddlebag and with a grin, threw a ziplock baggy with a sandwich in it at me and said, It’s all yours.

Confused, I remember looking at her as I tried to figure out why she was being so good to me. I wasn’t much of a looker not much over a buck sixty with a mop of blonde hair and a little gap between my teeth. With her face still buried in her wild rag, she said, Maybe when you get done piddling around and acting like you are busy, you can have lunch with me!

Her blue eyes were fierce, and for a moment, I felt like I was looking into the eyes of a half-broke colt. There were no questions to be asked, and I was just happy to have her attention. My mom used to say, Beggars can’t be choosers, and I was going to happily enjoy what little time I had with Randi that day.

As we sat on a deadfall eating chips and drinking some of the best hot coffee that I had ever had, I asked Randi where she thought she would be in five years. She looked at me and then looked out over the grassy meadow and said, Right here!

Right here in this meadow? I asked.

No, silly! Here on this ranch. This is where I want to be.

Confused, I looked out over the meadow trying to figure out what she meant. Pretty girls like her had life in the palm of their hands and doors opened with just their smile for someone half as pretty and half as smart as her. Look! she said with a squinted brow. I could go to pretty much any college I want, make shitloads of money, marry a doctor, and have it made, but that is not what I want. I remember looking at her surprised and maybe a bit relieved that she wasn’t going away anytime soon. This ground is home, she said softly. I will be the fourth generation in my family to run cattle here. I asked her curiously, What if this is all you ever had? She looked at me with a frown. What I mean is, this business of ranching is not easy, I said. This is all I need. Maybe a few babies would be nice, she said with a stoic smile.

I left well enough alone that day as we rode fence and talked about growing up in the middle of nowhere. As I talked to her that day, I realized that I had no plan. My life was as unsettled and up in the air as any election. Randi had a plan, and I liked that, but it also made me realize that I had nothing to offer her. As far as I knew, I would be cowboying until I was too old and decrepit to throw a rope. Maybe I would have my own spread one day, but it wasn’t likely. It took money to make money, and I had none. Randi worked hard, but the reality was that the ranch that had been in her family for over a hundred years would be given to her someday lock, stock, and barrel.

Ranch hands didn’t get rich or buy six hundred acre spreads by throwing a rope for someone. They just did what they did to survive. Some love it, and others just don’t know anything else. If one were lucky, he married into money, but every other cowboy out there had the same thought. Compounding the situation was that single rancher’s daughters were few and far in between. For a moment as we followed the crooked fence line, I wondered if that was my destiny.

My dad used to say that God had a plan for all of us, and somewhere it was already written. Our predetermined direction somehow intersected with the points in our lives that made us who we are. That day I wondered if Randi and her ranch were my destiny. I could only hope, but what else are cowboys good for except dreaming about a better life.

That day as the clouds grew thick and dark, we made our way toward home. At the top of a long draw that wound down to Randi’s house, she stopped and looked down at the trail that would take her home.

Okay! Buckaroo, time for me to go my way, she said hesitantly. In her eyes, there was uncertainty. For a young girl, she was wise beyond her years, and it intrigued me. As she leaned forward on her saddle horn and looked out over the tree-lined ridges of pine and buck brush, she said, God has a plan. I just have to wait for him to tell me what it is. At that very moment, I thought I knew what God had in store for both of us as I watched her slowly scan the valley.

Without saying a word, she raised her hand in a wave as she trotted away. I watched her wind down the gentle switchback until she was just a speck among the gentle oaks.

That night as I settled into my creaky bed, I thought about her smile. To me, each day was a means to an end, and I enjoyed the solitude and not worrying about maintaining a relationship. Lord knows, I had enough to worry about with the relationships that I had with my string of high-headed colts. At that age, it was just about survival and an occasional barn dance to get fixed up for. Nothing more, nothing less.

Sure, at that age I thought about plenty of revolting things that her daddy would have happily beat my ass for, but the truth is that I was scared to death. What would I have done with her had she thrown herself at me naked. Shoot, I was just a green kid that hadn’t seen anything other than a tit on a cow. What I learned about love, sex, and life, I learned from the other cowboys. Looking back, I am not so sure that they were well qualified to dispense with such advice.

Over the next several weeks, I tried keep busy readying fence and troughs and all else that would have to stand up to the harsh winter that were expecting that year. Though I tried not to think about Randi, it was useless. I was too chicken shit to ride down to her place, so I let the days fade away wondering when I would see her again. For all I knew, she might have had a boyfriend.

A Christmas

to Remember

Christmas was fast approaching and with it, a decent dusting of snow. I had been behind on cutting wood for my belly stove, and it was going to be a cold winter with no heat in my shack. As I came back late one day with a load of oak, I noticed a small box on the filthy mat in front of my shack door. I didn’t think much of it as I figured that it was some piece of tack that I had asked for. Hastily, I threw it on the table and went about getting the frigid shack warmed up. I remember sitting in a chair in front of the stove eating a can of beans that night as I watched the flames dance. As I finished my beans, I decided to see what kind of tack was in the box. As I picked it up, I noticed Do not open until Christmas or else written in light ink. I studied the writing and each side of the box with obsessive curiosity, but there was nothing else on it. As hard as it was, it sat on the table for a week.

On Christmas morning, I hopped out of bed, ready to tear the box open. Sitting on an old wooden chair in front of the fire, I looked at the silly box in my lap and began to laugh. For all I knew, some of the hands were playing a joke on me, and it probably had horse apples in it. I then began to wonder if it was a box of cookies from the boss’s wife. The mystery box had kept my mind partly off Randi, and I began to wonder if I shouldn’t just leave it sealed just so I had something to keep my mind off of her.

That morning, I finally opened the box, and my life changed indelibly. Wrapped neatly in tissue paper was a pink polka dot wild rag. A note tucked inside said,

Jacob,

Merry Christmas! I hope this keeps you warm while you are riding fence. When the cold wind bites your nose, bury it in this and think of me.

Soon,

Randi

I remember reading the note half a dozen times in disbelief. I tried not to make more out of the note than it was and tried to chalk it up to a friendly gesture. I pulled that silk