Dad's Final Goose Chase, Chapter 1

“Dad told me he buried it out here, in the middle of the back right stall. Where the hell is it?”

That was my sister Kat, her brow dripping sweat, both sleeves hastily pushed up above the elbows. she was holding a stubby shovel we always used to call a shorty in her hands, with a growing pile of dirt behind her. She was surrounded by a couple of good-sized holes dug into the hard-caked clay soils of the old farmstead. Broken rays of sunlight streamed in on her face through the gaps in the weathered wooden slats, highlighting her haggard look: exhaustion writ both in the lines on her forehead and the dark shadows circling the recesses between her sharp gray eyes and high Cherokee cheekbones.

“I know. We know. You’ve said it now a dozen times. Are you certain you understood him? This just doesn’t seem to be the right place.”

This came from my brother Sam, still wearing his sheriff’s uniform of all crisp blue lines and shiny brass stars. He was at least finally holding his hat down at his side, the heat in the old barn finally getting to him, of all people. But he wouldn’t take off his damned sunglasses, as if that look of the separate and disinterested lawman could somehow protect him from the reality that was slowly settling in on the three of us.

Our dad was gone--had been for three days now. Not dead, maybe, but gone. Poof. Worry if you want, but don't worry too much; this wasn't the first time.

“Listen, if you can stop digging for a few minutes, we can try to figure out what he actually mea-”

“You still think I am lying? You think I misheard him? Just shut up. You don’t get to storm in here on a white horse and get to just save the day.”

My sister had cut him off cold. She'd had her share of shit from him over the years, and she wasn’t in a mood to take another shined up turd from our bastard of an older brother.

I was standing off to the side leaning on my own full digger and still catching my breath from the digging. We had been at it for about 45 minutes, and between the two of us, we’d gotten a few pretty decent sized attempts dug out, all while Sam stood there and complained that there was no way dad had taken the time to bury anything out here, much less anything as important as the deed to the farmstead OR his last will and testament. Anything that we’d actually need, he said.

Sam glowered at her, opened his mouth for a second, but then closed it and looked away. Kat hadn’t moved her eyes or blinked once across those lingering minutes.

“Look, all I’m saying is that you two have been at this for damn near an hour, and if it was there where you said, you should be done. Can’t you just tell us what the old man said to you? And when?”

“I believe you, sis, but I think Sam is right,” I piped in, surprising myself in taking Sam’s part for the first time in what must have been years. “I know, I know… but maybe we can help decipher it? What exactly did he say?”

“Hehhhh…..ppphhhh…” Whether it was a heavy sigh or an outlay of exhaustion, I don’t know, but I could tell that my support for Sam had taken the bacon right out of Kat’s breakfast and she slumped down to the ground.

“Brothers. Joe. Sam. I am tired of this BS.” She looked up as she spoke clearly, crisply, and gave us a thousand-year stare through each pointed syllable. “I am not doing this again after today. Last time. So don’t ask. Just don’t.”

She paused, dropped the wooden handle of her shorty, and scooped up a handful of the red and brown clay, letting it slide through her fingers.

“He called me up a few days before he disappeared, like he normally would. He sounded out of breath, but otherwise totally normal. He had that bit of hesitation in his speech, a little bit of the stutter that has crept in over the last couple of years, but otherwise…. He sounded like himself, like before.”

Kat’s eyes were wet as she looked up and away. She wiped her face on the flannel of her shoulder and looked straight back at Sam.

“He told me straight up, and I flipping quote, stutter included, ‘The most important thing. It’s out b-back. Where R-R-Roxy was. Out.. back. The barn. The most important thing. You’ll need... f-f-f-find Roxy. Buried. Not too deep.’ His exact words, dick. This is exactly where that old nag slept for twenty years. I would know because I was the one who took care of her.”

Kat had indeed taken almost sole care of the mare. Roxy wouldn’t let anyone else near her for what must have been ten years. For my brother and me, she would snort and kick, scrape and dig at us with her hooves, rear up and whinny with the most awful and fearful looks. A true nightmare to train or saddle up, or really to just do anything with. But for Kat (and sometimes Dad), the old demon horse was anything but. When Kat would come home, she’d still whicker up to her, and Kat would go in close, kissing her muzzle and rubbing her ears.

“Well then let me ask you the obvious question, Kat. Where the hell is Roxy, now?”

Sam was feeling his ire rise. I could see it in his stiffness, the coiled look of his shoulders, and the downward slope of his forehead. He never could take anyone talking down to him, or even acting as if they were his equal. It was becoming obvious he wasn’t going to keep taking this tone from his little sister of all people.

Equally apparent to me was that Kat was simply done with him. He might be the high and mighty sheriff in their two-bit backwoods hometown, and used to people snapping to his beat, but she had carved her way up and out of this little world. And we can’t forget - she was still Daddy’s favorite, even after the cheating scandal with the messy divorce splashed all over the big city papers, after the cancelled contracts and online tirades. She was pretty much done with every man’s shit, with Sam’s pile of it sitting in the pole position.

To say the tension was high would be a severe under-representation. Between the ego built into Sam’s flashy star and uniform and my sister's complete lack of fucks left to give, it might as well have been the OK Corral at high noon, and not Dad’s old dilapidated barn on the back nine of the small farm we’d grown up on together.

A minute passed. Maybe two. I sat still, trying to stay out of both lines of fire in this one.

“I. Don’t. Know. Why don’t you start fucking digging, dick.” On that last word, Kat reared back and whipped the shorty over at Sam, blade end first.

And Sam did Sam. The one-time high school state tennis champ and later NCAA All American reacted like a mongoose dodging a snake bite. As if he saw it coming, he was moving before the shorty left Kat’s hand, dodging to the right, and getting his left hand out at just the right moment to catch the handle out of the air. His agility was still amazing, even then.

“You are digging... in the wrong place,” he stated calmly. With that, he walked out the back door into what used to be the corral.

I glanced up at Kat, as her eyes traced Sam out the back reaches toward the fishing pond. She was muttering under her breath, and looked down at me as if she forgot I was there at all.

“You coming, kid?”

I got up and followed her out the door, wondering what Sam knew.

***