HOWLERS by Kent Harrington

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    Marie, God … look at what we made together . He walked out to where his daughter had stopped in front of the barn. He put his arm around her and pulled her to him.
    “God, I love you two so much. Do you know that?” he said out loud, hugging her.
    “Daddy, you’re acting weird. What do you think, is it bad?”
    “You bet I’m weird.” He took the black nylon hackamore from her and walked the animal toward the barn door, watching it over his shoulder. He could see that the horse was limping. He stopped and turned the animal around. At the same time he moved down along the horse’s flank, dropping the hackamore’s single bridle onto the snow.
    “Is it bad, Dad?”
    Quentin moved to the rear and reached down to pick up the game hoof. He tucked it between his legs. The horse stiffened when he lifted it, then tried to pull the hoof out of Quentin’s hand, almost hitting him in the face.
    “Whoa.” He used his car keys to push muck out from the hoof’s center. “He’s picked up a thorn. That’s all.” He let the hoof drop and wiped his shit-and-mud covered hand and keys on his clean jeans.
    “Should we call Robin?” Robin was the new vet in Timberline, and he knew his daughter had a crush on him. She was finding any reason she could to have him up to the ranch. He was about to tell her that no, they couldn’t afford to have the vet in, but didn’t, despite the fact that Colliers had been doctoring horses since they’d come to the Sierras. He could have pulled the thorn out himself.
    “Yeah, go ahead and call him. Sharon left already, I guess. I wanted to take her to school this morning,” he said. Quentin turned and walked the horse back to his daughter and handed her the bridle.
    “I heard a motorcycle early,” Lacy said.
    They both looked at each other. The motorcycle meant that the biker Sharon had been dating had come to the ranch. Quentin hated bikers. The foothills were full of them, having come with the meth labs. The idea that his daughter, a high school student, was seeing one appalled them both.
    “She’s mad at me,” he said. “I told her she was wasting her time with those kinds of people. I think she’s doing it just to get me mad at her.”
    “Probably,” Lacy said.
    “I think you better go back to school,” he said. He tucked his shirt in nervously. “I think whatever reason you have for taking the semester off isn’t good enough. You worked too hard to get into medical school to leave like that. Your mother would have wanted you to go back. That’s all she talked about, you know, before.”
    “Let’s talk about it later. How’d it go this morning, Romeo?” Lacy said.
    “Good.”
    “Did she call you tall, dark, and handsome?”
    “You’ll like her,” Quentin said.
    “I’m sure I will. We’re about the same age!”
    “No, you aren’t,” he said. “She’s coming over tomorrow night for dinner. What should I make?”
    “Oh my God!” His daughter laughed. “We said date, not bring her home. And if you marry her, I’m not going to call her mother. She’s—how old? Thirty something. It’s weird!”
    “Very funny. I wanted you guys to meet her. I thought I’d cook my best dish.”
    “Daddy, do me one favor, please. Do not make that woman sit through your venison stew. It’s awful. Really awful!”
    It was snowing again. Little bits of snow were clinging to his daughter’s black Patagonia jacket that he’d bought her for that Christmas. Her blond hair covered the collar.
    “I think Sharon needed your mom more than you did. Maybe because you were older,” Quentin said.
    Lacy picked up the bridle. The horse lowered his head and munched a bit of snow. “I try to be like Mom was. I mean for Sharon. But I don’t think it’s working. She just pushes me away,” Lacy said. “She’s going out with a real low-life, I saw him this morning.  He’s so ... creepy looking.”
    “Like a bucket of—” Quentin stopped himself from swearing in front of