Journal Entry

One thing that was funny growing up is how close I was to Jarrod. There was four years difference between us. I knew some kids whose older brothers would act like they didn't even exist and that was if they were just one year older and not four. With Jarrod though that just isn't how it was. I remember following him everywhere, and he knew me. He knew me better than anyone else in the world.

He was away at college once when I was 16 and I fell down a mine shaft. Couldn't get up, couldn't go down, sides were too smooth to try to climb and when Da and the hands tried to just pull me out, they couldn't do it. They were going to have to try to dig down at an angle to get me out. At first, I thought this would be fast and I'd just have a story, an adventure of my own to talk about. But after a while I realized this wasn't a story and it wasn't an adventure. If they didn't get me out I could die.

Listening to Mother tipped me off really; it was all in her voice and I started thinking 'they're not going to get me out. I'm going to die in here all alone' and I was so scared. I could hear Mother telling me to keep talking to her, that everything was going great and soon I'd be out of there. But she was scared too, I could hear how frightened she was and the fact that she was trying to hide it just scared me worse.

I wanted to give up.

'Then she stopped talking, and someone-I couldn't see who-someone blocked the top of the shaft and I heard a voice below 'Damn It Nick! Can't I leave you alone for five minutes without having you get in trouble?' It was Pappy. At that moment, I knew everything was going to be fine. If Jarrod was here and he was yelling at me, then everything was normal.'

I even started to laugh. I wasn't surprised that he'd left college and rode all the way home just so he could stick his head in a hole in the ground and shout at me. I knew I was safe. Pappy might holler at me but he'd would take care of everything. "

Then he did the best thing in the world. I'd been down there for nearly 24 hours and, well, I was close to wetting in my pants. And I would rather have died then be pulled from the shaft smelling like a baby that wet his diaper. The whole valley would have known and laughed about it, but I was too embarrassed to mention it and I don't think anyone thought about. But Jarrod wasn't there ten minutes before he chased everyone away and lowered a bottle with a stopper on and a note inside telling me to use that and he'd pull it up and get rid of it. It felt so good to relieve myself in that bottle...it had gotten downright painful and nobody thought of it but Jarrod. But that was Pappy. Back then he thought about that kind of stuff and seemed to know what I needed before I knew.

Now days, it's more like we're two blind men in a big room, groping around trying to find each other. I hate that.

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Jarrod was angry. He had come home after an exhausting two weeks in San Francisco, and the first thing he saw as he approached the house was his bull in a separate enclosure insultingly far away from the barn and the house as if it had some contagious disease. When he arrived in the barn he noticed his saddle was missing from it's usual place. Eventually he found it in a corner, dirty and damp, with the conches dull and scratched. The matching bridle was a few feet away and in even worse shape.

Determined to ask Nick what was going on, Jarrod started looking for him without success, and discovered his fish were dead, pale bellies floating skyward as if they were trying to get a tan. The final injury came when he walked past the family garden and found his vegetables….and only his vegetable….in poor shape and covered in cabbage worms. It would take hours to pull them off the cabbage and there was no guarantee the plants could be saved anyway. At this point it was beyond obvious that this was no mistake and he started hunting down his brother in earnest.

It took him another hour to locate Nick, finally seeing him hitch his horse and walk into the house. Fuming, Jarrod followed and found Nick talking to Heath.

"Nick. I want a word with you!"

Heath glanced from Jarrod to Nick and let out a sigh.

"I got some work to do outside."

Jarrod waited just long enough for Heath to leave, then turned to his brother.

"What is going on Nick?"

"What do you mean?" Nick

"My tack is filthy. My fish are dead. The bull is so far away from the house it's almost an inviting someone to steal him. My vegetable-and ONLY my vegetables-are covered in pests and half dead. Is this some kind of petty revenge of some kind? Because plainly everything that belongs to me is being ignored. Did you give an order like that?"

For once Nick shrugged off the approaching argument, looking calm and collected.

"Not at all. In fact, I assigned an employee to do nothing but take care of your things, including the garden and the fish pond."

"Well whoever you assigned hadn't been doing his job, Nick! What did you do, hire the laziest man in the valley?" Jarrod felt his temper rising again. He was, he suspected, being baited but for what or why he couldn't tell. That just made him angrier.

"You tell me." Nick said coolly. "It's your client McArthur."

"McArthur?" Jarrod felt the hook sink in and flushed. "What, you just threw him out there with no instructions to let him sink or swim?"

"Nope. Told him exactly what to do and told him to come find me the moment he has a problem. Haven't heard from him since."

"So, this was on purpose? To make a point?" Jarrod was boiling. Nick seemed coolly indifferent and it made the whole thing even more infuriating.

"You hired him. Your hire..your problem."

"So, you assigned someone you knew wouldn't do his job?"

"I warned you this was a bad idea, Jarrod, just like the other occasions when you've hired someone that Heath and I have to bulldog. Well, not this time. You wanted him so much, you got him. So, if you're not happy with his work then either ride him until he does it right or fire him. And the next time you insist I hire one of your clients he's gonna be your problem too, because he's not gonna be mine."

"Jarrod." Victoria's unexpected voice stopped Jarrod from his next heated words. "Give me some time alone with your brother."

Jarrod stood in the living room for a moment, then wheeled and stalked outside.

Victoria stepped into the room and approached Nick, her back stiff with anger.

"Did you know?"

Nick didn't back down.

"That McArthur was going to do a terrible job? Not for certain but I suspected. Most of the people Jarrod hires are bad employees, I didn't see any reason to expect any difference with this one."

"And you thought this was an acceptable way to handle it?" Victoria tried reasoning with her son.

Nick bristled. "How else was I supposed to handle it? I've pointed out that these are bad decisions; I've said we shouldn't hire these people and each time I'm overruled. Did you know the last guy he brought in almost got one of my wranglers killed? And then there was that one...Benny. He almost set the barn on fire. Could've killed all the horses and maybe killed or injured some of the hands! And all to scratch the itch of Jarrod's good intentions!"

"That doesn't mean this was the right thing to do." Victoria found her voice rising with frustration.

"Maybe it wasn't. But I'll bet he doesn't dump one of clients on me again. Maybe the next time he's so eager to hire someone he can put them to work in his law practice." Nick walked to the door and paused. "And if Jarrod doesn't like the way I run this ranch, he can take over."

He shut the door and let out a deep breath before heading toward the barn, arriving in time to see McColl astride his favorite horse leading chastened looking Ira McArthur towards the road to Stockton. He cast a glance at Nick when he saw him.

"Jarrod asked me to take Ira to town. Can you go ahead and pay him for the work he's done?"

Nick raised his eyebrows but refrained from pointing out that paying him for work would mean paying him nothing. Instead he handed over a month's wages and watched the two ride away. There was a scuffling in the barn door and Jarrod appeared, holding a small bucket. He stared at Nick for a long moment before walking in the direction of the garden. After a minute Nick followed and watched as his brother kneeled in the cauliflower patch and started removing cabbage worms and dropping them in the pail. Nick hesitated, then joined him a row over. There was a crunch of footsteps and Heath joined as well. They sat there and pulled worms off the plants until the bucket was full and needed to be emptied before they could start again.

Nobody said a word.