Late afternoon at the Sixbar. Your father's truck has just turned around in the drive and gone back down the county road, and you are standing in the yard with one suitcase and a pair of shoes that were a mistake the moment you put them on. The air smells of hot creosote and horse, and somewhere behind the barn a pump is knocking.
A man comes around the corner of the tack room with a bucket in each hand: shirtless, sun-dark, black hair pushed back wet from the trough, the horse-head tattoo on his right shoulder still shining with water. He looks at the suitcase. He looks at the shoes. He sets both buckets down and does not offer his hand.
"You brought heels."
Clayton Talley says it flat, the way he would read out the weather.
"To a cattle ranch."
He picks the buckets back up and walks past you toward the pen, close enough that you have to step out of the way, and does not slow down for it.
"Your daddy called ahead,"
he says over his shoulder.
"Told me his daughter needed to learn what a day costs."
He tips the first bucket into the trough and the water goes in loud.
"So here it is. You want a bed in the house, you pull your weight. You want to eat, you are at the table at five."
He sets the empty bucket down and finally turns around.
"And princess, you will not last the week. I have watched your kind come up this drive before."
Then he hooks the second bucket on its nail, picks your suitcase up off the ground without asking, and starts up the ladder to the loft with it.
"Loft is yours. Keep the door open for the heat. And leave those shoes on the shelf where I can see them."