Boots Beneath Her Bed

Chapter 1

There's been a knife tucked under neath Grace Underwood's pillow since she was sixteen years old. The bone handle is the first thing she reaches for when her internal alarm clock goes off at 3:45 a.m., signaling the start of another day. With the lightest touch, she traces the familiar rivets, the guard, the heel, and the blood groove the same way she does every morning. Each ridge and scratch and stain on its surface is imprinted permanently in her brain, so she doesn't need to lift the pillow to look at it. The cool, unsheathed steel against the warmth of her fingertips is enough.

Mechanically, her body starts to move. It knows exactly what to do and where to go, even in the pitch dark. This early in the morning, the sky is still black and full of stars. There's no respite from the darkness save for the dim, milky light of the moon.

On go the well-worn denim jeans. The dusty, ancient Red Wings are tugged onto sore, calloused feet with a grunt, and shoulder-length chestnut hair is thrown into a messy ponytail. A dollop of grocery store sunscreen from the communal bottle is rubbed onto her sun-kissed, freckled face, then her neck, and behind her ears. Grace brushes her teeth at the ancient sink and rinses her mouth with water directly from the faucet. One look at herself in the mirror reveals puffy, dehydrated cheeks and lips, and a muddiness in her dark brown eyes from endless nights of fitful sleep. On her way out the door, she grabs her Longhorns hat from its place on the rack-it was burnt orange at some point in the past but has faded into more of a school bus yellow-and yanks her ponytail through the hole. She's ready.

The mares are easy to make out even in the dark. A few are grouped up near the hay bales, heads bowed like they're swapping juicy gossip. Off on her own, staring out into the blue-black sky is Vesta the palomino, who, when she spots Grace approaching the paddock, ambles over, whickering her morning greeting. Grace smiles, hoisting herself up until her bottom is resting against the top rung of the enclosure. "Someone's in a good mood this morning."

For a few precious minutes, they stay in that spot together, Grace relishing the silence and solace of the ranch before the day truly begins, and Vesta still and steady at her side. A majestic, golden sentry.

Leaning down, Grace presses her forehead to Vesta's muzzle and sighs. "Is today gonna be a good day? What do you think?"

Vesta lets out a comforting, almost resigned little nicker in response. A sound that tells a truth of which they are both intimately aware: Good days are few and far between at Braxton Ranch.

"Yeah, I know," Grace replies, stroking Vesta's muzzle with the tip of her nose. "Maybe we can get out to the trail this afternoon." She knows in her heart that it's wishful thinking at best. She'll be lucky if she sees Vesta again at all today, or any of the horses for that matter. Grace's currently being punished by way of keeping her from the stables; she's been exiled to the fields because she was five minutes late to the barn last week and then went on to fail at saddle-breaking a stubborn colt.

Strikes one and two, her uncle, Bellamy Whitlock, had growled.

She's talking to Vesta still, recounting the way she nearly slipped and fell into a pile of manure the day before, when the telltale cadence of boots scraping heavily against dirt sounds behind her. A pit instantly forms in her stomach, and with a quick glance over her shoulder, Grace confirms her suspicion that it's Bellamy, now standing still as a statue across the pasture, glaring at her. She looks away, taking a deep breath through her nostrils, trying to mentally prepare for whatever bullshit he's planning to spew today.

When his gravelly voice cuts through the peacefulness of the morning, it's as grating as nails dragging along a chalkboard, and as fury inducing as a blaring alarm clock right in her ear. "You forget about breakfast?" he asks loudly.

Without even looking back at him, she can picture him vividly-that terrible posture causing him to hunch over a tin cup of steaming coffee, what's left of his scraggly brown hair hanging limply under his black felt Stetson. The sound of phlegm rattling along a tobacco-coated throat echoes through the air-and then with an aggressive hawk that sounds almost painful, a loogie hits the dirt with a wet, hard whump.

When he's apparently cleared his sinuses enough to speak, he continues. "You got more important things to do than kiss on that horse. Get to the kitchen."

Hopping down from the rung, Grace mutters under her breath. "I wasn't kissing her."

"You sure as hell wasn't workin', neither," Bellamy argues. He has an irritatingly sharp ear, one of the only well-functioning components of his decaying form. He slips a cigarette between his lips and lifts his chin in her direction as she walks around the enclosure to where he stands. "Tell me something, Gracie."

Grace looks anywhere but his eyes as she comes to a stop, folding her arms over her chest. "What's that?" she asks flatly.

Slowly, Bellamy plods over to her, the slight limp in his gait making him look much older than his sixty years. How someone so unappealing to look at shared blood with her mother, Grace will never understand.

Another rattle of spit and grime in his throat precedes his next words, loud and thick enough to turn her stomach. "Why should I keep payin' you when all the other hands start earlier and work harder than you do? You think 'cause you're my kin that I won't throw you out into the woods?"

This gets Grace's attention. She glances up, anger rising to the occasion before any other emotion. Every bone in her body wants to argue with him, to punch him in his two front teeth for considering what he gives her to be payment. He houses her, feeds her, and lets her work with the horses when she's not fixing every bolt and pulling every weed and cleaning piles of shit across every acre of Braxton. To him, that's payment enough for keeping her around. For letting her stay. She opens her mouth to speak, the ire bubbling up in her throat, when he smiles, and the gleam of a silver molar sparkles in the moonlight.

He tuts, "Ah, ah, ah," and shakes his head. "Don't start with all of those empty threats now. You remember what happened the last time you tried to quit, don't you?"

Grace's nostrils flare, the blood beneath her skin starting to boil. Like a rushing flood, she remembers a series of doors slammed in her face at every business in town, calls from pay phones left unanswered and unreturned, service refused at diners she'd frequented for more than a decade. She remembers the hunger, the restlessness, the feeling of being watched. She remembers the startling clarity of how far Bellamy's reach stretched, how strong the choke hold was that he held on the towns surrounding the ranch. Like some sort of redneck gang, he and his lackeys posed too big of a threat for anyone to risk harboring her. When her meager savings had run out and even a last-ditch effort at hitchhiking failed, she remembers crawling back to Braxton with her tail between her legs. Defeated. Broken. Utterly trapped.

"If I'm such a shit employee, why keep me around?" she asks, impatience and irritation making her bold. "Why continue to put up with me, day after day, year after year?"

Bellamy chuckles, and it's a low, unsettling sound. "You know the answer to that question," he replies, then takes a long drag from his cigarette. "That debt of yours hasn't been repaid. And every time you screw up and cost me a sale, every time you give me lip, every time you think you're hot shit enough to make it on the outside, your interest rate goes up." He's closer now, the toes of his overly shiny ostrich boots creeping into her field of vision.

"Get on now," he barks. "Get to the kitchen. And don't burn my goddamn bacon like you did yesterday."

Grace stands still for a moment, edging on too long. Bellamy's eyes sparkle with malice, practically daring her to argue. But after nine years of this, she knows better. She swallows a retort along with her pride, and it's like vinegar sliding painfully down her throat. With that, she nods and walks past him without another word.


As instructed, Grace makes her way to the east end of the ranch, where a haphazardly renovated barn now acts as the chow hall and their pseudo visitors center-not that they get many visitors; Grace chalks it up to Bellamy’s poor salesmanship and their less-than-stellar Yelp rating. It’s been four years since she made her way into the kitchen one dark, cold morning before the rest of the hands, and Maryann, the ranch cook, nurse, and begrudging cleaning lady, beckoned her in, demanding she cut cold butter into flour for biscuits. Her usual help, a seedy, wandering-eyed guy named Jeff, had called out sick with the flu. Grace had stepped in to help without complaint, and found the task to be rather soothing, especially when it later resulted in soft, pillowy biscuits she’d slathered in sausage gravy. It became an unspoken agreement between her and Maryann after that. Jeff eventually left Braxton for good, and ever since, Grace has helped with the little tasks while Maryann handles the larger, more complicated ones, and together, they put out semi-decent meals three times a day.

She finds Maryann wiping sweat from her brow with a kitchen towel, standing over a cast-iron skillet where two pork chops sit, bubbling in a shallow pool of oil. Her silver hair flows in a long braid down her back, kept out of her face by a red bandana secured at her hairline. Somewhat of a collector of odds and ends when it comes to clothing, she looks like the human embodiment of a patchwork quilt. A wildly different bright, clashing pattern for her shirt, skirt, and socks.

"Mornin'," Grace says as she walks directly over to the aprons hanging near the deep freezer.

Maryann uses the hand not holding a pair of metal tongs to wave in her direction without turning around. "Pork chops and eggs," she shouts, starting the process of carefully flipping the chops in the pan. "All scrambled. I don't have it in me this mornin' to take custom orders."

Grace nods, happy for the simplicity. "You got it."

When the food is done, Maryann starts pulling the serving platters down from the high shelves that line the kitchen walls, and Grace refills the sugar canisters and the powdered creamers for coffee.

"What's the verdict today?" Maryann asks as she spoons ladles full of bouncy, pale yellow eggs onto a platter. "Think you'll get back to King Breezy?"

Grace bites the inside of her cheek, watching a small mountain of sugar make its way to the top of the glass canister. She thinks about the stubborn colt who'd given her a run for her money earlier in the week, further soiling her name with her uncle. She doesn't hate King Breezy for not cooperating-he's smart and mean like his daddy, and she can't fault him for that-but he certainly isn't her favorite horse of the bunch right now. "Probably not. Too much other stuff to do."

"Gonna be hard to break a horse you don't spend any time with." Maryann sighs. "Seems like a waste of all Hal's teachings for that man to have you shovelin' shit and toilin' away in the fields." She rarely refers to Bellamy by his name-he's always some variation of that man, that fool, or that rotten old bastard. Unlike Hal Hendricks, Braxton's late horse trainer who took Grace under his wing when she was still a teenager. Maryann lovingly, frequently, and correctly recalls his name.

"Preachin' to the choir," Grace says.

Maryann clicks her teeth. "You're young and spry, and far too smart to be at his beck and call. Hal would hate to see you still kickin' around this place, wastin' that talent."

"He'd hate to see you still here, too," Grace volleys back. Maryann has no retort for this except a slight quirk of her brow. With a rueful smile, Grace starts to take the full platters and sets them on the plastic folding table they use as a makeshift buffet. "It's a job," she says over her shoulder, "and Bellamy's my family."

Maryann barks a laugh. "Oh, honey. That sounds less true every time you say it."

Grace says nothing, and Maryann doesn't poke her any further, knowing from experience that it's a futile effort. She shuts the kitchen window that looks out into the dining room and gives Grace a nod that signals her to ring the mealtime bell. As that familiar chime echoes through this place she calls home, Grace wonders when blood ties and a shoddy roof over her head will no longer be enough.

At the table, Grace and the other hands all shovel bites of eggs and pork chops and jelly-slathered toast into their mouths as though they haven't eaten in days. They drink orange juice and coffee out of foam cups, and they talk shit. All the hands ever, ever do is talk shit.

Grace is minding her own business like she always does, chewing the meat off a pork chop for so long her jaw has started to ache, when Trey, a seasoned hand who loves to rag on her, leans forward from his place a few seats down. He pins her with an amused look that sets Grace immediately on the defensive. "What?" she barks through a half-full mouth.

Trey shakes his head. "She wasn't listenin'. She never is."

"'Course she wasn't," says Pritchet, the oldest of the group. He points his fork in her direction, pursing his lips. "She don't like to get down in the mud with us pigs."

Grace grumbles, looking back down at her plate. "Y'all are never talking about anything interesting anyway. Why should I try to keep up with your conversation?"

Trey huffs out a humorless laugh. "Well, sunflower," he begins, and out of the corner of her eye, she can see a maniacal grin spread slowly onto his face. "I think what we were discussing is quite interesting. You see, we were talkin' about girls and bulls. You ever ridden a bull, Gracie?"

Without looking up, Grace shakes her head. She tosses the gnawed bone from her pork chop down amid the scraps of toast on her plate. "Can't say I have."