Gatekeeper's Secret
Copyright© 2026 by Fick Suck
Chapter 26
Sept 22, 1962
The jewel went off while I was on the crapper. I was reading an article in the Playboy magazine when I nearly fell off the toilet seat. From now on, the Playboy stays in the bedroom. None of the chores got done before I had to saddle the horse and take off for the gateway. There were three of them, short and squat, but one was shorter than the other two. Their skin had an ashen look and their eyes appeared black, lacking pupils. After touching the jewel, they asked for a handout. They were panhandlers, although they were alien ones. I had a basement full of crap I could have given them had I known, but all I had in my saddlebag was a banana. They took it and left. On some unknown planet in a distant galaxy, maybe one of them slipped on a banana peel. Even aliens are afflicted with idiots.
Grady awoke to a banging on his backdoor, and then a slamming of the backdoor as someone stormed in angrily. The week had been quiet, and if he had not gotten laid, at least most everyone left him alone. With only two horses in the barn, Bri came and did the chores before leaving again. Sometimes she returned in the evening and went to the cabin. Neither Bettina nor his old truck had been seen on the ranch either.
“Grady!” Bri yelled. “Grady!”
“What?” He yelled back.
“Your cat keeps leaving me presents on my doorstep,” she yelled. “It’s disgusting.”
“Rosie likes you and she wants to give you gifts,” Grady yelled again before he went into the bathroom to do his business. When he walked into the kitchen, still tucking in his shirt, he found the coffeepot with half a cup left and an empty box of frozen waffles on the counter. He found a note on the kitchen counter informing him that he was out of coffee, milk, waffles, chips, ice cream, ice cream sandwiches and warming massage oil. He could not figure out the last one. Was she being coy or trying to be funny? After the peace and quiet, he was not much in the mood for funny. He pulled the last two hard boiled eggs out of the butter dish in the fridge before he went to feed the cat.
Rosie greeted him at the barn doorway with a meow, before she turned and headed towards the tack room. “Just like every other woman in my life – they expect me to follow them and wait on them without question or complaint,” he grumped. He grabbed a scoop of kitty kibble from the closed bin and got her a fresh bowl of water. The litter box looked clean, which meant that Bri, despite her protestations, had emptied and refilled the box. Grady did not see a need for a litter box when they were surrounded by the great outdoors, but Rosie was raised with a litter box and that was that.
He was about to go banging on the bunkhouse door when Bri climbed down from the loft. “We’re not going to need hay for a good while,” she announced. “Do you want to go for a ride?”
“Yes, but it’s going to be a work ride,” Grady said. “We’ll take the lower trail and do another survey. We’ll need a clipboard and pens to record flora and fauna. Besides the general health of the land, we’re hunting invasive species, and evaluating the vibrancy of the flora. We also want to check for any sign of poachers from over the winter. Still interested?”
“Hell, yeah. Let’s do it, Cowboy.”
Grady packed a lunch while Bri prepared the horses. He grabbed two sets of binoculars, the survey sheets and two rifles from the lock bin. “What? No camera?” Bri remarked when she saw him with his arms loaded with gear.
“The good camera with lenses is an entire backpack if you want to haul it,” Grady said. “For this simple survey, we can use a cell phone for pics.”
Bri held out her hand to take some of the gear. “I was joking. I think you woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”
“The bed was cold and lonely,” Grady said. “On the other hand, I got stuff done this past week. I’ve heard from nobody about anything, except for my accountant and my attorney, and I’m way too frickin’ young to be complaining about them.”
“Everyone’s been busy, I suppose,” Bri said before swinging herself up onto the saddle. “Firestorms, shitstorms, and heaps of annoyances,” Brianna said. “My mother is bugging me to either come home for a visit or let her visit here. I’m running out of excuses and Aunt Jessica won’t help.”
They headed out. Grady warned her as they turned onto the trail that going off the designated path could be dangerous for horses. The ground was a mix of different kinds of rock and the soft rock would often melt away, leaving holes and pits for the unwary to twist or break a limb. “This land is not like the movies where they ride their horses across the land without looking down or taking care of where the horses step.”
“Snakes?”
“No, they’ll pick up the vibrations of the horses’ hoofs and make themselves scarce,” Grady said. “Unless they’re hunting lizards, the best hunting time for them is dusk and dawn. Besides, not all snakes are venomous out here, just a few. There’s lot of good eating for them, though.”
“Are you trying to impress me or scare me, Grady?”
“I’m trying to make you smart in the saddle, Brianna,” Grady said. “We aren’t riding in the California hills on the other side of Mr. Magoo’s mansion and helipad.”
“Oh, you’re being funny,” Bri said. “I missed that the first time. Come on, Grady, I’m the one who invited you to come on a ride.”
“Sorry,” Grady said, trying to act sincere when he did not quite feel it. “You run in and you run out nearly every day. Maybe I get a wave as you depart.”
“I’m sorry you feel neglected, Grady, but you’re not my boyfriend or even my lover. We’re just friends with benefits,” she said.
“I wasn’t asking for or expecting sex, Bri, just more than a simple acknowledgment of my presence on this planet,” Grady said. “Rosie is a wonderful edition to my ranch, but she comes up short with her conversation skills.”
“Her presentation skills, too,” Bri said. “I’ll try to do better. Now, when do we start counting and what are we counting?”
“Looking at everything around you, the grasses, the bushes and the trees – all of it is local and native. When you spot a plant that does not look familiar, that is when we investigate. I’ve got a book on native plants with pictures, and I’ve got a second book on animals. Birds are a whole other subject unto themselves, which takes a lot more patience and time.”
They rode for an hour before Grady saw something interesting, a flowering plant with small pink flowers that he did not recognize. He noted the coordinates in the journal while Bri took a picture. He admitted he was unsure whether the plant was invasive or simply rare. With climate change, everything alive was slowly migrating northward across the entirety of the continent. Even out here, they were experiencing the creeping effects of a warming world.
They continued to ride. Grady finally breached the silence, “What is everyone doing that no one is coming out to the ranch?”
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