The Chosen Child. Brenda Mott

pockets.

      A long chain hung from the wallet in his back pocket down to his knees, then disappeared back up beneath his shirttail, attached to his belt, the end of which also dangled down the leg of his pants. He postured a gangsta walk as he made his way to the Chevy and climbed inside. Cody shook his head and followed as the sound of the Thompsons’ van faded down the driveway. He opened the driver’s door of the pickup and let Max jump up onto the seat before sliding in after him.

      Dustin remained silent as Cody started the truck and headed out a ranch road that led to the back half of the property.

      “Did you bring gloves?” Cody eyed Dustin’s baggy jeans. A person could hide a small child and two dogs in the pockets of those things.

      “Don’t need ’em.”

      Cody bit back a sigh. “Yeah, you do need ’em.” He leaned forward and retrieved the kid-sized pair of leather gloves he’d picked up at the feed store yesterday, and tossed them in Dustin’s lap. Dustin glared at him, but Cody ignored him.

      “I’m not a hick.” Dustin spoke the word in such a way that let Cody know exactly what he thought of him.

      “I believe the politically correct term is cowboy,” Cody shot back. Then he softened. He was supposed to be setting a good example, not arguing with the kid. “Look, the gloves are for your safety, like I told you before. I’m not trying to make you be a hick.”

      “Don’t you mean ‘cowboy’?” Dustin looked out the passenger side window as though bored out of his mind. “How can you stand living out here in the middle of nowhere?”

      Cody resisted his initial impulse to throttle the kid. The ranch meant almost as much to him as his marriage. It might be the only one of the two he had left at the moment.

      Hell, if he lost Nikki, nothing else would matter.

      “This ranch has been in my family for almost seventy years.”

      “That’s probably because nobody else would want it.”

      This time, Cody was unable to hold his emotions in check. “Look, Dustin, you put yourself in this situation,” he snapped. “You might as well make the best of it.”

      Dustin faced him, his dark brown eyes narrowed and his freckled cheeks red. “I didn’t ask to do stupid cowboy chores on some stupid ranch.”

      “No, but you chose to spray-paint my squad car. Negative actions have consequences.”

      “Oh, excuse me. I’ll remember to write that down in my journal.”

      “You do that.”

      Dustin rolled his eyes, then postured his shoulders, hands, and arms gangsta-like. “So me and my homies decided to spray-paint a few buckets. Big deal.”

      “I’d hardly call a Crown Vic with a souped-up 460 a bucket. And while you’re busy taking notes, remember that your homies decided extracurricular art wasn’t such a good idea after all.” Cody steered the pickup around a pothole in the dirt road. “They obviously learned something from what happened to you.”

      “Yeah, right.” Dustin slumped against the seat and stared out the window at the rolling grassland and the groves of trees beyond.

      Frustrated, Cody was nonetheless determined. He’d overseen juvenile community service on more than one occasion and had managed to see those kids through their assigned hours with a fair amount of success. He’d find a way to work things out with Dustin, too.

      Minutes later, Cody veered off the dirt road. He drove across the pasture to the corner of a section of fence that sagged between posts, some of it broken, where the horses had leaned on the wire to reach grass that was always greener on the other side. With the Chevy parked, he got out and closed the door behind him, Max tagging at his heels.

      Dustin did likewise and stood staring at the five strands of barbless wire that stretched out of sight from both points of the corner post. “We have to fix all of that?”

      “Most of it.” Cody moved to the back of the truck and dropped the tailgate. He reached for the heavy roll of wire and dropped it onto the ground, rolling it along with his booted foot. Leaving it by the corner fence post, he returned to the truck for the tools they would need. He handed the fence stretcher to Dustin.

      “What’s this thing?” The boy looked at the metal, saw-toothed and jointed contraption as though it might bite.

      Cody grinned. “Don’t worry. I’ll show you.”

      Two hours later, Dustin had the operation of the fence stretcher down pretty well, and Cody thought the boy even seemed to be enjoying the pleasure of working with tools. “Let’s take a break.” He lifted his cowboy hat and ran his sleeve across his damp forehead. The July sun burned down on them without mercy. Max had long ago retreated to the shade beneath the pickup truck, where he lay on his side, snoring loudly.

      “Canteen’s empty,” Dustin said, tipping it upside down and giving it a shake.

      “So, go fill it.” Cody put his hat back on. This wasn’t the best time of day to be out here stringing fence in the heat. Had he purposely picked late morning to early afternoon to make things harder on Dustin—or was he punishing himself? He’d done a lot of that, ever since Anna’s death.

      “Where?” Dustin crinkled his features in a mask of adolescent sarcasm. “I don’t exactly see a convenience store anywhere nearby.”

      “Try the water pump.” Cody gestured to the west. “It’s over that knoll, by the stock tank. You can’t miss it.”

      “You want me to drink horse water?”

      Cody gave him a look of exasperation. “The pump is fed by an underground spring. It’s better than any bottled water you’ll ever taste. Just lift up on the handle, but watch out. It’ll come out hard and fast.”

      “O-kay.” Dustin spun on his heel and ambled off.

      DUSTIN TOPPED the knoll and eyed the neighboring ranch house that sat a short distance from the fence bordering the Somers’ pasture. Great. He knew who lived there. Mr. Super Jock himself—Eric Vanderhurst.

      Running back on the seventh grade football team last year, as well as a wrestling champ and basketball center, Eric thought he was all that. He had blond hair and blue eyes, and practically every girl at school hanging on his every word. He made Dustin want to puke. But worse, Eric was a bully who enjoyed picking on boys younger and smaller than him. He’d long ago singled out Dustin as one of his targets.

      It was no secret that a lot of kids resented Dustin for having been bumped up a year. He was the youngest kid in Deer Creek Middle School’s seventh grade class. In the first grade, he’d been skipped to second because of his ability to learn quickly and easily. With a photographic memory, it took him little effort to retain whatever the teachers threw his way, and acing tests was so simple, Dustin found them boring.

      But then, that had been before his mom had given herself completely to the drugs and alcohol. Before the foster care system had swallowed him up and spit him out again and again.

      Frank and Sylvia were okay. He’d lived with them for about a year now. But he didn’t give a rat’s ass about school anymore, and he’d recently let his grades slip to the point where he’d barely passed seventh grade. Everyone was on his case—Frank, Sylvia, his teachers and school counselor. But Eric Vanderhurst made his life all the more miserable.

      Dustin had been relieved when summer vacation finally arrived so he could hang with his friends. But Eric wouldn’t leave him alone, even now that school was out. He made it his mission in life to make Dustin’s life hell, which was part of the reason Dustin and his homies had decided to form Tech-9. As a gang, they would show jocks like Eric that they weren’t to be messed with, and spray-painting their initials on cop cars had seemed a good way to start. It was something Dustin was sure Eric would be too chickenshit to do.

      But