Bulls of Branton

Short Fiction

This one is from July 2024. I haven’t thought about it for a while. I just re-read it and while there are a few things I could change, it still makes me chuckle and feel a connection with the characters. So there’s that.

Thanks for reading. New stuff coming soon.

Jimmy had a way of talking to me like I was some kind of hick, as if he wasn’t a Florida cracker himself. He’d try to make me feel stupid for asking questions, smirking and shaking his head like a wise man among fools, and by this point, I had learned to stop asking.

So now, I had taken a wrong turn or two and was running late for my appointment with the Swindlers. I was new to the area but Jimmy had insisted on giving me directions instead of just letting me punch it into the GPS. “It’s simple,” he said. “Get off at Golden Gate, turn right, go through the first light and turn left at the second one but stay in the right left turn lane because there’s two of them and you’re gonna wanna take a quick right and then your first left, which is the shore road and you take that to the end which is a mile, give or take, but that don’t matter because you follow it to the end and you’re at the beach but you won’t know it because of all the big houses blocking the view but once you can’t go no more, you turn left and it’s a little way up on your right.”

It was something like that but not exactly that, because if I’d have remembered all of it, I wouldn’t have gotten lost. Maybe he said turn right and it would be a little way down on my left but I had screwed it up long before I ever got to that.

One thing Jimmy said that I did remember was that there was a big Jacaranda out front and that would have been a good landmark if I only knew what in hell a Jacaranda was. Turns out, it’s a tree.

We have our share of trees up in Branton—Live Oaks with Spanish moss, Palmettos, Sagos, King Palms, Coconut Palms and Poincianas to name a few. And cattle and corn fields, orange groves, horse farms, dive bars, musty antique shops, dusty jacked pickups, pretty girls in short shorts and sad girls with knuckle tattoos and meth teeth, good old boys and mean young hotheads, preachers, mechanics, carpenters, heavy equipment operators, nurses and school teachers. And we have lakes with gators and lawn chairs and fishing poles, and coolers with ice and Beer. On the four-lane, right off the highway there’s a McDonalds, an Arby’s, a RaceTrac and a Dunkin’ Donuts all within a quarter mile. There are rumors of an Olive Garden coming soon but that might just be wishful thinking.

And on the county road that runs east from town, we have little houses on ten or fifteen acres that we call farms or ranches, depending on what we convince ourselves we’re doing there. If you Street View my place, you’ll see Bronto, my stud bull, with his head out over the front fence, busted out of the bull pen and in the garden, chomping and drooling, trampling everything and shitting randomly. It’s from about a year ago, a day or two before he killed the mailman’s Rottweiler. The picture is still up on Google Earth. At least it was last time I checked.

I made a good living in Branton building screen rooms. That’s what we called them up there. Down here in Naples they call them “pool enclosures” but they’re basically the same thing—aluminum frames with fabric screens to keep out the bugs and critters and most of the snakes. I’d design them and have my buddy Rafe come in to pour a slab that we could build on if there wasn’t one there already. Business was steady because you can’t sit outside at night in central Florida without a screen room.

But when your wife starts a GoFundMe for a replacement Rottweiler and moves in with the mailman, you can get the feeling that your life ain’t all that it could be, that it might be better to try your luck downstate where the real money is and maybe go to work for someone else and not have to keep your own books and not have to give discounts to everyone who says they know your cousin.

I pulled over to give the Swindlers a call and let them know I’d be five or ten minutes late. Mr. Swindler told me to take my time. “No rush,” he said. “My wife hasn’t come home from her golf lesson yet.” The way he said “golf lesson” made it sound like it meant something else, like I could almost see him making those little air quotes with his fingers at the other end.

I was punching the address into the GPS when Jimmy called to ask if I was there yet. “Just about to pull in,” I said. I still didn’t know where the hell I was.

“I put a lot of work into selling this one, Dwayne,” Jimmy said. “So don’t fuck it up. You show them the samples, get the measurements and just keep saying yes sir, yes ma’am. This guy is loaded and he’s not interested in any of your hick bullshit.”

That was pretty much the standard Jimmy pep talk.

I eventually found the place and sure enough, there was a big tree in front, covered in blue flowers and now I knew what to call it: Jack-a-something. There was one like it in the bullpen that Bronto used for shade and to scratch himself on when he wasn’t off on one of his romantic appointments. The one in the bullpen never got the blue blossoms like this one but it had the same kind of leaves that looked like ferns. It may have had something to do with Bronto, why it never got the flowers.

Because Bronto could be a handful. Some days he would lean against the gate and rock it back and forth for hours until the latch would finally give and he could stomp his way into the field. I found that when he got into one of those moods, it was best to just let him be for a few days and hope that he didn’t do too much damage. But when I’d hook his trailer to the dually, he’d walk right in because he knew what was waiting for him at the end of the ride. They’d put three or four cows out with him at a time and he’d be up on one and have his eye on the next. I charged thirty-five dollars a cow and I’d leave him there for a week or two, depending on how many cows there were. It was good side money for me and Bronto loved his work.

I parked my truck on the street, like Jimmy said I should always do because these kind of people don’t want a big ugly pickup in the driveway, leaking oil on their expensive pavers and making the neighbors wonder if squatters had moved-in and the next thing would be a couch on the front lawn.

Mr. Swindler met me at the door, an older guy, mid-sixties I guessed, and tall, almost as tall as me. He was fit-looking with slicked-back silver hair and dressed sharp in a blue checked sport shirt and khaki shorts and one of those braided leather belts to match his brown shoes with the tiny socks that hardly show. And a Rolex. A big one.

“Nathan Swinder,” he said.

Leave it to Jimmy to get the name wrong.

“Pleased to meet you, sir, I’m Dwayne,” I said but I didn’t reach-in for a handshake because he had his arms crossed behind his back. The view behind him through the house and across the sugar sand to the sparkling blue water almost took my breath away. I wondered what a blue like that would be called. There was probably a name like azure or cobalt or cornflower that they all called it down here. Or maybe they just called it blue and took it for granted like a painting on the wall or the tile in the guest bathroom shower.

Mr. Swindler looked down at my work boots and glanced at his Rolex. “Would you mind meeting me around back, Wayne?” he asked. “Mrs. Swinder should be home any minute.”

He wasn’t out there when I got around to the pool deck, so I stood looking out at the Gulf for a few minutes trying to put a name to the color; Ultramarine, Royal, Blueberry. None of them seemed quite right.

“Did you bring the color samples, Wayne?”

“Sir?” I was a little startled and for a moment I thought he was interested in helping me find the name for the color of the Gulf of Mexico.

“For the frames, the color options,” he said.

“Yes sir,” I said. “Right here in my bag but basically you’ve got your white or your bronze.”

“But your boss said we can have any color we choose.”

Fucking Jimmy. That might have been a good thing to mention to me.

“Well, sure,” I said. “If Jimmy said so, I mean, if you want to pay up for custom.”

“She’s going to want custom, Wayne.”

Leave it to Jimmy. In all my years in the business, I never heard of anyone doing a custom color. I doubted that it was even possible.

“Of course, sir,” I said, “No problem. As for the screens, you have your silver, your black or your charcoal.”

“That’s fine, Wayne,” he said. “Let’s just wait for her to get here.”

“Yes sir,” I said. “I’ll go get my stuff and start measuring.”

I was out at the truck, sliding my extension ladder off the rack, when a USPS van with the eagle logo and a driver dressed in regulation blue and gray, dropped the mail in the box, gave me a wave and headed to the next stop.

Not like rural delivery in Branton where any fat ass in a gravy stained T-shirt, driving a dented F150 with a crooked magnetic sign on the side and a slobbering Rottweiler in the back, can get a contract to deliver the mail and park on the street a little way down from your house on Wednesdays and walk in through the tractor gate to avoid the doorbell camera and meet your wife at the side door and leave the dog outside to bark and growl at the alpha Angus in the pen, only to find out the hard way that the bull is loose and is not taking any shit whatsoever today.

A black convertible squealed into the driveway and screeched to a stop in front of the garage. I hadn’t gotten a look at the driver but I figured it must be Mrs. Swindler so I set the ladder down and walked over as she was putting the top up. I had never seen a Maserati Gran Cabrio in person but I recognized it from my my Car and Driver magazines.

Her legs were long, tanned and lotioned as she stretched them from the car kind of slowly, almost luxuriously. Her toenails were hot pink in her white sandals and there was a gold bracelet with a tiny heart on her left ankle. She picked up her handbag from the passenger seat and squirmed her way out. She had long, dark, wavy hair and big sunglasses with gold trim and wore one of those lady golf outfits with the short skirt (that is really more like shorts) and a tight shirt with maybe thirty buttons, a bunch of them undone at the top, about three more than anyone’s mother would approve of. I had seen beautiful women like this before, but only on certain websites. Chalk-up another thing Jimmy forgot to mention.

“Appalling traffic,” she said. “I’m Mia Swinder, Nathans’ wife.”

I figured she was used to saying it that way so people wouldn’t think she was Nathan’s daughter.

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said, “I’m Dwayne.”

“Cerulean Blue,” she said with a big white smile, like she just solved the puzzle on Wheel of Fortune. I was confused but I was pretty sure she wasn’t talking about my eyes. Maybe this was the name of the color of the Gulf of Mexico.

“For the frames,” she said. “I want Cerulean Blue.”

“Yes. Ma’am,” I said. “I’ll write that down. Is that with an S or a C?”

“I have a color swatch inside. And since you’re right here, would you mind carrying my clubs to the garage? Thank you so much, Wayne, you’re a doll. Love the mullet!”

I took the easy dimensions first, the ones on the ground for the width and length. I set the laser target tabs out at the edges and tabbed the centerlines for where the doorways would go and shot all the measurements and entered everything in my tablet. I couldn’t help but overhear them in the kitchen the whole time because it was a beautiful day and all of the sliders were wide open to catch the breeze off the water. Mr. Swindler seemed to be having trouble understanding how these forty-five minute private golf lessons always seemed to take three and a half hours.

“Well, that’s door to door,” Mrs Swindler said. “And there’s all the seasonal traffic.”

“Un huh,” said Mr. Swindler. “I’m still missing about an hour and a half.”

“I ran into Cheri in the clubhouse. We had coffee.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Swindler. “That explains it. They’ve come down early this season—they don’t usually leave New York until after the first of the year. I’ll have to call Harold and set up a tee time.”

“Sure,” said Mrs. Swindler.

It didn’t sound like Mr. Swindler was buying her story and it didn’t seem like Mrs. Swindler really wanted her husband to call Harold for a tee time but none of this was any of my business. It was break time so I went to the truck and got my sweet tea from the cooler and sat in the shade of the jacaringo or whatever the tree was called. I checked my phone and sure enough, Jimmy had been blowing it up:

Hows it going?

They want custom paint. I’m sure I told you.

Don’t mention the senior discount.

See if you can upsell them on some privacy panels.

She’s really hot, Right?

What’s going on down there, Dwayne?

Don’t fuck this up Dwayne. This guy is loaded.

It was cool under the jacarondo and the blue blossoms smelled nice—like grape soda perfume. I never knew how nice one of them could look and smell when there was no two thousand pound bull around to gnaw on the bark and strip all the leaves from the low branches. That’s the kind of thing that Bronto would do when it had been too long between “appointments” and he’d be getting backed-up and cranky. Those were the times when you’d have to watch your back around him, when he’d been out of work for a while. He had been home for three weeks when the mailman’s Rottweiler came in to harass him for what turned out to be the last time. The doorbell camera captured a lot of it, at least the first three ragdoll tosses. I’ve watched it dozens of times. I never get tired of it.

I was getting up to get back to work when another car, a mini van, zipped-in and damned near clipped my tailgate as it turned for the circle and stopped at the front door. A woman got out, slammed the door and turned to look at me like she was trying to decide if I was the lord of this manor. She was short but cute, if a little on the plus-size side and the angry look on her face kind of froze me in place. She turned away quickly and headed for the front door. I could see two empty baby seats in the back but this was another thing that was none of my business so I went back around to the pool deck to get started on the high parts.

I was a little surprised to see Mrs. Swindler sunbathing on the far side of the pool in a little white bikini. I coughed politely so I wouldn’t startle her but she didn’t look up because she had earbuds in and was busy typing on her phone with both thumbs, lying back and holding it up in front of her.

I went up on the ladder, starting on the left side, measuring three feet above the window openings, striking a level line and working my way over toward the right where the frame would bump up over the bedroom balcony and then angle back down to catch the outside wall on the right. When I was done marking it out, I would shoot all the dimensions and enter them into the tablet. It was a complicated job and that’s why Jimmy sent me instead of doing it himself. He would never admit it but Jimmy didn’t trust himself to get it right.

Every so often, I would give a look over to Mrs. Swindler in her tiny white bikini with the straps down and her red navel piercing that looked like a ruby, and her tanned, lotioned legs, crossed at the ankles and the hot pink toenails, just to make sure that I wasn’t disturbing her with all my clanking around with the ladder.

The sliders were closed now, but I could hear raised voices from inside. I thought I might have heard a woman crying. I was starting to feel like I was too much in the middle of things with the Swindlers.

I looked over and saw that Mrs. Swindler was up now and pacing back and forth, on the phone with her ear buds, whisper-yelling, holding a hand to her forehead and looking up to the sky. She seemed like she was in distress. Maybe panicking would be more accurate. Something bad was going on here and I was getting more and more uncomfortable with the situation.

The slider opened right below me and Mr. Swindler stepped out. He had a bald spot that I hadn’t noticed from ground level and the back of his neck had cross-hatched wrinkles that had been hidden by his shirt collar. He stood there for a moment, shaking his head, watching his wife walk back and forth and stamp her foot and put her hand to her forehead and bend forward and yell-whisper into the phone. He called her name a few times, louder each time until she finally heard him and took the earbuds out. “Come in the house,” he said. “Now.”

I only had a couple more tabs to go before I could get down and shoot the measurements, pack my stuff and go. I was trying to concentrate and tune-out the noise but it was impossible with the three of them shouting and screaming inside.

Things went quiet after a while and I was hustling to get done. I was all the way to the right, marking the angle when I heard Mr. Swindler at the foot of the ladder. “Come down, Wayne,” he said.

Something about his tone, something about this whole day was starting to rub me the wrong way. He and his wife were having some domestic issues, that much was clear but he had no right to take it out on me. Sure, I was a little late because of Jimmy. And I might have gotten a little preoccupied trying to find a name for a blue that I had never seen before and I might have admired a pair of long, lotioned legs and a bejeweled bellybutton. And so what if I took a break in the shade of a tree with Cerulean Blue blossoms that smelled like grape soda and made me realize that maybe I could have had something like that at home and never known it.

“I’ll just be another minute,” I said. “I’m almost done up here.”

“I’d like to speak with you now,” he said calmly but not leaving any doubt that he meant, “get your ass down here.”

That pissed me off and I guess I must have come down a little hot because when I turned around at the bottom he took a step back and ran his hand over his hair and adjusted his collar and tried to get his eyes right.

“Yes, Mr. Swindler,” I said.

He took another step back. “Actually, it’s Swinder, Wayne. Not Swindler.”

“Actually, sir, it’s Dwayne, not Wayne.”

“Well, I’m sorry Dwayne,” he said, “but I’m going to have to cancel the project. Please pack-up your tools. Sorry for your trouble.”

This news did not improve my mood—in fact I felt like the latch on the bullpen gate was about to give.

“Well, ain’t that some shit, Ethan,” I said. “You just cost me my job. Jimmy is gonna fire me for sure.”

“It’s Nathan,” he said, “Not Ethan. But don’t worry, I’ll explain to Jimmy that the cancellation had nothing to do with you when I call him to have my deposit refunded.”

“Good luck with that, Nathan,” I snorted. “Jimmy may be dumb but he ain’t stupid.”

I was mad enough now to give him a piece of my mind about rich people who don’t think twice about running people around, wasting their time and airing their dirty laundry in front of them like they don’t exist. Never even looking around to see how good they have it with their marble floors and infinity pools and the beach in the back yard, the fancy cars and the hot young wife and a shade tree with blue blossoms that they never even bother to look at, let alone walk over to smell.

But I didn’t say any of that because it wouldn’t have made any difference to a man like Nathan Swinder, what a screen man from Branton thought of him. It probably would have just made me look foolish and given him a good story to laugh about on the golf course with his boardroom buddies.

What I did say was, “I feel you owe me an explanation, Nathan.”

He raised his eyebrows like he was insulted and took a deep breath as if he was fixing to put me in my place but then he deflated himself with a long exhale and got smaller as his shoulders sagged forward and his head went down.

“I suppose I do,” he said, “but I’m in no mood to talk about it.”

“Well, I wasn’t in the mood to come all the way down here and do a shit-ton of work for nothing and then get fired for it.”

“I told you, Wayne, I’ll assure your boss that it has nothing to do with you,” he said. “May I offer you a beer before you go?”

I don’t know exactly why but this made me even angrier. “Are you going to have one with me?” I asked.

“No, Wayne,” he said, his eyes welling up. “I avoid carbs.”

I stood there looking at him for a moment trying to decide whether I wanted to punch him in the nose or put my arm around his shoulder.

“I’d like to put my feet in the Gulf of Mexico, Ethan,” I said. “Maybe get a close-up picture of the water before I go. Would that be okay with you?”

“Yes, Wayne,” he said. “I suppose so.”

I reached down, unlaced my work boots, kicked them off and peeled off my sweaty socks and stuffed them inside. “I’ll be back in a few minutes for my stuff,” I said. “But can I ask you a question, Ethan?”

He gave me a vacant look.

“Was that the golf pro’s wife showed up and nearly crashed my truck?”

“Yes.”

“So, I guess you know now why your wife’s swing hasn’t improved?”

“Yes, Wayne,” he said. “If you want to put it that way.”

He turned away and dabbed at his eyes and I was starting to feel less and less like punching him.

“Well, Ethan,” I said, “If it makes you feel any better, my wife is shacking up with the mailman.”

It didn’t seem to make him feel any better. Or worse.

I was halfway down the sand when I noticed that the water didn’t look the same. Maybe it was the clouds that were rolling in that changed the light and sucked the Cerulean out of the blue and then the blue out of the green and turned it Silver Pine, Slate, Gulf Gray. Maybe all of this just looked better from a distance.

I turned around and headed back to the house to get my ladder and tools.

My phone rang while I was sitting on the chaise putting my socks and shoes back on. It rang again while I was packing up the laser and the tabs. It rang a third time as I was carrying my ladder around front so I finally set everything down and answered. Of course it was Jimmy, ranting and raving, calling me a stupid hick and telling me not to bother coming back. I told Jimmy to go fuck himself and picked up the ladder.

Out front, Mrs. Swindler, wearing jeans and a lady blazer, watched a cab driver struggle to get her suitcase into the trunk. I rolled the ladder onto the rack and tied it down as the taxi pulled out of the driveway, headed for the shore road. I walked over to the Jacaranda and pulled a grape soda branch to my nose, then stepped back and took a picture of the tree with all the blue blossoms. I leaned against the truck for a moment, looking up at the house, picturing old Nathan alone in there, wiping tears from his eyes, on the phone with Harold in New York. I pictured the golf pro’s wife at home changing diapers and throwing golf clubs onto the front lawn. I pictured Mia Swindler in the cab calling her daddy for the name of his attorney in Miami. I pictured the mailman lying on the couch and yelling to my wife to bring him another Mountain Dew.

And when I finally found my way back to the highway and settled-in for the long ride back to Branton, I pictured a big old bull in a field, who never took any shit whatsoever.

END

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