Chapter 11: Alfalfa

The chase truck did not come.

I sat on the edge of the tipped basket in the tall grass at the foot of the bosque.

The sun cleared the Sandias.

I had left Nestor smiling at me across the field, and I could still see it.

The pepper lay behind me in a long red heap across the meadow.

The last of her heat ticked out of the fabric.

I had landed her cleanly, hard on the grass, and the basket had tipped over on its side.

I was not hurt.

I was laughing so hard I couldn't get up.

The radio on my shoulder crackled.

"Pepper, Chase," Eloy said, out of breath. "I have a flat tire."

"Chase, say again," I said.

"I have a flat tire on the ditch road. A nail. I'm coming on foot."

"It's three miles," I said.

"I can see you. I'm coming," he said.

"Chase, you're going to die of a heart attack in my meadow," I said.

"Then it's your meadow now," he said, and the radio went dead.

Twenty minutes later he came out of the cottonwoods at a dead run.

His hat was gone and his shirt was dark with sweat.

He stopped at the edge of the grass, bent over with his hands on his knees.

"You're alive," I said.

"Barely." He straightened up and looked at the sprawled balloon, and the tipped basket, and me. "Are you hurt?"

"No."

"Then why aren't you getting up?"

"Because I like it down here," I said. "Come here."

He crossed the grass slowly.

He knelt in front of me with the sun behind him, and the light caught the silver at his temples.

He had run three miles to find out whether I was breathing.

"Say it," he said hoarsely.

"Say what?"

"Whatever I'm allowed to do."

I took his hand and put it flat on my chest, over my heart, where he could feel it going.

"You're allowed to do anything," I said. "And the check is done."

Keep reading free with an account. Start She Slept With My Husband, So Her Fiance Rides My Balloon from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.