Total pages in book: 31
Estimated words: 29106 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 146(@200wpm)___ 116(@250wpm)___ 97(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 29106 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 146(@200wpm)___ 116(@250wpm)___ 97(@300wpm)
But I know how it looks to the haters because they call my brother and I sadists who relish in the death of other living organisms. Yet there are multiple angles of viewing the scenario. The truth is that as cattle ranchers, we’re intimately in touch with the land, the sky, the sun, and of course, the animals that roam our property. Death is merely the flip side of life, and with every calf that’s born; every cow that goes to market; and hell, every blade of grass that grows on our property, we know that life is transient. There is only nothingness in the end; dust to dust, ashes to ashes.
As a result, most things don’t matter except for family, friends, and living without regrets. Different, but interrelated ideas. My eyes land on a framed photo on my desk which features Mom, Dad, me and Colt, as well as our other five siblings mugging for the camera. Yeah, Mom and Dad were fruitful, resulting in a giant brood. Not only that, but our siblings have been fruitful as well, reproducing and multiplying again and again so that our extended family now has something like forty people in it when you include all the kids, grandkids, and even the one great-grandchild from my brother Billy.
I shake my head ruefully, eyeing the photo. Did my sister have four children or five? Twins or triplets or maybe a set of both? I can’t remember.
“Yo, I don’t want to go,” I grunt to my brother.
Colt looks up from his desk.
“You mean to the party at Becca’s? But it’s Josie’s birthday.”
I roll my eyes.
“Do we really have to go to a kid party? It feels like we’re always going to children’s birthday parties these days.”
Colt shrugs and nods, still typing at his computer.
“Yeah, and with the twins turning six soon, we’ll have more parties to go to. Hopefully, they do a joint thing this year, but you never know. Juno and Jamie are spoiled, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they demand two shindigs this year instead of one.”
I stare at my brother’s rugged mug.
“No fucking way. I can’t go to two birthday parties in such a short time frame. It isn’t feasible. I’ll fucking die.”
Colt merely shrugs again, still typing away with his eyes fixed on the screen.
“Yeah, it’s tedious and I especially hate when they pull out the projector and start with the birthday PowerPoint. It’s fucking boring because who really wants to hear all your inside jokes, much less view an endless reel of your last vacation? But these are the Madewells, and dude, we’re Madewells too.”
I grunt.
“Yeah, whatevs. I fucking hate how they’re always on us to settle down and start reproducing too. Like they aren’t already overpopulating the world.”
My brother shrugs.
“It’s annoying, but you know how they are. Besides, we’re practically geriatric at this point to them. They all started reproducing at eighteen, so we’re like fucking ancient geezers.”
I shake my head.
“Fuck them. Forty isn’t exactly over the hill. But I hope they don’t bring a woman around and introduce her to us, hoping that one of us takes an interest. What was her name again from that last thing? Tanisha? Jumelle?”
“Tanielle,” Colt says glumly. “She was cute but not our type. Susan’s friend’s daughter, right? Who was just “stopping by” to drop off her angel food cake. What was she? Seventeen? Eighteen?”
I snort.
“Yeah, the Madewells don’t give a shit about a woman’s age. The younger the better, so she’ll have more fertile years to breed. As you can see, the fam doesn’t believe in birth control,” I drawl. “It’s the trad wife lifestyle coming at you.”
My brother shrugs.
“Trad values are trad values, and it’s fine, but you know they don’t even suspect that we share women. Our sibs have no fucking clue.”
I nod silently because it’s true. Sure, our family sees my brother and I as black sheep, but in an oddly endearing way that can be “corrected.” As Colt mentioned, we didn’t get married early and then start procreating like rabbits. Instead, we’ve remained single, and as far as our relatives know, we’re enjoying the bachelor life like any red-blooded alpha male. But they don’t suspect the half of it, which is that we prefer to share women. If the fam found out, goddamn, but the shit would hit the fan. Our relatives would be shocked, surprised, and damn us to hell. Literally, they’d consult the family pastor and we’d likely be subjected to some kind of religious exorcism.
What can I say? The Madewells espouse conservative values, like many people in this region, and the fam believes in the union of one man and one woman with no exceptions. It hasn’t caused a problem so far, but that’s because they don’t know about me and Colt. Again, it would be hellfire and brimstone if they found out that we enjoy sharing pussy.