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"Colby!" the woman yelled from the porch. "dinner's ready!"
He lobbed the bale of hay up to the loft with a hand.
"Hey," a girl there exclaimed. "Watch where you throw those things. You almost floored me with this one."
He smirked at his sister as she grabbed the bale with both hands and hefted it in place.
"Dinner," Colby said.
"I heard her, I'm not deaf, you know. Just throw me the last one and we'll go."
With a shrug, he grabbed it, backed up so he could see the top of the stacks of bales, and lobbed it at an empty spot. It landed in it, but crooked.
She looked at it then at him. "Just why do you need my help?"
"Bored?" he said.
She snorted as she shouldered the bale in place. "You, bored? You can entertain yourself lying in the field looking at the sky."
"Lonely?"
"Well, if you stepped off the ranch once in a while you wouldn't be so. You know dad isn't going to mind if you let us do the heavy lifting once in a while." She climbed down the ladder and Colby indicated the tractor, which he'd had to move out of position so they could throw the bales into the loft. "Not that heavy, dumbass."
He grabbed it and raised it, making sure his footing was proper, turning slowly to avoid his sister and to keep the momentum from building up. Being able to pick up and carry three tons came with a few drawbacks, he'd had to discover as he grew up. Chief of which was momentum. The faster he moved something heavy, the tougher it was to then stop moving it. Something about laws physics, conservation of this and that. Herbert had explained it a few times to him, but Colby's thing was his strength, not his smarts. He let his brother talk, because like every Rowlings he loved to do that, but Colby didn't work too hard at trying to understand.
He closed the barn door behind he and Jambalaya, and escorted her to the house, where the torrent of people could be heard a hundred feet away, all taking at the same time.
Entering only served to increase the volume as Jamba joined in with the talking. Sitting next to Mich and Alice. In utter chaos, everyone greeted them as if they were long-lost family members gone for years, instead of having spent the afternoon working in the field with most of them at one time or another.
The Rowling Ranch was a sprawling thing that needed half a dozen of the Rowling families to keep moving, and today it seemed his mother had decided everyone was eating in her house. His aunt was seated on the counter, plate in hand with her youngest next to her. His older brother was walking and chatting on his phone, drumstick in hand taking a bite between arguing with someone from the John Deer company, which meant he was back on his 'my tractors are too old' thing. Dad was going to have to talk him down again before he was talked into taking a loan the family couldn't afford.
Being the largest ranching family in Texas didn't come with as much wealth as people not involved in it thought. The entirety of their worth was in the livestock and equipment, the meager profits they made were carefully controlled by his father so they wouldn't end up having to sell because they'd overextended themselves.
His father smiled and nodded at him as Colby took the plate his mother handed to him. A full chicken, de-boned, covered in green beans and corn. His appetite was proportional to his strength, his mother loved to say. He leaned his muscular frame against one of the few free spots on the wall and ate.
"Col! you got mail today," Jefferson yelled over the conversations from the other side of the kitchen, then was off. Colby looked to his father, who was talking with Agnes, then his mother, who was deep in conversation with Janice. He wouldn't get information from them, and none of his siblings would take the time in their busy schedule to notice the mail had come in, let alone to whom it was addressed. at eight, Jefferson was still officially in school, so he had a little free time between that and the few chores he could handle.
His brother returned waving the letter and Colby placed his plate on the corner of the table, then wiped his hands before taking it. The white envelope had an official-looking stamp in the upper left corner. Harker Academy, out of Pennsylvania. Curiosity made him rip it open and read through it.
He frowned. This was an acceptance letter for him to attend that school. No, to attend something about supers that took place there. Classes on how to be a superhero, of all things. He waited until his father looked in his direction and raised an eyebrow, indicating the letter.
"Yeah, someone from that school called about two months ago, I figured it would be good for you."
"What?" Colby exclaimed, causing everyone in the room to fall silent.
"They heard about what happened back in March, and they think you'd be a good candidate for their program."
March had been when they'd gone into Houston to negotiate starting prices for the next auction. a bunch of supers had decided that a hundred ranchers in one place meant lots of money they could get their hands on. Of course, the idiots didn't keep in mind that no rancher left home without at least one rifle in their possession, so they'd found themselves in a shooting match that kept the low-powered one in check. They certainly didn't know about Colby, since their strong woman and energy blaster were nowhere near strong enough to take him down.
By the time it was over, the news was there and as much as Colby tried to vanish in the crowd, the ranchers made sure his part in the melee didn't go unmentioned. Like throwing a pickup was that big of a deal.
"Why?" Colby asked, trying not to let the hurt sound. Why was his father sending him away? The ranch was everything to a Rowling.
"You kidding?" Kyle said. "imagine it, you, a superhero."
For a second, Colby wondered how his cousin knew about this when he didn't. Then remember which family he was part of. The real mystery was how come Colby hadn't heard about this before now. It must have taken a threat of epic proportion by the Rowling elder to keep anyone from even whispering about it in his presence. Rowlings couldn't keep secrets, everyone knew that.
Seemed they could.
"The ranch," Colby said.
"It's not going to go anywhere, Son."
Colby looked at his dad, unable to form words. He wasn't a superhero, he was a rancher, like everyone in the family. His strength and toughness just made him more valuable. He could deal with rambunctious bulls and not have to worry about getting hurt.
"The ranch ran before you, Col," Bridgette said, smiling to soften the statement. "We'll feel your absence, but we will survive until you come back."
"And you'll be able to visit, right?" Jefferson said. "He's going to visit, right Dad."
"Of course. he'll be here for the holidays, for the summer." Their father said, and with that resolved, conversation started up. How exciting it was for Colby to go to a school for superhero. How it had to be the first one because no one had ever heard of such a thing. And was it because of Jacksonville? of course it was, these days everything about supers was because of Jacksonville.
Without noticing it happening, Colby was sitting at the table, food forgotten, rereading the letter. He wished he felt the excitement everyone else did. It was a four-year course. The first rule of which was he couldn't tell anyone there he had powers. How was he going to do that? He'd never had to think about it. If something needed doing he did it. That it be milking one of the cows, knocking sense in a bull, or raising a tractor when the repair lift broke. His strength was a part of him. He hadn't thought about hiding it when the supers attacked. He could have whipped out his magnum and used that to keep them down, but his strength had been the more appropriate response to the situation, so that was what he'd used.
What kind of school for supers started by saying he couldn't use his strength? He looked at his father, who was in conversation with Elizabeth, probably something about how her new husband needed to get used to handling a gun, even if he was from up north. He couldn't be a Rowling if he couldn't shoot a can off a post. Even Jeff could do that at his age.
What was the school going to say about his Magnum?
No, Colby decided. After diner, he was going to lock his father in his office and they were going to resolve this. He was going to make him see sense. He was needed on the ranch, not halfway across the country.
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