At the Lazy L&B

by Megan Soyars

At the Lazy L&B Dude Ranch where I worked, there were only two cooks for about thirty guests. It wasn’t the best of arrangements, but we made due with the staff we had.

First there was Doc, an ex-hippy who had stumbled onto the profession after discovering he could bake while being half-baked. Then there was my friend Selena, who worked part-time as an assistant cook. She was only nineteen, but pretty damn good at her job.

Then…there was Mary Ann. A cook from New York—or chef, as she liked to correct you—who’d worked restaurants in Paris, Italy, and Greece, but somehow ended up on a dude ranch in the middle of Nowhere, Wyoming. She was a good cook (excuse me, chef) but a helluva crazy bitch. The staff suspected she was bipolar because her moods changed lightening fast. One moment she could be screaming, threatening, waving knives around (literally), the next moment quiet and gentle as a lamb. You learned to be on your toes around Chef Mary Ann.

For this reason among others I stayed out of the kitchen. That is, I did unless Mary Ann yanked me in by the arm to do dishes. She had yanked me in such a manner today. I was wearily scrubbing at several pans which had been encrusted in grime for at least a century. Through the window, I could see the wranglers saddling up the horses in the cool morning. They were talking, laughing, tightening cinches. I envied them desperately.

“Hey, earth to Jessica!”

Two fingers were snapped rudely in front of my face. Who else? Mary Ann.

“What are you doing, dishes or standing there with your mouth hangin’ open?” She laughed raucously. Apparently she was on one of her bipolar highs today. Well, it was better than her bitchy lows. I decided to risk it and tell her the truth.

“I’m doing dishes.” I pointed out the window with my grimy sponge. “But I’d rather be out there, though.”

Mary Ann clapped me on the shoulder. “Well, you’re almost done, girl.”

At that moment, Doc dropped another grimy pan into the sink. Noticing my look, Mary Ann said, “Betcha want to go to the rodeo today, don’t you? It’s in town this afternoon.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but I’m working.”

“So stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop working.”

I looked up from my pan. Doc ceased chopping potatoes.

“What d’you mean?” I exclaimed. “You dragged me in here to do dishes, Mary Ann!”

Mary Ann seemed to suffering from one of her frequent lapses of memory. But then she yanked the sponge out of my hand.

“I made you start working, I can make you stop. You said you wanted to go to the rodeo, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, but—”

“But nothing. You’re stressed, Jess. I can see it. You need a break. Selena does, too. Selena!”

Currently, Selena was on-duty in the kitchen, but I knew she was taking a cigarette break outside behind the freezer.

“Um, I think she’s in the bathroom,” I said.

“I’ll go get her,” said Doc, who was in the know about such breaks because he took them himself.

When Doc returned with Selena in tow, Mary Ann explained the plan. Me, Selena, and herself were going to sneak to the rodeo while Doc held down the fort in the kitchen until six or so. Then we’d be back in time to assist him with last minute prep before dinner. I felt fine with this arrangement, but a wary light had crept into Doc’s eyes while Mary Ann was speaking.

“But tonight is steak night,” he said.

“I know. Steak night’s easy….stick it in the oven, stick a thermometer in it, 150 degrees, bam.” She clapped her hands together.

“Mel won’t like it...”

“Who gives a fuck about Mel?” (Mel was our boss.) “Who runs this kitchen, me or her?”

“Well, you do only by proxy.”

Mary Ann obviously didn’t understand what ‘by proxy’ meant, because she said, “That’s right. I do. So me and the girls are going to the rodeo. You stay here. Do the steaks. 20 minutes. 325 degrees. Bake the potatoes. You know the swiss chard in the fridge?”

“Yeah.”

“Take it out. Platter it. Serve it.”

“So I’m working alone?”

“Yeah. You always do on my day off, don’t you?”

Technically, Doc always cooked with Selena, but I didn’t bring up this fact. I wanted Selena to come with us; the thought of being stuck in a confined car space with Mary Ann for two hours slightly frightened me.

Mary Ann now ordered Doc outside to the freezer to get the steaks. He slouched out, looking not at all pleased by the proceedings. Taking off her apron, Mary Ann tossed it towards the counter, where it missed and fell to the floor. We left it lying there. Doc would pick it up later. Then we heard someone say, “Excuse me?” behind us.

We looked around. One of the lady guests—the British one that looked like J.K. Rowling—was sticking her head through the dining room door.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t mean to eavesdrop, but I heard you were going to the rodeo. My husband Mark and I have been wanting to go! But we haven’t any transportation. You see, we flew here…”

“You could get a ride with us,” Selena offered. “We’ve got room.”

I shot her a look. Mary Ann hated British guests. She thought they were pretentious.

But Mary Ann was regarding the British woman with her head cocked to the side. She was sizing her up.

“How many do you got?” she asked abruptly.

“Pardon?”

“How many of you want to go to the rodeo.”

“Oh! Just me and my husband. Mark.”

“Well, come on, get him. Let’s go.”

The woman cast Selena and me a startled look. We shrugged and grabbed our coats. When Mary Ann said go, it meant go. Especially before dinner service.

In less than ten minutes, all of us were piled in Mary Ann’s fancy-ass BMW. The woman’s husband looked very British, with flyaway gray hair and a tweedy jacket. I couldn’t recall his name, nor the British woman’s either. I was notoriously bad with guest names. I decided to label them J.K. Rowling and Tweedy.

“Well, let’s head to the rodeo!” Mary Ann screeched in a bad country accent. “We’ve got five hours, gang.”

We zoomed off ranch property and onto the sixteen-mile driveway that led to the main road. Selena and I grinned at each other. I rubbed the sleeve of her Carhartt jacket, wishing I had one of mine own. I was going to be cold as hell at the rodeo. I hadn’t checked the forecast this morning, since I’d assumed I’d be in the kitchen all day, doing Mary Ann’s dumb dishes.

The rodeo grounds were located outside of town, and took us about an hour to reach from the ranch. The arena was outdoors, surrounded by wooden bleachers. Practically everybody was here. Young people, old people, families, teenagers. Hamburgers were sizzling by the food hut. Vendors paced by the bleachers, hawking their wares. On the other side of the arena, I could see the cowboys (and girls) saddling up their quarter horses.

Looking around at it all, I felt a little jolt of happiness. I loved the rodeo; I’d grown up around it. When I was little, my dad rode bulls in the south Texas circuit. It was a dangerous occupation, but something I could brag about to my classmates on ‘Career Day.’ However, I was startled out of this childhood reverie by Mary Ann when we reached the bleachers. Grabbing me by my sleeve suddenly, she dragged me towards her.

“Three hours,” she muttered in my ear. “Then we gotta head back to help Doc. Understand?”

An elderly couple standing near us was casting me a concerned look. “Yes, Mary Ann, I understand,” I said, trying to free my arm. Sometimes I wondered if she suffered from Tourette Syndrome as well as bipolar disorder.

Finally she let me go and we climbed the bleachers together. The barrel racing was just starting. We all settled into our seats. My mood was rather deflated by Mary Ann’s behavior, but I tried to ignore her. At least Rowling and Tweedy were enjoying themselves. They were ooing and ahhing at the horses streaking around the barrels. They got even more excited when the calf scramble started.

“Oh my!” Rowling giggled at the sight of all the kids falling around the arena, trying to catch the calves and take the ribbon off their tails. I noticed Mary Ann smile a little maliciously when one kid got kicked in the leg.

Then the vendors came around. Selena and I bought Fanta Red sodas and the British people got Coors. They offered to buy Mary Ann a beer too, but she said she didn’t drink “on-duty.” However, I wasn’t sure what this statement meant since she wasn’t actually in the kitchen.

I briefly thought of Doc, who was slaving away by himself over the stove. I tried to chase away a feeling of guilt with some more Fanta Red. After all, I hadn’t forced Mary Ann to take Selena and me to the rodeo. Technically, she had forced us.

But half-way through the saddle bronc riding, Mary Ann leaned over and pinched my arm like an over-bearing mother.

“Come on, Jessica. It’s time to go.”

I glanced at my watch. 4:46. Exactly two hours, just like she’d promised.

“Now?” Rowling butted in. “I don’t believe the rodeo’s finished, Mary Ann.”

“I know,” Mary Ann replied. “But I have to work dinner.”

“Oh my!” Rowling looked startled. “You mean no one’s in the kitchen?”

“Well, Doc’s in the kitchen,” Mary Ann said, standing up, “but his scrawny ass can’t handle steak night alone. Come on, gang. Let’s get going.”

Though Rowling and Tweedy looked slightly put out, they didn’t argue. Within minutes, we were all back in the BMW. Mary Ann turned on the car heater and the seat heaters. Even though it was only 5:00, it was already chilly and the sky was very gray. That was summer in Wyoming for you.

I felt a vague depression as we drove off. I’d only had a few hours reprieve from dull, monotonous ranch labor. My mood didn’t improve when Mary Ann turned on Tom Petty and started singing along. She didn’t turn it off until Selena complained of a headache.

By now we were halfway to the ranch, and the sky was starting to look really ominous. Dark thunderclouds were gathering ahead of us. Before long, it started raining. The rain got harder, but to my shock Mary Ann started speeding up.

“Um, Mary Ann, maybe you should slow down,” I said.

“I’m trying to beat the storm,” she muttered.

“But you’re driving into the storm.”

“I know. Like I said, I’m trying to beat the storm.”

I decided not to argue with her twisted logic. But when hail began smattering against the car, I started getting frightened.

“Mary Ann, for fuck’s sake, slow down!”

“Er, yes, Mary Ann, perhaps you should slow down,” Tweedy piped up from the back seat.

To my relief, the speedometer started to drop. But the hail only got worse.

“Ah, Mary Ann, perhaps you ought to pull over and wait for the storm to abate,” Rowling said.

“To what?”

“To stop.”

Mary Ann sighed very heavily, as if she were dealing with five-year-olds. “I can’t. I. Have. To. Get back to the ranch.”

“But the conditions—”

“Alright, alright!” Mary Ann screeched off the road and parked the car. “There. Are we all happy?”

No one responded, though I certainly wasn’t happy. I couldn’t believe the weather had turned so bad so fast. Once again, I regretted not checking the forecast.

“Does it normally hail in June like this?” asked Tweedy from the back, breaking the silence.

“Not usually,” Selena answered. “But Wyoming weather can sometimes be freakish. I think last year it hailed on the fourth of July.”

“Goodness,” said Rowling.

“Well, it’s certainly fucking us up.” Mary Ann glared at the sky as if it was mocking her personally. “I’ve got to get back to work dinner.”

“We’ll make it,” Selena assured her, but as she spoke the hail got harder. Pebbles grew to the size of golf balls. It slammed against the car—the roof, the sides, the windows. A hairline crack appeared on my side of the windshield. Mary Ann didn’t see it. She was now sitting with both her eyes and jaw clenched shut, an expression she sometimes assumed in the minutes before meal service. An expression I knew meant, keep your mouth shut, Jessica.

So I cringed down in my seat and waited for everything to pass over. Minutes passed. The hail slowed, then stopped. All of us straightened up in our seats and looked around to assess the damage. Mary Ann noticed the hairline crack in the windshield. She stared at it for several moments, and I leaned against my car door, waiting for an explosion. But she only muttered “fuck,” very quietly under her breath. Somehow, this was more frightening to me.

“Shall we go?” asked Tweedy from the backseat. I had the sudden urge to scream at him to shut up. He obviously didn’t realize what a perilous situation we were in.

“Yes,” Mary Ann said grimly, “we shall go.”

She then threw the car into gear and screeched back onto the icy road. We careened into the opposite lane, hydroplaning for a few minutes. We then careened back into our lane and went off the road, spraying mud. Somehow, we returned to the road and Mary Ann slowed down to a speed of 40 mph before she killed us all.

I now realized that I was gripping my door handle with such force that my hand had gone numb. I pried it off the handle with my other hand and looked towards the backseat. Rowling’s mouth was open in a silent scream, and she was grabbing Tweedy around the neck with such force that she appeared to be strangling him. Selena just looked at me and shook her head slowly back and forth. I turned back towards the road.

“You must remember you have no snow tires on, Mary Ann,” I said very quietly, in case she decided to go fucking Evel Knievel again.

“Yes, I know,” she replied.

After this, there was a tense silence in the car. Eventually, we reached a vehicle ahead of us and Mary Ann had to slow down even more. I forced myself to breathe and tried to relax the tension in my muscles. When we reached the driveway that led to the ranch, I glanced at the clock. 5:56. We were a little late, but we’d be fine. At least, I thought we’d be fine until I saw the condition of the driveway ahead of us.

We had a dirt driveway with mountainous rocks on one side and an irrigation ditch on the other. This did make for a good combination during storms. Parts of the road were icy with hail; others had been washed out by the flooded irrigation ditch. Rocks lay everywhere like landmines. Mary Ann attempted to steer around them, but every so often there’d be an awful scraping sound against the car. We’d now slowed down to a speed of 4 mph, and this was clearly torturing Mary Ann. Then, when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, I saw what lay ahead.

The next part of the driveway had been completely landslided by rocks and mud. The irrigation ditch roared alongside it, now the size of a small river. I gulped. “Oh my,” said Rowling.

It occurred to me that if we were in a truck with 4-wheel drive, we might be able to make it over. But no. We were in a compact luxury vehicle. I kept expecting Mary Ann to stop or something, but she showed no signs of doing so. She just barreled over the shit.

We all sat rigidly in our heated car seats. There was a horrible grinding noise under our feet as rocks scraped against the car’s underbelly. We were rocking back and forth, but still moving. For a moment—crazily—I thought we might just make it. But then a rock the size of a small planet appeared in our path. Mary Ann had no choice but to slam on the brakes.

“Goddamnit!” she snarled. “God-fucking-damnit!”

Putting the car into park, she scrambled out. The rest of us filed suit. My feet sunk down through the slush. Rowling made a small groaning noise beside me. Looking down, I noticed she was wearing flats with ankle socks. Mary Ann, who was wearing combat boots, went up to the small planet and kicked it.

“Goddamn rock! We could’ve made it!”

“Perhaps you should move your car off the road, Mary Ann,” said Tweedy, who was warily surveying her tantrum.

“Why? We’re not going anywhere.”

“Not us, but perhaps someone else. A backhoe, perhaps.”

I wondered how many times someone could say ‘perhaps.’ Mary Ann glared at Tweedy for a few moments, then to my surprise agreed.

The task was divided; Rowling would steer the BMW while the rest of us heaved and pushed in the muck. Inch by inch we managed to move the car back and Rowling steered it to the side of the road.

“We’ve done it!” wheezed poor Tweedy. We had all gotten splattered in the process of moving the car. I was panting and tasted mud in my teeth. Mary Ann looked like she was ready to kill someone.

“Get out, get out!” she screamed to Rowling. “We’re going to try to go around the rock!”

Selena and I shouted in dismay.

“Mary Ann!” I grabbed her arm. “We can’t go around it. You’ll bottom out!”

“I have to start dinner!”

“Doc’s taking care of it.”

“Fuck Doc! He can’t do shit without me. I am head chef here!”

I decided not to mention to Mary Ann that she had trusted Doc with dinner only hours earlier. I looked over at the British people. Rowling was huddled behind the steering wheel and Tweedy was staring at Mary Ann with his mouth hanging open.

“Well, let’s see if we have cell service,” Selena said hastily, flipping her phone open. “Maybe we can call someone to pick us up.”

But Selena didn’t have any bars, nor did Mary Ann, the only other person who had brought her cell phone. A sick feeling of dread crept into my stomach. Then Mary Ann became suddenly and ominously calm.

“Why don’t we all get into the car,” she said very slowly. “We’re all cold and I can sit and think. Ponder my options.”

It was always a bad sign when Mary Ann used words like ‘ponder.’ We all crept towards the car and sat inside. The British people were still staring at Mary Ann like she was a bomb that was about to go off. She had begun talking to herself.

“Let’s see…Doc started the steaks about three hours ago. Or at least I told him to. And he’s boiling the potatoes. And using the swiss chard. And the hors-d’oeuvres…fuck, I didn’t tell him anything about the hors-d’oeuvres!”

“That’s okay,” I said hastily. “There’s some leftover curry dip in the fridge. Maybe he’ll use that.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Mary Ann was beginning to look stressed again. I noticed her knuckles whiten on the steering wheel.

“And the desert….oh Doc, that damned hippy—I didn’t show him how to make the crème brulea!”

“He could bake cookies,” Selena suggested.

“No, he can’t bake cookies. Mel expects crème brûlée, she wants crème brûlée—it’s on the goddamn menu!”

“The menu could be changed.”

“No, the menu can’t be changed!”

Mary Ann stormed out of the BMW in a huff. In the back, J.K. Rowling said hesitantly, “Really, I prefer cookies over crème brûlée, I do.”

In a few minutes, Mary Ann returned to the BMW. She had an idea, she told us in a voice of forced calm. She’d start walking in one direction till she got cell phone service, and Selena would walk in the other. Selena didn’t look pleased at the prospect of sloshing through the hail till she got service, but agreed. I decided to go with her for moral support. We clambered out of the warm BMW together and started down the road.

It only took a few minutes for me to regret accompanying Selena. As a kid from southern Texas, I wasn’t built for these kinds of conditions. My damp sneakers were now soaking wet and my thin jacket offered no protection. For awhile, the only sounds were my teeth chattering and Selena flipping her phone open and closed, checking for bars. Finally, she muttered, “This is idiotic. We could walk for ten miles and still not get service.”

“Mary Ann’s a crazy bitch,” I said.

Selena laughed.

“Actually, you seem really calm, considering,” I told her.

“Crazier shit has happened to me here,” she replied solemnly.

“Like what?”

“Well, one time one of the cooks at a whole batch of shrooms he had found out in the woods. He had such a bad trip that we had to lock him in the English saddle room for two days. He thought the stirrups were trying to strangle him.”

“Didn’t Mel find out?”

“No. Every time she went near the saddle room we told her a horse was colicking. She thought she had bought bad oats.”

“What’d she think happened to the cook?”

“He was sick, we said. The meals—”

“Ughh.”

“Yeah. Leftovers for lunch and dinner. Then, our last cook…”

“Yeah?”

“She wasn’t tripping on shrooms, but she was a drunkard. One night she got hammered, opened the refrigerator, and saw we had put the dressing on the dairy shelf. She knocked it all out onto the floor. We had to clean her mess up in the morning.”

I was silent, suddenly thankful for Mary Ann. She didn’t make us clean up her drunken messes, nor had she given us a reason to lock her in the English saddle room—at least not yet.

Hell, she’d even taken us to the rodeo! And she obviously cared about Doc and dinner service, or else she wouldn’t be throwing such a shit fit about it.

“Hey, what’s that?” Selena asked suddenly, breaking into my thoughts.

“What?”

“Up ahead.”

In this distance, I could see a dark blob on the road. My heart leapt up as my first thought was of a bear. They were all over this area of Wyoming; Selena and I were essentially walking through a forest that happened to have a road in the middle of it.

But as the blob got closer, I saw that it was actually a truck. One of those redneck, 4x4, lifted trucks. It was barreling down the washed-out driveway like it was in a commercial for off-roading.

Instinctively, Selena and I started waving our arms. The truck pulled to a stop and a cowboy stuck his head out the window. A chew was bulging in the side out his mouth.

“What’re you girls doin’ out here?” he asked in surprise.

Selena and I quickly explained our situation. The cowboy’s eyes got wider and wider as we spoke.

“Well, damn!” he said finally. “Well, me and my buddy—” he jerked his thumb as his passenger, another cowboy, “—are headin’ back to our place, but we can give you a lift if you want. The Lazy L&B, you said?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, hop in.”

Selena and I looked at each other. Dim warnings from my mother about getting into vehicles with strange men rang in my ears, but I ignored them. This was an emergency situation. We hurried over to the passenger side.

The truck was a single cab, and the second cowboy scooted over so we could squish in. It was a tight fit. Cowboy #2 was quite large, so I had to put my ass essentially in his lap to make room. This was very awkward, but I consoled myself with the fact that at least I was warm.

Thankfully, it only took the cowboy’s monster truck a few minutes to reach Mary Ann’s BMW. She was pacing by the side of the car like a caged tiger, waving idiotically at the truck, which had already stopped. Cowboy #1 stuck his head out.

“You Mary Ann?”

“Chef Mary Ann, yes. Selena, Jessica, who are these…men?”

Judging by her tone, Mary Ann was biased against rednecks as well as British people. I rolled my eyes. Leave to her to bite the hand that feeds.

“These gentlemen,” I called back, “have agreed to give us a lift to the ranch. So come on!”

“Oh good!” Mary Ann clapped her hands together, her mood changing instantly. “Mark, uh…Mark’s wife, get out!”

Tweedy and Rowling climbed hesitantly out of the BMW. They were staring at the rust-stained monster truck like it was an alien life form.

“I can give all ya’ll a lift, but some of you’ll have to sit in the bed,” Cowboy #1 explained. “There ain’t enough room up here.” Then he spit his chew out the window.

Tweedy glanced at the brown blob lying on the hail in distaste. Then he turned towards his wife.

“Ah, Trisha, would you care to sit in the back or front?”

“It doesn’t really matter,” Trisha/Rowling said in a small voice.

“Nonsense,” Mary Ann barked. “You’ll sit in the front. You’re guests! You’re on vacation!”

She then swung open the passenger door and ordered Selena and me to get out. That was Mary Ann’s hospitality for you. But actually, I was surprised she’d even offered it.

So Mary Ann, me, and Selena clambered into the bed of the truck together. It was steel, which made my ass cold as hell. Plus, disaster scenarios had started playing in my head. They worsened the closer we got to the ranch. I imagined Mel walking into the kitchen (something she rarely did) and seeing Doc working solo. I imagined the steaks burning. The convection oven exploding.

By the time we got to the end of the driveway, I was becoming a nervous wreck. But I took several deep breaths and told myself that I would be a bystander in whatever disaster awaited us at the L&B. Sometimes it paid to be merely a dishwasher.

When we finally reached the ranch, I looked swiftly towards the main lodge, where the dining room and kitchen were located. The lights were all on and nothing appeared to be on fire. I took this as a good sign.

Mary Ann banged on the truck’s rear window and directed the cowboys to pull up behind the kitchen. They stopped and we climbed out. I was shaking the stiffness out of my frozen legs when I noticed Rowling and Tweedy escaping towards the guest cabins at a brisk trot. Neither of them looked back, not even at the sound of the cowboy’s truck screeching off into the sunset. I didn’t blame them. Technically, I could return to my cabin too, but I now felt a comradely tie to both Selena and Mary Ann, borne of the hardship we’d suffered together. So I marched with them up the sidewalk that led to the back door of the kitchen. When we reached the door, we all stopped to steel ourselves.

Mary Ann’s hand shot out suddenly and grabbed my arm. She was staring intensely into my face. I noticed that her pupils were dilated.

“I’ve got a feeling,” she told me slowly, “that it was okay.”

I tried not to lean back. “That what was okay?”

“Dinner service. I’ve got a feeling…that it was okay.”

Selena was standing beside us, flabbergasted. “You mean, all your—” she gestured to Mary Ann, unable to find words, “—was for nothing?”

“All my what?”

I jabbed Selena quickly in the ribs before she could respond. “Just leave it,” I muttered. If Mary Ann was now at peace with whatever lay beyond those kitchen doors, then so was I.

We swung them open and stepped inside. Our martyr Doc was standing by the mixing bowl. He looked up at us. Sweat was dripping down his face, mixing with the coco powder that covered it. Two cabin girls and a wrangler were standing beside him. They were equally covered in foodstuff.

“Dinner,” Doc announced to us, “has been served.”