Page 18 of Roads Behind Us
I kind of… liked it?
Chapter Six
Bax
“The cursed wheelbarrow that started it all,” Rye said with a grin.
The metal pushcart I’d turned to grab when Red Pepper the bull tried to maim me waited by the base of the porch stairs, and Rye helped me down them.
“Hold on,” he said, and he left me teetering on my crutches. He jumped the stairs and grabbed a pillow from the wooden chair I used to rock Athena in, then jumped back down and tossed the hot-pink puff into the wheelbarrow. “A cushion for the king’s tender ass.”
“Ha. Funny,” I said, but it wasn’t the worst idea in the world. I sat on it and let my good leg hang over the side. My cast kept my right leg straight out in front of me, and I rested the crutches over my thighs.
I heard Rye grunting behind me as he began to push. “Damn, man. Lay off the pound cake, will ya?”
“Ha! You know we’ve got tractors, right? You could’ve picked me up in the skiddie, and by the way, you weigh more than I do.”
“There’s no way you’re ridin’ in my brand-new skid steer. You’re bad luck. And now you got them rods and pins in your leg. They probably add twenty pounds. Anyway, I’m just glad you decided to get out of the house. A little sun on your face ain’t a bad thing.”
“Please,” I said. “You’re taller, and you got at least ten percent more muscle mass than me, at the very least.”
“Whatever. You’re just jealous ’cause I’m more handsome than you.”
“You’re delusional,” I said, laughing with my best friend who was as much a brother to me as Brand.
He pushed me through a dip in the dirt on the path to the barn that he easily could’ve avoided. “Now, I know that’s not true. Aubrey tells me I’m the hottest guy on the planet, and she’s very knowledgeable. She reads lots of books.”
I snorted. “Sure she says that, when she wants somethin’ from you.”
“Fine by me,” Rye said, “’cause what she wants is my hard c?—”
Throwing my hand up in the air, I yelped, “Stop! I got no need to hear about your red rooster.”
“Your loss. My red rooster can cock her doodle doo somethin’ fierce. Hey, so how you feelin’?”
“Yeah, I’m… okay.”
“How’s the pain?”
I sighed. “Sucks. But it’s better than it was right after surgery. Now it’s more about aches and pains. It’s so damn frustratin’. I’m sittin’ around, watchin’ the world go by without me. You know me. I like to stay busy.”
“Have you finished that picture I saw you workin’ on the other day?”
Every pebble he rolled the cart over made me clench my jaw in pain. “Naw, man, that’s just sketches and scratches.”
“Well, you oughta make it more than that. Spend some time on it. Let your creativity out. What else you got to do?”
He had a point.
“Well apparently, today I need to make some phone calls. Who am I callin’?”
“I need you to put in an order with Bob at the feed store, and it’d be great if you could call the vet and hash out the herd health-check appointments and the immunization schedule for the next year, and if we wanna go organic, we gotta start talkin’ about probiotics. Yola’s expectin’ our call. We’ve already talked about it, but I’ve been waitin’ to get anything down in their books till the new stock got here, so we’d have a better idea about numbers.”
“Done. That’s it?”
“I mean, I’ve got a whole list of shit that needs doin’, but just tackle what you feel up to. Don’t push it.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s not like I broke every bone in my body. I can make calls or do whatever else as long as I can sit while I do it.”
