Page 26 of Brett and Rowdy
He stopped for a second, tilted his head, utterly confused. “For what? You’re the one who made the thing.”
“Yeah, I am, but I gotta tell you. That response is why I make the things.” There was a sense of awe in the timbre of that drawl. “And I rarely get to see the really good reactions in person. You rock.”
“No?I can’t believe that. It’s so…” He shrugged again, his hands moving.
“True story.”
He snorted. “Mira, look, I want to see the rest before the beer.”
“All right, man. Need a hand up?” Brett touched his shoulder, and he jumped, because the touch was different somehow. Not hesitant or impersonal.
“Thanks, I appreciate it.” He let Brett pull him to his feet, and he grabbed his cane so they could go outside. The dogs came to see what they were up to, milling around their legs, but nobody tripped him up, which was great.
Brett took him out to the backyard, the humidity slapping him in the face, and he noticed that there was neatly clipped grass under his feet. More gravel crunched, then, as they got on a path out toward the back forty. Soon enough, they were stepping inside Brett’s workshop, and Rowdy smelled more of that deep, metallic fire smell, along with all of the other things that he guessed went with metalworking. Metal, oil, and wood shavings, and the floor under his feet was some kind of something hard. He wasn’t sure. Surely not tile. If Brett dropped a big piece of metal on tile, then it would break. But it wasn’t wood.
“So tell me what I’m supposed to be seeing here,” Rowdy said.
“Well, as you come in the door, directly across the room is my big workbench. That’s where I put things together, getting them ready to weld or to mount, and where I make my plans. I stackanything that I’m about to forge together, that kind of stuff. And then around the room from right to left, there’s drill presses and grinders and whole bunches of other tools.” Brett took him to the workbench so he could feel the scarred wood.
“Oh, feel that. Was that your grandpa’s?”
“Yeah. It’s older than that too. Maybe a hundred years old or so.”
“I like that kind of hand-me-down,” Rowdy murmured, tracing a scar in the surface.
“Me too. If we go through the little side door next to my workbench, we go out to the forge and the welding area, but there’s a couple of pieces in here I wanted to show you first. Then we’ll go out there to where I’ve got some of the bigger stuff.” Brett sounded so proud, and Rowdy got that. He did.
When he was giving somebody a tour of the ranch and his pop was driving the golf cart around or whatever. He just really loved to show off his passion, and he thought Brett was the same way.
“Cool. That’s neat, man. Can I feel some of the tools?”
“Absolutely. Come on; we’ll start with the big drill press. I have smaller ones too, but this one will really put a hurt on some metal bits.” Brett led him over to the right and took him maybe half the distance of the room, he thought.
His boots rang on the floor as they walked, and he thought it might be concrete. Then Brett took his hand and put it on the casing of a big machine.
“See this is a motor casing, and then if you move your hand forward, toward yourself I suppose, so maybe backward, you’ll feel the controls. It’s not plugged in right now, so you don’t have to worry about turning it on. And then there’s the head where the drill bit sits. Just be careful because the bit that’s in it right now is really sharp on the end.”
“Got it.” He explored, letting his fingers find all the things just like he had with the coffee table and the workbench. They looked at several of the other tools the same way before Brett took him out to the forge, which smelled completely different. It smelled like charcoal and like horseshoes. He just didn’t know how else to say it. It was a smell he understood, because he knew farriers, but this was also Brett’s workshop, so it was all new.
The smaller pieces Brett had let him look at in the shop were really cool. There had been a fish made out of license plates, and there had been some sort of twisting spiral that he thought was going to end up being one of those neat wind-driven whirligigs, but it was the stuff out in the welding floor that really fascinated his fingers and his heart. Wild shapes that twisted and curled and crawled up each other like fire maybe or like the best kind of storm. It was just stunning how Brett put things together, and Rowdy couldn’t believe how he had this incredibly visceral reaction to it. He wanted to just keep touching it forever, but at the same time, somehow it turned him on and made him want to touch Brett.
He could hear Brett shifting from foot to foot, feel the pressure of the man’s arm and shoulder next to him, that heat from Brett’s body, and he smiled, looking into what he thought was Brett’s face.
“What do you think?” Brett asked after he finished touching the largest piece, which he thought was based on water, but he had a feeling Brett was gonna make him ask if he wanted to know.
“I think they’re amazing, man,” he said. “I can’t stop touching them.”
“What’s so cool about them? I’m not being needy, am I?” Brett’s laughter made him join in.
“No. They’re cool because they’re not like anything I’ve ever touched before. They’re totally new, and these days, that’ssomething completely odd for me. Like it blows my mind, actually. So good job.” He would give credit where it was due. Brett was an artist, like a true, amazing artist, full of this phenomenal creativity.
“Thanks.” He could hear the deep smile in Brett’s voice. “It’s really neat to hear that. I… sometimes I forget that people like what I do. I get a little down on myself.”
“That’s because you’re too damn serious, man.” He reached down for Brett’s hand, letting his fingers run down Brett’s arm until he found it. “You need to take more joy in life.”
“I think I’m fixing to figure out how to do that again a little bit.”
Rowdy felt his grin widen into something a little more naughty. Maybe a lot more naughty. “Yeah? I could get behind that.”
