Huckleberry Lake by Catherine Anderson

Author:Catherine Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-12-30T16:00:00+00:00

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After finishing the paddocks, Erin had just enough time to grab a shower and talk with Uncle Slade before she walked over to the bunkhouse. Her back and butt were killing her, but she pasted on a smile as she entered the building and then promptly forgot her aches and pains. She’d never seen four men milling around in a kitchen. It was apparently Wyatt’s night to cook, because he stood at the stove while the other men repeatedly bumped into each other trying to unload the dishwasher.

“That dad-blasted machine don’t work!” Tex complained. “This pot ain’t clean!”

“That’s because it wasn’t scrubbed out before it was put in the rack,” Kennedy retorted. “You’re the only one who doesn’t prewash, so it’s probably your fault.”

“I’ll be damned,” Tex blustered. “Don’t make no sense at all to wash dishes twice. Like I don’t got better things to do?”

“Now you have to wash it twice anyway,” Kennedy pointed out.

“It’ll be snowin’ in hell when you see me washin’ anything twice! It’s sterile. You told me that’s why we have to use that newfangled contraption, cuz it gets rid of all the germs.”

“I don’t want to eat dried-up old food!” Kennedy protested. “That pot is nasty. You have to wash it.”

“You been sniffin’ after that girl so much that you ain’t been here for supper half the time, anyhow!”

Tex held the pot as if he were thinking about bonking Kennedy over the head with it, and Erin began to feel nervous. She glanced at Wyatt, wondering why he didn’t intervene before an actual fight erupted. He seemed unconcerned about the commotion. Then she remembered he couldn’t hear, and the combatants were behind him. No wonder he always seemed so calm and unruffled. He missed out on a lot of the unpleasant stuff.

Erin stepped forward. “I’ll wash the pot.”

For a moment, she half expected Tex to bonk her. “Ain’t nobody gonna wash this here pot twice!” he bellowed. “It’s nothin’ but dad-blamed foolishness to go washin’ stuff twice when we know it’s sterile.”

Thinking quickly, Erin said, “Sterile or not, that is organic matter in the pot, and there’s nothing to say it won’t become contaminated sitting on a shelf. Have you ever had food poisoning?”

He lifted the lower plate of his dentures with his tongue and then sucked it back down over his gums, making a clicking noise. “Yes, missy, I have. You don’t eat buckboard food fer over fifty years without gettin’ the heaves and shits a few times.”

“Do you want to get food poisoning again?” Erin asked.

“No, I sure don’t.”

She reached out and wrested the pot handle from his gnarly hand. “In that case, I’ll wash it, and this quarrel will be over.”

“We ain’t quarrelin’,” he protested. “We’re just discussin’.”

Kennedy slipped past Erin to grab more plates from the dishwasher. As he turned to put them in a cupboard, he waggled his golden eyebrows at Erin. “Welcome to suppertime at the O.K. Corral.”

Erin hid a smile as she stepped over to the double-wide sink to scrub the pot.

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