Wiggs, Susan - Lakeshore 4 by Snowfall at Willow Lake

Author:Snowfall at Willow Lake [Lake, Snowfall at Willow]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-02-09T16:47:28.578000+00:00

“Sometimes,” said Noah. “Girl down the road, name ofChelsea , helps out in the clinic three days a week, but horse manure is kind of an everyday event.”

“Wonder why,” Bo muttered, pushing away from the wall.

“It's not so bad,” Noah pointed out. “Back when my family had the dairy, I was dealing with cow manure, which was a lot nastier and there was a lot more of it.” With practiced routine, he scooped feed from the bin, filling four pails.

“Take the bucket to that one, will you?” He handed Bo a galvanized pail of feed deeply scented with molasses.

Grumbling, Bo went to tend to the big roan quarter horse. Friendly as a Labrador retriever, it sidled right up to him. “Jesus, he's stampeding me,” .80 said, nearly spilling the bucket as he plastered himself against the side of the stall.

“Nah, he's just glad to see you,” Noah called, feedingAlice in the next stall. “Relax, buddy. I thought guys fromTexas were all cowboys who liked horses.”

‘That's what everybody who's not fromTexas thinks. Closest I ever got to a horse growing up was watching old Bonanza reruns on a TV I stole.”

“Hang on a second while I take out my violin.” Noah pantomimed drawing a bow dramatically across the strings.

“I’m just saying.” Bo finished emptying his bucket and moved back as the horse went to the trough.

Noah knew Bo hated pity. He would rather be made fun of than pitied for the way he'd grown up, raised by his older brother. The Crutcher boys had lived in a trailer park inEast Houston , with a yard that backed up to a ship channel so polluted with petroleum products that it regularly caught on fire.

“Anyway,” Bo continued, “you're the one shovelling stalls while I’m fixing to head down toFlorida to work on my tan.”

Noah reeled in the hose and put up the equipment.

“Okay, we're done here.”

“Finally,” Bo said. “Remind me next time to drop by after chores, not before.”

“You sure complain a lot,” Noah said as they crossed the compound, the twilight throwing long shadows across the snow-covered yard.

“I do, don’t I, Tom Sawyer?” Sometimes Bo called him Tom Sawyer, because he was convinced that Noah's idyllic small-town boyhood was the kind of thing that only happened in fiction. Bo himself was more of a Huck Finn, unattached and rambling wherever he pleased. Self-educated, Bo had read more books than anyone Noah had ever met, and loved to sprinkle his conversation with both literary references and obscenities. “I reckon,” he went on, “it's because I haven’t been laid in a while. Tends to get a guy down, feeling sorry for himself. I reckon you know that.”

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