Dawn Comes Early by Margaret Brownley

Author:Margaret Brownley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson Inc.
Published: 2012-01-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

When Luke opened for business that morning, Uncle Sam was waiting outside the shop. Homer greeted Luke’s uncle with wagging tail.

“Hello, boy.” Uncle Sam leaned sideways to pet the dog so as not to bend his bad back.

Luke eyed him with more than a little concern. Not only was it unusual for Uncle Sam to drive into town this early since his retirement, his face looked drawn as if he’d not been sleeping well.

Luke thought the world of the man. Everything Luke knew about the blacksmithing trade he learned from his uncle. It was a bittersweet day when Uncle Sam turned over the business to him. Said he wanted to try his hand at wood carving, but Luke knew his uncle simply couldn’t adjust to the changing times. He considered ready-made tools, door hinges, and other household necessities an affront to his blacksmithing skills, and had even gone so far as to ban mail-order catalogs from his household.

“What brings you here so early?” Luke asked. “Is Aunt Bessie all right?”

Uncle Sam straightened. “Depends what you mean by all right.” He pointed to the mug in Luke’s hand. “You don’t happen to have any more Arbuckle’s, do you?”

“Upstairs. I’ll get you some.”

Luke returned from his upstairs dwelling a few moments later with a steaming cup of coffee. Uncle Sam had his hand on the anvil.

“I remember the day I found this meteor,” he said. “A couple nights earlier we saw this light streak across the sky and some of us boys decided to hunt for it. It took me three days but I found it. You ain’t gonna find a better anvil than this, not anywhere.”

Luke handed his uncle the cup of the steaming brew and listened patiently to the story that had been told perhaps a hundred, two hundred times through the years. He knew his uncle would eventually get around to telling him the real reason for his early morning visit and he was willing to wait. It was the least he could do for the man who had treated him more like a son than a nephew and had even given him his name.

Uncle Sam blew on the hot coffee and took a sip. “Just what I needed,” he said. He glanced at the broken handle of a water pump. “They don’t make things like they used to, do they?”

“’Fraid not.”

His uncle studied the miniature windmill centered on Luke’s workbench. “How’s it coming along?” Luke and his uncle had been discussing a new design for windmills.

“I still can’t figure out how to make it flexible enough to lower to the ground, and strong enough to hold up to the wind.”

“Hmm.” His uncle glanced around the shop. He offered no thoughts on how to get around the wind problem, which further convinced Luke something was not right.

“Do you know of anyone other than a blacksmith who works with the four elements—fire, air, earth, and water?”

“I don’t know. Glassblowers maybe?” Luke said. Where was his uncle heading with this?

Abruptly Uncle Sam got to the point.

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