His Reluctant Cowboy--A Gay Cowboy Romance by A.M. Arthur

Author:A.M. Arthur
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Carina Press
Published: 2022-08-10T17:00:30+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Elmer took full advantage of the new freedom of his wheelchair, despite the chillier weather of late October, and Josiah loved seeing the elderly man come alive in the sunshine. After physical therapy, both morning and afternoon, Josiah allowed Elmer to spend an hour in his workshop. Mostly Elmer told Josiah where to move this or that, or he explained how a particular tool worked, because he wasn’t strong enough yet to use the tools himself. Elmer grumped a lot about it, but every time Josiah reminded him that pushing too hard could set him back, Elmer gave in.

They did a bit of cleaning, too. Josiah hauled a big plastic trash barrel out of a stall, shoved a sturdy garbage bag into it, and set it up by Elmer wherever he was working for bits of trash as he found them. Scraps he’d saved for an idea, but that maybe, now that he’d had one health scare, he might not actually get to use as planned. Scraps that were no good to anyone except his imagination.

Actual trash went into the bin, too, like water-damaged car magazines, torn boxes of nails that could be consolidated into a glass jar with others of the same size, and plastic baggies with contents long melted or disintegrated due to air exposure. The place slowly decluttered on the surface, but there was a lot of work yet left to do for it to be anywhere close to organized—at least in Josiah’s mind. Elmer seemed to know exactly where everything was supposed to go in the chaos.

They talked about the booth Elmer would set up for Saturday’s picnic. The Baptist church provided a single folding table per person/company who wanted to set up and talk about their products. The other four churches would set up with tracts to talk about their particular religions—not that everyone in Weston hadn’t already chosen one or none at that point—as well as places like hunting clubs or the Loyal Order of Whatever type of places. Probably a Boy Scouts table. Woods Ranch, according to Michael, would have information on their organic beef, plus a penned-in young bull from their spring group of calves for kids to pet.

Michael had reserved a table for Elmer and promised to print out some flyers with information on welding, metal art, and recycling to hand out. For as miles apart as Michael and Elmer had seemed on Josiah’s first day, the pair had come together more in the last month-plus, and he loved to see it—except on the rare occasion they dipped into certain parts of the past. The one part they always avoided around him was Michael’s mother.

Josiah knew very little about Carol Pearce, other than she’d died when Michael was in high school. Her and Elmer’s wedding photo still adorned the living room’s mantel, plus a picture of her holding an infant Michael that Elmer had once requested Josiah bring down from his bedroom, but those were the only obvious traces of the woman.

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