A Pair of Second Chances (Ben Jensen Series Book 1)
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Authors: Brian Gore
A Pair of Second Chances
B.K. Gore
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are the product of the imagination of a fevered brain. They are used fictitiously and are not to be taken or construed as reality. Any resemblance to actual events, incidents, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is tee totally, coincidental.
Published by B.K. Gore
Copyright 2011 B.K. Gore
License Notes
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Table of Contents
A Pair of Second Chances
The rough, staccato, snoring rattled through the dilapidated, one room cabin, at times choking to a halt for so long a time, you’d get the idea he’d died in his sleep.
The cowboy was sprawled across the bunk on his back. His left foot, toe poking through a hole in his dirty sock, lay atop the tattered blanket rumpled up at the foot of the bunk. His right foot, still holding its boot, sat on the floor. An empty whiskey bottle lay discarded on its side, inches from the fingertips of the hand it had fallen out of. The cowboy's arm, dangled off the bunk from the drunken body that carried it around. His grizzled face sported three days of scraggly beard.
The grubby, not young, cowboy was still laying abed, mumbling drunkenly, as the rising sun sent its first beams through the pane of glass in the window… a pane as grubby as the rest of the cabin.
“Shoot! God Damn it! SHOOT!” His sudden shout, cut off the mumbling and lifted the old fella off his sheets. With a snorting, choking gasp, the man woke with a start, his eyes staring, panic stricken wide, at the ceiling…
For a second he held his breath, until recognition of his surroundings crawled through the drunken fog in his brain. He closed his eyes… and slowly his body, arched away from the dirty sheets, relaxed, the held breath, slowly sliding out of his lungs… ending with a shudder… and almost… the hint of a sob.
Rolling over on his side the cowboy pushed himself upright on his bunk with his right hand. The room reeled around him as he rubbed his face with his left and leaned over to pick up the empty bottle for a ‘morning eye-opener’.
“Shit! Empty.” as he tossed the bottle aside to roll across the floor of the small room, and stop at the log wall.
After pulling back on the one boot he’d managed to dislodge, and gaining a firm grip on the corner of the footboard of the rusty, old, iron bed, he hauled himself to unsteady feet and shuffled across the room to the woodstove in the corner…
Opening the iron door he threw in a couple chunks of stove wood, on top of a few crumpled pages from a month old Billings Gazette, and lit it with a small bic lighter from his pocket.
He cranked the handle on the old fashioned pump bolted down beside the sink that was set into a log slab, varnished to serve as a kitchen counter. After he'd pumped water into the battered, blackened, once-enameled, coffee pot… and thrown in a handful of coffee, he banged it back onto the equally battered woodstove.
While the water heated, he rustled through one of the produce boxes, nailed to the wall for cabinets, and found a pint Old Crow bottle with one swallow left… which quickly disappeared.
The amber elixir caused an involuntary smacking of his lips, and brought a faint smile to his weathered face. Eye-opener now complete, he set about frying up some bacon and eggs on the battered old woodstove.
As the food sizzled in the pan he reached over and flicked the switch on the little, battery powered CD player his daughter had given him, the last time she tried to talk him into leaving the rawhide remnants of his ranch. Soon, the soothing voices of David Carradine and Tom Selleck, singing Cowboy Lullaby, from his favorite Monte Walsh soundtrack CD, were serenading him, amidst the aroma of frying bacon, stale whiskey, and dirty socks…
His faint smile widened into a grin… He was home… and all was right with the world.
After the breakfast dishes were scraped and cleaned, as much as anything in that cabin ever got cleaned, the cowboy clapped his stained, once silver belly felt hat on his head to walk out to the small, ramshackle barn to do morning chores…
Only a couple saddle horses were kept on his ‘home’ place. The rest, something better than two dozen head, mostly mares, not counting their colts, were left out on grass. Made little sense to him to feed ‘em; “Not when there’s a whole mountain of grass they’ll never get to. Hell, I’ll never get to puttin’ a saddle on most of ‘em anyway” he’d say with a grin, to anyone that asked.
With the two horses he kept up close fed, he climbed into the battered green Ford pickup, fired up the near ancient motor, and rolled out of the yard, headed for town.
“Booze, Bolts, Beans an’ Bankers A.H.!” he called out the window, to the big, non-descript, faintly shepherd looking mutt lying on the porch of the cabin. “I’ll be back when I get here. Anybody tries to steal any of these treasures… you help ‘em load up!”
The engine coughed when he mashed down on the accelerator, spewed a cloud of blue smoke and spun the tires. With rocks and gravel flying, the man fishtailed that old truck down the ranch road, five miles to the graded county road. It was another four miles east, to hwy 78.
From there, he drove 15 miles into the town of Columbus, Montana. Not a big place, but it still contained every thing he needed. The first stop was at the liquor store. First building on the south as he entered town, he picked up a couple of pints of Old Crow and three fifths of Johnny Walker. Of course, when he got back to the truck an obligatory ‘test’ was required to make sure the liquor was indeed the stuff advertised on the label. Two strong pulls verified its authenticity. Yes sir! Gen-yoo-ine, unadulterated, high grade, bust head! The pints of Old Crow, he accepted at face value. Next on his routine, came the grocery store for a sack of dry beans, flour, eggs, sugar, coffee, bacon, four large steaks and a couple sacks of ice.
“Ben? Don’t you have any cows left on that rat hole of a ranch? Why in hell is a cowman buyin’ beef?” the middle aged cashier wanted to know.
“Sure Emma… I got cows… and a few steers too… but since the power company cut the juice to the place… It’s kind of hard to keep a freezer runnin’.” Ben Jensen grinned back at her. “I can’t eat it fast enough to keep it from spoilin’… Maybe you should come on out… we can ‘work up an appetite’… and then you can help me eat one of those cows?” he teased the cashier.
“Yeah, right, I’m sure my husband wouldn’t mind me takin’ up with a fine western gentleman like yourself! And why would they turn off the power to such a respectable gentleman like you anyway?” Emma asked as she totaled up his groceries on her register.
“Well girl… the man said something about; they don’t get paid and the power gets shut off… I told him they had oughta give the fella who thought up that idea a raise. I’d like a deal like that myself. He looked kind of confused and wanted to know, what the hell I was talkin’ about! So I told him… Well sir! I work all year, and then get to pay the bank for the privilege!”
Emma allowed with a hearty laugh, as how she and hers had “Been there, done that… and that’s why we both work in town now.” and sent Ben on his way with a more solemn; “Ben? You take care of yourself, you hear?”
“Sure thing Emma… as soon as I leave another pound of flesh over to the bank… seems like they’re wantin’ to get paid again!” he called back to her as he went out the door.
That old green truck smoked and belched its way, halfway down the block to the next stop at the NAPA parts house.
Jensen hollered as he pushed through the glass door; “Abernathy! You rusty Ol’ pervert! Get off your old lady an’ get out here to help a man damn you!”
Bob Abernathy and Carol his wife, blushing and pushing at her hair with her hands came out of the office, behind the counter.
“Benjamin Jensen! You’re awful!” she blushed.
“Ha Ha! Caught you again, didn’t I?” Ben laughed. “Six kids ain’t enough for you two? What are you tryin’ to do, double the population of Montana all by yourselves?”
“Hell no” Bob retorted. “I don’t have to pay overtime to family. I figure to staff this whole store, and maybe one up in Billings with my home bred line of Abernathy Drones” he continued with a laugh. “What are you needing today Ben?”
“I’ll tell you Bob, that ol’ wore out Ford is near done in… and I ain’t got the dinero to rebuild the motor just now… ‘sides… that would triple the value of the truck! You got anything that a fella could just dump in the damn thing to help seal up the rings, so I could maybe squeeze a few more miles out of her?”
“I do… its… just… over… here…” Abernathy replied as he stretched to reach for a can, up on a high shelf that tested his altitude challenged frame.
“You know Bob” Ben teased; “Maybe you an’ Carol should look into artificial insemination.”
“Huh? What the hell are you talkin’ about? A.I.? For what? I’ve never had any sort of a problem” the NAPA man sputtered.
“Well, I was just thinkin’, seeing you had to stretch so hard to reach that can… If you went for A.I.; You could get semen from some ol’ bull that was, say, six foot tall or so… and breed them Drones of yours to be able to reach the shelves!” Ben explained.
“Aw you crazy bastard! You had me goin’!” Abernathy turned and called back into the office; “Carol! Come back out here an’ listen to what this rancher thinks about our ‘Breeding Program’ ”
“I will not! I heard it all from right here! You tell that pervert to go play with his cows!” Carol called to them both from her desk in the office.