Picking Up the Pieces Read online

  PICKING UP THE PIECES

  BROKEN SPUR SERIES: BOOK ONE

  Carolina Mac

  Copyright © 2020 by Carolina Mac

  PICKING UP THE PIECES - 1st ed.

  ISBN 978-1-989827-01-7

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  To: My brother.

  Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway.

  ―JOHN WAYNE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Sunday, April 5th.

  Broken Spur Funeral Home. Broken Spur. Texas.

  MY name is Logan McKenna and today I’m burying my father. Figured it was my responsibility being the oldest and the most sensible of the three of us. My two younger brothers, Clayton and Jack, tend to be a little on the lazy and self-indulgent side if left to their own devices for too long a period of time.

  Our mother died years ago, and Daddy raised us up best he could for an old crippled up bull rider. Not many jobs came his way the shape he was in and me and my brothers had to pitch in to make a living off our thousand—starved for water—acres.

  Now Daddy is gone, and it’s up to us—mostly me.

  I checked my look in the bathroom mirror and figured I looked decent. My dark hair was a little long and I didn’t have much of a tan, being only April, but it was the best I could do.

  “I can’t tie my tie proper,” hollered Jack. He was our baby brother at twenty-three and it took a lot of effort keeping him on the straight and narrow. A few close calls with wild girls, too much beer, and lately, the law, and me and Clay clamped down on Jack. We reeled him in and read him the set of McKenna ranch rules.

  He’d been trying hard and sticking close to home the entire time Daddy was fighting his last battle with liver cancer, but me and Clay were worried that his best efforts might not last now that Daddy was no longer with us.

  “I’ll fix it, Jacky boy,” I said, and spun him around in front of the bathroom sink. I stood all six feet of him in front of the mirror and showed him. “Here’s how you do it.”

  “If I had gone to church more, I’d know how to tie my tie,” said Jack in his repentant voice. A voice we’d heard a lot lately.

  “Uh huh. Don’t beat yourself up, Jacky boy. Daddy won’t care if your tie ain’t tied right. He’ll only care that you’re in the front row of the church sitting right in front of his casket.”

  Jack made a face. “Can’t think about it, Logy. Makes me sick to think about Daddy being dead and us trying to run this ranch and make it on our own.”

  “Tomorrow we’ll sit down at the kitchen table and make a budget and a plan, but not today. Today’s for Daddy. All his old buddies from the rodeo circuit will be coming to the funeral and the wake. Daddy was a rodeo legend in his time and there are still a few people around who remember what a great bull rider he was.”

  “Wish I’d seen him when he was winning every event,” said Jack.

  “Yeah, well we were too young to remember much, but Momma told us some good stories.” I retied Jack’s tie, straightened his unruly dark hair with my hand and sent him to wait on the porch. “Clay, you about ready? We have to leave in five minutes to make it to the church on time.”

  I heard Clay’s boots clunking down the hall towards me and I hesitated to look up and see what he was wearing to our father’s funeral.

  Clay was one of those free spirits who did whatever struck him at the moment. Auburn haired and blue-eyed like Momma, Clay was blessed with a stellar singing voice and a gift for playing the guitar. Girls flocked to him like bears to honey and most of the time he never even noticed they were swarming around him.

  Jack and I noticed, but none of them ever came our way, not even as a poor second choice. With the hard road ahead of us trying to make a living off our dried up ranch, we wouldn’t have time to worry about the opposite sex. At least I wouldn’t. I’d learned that hard lesson a long time ago.

  Broken Spur Baptist Church.

  THE white frame church in the middle of town was full to bursting with friends and neighbors of Daddy’s. People loved Kenny McKenna and he would be sorely missed in this dry gulch west Texas town of three hundred people.

  Pastor Rankin met the three of us at the front door of the church and escorted us up the aisle to have a final look at Daddy lying in his coffin. He laid there with a peaceful look on his face, his hands clasped together across his chest and his championship rodeo buckle gleaming under the overhead lights.

  We’d had a long conversation with Mr. Young, the proprietor of the funeral home. He said there was no sense burying Daddy with a perfectly good pair of snakeskin boots on when one of us could make good use of them, but us boys knew Daddy would be shamed being buried without his boots. Mr. Young argued and we argued back.

  I double checked to make sure Daddy was wearing boots and he was.

  Mrs. Sinzheimer played the organ best she could, but her eyesight was going, and she missed a few notes in a couple of the hymns. Clay noticed, him being the music expert in our midst and he commented on it later, out of Mrs. Sinzheimer’s earshot.

  After several old bull riders limped up to the front of the church and said nice things about Daddy—like what a good sport he was—and how he always encouraged the younger bull riders when they broke a bone or two and were out for the season. The Pastor said a prayer and the service was over.

  Pastor Rankin told everybody Daddy wanted to be cremated and not buried in the cold dirt behind the church—it was his last wish and we couldn’t blame him.

  I picked out an urn for the mantle and hoped Clay and Jack liked it. If they didn’t, then they should’ve gone with me and picked it out their own selves.

  AT the end of the service, we all went downstairs to the church basement for lunch. The church ladies had long tables set up covered with white paper tablecloths tacked on with thumb tacks. Little vases full of spring flowers were on every table and folding chairs were lined all around the outside of the room.

  Each table was loaded with a huge array of food—casseroles and sandwiches and salads and meat, and one whole table was nothing but desserts. Every square, cake and cookie you could name and some you couldn’t were on display. Homemade pies of every description were lined up. Some lemon pies had meringue four inches high.

  After everybody had eaten every scrap they could hold, the ladies sent me, Clay and Jacky boy home with scalloped potatoes, ham, three green bean casseroles and four pecan pies. We were set for a day or two at least.

  The Wake.

  Broken Spur, the town, was named after Broken Spur Roadhouse because the roadhouse came first, then the town. Kind of like the chicken and the egg. Daddy always swore to us the egg came first, but we knew it was the chicken.

/>   Originally a stop on the Pony Express trail, the Broken Spur had been a hotel and saloon combination, an overnight stop for weary travelers on the western frontier. Through the years it passed through many hands and several renovations, but it survived and today it was better than ever.

  The Broken Spur Roadhouse was the hub of the town that consisted of one medium sized grocery store, one gas station, two churches, one funeral home, a diner and a barber shop/hair salon combo. A couple of streets of houses and that’s all she wrote. The rest of the residents were ranchers on the outskirts of town like me, Clay and Jack.

  The present owner of the Spur was a feisty red-haired lady named Janey O’Brien. She’d had designs on Daddy since the first day she set foot in town and he seemed to be an admirer of hers as well, but we never did get her for our new Momma.

  Her fondness for Daddy made the roadhouse the logical place to hold Daddy’s wake. Miss Jane had made a poster to that end and tacked it up on the front porch of the roadhouse so everybody in town could see it.

  The whole town would turn out to toast Daddy, except maybe for old Jessup Spinner. He’d never had a kind word for anybody and especially not Daddy. They had a life-long battle over the fence line on the west side of our land. That dispute never would be settled. Not now.

  MISS Jane hugged all three of us when we arrived at the roadhouse at eight o’clock, the time she’d set for Daddy’s wake. “You poor boys must be so sad and lost without Kenny. If there’s anything I can do to help y’all, you call me. I want you to put my number in each one of your cell phones right this minute.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Jack. “But you might be sorry. I might be calling you in the middle of the night to come and get me out of some horrible mess I got myself in.”

  Miss Jane pointed to the stools in front of the bar and told Hank to pour us all a Lone Star. “These three boys are drinking for free tonight, Hank, but only them. I can’t afford to water the rest of the herd.”

  “No, ma’am,” said Hank. “Only Kenny’s boys.” Hank set the drafts in front of us and wiped a tear from his eye. “Sure am gonna miss your old papa sitting at my bar every night.” Hank pointed. “That end stool down there was his stool. I never let anybody else sit on it after seven o’clock because I knew Kenny was coming—every night just like clockwork. This is a sad day for me.” Hank kinda reminded me of Grampa Zeb on the Walton’s reruns.

  “Sad for us too,” I said, and I meant it. We were going to miss Daddy every single day.

  By nine o’clock all the tables in the bar were full and the local band called the Spurs—not too original—but Broken Spur wasn’t noted for birthing too many Einsteins—were setting up on the stage at the far end of the roadhouse.

  When they played the first song after the warm-up, Ricki Thorn asked me to dance. I hadn’t danced with anyone since Linda Loudon and I had broken up a year ago and I wasn’t keen to dance now.

  I left my half-finished draft on the bar, took her hand and walked with her to the dance floor. I wasn’t much of a dancer, but I’d never get any better watching other people. That was something Momma always said.

  The first one was a George Straight song and a bit on the slow side, and I was grateful. I wasn’t ready for anything too taxing. That might come later when I was good and drunk out of my mind. Looking forward to it.

  “Loosen up a bit, Logan,” said Ricki. “I can feel how stiff you are.”

  “Not a good day for me, Ricki, and I’m tense. I admit it. Had to say goodbye to Daddy today.”

  “I’m sorry for y’all,” said Ricki. “If you want some company while y’all are grieving for old Kenny, I’d be pleased if you called me up and invited me out to your ranch.”

  “Nice of you, Ricki. Don’t know how much company we’ll be entertaining in the next little while. Me and the boys gotta come up with a survival plan tomorrow morning. Might take up all of our time just to put groceries on the table.”

  “Don’t y’all have some of old Kenny’s bulls out there in the back pasture?”

  “Sure do.” The song ended and I was keen to take Ricki back to her table, but she was balking, planting her cowgirl boots firmly on the pine and not going in that direction. I was going to have to dance another song with her.

  “You could give lessons on bull riding, or with your past history and talent, Logan McKenna, you could give lessons on being a super star steer roper or a bronc rider. Any number of things that could get the cash rolling in for y’all.”

  “Uh huh.”

  The band was trying to play a Toby Keith song. One of the sad ones and it was bringing a tear to my eye. “I think I’ll go back to the bar, finish my beer and think on what you said, Ricki. A lot of good ideas in your blonde head.”

  She smiled and I wished we had a dentist in Broken Spur.

  When I got back to the bar, a lot of Daddy’s friends were sending beers over to me, Clay and Jacky boy. We would have to work hard to get them all drank down by closing time.

  Clay was ahead of me on his beer consumption and announced that he was going to sing with the band.

  “Okay, you go ahead, kiddo. What are you going to sing?”

  “Don’t know yet. I’ll have to borrow a guitar.”

  “I’m gonna move closer”, I said, and Jacky boy nodded and picked up his glass.

  We wandered through the full tables trying to find a spot on the dancefloor where we could see Clayton on the stage. Out of the blue a dark-haired lady I’d never seen before beckoned me over.

  “Why don’t you sit here with me, Logan?”

  “Do I know you, ma’am?”

  “Don’t know how you could. I only arrived in Broken Spur today. I came in for a room and a bite of supper and didn’t know a thing about the passing of your father. So sorry about your loss.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. You got a name?”

  “I do. It’s Carson.”

  “Nice to meet you, Miss Carson. And I thank you for letting me and Jacky boy sit at your table.”

  “I’m glad of the company. I don’t know many people in Broken Spur.”

  “Not many to know,” said Jack and I knew he liked Carson right off—like he did most of the female species.

  “Why would you be in Broken Spur anyway?” I asked thinking it was none of my business.

  “On my way somewhere else, but my car stalled a couple of times on the highway and I thought I’d get it checked out before I went any farther.”

  “Where you headed, Miss Carson?” I asked, “Or is it none of my business?”

  “I have a job offer in El Paso, if I choose to take it.”

  “What do you do exactly?” asked Jacky boy.

  “I take businesses that are going nowhere and get them up and running.”

  I raised an eyebrow thinking we could use her on the McKenna ranch, but we didn’t even have a business—at least not yet. “What about people who need a business but don’t know what they’re doing or how to get a business off the ground?”

  “Are you referring to yourself, Logan?”

  “Could be. More of a hypothetical question.”

  “Just so happens I have a day to spare before I have to leave for El Paso. I could meet with y’all tomorrow and see what kind of problems y’all are having.”

  Clay started singing a Jamie Johnson song and I turned my head to listen to him. “That’s my brother.”

  “Oh, he’s good,” said Carson. “Very good. I love that song.”

  I smiled and wondered what she’d look like in the daylight. It was dark here in the roadhouse and she could look like a mad dog and I wouldn’t even know it.

  The crowd hooted when Clay finished his first song and hollered for another one. Jacky hopped up and asked Miss Carson to dance and away they went spinning onto the dance floor. I sat alone finishing my beer and wondering about what she’d said about meeting with us and getting us going.

  Could she do that? Could anybody?

  Miss Jane came around th
e corner from the bar and brought me another draft. She sat down and listened to the end of Clay’s second song. “He’s so good. I wish he’d cut a demo and take it to Nashville or into Austin. A lot of producers in Austin now that it’s such a mecca for talent.”

  “I don’t know nothing about that, Miss Jane. But I do think Clay has a musical gift.”

  “He does, Logan. He definitely does. Kenny was so proud of him, just like he was proud of all you boys.” Miss Jane broke down and began to sob. “I loved your father and I’m going to miss him so much.”

  The night wound down and we stayed until closing time. Nothing else for us to do anyways except go home and sleep in our empty house. Empty without Daddy.

  Miss Carson had gone upstairs to her room and left me with one of her cards. The lighting in the roadhouse wasn’t the best for reading business cards, so I stuck it in my pocket and left it for the morning.

  A lot of things were best left until the morning. Me and Clay and Jacky boy were all drunk and it was all I could do to get us into the truck and drive the few miles to the McKenna Ranch.

  Once we were home, my brothers were on their own to get into the house and find their beds. I staggered into the bathroom, did my business, then flopped face down on my bed in my room and I was out.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Monday, April 6th.

  The Plan.

  AT dawn I staggered to the barn to start the chores and I seemed to be totally alone. Neither one of my brothers had bothered to get out of bed to help me. We’d have words on this subject later, but for now, I had to get the horses fed before I puked. Too much free beer.

  I was breaking apart the last bale of hay when Clay showed up to help me. “Sorry, Logy. I was out cold. Too much free beer, I’m blaming it on. I’ll do all the chores tonight to make it up to you and you can have a break.”