Nothing but Trouble_ A Kevin Kerney Novel - Michael Mcgarrity [1]
He remembered Johnny waiting for him outside the church, standing next to a new truck with the initials JJ painted on the doors above a rider on a bucking bronc. Dressed in alligator cowboy boots, black pressed jeans, a starched long-sleeve white Western-cut shirt, and a gold-and-silver championship rodeo buckle, he’d flashed Kerney a smile, led him away from the truck where his lady friend waited, and offered his condolences.
“It’s a damn shame,” Johnny said with a shake of his head. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Eventually, I suppose,” Kerney replied.
“But not yet,” Johnny said.
“Not yet.”
They caught up with each other. Johnny had been rodeoing since graduating from high school and had become a top-ten saddle bronc rider, while Kerney had finished his college degree and gone off to Vietnam as an infantry second lieutenant. Johnny’s parents, Joe and Bessie, who owned a big spread on the Jornada, a high desert valley straddled by mountains in south-central New Mexico where Kerney had been raised, had sold out and bought another ranch in the Bootheel of southwestern New Mexico. Joe had left his job as the president of a local bank in Truth or Consequences to take over a savings and loan in Deming.
Still in shock over the loss of his parents, Kerney didn’t have much to say, but he promised to stay in touch with Johnny once things settled down. Johnny gave him a phone number where he could be reached and left with the nameless woman.
It had been typical of Johnny not to introduce his lady friend. He had a catch-and-release attitude toward woman.
Kerney never followed up. His friendship with Johnny had ended years before. At the age of sixteen Kerney had hired out as a summer hand on the Jordan ranch. On his first day at work he’d been sent with Johnny to repair a cattle trap in preparation for the fall roundup. The job consisted of replacing broken fence posts and stringing new wire.
By noon they’d almost finished the chore, when they ran out of steel replacement posts. Johnny took the truck to get more from a ranch supply store in Truth or Consequences, while Kerney stayed behind to string and splice wire. Four hours later Kerney was still waiting for Johnny’s return when the ranch manager, Shorty Powell, had showed up.
“Is this as far as you’ve got?” Shorty asked, surveying the unfinished trap.
“We ran out of posts,” Kerney replied. “Johnny went to get more.” He didn’t say anything about Johnny leaving him stranded in the hot desert sun for four hours with no water, no shade, on foot, and ten miles from the ranch headquarters. He didn’t tell Shorty that while he’d waited for Johnny he’d rebuilt and rehung the gate to the trap by himself, using the old wooden fence posts.
“This job should have been finished today,” Shorty said as he grabbed the mike to the CB radio in his truck and called for Johnny. “Where are you?” he asked when Johnny replied.
“Just leaving the store with the posts.”
“I want you and Kevin out at the trap first thing in the morning to finish up. I’ll bring Kevin back to the ranch.”
At the ranch Johnny had not yet arrived. Shorty killed the engine and gave Kerney a long, appraising look. “That wasn’t a full day’s job I sent you boys out to do. What took so long?”
“We had a lot of wire to splice and the ground was pretty hard,” Kerney replied, so parched he could barely speak. “Pounding those posts in took a while.”
Shorty grunted. “It’s your first day on the job, so I’ll give you some slack. But if you’re going to work for me this summer, I expect you to put your back into it.”
“Yes, sir,” Kerney said.
The next morning, as they finished up at the trap, Johnny told Kerney how he’d stopped by his girlfriend’s house in town on the way to the store and had gotten “distracted.” He never once apologized for leaving Kerney in the lurch, nor