Page 1 of Shep
1
SHEP
“Hey, Pops. What’s up?”
I answered my father’s call as I was driving back to the shop with a tow. The diesel engine of the tow truck puttered smoother than the ruts in the dirt road.
The car I was pulling had skidded into a ditch the night before, probably going too fast for the early season snowfall. As sheriff, my brother Colt had called me about the abandoned car, so it was the first thing I was tackling today. It hadn’t been hard to hook it up and pull it from the ditch. Whoever the hell it belonged to would come and get it at my shop, pay thetowing fee and hopefully have the axle damage caused by the slide into the ditch fixed by me.
The snow had stopped falling before dawn. Only about six inches coated the ground, and the main streets had already been hit by Abe and his snowplow. The tall grasses still poked from the fresh blanket of white on both sides of the county road. It’d already snowed several times this season, but November was when the temperatures dropped and stayed low for the rest of the winter. This storm was probably gonna be the base for what was to come.
Still, the sun was bright and I had to cut it by wearing sunglasses.
“I had coffee with my friend Hank,” Pops said. “He works at the community college in Barnes.”
“I remember. Mechanic program.”
“That’s right. He’s got a kid who needs a mechanic’s job,” he continued. “I thought since Marv didn’t work out–”
I sighed. “Yeah, Marv definitely didn’t work out,” I repeated, thinking back to the guy who’d always come in late with various dumbass excuses, didn’t know an allen wrench from an axle. He could do oil changes, I’d give him that, but nothing else. It’d been obvious he’d worked at one of those quickie service places where an employee only needed to know where fluidswent in and out of a vehicle to be hired. No real engine skills.
I had the only full service mechanic shop in Devil’s Ditch, meaning I took care of the easy stuff and fixed the hard stuff when it came to the community’s vehicles–cars, tractors, snowmobiles, and an occasional chainsaw. Two years ago, I bought the business from Joe Blount–another friend of my father’s–who’d wanted to retire to warmer climates. I’d worked with him since I was in ninth grade and it had been an easy transition.
As a kid, instead of climbing on the back of a horse for fun like the rest of my family, I started tinkering on the family snowblower, fixing it the first time when I was ten and the engine had died halfway through clearing the walks during a blizzard.
After that, I moved on to lawnmowers, snowmobiles, and any other small machine around the ranch. Word spread that I could fix things and my neighbors soon started calling me for needed repairs.
Now, at twenty-three, I had over ten years of fixing shit around Devil’s Ditch, so I was trusted. I might’ve been the only repair shop in town, but people returned because I did a fucking good job on their car. I had enough business where I’d wanted an employee, someone who could do the routine services, like oilchanges, but also be available to take tow calls, like the one I was on now. They happened at all hours of the day or night and it would have been nice to have a break.
That sure as hell hadn’t worked out. Marv had been a fucking pain in the ass. I took more time to help him than if I’d just done the work myself. I was pretty sure he even skimmed some cash off the till, but I couldn’t pin it on him. So no, I wasn’t interested in doing that again anytime soon.
“I wasn’t sure if you were looking for someone else,” Pops mentioned.
I ran a hand over my face as I kept my eyes on the road. I hadn’t shaved this morning and probably wouldn’t for a while, which was something that usually happened once the weather turned cold.
I grew a beard. By spring, it would drive me fucking nuts and I’d shave it off.
“Not a chance,” I muttered. “He was more work than help. I’m good going solo for a while.”
“All right. I hear you,” Pops said, then his voice went muffled as he talked to someone on his end. “Ma wants to know if you’re coming for dinner tonight. The girls are probably gonna talk about the joint baby shower and we need all the testosterone we can get.”
I had to smile. With five pregnant women in thefamily now, their growing bellies were definitely running the family. The weird-ass food combinations we ate to satisfy all their cravings were insane. I’d never imagined hot peppers, scrambled eggs, and sloppy joes in the same meal before my brothers up and found their women and knocked them up. My sister, Lainey, too. She was running her husband Beau ragged, I had no doubt.
The last thing I wanted to do though was hear about burp cloths and diaper rash cream.
I winced at the thought. I didn’t have a girl of my own. Not a chance in hell was I getting anyone pregnant. It’d been too long since I even had sex. Too long finding a woman I wanted to even fuck.
“I’m meeting up with friends,” I told him. I hadn’t heard back yet from Cyrus and Jackson about what we were doing. Probably getting beers at The Roadside. “Tell Ma later this week, okay?”
“Will do. Love you, son.”
“Love you, Pops.”
I ended the call, tossed my cell on the passenger seat.
This was my life. A small town mechanic. I wasn’t a famous bull rider like my oldest brother Trig or a famous college quarterback like my younger brother Zeb.
I wasn’t exciting like them. I hadn’t found the love of my life in a snowstorm or at a rodeo. I wasn’t a cowboy. Hell, with my bum knee, I couldn’t even be one if I tried. It was pretty hard to be the Marlboro Man if you couldn’t ride a fucking horse. Besides the injury I got skiing when I was fourteen, it just wasn’t in my DNA.
