It Takes a Cowboy

By noon, they hadn’t caught any keepers, but Jeffrey still seemed to be enjoying the experience. Scott set his rod on the ground. “I’m getting hungry. How about you?”

“I could eat. What have we got?”

Rummaging in the insulated carrier he’d brought with them, Scott pulled out two individual-size cans of Vienna sausages, a tube of crackers, a small plastic bottle of mustard, two bags of dried fruit and some packaged oatmeal-raisin cookies. Two cans of soda were still reasonably cool; he handed one to the boy and opened the other for himself.

Jeffrey looked doubtfully at the very plain fare. “This is lunch?”

“You were expecting caviar?”

“Well, no, but...”

“Redneck picnic. Eat up.”

Jeffrey pulled the ring on his can of sausages. “I don’t think Aunt Blair would consider this a healthy meal.”

“Hey, we’ve got protein, grain and fruit. What more could she ask?”

“She thinks you gotta have something green at every meal. She’s really into eating green stuff.”

Scott peered thoughtfully into his can. “There’s some fuzzy green stuff growing on these sausages. Does that count?”

“Eeww! Gross.”

Scott laughed. “Just kidding. There are too many preservatives in these cans to allow any green stuff to grow.” Just to prove the food was edible, he laid a sausage on a cracker, squirted mustard on it and popped it into his mouth.

Somewhat experimentally, Jeffrey imitated his actions. They munched in companionable silence for a while, and then Scott asked casually, “So your aunt makes you eat healthy, huh?”

“Oh, yeah. You’d think we’d drop dead if we ate burgers and fries more than once or twice a month.”

“Nice to know someone cares if you’re eating right, isn’t it?”

Jeffrey shrugged. “It gets old sometimes. My grandma never cared if I wanted burgers or nachos or burritos all the time.”

“Blair wants you to be healthy. That’s her way of showing she cares about you.”

Jeffrey mumbled something around a cracker.

“Do you like living with your aunt?”

The boy crumbled a piece of cracker between his fingers. “It’s okay...at least until my dad comes back.”

“Oh? Then what?”

“Then he’s going to take me with him. He travels all over the world. Never spends much time in one place. He says nothing ties him down.”

Including his son, apparently. Scott kept that thought to himself, being careful not to let anything show in his face. “That’s the way you want to live? Always on the move? Never having the same people around you? What about school—your friends?”

“I hate school,” Jeffrey muttered. “And I don’t have many friends.”

“Why not? You seem like a cool guy to me.”

The boy flushed a little, looking both disconcerted and pleased by the comment. “The guys at my school are all geeks and losers.”

“All of them? I find that hard to believe.”

“Well, it seems that way to me.”

“Maybe you haven’t really gotten to know any of them well enough to find out for sure.”