My short fiction: Down Home/Chapter 1

Chapter 1
                                                                   Down Home
Josh's wood shop was located west of town, past the new school with its huge gymnasiums , and the fishing bobber water tower, which was now surrounded with dollars stores and tourist traps. He had logged; cut his teeth on the oak, pine, and birch that towered over the ever-expanding freeways, tourists, and other trappings, which are often referred to, by the local euphemism: progression. He was always in the woods growing up, and now he was finishing his senior project...a handmade, birch stripped canoe. His shop was located in a grove of paper birch. It was the grove from which he had been gathering the birch strips for his canoe. His shop was about twenty paces west of his Grandpa Ned’s trailer house. Everyday during the summer, his grandpa would pick him up in his orange Ford pickup truck, and they would drive twelve miles north of town to his grandpa’s farm. His grandpa called the farm "Down Home”; always running the two words together into one. To grandpa, “Down Home” meant venison jerky, pocket knives, homemade rat traps, and calling the cows in from the woods everyday with his deep cigarette stained voice, yelling “Come Boss”, which I never even considered at the time, because this statement always worked. To the cows it meant food, and I can still hear grandpa’s calls echoing out into the pasture. His deep guttural commands seemed to penetrate the scrub brush and poplar forest, or popple, as grandpa called it. His far reaching “Come Boss!” calls surged through the forest, to the cattle lurking in the trees; they were a Red Poll variety Grandpa had acquired through one of his various horse-trading hustles, and they were strong and hearty, with red hair and white faces, very similar to the northern European types that had settled this harsh, cold, windswept section of Northwestern Minnesota. The cows would slowly start walking their well-worn trails up to Grandpa and I. Most of the cattle were following one another until they neared the rough-sawn pine feeder box, and then the hungriest would get bucky, and all I remember is Grandpa leaning lazily against the metal pole shed, always just sitting their with that smirk…he gets a kick out of all this stuff, enjoying an Old Gold smoke, yelling “Come Boss!”, and checking in on his stock. Down Home is his sanctuary, the land always in his eyes. He's really tied to the land.
       He stopped yelling “Come Boss” as the cattle started feeding, but I continue, watching the cows come up and stick their heads in the feeding trough. I yell “Yah!” at a few of them, crowding the others, just to show them who’s boss, and to show my grandpa I am not afraid of anything out on this land. I know I really am and I imagine Grandpa could sense my fear, but he never said, as he wasn’t much of a talker. He takes me to his sanctuary everyday during the summer,
         He picks me up and we drive out to “Down Home” in his orange Ford truck, taking gravel roads the whole way so we can check the crops. We arrive at the farm, and head over to the cattle barn, and start calling the cows, but when I turn to see his smirk...the “I know the secret to life is all about choice” smirk, all I see is his body slumped down on the ground in an alarming heap of lifelessness, the Old Gold still burning alongside his hand, and he won’t wake up, no matter how much I try he just won’t wake up. I yell for help, but there is no one for miles in any direction, and I run into the shop, pick up the phone and call 911, give directions to the farm, and go back to his body and start CPR. Everything else disappeared as I beat on his chest, and gave him breaths, but he just wouldn’t wake up. The first responders try to pull me from his body, and I can hear the sirens, but I just lay my head on his chest, and weep.