Bailing Wire
Robert C. Waggoner
Copyright 2014 by Robert C. Waggoner
Smashwords Edition
Bailing Wire
Lisa Longstreet threw open the pickup door and got out swearing a blue streak. The following cloud of dust from the gravel road swallowed her making her cough. She looked at the deflated left front tire and gave it a kick. Then the pain hit her and she danced around holding up her injured foot. Tears ran down her cheeks as she leaned against the rusty fender of her 1963 International pickup truck that just seemed to never die.
Lisa slowly slid down the fender to the road sitting and leaning against the flat tire wondering how so many things could go wrong in one day. First she was rudely woken up by her dogs raising hell. As she found out some coyotes dug under the chicken coup and killed a couple of chickens.
Actually it was her fault she forgot to unchain the dogs for protection. But she remembered fighting with her precocious thirteen year old, Alice, over doing her homework. With the sleeve of her flannel shirt she wiped her eyes and nose not caring if her sleeve had snot marks or not. She was long past caring what she looked like. The daily grind of living life without a mate was taking its toll on her.
He’d left her and the kids three years ago. Not by choice, but by illness. Lisa had licked her wounds and vowed to continue on no matter how hard the work was. But now, with gravel poking her butt through her faded blue jeans, she gazed across the landscape of Wyoming. My God, she thought, what a desolate and dreary place.
She heard rather than saw a vehicle coming from the direction she was going. Standing up she tried to make herself presentable. She hurried and dug out of the tool box a hydraulic jack and lug wrench.
Out of the corner of her eye she recognized Ted Redburn a close friend and neighbor. Ted slowed up and leaned his head out the window and said, If there is something I hate worse than a flat tire, I’m damned if I know what it is.
Me too,
Lisa
