Black Hills

grandfather had been released from the hospital, he’d stayed in the parlor they’d outfitted as a bedroom. He’d needed a wheelchair and help with the most personal functions.
    And he’d hated it.
    The minute he’d been able to manage the stairs, however long it took, however hard it had been, he’d insisted on moving back to the room he shared with his wife.
    The door was open. Inside Coop saw his grandfather sitting in a chair, scowling at the television and rubbing his leg.
    There were lines in his face that hadn’t been there two years before, grooves dug by pain and frustration more than age. And maybe, Coop thought, some fear along with it.
    “Hey, Grandpa.”
    Sam turned the scowl toward Coop. “Not a damn thing worth looking at on the television. If she sent you up here to check on me, to see if I need something to drink, something to eat, something to read, somebody to burp me like a baby, I don’t.”
    “Actually, I’m heading out to check on the horses and thought you could give me a hand. But if you’d rather watch TV . . .”
    “Don’t think that kind of psychology holds water with me. I wasn’t born yesterday. Just get me my damn boots.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    He got the boots, one of the pairs set neatly on the closet floor. He didn’t offer to help, something his practical and insightful grandmother couldn’t seem to stop herself from doing. But Coop judged that came from fear, too.
    Instead he talked about the business, the current trail ride, then his stop at the refuge.
    “Lil said she’d stop by and see you today.”
    “Be pleased to see her, long as it’s not a sick call.” Sam levered himself up, bracing a hand on the back of the chair as he got his cane. “What did she have to say about running around in those foreign mountains?”
    “I didn’t ask. I was only there a couple minutes.”
    Sam shook his head. He moved well, Coop thought, for a man who’d busted himself up four short months before. But the stiffness was there, the awkwardness, enough to remind Coop just how easy and economic Sam’s gait had once been.
    “Gotta wonder about your brain, boy.”
    “Sorry?”
    “Pretty girl like that, and one everybody knows you had a hankering for once upon a time, and you can’t spare more than a couple minutes?”
    “She was busy,” Coop said as they started toward the stairs. “I was busy. Plus, that was once upon a time. Another plus, she’s involved with someone.”
    Sam snorted as he clumped downstairs, with Coop positioned to catch him if he lost balance. “Some foreigner.”
    “Have you developed a prejudice against things foreign just recently?”
    Though his mouth was tight from the effort to negotiate the stairs, humor twinkled into Sam’s eyes. “I’m an old man. I’m allowed, even expected, to be crotchety. ’Sides, involved ain’t nothing. You young people today don’t have the gumption to go after a woman because she’s involved. ”
    “ ‘You young people’? That would be part of the new and expected crotchety?”
    “Sass.” But he didn’t complain when Coop helped him into his outdoor gear. “We’re going out the front. She’s back in the kitchen, and I don’t want her raining all her worries and don’t-do’s down on my head.”
    “Okay.”
    Sam let out a little sigh, and put on his old, rolled-brimmed hat. “You’re a good boy, Cooper, even if you are stupid about women.”
    “I’m stupid about women?” Coop led Sam outside. He’d shoveled the porch, the steps, a path to the trucks, others to outbuildings. “You’re the one who has his wife nagging at him. Maybe if you did more in that bed at night than snore, she’d leave you alone in the daytime.”
    “Sass,” Sam repeated, but he wheezed out a laugh. “I oughta give you a good whack with this cane.”
    “Then I’d just have to help you up when you fell on your ass.”
    “I can stand long enough to get the job done. That’s what she won’t get through her head.”
    “She loves you. You scared her. And now neither one of you will give the other one a break. You’re pissed off because you can’t do everything you want, the way you want to do it. You’ve got to walk with a stick, and might have to for the rest of it. So what?” he said without letting a drop of sympathy escape. “You’re walking, aren’t you?”
    “Won’t let me step out of my own house, on my own land. I don’t need a nursemaid.”
    “I’m not your nursemaid,” Coop said flatly.