IPB-162 CB Mother by Lance Gordon [ILLUSTRATED] (EB)

Sleepy-eyed Chuck McPherson sat at the kitchen table of his ranch home rubbing his whiskered chin between his thumb and index finger and nursed his steaming 'cowboy coffee', black as river-bottom mud. The Idaho rancher loved the morning best: Mornings when he could sit here and listen to the rooster crowing in the farm yard and watch his sheep in the back forty grazing in the pinkening morning sunlight. In the distance they were small and soft as dandelion gone to seed. Every morning over his cup of coffee, the rancher counted those sheep. They were his livelihood.

Yeah, morning's are the best hours of the day, mused the rancher. Night's are too goddamned long since Lila left us. Chuck hooked his right thumb in his overall suspender and let his arm hang uselessly from it. He could think better that way, and he had some serious thinking to do. Most of it had to do with his only child, his son.