Free Forget Me Not by Stef Ann Holm

Luis’s savory sourdough pancakes fried in salt pork drippings with molasses poured on top, and a cup of hot black coffee, strong enough to float an old horseshoe.
    For several weeks, J.D. had been getting up and fixing breakfast for the boys. He got too busy around the place to deal with dinner and supper, so Boots had taken on those shifts. J.D. wasn’t lame in the kitchen; he just didn’t like cooking.
    J.D. swung his legs over the side of the bed, then ran his fingers through the stiff growth bristling on hischin. He figured he’d avoided his razor long enough. He dressed in the near dark. After slipping into a fresh pair of Levi’s, he slid his arms into a loose-fitting blue flannel shirt that was worn and soft. He grabbed his boots, shoved them on by the mule ears, then fit his pants over the scarred leather.
    His tread out of his bedroom was light, despite the rolling walk he’d adapted as a cowboy from wearing the chunk-heeled boots of his profession. Boots’s door was closed, and no light shined from within the room. More and more of late, Boots didn’t keep regular hours. Sometimes when J.D. would get up to check on a calf or to investigate what the dogs were barking at, he’d find Boots’s lamp lit at any hour of the night. J.D. had asked him why he didn’t sleep, and Boots had grumbled that his mind was going and he forgot when to go to bed. Boots would be sixty years old in a couple of months. Though he was getting on, J.D. didn’t think the old man’s mind was going. J.D. sometimes wondered if Boots stayed up late to figure out ways to torment him. For as long as J.D. could remember, he and Boots had never been father and son, much less friends. In spite of that, it seemed to J.D. that he’d been answering to Boots all his life.
    J.D. had inherited Boots’s bad temper, and the rage that J.D. sometimes felt made him distance himself from people when he was angry. That was why, after last night’s exchange with Boots in the dining room, J.D. had left the house rather than confront Josephine. He’d gone for a fast ride on Tequila to burn off some energy. He’d been in such a vile frame of mind, he hadn’t been able to trust himself around anyone. He was liable to knock somebody for a loop. And he sure as hell would never hit a woman. Or his father. Though there had been times he’d been damn close to jumping on Boots’s back.
    They fought often, and were they ever to apologize to each other, they’d have to chip through layers upon layers, years upon years of fighting and walking away,just to get to the root of the problems between them. Both were bull-headed, and J.D. doubted he and Boots would ever have a kind thing to say to each other.
    Faint light from a thin wedge of moon lent the front room slight illumination. Rawhide had been pretty much incorporated into everything. It made the woven bottom of the springless bed J.D. slept in and was the cushions and backs of the chairs he and the boys sat in for a spell at night after supper. Cowskin made up the soft rug spread at the stone hearth. Wagon wheels and a sanded plank of wood had been converted to tabletops for card playing. Old horseshoes came in handy for just about anything in the house or the tack room.
    J.D. went to the mantel and opened a box of matches. He struck one and lit a kerosene lamp. Turning up the flame, he proceeded toward the kitchen. When he pushed the door inward, he stopped short, lifting his arm to cast light about the room.
    â€œGood gawd,” he whispered, then cursed himself for uttering Boots’s favorite expletive.
    There were tiny pieces of tomato pulp everywhere. Nothing had been cleaned up from Josephine’s “effervesce of tomatoes.” J.D. hadn’t been sure exactly what Boots had been talking about. Now it was all too clear.
    Stepping into the kitchen, J.D. put a flame to all the lamps. When the wicks were hissing with a