An Offering

Chapter one of Repairs, a story of Josh & Argos

In the formerly united states, Camersville, Pennsylvania, mid-October 2036

As the western sky was growing red with the setting sun, a skinny 17 year old boy with shaggy blond hair pulled a large cooler off the back of an old, light blue Ford Ranger pickup. He lugged it to the side door of a green ranch house, set it down, took a deep breath, and knocked.

After a minute, the door opened, and another boy, red-haired, a couple years older and significantly larger than the blond one, appeared.

“Josh, she’s still mad at you. You should—”

Josh just held up an index finger. The red-haired boy stopped.

“Liam, do you guys have freezer space?”

Liam blinked a few times. “Uh…what?”

“Do you have freezer space?”

The older boy squinted down at him. “Some, yes. Why?”

Josh tapped the cooler. “I have something here by way of an apology. It’s two wild turkeys I shot. I figured your family could have them for Thanksgiving.”

Liam cracked open the cooler and peered inside. He scratched his forehead and grinned a bit. “Well, that’s a new way to say sorry.” The grin faded. “She is still mad at you. But…she still wears that ivy necklace you got her too. I’ll see if she could talk sometime. You in town?”

“Yeah, staying downtown with my friend Marcus Green.”

“I know him. I’ll call tomorrow. You hunted these?” He picked up the cooler.

“Yeah, I got three. Traded one to the butcher shop to clean the other two.”

“Nice work.”

Josh smiled at the compliment. “I eat most of what I hunt, and when that’s the reason, you learn pretty quick.”

The next afternoon, Josh got a call at his friend Marcus’s apartment. Liam said that his parents thanked Josh for the turkeys and that Izzy would meet him at the coffee shop after school next Tuesday.

The other Josh & Argos stories