Branson Gulch Blues, Part VI
This follows Branson Gulch Blues, Part V, Part IV, Part III, Part II, and Part I...

Grandpa's body had already been reduced to ash by the time Rory and his parents arrived to Branson Gulch three days later. What was left of him now sat in a decorative vase, surrounded by pictures of his life, artifacts of his career, and flowers that Rory thought looked both expensive and exotic.

He kept
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Branson Gulch Blues, Part V
This follows Branson Gulch Blues, Part IV, Part III, Part II, and Part 1...

Rory woke up in a panic, strangling in his own sheets, mired in the octopus-like constriction of untucked sheets, blankets, somehow coupled to his own clothing. He angrily pulled the wrapped corner of his sheets from around his neck. It flickered away like a dismayed python.

Sweat beaded at this forehead and the ba
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Branson Gulch Blues, Part IV
This follows Branson Gulch Blues, Part III, Part II, and Part I...

There came well known sounds that required no investigation. The garage opening. A truck pulling in slowly, a rough idle turning to silence. The muffled whump of a door closing. The garage closing, its terminus leaning into a resounding echoey thump.

Grandpa walked in from the garage looking exhausted. He glanced at Nana,
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Branson Gulch Blues, Part III
This follows Branson Gulch Blues, Part II, and Part I...

Rory sat on the edge of the overlook, his new shiny bike parked against the stout rock and mortar wall. His feet dangled out over the space of the grasses, shrubs, and occasional cotton tails that clumped together in the old lake bed. The cotton tail heads were bent, broken, and splayed, most of their dark brown fluff lost to the wind
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Branson Gulch Blues, Part II
This follows Branson Gulch Blues, Part I...

Rory burst into the kitchen, leaving the mud room door to the garage wide open.

"Hey hey, there mister... shut that door. We don't want Bixby getting out!" Nana admonished from the sink, elbow deep in pie making adjacent mixing bowls.

Meanwhile, and notably not moving a single muscle, Bixby laid on her customary memory foam mattress near the
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