The ground was wet and his saw horses were\nsinking under the heft of the fresh cut lumber and sticking into the mud. He\nleaned a couple more boards up against the side of the hay barn well within his\nreach once he went up, and he moved his orange fiberglass ladder over a couple\nof feet, steady-as-steady could be on this vanishing earth, and he climbed\nhalfway up the ladder and felt a soft breeze lapping against his cheek. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He pressed his knees up against the ladder\u2019s\nframe and grabbed a poplar plank. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ladder swayed. Leaning with all his weight,\nhe hoisted that plank up against the side of the barn and pulled the nail gun\nfrom his tool belt and thwack<\/em> had the\ntrigger pulled and thwack<\/em> another\nnail went straight into the stud six inches to the left, direct, precise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He climbed a couple more steps to the skinny\npart of the ladder. Bracing himself, he shot two more nails into the top plank,\ninspected his work, and he climbed down the stainless steel rungs. Twelve feet\nbelow, his feet squished into the mucky ground and made a sucking sound, and he\nsidestepped the ladder and shot two more nails into the bottom of the board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Work\u2019s good for the soul, he thought. All a man\nneeds. Forget her. Fuck the bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pigeons warbled, dropping shits and taking\nflight, and he heard tires crunching on gravel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He turned to have a look and saw his old man\u2019s\nblack Z71<\/em> rumbling down the drive\nover by the farmhouse. Past the milking parlor and onto the rutted muddy path,\nhis pops was steering around all the washouts and puddles at idle speed. He\npassed the machine barn and kept going left. Going right. So slow across the\nproperty. Always moving forward\u2014toward what? remained a mystery\u2014but always\ngetting there in his old man time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Never likes to get dirty, he thought. A farmer\nafraid of the mud. Ain\u2019t that something. Guess he\u2019s coming to check up on the\nboy, so he took off his leather gloves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The truck came to rest, engine still gurgling,\nand his pops put down his window. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFinally got to siding the hay barn, ha?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTrying to get it in before the party.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSounds good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n His father reached for his armrest and his\nwindow began rising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHold up,\u201d Larry said. \u201cWait a minute. How was\nthat certification?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSpent five hours talking about pests,\u201d Marty\nsaid in his old man get-the-fuck-off-me voice. He shook his head. \u201cI raised my\nhand and finally told em, \u2018The only pests around here is them goddamn\nIndians.\u2019\u201d The old man laughed. \u201cThat got a good rise out of everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYeah, well, they\u2019ve been back.\u201d Larry stepped\ncloser to the truck. \u201cMa said Havernutter\u2019s guy came by while we were out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIs that so?\u201d Marty asked. \u201cWhat a shame I\nmissed him, again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBeen by a lot lately.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNo more than usual.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNah bull shit,\u201d Larry said. \u201cThat makes twice\nthis month.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYup,\u201d Marty said. \u201cGuess it does.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMust be thinking you\u2019re getting soft. Ready to\nsell.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The old man reached for his gearshift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou leaning that way?\u201d Larry asked. \u201cYou close\nto selling?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow about you put up the rest of that barn\nsiding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou know I\u2019m working things out, right?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Marty\u2019s window rose and his face vanished behind\nthe shiny glass. His tires spun in the soggy brown earth till they grabbed, and\nhe inched all the way back home, in reverse, slow and silent just like he had\napproached. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Jason Edward Collins currently teaches at the Surrey International Institute at the Dongbei University of Finance & Economics in lovely Dalian, China. He has an MA in English Language & Literature from Brooklyn College, and he has an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from The New School. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":109,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/brandon-mowinkel-198137-unsplash.jpg?fit=5184%2C3456&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":156,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions\/156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}