The Fence She Finished in His Gloves

Brett Wakes Up

They took the breathing tube out nine days after the fall. I was there when they did it, because I had told the night nurse I would sleep in my truck in the parking garage if that was what it took.

His voice was nothing, a scrape. The first thing he said was my name. The second thing was, “Hensley.”

I laughed and cried at the same time. Of course that was the second thing. That man had been lying unconscious for nine days, and the first thing his brain went looking for was the fence.

I told him everything over the next two days, a little at a time, when the nurses said he could handle it. About the strap. About the account. About Rod’s phone call. About the hydraulic driver.

He listened with his eyes closed. When I told him about Rod, his jaw went tight, and a tear came out of the corner of one eye and ran into his ear. He did not say anything mean. He just whispered, “Rod’s had a hard year.”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“No,” he said. “It doesn’t.”

Then I told him about the boys, and the red driver, and the rock. And he opened his eyes and looked at me like he was seeing somebody he had never met.

“You’re building it,” he said.

“We’re about halfway through what’s left.”

He was quiet a long time. Then he moved his hand on the blanket until it found mine.

“Don’t let Tanner skip the twist sticks on the braces,” he whispered. “Check every one. And stretch the bottom wire first. Not the top. Everybody wants to do the top.”

“I know, honey.”

“And keep the tension even. Plink it like a guitar string. They should all sing the same.”

I said I would. He held my hand until he fell asleep. When I looked down, he had found the blisters on my palm, and his thumb was resting right over the worst one.

The Stretcher and the Wire

By the end of the second week, every line post but the last half mile was standing in a row down the east side of Hap’s pasture.

You could sight down them from the north brace and they lined up like a row of soldiers.

Then came the wire. Five strands, each a mile and a half long, unrolled in sections and stretched between the braces a quarter mile at a time.

Stretching wire is a three-person job. One person runs the stretcher, the hand ratchet that clamps onto the wire and pulls it tight. Somebody watches the tension. Somebody walks the line and clips the wire to every post.

We had exactly three people. It worked out.

On the last half mile we had to work both jobs at once to beat the first of November.

I drove the last line posts down at the south end while the boys stretched wire behind me on the posts I had already set, close enough that I could hear the stretcher ratchet clicking between my own hits on the driver.

That was the morning I remember best. Bright and cold, the grass gold under a clear blue sky, the white flatbed parked beside us with the last of the posts and wire rolls on it. Lift and slam. Click, click, click behind me.

Tanner ran the stretcher, because he had the arms for it. Wyatt clipped. I walked behind both of them, plucking every wire between every post, listening the way Brett said to.

They should all sing the same.

The first few days, they did not. Some sang high and some sang flat.

I made Tanner let off and redo a whole quarter mile of the bottom wire because it hummed a full note lower than the one above it. He did not complain. He just let off and did it again.

Hap Hensley came by most afternoons in his old pickup. He would park on the rise, get out, and walk the line by himself with his hands in his coat pockets.

He never said much. Sometimes he plucked a wire himself and nodded and went back to his truck.

One afternoon he brought a paper sack of ham sandwiches and a thermos of coffee and set them on the flatbed without a word. Tanner ate three sandwiches. Wyatt ate two and saved one for later.

I asked Hap once how it looked. He took his hat off and scratched his head.

“Looks like a fence,” he said, and walked back to his truck. I did not know yet how to read that man.