The Honeymoon We Spent Fencing Forty Acres

“I drove past that sign twenty times this week,” Roger said. “Every time I drove past, somebody honked. The fellows at the elevator have been ribbing me since Wednesday. Lyle called me Thursday night and gave me a piece of his mind for twenty minutes. Lyle hasn’t called me in two years.”

He almost smiled. “He said, Rog, those kids are doing what Dad would’ve done. And you’re doing what the bank did.”

I saw that one land on him, even telling it. I saw it was still landing.

“Today I saw you out there in the draw by hand,” he said to Caleb, “with your hands all wrapped up, and Brooke holding the posts. And I thought, that’s the forty. That’s how it got fenced the first time. My granddad and my grandma, by hand, in 1946.”

He wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand, quick, like a man getting dust out.

“So I’m not going to ask to buy it again,” he said. “It’s yours. I’m sorry for Branson. And I’m sorry for what I said at the reception about vet tech money. That was low. I’d like to pay the condo back to you some other year, if you’ll let me.”

Caleb looked at me. It was my call as much as his. I knew that’s what the look meant.

I thought about it honestly. I thought about the swimsuit still in the duffel bag.

I thought about my split gloves, and Caleb’s hands, and how close I had come to calling Roger that Monday morning and saying things that could never be taken back.

And I thought about an old man in a hospital bed in 2011, holding his son’s wrist.

“I don’t need Branson,” I said. “Not this year, anyway. But I’d like you to do something else.”

Roger waited.

“The back ten,” I said. “Down past the pond. We can’t run cattle on all forty yet, not till we can afford them. That back ten will grow good hay. Cut it on shares. Half for you, half for us. Starting next summer.”

Caleb’s head came up. He hadn’t known I was going to say it. I hadn’t known until I said it.

“You don’t have to do that,” Roger said.

“I know,” I said. “That’s why I want to.”

Roger looked at the table for a long time. Then he reached across it and shook my hand, the way men out here shake on things.

It was the first time he had ever shaken my hand. It was a good, hard handshake.

“Halves,” he said. “And I’ll bring the baler.”

He left a little after nine. Caleb walked him out to his truck. I watched from the kitchen window.

They stood by the tailgate for a long time, and I couldn’t hear them, but at one point Roger put his hand on the back of Caleb’s neck, the way you do with a boy.

When Caleb came back in, his eyes were red, and he didn’t say anything, and I didn’t ask. I unwrapped the vet wrap from his hands, cleaned the blisters again, and wrapped them in fresh.