The Bonfire I Lit on My Own Ground

A deed is a loud thing to swing. I did not want to win that way. I did not want to be that man, and I knew Dwight was counting on both.

There was also the matter of the offer.

Back in the spring Dwight had offered me thirty-two hundred dollars an acre for the back forty. Cash. He said it was more than bottom ground was worth and he was only doing it to keep it in the family.

A hundred and twenty-eight thousand dollars for forty acres I could not farm. I told him no.

He did not understand the no. To Dwight the land was a number, and I had turned down the number.

So he thought I was a fool who sat on worthless ground out of sentiment. Maybe I was sentimental.

But the ground was not worthless to me, and neither was the reason Grandpa gave it to me. You cannot put a price on either of those things that a man like Dwight would ever agree to pay.

I decided I would not call him. I would not swing the deed.

I would just build a fire.

Moving The Wagons

Jen knew something was up before I left the house. She watched me pull on my canvas coat and load the chainsaw and the long matches into the truck, and she did not say let it go this time.

“You’ve got your grandfather’s face on,” she said. “The one from when you dig your heels in.”

“I’m just going to build a fire,” I told her.

She looked at me a second. Then she put a thermos of coffee in my hands and told me to take a hat. That is how Jen says she is with you.

I went out to the back forty the Saturday of the bonfire while it was still light. A good three hours before anybody was due.

Dwight had already been there. His pile was up the hill by the gate, tall and square, and he had parked two of his hay wagons flat end to end to make a windbreak and a place for the coolers.

He had staked the folding chairs in rows facing his pile. He had claimed the whole top of the field for his night, on my ground, and driven home to eat supper, sure it was handled.

I hooked my old tractor to the first hay wagon and pulled it down off the hill to the creek bench. Then I came back and got the second one and pulled it down too.

I set them along the north edge of the bench the way Grandpa used to set his. To break the wind off the water, with the open side to the fire.

Then I got to work on the wood.