The Mile of Wire Around Mom’s Pasture

He was quiet for a long time. A truck went by on the road behind him and the driver slowed and lifted two fingers off the wheel, the way people do out here, and looked at the fence, and looked at Cecil, and drove on.

“Abner,” he said. “I couldn’t afford the posts.”

“I know.”

“I should’ve said so. I should’ve just said so. Instead I stood in her lot and made jokes.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “That was a sorry thing to do.”

“It was,” I said.

He nodded. He didn’t argue it. I will give him that. He stood right there in front of the fence he had made necessary and took it.

Then he looked past me, up the hill, at Mom.

“Edna Mae,” he said, loud enough to carry. “I’m sorry about your heifers.”

Mom stood up off her bucket. She looked at him a long time, the way she had looked at that bull.

“I know you are, Cecil,” she said. “Go on to work. You’ll be late.”

He went. But he looked back at the fence twice before he got to his truck.

That Sunday, Mom set his plate out like always and passed him the chicken first like always.

Nobody said a word about the fence until the pie. Then Cecil set down his fork and cleared his throat.

“Abner,” he said. “That’s the best fence I’ve ever seen. What would you charge to do my side?”

The whole table got quiet. Twila put her hand on his arm. Dad leaned back in his chair with his bad knee up on a stool and waited to see what I’d say.

I thought about the six heifers going to the sale barn. I thought about Mom standing in her lot with a bucket of feed in her hand, taking it four times without a word.

And I thought about Twila and the kids, and the plant cutting him to three days, and the cord of wood he cut for Dad that winter.

“Wyatt and I will build it in October,” I said. “On Saturdays. Homer’s already said he’ll come.”

“What do I owe you?”

I looked at Mom. She just picked up her coffee.

So I wrote it on a napkin, there at the table, and slid it across to him. Not a dime for two Saturdays of labor. Not a dime for Wyatt’s blistered hands, or Homer’s coffee, or all the times he had laughed in Mom’s lot.

He read it twice, folded it into his shirt pocket, and said, “Thank you.” Mom refilled his coffee. Twila squeezed his arm. Dad started telling Wyatt about the fiddle.

Cecil asked me what I’d charge to do his side, and I charged him for the wire.