The Mile of Wire Around Mom’s Pasture

The first day he went by, he slowed down, looked, and kept going. The second day he did not slow down at all.

On Wednesday, two neighbors came. Ancel lives on the farm past Homer’s, and he brought his own tractor and a load of brace rails he had left over from a job. The dairy man from up the road brought his son and a post-hole auger of his own.

Between all of us we set the other three corners in a single day. Ancel had built H-braces for 40 years and did not need to be told a thing.

He showed Wyatt how to make the diagonal brace wire. Two loops of smooth wire from the top of one post to the bottom of the next, wrapped twice, and then a short stick put through the middle and twisted until the whole brace went tight as a drum.

“That’s a twitch stick,” Ancel told him. “Leave it in there. You’ll want to tighten it again come spring.”

By Thursday night we had every corner and every brace set. Wyatt fell asleep in the truck on the way home with his boots still on.

That Sunday was the first family dinner since I’d started.

I had worried about it all week. I did not know what Cecil would say, or what Twila would say, or whether Mom would set out a plate for Cecil at all.

She did. Of course she did. She set a plate for him at his usual place and passed him the chicken first, the way she always has.

Cecil ate. He talked about the ballgame. He did not say one word about the fence, and nobody else did either.

When the pie came out, Dad leaned back in his chair and said, “Homer Grubb’s out there every morning, you know. Eighty-five years old.”

Cecil looked at his plate. “I heard.”

That was all. But I saw Twila look at him, and I saw him not look back.

After dinner, while the kids were outside, Twila caught me alone on the back porch.

“He’s embarrassed, Abner,” she said. “He can’t fix his own. We don’t have it right now. The plant cut him to three days.”

“I know,” I said.

“Then why are you doing this right where he has to drive by it every day?”

“Because that’s where Mom’s fence is,” I said. “I’m not doing it to him. I’m doing it for her.”

She stood there a minute. Then she nodded and went back in. She never brought it up again, and I loved her for that.

The second week we set line posts. My skid steer and driver did the heavy work, and Wyatt walked ahead of me setting the stakes on Homer’s string so every post went in plumb and on line.