Thirty Six Pullets for Miss Edna

Lamar

It was after six by then, still full daylight. The sun was coming low and gold across the pasture behind Edna’s house, and the shadows of the new posts stretched long across the yard.

The kids were packing up crates and drinking the last of the tea. Orene was loading the tarp. The father who had stayed was rolling up the scrap wire.

That was when I saw Lamar.

He was standing at the fence line between his place and the road, right across from Edna’s drive. He had come out of his barn and he was just standing there.

He was looking at the run. At the kids. At Orene’s pickup in the drive with crates stacked in the bed. At the blue cooler at the end of the gravel, still sitting empty with the lid shut.

The kids saw him a second after I did. They got very quiet.

One of the brothers from the river family stepped in front of the run gate. He did not say anything. He just stood there. He is nine years old.

Miss Edna set her red hen down inside the run and closed the gate behind it.

Lamar stood there maybe a full minute. I do not think he moved at all.

Then he turned around and walked back into his barn.

I let out a breath. I thought that was the end of it, and to be honest I was glad. I had promised Miss Edna nobody would say a word to that man, and nobody had.

Then his barn door rolled the rest of the way open.

Lamar came back out carrying something long and heavy across his shoulder. It was a hog panel, sixteen feet of heavy galvanized welded rod, the kind you fence pigs in. He had another one dragging behind him in his other hand. He had a bucket of T-post clips hooked over his wrist.

He walked across the road and down Edna’s gravel drive, past the blue cooler, past Orene’s pickup, past the kids.

He put his hand on the gate latch of the new run.

He did not open it. He just stood there with his hand on it, and he looked at Miss Edna.

“These go along the bottom,” he said. His voice was rough. “Outside. You stake them down flat. A dog won’t dig through a hog panel.”

Nobody said anything.

“I had them from when we kept pigs,” Lamar said. “Five or six years ago. She wanted pigs one year.” He stopped. “They’ve just been leaning in the barn.”

Miss Edna looked at him for a long time.

“I’d be obliged, Lamar,” she said.