He climbed down out of his tractor while I was running the auger and stood next to the tender with his thumbs hooked in his bib pockets.
Butch is seventy-three. He and Dad shared a fence line for forty-six years. And they argued across it for all forty-six.
“Anybody in your dad’s fields?” he asked.
“Not that I’ve seen.”
“You going to be?”
“Haven’t been asked.”
Butch looked at me. He has a way of looking at you that feels like being weighed on the scale at the elevator.
“Two of a kind,” he said. Then he shook his head. “No. Three of a kind. Him and the both of you.”
He spat in the dirt.
“It’s a wonder anything ever got said in that house.”
The first of May came. Then the fifth.
I drove the tender past the home place twice a day on the county road. Both fields just sat there in last year’s stalks, with nothing moving in them but blackbirds.
