Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Stephen Garrett set the post and put out his hand, and Cody laid the tamping bar in it without being asked.
That was how the crew ran. A look, a tilt of the head, and the right tool turned up where Stephen wanted it.
Three years he’d put in as a Bolton hand before Chad handed him the north line, head down and learning the country foot by foot.
He’d run the crew for three years since, and built the thing the only way he knew would work.
He showed up first, worked just as hard as his men, and was the last one to leave at the end of the day.
Words didn’t run the northern line. Work did.
They moved down the fence in the rhythm Stephen favored, steady and unhurried, splicing wire and reseating the posts the spring thaw had heaved loose.
He called out little. “Brace there.” “Next one’s rotted clean through.
” The men took care of the rest. Wes, barely a month on the crew, had quit glancing to the older hands for the nod of approval and started glancing to Stephen instead.
That was its own kind of promotion, and the boy had earned it.
Wes wrestled a clip and lost the fight. “How do you make it look so easy?”
“Don’t fight it.” Stephen seated the clip in one motion. “Let the wire come to you. It’ll meet you halfway if you give it the room.”
Wes tried again. The clip snugged home clean.
“Huh.” The boy looked pleased with himself.
“Now do four hundred more.”
A grin cracked across Wes’s face, and he bent to it.
The worst of the postholes that morning struck a seam of caliche hard as a skillet. Stephen took that one. He always took that one. A crew lead who pointed at the bad ground and stepped wide of it didn’t lead anything for long.
Partway down the line, Maddox rode out from the home place and drew rein at the fence.
“Chad’s asking after the east gate. Hanging crooked since the storm.”
“I’ll have it rehung Friday.”
“Figured that’s what you’d say.” Maddox touched his hat and rode off, and the crew bent to the line again.
When they broke to water the horses, Stephen crossed the pasture to the truck for the wire stretcher.
The envelope was on the dash, where it had ridden for nine days.
County return address, his name in the little window.
He’d opened enough of those over the years to guess the rest without slitting this one.
Property taxes on the inheritance, due, and climbing the way they climbed every year now that the new highway ran so near his back line.
He left it where it lay.
Earl Garrett had walked that home section every evening of his life, hands clasped behind him, reading the grass the way other men read the paper.
He’d left Stephen the home place with its complete acreage and one instruction, given the winter before he passed.
Keep it in Garrett hands, son. Don’t sell, and don’t let anybody buy you cheap.
Stephen meant to honor every word of it.
The taxes he’d cover the way he covered everything, out of his own workman’s income, even if it meant a lean winter and a longer list of repairs he’d put off.
A crew lead’s wages didn’t leave much slack, so he made the slack himself, the way his grandfather always had.
He’d been raised by a man who wore the same boots eleven years and called any dollar he hadn’t earned a loan against his own backbone. A man who leaned didn’t own a thing. He only rented it from whoever propped him up.
That was the one debt Stephen refused to carry.
What he had, he had in sweat. He’d set every straight run of fence on the property himself and grubbed the cedar out of the south pasture by hand. A bank couldn’t hand a man that, and neither could luck. You earned the right to call a place yours post by post, or you didn’t call it yours at all.
The crew coiled the last of the wire with the loose-jointed ease of men who’d put in a hard day and done it right. Cody slung his gloves over one shoulder.
“Burgers at the Wagon Wheel, boss. Whole crew’s headed over. Come on, it’s Wes’s first month. We’re buying.”
“Y’all earned it.” Stephen pushed his hat up. “Next time.”
“You said next time last time.”
“And I’ll say it the time after.” He let the corner of his mouth go, the closest thing he kept to a grin. “Go on. Tell Marlene to keep the lot of you out of trouble.”
Cody shook his head, easy about it, and didn’t push. The crew rolled out in a clatter of tailgates and twangy radio, and Stephen stayed on to load the tools the way he wanted them loaded.
He didn’t hand this part around. The hush after the trucks pulled out was the stretch of the day he came for.
He was sliding the post driver into the bed when a car turned up the ranch road. Annie Bolton stepped out near the equipment barn, a covered dish balanced on one palm.
“Stephen!” She crossed the lot as though the call had been planned for days, never mind that Chad’s truck sat nowhere in the yard. “Tell me you haven’t eaten. I made enough chicken and dumplings to founder the whole outfit.”
“Crew’s gone to the Wagon Wheel, ma’am. You missed them by a hair.”
Annie waved that off and lingered, the dish riding her hip, in no hurry for a woman who’d driven all the way out to feed a husband who wasn’t home.
“How’s the north line holding?”
“It’s holding strong.”
“That’s what Chad says about you. Holding strong.
Highest praise he can give.” She laughed at her own joke and rolled on without a breath.
“You work too hard, Stephen Garrett. The whole crew does. What we ought to do is throw a proper spread at the joint barbecue this year, Bolton and Hickory Hollow both. Kelly’s already after the caterer. ”
Then she lit up the way she did when a fresh subject pleased her.
“Speaking of Hickory Hollow. You ought to meet their office manager one of these days. Elise Pollard. Sharpest office manager in three counties, I’d swear to it.
Runs Robert’s whole operation and makes the thing look easy.
Pretty as a picture, too, not that she’d ever hold still long enough for a body to tell her so. ”
Stephen gave her a polite nod. “Sounds like Robert’s fortunate to have her.”
Annie opened her mouth to go on, plainly wound up for more, but Stephen reached for the next tool, and even Annie Bolton took a hint when a man handed her one.
“Well.” She patted the fender. “Think on the barbecue. Be a shame for the two of you to miss it.”
A nudge, plain as paint.
He let it sail on past. Annie married off half the county in her head and meant not a lick of harm by it, friendly with the fence posts if they’d stand quiet long enough for it.
He raised a hand as she pulled away, then turned to the tools.
The drive home ran a dozen miles of dark county road, fence on both sides, the better part of it Garrett ground once. Stephen rolled the window down and let the night do the talking.
The house stood where he’d left it, porch light tripping on with the timer, supper whatever the icebox cared to offer. He ate at the counter and washed the one plate after.
The house had room for two and always had. His grandmother’s quilts still folded in the cedar chest, her side of the closet bare since before the place came to him. He’d never minded the extra room. A man couldn’t miss what he’d never set out to want.
Then he sat out on the porch step with the dark folding in close, and for a good while the only company he wanted was the land itself, holding on, the way he aimed to keep it.