Chapter 10 #2
The problem was that meant he had to come at the greenhouse from the front—the eight-foot side—and it was deeper than it was wide, and the shelf only extended about four feet under the greenhouse.
“So you’ll take these straps,” he said, indicating the dark gray canvas. “And it hooks right here to the back of the skid steer, and you go all the way around the greenhouse, and we’ll hook it to the other side before I even move.”
She nodded, her mouth set in a grim line. “Let’s do it.” She moved to pick up the straps, but she couldn’t do it. Brandon’s first instinct was to jump in to help her, but he held back.
“Just do one strap,” Brandon finally said.
“These metal hooks are really heavy,” she said, still struggling with them both.
“Yeah.” Brandon didn’t say more, because this was heavy-duty equipment meant to move buildings. Of course it was going to require a heavy-duty piece of metal to keep a building attached to a machine.
Lenore finally got the first hook up, and he helped her clip in the first one, and then he got into the seat of the skid steer. It barely accommodated his height, but he managed to ease the machine forward and slip the shovel-like shelf underneath the greenhouse.
He inched forward again and again as Lenore kept gesturing for him to do so. Her palm suddenly came toward him, and she yelled, “Stop!”
He did, the greenhouse rocking a little bit as he nudged it with the skid steer.
“All right,” he yelled. “Now you’re gonna have to haul that other one all the way around the greenhouse to this other side.”
Lenore managed to pick up the second hook, and she started to push the strap through the narrow gap they’d created between the greenhouse and the cabin. She couldn’t fit, so she jogged around the skid steer and down the length of the greenhouse and disappeared around the back corner.
Brandon locked the skid steer so that it wouldn’t rock, and he waited. And waited. And waited. Lenore had brought over a shovel to use to grab the hook and pull it toward her in the narrow alley between the greenhouse and cabin. Did she need help?
Finally, Lenore reappeared, and she had the heavy hook clenched against her chest. It seemed as big as her torso, though it wasn’t. He grinned at her, and he waited patiently while she fumbled to get it clipped onto the back of the skid steer.
“Ratchet it tight,” he said, and she started doing that. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion, and Brandon had employed more patience this week than he ever had. Lenore worked hard, and she wanted to learn, and he couldn’t expect her to do everything at the speed at which he did.
“I think I got it,” she said.
Brandon ducked under the strap and checked. “I’m just gonna get it a little tighter,” he said. “We want it to be really tight. It’s the only thing holding the greenhouse on.”
“Yeah, sure,” she said. “Tighten it up.”
He did, getting it to go three more clicks. He didn’t dare do another one, as he’d noticed the back of the skid steer starting to tip up with the weight of the greenhouse.
Dear Lord, he prayed silently as he got back into the skid steer, the rough strap scraping along his shoulder as he ducked under it. That stinging reminded him that this was not child’s play, and he needed to pay close attention to everything around him.
He put his hands on the controls, a slight tremor running through his chest.
“All right,” he muttered to himself. “Here goes nothing.”
He first lifted the shelf to get the greenhouse off the ground and tilted back toward the skid steer slightly. That should distribute the weight better and keep the tracks on the ground.
“Whoa, whoa!” Lenore yelled as creaking and groaning and jostling noises came from the greenhouse.
Brandon slowed, but he didn’t stop, and a few seconds later, he felt the greenhouse lift from the makeshift foundation it had been placed on. “Now we just kind of move it,” he yelled, and he started to back up.
The skid steer did a great job backing into the parking area in front of Lenore’s house the greenhouse bobbing and creaking along with it. Brandon managed to get moving forward to the front of the house, and he made a wide turn around the left corner.
Lenore had stayed at the side of the greenhouse the whole way, and now she stood down at the back corner of the house, gesturing him forward with a slow flapping motion of her hand.
Brandon wasn’t straight, and he didn’t have enough distance to straighten out, so he pushed right into the corner of the house despite Lenore’s shrieking protests, and then backed up.
It took a couple more painstaking, time-consuming, back-and-forth movements before he lined up the greenhouse parallel to the house.
He’d already cleared this ground of the grasses and weeds, and he intended to put the greenhouse directly onto the soil and anchor it with cinder blocks.
He told Lenore they could fill those with dirt and grow things in them as well, and everything he said, she looked at him like he’d grown four extra heads.
He didn’t think anything he thought of or said was all that wild—at least not when it came to homesteading—but Lenore acted like she’d never heard of any of it before.
“Stop, stop!” Lenore yelled, and Brandon brought the skid steer to a screeching halt.
Mistake, screamed through his mind as the greenhouse started to rock with two-thirds of it off the front of the shelf. He quickly locked down the skid steer, which should give it some added weight as it anchored to the ground.
Still, he felt himself tipping forward slightly, and something told him to get out.
“Brandon, it’s falling!” Lenore yelled.
“I see it,” Brandon yelled back. And he could feel it too. What he didn’t know was what to do about it. “Maybe the ground’s not level,” he called.
“We’ve just got to get the strap off,” Lenore said.
She jogged toward him, and while Brandon had moved the greenhouse the whole distance with a ground clearance of only six inches, it suddenly felt like if it tipped, everything would be lost.
Get out, get out, get out, his brain screamed at him. With the back of his seat still pitching up, Brandon turned to fly from the cab of the skid steer, completely forgetting that the strap stood in his way—a very tight, very rigid, very rough canvas strap.
It caught him straight in the neck, choking him and sending a path of pure fire across his skin. He yelped, his eyes closing and his hands coming up to shove the strap away. That, of course, didn’t work, and he felt himself falling backward.
He couldn’t stop himself, and he hit his head against something hard. Brandon groaned, trying to figure out where he was in space.
“Brandon!” Lenore yelled, but at that moment in time, Brandon didn’t know which way was up and which way was down. A horrible crash filled the air as the greenhouse and gravity won, pulling the skid steer forward and lifting the back of it right up off the ground.
Brandon pitched forward, every muscle in his body tight. His forehead hit the plastic windshield of the skid steer, and he cried out.
Get out. Get out. Get out, still ran through his mind, and he couldn’t hear anything else.
Brandon managed to open his eyes and scramble out from underneath the strap and out of the machine as it continued to settle. He crawled on his hands and knees for a couple of paces and then fell onto his back, panting.
Lenore rushed forward and dropped to her knees at his side. “Are you okay?” She brushed his hair back. “You’re bleeding.”
He’d had three points of pain on his body—the back of his head, his forehead, and his throat. And out of all of them, his throat hurt the worst.
“I can’t—” he said. “—breathe.”
“It’s okay,” Lenore said, staying absolutely calm. “You’re all right. There’s nothing preventing you from breathing, Brandon. Take a breath.”
He did, but it was sharp and quick and did nothing to help the panic rising in this chest. He pressed his eyes closed, telling himself to breathe over and over again.
She put one hand on his chest. “That wasn’t a good one. Go slower.”
He couldn’t, and he gasped at the air in short bursts for what felt like a long time. Finally, he managed to exhale properly, and he took in a long, deep breath as he finally allowed himself to relax into the ground beneath him.
Somehow, a smile came to his face. “It wouldn’t be worth doing if something exciting didn’t happen,” he said, the same way his daddy had when things hadn’t gone exactly right on the ranch.
Lenore scoffed, but Brandon was just glad he could take a regular breath again. Everything had settled, and the silence of the homestead brought a measure of peace with it.
After a few minutes, Lenore punctured the silence with, “Did you pass out?” Her delicate fingers brushed along his hairline again, eliciting a shiver to run down his back. “Brandon, I swear if you passed out?—”
He smiled, and without opening his eyes, he reached for her and said, “Lay by me, sweetheart. I need to remember how to keep breathing for just another minute.”
Then he pulled her to the ground and tucked her against his side as he kept on breathing.