11. Kieran
KIERAN
With Zara’s keys in my pocket, I feel like a new man. This is it. The rest of my life starts now.
I drive home, thinking optimistic thoughts. I need to order a bed to be delivered to the new place. I’ll do that right away, even if I’m not ready to move.
If you have a bed, it’s official, right? Everything else can come later.
Since it’s Saturday, I don’t have to go to my Burlington job. Kyle and I have plans to bale the oat straw, but it’s not even noon, so we’ve got five hours of daylight left.
While we’re out there, I’ll tell Kyle that I’m moving out. He can get used to the idea while I’m still here, working hard while my dad heals up from his surgery.
But eventually I’ll be a free man—free to live somewhere else and let Kyle take on most of the farm labor with dad.
And free to figure a few other things out, too.
I bump along our dirt road with the music blaring, feeling optimistic. And I just ate the chewiest, most amazing sesame bagel I ever tasted in my life. Even if part of me still hopes Roderick will turn tail and leave town again, I will miss that man’s baking.
When I park my car outside the farmhouse, though, reality sets in. Kyle’s pickup isn’t here, and neither is my parents’ truck.
Inside, I find my dad in his easy chair, looking uncomfortable. Actually, uncomfortable doesn’t even cover it. His lips are white with pain. “You okay?”
“Do I look okay?” he snaps. “Is your mother back yet?”
“No,” I say slowly. “Where’d she go?”
“Grocery store,” he grunts.
“You want help getting out of that chair?”
His lip curls with the horror of needing help performing such a simple task. I can see him wrestling with his choices—remain in pain, or accept help from his least favorite son?
“Yeah,” he eventually grunts. As if it kills him to ask me for help.
I reach down and offer him my hand, which he grasps with both of his. Then he pulls himself up with a weary groan.
“Doctor said a straight-backed chair would be better than that recliner,” I remind him.
“Not deaf. I heard him.”
Right. “Where’s Kyle?” I ask as my dad eases past me, walking like a ninety-five-year-old.
“Dunno. Not my job to keep track of him.”
So I guess it’s mine. I take out my phone and shoot off a text to my brother. Can we bale straw today?
His response comes quickly enough. I’ll start it tomorrow .
Where are you?
Watching college football with Griff on his lunch break.
I feel a sharp, irrational pang at being left out of these plans. I’m usually at work right now, though, and not free to hang out in the middle of a Saturday. They wouldn’t expect me to be available.
It would have been nice to be asked, though.
With nothing else to do, I go outside and collect eggs from the chickens. Rexie barks hello, trotting across the meadow to see me. And the hens cluster around me like groupies at a rock concert. At least the animals are happy to see me.
Since I’m here, and it’s a nice dry day, I decide to bale some of the oat straw myself, even though it’s really a job for two. But then I discover that I can’t, because we’re out of diesel for the tractor, and Kyle has driven the truck with the tank on it to Griff’s.
I shouldn’t be so annoyed, but I am anyway.
Kyle, please get some diesel and come home. It’s the perfect day for baling .
Griff wants me to press some cider , comes his response.
My blood pressure spikes, because Griff will pay Kyle for his hours, so of course Kyle wants to stay. But didn’t we just talk about this? Kyle’s double-dipping can’t happen on my dime, and I’ve already pitched in too many hours this month.
I don’t think Kyle realizes that Dad’s back may never be a hundred percent again. It’s going to be a rude surprise when I’m not around to pick up the slack anymore.
Look, I’m available now , I reply. I would have gotten started alone. But the diesel tank is with you .
Fine , he replies a minute later. On my way . I can almost hear him grumbling, like I’m inconveniencing him right now.
While I’m waiting, I move the chicken tractor and take care of some other chores. On a farm, there’s always something more to do. Clock-out time comes only when it’s too dark to see.
Kyle drives up eventually. He’s remembered to get the diesel on his way home, so at least I don’t have to go to jail for murder. “Hey,” my brother says, jumping out of the truck, his movements brisk. Again, it’s obvious he’s mad at me for interrupting his Saturday.
He won’t stay mad, though. Kyle doesn’t hold a grudge. He’s an easygoing guy. He sees no evil and takes no sides. Still, it’s frustrating to me that he never notices all the tension and the crosswinds in our family. I feel like I have to carry that burden alone.
It’s easier to be Kyle than to be me, and I envy him more than he will ever know.
After we gas up the tractor, we hitch up the baler and drive it out to the field. “You want to bale or toss?”
He shrugs.
“I’ll toss,” I say, taking the harder job.
“Okay,” Kyle says easily. Then he climbs back onto the tractor, and off he goes.
I move my pickup truck into the field and wait a moment until the baler poops out a few square bales. Then I start heaving them into my pickup truck.
It’s repetitious, and the truck needs to be constantly moved. But the physical activity starts to work its magic on me. When I’m moving, my mind becomes calmer.
Kyle and I have always been farm boys, unafraid of hard work.
My brother may be flaky, but once you get him started on a task, there’s no one better to have on your team.
When I was a little boy, I thought my father and my big brother were everything.
I was never happier than when we were all outside together, working shoulder to shoulder.
Those were the days when I was ignorant of the shadowy corners of my parents’ marriage and too young to notice that my dad would never love me as much as Kyle.
I thought Kyle’s status was due to birth order.
He was the bigger brother and therefore more admirable.
And therefore I was always trying to compete.
I worked my skinny little butt off so I could wield a hammer like Kyle or lift a fifty-pound bag of chicken feed.
There was only the fresh air and the sunshine and my zeal to do the work of real men.
I just assumed I was every bit as deserving of my father’s love as Kyle was, and that I’d get my share eventually.
Spoiler alert: I never did.
Meanwhile, I developed interests that nobody else in the family shared.
Although I didn’t know anyone else who could draw, I did so obsessively.
My father’s green John Deere was one of the first things I drew, and it became the subject of hundreds of pictures.
I used up every green crayon in the house, and when they were gone, my mother joked that I’d have to start drawing Kubotas, because they’re orange. So I did. Problem solved.
Art was something that was only mine. Kyle couldn’t compete. And I needed that, because my desperation to be Dad’s other sidekick wasn’t working out so well. I didn’t know why.
Until one ugly day when I was fourteen, and I overheard my family’s big doozy of a secret—that I was the kid nobody had wanted.
It was a hard thing to hear at fourteen, but many things in my life made more sense after that.
Kyle and I bale oats until we can’t see the field anymore. He shuts off the tractor and climbs down to stand beside me, where I’m sweating in spite of the October chill. “That’s better than half of it,” he says. “Are we gonna bale the rest tomorrow? Or were you thinking of grazing it?”
I consider the question. “Safer to bale it, unless it rains before we can do it. It’s in really good shape right now, and if we get early snow you’ll be hating life.”
“Cool. We’ll bale it, then.”
This whole exchange bothers me, though. I’m not the one who should be figuring this stuff out. “Hey Kyle?”
“Yeah?”
“You need to know that I’m moving out at the end of the month.”
“What?” My brother gapes at me. Even in the dark I can tell that it never occurred to him that this was a thing I might do. “Where would you go?”
“I rented the house next door to Zara.”
“Why, bro? Here you’ve got free rent.”
“It was never free,” I remind him. “Twenty hours of farm work a week.”
“But—” Kyle gulps. “You still have to pitch in while dad is laid up. You can’t just bail on me.”
“Like I’d do that?” My voice actually cracks in surprise. “You’ll have me until all the harvest stuff is done. But you need to understand that Dad isn’t going to have a miraculous recovery. He’s had disc trouble for thirty years. I don’t think he’ll ever throw bales of hay around again.”
“Nobody said that,” Kyle insists. “He’s having all this surgery so that he can get better.”
“He’s having all this surgery so that he doesn’t get worse,” I argue. “The real blessing here is that you don’t seem to have inherited it. Keep your back strong just to be sure, okay?”
Kyle squints at me. “You too, right?”
“Right,” I say quickly. “But I’m not the one who needs to do farm work forevermore. This is your spread.”
“And yours,” he adds, still not getting the message.
“It was never mine.”
“Bullshit. That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. Just because you and Dad argue sometimes doesn’t mean he’s cutting you out of the will or some shit.”
I want to shake Kyle and scream, Pay attention!
Then again, it’s not my brother’s fault.
He can’t see what I see, because he doesn’t have all the information.
“I’m not Dad’s choice. It’s nice of you to pretend otherwise, but it isn’t helpful right now.
This is your farm, and he needs you to step up and take over.
Either you do that, or he’ll reinjure himself. You know it’s true.”
“Fuck.” Kyle shoves a bale of straw further onto the truck and then looks around, like he’s seeing our darkened farm for the first time. “I’m a good worker. But I’m shit at the business stuff. I’m no good at planning.”
At least he realizes this. “All you need is some focus. Channel your inner Griffin.” Our apple-farming cousin is a savvy businessman. “Hell—ask Griff to help you. You know he would.”
“But you won’t,” Kyle grumbles.
That’s right, and it gives me a pang of guilt. Except I know better than to help, because Kyle would just let me do everything. “I’m busy making other plans. New house, new classes in the spring.” I’m finally taking control of my life. And that means weaning Kyle off of my assistance.
“Just don’t move out,” Kyle says, as if this were a negotiation. “I’ll step up. I’ll plan everything. But you should really stay here.”
“It’s a done deal. Sorry.” Just saying those words is a big deal for me. I’m no longer caving to everyone’s expectations.
Kyle’s face creases in frustration. He kicks the last bale of straw over and then stalks off without me.
I suppose I could walk off without finishing the job, too. Just to prove a point. But I squat down and grab the last bale, heave it into the truck, and then drive it back to the barn.