The prairie's edge softened in the gray half-light of dusk. Without hurry, the boy dug at the base of an old branch whose time as a fence post had run its course. He wiped his brow with his forearm and felt the dust and sweat, grit and slime. He stared past Jon Jon working on the next post, past a string of early geese pumping the air above fields loose with amber grass, past a row of fence posts that had stood since Old Man Hill's grandfather rooted them there as much to keep strays out as to keep his own stock in. Though the boy knew where Old Man Hill's property ended, he could not see it. He saw the horizon, daunting and unreachable. It would take them the rest of the summer, or longer, to finish the job.
They had been at it for two hours and Jon Jon had not said a word. He dug, he jostled, he pulled, he grunted. He did not talk. They had removed twelve posts, Jon Jon responsible for seven. The boy paused his own digging to consider the geese and his father and the goose pit--the coming Autumn. Jon Jon kept working, without complaint, without a break.
The boy almost opened his mouth. He almost told his younger brother that he would finish the day, maybe even the summer--alone. He almost apologized, like his father always said he should when he made a mistake--even if he hadn't meant any harm.
Instead, he hacked at the base of the severed limb that had once been a fence post, that had once been young, and muttered under his breath about the unfairness of it all.
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