“What
did you tell him?”
“I told him a brass key does not fix a broken pasture fence,” Dad said. “I told him to grab a spade and start digging.”
Out in the dairy yard, the crisp autumn morning air smelled of cut corn silage and cold diesel exhaust.
Travis was pulling sixty pound square bales off the flatbed trailer, swinging them high onto his thigh before tossing them into the loft chute.
His insulated chore jacket sat unzipped over his flannel shirt, steam rising off his damp back as he moved.
Dad walked down the concrete ramp from the milkhouse, his heavy boots crunching on the frozen gravel.
“Stack those seven deep along the south wall,” Dad called out toward the chute. “The tin roof leaked on the bottom layer during the spring rains.”
Travis did not look up or slow his rhythm.
He caught the green twine on another
