On the other side of the river and up the hill a vacant dairy operation stood like an emblem of a former time. It had gone under three years before, the cows sold, the barn stripped, the corrals left empty and the manure turned to dust. The place looked sunbleached as cattle bones. It seemed that most dairy barns in the area held corrals of weeds instead of cows anymore. Milk prices had been low that year. Another outfit across town sold its equipment and livestock the year after but was sitting on the land, waiting for the rumored money to show up. Something about that abandoned place across the river made him want to go there, because it would be strange and secret to walk around it, nothing but birds for company, and maybe not even them, since there was no spilled feed for them anymore. His father had foreseen this. He had broken with the farm at eighteen for a college degree, leaving Elmer to sit at their father’s feet a lone disciple. Jack’s father had not worked another day on that ground because Blair forbade it. When the old man saw his eldest son forsake his birthright he hefted a chip to his shoulder that he’d not shrugged to this day. Jack’s view of this schism was more seasoned now, and he suspected that his father’s unorthodox views of the church had something to do with Blair’s paternal hostility. Jack’s father taught him to respect physical labor, to love it even, but not to rely on it, and had disapproved of his slow gravitation toward that lifestyle. His father said that if a man had the option, physical labor was to be more of a balance and a release than a livelihood depended on for basic sustenance. A man should have two sets of practical skills, that which he did with his hands and that which he did with his mind, and Jack felt what would have been his father’s disappointment that his only child had never acquired an obvious skill of the mind. Never mind that he knew each cow by her udder, knew her number and the number of her mother, could quote milk records and birth lines. Never mind that he knew how to harvest hay and corn at its highest yield, that at age twenty he was confident he could run this entire farm by himself if he had to. He could hear his father saying that some were meant to be simple men but some chose to be fools, and some were meant to do greater things than pull the teats of another man’s cows and wait for an uncertain inheritance whose tacit promise brought ambivalence at best.
In some dead hour of the afternoon he walked through the oppressive sunshine and dragged his feet in the gravel of the barnyard. Elmer called to him from where he rested, post-lunch, in the shade of his trees and told him all four tractors needed greasing. Jack walked on like he hadn’t heard. He worked on his back beneath the tractors and by the time he ran out of grease and made a run to the co-op for another box it was nearly time for milking. Looking out from under the biggest tractor he saw dust, and when it settled, an old blue Cutlass Supreme parked alongside the diesel tank, and when its door opened, Roydn Woolums. The farmhand stepped out and walked up the incline on his way to gather the cows. He stopped at the tractor and Jack looked out at his manure-caked boots and kept working. Roydn never washed his boots. He either lacked the perception that this small crumb of dignity might be had in this profession or he didn’t care. He stood there for a full minute before he spoke, spitting once in a while on the gravel.
—Hello Selvedge, he said finally. Hot bitch, ain’t it?
—Didn’t Blair tell you? said Jack. You’ve been fired.
—What’d you do today, said Roydn. Beat off and sweat over it?
Jack scooted over and saw the kid swiveling his bean-shaped noggin around in the afternoon sun. A large round chin and bulbous forehead made up the balance of weight above bony shoulders and a sunken chest, and they bent toward each other as if they hoped to touch someday. There was a lump in his throat like he’d swallowed a knotted tree branch, a knuckled growth that moved up and down when he spoke or swallowed. He held in his hand a bottle of Pepsi and pulled out a wrinkled package of corn nuts and threw some in his mouth.
—Give me a few of them corn nuts, said Jack. I ain’t ate yet.
Roydn handed over the bag and Jack shook some into his mouth and immediately regretted it. He slid beneath the tractor and found another grease zerk.
—So what’d you do today? said Roydn.
—Fixed fence.
—Where abouts?
—This one here that runs to the house.
—That’s a long one. Say, is Blair ever going to sell any of that piece? I been looking to buy a little land to start my operation.
—Why don’t you talk to him.
—Well ain’t you going to get half?
Jack grunted. He was sweating freely and smears of black grease covered his arms and old grease was packed under his fingernails, so he couldn’t wipe the sweat from his face nor away from his eyes where it ran in and stung them.
—What’s that supposed to mean? said Roydn. I bet you get half. This place is as good as yours. You was born into it. When you share the place with Elmer you let me buy some of that piece for my operation.
—What operation is this now, Woolums?
Roydn came down on his hands and knees close to Jack, trying to look him in the face, but Jack wouldn’t allow it.
—Well you know, he said, when I was in Nebraska I seen hog farms all over. I knew some real well-off hog farmers. So it’s a hog farm I got in mind.
—What happened to the turkey farm?
—The turkey farm? He sat back on his haunches and let his head drop and stared at the ground. He rubbed his whelked chin as he considered. Well, that failed about a year ago it must of been. Bout the time I got back. Pa wanted to make um free range, but we lost money that way somehow. We’re tending compost piles now, and that ain’t going nowhere. And by the way, Pa wants to know if he can come get some manure with his pickup. Wants to know if you got any drier stuff available.
—What’d you do with the bull calves you bought?
—One died, and the other I sold to that halfwit Wrink Poulsen.
—Make any money?
—I made a little.
—How much?
—Enough.
—How much?
—Seventy bucks.
—That after feed?
—Nah.
—So you lost money.
—I don’t member how it went.
—That ain’t worth the effort, said Jack.
—Would be though, if I was to run a feed lot and made a small profit on every bull.
—That’s a better idea than the pig farm. The town should have a problem with a pig farm.
—I’ll get um to change their minds on it then, said Roydn. His eyes squeezed