Page 2 of On the Land, We Shoot Straight

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rady sipped his coffee and listened to the sounds upstairs.

It’d been a while since he’d had someone else in the house.

The pipes rattled as the water started up, an almighty clang like a cannon was being loaded.

It’d settle once the kid, Cole, figured out he needed to turn the taps just so.

Grady listened to the banging and took another sip.

The rattles petered out as Cole must’ve worked it out, the sound of water gushing through the pipes filling the kitchen.

He ought to get the damn thing fixed. His missus had been on about it, but since she hardly ever came out here, he hadn’t bothered, and he didn’t reckon this Cole would give a shit.

Grady finished his coffee and set about getting his stuff together for the night. He figured Cole would come down soon, and he got to fixing him a plate alongside the sandwiches he was making for himself. The water went off with a final clang just as Grady was screwing the lid on his thermos.

He set the plate for the boy on the table and headed into the foyer to get his boots on.

As he sat on the bottom step of the staircase and tied his laces, he debated if he should wait until the boy came back down before leaving.

Then he felt annoyed to be thinking on it.

He went back into the kitchen, got his bag and thermos, looked at the plate and the coffee next to it, and thought about how quiet the house was.

He set his stuff down, went back out and up the stairs.

The door to the spare room was open, and Grady looked in. Cole was there on the bed, hunched up in a little ball and dead to the world.

“Fuck’s sake.”

Grady went out again and down the stairs.

He got the plate and the coffee and cursed Old Man Cole.

He went back up, his tread softening as he crossed the floorboards and set the food and the coffee on the bedside table.

He glanced down at the boy. He was out of it, all right.

He hadn’t bothered with a shirt, and his pants had seen better days, the material so worn it’d only take a gust of wind to shred them off his waist.

Grady glanced back up at Cole’s face; his lips were parted, and he breathed softly, as if even in sleep he was trying to be quiet. Grady frowned.

He went out again, resigned to doing the whole field himself.

Grady whistled up the dogs. They launched themselves into the back of the truck, their nails clicking on the bed as Grady swung himself into the driver’s seat and put his bag on the passenger seat.

He turned the key and set off for the nearest field.

He could’ve walked it even with the tractor parked on the far side, but he wanted his bed too much at the end of the night to be making the walk back to the house.

The horizon was bleeding bright pink as he pulled up next to the fence and got out, the blackness above it streaked with the last of the light.

It was still hot, but it was damn cooler than it had been.

The dogs jumped down, scurried around sniffing the dirt and the trees flanking the field, checking that everything was just as they’d left it twelve hours ago.

Once they settled their accounts with the land, they’d fall into step with the tractor wheels and make the trek at a slow pace up and down the rows until dawn.

Grady got in the cabin with his stuff, turned the key, and made a start.

His missus used to ask how come he never got bored out here.

Grady never answered her. He didn’t know how to say it was his time to think—or not think, as it were.

Only problem that night was, as the sky shifted from black to blue with the moon heavy and full on the far horizon, his mind kept playing over what in the fuck he’d been thinking, taking that boy in.

Seventh born and there weren’t no way that kid had a skill. His life would’ve been a foregone conclusion. Finish school. Move to the city. Work construction or go to college if he was bent that way. Not the farm. Even if the eldest hadn’t wanted it, the second would. Or hell, the third. The fourth.

Not that it mattered much because Grady knew he was doing this field and the next one on his own. Now he just had to figure out how to kick the kid out without having to think too much on bleeding hearts and where the boy could possibly go. It was eating at him more than it should.

Grady hadn’t got his mind to working on much else when he was slamming on the brakes at the appearance of a dark figure in the headlights.

The dust and wind whipped around the boy as he held his hand over his eyes and tried to peer into the cabin against the glare.

Grady cursed, turned the key, and got out.

“Whaddya doin’ gettin’ in front like that?”

“I been tryin’ to get you to stop.”

They stood in the halo cast by the tractor’s lights in the field.

“What for?”

“It’s nearly five.”

Grady watched as a swirl of wind kicked up and tousled the hair around Cole’s face before settling again, the little bugs dancing in the light between them.

“You wanted me to start at five,” Cole said, something earnest yet guarded in his voice.

“All right,” Grady said, figuring, what the hell, what’s the worst that could happen? Kid plants it through a fence while Grady’s sleeping and Grady repairs the fence.

He went back to the cabin and heard Cole following him, felt his presence at his back.

He swung himself up into the seat and grabbed his bag and thermos.

He was about to get out when he glanced down and saw Cole studying the gears like he was aiming not to be seen doing it. Grady decided to throw him a bone.

“You been drivin’ this model before?”

Cole looked up. He smothered his surprise, cleared his throat. “Not this one, no. My daddy’s got an older one. I think.”

Grady grunted and got to explaining how to shift gears, how to turn with the combine, when to turn, then where he was at with the field and what Cole could expect to get done.

“It’s gonna be hot, but I ain’t got no AC in here, so it might be best to call it and come on back in for lunch.”

Cole nodded. “I’ll be all right.”

Grady wasn’t sure about that, and it wasn’t like he could afford to replace the tractor if the kid did some damage, but screw it.

If Cole pulled it off, Grady would have the crop in just in time for the real rains, and that’d be something.

Provided they got rain this year. The downpour that’d allowed him to put the crop in at all didn’t mean more was coming if the past years were anything to go by, and the unseasonable dragging of the heat meant the chatter in town ran to another drought.

But he sprayed after that rain, then started seeding because what else was he going to do?

“All right,” Grady said and jumped down.

He set off in the direction of the house and left the truck.

The dogs looked between him and Cole and decided to stay.

They’d come back when it was too hot, Grady knew—still, it wasn’t like them to leave his side.

Them deciding Cole was all right made Grady think maybe letting him stay was going to be all right too.