A Yoke Built for Two | A Dead Hog, a Shovel, and a Fifteen-Year-Old

May in Missouri. Warm, not hot like it will be in July. Humidity in the air, mist at the bottom of the hill hiding the green grass.

Bright white gravel under tires. He opens the passenger door. He is fifteen. His grandma drove him.

The Oldsmobile idles behind him until the screen door opens and a man comes out. Then she pulls away.

The man is the rancher’s son. Sixty years old, maybe more. His truck is running in the yard.

“You eat breakfast?” he says. Then, “Dad’s in the hospital. Nursing home after that, probably. He won’t be coming back to this.”

The house first. Old, white, small, on top of the hill. A garden plot on the side, a shotgun sitting by the door nearest the garden. Dogwoods and oaks, leaves out full now. One level. Two bedrooms, a kitchen, a sitting room. Clean. The beds made tight with homemade quilts. Glass jugs on the floor by the kitchen door. “Dad’s corn whiskey,” the son says. The boy can eat lunch in here if he wants. Running water. The well is outside.

A newspaper picture in a frame on the side table. Five generations. A new baby, and a great-great-grandmother still alive to hold him.

“That’s my mom,” the son says. “Holding the baby. That picture is ten years old now.”

Then the work. Build a cattle corral and an alley good enough to back a trailer in and load. Stay out of the old smokehouse. It’ll fall down any day now. One of those sheds needs knocked down before it falls down, you can use the tractor to help. The chicken coop needs cleaned out. Probably hasn’t been since Mom passed. Most of the perimeter fence needs checked. Water tanks sorted.

The truck is still running.

The son looks at his watch. Plenty to do.

“But there’s a job that needs done before all that.”