Work had a way of quieting anxiety. At least, that was what I was counting on. By the time Lloyd shut the garage doors and fired up the ATV, my dread had retreated into something manageable. Not gone. Just buried beneath the weight of purpose.

  The four-wheeler rattled beneath us as we bounced along a dirt track that cut through open pasture. Lloyd drove, one hand on the throttle, the other resting easy on his thigh. I sat behind him, gripping the cargo rack where he’d lashed down a bundle of fence posts, a post-hole digger, a sledgehammer, a spool of barbed wire, and a bucket full of metal clips and tools whose names I’d yet to learn.

  The land rolled out wide and patient on either side of us. Cattle lifted their heads as we passed, watching with dull curiosity. A calf peered at me from behind its mama’s legs.

  Lloyd cut the engine near the eastern boundary. The fence there sagged in places, leaning like tired men who’d lost the strength to stand straight. Several posts had rotted clean through at the base, the wood dark and spongy where years of moisture had done their work. Moss settled into the cracks, taking advantage of the shadows that shielded them from the sun. At that altitude, there was less atmosphere to protect them from those scorching solar rays, which was why Lloyd lent me one of his old hats and ensured I put some sunscreen on before we began.

  “This line here,” Lloyd said, swinging off the ATV, “it’s older than Derek. Maybe older than Evan too. Time to put it out of its misery.”

  Like I did with Lady? I imagined myself as some manner of grim guardian, a master over the threshold between life and death. I was not the judge, just the one who eased passage from one existence to the next. Maybe it was just my father’s time? The thought alleviated some of the guilt.

  “Don’t go spacing out now.” Lloyd shoved the post-hole digger into my arms. “Ever use one of these?”

  I looked it over, recognizing it from that summer with Bob. “I have, actually. Just not for fences.”

  “Oh?”

  “I worked for a land surveyor,” I said. “We used this to set boundary marker posts.”

  Lloyd raised a brow at me, clearly curious what other surprises I might be willing to share. His inquisitive expression made me regret having said anything. My dad had once told me a story from his Air Force days, about when he used to drive trucks and deliver sensitive materials. Sometimes someone would approach him seeming like a friendly stranger. They’d ask questions like, “How early they got you getting up these days?” The questions seemed harmless enough, but these people were really fishing for information they could use to ambush the truck on the open road. They’d gather little pieces of information and then put them together like so many pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

  Any fact from my past was a puzzle piece that Lloyd could use to find out who I was. If I let slip that the surveyor I worked for was named “Bob” or that he had one eye, Lloyd could deduce who he was based on that and give him a call.

  Rather than dwell on it too long, I began digging a new hole. The ground was stubborn, packed hard with stones that rang against the metal. My shoulders protested almost immediately, muscles still stiff from years of tension that no amount of lifting weights had ever quite resolved.

  Still, I worked.

  After I finished the first spot, Lloyd patted me on the shoulder. “Good. Build that character!”

  Each hole took time. Sweat made Lloyd’s old hat stick to my forehead. Dirt caked onto the work gloves he’d lent me. Exertion made it satisfying. Years of being told I “wasn’t a real man,” followed by pointlessly lifting and lowering heavy plates for no apparent reason other than the sheer labor of it melted away. I was a real man. I was capable. All the more so when there was a reason for the work.

  Lloyd showed me how to set the new posts and tamp the soil tight around them. Then we move on to the wire. He demonstrated how to stretch it taut and how to staple it just enough to hold without snapping.

  “You ever meet a woman named ‘Barb?’” Lloyd asked me.

  I shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

  He held the wire in front of my eyes. “Well, now you know several. And I hope you’re enough of a gentleman to know not to touch a lady if she doesn’t want you to, and even if she wants to, you ought to be careful of how you touch her. Because if you touch her wrong, she’ll hurt you. Understand?” His lips wore an amused smirk. “Barb will stick you if you touch her. Even if it’s an accident. Got it?”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  I learned quickly just how right he was. Barbed wire was honest, she did exactly what she was supposed to do. Even the gloves only offered mild protection from her edge.

  After a short while, Lloyd said, “Looks like you’ve got the hang of it.” He fished a walkie talkie out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Here. If you need anything, or something goes wrong, you call me. Alright? I got a few other things to deal with.”

  “Will do, Lloyd. Thank you.”

  With no further words, he hopped on the four-wheeler and drove off, leaving me with the tools and supplies for the job.

  Not long after he left, the work became routine, almost second nature. I learned where to grasp the wire to avoid the point, and the pile of rotted posts began to grow.

  It’s always when work becomes natural that thoughts start to settle in. Memories and ideas. As I thought on what Lloyd said about “respecting a lady,” called to memory the twisted way my father treated women. The man had started a photography business a few years ago. It was his way of being “artsy” and “creative.” He turned his old office into a studio, one right next to the one where my mother worked in her home office.

  My parents didn’t discuss house finances with me much, but from what I could tell, the photography business made very little. My mother was working overtime constantly, we were eating ramen noodles far more often than usual, and I’d overheard my father asking her for money so he could buy another new piece of camera equipment.

  Shortly after that, the models started coming in for photoshoots. Amateur models trying to make it big in the business. My dad would often gather the whole family together to show us the results of his photoshoots. I recall the pained expression on my mother’s face when she noticed the pattern in every picture: the models were beautiful, and all were scantily clad. There were even a few photos which implied that the model was nude, though the camera angle had given her some measure of honesty.

  I recall the burning sensation that rose to my ears, feeling the humiliation my mother went through.

  On one occasion, my father talked to me about the most recent shoot he had. The model was eighteen, just a year older than I was at the time, and, judging by the pictures, she was the most gorgeous woman I’d ever seen. Dark hair, mysterious eyes, an infectious smile, and a figure like a goddess. I was in awe that such a woman could even exist, let alone that he had gotten to spend the day with her.

  Dad told me that she had a great sense of humor too, and he got her laughing pretty hard. He said they had such a great rapport that she asked if there was a younger version of him.

  “Did you mention me?” I’d asked him.

  “No,” he told me. “I mean, I said I had a son, but told her you’re really nothing like me.”

  I said nothing more, but I was furious. Often, my father had made fun of me when I was single, pushing me toward finding someone. Since I had no confidence, this often led me to date someone I wasn’t really that interested in, just to say I had someone. Then, almost like clockwork, he’d start making fun of my girlfriend when she wasn’t around. He certainly had a field day mocking Lilah behind her back, just for being a twenty-nine-year-old single mother getting involved with a nineteen-year-old who still lived at home with his parents.

  Yet here was this model, this picture of pure feminine beauty, and rather than try to nudge her toward me and see what might happen, he shut down the conversation. Moreover, he told me that he’d shut it down. What was the purpose of regaling that story to me if not to either brag that young women still wanted him or specifically to hurt me?

  My teeth gritted at the memory, and I dug harder at the rocky soil for the next post.

  Is that why you really killed him, then?

  The voice was in my own thoughts, but my vivid imagination had all but created the image of a person standing next to me, throwing such disturbing allegations.

  No, he was trying to kill me first, so I defended myself.

  I struck the hard earth once more, cursing under my breath that it would not obey me.

  But you knew what would set him off, said the voice in my head. You knew that turning it around on him was going to make him angry, so you brought a gun and did just that.

  My teeth ground together so hard I thought they might crack. He was strangling me!

  You baited him!

  “Screw you!”

  A moment later, I realized that I’d said it out loud. I glanced around, ensuring that no one was in earshot. To my relief, not even animals were close enough to hear what I’d said.

  That’s all I’d need, right? I thought as I returned to my work. For people to hear the runaway talking to himself.

  Something garbled came through the walkie talkie. Taking a deep breath, I dug it out of my pocket. “Come again, boss?”

  “I said I’ve got lunch for you,” came Lloyd’s voice on the other end. “You ready to eat yet?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I could use a little break.”