The early morning sun streamed through the large bay window and onto the broad shoulders of the man who knelt in prayer. A golden retriever basked serenely in the sunlight next to him. The man raised his eyes to the sunrise, voiced a low “amen”, and smiled as he stood to his feet. He placed his large, rough hands on the bay and leaned forward, drinking the beauty of the day.
“Ah, it’s a fine day you’ve made, sir....yes, a fine day.”
With a slight smile and a nod, he affixed his hat firmly on his head. He strode into the kitchen and fetched a water cooler from the refrigerator, then strode out the front door with the exuberant dog close at his heels.
The front door squeaked and slammed behind them as his large hand grasped a spud bar and post-hole digger leaning against the house. He placed the tools in the bed of his truck and the dog jumped in beside them. He climbed into the truck with the cooler by his side and drove down a gravel road to the outskirts of his property, which ran up to a dirt road. After driving about five hundred feet on the dirt road, he pulled to the side. With tools in hand, he stepped resolutely to two stakes planted eight feet apart in the middle of a painted orange line that ran the perimeter of his property. The dog jumped out of the truck and followed the man into the grass, searching for a good place to nap.
The man tossed the spud bar to the side and removed the first stake. He thrust the post-hole digger into the ground and began digging a hole centered on the stake’s mark. He worked steadily for about twenty minutes without hitting any rocks of consequence, then measured the hole width and depth.
Satisfied, he hefted five large flat stones from the bed of his truck onto his shoulder, and carried them over to the new hole. He grabbed the top stone, covered the hole with it, and set the remaining stones on the ground near the second stake. He measured another eight feet along the orange line from the second stake and planted the first stake at that point.
The tape measure snapped back into its case as he removed the second stake and began to dig again. At the second thrust of the digger, a large crow landed on his head and said, “Hey, fathead!”
The man ducked and shooed the crow away. “Elmer, get out of here!”
“Show me the money!” said Elmer.
“Elmer, it's way too early in the morning for this.”
“Show me the money!”
“Elmer...no. You're going to have to wait.”
“It's twelve o'clock! It's twelve o'clock!”
“No, Elmer. Now get out of here.”
“That's mutiny, Mr. Christian.”
The man finally lost patience and chased the bird away and continued his digging. He worked until almost noon, occasionally prying out stubborn stones with the spud bar. From time to time, he guzzled ice water from the cooler in the truck, and called his dog over for a drink.
Close to noon, a large truck rolled down the dirt road and parked beside where the man worked. Despite the size of the truck, it looked too small for the man in overalls who emerged from it. Surprisingly, the earth did not quake when he clomped up to the man digging the hole. The dog happily trotted toward the giant wagging its tail and offered its head for a pat.
“Hey, Bayo. How you doing, boy?” The giant left the dog and approached the dog’s owner. “Hey, Oliver...digging you some post-holes?”
Oliver pushed a stake into the ground at the eight-foot mark and let the tape measure snap back into its case as he walked toward the large man with his hand extended.
“Mr. June...indeed, I am.”
The two men shook hands. Oliver, though a large man with big, thick bones on which hung big, thick muscles, seemed like a pubescent boy compared to Mr. June, who was much nearer to seven feet tall than six, with the girth of an oak.
“Whatcha fencing for? You gonna start you some cattle?”
Oliver shook his head. “Nope. Thought I’d try my hand with horses.”
“Huh. How many holes you gotta dig?”
“Five hundred.”
“Great gobbledy-goo, Oliver! Why’ncha get you a hole drill?”
Oliver looked at Mr. June with barely perceptible disdain. “If I need a hole drill, you can be sure I’ll get one, Mr. June.”
“How many you dug so far?”
“Almost finished with two hundred. Just turned the corner on the long side yesterday.” He pointed toward his house. “See up there? I already triple-coated the first hundred posts white and concreted them in.”
Mr. June squinted. “Them look like six by six’s.”
“They are. I want a good, solid fence.”
Mr. June chuckled. “Man, why’ncha just build you a wall?” Oliver smiled. “Y’know, Oliver, you need to get you a wife and have you some boys to help with this work. It’s been seven years since the accident, ain’t it?”
Oliver reached up, placed his hand on Mr. June’s shoulder, and began walking with him back to his truck. “Yes. Thank you for...”
“Y’know...y’know, my Jenny says she knows some fine old gals you could hitch up with. Some of them’s widows and got spreads of their own, and some of them got nothing, but dang pretty enough to make up for it. Jenny says she’ll make you a match any time you want and...”
They reached the truck. “Mr. June, you can thank Jenny for me for her consideration…again…and you can assure her that she’ll be the first one I call if ever I want a ‘match’.” Oliver looked steadfastly into Mr. June’s eyes.
“Sure...sure thing. I’ll tell her that.” The men paused.
“Hey, Oliver...I got me a taste for some of Mary’s ribs into town. You wanna come?”
“No, thank you, Mr. June…maybe another time. I have some lunch waiting for me in the house.”
Mr. June circled around his truck to the driver’s side. “Well, OK, but’cha don’t know what you’re missing. Mary makes ribs better’n my Jenny, and what’s worse, Jenny knows it. She knows I used to have a thing for Mary and her ribs, and you know I almost asked her to marry me, before I met Jenny. I gotta lie and tell Jenny I’m going to town for feed or tools. Say, you think that’s wrong? Kinda like a food affair or something?”
Oliver smiled. “Well, if Jenny ever finds out, I expect she’ll let you know if it’s right or wrong.”
Mr. June winced. “Hoooo-EE! If that’s the measure, then I’m an evil, evil man! She’d slap me on Satan’s griddle herself, if she ever found out! She hates Mary. Always thinks she’s trying to steal me away from her.” Mr. June opened the door to climb into his truck, and Oliver chuckled as he turned and starting walking toward his own truck.
Before getting in his truck, Mr. June said, “Hey, can I ask you a question?”
Oliver turned to face him. “What is it, Mr. June?”
“How come is it you won’t call me Bubba like everyone else? I know folks don’t see each other much out here, but I known you for what...gotta be more’n twelve years...and you still call me Mr. June. How come is that?”
Oliver knitted his brows. “Well...uh...I don’t recall you asking me to call you anything else, and I suppose I view it as a sign of respect...for you.”
“I asked you to call me Bubba before, but you don’t. Now lemme tell you something, Oliver. Us Juneses been hog farmers since Adam, and the best I know, not a one’s got any respect for it. Most people, especially city folk, think we’re fools, and maybe we are. But the short of it is, us hog farmers been so long without respect, we wouldn’t recognize it if you served us a chunk of it with an apple in its mouth. But I tell you what...I may not recognize respect, but I sure do recognize friendship, and I think that’s what we got here. We been through a lot of good and bad, you and me, like when you built your house, like when you had bumper crops three years in a row...and...like...when Ellen and your little boy...got killed...” Both men bowed their heads.
“I guess what I mean to say is, I can live without respect, but I can’t live without good friends. And Oliver, all my friends call me Bubba.”
“I...I will try to remember that...Bubba.”
Bubba smiled. “You still ain’t nothing but a city boy. That college filled you with more manure than’s on my entire farm.” And with that, he climbed into his truck and drove off down the road, leaving Oliver smiling broadly in a cloud of dust.
Oliver chuckled, shook his head, and murmured “Bubba” lowly as he headed for his truck. As Bayo jumped in the back, he got behind the wheel and drove to his house.
The front screen door squeaked as he and Bayo entered the house, and banged behind them. He opened the refrigerator, set sliced roast beef and fixings on the kitchen table, and assembled a large sandwich. He hungrily bit into it as he leaned back against the kitchen sink. Bayo slupped from a water dish nearby.
Through the kitchen door, which led to the living room, his eyes locked on something, and he walked towards it as he ate. He stopped in front of a small table next to a leather recliner. On the table were a lamp, a dial telephone, and a framed picture of a pregnant woman and a little boy. He picked up the picture and gazed at it for several seconds as he swallowed his bite.
He set his half-eaten sandwich where the picture had been, picked up the telephone receiver, and dialed a number with the same hand, staring at the picture as he waited for an answer. An answering machine with a young boy’s recorded voice answered.
“Hello, you have reached the Martin residence. This is Preston speaking. Please leave your name, the time you called, and a short message, and...”
With slight disdain, Oliver hung up before the message completed. He picked up his sandwich and carefully set the picture back in its place.
From somewhere out on the porch, Oliver heard Elmer say, “It's twelve o'clock! It's twelve o'clock!” He sighed as he went to the kitchen and took a small bowl from a cabinet and a can of beer from the refrigerator and walked out to the porch.
“Show me the money!” Elmer waited on the porch railing.
“Yes, yes, Elmer. I have it here.” Oliver opened the can of beer and poured half of it in the bowl and set it on the rail. Elmer shuffled to the bowl and dipped his beak to drink.
“You have to be the world's only alcoholic crow. You're a pest whether you're sober or drunk. Why you latched onto me, I'll never know.”
Oliver walked back into the kitchen and sat at the table. He finished his sandwich, then made another just like it. He ate that sandwich as well, then grabbed the twin of the cooler in his truck from the bottom of the refrigerator. The ice cubes knocked against the sides of the cooler as he walked out the front door to return to his work with Bayo at his heels and Elmer's “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!” in his ears.