Show Me (Thomas Prescott 4), Nick Pirog [classic children's novels .TXT] 📗

“You any good?”

“Full ride to Purdue.”

“No kidding?”

He nodded.

“How’d you guys do?”

“Not great. Only had one winning season when I was there.”

“The pros ever come sniffing?”

“Not really. I was small for a college offensive tackle, I would have been a fruit fly in the pros.” He took a breath. “But I got a free education, got a degree in agricultural studies, then moved back home.”

“Agricultural studies? You were always into farming?”

“Got into it when I was in high school. One of the assistant coaches had a farm and he’d pay some of us to come work it during the off-season and the summer.” He glanced down at his hands and said, “I fell in love with the dirt.”

“Is that what you did when you moved back?”

“Started working on my old assistant coach’s farm full-time. I would help out with the football team too, as sort of an ad hoc offensive line coach. Did that for a long time, just saving as much as I could. When I was in my early thirties, I took out a loan, and bought a ninety-acre plot.”

“Where was that?”

“About six miles east of here. Farmed my ass off for the next five or six years. Made a couple nice returns.” His face fell. “Then I lost it.”

I wanted to ask him what happened but I didn’t want to pry. All I said was, “I’m sorry.”

He puffed out his cheeks, took a breath, then said, “But if I hadn’t lost the farm, I probably wouldn’t have met Alexa.”

“God works in mysterious ways,” I said. I may have said this in his dad’s voice.

He laughed, then said, “You got to stop doing that, man.”

“Never.”

I asked, “So you met Alexa?”

“Yeah, I went back to coaching the kids at the high school—was the freshman/sophomore head coach—and Alexa was teaching tenth grade. Got married a couple years later, and the twins came a few years after that.”

I told him how absolutely beautiful his daughters were, then asked, “What happened with the coaching?”

“About five years ago, they got rid of the freshman/sophomore team. I could have stayed on as an assistant with the varsity team, but I was making more money picking up odd jobs.” He downed the last of his beer, then said, “Speaking of that, we ought to get back to work.”

We spent the next seven hours back in the fields, the two of us splitting time driving the tractor and shoveling the vast amounts of brush into the back of Randall’s truck and trailer.

After the sun set, Randall and I returned to the rocking chairs. Along with the chairs, I’d also purchased a bug zapper and a bunch of citronella candles. But even together, the zapper and the candles were overmatched and the mosquitos descended on us. Randall didn’t seem the least bit fazed by the swarming insects, immune to them after a lifetime in the Midwest. I swatted, slapped, and inhaled bugs until finally giving in and covering myself in a thick layer of noxious bug repellant.

There was a small cooler of beers between Randall and me, and we sipped brews under the fluorescent blue light of the bug zapper. The first beer, we talked about me. My life, my parents, my sister, a few of my cases. The second beer, we more or less sat in silence, both of us exhausted from a fourteen-hour day in the baking sun.

At one point, Randall took out his lighter and lit the mountain of brush in the dirt in front of the house.

The third beer, we watched it burn.

Chapter Sixteen

The next two days were much the same. Randall showed up on my doorstep at 7:00 a.m. with two steaming cups of coffee. Then we spent the next fourteen hours switching off between driving the tractor and shoveling the brush. Then we drank beers and watched the pile blaze and settle to ash.

On Saturday, we took a half day.

For Mike Zernan’s funeral.

The cemetery was on the far eastern edge of Tarrin, adjacent to sprawling mounds of dirt that Randall explained was where the kids went to BMX. As if on cue, a rider emerged over one of the hills, zoomed down a steep decline, then hit a jump, launching himself into the air.

It was a peculiar dichotomy, the cemetery and the BMX park so close to one another. One a final resting place. The other, perhaps the essence of living. And it probably made things super easy when a kid did a backflip and broke his neck.

Just drag him across the street.

The cemetery parking lot was overflowing. I was curious how many people would show up for Mike’s funeral. It was a small town, and he had been a public servant for twenty years, but I was surprised at the number of cars.

I parked the Range Rover in the dirt overflow parking, and Randall asked, “Was it really necessary to bring them?”

Harold and May were both sitting on Randall’s lap.

“They’ve been cooped up all day. They needed a little field trip.”

“You’re gonna end up in the loony bin.”

“Says the guy wearing a white suit to a funeral.”

“Hey,” he said, “I look good. And this is my lightest suit.”

To his credit, it was baking hot. To his discredit, he looked like he was about to host Family Feud.

A few days earlier, I bought a suit at the only store in town that sold such things. The measurements of the suit were depressing. My waist was once a 34. Now I was a 40.

Sigh.

Randall and I exited the car, both pulling our suit coats from where they were hanging on hooks in the backseat.

I pulled on the navy jacket, my internal temperature jumping ten degrees, then noticed through the window that Randall had left the passenger door open.

I ran around the car. Randall was struggling into his white linen suit coat, and I shouted, “The piglets!”

They were gone.

I whipped my head around and saw them. They were scampering between the grave stones, headed toward the large crowd