The split rail

Clayton said it like this. Our thoughts mind you are rain and the ‘lessenin’ we boil it, stew it that is, well, the more there is to the good. Also, he went on to say, thoughts kin point to where the turkey shit in the buckwheat. I think I know that one, I replied. Leather boots ragged assed and sullen, laces unwound to the porch floor, but it was when we sat on the front step together that I came to know how the boots betrayed the wearer.

The creases that hung below Clayton’s eyes eased, chestnuts shined like the acreage itself as he pointed to the faraway fields birthing from a widening South Bay; slope of land easing from under winter, low wind cradling the smell of earth reborn.

By the time I was seven I would shun the loudness of Sunday family visits here at the house, Clayton began to tell: mostly because I had heard the stories before and by then I had new ones to learn. I would slip away and generally tuck myself half under the zig that followed the zag in a snake fence row of split rails that lined the pasture on the back survey. I would lie on my back mostly hidden and silent, but not alone. The chipmunks that used the fence as a roadway would travel just above my nose, their mild shadows chasing after them. Then there was birdsong; the rattle of the corn stalks; the sweet stink of apples on the ground of last season; the awesome sight of a vulture hovering on patrol, higher than silo-high was how he put it.

By that time, Clayton told, I could haul a splittin’ maul and could wedge open those red cedar logs for fencin’ just like I could slice the belly of a twelve-inch trout from the creek beyond; the logs were new cut, tang of bark innards filled your nostrils, rosy lookin’ wood got graceful with age and just like ‘em I have weathered too; row after row of fences stuck loyal to the place, stitchin’ the hem of every ten-acre grazing patch and meadow an’ cornfield is all I can say.

I done hayin’ too, my grandfather showed me how to stook hay like in his day and he would do it for the sheer beauty of it over there in a small corner of field after the square balers arrived and I for sure would love one day to stand some sheaves just to see them be there with the meadowlarks and the picture of my granddad between them. Could I plough? Plough? He clenched his clean-shaven hardened jaw. Look it those fields beyond with just little me trippin’ in the raw furrows behind big June; she was eighteen hands, a blue roan Belgian and I clung to those worn ash plough handles and steadied the blade best I could as she steered the way. Belgians Clayton said doesn’t have hair around the feet like the Clyde’s; he explained because he was sure I wouldn’t know the difference and I didn’t.

Early day I’m out there Clayton went on, it’s a Saturday and the river of the sun burnin’ through the shadows of a moonless night is what I thought I heard him say over the yowl of circling warplanes on manoeuvre from Trenton base. The row of hardwoods wore a fine cloak of purple and gold, Lord of the land, rivers and sea. That was the God I knew that didn’t take no book or preacher to explain it, ya understand? I understood, I replied. Then Clayton said when he and June reached the fence bottom it was time for a break. I unhitched the plough and watered and fed her and then clinging to the harnesses and gently steppin’ onto the crook of her knee I would yank myself up and slide onto her back. Up there was taller than the porch roof and broader than a top bunk. I would lie flat, my head on her rump, feet on her withers and soaked in her body heat and the cool spring air and we listened to the clouds sifting by to the roll of the pines. Just me and one grand elephant of a horse and when you remained still like that you were part of every sort of thing, every bug, every blessed blade around you, you follow? I followed; I also said to Clayton that folks work every day to find what he knew all along. Maybe and somehow he whispered. Start off by hiding under a fence rail and just listen, was what Clayton said to me as I was leaving. And that was where I began.