Every time I looked up from my welding that Saturday, I could see Vance.
His truck was parked at the top of the hill on the edge of his meadow, about two hundred yards away. He was sitting on the tailgate. He had a thermos and a pair of binoculars, and he didn’t move. He sat there all morning. He sat there all afternoon.
“He’s been up there since sunup,” Ardith told me while she handed out the last of Earl’s burritos. “I saw him when I drove in.”
“Let him watch,” I said.
“You think he’s mad?”
“I don’t know what he is.”
Around four, Bryce, Ardith’s oldest, carried a coil of rope up the hill to Royce’s tractor, and he passed right by Vance’s truck. When he came back down, he came over to me with his eyebrows up.
“Mr. Tolliver asked me what kind of pipe it was,” he said.
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him drill pipe. Five-inch. Grade E. That’s what Hub said.”
“What did he say back?”
“He said, ‘Huh.'” Bryce thought about it. “And then he said, ‘Tell her to bevel those rail ends so the kids don’t cut their hands.'”
I looked up the hill. Vance was still sitting on his tailgate with his binoculars.
I beveled the rail ends.
We quit at dark. The pipe was set, the bracing was done, and the steel straps were on. All that was left was the decking and the rails.
That night, Travis called from his bunk in West Texas.
“Well?”
“Four joints across. Bracing’s on. Hub made me redo one weld.”
“Only one?”
“Only one.”
“That’s a good day, then,” he said. “Hub made me redo nine on my first rig.”
“Vance sat on his tailgate all day and watched.”
“He say anything?”
“He sent a message through an eleven-year-old to bevel the rail ends.”
Travis laughed so loud his bunkmate yelled at him.
“That’s Vance,” he said. “He can’t help himself. The man’s never seen a job he didn’t want to stick his nose into.”
“He hasn’t taken the can down.”
“No,” Travis said. “But I bet he’s thinking about it.”
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