waiting for them, smoking their pipes in the dark like sentries.
Cristina was not such a girl. She had a dignity and seriousness of purpose far beyond her years. He was sure she was the kind who would let only one man touch her, the one she decided to wed.
Work, Karl. Work. The wind had picked up enough that when he lifted the next post, he had to take it into account. More shoulder and less embrace made this encounter a mite less incriminating. The post slid down the shallow trough he had cut to make the process easier. When he had one whole side completed, he checked the alignment: as straight as the numbers in one of his father’s ledgers.
The wind blew his sweat cold as he admired his work with the devil’s pride. The proper antidote, of course, was the same as for desire: redoubled labor. He worked steadily through the afternoon until, with three sides of the rectangle complete and the fourth started, Friedrich showed up, collar and hair still wet from the crick.
“Do any good today?” Karl asked.
“Robert got him a few,” said Fritz. “Fat ones, too.”
“See any water moccasins?” Karl asked.
“Naw,” said Fritz, as if it wouldn’t have scared the bejabbers out of him if he had.
“Were you the only two there?” Karl asked.
“Andrew Schwarz and Harley Ansel came later,” Fritz said.
“Harley give you any trouble?” Karl asked.
“Naw,” said Fritz. “When I told him what you was doing, it gave him a good enough laugh that I guess it satisfied him.”
“Don’t ever let him bully you,” Karl said. “I’ll have a talk with him if you need me to.”
“Aw, Harley ain’t so bad,” Fritz said, and Karl could not help thinking that Fritz had probably laughed right along with him.
He went to the horse cart to pull down another post from the dwindling pile.
“I’ll help,” said Fritz.
Karl could have asked his father to assign Fritz to assist him, but it was the elder’s lot to shoulder the burden.
“Dad sure did give them enough land,” said Fritz, gazing down the long-side fencerow.
“Got to last till Judgment Day, I guess,” said Karl.
The younger boy walked over to the empty hole and looked down. The wind had abated, and bees flitted at the dandelions.
“You suppose he’s fixing to bury himself here?” said Fritz.
“He’ll probably be looking for a little help from the two of us,” said Karl.
“I mean him and Ma, they’ll both be here?”
“Don’t get too far ahead of yourself, Fritz,” said Karl.
As he began to lift the next post from the pile, Fritz leaped to help.
“It’s all right,” said Karl. “I got it.”
Fritz disregarded Karl and managed to get the butt end off the ground. The quiver of his exertion expressed itself down the whole length of the log.
“Steady, boy,” Karl said.
That only made the log wobble so much that Karl could feel it working out of his own grasp.
“Just let me know if you’re going to have to drop it, Fritz,” he said, using all his will to keep up his end for fear that if he lost it, the weight would crush his brother’s hands.
Without warning Fritz simply let go. This broke Karl’s grip, and the heavy log crashed against his shin.
“Almighty!” he cried as he went down.
The pain did not come immediately, but when it did, it radiated from the spot of the blow upward and downward until it hurt as much as a part of him could.
As he held his shin between his hands, the feeling began to center itself where he could test it. When he realized that the wound was more likely a bruise than a break, the question of Fritz began to intrude into his selfish pain.
He was nowhere to be seen from the ground where Karl lay curled.Karl straightened his leg against the hurt, rolled off his hip, and pushed himself upward to a sitting position. It was only then that he saw the retreating form. Fritz’s impulse to flee was as much a part of his nature as a rabbit’s.
Karl leaned on an arm opposite the injury and pushed up against the burden of the earth. When he got upright he listed, but he was able to stand.
“Fritz!” he called out, waving his arms. “It’s all right.”
Fritz turned, but trouble was trouble, and it never went away. So you had to. Just that simple, said the rabbit.
Karl’s leg ached something fierce. It gave him sharp notice whenever he put too much weight on it. But still he found that if he stood correctly, canted away from the weak side so he could take the burden on his good leg, he could still lift. It did test his back, but no more than hay bales in tight quarters in the loft. He used the tool to brace himself as he leaned over, then used the pole itself for balance as he slid it.
Getting the fence post upright proved to be another matter. He pushed his bad leg as far as he could, but still the angle was wrong. The log would not slide into place. It began to wobble, and he had to throw it from him. At this point he really could have used his brother’s help. But that was an idle thought. He tried again and again until he succeeded. Eventually he was able to master how to work hurt so he could keep going until the posts turned the empty land sacred.
There had been jeopardy, but he had gotten through it. Danger was always present, whether in building a fence or running the sharp-bladed implements in the fields. It was there even in pleasure, climbing a tall lookout tree near the crick or touching a girl at the dance who you could tell wanted to come back around to be touched again. It was the way of the world to put obstacles in the path between a man and the things he wanted or was obliged to do. Otherwise, Karl supposed, a soul would never be measured. Maybe this then was the reason God made moccasin snakes and swimming holes and gypsy women and little brothers.
3
WHEN KARL LIMPED INTO THE HOUSE, he did not mention Fritz’s role in his injury. He had just lost his balance, he said.
“That is the cause of all human misery,” Karl’s father observed.
Karl could think of quite a few other causes—starting with severe fathers—but he stood silently, wondering what punishment his father would mete out to him for a job well done.
His father began to pace.
“Success in agriculture today takes more than a knee for the weather,” he said.
Was this a test? It was not his knee that he had hurt.
“Your mother
