Page 25 of Roommate
After we gas up the tractor, we hitch up the baler and drive it out to the field. “You want to bale or toss?”
He shrugs.
“I’ll toss,” I say, taking the harder job.
“Okay,” Kyle says easily. Then he climbs back onto the tractor, and off he goes.
I move my pickup truck into the field and wait a moment until the baler poops out a few square bales. Then I start heaving them into my pickup truck.
It’s repetitious, and the truck needs to be constantly moved. But the physical activity starts to work its magic on me. When I’m moving, my mind becomes calmer.
Kyle and I have always been farm boys, unafraid of hard work. My brother may be flaky, but once you get him started on a task, there’s no one better to have on your team. When I was a little boy, I thought my father and my big brother were everything. I was never happier than when we were all outside together, working shoulder to shoulder.
Those were the days when I was ignorant of the shadowy corners of my parents’ marriage and too young to notice that my dad would never love me as much as Kyle. I thought Kyle’s status was due to birth order. He was the bigger brother and therefore more admirable. And therefore I was always trying to compete. I worked my skinny little butt off so I could wield a hammer like Kyle or lift a fifty-pound bag of chicken feed. There was only the fresh air and the sunshine and my zeal to do the work of real men.
I just assumed I was every bit as deserving of my father’s love as Kyle was, and that I’d get my share eventually.
Spoiler alert: I never did.
Meanwhile, I developed interests that nobody else in the family shared. Although I didn’t know anyone else who could draw, I did so obsessively. My father’s green John Deere was one of the first things I drew, and it became the subject of hundreds of pictures. I used up every green crayon in the house, and when they were gone, my mother joked that I’d have to start drawing Kubotas, because they’re orange. So I did. Problem solved.
Art was something that was only mine. Kyle couldn’t compete. And I needed that, because my desperation to be Dad’s other sidekick wasn’t working out so well. I didn’t know why.
Until one ugly day when I was fourteen, and I overheard my family’s big doozy of a secret—that I was the kid nobody had wanted.
It was a hard thing to hear at fourteen, but many things in my life made more sense after that.
Kyle and I bale oats until we can’t see the field anymore. He shuts off the tractor and climbs down to stand beside me, where I’m sweating in spite of the October chill. “That’s better than half of it,” he says. “Are we gonna bale the rest tomorrow? Or were you thinking of grazing it?”
I consider the question. “Safer to bale it, unless it rains before we can do it. It’s in really good shape right now, and if we get early snow you’ll be hating life.”
“Cool. We’ll bale it, then.”
This whole exchange bothers me, though. I’m not the one who should be figuring this stuff out. “Hey Kyle?”
“Yeah?”
“You need to know that I’m moving out at the end of the month.”
“What?” My brother gapes at me. Even in the dark I can tell that it never occurred to him that this was a thing I might do. “Where would you go?”
“I rented the house next door to Zara.”
“Why, bro? Here you’ve got free rent.”
“It was never free,” I remind him. “Twenty hours of farm work a week.”
“But—” Kyle gulps. “You still have to pitch in while dad is laid up. You can’t just bail on me.”
“Like I’d do that?” My voice actually cracks in surprise. “You’ll have me until all the harvest stuff is done. But you need to understand that Dad isn’t going to have a miraculous recovery. He’s had disc trouble for thirty years. I don’t think he’ll ever throw bales of hay around again.”
“Nobody said that,” Kyle insists. “He’s having all this surgery so that he can get better.”
“He’s having all this surgery so that he doesn’t get worse,” I argue. “The real blessing here is that you don’t seem to have inherited it. Keep your back strong just to be sure, okay?”
Kyle squints at me. “You too, right?”
“Right,” I say quickly. “But I’m not the one who needs to do farm work forevermore. This is your spread.”
