The faster I get this done, the faster I can pick berries with Daphne.
Two or three of the hens are already watching me warily. At least I don’t have to deal with their electric fence, which Dylan already dismantled. So the hens are milling around their coop, scratching in the grass for bugs, and waiting to slash my throat with their sharp beaks and their scaly red feet.
“Okay, ladies,” I say, easing my way toward the coop. “Everybody be cool! This is a robbery.”
I hear a snort from the berry patch. Maybe Daphne isn’t a fan of Pulp Fiction. But a good line is a good line, even if the chickens are doing their best to ignore me. The coop has these little doors that open from the outside, revealing the nest boxes. It’s a pretty good system, and the first one I open has an egg right there for the taking.
It’s still warm. I set it carefully into the wire basket and then open the next box.
A hen glares at me from inside, her red eye angry.
“Lift up your feathered ass, girl. I don’t have all day.”
She doesn’t budge, and I let out a sigh. Then I give her a little nudge, and spot the two eggs she’s sitting on.
“This hurts me more than it hurts you,” I promise her. Then, one at a time, I steal those eggs. And she lets me.
Three down, ten or eleven to go.
As I open the next box, I feel eyes on my back. I don’t turn around yet, though. Daphne’s watching me. She probably thinks I’m incompetent. While I was born in Vermont, I’m a military brat. I grew up all over the world. And my idea of spending a great day outside is drinking in a German biergarten or sitting at an Australian cafe drinking flat whites and reading poetry.
But it’s hard to deny that the country life looks good on me. It’s only been a few weeks, and I’m tanner and stronger than I’ve been in years. And Daphne likes that a whole lot more than she’s willing to admit.
Fine. If she’s going to watch me, I’ll give her something to look at. I set the wire basket down in the grass and then strip off my T-shirt. Then I angle my torso a quarter turn and flex when I open the next box. I gather another egg and then cut my eyes to the right to try to catch her watching me.
Bingo. I see a flash of silver between the branches of a blueberry bush.
“Shipley?” I call out. “You need something? What are you doing with your phone?”
“Checking the time! I have a call in an hour. My new job in Burlington starts tomorrow.”
Huh. I was planning to head to Burlington tomorrow too. What a coincidence.
“After you’re done with the eggs, you can pull some of these weeds,” she says, changing the topic. “It’s a mess over here.”
“Yes ma’am. We can do that together, right?”
“No way,” she insists.
Damn. I go back to the eggs.
The sun beats down on me an hour later as I tug another dandelion out of the dirt. My back aches from leaning over, but my knees are saved by the green cushion I’m kneeling on. It’s called The Garden Pad, and when Ruth Shipley—Daphne and Dylan’s mom—handed it to me fifteen minutes ago, her smile said, Here, you poor, tired fucker. Don’t die on my property.
The chance of that is low, but not zero. And I’m really fucking thirsty right now. My body aches from this morning’s pasture work, where I dug hole after fence post hole to keep up with Dylan and his older brother, Griffin. I’d had too much pride to take things slow. And now my poor tired body needs to lie down on this strip of grass for a nap.
I'd also like a cold beer and a smoke. But I’ve promised Mrs. Shipley that I’d quit smoking, so I can't light up so close to the farmhouse. And I'm a stubborn bastard. I’m going to weed this damn patch if it kills me.
Staying here for the summer was all my idea, after all. Dylan Shipley is my friend and roommate during the school year. I knew the Shipleys were always short-handed, so I’d made Dylan a deal—if they took me on for the summer, I could rent out my Burlington house and get Dylan’s rent down to practically nothing for next year.
“Hell yes,” he’d said. “We’d be happy to have you,