“Tony,” Vicki snapped and Tony jumped. “Don’t run with a baby in your arms.”
Stomping his foot, “Robin was naked and wanted me to hold her,” Tony whined.
Holding her hand up again, “No excuses,” Vicki said and then turned to Arthur. “I’ll try to feed Nicole, but she only likes her Arthur to feed her.”
Putting the swings down, Arthur picked Vicki up in his arms and set her on his hip. “She needs to learn that others can feed her, but I’ll do it if she won’t eat. How about that?” Arthur asked and nuzzled his face into Vicki’s neck, making her squeal.
“Okay,” Vicki laughed out and he put her down.
Arthur turned to the kids. “I’m going to show you your jobs one at a time. Those of you on equipment, whose job is it to watch for others?”
“The operators,” everyone answered.
“All machines are to be in low. Now, let’s hide the road,” Arthur said, leading the group to the creek that ran behind the house. “Pat, you will dig a hole here in the creek,” Arthur said, walking out in the six-inch deep water. Grabbing rocks, Arthur outlined a circle. “You will dig it six-foot-deep, that’s to the elbow of the arm.”
Pat nodded and Arthur led them over to the tractor. “Now, that is a rotary tiller on the tractor and is very dangerous. Shawn will start off. We are tilling from here,” Arthur said, pointing at a spot on the road. “All the way down the road to where that dirt track leads to the Kercher barn.”
The kids looked back at the track to the barn that was across the dirt road. Going through an overgrown field, the track formed a circular drive that hit the dirt road just around a small curve a quarter of a mile away.
Walking around, Arthur continued laying out the jobs and then told the kids to get to work. He jumped up on the tractor and drove it to the road. Turning on the PTO shaft, Arthur lowered the tiller until the teeth were sunk in the packed dirt road.
Seeing Shawn understood, Arthur stopped and let him take over.
Arthur headed over to the trailer that had dozens of sapling trees with their roots bound up in burlap. Grabbing a bundle of orange flags, Arthur marked a line from the creek over the road Shawn was tilling up all the way to the hill that sat in front of the house.
After he did that, Andrea and several others started laying out metal fencing posts along the line Arthur had marked. Picking up a can of spray paint, Arthur moved past the line of flags and started painting Xs at random spots. Then, he had Shelia move over with the track steer that had an auger attachment on the front.
After the hole had been dug in the creek, Arthur pulled the trailer with the water pump over and unhooked it. Before he could go and check the work, Vicki called over the radio that Nicole refused to eat. Taking Nicole and the bottle, Arthur fed her as he walked around and watched over his kids.
Just before noon, they ate and then pulled over the forty-foot trailer that was carrying the pallets of sodded grass squares. Starting where the road was tilled up, they put the grass squares down over the road as Pat drove the truck very slowly, something Pat was very good at, down the tilled up road. They only had enough grass for several hundred yards.
As Arthur showed the kids how to use the seed spreaders, Shawn pulled the tractor over to the other trailer. Using the bucket, Shawn carried the trees to the holes that had been dug with the auger and dropped them in.
At two, they were putting up the barbed wire fence as Arthur pulled coils of water hoses from the trailer and laid them out. Kirk followed Arthur, carrying tripod water sprinklers that were five feet tall. When the sprinklers were set up, Arthur put a large hose in the hole that had been dug in the creek and turned a switch on the water pump.
The kids all turned as the sprinklers coughed and spit, then started sending out jets of water on the new trees and grass. “Holy shit, we hid a road,” Shawn said, looking back from the front yard.
“I know where it was at,” Shelia said, pointing at the very green grass.
“In a few weeks, you won’t,” Shawn said in amazement. “We can still use that dirt track to the barn but if anyone comes down this road, it will look like a dead end.”
Walking over, Arthur patted Shawn’s shoulder. “Now you’re getting the idea. Work hard, but always work smart,” Arthur told him. “We’ll grab a ‘Dead End’ sign and put it on the road to finish the job.”
“What about the north road?” Andrea asked.
“We will do the same where the road Ts off and crosses the north creek,” Arthur said. “But that can wait. We have much more work to do; this was the road I was worried about.”
“Guns now?” Jim asked, crossing his fingers.
“Not yet, we have work to do in the greenhouses and then we hit the gun range,” Arthur said and Jim started jumping up and down cheering.
Pointing over at the pump trailer, Andrea asked. “What about that?”
“We’ll leave it for a few weeks or so,” Arthur said as the others started gathering up the stuff. “It’s on a timer, so it will water the area for five hours every day. By then the grass should be set and if not, we’ll leave it longer.”
Everyone loaded up and took the new dirt track to pass a very dilapidated barn. Driving slow, Arthur felt like Pat as he glanced in the mirror to
