“Now stop! That’s not an easy thing for me to admit. You know Tracy is my only child and I damn near lost her at childbirth. So I only wanted what was best for her and at the time I didn’t think that was you. But I watched you with Nicole. She stripped away your East coast sarcasm and your ill temper towards the world. You loved her like no other ever could. The father’s pride that beamed in your eyes every time you held her, that alone made me realize my error. I’ve seen you with all your kids Mike and I know that you would do whatever it took to make sure that each and every one of them was safe. And for that Mike I’m sorry that I ever doubted you. But if you take one more swig off my bottle like the last one, I’m taking it all back.”
I handed her the bottle back, I had actually taken a fair hit against the contents. I felt a little bad but it was rapidly becoming covered over with the warm tingly feeling of a buzz.
“What are you two doing out here?” Tracy asked, donning her coat.
“Reminiscing.” I told her.
“Reminiscing huh? How much of that paint thinner have you had Mike?” My wife asked me.
“More than he should have.” Carol said, holding the bottle up.
“We gots to get that minivan off the road.”
“Gots huh? I don’t think you should be driving anything, Mike.” Tracy said.
“Aw it’s not like he’s going to get a DUI. Loosen up girl.” My mother-in-law said between swigs.
“Mom! Don’t encourage him.”
“You still got that tractor Carol?”
“Actually had it running about a month or so ago to plow the driveway. Don’t really have a desire much now to go out. “Though if you hadn’t brought this whiskey I might’ve been changing my mind soon.”
CHAPTER 22 
Now the question was, did I want to plow the driveway and let any old schmoe have a direct route up or did I want to drag the minivan and all its contents up here. If I dragged it up here and something happened where we needed to get out again we were screwed. Plow the driveway it was then. If anybody came a knockin we’d deal with it at that point. Not like this was I-95 to begin with. I went back into the house and put on everything and anything that I thought would stave off the frigid cold. Whisky glow was only going to get me so far. And yes I know that alcohol doesn’t really warm you up. It does the opposite in fact by thinning your blood. It just makes you FEEL warmer. I had bundled up near to the point of becoming a beach ball with appendages and was three steps down the porch before I realized I had forgotten something. Now I know this was the safest I’ve felt in weeks but still I marched back in pretending to ignore my wife’s questioning gaze and grabbed my nine-millimeter.
The barn, where the tractor was located, was about 100 yards or so from the house. I encountered six death blotches between the house and the barn. I shook my head in marvelment of how Carol had survived. Had she slept? It wasn’t like she could post a guard. She didn’t have a dog anymore. Bastion had died I think two summers ago, struck by the tractor. Tracy had cried for near on a week. Her father had got that coon hound the day he found out he had cancer. He often told people that on his worst days of getting chemo, it was the tail wagging, tongue- licking Bastion that helped him get through the day. Even on his deathbed he had told Carol that the dog had probably given them an extra half of year together. Carol loved that dog, if only for the fact that it had given her and her beloved husband extra time.
It was two years after Everett’s death that she had hired a handyman to get rid of some trash from the back acreage. Something Everett had been promising for close on 15 years. It was more of an inside joke that Everett had never gotten around to it than a point of contention. When the man had come running up to the household with a broken bloody bundle in his arms, Carol had intrinsically known what he carried. She had wept nearly as many tears for the mangy Bastion as she had for her husband. Another link to him was gone. She buried Bastion alongside her husband in the family cemetery.
So I circled back to the original question. How could she ever sleep knowing that at that very minute, a mindless, hungry predator might be closing in. I shuddered. I had reached the front door to the barn, now not nearly as prepared to enter into the gloomy interior.
“They don’t lay in wait Talbot.” I said out loud. It was a trick nearly everyone uses to steel their resolve. I think it’s more to let whatever monster is lurking know that we’re coming in ready or not. I just wish the monster gave the same courtesy. I clicked over the ancient light switch. Two light bulbs lazily lit the room. you could still wear night vision goggles in here and not get any glare through them. The tractor stood dead center in the barn and every deadly implement known to farming kind graced the walls all around me. I was sweating. I felt that it was dignity saving to blame it on the multiple layering I was swathed in.
I had reached the tractor when Justin shouted to me from the door. I realized then my mistake. Not that I was going to shoot Justin or even that he startled me enough to do it accidentally but if someone of ill intent had come up on me, my multi layered fingers couldn’t fit in through the trigger guard. “You are just all sorts of a hot mess, aren’t you Talbot.” I again said out loud to myself.
“I asked if you needed any help Dad.” Justin answered thinking I hadn’t heard his first query, which I hadn’t. I had been whistling demons away at that time.
He looked like shit and five degrees below zero was going to do little to help him. “Sure.” I didn’t know what the cause of his recent detachment to us was but if he was going to throw a lifeline it was my duty to reel him in. “Gotta a gun?”
“What do you think? I’m your son.”
“Smart ass. Okay let’s just do a quick search through the stalls and the loft. This place gives me the willies.”
“You sure it’s not me?” He asked, half of the question was smart ass reply half though was a true question.
I didn’t have a fifty fifty answer. I let it drop. Within minutes we discovered that the only other tenants of the barn were an extended family of field mice. I decided that if they were going to leave us alone then I would follow suit. Yep you guessed it. Mice scare the crap out of me. Yes I’ve been to battle. I’ve killed my fellow man and monsters of myth. It’s just something about that hairless tail that really shoots a spike of fear through me. I don’t really want to talk about it. Just add it onto the growing list of Talbotisms.
The tractor cranked after the third time and a good blast of starting fluid into the carburetor. “You up for doing some plowing?” I asked Justin.
He looked at me like I was pulling his leg. “You serious?”
“Sure go ahead.” I told him. For those of you that thought I did this only because I didn’t want to be out in the North Dakota winter only have it partially correct. Isn’t this part of the reason we have kids at all? So they can do the shit jobs that we used to do. Like taking out the trash, mowing the lawn, shoveling walkways. You don’t really wonder why farm families used to be so huge do you? It’s not because screwing is the only thing to do. It’s because there is so much work to be done. Okay and screwing was really the only form of entertainment.
I stepped back before Justin had the chance to lurch the tractor into gear. The kid really couldn’t so much as drive a nail, if you catch my meaning. He definitely inherited that from his mother. I figured the tractor to be about 8 feet wide and the doors to the barn easily double that width and still I wondered if he would hit the frame. Would that kind of strike be enough to take the ancient structure down? And would we survive being buried by 87 tons of sharpened metal objects? Probably not, I walked out to guide him through. Not bad, I thought, as he had a good six inches of clearance on his left hand side.
“Alright.” I shouted. “Just make a pathway down to the minivan so we can get it back up here.” Justin gave me a thumbs up.
I turned to walk back to the house and hopefully a steaming mug of cocoa. I was lost in the reverie of melted marshmallows when the warning shout came.
“Look out!” Came the distant shout from the house. I looked up towards the porch. Tracy was cupping her hands together for the bullhorn effect. When she realized she had caught my attention she made an over agitated gesture with her arm. I dove to my left, the blade of the plow pushed air past my face, Justin was looking off to his right and had not even noticed that he had almost made me a snow angel. So angel might be a little liberal but it’s more of an analogy. He turned back towards me as he passed. Something between ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘Damn’ crossed his face. I stood up and brushed the snow off of me, just staring at him as he passed.
I looked back up at the porch Tommy had an expression on his face I couldn’t remember ever seeing. It was rage. The glare he directed at Justin got to me more than the mice. All of a sudden Carol’s house didn’t seem quite
