The Reasons I Won't Be Coming by Elliot Perlman

Author:Elliot Perlman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

Neil had taught me to drive a tractor. Both of us did our best. In spring, early summer and early autumn we waited for rain. He taught me to mend a fence as well as anyone, but my stretches did not always hold firm. Occasionally cattle would stray. Once Neil had found two of the cows in the shed at the back of our house. He had been repairing something for Madeline. I don’t know what it was. Things around the house used to break. She would discover them and he would fix them, all without my knowing. She would talk to him about finances, the farm’s, his, and ours. Sometimes I would come in and they would be going over the books with a cup of tea or a beer in summer.

It was nothing, he said, but I could sense that he pitied me. I knew he was double-checking everything I did. As uncomfortable as we were around each other, I could not fault his effort around the property. He could not have taken greater care of everything if it had all been his.

After a while I got used to him checking my work. I got used to working on my own too. Sometimes I would see him in the distance and wave. Perhaps he was shortsighted, or else it was just that men on the land did not wave, just as men on the land did not have pet names for particular cows. There was one we had for a time, one with a long, angular face, that seemed a little aloof. I called her Garbo. It did not catch on.

Andy had built a wooden partition in the shed and was living there. I suspected this bothered Neil, who would have felt his access to the shed somewhat restricted by Andy’s presence. He liked to be up early and would often start in the shed, cleaning things. I never knew exactly what he was cleaning. The tractor, the pitch-forks, the saws. Once Andy saw him cleaning the gun. I heard them talking. Andy had stumbled out of bed on hearing him.

“You gotta do that?”

“I’m sorry if I woke you. Got to keep things clean.”

“You gotta do that now?”

“We’ll be seeing some foals pretty soon. Foaling season is when things have to be put down, the ones that won’t make it.”

I started to wonder if I did not actually create more work for Neil, given that he had to check everything I was doing. Some days I would quit soon after lunch and spend the rest of the afternoon reading on the verandah. Andy had made me a chair out of some wood we had lying around. He had stripped it, sanded it, sealed it and then tacked a padded leather pouch on the seat and another at the back. He put some springs on the back legs so that it rocked or tilted a little. Then he painted all the wood pastel blue. I had become a man colored pastel blue.

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