Working Men Box Set by J.M. Snyder

Author:J.M. Snyder [Snyder, JM]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: JMS Books LLC
Published: 2016-07-11T04:00:00+00:00

THE END

Opening Day at the County Fair

About the only thing that happens here in Boydton County is the annual fair. The first week in October everyone turns out at the fairgrounds, their livestock and crops in tow. There are cattle auctions, hog calling contests, funnel cakes, chitlins, and “Best of Show” ribbons given out for everything from largest cucumber to fattest sow. On any given day there’s maybe five hundred people all told, jostling for a place inside the split rail fence that cuts the grounds out from the surrounding fields. Believe me, that’s a crowd around these parts, and all the pick-ups and John Deeres tear up the dirt tracks that lead into the fairgrounds something fierce. When the fair committee manages to wrangle someone famous to stop on by, the mud and the muck just gets worse. Few years back, they had that guy who played Deputy Enos on The Dukes of Hazzard, and you’d have thought it was Boss Hogg himself. This year my sister Jolene heard it might be Toby Keith, but I think she heard wrong because there’s no way the county could cough up the money to bring someone big like him here. I mean, really.

The day the fair’s set to open, Jolene wakes me up at 4:30, just before dawn. Since it’s still dark out at this hour, it takes her several minutes to rouse me out of sleep. Barely opening my eyes, I groan, “God, Jo. It’s too early.”

“Come on,” she mutters, keeping her voice down so she won’t wake our folks. “Jesse, you said you’d drive me to the fair. Missy’s outside and waiting already.” Missy is Jolene’s prize pig—she won four ribbons three years back and Jo’s been making money selling her offspring at every fair since. Vaguely I remember telling her that I’d give her a ride to the fairgrounds, but right at this moment I can’t for the life of me imagine why.

When I don’t stir, Jolene shoves my bed and hisses, “Jesse!” Then she shucks off her sneakers and clambers on top of my covers, nothing but pointy elbows and skinny legs that poke at me in unpleasant places. Rising to her feet, she stomps about my mattress, narrowly missing my hands and face. “Wake up,” she chants in time with her steps. “Wake up, wake up, wake up.” I curl into a fetal position and squeeze my eyes shut, but what’s the use? She’s won. Still, I hold out until she stops moving and threatens, “I’ll tell Pa.”

Only then do I stretch awake. The last thing I need is my father in here, towering over my bed with his hard eyes, asking in that dangerously low voice of his how a hard-working man like him managed to sire a lazy do-nothing freeloader like me. I’ll never be good enough for him, I’ve learned that lesson over the last twenty years, but that’s never kept me from trying. As I kick Jolene off the bed, I yawn and tell her, “I’m up already.

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