Page 60 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
“Soil composition.”
“Liar.”
He almost smiled. Almost. The corner of his mouth twitched, and he covered it by driving the fork down harder than necessary, which hit another rock, which sent another jolt up his arms.
“You two plan on turnin’ that whole acre by supper?” Pa’s voice carried down from the porch. “At the rate you’re goin’, that garden’ll be ready right about the time Miriam here starts school.”
Grace looked up. “We’re makin’ good progress, Rafe!”
“You’re makin’ conversation is what you’re makin’. I been watchin’. More talkin’ than tillin’ from where I sit.”
“We can do both!”
“Uh-huh.” Pa shifted Miriam to his other knee. “Boy never could work and talk at the same time. Even as a young’un. Remember, Logan, when your Ma—”
“You quit that talk now!” Logan frowned. “I’m serious!”
“—asked you to help shell peas and you got so focused on gettin’ every single pea out perfect that it took you three hours to do one bowl?”
Grace blinked. “Three hours?”
“Three hours.” Pa rocked back in the chair. “The boy lined every shell up in a row on the table, sorted by size, before he’d throw ’em out. Miriam, God rest her, just about lost her mind. She said, ‘Rafe, our boy is either gonna be president or the most borin’ man in the territory. I can’t tell which.’”
Logan huffed. “That ain’t—”
“Oh, and the firewood.” Pa bounced the baby. “Logan, how old were you? Seven? Eight?”
“Pa!”
“Eight. The boy stacked firewood for the first time and tore the whole pile down three times because the bark didn’t face the same direction on every log. His brothers come runnin’ inside, cryin’ because Logan yelled at ’em for stackin’ crooked.”
Grace pressed her hand over her mouth. Her shoulders shook.
“And the thing is,” Pa leaned forward, tipping the rocker, “the boy ain’t changed one bit. Thirty years old—”
“I’mtwenty-five!”
“—and still can’t let a single thing be less than perfect. Serious as a sermon from the day he come into this world. I don’t think the boy’s told a joke in his entire life.”
“That ain’t true.”
“Name one.” Pa raised a finger. “One joke. Go on.”
Logan stabbed the fork into the dirt and left it standing. “I tell jokes.”
“When?”
“I told one last week.”
“You told Thomas his bootlaces didn’t match. That ain’t a joke, son. That’s an observation that made a grown man question his eyesight for twenty minutes.”
Grace doubled over right there in the dirt, laughing into her knees. Her shoulders heaved. The rake fell sideways, and her whole body shook with it.
“Iknowjokes.” Logan crossed his arms. “Plenty of ’em.”
“Well, go on then.” Pa spread one hand wide while the other kept Miriam steady. “Enlighten us.”
Fine.
