“I Told Her to Go Dance With Another Man — Her Comeback Left Me Standing There Like an Idiot”

Then she walked off like she hadn’t just dropped a thesis statement on my entire personality.

I stood there holding wire, watching her go, and for the first time in years I wasn’t thinking about the fence.

That chicken came back. Twice more.

I “fixed” the fence higher both times. May watched from her side with her arms crossed like she was at a dinner theater. “I really admire your persistence,” she said. “Even when it doesn’t work,” I shot back. She laughed, and somehow twenty minutes disappeared — feed prices, weather, my tractor that’s been “almost fixed” since Obama’s first term.

That night I sat on my porch with cold coffee, staring at the light on in her kitchen across the field. Told myself it was nothing.