Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

A Good Day

He loaded the flatdeck with the tractor and the post-pounder as the light was still crawling above the eastern horizon. Long shadows lay across the yard mirroring the archipelagos of clouds above, somewhere between white and grey, set against a dark sky becoming blue. The back of the truck was already filled with posts and rolls of barbed wire and a fencing connector and a five-gallon pail filled with fencing nails. The hammer and pliers were in his toolbelt, tucked behind the seat of the truck alongside the cooler with his lunch and thermos of coffee.  

He was on the road by the time the shadows had resolved to light, leaving a trail of dust that hung in the air long after his passage. Once he reached the pasture he had a cup of coffee leaning against the truck, listening to the wind stir the grass. The only other sound was the call of the birds, blackbird and meadowlark mostly, and the hum of the grasshoppers. A bad year for them. The cool of the morning, promised the end of their season was just around the corner. The cattle were out of the pasture, having been sold the week before. Winding down that season as well and getting ready for the next. 

The morning he spent on the west fence. There were no bad posts so he just used the truck, replacing nails that had fallen out and connecting a broken section of wire. Lunch was salmon sandwiches with cucumbers and carrots from the garden. Dessert was a slice of chocolate zucchini cake. He washed everything down with the last of the coffee. The north fence had a few posts that had broken off, so he brought the tractor and post-pounder around to deal with them. The bottom wire was going as well, so he decided to replace the full length of it. That took the rest of the afternoon with still some left to finish the next day.  

He quit when he started to get hungry. The shadows were already getting long, the clouds tinged with red as the sun drifted low in the west. He left the flatdeck, tractor and post-pounder in the pasture. By the time he’d strung up the gate and turned the truck onto the road home, he had to turn on the lights. They caught grasshoppers flitting ghostlike across the road, dodging out of the way of the truck. He turned on the radio to listen to the weather for tomorrow.