Silas glances at me. I look at the fence.
"Post needs resetting," I say. "Ground shifted after the last rain."
Beckett looks at the fence post, then at the tools, then at Silas, who is already back to work with the quiet efficiency of a man who has decided this situation is not his problem. "What can I do?"
I hand him the post driver without breaking stride.
He takes it, looks at it, and to his credit does not ask what it is.
We work in relative silence for a stretch, which is not something I expected from him. I had him pegged as a talker, the kind of man who fills quiet with words because quiet makes him uncomfortable. Instead he follows Silas's lead without being told to.
He holds the post steady when Silas needs it held, and doesn't complain when the post driver comes down wrong and rattles up his arms hard enough that I see him wince.
He doesn't mention it.
I'm resetting the wire tension on the far side of the post when the sun moves past the tree line and hits the pasture full on, and the temperature reminds me cheerfully that it is Texas. It is summerand it has no interest in being reasonable about either of those things. I pull my hat down and keep working.
Beckett, I notice, did not bring a hat.
He also did not bring water, sunscreen, or any apparent awareness that standing in direct Texas sun in a light gray shirt is going to become a problem inside of twenty minutes.
The shirt is already starting to show it.
He's pushed the sleeves up to his elbows, which does something to the lines of his forearms that I notice purely as an involuntary biological observation and immediately file away under things I am not thinking about.
I am not thinking about it.
"There's a water jug on the back of the four-wheeler," I say, without looking up from the wire.
"I'm fine."
"I didn't ask if you were fine. Drink water."
A pause. Then the sound of him walking back to the four-wheeler.
Silas appears at my elbow, quiet as always, and says at a volume only I can hear, "He's not bad with his hands."
"He held a fence post, Silas."
"He held it right." Silas picks up the wire cutters. "Some people don't."
I don't answer that.
Beckett comes back, water jug in hand, and goes back to work without comment.
I watch him out of the corner of my eye for approximately three seconds longer than is strictly necessary, cataloguing the way the effort settles into his shoulders, the way he adjusts his grip without being shown twice.
Then I look back at the fence because that is what I am here for.
The fence. Not the forearms. The fence.
Then my mind drifts to other problems.
The broken irrigation line was nobody's fault that suddenly flooded the field.
That is the official position I am taking and I will not be accepting questions at this time.
What happened, technically speaking, is that Beckett decided to "take a look" at the east field irrigation system after lunch. Not fix it. Not adjust it. Just look.
