Page 88 of Trick or Tease

I stepped back further, trying to imagine how it would look mounted over the entrance. “This thing’s going to be heavy as hell to get up there. We’ll probably need to hire a crew with the right equipment. Maybe rent a boom lift or something.”

Billy gave me a look like I’d just suggested we hire a marching band. “Man, you really have been in the city too long.”

“What do you mean?”

Instead of answering, he pulled out his phone and made a call. “Hey, John? Yeah, it’s Billy. We’ve got a big sign we need to mount up at the farm entrance. You still got that excavator?” He paused, listening. “Perfect. Can you swing by and give me a lift? Great, thanks.”

He hung up and immediately dialed another number. “Tom? Billy Hogan. Listen, we’re putting up our new farm sign today and could use some extra hands. You free?” Another pause. “Awesome. Bring your ladder if you’ve got it.”

I watched in amazement as he made call after call. Within ten minutes, he’d assembled what sounded like a small army of neighbors, all willing to drop what they were doing to help us hang a sign.

“That’s it?” I asked when he finally put his phone away. “You just call people?”

“That’s how it works out here, city boy. We help each other out. John helped me fix my tractor last month, so I’ll help him with his hay harvest next week. Tom’s wife brings us vegetables from their garden, so we give them free pumpkins in the fall. It’s called community. The leftover pumpkins in the field feed the pigs. We give them away and we usually get free pork chops and bacon.”

I felt a little embarrassed by my first instinct to throw money at the problem. In Manhattan, everything was transactional. You needed something done; you hired someone. The idea that people would just show up to help because you asked was foreign to me.

And it shouldn’t have been because I did grow up here. It just felt like another life.

About an hour later, trucks started pulling into our driveway. John arrived first, his excavator loaded on a flatbed trailer. Behind him came Tom in his pickup, followed by three other neighbors I recognized but hadn’t seen in years.

“Garrett!” John called out, hopping down from his truck. “Haven’t seen you since you were knee-high to a grasshopper. Heard you’re some big-shot lawyer now.”

“Something like that,” I said, shaking his weathered hand.

“Good for you, bud,” John said.

Tom clapped me on the shoulder with a grin. “Billy tells us you’ve been helping get this haunted farm thing off the ground. That’s real nice of you to pitch in.”

“It’s been fun,” I said, and I meant it. “Billy and Sabrina have put in most of the work.”

“Well, it’s bringing folks together,” said another man I vaguely remembered as Mike from the hardware store. “My wife’s already planning to bring the grandkids once we get the corn harvested. Been years since we had something like this around here.”

As we talked, I started to realize something that hadn’t fully hit me before. For these people, a trip to our farm wasn’t just a casual afternoon outing. Mike mentioned having to wait until after harvest. Tom’s wife had asked if we’d still be open after she finished canning season. These were people whose entire lives revolved around the rhythm of farming, where taking an afternoon off for entertainment was something you had to plan around weather and crops and a dozen other variables.

In the city, if I wanted to go to a show or grab dinner somewhere new, I just went. Money wasn’t a barrier. But for these neighbors, time was the precious commodity. They worked from dawn to dusk during harvest season, and a few hours at a corn maze represented a real sacrifice of their limited free time.

It made what we were doing feel more important somehow. We weren’t just creating another entertainment option—we were giving hardworking families something to look forward to, a reason to take that rare break from the endless cycle of farm work.

“Alright, let’s get this thing up,” John called out, firing up the excavator. The diesel engine rumbled to life with a cloud of black smoke.

I watched as Billy climbed into the excavator bucket like it was the most natural thing in the world, the heavy sign balanced against his shoulder. Tom hopped in beside him, and John slowly raised the boom toward the entrance posts.

My lawyer brain immediately started cataloguing all the ways this could go wrong. No safety harnesses, no hard hats, no fall protection of any kind. The excavator wasn’t even on level ground. In Manhattan, this would require permits, licensed operators, insurance waivers, and probably a safety inspector. There’d be forms to fill out in triplicate and meetings to discuss the meetings about the project timeline.

But I kept my mouth shut. These men had been doing things like this their entire lives. They knew their equipment, they knew their limitations, and they’d been looking out for each other long before OSHA existed.

“Little to the left!” Billy called down as they positioned the sign.

John adjusted the boom with the kind of ease that only came from decades of experience. Tom held one end steady while Billy worked to get the mounting brackets lined up with the posts.

“Perfect!” Mike shouted from below. “That looks real professional, boys!”

As they worked, the other neighbors and I held the guide ropes, making sure the sign didn’t swing too much in the breeze. It was surprisingly satisfying. Working with my hands and other people. Everyone had a job, everyone contributed, and nobody was checking their phone or thinking about how they could bank the favor.

“Got it!” Billy called out as the last bolt went in. John slowly lowered the boom, and both men hopped out of the bucket with grins on their faces.

We all stepped back to admire the finished product. The sign looked perfect, bold and eye-catching without being gaudy. The slightly weathered look Billy had achieved made it seem like it had been there for years rather than hours.