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I laughed with him as I started to unload. “I’ll take you up on that.”
Dale said, “If that’s it for today, we’ll head home.”
“Where’s home?” I asked him. Having the pigs round the clock but only helping for a few hours a day worried me.
“Twenty miles down the main road there.”
“I saw a small trailer not far from the pigpen. Is it livable?”
“Never saw the inside. What you gettin’ at?”
Burke whispered, “I think I know. You want them to move in here?”
“For now, at least until the pigs are sold, or we get the hang of taking care of them too, so when Tucker and Dale are gone at night, we can handle things.”
Tucker was smiling, but Dale looked at me like I was ridiculous. “You serious?”
“Go check it out. If it’s livable or can be fixed up quickly enough, I’m serious. Don’t farms need workers?”
Finally, Dale smiled too, and I could see they were relieved, but I had no idea why. “Well, that’s just nice of you. How much?”
“How much…what?”
“Rent?”
“Oh! No rent. You work here.”
Tucker laughed, then held out his hand to me. “Mighty nice. That’s real nice.”
He told his friend, “Come on!”
Burke cocked his head at me, but he was grinning too. “That was nice. What’s…gotten into you?”
“What?”
“I’ve never seen you smile so much.” He shook his head and said, “Never mind. It’s this fucking place. It did it to me too.”
“It is…great here. I have a lot of savings. I might find a place here when I’m no longer needed for Theo’s protection.”
“How’s that going?”
I sat with him on the porch step after peeking inside to ensure I wouldn’t be overheard. “It’s going well, actually. Better than I thought. I threw him in the pig pen, and since then…he’s been better.”
“You, what?”
He started laughing, and I nodded. “He pissed me off, so I overreacted, but it seemed to back him off as being a total prick. At least for now.”
“I can’t see him changing for a second. Good for you.”
“Say, I don’t know if you have connections yet, but I will need a plumber, maybe an electrician too. The living room lights look a little dim to me. The bathrooms, at least the one, need some new fixtures badly, and the kitchen, well, you saw it. Theo’s okay for now with using his money to fix it, at least enough to live.”
“I’ll ask Noah. I’d send my contractor, but he’s on another big job after my place.”
“Thanks. I think we’re gonna settle in fine here for a bit. Maybe longer, at least for me. I think we’ll do okay, doing some of the work ourselves. If I knew plumbing, I’d give it a shot.”
Burke smiled at me slyly. “Yeah. You’ve…got something on your mind.”
Before I could deny it, Theo came out of the house. “Oh.You’restill here.”
