Chapter 8: Amendments

At dawn the hail lay in the yard.

The sun came up pink behind the Quonset, and the white drifts steamed.

I walked out in Grandpa's rubber boots with a mug of coffee and started counting again.

I'm an adjuster, and counting is the only way I know to stand in a ruined field.

The east eighty was gone.

The wheat lay flat in the mud, combed down in one direction, with the heads shredded and the stems snapped at the knee.

I did the arithmetic standing right there.

The other four hundred acres were standing, with torn flag leaves and about fifteen percent stripped.

It was bad.

It was also a long way from the end of the world.

"Can you live with that?" Colby asked.

He'd come up beside me without a sound, with his hat pulled down and his own cup in his hand.

"I've paid out on worse and told people it would be all right," I said. "Now I get to find out if I was lying."

"And?"

"Ask me in June."

He nodded and didn't push.

I looked at him sideways.

He looked at the field, and then at the toes of his boots, and then very quickly at me.

I knew we were both thinking about the barn.

"I came to say good morning," he said. "That's all. I'll go."

"Stay for breakfast."

"Term six is supper."

"It's an amendment."

I made him toast.

He burned it, and then he ate it anyway.

When I put the legal pad on the table between us, he took one look at it and put his coffee down.

I wrote with his chewed pencil.

Term three, amended. Kissing allowed.

I looked up.

"Term two stays," I wrote. "Bunkhouse until I say."