He could have chipped in with some labor to make the job easier but Old Mel was a firm believer in not hiring a goat and bleating himself. He knew the nephew would stop work to reply because he couldn’t perform two functions simultaneously. He knew the response would be long and slobbered. The nephew’s skull indentation made Mel wonder if he’d been hit by a metal petanque ball thrown at high speed. So, on Saturday last, Old Mel sat on the top rung of the back fence and watched the young man work. Twenty palms saved without crippling his spine. Oil palms took care of themselves if you watered them often and gave them manure treats once every three months. So, a well, a cheap Chinese pump, half a dozen sprinklers, and all he’d need to do was flick a switch. Mel had been lugging watering cans out there for two weeks and his back bones were starting to clack like mah-jong tiles. The irrigation trenches his family had dug between the rows of oil palms didn’t extend to the rear fence and the new fronds were browning even before they fanned open. Old Mel hired one of Da’s nephews-the slow-witted one with the dent in his forehead-to sink a well in his back acre. BUSH, LACROSSE, WISCONSIN, 18 OCTOBER, 2000 “Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.”
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