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the tightening. the loosening His mind tended to wander when he drove out, checking the fence lines; wondering if his great-granddad would've had something to say about the luxury of a truck, when all that perfectly good horseflesh waited back in the stalls, needing to be exercised anyway. Two birds, one stone…he’d say. But the truck was so efficient. Some battles never change— time and rain and rattlers. He could have sent one of the hands out to check the fences, but it was one of the few pleasures he gave himself— looking out over his beloved land, knowing it still looked the same as it did hundreds of years ago, way before his great-grandfather’s time. He kicked aside a curling snakeskin, eyeing the shadows around the fencepost. He wondered if it felt good to a snake to shed its skin; decided it did. Something there is that doesn’t love a fence…he thought, getting out again to upright a post; tighten the wires. He wondered what that Frost fellow would’ve had to say about West Texas—the wild of horses; the constant drought; rattler ghosts at every step… He wondered about the future—about too many people chewing up the land; crowding the earth. Used to, you had to birth a lot of kids to help with the ranch, but these were the days of fast trucks and hungry Mexicans— their mothers, destitute across the border. And as he pulled off his gloves, he found himself thankful to be living in this modern age—glimpsing his great-granddad’s knuckles, strong and sun-scarred—that same DNA snaking around inside of him… And he wondered about the past—if his hands could have ever cracked a whip against a dark man’s back, even if he thought it was the only way to save the land he loved. -60- ...

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