Page 120 of Boston
Some guests used it as a walking trail, and someone before Boston had been hired had put out little signs for all the vegetation and animal habitat. So he took people on the tour explaining the signs and showing them exactly what to look for in the landscape. Amonkeycould probably do it if he had a script, and Boston had done his first few tours with one.
“This looks like the north entrance,” Cash said, and Boston looked up from his phone. They both still wore their white shirts and ties as they’d come straight here from their Sunday worship service, and they had plans to go to Uncle Jem’s for lunch that day.
“Yep,” Boston said, and he cut a look over to his cousin. “If we buy this place, which house do you think you want?”
“I don’t know,” Cash said. “I gotta see inside them first.” He glanced over to Boston. “Tell me why we wouldn’t buy this place.”
“I don’t know,” Boston said.
“It’s just because you’re in a bad mood,” Cash said. “You just got to go talk to Cora and tell her that you’re both going to be busy for the rest of your lives, and you guys just have to figure out how tomaketime for each other.”
Boston looked away and said nothing.
“Come on, brother.”
“I don’t know,” Boston said, plenty irritated now. “It sort of sounded like she’d already had doubts about us anyway. And what am I gonna do? Show up and say, ‘I can make more time for you’? Ain’t no one can make more hours in the day, Cash.”
“Yeah, you just make different choices.”
“Okay,Dad.”
Cash burst out laughing as he brought the truck to a stop and then flipped a U-turn. “Let’s go in over here and see what it looks like from this side.”
The other entrance to the property sat on the same highway that Uncle Tex lived on, just further north.
“I think this place is actually in Rusk,” Boston said.
“I think so too,” Cash said. “Or else it’s county.”
“I think it’s Rusk, because I’m pretty sure the sign that says ‘Welcome to Rusk’ is way back there before that red silo. Remember?”
“You drive this road way more than I do.”
“I’m pretty sure theWelcome to Rusksign is back by that red silo.”
“That red silo is on our property,” Cash said, and Boston noted how he already spoke of it as theirs. “It was one of the pictures, remember?”
“I do remember that,” Boston said.
Cash made the turn, and the first thing he did was hit an enormous pothole. Boston groaned and threw his hand up to the bar above the window while Cash said, “Whoops, didn’t see that.”
“I bet a lot of the roads need to be repaired after fifteen years,” Boston said, and that would only be the tip of the iceberg. He couldn’t evenimaginethe enormity of things that would need to be replaced, repaired, gutted, redone, and fixed up just to make this place livable. He wanted to ask Cash if they reallywanted to do this, but he kept his mouth closed because he hadn’t even seen the place yet.
Cash drove through pines and aspens, and just past two of the tallest trees on the property, the space opened up and revealed the blue farmhouse that Boston had seen in the real estate listing. It had looked big in the pictures, but it towered in real life.
“Wow,” he said. “How big was this house?”
“I think this is the bigger of the two,” Cash said. “Almost four thousand square feet.”
“What in the world are we going to do with a four thousand square foot house?” Boston griped.
Cash came to a stop in front of it and grinned out the windshield. “Make our daddies jealous.”
“Yeah, as if they don’t have enormous houses.”
“Hey, my daddy’s got a lot of kids,” Cash said.
“I mean, it’s not falling down,” Boston said. “We’ll know more when we can get out and climb the steps.”
