Hired Man

Jake Dockson wore bib overalls 
and smelled of corrals and harness. 
He could lift three hundred pounds and 
handle the Jackson fork, but he 
couldn’t tend the water. Jake was 
thirty-four and two-stepped to the 
Victrola. Saturday nights he 
bathed and shaved and painted his eye 
brows with a burnt match, and went to 
the dance. Sometimes he made us jack 
o’lanterns, and lambs from milkweed 
pods. The mean Barber boys chased my 
brother home, and Jake went after 
them with a cedar post, dammit!