Grade 9 · Story
The Fence Line
For as long as I could remember, my father and Lyle Pruitt had shared a property line, a fence and absolutely nothing else. The fence followed the low ridge separating our hayfield from his pasture, a quarter mile of weathered cedar posts and rusting barbed wire, and the quarrel that had silenced the two men was older than I was: something about a surveyor's stake, a disputed strip of ground eleven feet wide, and remarks delivered at a county meeting that neither of them would ever repeat. Whenever we passed Pruitt's pickup on the highway, Dad kept both hands on the steering wheel and his eyes fixed on the centerline. Whenever Pruitt encountered us at the feed store, he became remarkably interested in the seed packets.
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5 questions
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