It was another long night. Even after I exhausted myself working at the farm, the particularly humid air made sleep an impossibility. Down to my underwear with no covers, I was sweating buckets. At around three in the morning I gave up and worked on my story by candlelight. Dawn broke, and I willed myself to get changed into some trousers and an undershirt, with a clean collared shirt packed in my schoolbag.

Heavy footfalls came from the stairway, and I turned to see father had come downstairs.

“Mornin’ dad. What's up? You usually don't get up until seven.”

“The bank wants me to come in early to finalize some new account registrations.”

“Sounds fun. Im off to the Jansen farm, see ya later”

He didn't reply, instead with a sad smile turned towards the stove to boil water for tea. I left for the farm, and hoped that when I finished college and got a job, it would be one I enjoyed going to.

It was a typical day at the farm. Mrs. Jansen handed out lists to myself and two more boys who were also working that day. With our tasks assigned, we went off in separate directions.

‘Let’s see what’s first on the list. Ugh… dig a new hole for the outhouse. Lovely’

I grabbed a spade from the tool shed, and began driving it into the ground. The area marked out by Mr. Jansen was four meters squared, and needed to be one and a half meters deep.

‘Dear Lord this is goin’ to take forever. This is why I hate digging. Back-breaking work, ya get dirt crammed in where the sun don’t shine and it was a pain getting out of the hole you put yourself in’

After a half hour, I had only dug about a third of the way, but was panting like a dog. At this rate, I wouldn't have enough strength to finish my other tasks. Determined not to fall behind, I gave another sharp thrust of the shovel. The tip barely penetrated the earth.

‘Shit. I hit clay. Screw this I’m moving on’

I stepped out of the hole that I had started, and decided to save it for last. If worst camp to worst, I would just have to finish it the next day. Compared to the digging, the other tasks were childsplay. I took the food scraps the Jansens saved, and poured it into the feeding troughs. Pigs were such disgusting creatures, not caring what they ate, where they slept. It didn’t matter what was in the trough, they ate it. I’m sure if you relieved yourself in it, they would treat it as five star dining.

I turned my back on the pen and walked towards the grain silo. Chickens were up next on the “to feed” list. I opened a hatch in the side of the silo, and shoveled grain into the aluminium bucket I’d been carrying.

‘Half full should do the trick. There aren’t as many to feed today’

I thought this as I entered the wire fenced area that housed the chickens. On the left of the chicken coop, was a smaller, segregated area for the chickens that would be processed. That was where the other two boys had situated themselves. One was systematically using an old tree stump and hatchet to lob off the heads off the fattests chickens they could find. After the head was removed, the executor would toss the corpse into a basket, stained red with the blood of previous dinners. From that basket, the second boy would take a decapitated body, and carefully pluck the feathers from it.

I reached into my bucket and sprinkled the grains over the ground, making sure it was spread evenly. If the seed wasn’t spread properly, then the chickens would crowd and possibly fight over food.

‘Dumb birds’

Slowly but surely I finished up the rest of the jobs assigned to me. Now it was time to go back to digging that dreaded hole. I grabbed a pickaxe and bagin working with the hard clay. With a rythme starting to build, the hole began to deepen faster than I thought, or so I believed. After and hour and a half of loosening up the clay with the pickaxe then shoveling it out, that damned hole was finished.

Mr. Jansen came from behind the house, with the processed chickens strung up and slung over his shoulder. He stuffed them into a plastic bag and tossed it into the back seat of his automobile.

“Thanks again for the help today Benjamin. I’m sorry you had to dig out the new outhouse hole. I would’ve done it myself, but swinging the pickaxe and lifting all that heavy dirt, it’s just getting too difficult for me.”

“Don’t worry Mr. Jansen, all in a day's work.”

He looked me over with an amused expression.

“Would you like a ride home Mr. Holler? You look awfully tired”

I looked down at myself, noticing for the first time how much of a mess I was. My boots were caked with thick mud from being in the pig pen. On top of that my pants were almost entirely covered with dirt, and now had a few tears in them. Stuffed into their filthy pocket was the clean collared shirt I had brought with me. What was supposed to be a clean change of clothes had turned into an unrecognizable rag. The undershirt was soaked through, clinging to my torso.

“Are you sure you want all of this in your car?’ I said, gesturing to my sad state. With a wave of the hand Mr. Jansen said,

“Ah don’t worry about it. I’ll throw down an old bedsheet”

He disappeared back into the house, returning with a cream coloured bedspread. I made sure every inch of the furnishing was covered, and hopped into the passenger seat. It took a few twists of the key for Mr. Jansen to get the car going, but sure enough the old engine was purring like a cat. An old, sickly cat.

For a few minutes it was an awkward silent drive. After going over a deep pothole in the road, Mr. Jansen took the initiative and made a joke about “how he’s surprised the old auto survived that bump”. Mr. Jansen car had been put through the ringer. It wasn’t built to haul cargo, but haul cargo it did. This put out the motor multiple times, and even broke an axle once. With the rough roads of the countryside, sharp rocks put more holes in his tires than he dared to count. High winds blasting dirt against the car had eroded away the majority of the paint, leaving only a rare patch of red.

But he’ll be damned the day the auto quits! Sure it took a little convincing to get it to start, but despite all the poor automobile had been through it still ran like a champ. After another odd silence, I decided to change topic.

“So Mr. Jansen what do you think of the war that’s broken out over in Europe?”

“Getting into politics at such a young age eh? Well I guess sooner is better than later. I’m not going to pretend to fully understand the situation over there Benjamin. Two countries didn’t like each other, and one shot the leader of the other.”

“Sounds like you’ve got a pretty good handle on it to me” I interjected with a sly smile. He gave a hearty laugh and continued.

“If two countries want to have at it that’s their business, but when they drag others into it, that’s when I get annoyed. Think about Germany and Russia. Because of some political mumbo-jumbo, now they are thrown into the conflict. When you have an issue with the house next door, ya don’t involve the whole neighborhood!”

I could see that Mr. Jansen was starting to get flustered.

“It just frustrates me so much, people killing people over nothing. God gave us hearts to love, not so we can rip ‘em out.”

The car slowed to a stop. The trip was a lot faster than I thought it would take. I looked at the now troubled man. Was it age or anxiousness that wrinkled his face?

“Well sir let’s pray that this conflict doesn’t draw out.”

“Yes…” he said as he gazed blankly at the steering wheel. “...let’s”

“Well… thank you for the lift Mr. Jansen. Would you like to stop in for some tea?”

“I’ll have to take a rain check on that offer, I ought to get these chickens to the butcher. Thanks for the help today Ben, take the next couple days off.”

“Are you sure sir?” My aching muscles screamed at me to shut up.

“Of course Benjamin. I know that hole was a devil of a task. You earned your rest.”

“Well that's awful generous of you Mr. Jansen. I wish you the best!” We waved each other goodbye and he drove off towards centre town.

I walked behind the house to look for the hose. ‘If mother saw me like this, she would surely have a heart attack!’ Sure enough it was wrapped around twin pegs on the side of the house. The water was refreshingly cool, and the mud ran away with a bit of scrubbing.

After an hour drying under the sun, I went inside. Donovin was haphazardly chopping vegetables while Jonathan stirred a bubbling pot of broth. Mother was in the den with Dad. She was reading the novel her book club had picked out, some drab romance story, and father was cleaning his rifle.

“You barely ever have that thing out dad, what’s the occasion? Market meat too expensive?”

He let out an exasperated sigh. “Mr. Hoppmann is taking the senior accounting staff deer hunting as a thank-you for all the hard work.” He gave his head a slight shake.

“It’s on sunday, when we don’t even work. If he really wanted to show appreciation, he should have had us hunt on a weekday. We all know what this really is anyways. He’s taking us out on this trip so we can shoot a trophy for him, since he can't shoot shit for himself”

“Tom, language!” Mother said, looking up from her book.

“Sorry Jaine” he grumbled, and went back to cleaning his rifle. She looked at him for a moment, with furrowed brows and a slight frown, then continued reading her book.

“Hey dad, ya ever going to teach me how to use that?” I raised a questionative eyebrow.

“Only when you need to. Besides, it’s really not that hard to use. Just a matter of practicing enough so that you can use it efficiently”

Mom put down her book again. “And you will never need to. I don’t want my boy toting around a gun.”

“Oh come off it Jaine. It’s not like the kid is going to think he’s some sort of gun-slinging ranger that needs to take on the villians of the world. It for hunting, sport shootin’ at best.”

“He’s going to put an eye out with it” she retorted, her voice rising in pitch and volume.

“If he gets shot in the head, he’s gunna put out more than just an eye!” Jonathan chimed in from the kitchen.

Father put his face in his hands and mother’s expression was one of pure fear.

“That is IT!” she cried, “Tom put that weapon away. There will be no more discussion about it. Benjamin you are NOT learning how to use that, and Tom, don’t be planting bad ideas in our son’s head”

“Dear, Ben is eighteen years old he can...” he attempted to say, before Jaine raised her hand to silence him.

After that it was a quiet dinner. Donovin and Jonathan were whispering to each other, stifling laughs as they ate. Hector, not knowing what had transpired just sat looking confused. Jaine kept shooting angry looks at Tom, and fearful ones at me.

What are you going to do mom, when there’s a shortage on food, and dad can’t hunt? Are you going to hunt? Ya right.