Educated

Dad leave, then he turned to me and said, “Okay, Siddle Liss. You bring the
pieces and I’ll feed them through. If the iron is thick, say a half inch, I’ll need
your weight on the back to keep me from getting tossed into the blades.
Okay?”
Shawn and I ran the Shear for a month. Dad was too stubborn to shut it
down, even though it cost him more to have his foreman salvaging than it
would have cost him to cut the iron with torches. When we finished, I had
some bruises but I wasn’t hurt. Shawn seemed bled of life. It had only been a
few months since his fall from the pallet, and his body couldn’t take the wear.
He was cracked in the head many times when a length of iron bucked at an
unexpected angle. When that happened he’d sit for a minute in the dirt, his
hands over his eyes, then he’d stand and reach for the next length. In the
evenings he lay on the kitchen floor in his stained shirt and dusty jeans, too
weary even to shower.
I fetched all the food and water he asked for. Sadie came most evenings,
and the two of us would run side by side when he sent us for ice, then to
remove the ice, then to put the ice back in. We were both Fish Eyes.
The next morning Shawn and I would return to the Shear, and he would
feed iron through its jaws, which chewed with such force that it pulled him
off his feet, easily, playfully, as if it were a game, as if he were a child.