16
Disloyal Man, Disobedient Heaven
Construction began on the milking barn in Oneida. Shawn designed and
welded the main frame—the massive beams that formed the skeleton of the
building. They were too heavy for the loader; only a crane could lift them. It
was a delicate procedure, requiring the welders to balance on opposite ends
of a beam while it was lowered onto columns, then welded in place. Shawn
surprised everyone when he announced that he wanted me to operate the
crane.
“Tara can’t drive the crane,” Dad said. “It’ll take half the morning to teach
her the controls, and she still won’t know what the hell she’s doing.”
“But she’ll be careful,” Shawn said, “and I’m done falling off shit.”
An hour later I was in the man box, and Shawn and Luke were standing on
either end of a beam, twenty feet in the air. I brushed the lever lightly,
listening as the hydraulic cylinders hissed softly to protract. “Hold!” Shawn
shouted when the beam was in place, then they nodded their helmets down
and began to weld.
My operating the crane was one of a hundred disputes between Dad and
Shawn that Shawn won that summer. Most were not resolved so peacefully.
They argued nearly every day—about a flaw in the schematics or a tool that
had been left at home. Dad seemed eager to fight, to prove who was in
charge.
One afternoon Dad walked over and stood right next to Shawn, watching
him weld. A minute later, for no reason, he started shouting: that Shawn had
taken too long at lunch, that he wasn’t getting the crew up early enough or
working us hard enough. Dad yelled for several minutes, then Shawn took off
his welding helmet, looked at him calmly and said, “You gonna shut up so I
can work?”
Dad kept yelling. He said Shawn was lazy, that he didn’t know how to run
a crew, didn’t understand the value of hard work. Shawn stepped down from