Educated

The memory of Tyler had faded, and with it had faded his music, drowned
out by the crack of metal crashing into metal. Those were the sounds that
played in my head at night now—the jingle of corrugated tin, the short tap of
copper wire, the thunder of iron.
I had entered into the new reality. I saw the world through my father’s
eyes. I saw the angels, or at least I imagined I saw them, watching us scrap,
stepping forward and catching the car batteries or jagged lengths of steel
tubing that Dad launched across the yard. I’d stopped shouting at Dad for
throwing them. Instead, I prayed.
I worked faster when I salvaged alone, so one morning when Dad was in
the northern tip of the yard, near the mountain, I headed for the southern tip,
near the pasture. I filled a bin with two thousand pounds of iron; then, my
arms aching, I ran to find Dad. The bin had to be emptied, and I couldn’t
operate the loader—a massive forklift with a telescopic arm and wide, black
wheels that were taller than I was. The loader would raise the bin some
twenty-five feet into the air and then, with the boom extended, tilt the forks
so the scrap could slide out, raining down into the trailer with a tremendous
clamor. The trailer was a fifty-foot flatbed rigged for scrapping, essentially a
giant bucket. Its walls were made of thick iron sheets that reached eight feet
from the bed. The trailer could hold between fifteen and twenty bins, or about
forty thousand pounds of iron.
I found Dad in the field, lighting a fire to burn the insulation from a tangle
of copper wires. I told him the bin was ready, and he walked back with me
and climbed into the loader. He waved at the trailer. “We’ll get more in if you
settle the iron after it’s been dumped. Hop in.”
I didn’t understand. He wanted to dump the bin with me in it? “I’ll climb
up after you’ve dumped the load,” I said.
“No, this’ll be faster,” Dad said. “I’ll pause when the bin’s level with the
trailer wall so you can climb out. Then you can run along the wall and perch
on top of the cab until the dump is finished.”
I settled myself on a length of iron. Dad jammed the forks under the bin,
then lifted me and the scrap and began driving, full throttle, toward the
trailer’s head. I could barely hold on. On the last turn, the bucket swung with
such force that a spike of iron was flung toward me. It pierced the inside of
my leg, an inch below my knee, sliding into the tissue like a knife into warm
butter. I tried to pull it out but the load had shifted, and it was partially
buried. I heard the soft groaning of hydraulic pumps as the boom extended.