the fights they’d had before—this was unrestrained somehow, hateful.
I’d never seen anyone yell at my father like that, and I was astonished
by, then afraid of, the change it wrought in his features. His face
transformed, becoming rigid, desperate. Shawn had awoken something
in Dad, some primal need. Dad could not lose this argument and save
face. If I didn’t run the Shear, Dad would no longer be Dad.
Shawn leapt forward and shoved Dad hard in the chest. Dad
stumbled backward, tripped and fell. He lay in the mud, shocked, for a
moment, then he climbed to his feet and lunged toward his son. Shawn
raised his arms to block the punch, but when Dad saw this he lowered
his fists, perhaps remembering that Shawn had only recently regained
the ability to walk.
“I told her to do it, and she will do it,” Dad said, low and angry. “Or
she won’t live under my roof.”
Shawn looked at me. For a moment, he seemed to consider helping
me pack—after all, he had run away from Dad at my age—but I shook
my head. I wasn’t leaving, not like that. I would work the Shear first,
and Shawn knew it. He looked at the Shear, then at the pile next to it,
about fifty thousand pounds of iron. “She’ll do it,” he said.
Dad seemed to grow five inches. Shawn bent unsteadily and lifted a
piece of heavy iron, then heaved it toward the Shear.
“Don’t be stupid,” Dad said.
“If she’s doing it, I’m doing it,” Shawn said. The fight had left his
voice. I’d never seen Shawn give way to Dad, not once, but he’d
decided to lose this argument. He understood that if he didn’t submit, I
surely would.
“You’re my foreman!” Dad shouted. “I need you in Oneida, not
mucking with scrap!”
“Then shut down the Shear.”
Dad walked away cursing, exasperated, but probably thinking that
Shawn would get tired and go back to being foreman before supper.
Shawn watched 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