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said, “I’ll see what we can do.”
    We headed off to get started stringing the wire. It would make it a lot easier dealing with the pigs, not having to feed them in the pen. We stopped by my place so I could grab a machete and an axe before heading over to Thad’s. At the barn, Thad pointed out a large pile of yellow plastic insulators and a couple rolls of wire.
    “I been scrounging them all over the neighborhood. There’s still a lot out there I didn’t get.”
    “Yeah. Almost everyone around here used it in one form or another,” Danny said.
    Hearing us at the barn, the pigs started making a ruckus, squealing and banging into the sides of the pen. I looked in at them. “Looks like they’re hungry.”
    Thad smiled. “They’re always hungry. They’re pigs.” He then pointed out a large sow, “Look how low her belly is. She’s going to drop a litter any day.”
    Danny laughed. “Looks like she could use a skateboard under that belly.”
    I picked up a bucket full of insulators and said, “Well, let’s get to it.”
    Thad went to get a couple hammers and Danny grabbed the wire. We walked out to the back of the pasture and looked the woods over. When Thad showed up, I asked him what he was thinking.
    He pointed to the south. “The woods go back there for a couple hundred yards before turning to pasture again. I was thinking of clearing a line right off the edge of the fence there and running straight through, then cut across the edge of pasture. Then cut a line back on the other side and we’ll have them hemmed in.”
    “You want to keep the wire about a foot off the ground?” Danny asked.
    Thad nodded. “That’d be plenty. They only need to touch it once or twice before they figure it out.”
    Pulling the machete out of its sheath, I said, “I’ll start cutting a line.”
    And so we got to work. I started clearing brush with the machete. It wasn’t always a straight line as I would weave back and forth to allow for large trees. They would make good places to nail in the insulators. Thad and Danny worked behind me hanging those. The bush in the area wasn’t very thick and made the job of clearing it pretty easy. The hardest part was actually the edge of the pasture.
    I made it through the wood line without too much trouble. But once at the transition line between the woods and pasture, the grass proved to be quite thick. It took a lot of chopping to clear it and the other brush. It was hard work, but I actually enjoyed it. It kept my mind off things that had taken place earlier, something I still haven’t really processed. But lately, I enjoyed any kind of work that put a tool other than a firearm in my hand.
    I was on my knees hacking at the tall grass when Jamie walked up. I looked up to her holding a sickle and looking at me with a smirk on her face.
    “Wouldn’t this be a lot easier?”
    I shook my head. “I guess it would. Didn’t even think about trying to get a better tool.”
    She tossed it to me. “I watched you for a while and finally took pity on you and asked Thad if he knew where one was.”
    With a smirk of my own, I asked, “Just how long did you watch before taking pity on me?”
    “Till I started to get tired,” she replied with a laugh.
    Picking up the curved blade, I said, “Hope I didn’t wear you out.”
    It certainly made the job of cutting the grass a lot easier. Thad and Danny caught up to me because of the slow going and pitched in to help. With Jamie and Ian hanging around to keep an eye on us, we finished up the line and had insulators hung all the way around the patch of woods by early evening.
    Thad wiped his forehead with a rag as he looked down the cleared line. “We’ll string the wire tomorrow and let those hogs loose.”
    Ian looked around the patch of woods. “Is there anything in there they can eat?”
    “Oh yeah, plenty,” Danny replied.
    Ian shook his head. “I don’t see anything.”
    “You get out there and root around and you’ll find