I told my brother I have to rename the place Thistle Ridge. Only thing that grows worth a damn up here any more. He concurred.
I stopped and leaned on the hoe and wiped my brow with the back of my gloved hand. "I mean I'm glad," I said, "that he left it to us, to keep in the family, but damn." I looked over the hill, over the purple flowers, some of which had begun to show white cotton atop the ugly, gnarled stalks. He looked at his feet and kicked at the grass.
"I know it," he said. I swung the hoe with a grunt, and swung again, and dug at the base of one, and it fell, a few pricks stinging my shoulder as I hunched under it. He picked it up gingerly, even with his heavy gloves, and tossed it away. We didn't speak and the sounds were birds and our breathing and thistles falling.
"God damn good enough," I said when we weren't yet finished. He nodded, settled back on his heels, and mopped his brow. I did the same to mine.
Leaning back heavily on our heels we trudged down the hill to the house. Inside the kitchen smelled like Murphy's Oil Soap and even with the table still in the middle the room seemed barren. We took turns drinking cold clear water from the one glass remaining in the cupboard. We felt right in the place. We fit; the house left room for us, and I leaned on the counter and he sat up on it, and the place was around us, as it always had been, only more quiet. We were silent but not awkwardly so. A crack in the wall, which I remembered from years before, seemed to have gotten longer a little. The pale yellow paint was chipping away.
"What a fucking dump," I said and we laughed.
"Did you hear about the headstone?"
"It's all taken care of," I said. He was satisfied. There was more comfortable silence.
"Like you say," he said, "I like that he left it to us. But I'd rather have the money." We laughed again.
"Oh yes, the family fortune," I said. "We should sell this place. What do you think we'd get for it? Ten bucks?"
He smiled. "Old crappy small house for sale on ninety acres of rocks. Excellent crop of....thistles." We laughed and I drank another glass of water.
"Seriously, though. I'd prefer not to sell it. I mean if anyone would even want it." He smiled a little and looked at me. "I mean I feel like he's trusted us with it. To make it better, like it used to be."
He was quiet. He never did like to speak seriously with me, and we had talked about that and had tried to be more open with each other. I tried to speak openly about our father and what we had left of him. He was uncomfortable a little but he looked at the floor and said, "I know what you mean. I had the same thought." I finished drinking the water.
"I better go," I said. "I'm gonna come back tomorrow and finish."
"All right, I'll come back too but I can't be here until 2 or so."
"Right, I know. I'll come after lunch."
We said goodbye and drove away, still his boys, and I thought as I turned the corner that I really ought to get that will finished, for my boys, not that I had any more to leave them than I had inherited. Of course I didn't get around to it, but I will.
We got it cleaned up, but it's still all thistles, and we go there to walk sometimes, my family or my brother's, seldom two families together.
