Signs
“Well, what does the almanac say?” he asked the old hired hand. “Is it gonna be a good year or what?”
“What.”
“I said, ‘Is it gonna be a good year or what?’” he said, louder. The man had been his dad’s hired hand. He kept him on out of a sense of obligation, though his hands were so shot he could hardly do chores anymore.
“You asked, ‘Is it gonna be a good year or what?’ ‘What’ is my answer.”
“I don’t know what to do with ‘what’.”
“It’s gonna be a cold winter, I know that.”
“How do you know?”
“The crows are huddling closer on the lines,” the hired hand said, pointing up to the power line with a pair of pliers. They were fixing the fence where some drunk kid had gone through.
“You know what I think?”
“What?”
“I think you’re full of it.”
“Full of what?”
“You know what.”
But when he finally looked up, he had to admit, the crows did seem to be huddled closer.