128 The Meadow Eggs and Paintballs Benjamin Murray At dusk the clouds oozed around the orange ceiling of the sky, mirroring the cut, golden pasture on which we walked, carrying a bucket of fresh water for the chickens in the barn. My brother talked about the Dart, how it was leaking near the water pump, and how he’d have to walk to Alan’s down the road for a new one, seeing how Alan worked at Daley’s back in the day, wrenching on Chryslers and Dodge, spitting on Chevrolets when they coughed or slouched into his bay. My brother liked to dissect every problem, think of all the ways for something to break, fall apart, and then how to fix or correct or remanufacture, etc. Or he’d talk about his new paintball gun, how the metal was painted green with splotches of brown and black, just like the army. I’d to tune him out, count the fence posts around the corral, watch red paint chips flutter off the old dark wood of the barn. To our right, our neighbor’s pasture was bare, except for a dirt track looping up and down their fences. Our barn used to be a source of fascination. When I was little, I would stand on my bed to look out my bedroom window and watch the rain reflect off the shingles; how it gleamed when the showers passed, the red paint reinvigorated, like an older tattoo recolored. My brother and I walked in single file, him up front, and my feet fitting inside his footprints left behind in the broken tan stalks and grass. “But, I don’t think it’s the weep hole. At least, from where the puddle forms on the driveway. And you know dad insists that it’s the bypass hose, but the connections look fine. I even tightened them, which you know you shouldn’t have to do. And there would be a puddle on top the intake manifold, given that…” I didn’t really need to count the fence posts. There were 22. We creaked open the door and squeezed in, the dark room
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