Rust & Starlight
Chapter 4 : Blisters and Barbed Wire
Morning came to Calloway Farm not with a sunrise but with a scream. Not a human scream — a rooster. Mason had heard roosters before, of course, in the abstract way that city people hear about farm sounds. But he had never been personally attacked by one at 5:47 a.m. through a barn wall that might as well have been tissue paper.
He lay on the cot, staring at the raw wood ceiling, and catalogued his body’s complaints. His hands: two throbbing, blistered disasters. His shoulders: a furnace of delayed agony. His back: apparently owned by someone else, someone who hated him. And his head — mercifully — was clear. No fog. No craving. Just the sharp, unpleasant clarity of sobriety.
The rooster screamed again.
“All right,” Mason muttered to no one. “I’m up.”
He swung his legs off the cot. The barn loft was cold — colder than he’d expected for early October. His breath puffed in small clouds. He pulled on the same jeans from yesterday (he had no others; his bag was still in the wrecked truck) and the flannel shirt Wren had left on the table last night. It was too small in the shoulders and smelled like woodsmoke. Her husband’s, he realized. Luke’s.
He didn’t let himself think about that.
The ladder down was an exercise in humiliation. His arms shook. His grip slipped twice. By the time his boots hit the barn floor, he was sweating despite the cold.
Wren was already in the yard.
She stood by the fence line — the broken fence, his fence now — with her back to the barn. She wore a heavy canvas coat, mud boots, and a wide-brimmed hat that cast her face in shadow. In one hand, she held the post-hole diggers. In the other, a Thermos.
She didn’t turn when he approached. She just held out the Thermos.
“Coffee. Drink it before it freezes.”
Mason took it. The metal was warm. He poured the lid full — black, again, no sugar — and drank standing there in the gray dawn, watching the steam rise and disappear.
“You’re up early,” he said.
“The farm doesn’t care about your sleep schedule.” She finally turned to face him. Her eyes flicked to his hands. “Let me see.”
“I’m fine.”
“Let me see, or I’m adding another week to your contract.”
He held out his hands. The blisters had bloomed overnight — some the size of dimes, some larger, all of them angry and pink. A few had burst open during his clumsy descent from the loft, leaking clear fluid that had dried into a tacky film.
Wren made a sound. Not sympathy. More like the noise a mechanic makes when someone brings in a car they’ve clearly been abusing.
“Sit on that bucket,” she said, pointing to an overturned five-gallon pail near the barn door.
“I don’t need — “
“Sit.”
He sat.
She disappeared into the barn and returned with a small wooden box — a first-aid kit, but not like any Mason had seen before. This one was old, painted olive green, with a red cross that had faded to pink. Inside, the supplies were arranged with military precision: gauze, tape, antiseptic wipes, a small glass bottle of something brown that smelled like iodine and regret.
“You’re going to want to look away,” she said, pulling on a pair of latex gloves.
“Why?”
“Because this is going to hurt.”
She was not wrong.
The antiseptic wipes felt like fire ants dancing on his raw skin. Mason gritted his teeth and stared at the horizon — at the endless Kansas sky, which was turning from gray to pale gold — and tried not to make a sound. But when she pulled out a sterile needle to drain the largest blister, a hiss escaped through his teeth.
“You’ve played stadiums,” Wren said without looking up. “Twenty thousand people screaming your name. And you’re whimpering over a blister.”
“I’m not whimpering.”
“You’re whimpering.”
“I’m groaning. There’s a difference.”
She snorted. It was the first unguarded sound she’d made — not the controlled, wary tone she used like armor. It was almost a laugh. Almost.
“Hold still,” she said. “Last one.”
She worked quickly, efficiently. Within five minutes, his hands were wrapped in clean gauze, the bandages snug but not tight. She’d even taped his thumbs separately, so he could still grip things.
“These will need to be changed twice a day,” she said, packing up the kit. “And you’re wearing gloves from now on. The leather ones I gave you — not those thin gardening things you tried to use yesterday.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t call me ma’am.”
“Sorry.”
“And don’t apologize for everything. You’re not Canadian.”
Mason blinked. “How do you know I’m not Canadian?”
She stood up, brushing dirt from her knees. “Because I Googled you last night. After you went to bed. Read your whole tragic Wikipedia page.” Her expression was unreadable. “Born in Abilene, Texas. Father left when you were three. Mother died when you were twelve. Raised by your grandmother until she passed when you were nineteen. First guitar at eight. First bar gig at fifteen. First record deal at twenty-one.” She paused. “You’ve been running your whole life, Mason Cross. This farm is the farthest you’ve ever been from a highway.”
He didn’t know what to say to that. Because she was right.
She turned and walked toward the fence. “Come on. You’ve got four posts to set today, and the sun’s burning daylight.”
The work was worse than yesterday.
Not because Mason was weaker — he was, actually, his muscles had stiffened overnight into something resembling petrified wood — but because the novelty had worn off. Yesterday, there had been a strange, almost romantic desperation to the labor. I’m a broken celebrity learning to fix a fence. This is character growth. This is a movie montage.
Today, it was just pain.
The post-hole diggers were designed by someone who hated the human body. The mechanism required him to jam the blades into the dirt, spread the handles apart, and lift out a plug of soil — then repeat. Two hundred times per hole. The dirt here wasn’t the soft, forgiving earth of gardening shows. It was Kansas clay, dense and stubborn, packed by a century of hooves and weather.
By nine o’clock, Mason had dug exactly one hole. His back screamed. His bandages were already gray with dirt. And his stomach was making noises that suggested it would soon revolt if not fed.
Wren appeared at the fence line with a brown paper bag.
“Breakfast,” she said, tossing it to him.
He caught it — barely — and opened it. Inside: two thick slices of bread slathered with butter and honey, a hard-boiled egg, and an apple that still had dew on its skin.
“You eat while you work,” she said. “I’ll check on you at noon.”
And then she left.
Mason stood alone in the field, holding his breakfast, surrounded by broken fence and the lowing of distant cattle. The wind had picked up again, carrying the smell of hay and manure and something else — something sweet, like the honey on his bread.
He ate the egg in two bites. The bread in four. The apple he saved, tucking it into his jacket pocket.
Then he picked up the diggers and started on the second hole.
At noon, Wren returned with a canteen and a critical eye.
The second hole was done. The third hole was half-finished. Mason was on his knees, using his bare hands — bandages be damned — to scrape rocks out of the bottom of the excavation.
“You’re doing it wrong,” she said.
“I’m doing it.”
“You’re doing it wrong. Let me show you.”
She knelt beside him — close enough that he could smell her soap, something simple like lye and lavender — and took the diggers from his hands. “You’re forcing it. This isn’t about strength. It’s about leverage.”
She demonstrated. Her movements were fluid, almost graceful. The diggers sank into the clay, bit deep, and came up clean. She repeated the motion, again and again, barely breaking a sweat.
“You’re making it look easy,” Mason said.
“That’s because I’ve done it ten thousand times.” She handed the diggers back. “Now you try. Slow. Feel the rhythm.”
He tried. It was still hard. But now that she’d pointed it out, he could sense what she meant — the way the tool wanted to move, the small adjustments that turned agony into something almost meditative.
“That’s better,” she said. She didn’t smile. But she didn’t frown, either. “Keep going. I’ll be back with lunch in two hours.”
She walked away again. Mason watched her go — the straight line of her back, the way her braid swung between her shoulder blades, the careful distance she kept from everything and everyone.
She’s lonely, he realized. Just as lonely as I am. But she’s better at hiding it.
He picked up the diggers and went back to work.
By sunset, Mason had set all four posts.
They weren’t perfect. Two of them leaned slightly — one to the east, one to the north — and Wren would almost certainly make him redo them tomorrow. But they were in the ground, standing upright, waiting for wire.
His hands were bleeding through the bandages. His back had moved beyond pain into a kind of numb white static. And he was hungry in a way he hadn’t been since childhood — a deep, primal hunger that had nothing to do with craving and everything to do with survival.
Wren met him at the barn door. She looked at the fence line, at the four crooked posts, and nodded once.
“Better,” she said. “Come inside. Dinner’s ready.”
That night, they ate in silence again. But it was a different silence — less hostile, more companionable. Mason noticed things he hadn’t noticed before. The way Wren cut her chicken into small, precise pieces before eating. The way she glanced at the window every few minutes, as if expecting someone to appear. The way she held her fork — too tightly, like she was afraid someone would take it from her.
After dinner, she stood at the sink washing dishes. Mason, remembering the terms of his contract, picked up a towel to dry.
“You don’t have to do that tonight,” she said.
“You said I wash my own dishes.”
“I said you wash your own dishes. These are mine.”
“You washed my breakfast plate this morning.”
She paused, her hands in the soapy water. “That’s different.”
“How?”
She didn’t answer. She just handed him a dripping plate and turned back to the sink.
They worked in silence — her washing, him drying — until the last fork was put away. Then Wren dried her hands on a rag, hung it on the oven handle, and turned to face him.
“Tomorrow,” she said, “we stretch the wire. It’s harder than digging. You’ll need to pay attention.”
“I will.”
“And Mason?”
“Yeah?”
She hesitated. Something flickered across her face — doubt, maybe, or fear, or the ghost of something she’d buried long ago.
“Don’t hurt yourself trying to prove something,” she said. “I’m not keeping score. I just want the fence fixed.”
She walked to the stairs — her bedroom was upstairs, he’d figured that out — and paused with her hand on the railing.
“Good night,” she said.
“Good night, Wren.”
She climbed the stairs. A door closed. The house settled into the quiet creaks and sighs of an old building settling for the night.
Mason stood alone in the kitchen, drying his hands on the towel, and realized he was smiling. Not a big smile — just a small, surprised curve of his lips. The first genuine smile he’d worn in years.
Three weeks, he thought. Maybe four.
For the first time, he wasn’t sure he wanted to leave.