Merriton

“I wanted to meet you guys.” Kevin was at the door of the Thunder Brother’s home. “I know I’ve said hi to you a couple of times, but I haven’t really met you.” Both John and James were at the door. Kevin could never tell them apart, but he had learned long ago never to ask brothers if they were twins. They opened the door wider and let Kevin in.

One of them took his coat. “Heard you were an Olympic skiier.” Kevin blew out all the air he had in his lungs. “No…” The other brother asked, “I heard you were a shoe-in for Jeff’s job.” Kevin looked at the two brothers. They were tall and blond. They looked like they should be on a Nazi poster displaying perfect Aryan strength. “Well, kinda. I’ll do the winter half and Moe from Up North is gonna do the summer half.” Both brothers nodded and simultaneously answered, “Moe…”

They headed out of the foyer and into the parlor. “This place looks just like Random’s.” The brothers looked at each other and the one with a scar on his lip answered, “Yeah, except we don’t have a ton of computers lying around everywhere.” Kevin nodded. They indicated that he sit down. Their couch was in the same spot as the futon in Random’s house. “It’s a little different, though. Random’s place has a hallway over there.” The brother with a scar on his lip answered, “Yeah, to the suicide room. Does Randy ever go in that room?”

Kevin raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “Nope. None of us do. Wanna know something?” Kevin lowered his voice and leaned closer to the brothers. They nodded and he continued, “The first night we came there, they showed me the room…” Kevin paused for dramatic effect. “The blood stains were still there, all over the wall and floor…” He leaned in a little closer and the brothers followed suit, bending at their waists. “I said to Sierra, “Man, why would you want to live here!’ And she said, ‘There’s more to this house than this room.’ And right then, POW!” Kevin pulled back. “The light bulb in that room exploded!” He let the story sink in. “None of us have been in that room ever since.”

The brother with a scar looked at him with admiration, but the other brother shook his head. “A burnt out light bulb?” There was a bit of disbelief and sarcasm in his voice. “You guys were scared off by a burnt out light bulb?” Kevin blushed. “Well, when you say it like that it sounds silly, but you weren’t there, man. It went out right when Sierra…” The more he thought about it, the sillier it sounded. “It was scary.” The three of them laughed together.

The brother with a scar said, “So, Randy thinks you’re pissed off at him.” Kevin shook his head. “No, I’m not. He just surprised me with all this, you know? He’s a computer guy. I really didn’t expect him to actually be running a farm. What does he know about farms?” The scar curled into a sheepish smile. “You know, I think that Internet is somethin’. He found out about a whole buncha stuff that we never even heard about. Plus, he’s willin’ to do all the shit work like dealin’ with sellin’. When we…” His voice trailed off and his brother finished, “When we found out that we were losing the farm, it felt like the world was ending. Then, here comes some crazy guy who gives it all back to us. We…”

The room was quiet and Kevin didn’t know what he needed to say. Random had offered him a room at the ranch, but this was their house. Roscoe had told him to just be upfront with them, so he drew in a breath. “Did Random give you the ‘80 Hours And Hatin’ It’ speech?” The brother with the scar stood up. “He talked a bunch about working 40 hours a week, yeah.” He paced to the window. For a second, Kevin felt like he was in Random’s house. Outside that window is the corral for Sierra’s goats, he thought. The brother answered, “He’s off his rocker.” Kevin was suddenly curious to see what he would see if he really looked out that window. He walked over and opened the sheer curtain. Snow. For as far as he could see, there was snow.

“I worked for Random in San Francisco. You do NOT want to go over your 40 hours. If you make Random happy, he is the best guy in the world, but you do not want to see him angry. He will cut you. You’ll do anything to get him back to the nice guy.” Kevin closed the curtain. Sunny day. He was missing his time on the mountain with Roscoe to talk to the Thunder Brothers. The brother by the window walked back to his chair and plopped into it. “We just figured we’d do whatever we want.” Kevin turned around and faced the two of them. “Don’t. If he even thinks you’re working overtime and not claiming it, he will put a freakin’ time clock in this house and you’ll have to punch it. No, you’ll WANT to punch it just to make him happy. Believe me. You do not want to go over on your hours.”

One of them made a rude noise with his mouth and Kevin continued, “Listen to me, this is really important to Random. Back home…” Home? Was San Francisco home? Was Random’s house home? “Back in San Francisco, all these companies like to brag about how many hours their employees work. Some of ‘em even have t-shirts that said, ‘80 Hours And Lovin’ It.’ Random thinks that just burns his employees out. I used to work at a place like that and don’t ya get tired? The work HAS to be done and there’s no one else to do it, so you end up exhausted and making mistakes.” The brother with a scar raised his hand to his lip. Kevin continued, “I promise you Random won’t let that happen to you. Sure, we got busy at Zerbitz, but he always took care of us.”

The brother with a scar on his lip asked, “How?” Kevin shrugged. “He does it two ways. He brings on green computer guys during the slow times. We would train them when we were slow because there was nothing else to do. Then when things got REALLY busy, and we were all working, he would bring in another crew of seasoned computer guys that he kind of found on his own. These guys were pretty smart and were able to just come in, help us through the crunch time and then go back to their freelancing or whatever.” Kevin paused. He was calmly trying to broach the subject, but he couldn’t think of any other way to say it. “I’m the green guy.”

The quiet brother finally spoke, “Randy told us ’bout his idea to bring you on. Thing is, you don’t know anything about farmin’ AND you weigh about 98 pounds. What can you do?” Never once had Kevin thought about the fact that he was so small when he went over this idea in his head. He was dumbfounded, “I weigh 120 pounds.” The brothers laughed. Both of their mouths opened widely and loud laughter escaped. The brother with a scar choked out, “Oh! 120 pounds! Okay, then! That’s MUCH better!”

Kevin imagined himself hurling huge bales of hay into a truck and realized how silly he was sounding. He chuckled to himself and pleaded with them, “There’s got to be SOMETHING that I can do. You just teach me everything you can do and I’ll do my best to grow stronger.” The quiet brother wiped the laughter tears from his eyes, “Yeah, he’s drinkin’ milk!” He laughed some more.

Kevin tried to broach the subject he had been so worried about, “Thing is, he says I can live here with you guys and learn, but this is YOUR house, even if he owns it. I’d like to take the job. I’d like to help him out, but I don’t want to just barge in here and take a room and demand that you train me.” Both brothers shook their heads, but the brother with a scar spoke, “We got three extra rooms in this house and a whole place out back for farm hands. You can have whatever room you want. Just seems silly to keep farm hands all winter long. Sure, you’ll be workin’ with Roscoe, but we were always able to survive the winter with just us. We told Randy that you were welcome.”

A huge weight lifted off Kevin’s chest. “Okay, sounds like a deal. One more thing. Which one of you is James and which one is John?” The brother with a scar stood up and patted Kevin on the shoulder, “I’m James.” Kevin smiled. Suddenly, the two brothers looked completely different and he was surprised that they had ever looked similar.