“I think I got it,” she said.
Brandon ducked under the strap and checked. “I’m just gonna get it a little tighter,” he said. “We want it to bereallytight. It’s the only thing holding the greenhouse on.”
“Yeah, sure,” she said. “Tighten it up.”
He did, getting it to go three more clicks. He didn’t dare do another one, as he’d noticed the back of the skid steer starting to tip up with the weight of the greenhouse.
Dear Lord,he prayed silently as he got back into the skid steer, the rough strap scraping along his shoulder as he ducked under it. That stinging reminded him that this was not child’s play, and he needed to pay close attention to everything around him.
He put his hands on the controls, a slight tremor running through his chest.
“All right,” he muttered to himself. “Here goes nothing.”
He first lifted the shelf to get the greenhouse off the ground and tilted back toward the skid steer slightly. That should distribute the weight better and keep the tracks on the ground.
“Whoa, whoa!” Lenore yelled as creaking and groaning and jostling noises came from the greenhouse.
Brandon slowed, but he didn’t stop, and a few seconds later, he felt the greenhouse lift from the makeshift foundation it had been placed on. “Now we just kind of move it,” he yelled, and he started to back up.
The skid steer did a great job backing into the parking area in front of Lenore’s house the greenhouse bobbing and creaking along with it. Brandon managed to get moving forward to the front of the house, and he made a wide turn around the left corner.
Lenore had stayed at the side of the greenhouse the whole way, and now she stood down at the back corner of the house, gesturing him forward with a slow flapping motion of her hand.
Brandon wasn’t straight, and he didn’t have enough distance to straighten out, so he pushed right into the corner of the house despite Lenore’s shrieking protests, and then backed up.
It took a couple more painstaking, time-consuming, back-and-forth movements before he lined up the greenhouse parallel to the house.
He’d already cleared this ground of the grasses and weeds, and he intended to put the greenhouse directly onto the soil and anchor it with cinder blocks.
He told Lenore they could fill those with dirt and grow things in them as well, and everything he said, she looked at him like he’d grown four extra heads. He didn’t think anything he thought of or said was all that wild—at least not when it came tohomesteading—but Lenore acted like she’d never heard of any of it before.
“Stop, stop!” Lenore yelled, and Brandon brought the skid steer to a screeching halt.
Mistake,screamed through his mind as the greenhouse started to rock with two-thirds of it off the front of the shelf. He quickly locked down the skid steer, which should give it some added weight as it anchored to the ground.
Still, he felt himself tipping forward slightly, and something told him to get out.
“Brandon, it’s falling!” Lenore yelled.
“I see it,” Brandon yelled back. And he could feel it too. What he didn’t know was what to do about it. “Maybe the ground’s not level,” he called.
“We’ve just got to get the strap off,” Lenore said.
She jogged toward him, and while Brandon had moved the greenhouse the whole distance with a ground clearance of only six inches, it suddenly felt like if it tipped, everything would be lost.
Get out, get out, get out,his brain screamed at him. With the back of his seat still pitching up, Brandon turned to fly from the cab of the skid steer, completely forgetting that the strap stood in his way—a very tight, very rigid, very rough canvas strap.
It caught him straight in the neck, choking him and sending a path of pure fire across his skin. He yelped, his eyes closing and his hands coming up to shove the strap away. That, of course, didn’t work, and he felt himself falling backward.
He couldn’t stop himself, and he hit his head against something hard. Brandon groaned, trying to figure out where he was in space.
“Brandon!” Lenore yelled, but at that moment in time, Brandon didn’t know which way was up and which way was down. A horrible crash filled the air as the greenhouse andgravity won, pulling the skid steer forward and lifting the back of it right up off the ground.
Brandon pitched forward, every muscle in his body tight. His forehead hit the plastic windshield of the skid steer, and he cried out.
Get out. Get out. Get out,still ran through his mind, and he couldn’t hear anything else.
Brandon managed to open his eyes and scramble out from underneath the strap and out of the machine as it continued to settle. He crawled on his hands and knees for a couple of paces and then fell onto his back, panting.
