Riggs
It was the best time of the day.
While I loved the work I did, being a third-generation farmer on my family’s farm, the end of the day was always a welcome event.
There was always plenty to keep me busy. Depending on the time of year, my responsibilities would change based on what crops we were planting and harvesting, the needs of our livestock, and what events the farm was hosting.
My day-to-day activities would range everywhere from preparing the land for our crops, harvesting crops, and tending to the animals on the farm all the way to maintenance of the farming equipment, helping out in the on-site farm market and bakery, and cleaning the yard and hutches.
No matter the time of year, though, I was guaranteed to have a full day of work ahead of me. What was nice, though, was when I was able to wind down a day that had been filled with hard physical labor by helping to move the fruits and vegetables in our on-site farm market into the refrigerators before heading home for the day.
I’d been doing that for the last few minutes as I thought about what next week was going to bring in terms of work.
Every year, we hosted a fall festival. We’d open up parts of the farm, well beyond the farm market and the bakery, to the public and transform the place into the perfect spot to spend a fun fall weekend. Along with access to the farm market and bakery, we offered a corn maze, a hayride to our pumpkin patch, a bounce pillow that was over sixty-five feet long and thirty feet wide, a corn bin, a hay mountain, and an apple cannon.
Of course, we also set up a special area for a petting zoo.
So, with everything that we planned to have available at the festival, next week would be a tough week. We’d still have to get not only most of our regular duties taken care of but also set aside a significant amount of time to prepare for the weekend. Thankfully, once it was all set up, we wouldn’t need to do that much work to maintain it from one week to the next.
For now, though, I had to make sure that I stayed on top of everything this week, so we didn’t have any surprises when we were ready to get things taken care of next week. Today, I’d accomplished all of my usual daily tasks for a Tuesday plus I did a check on several pieces of farm equipment. I took care of the routine maintenance on the equipment and had just done it not that long ago. Even still, with everything we needed to deal with next week, I didn’t want to run into a problem with something that could have been easily diagnosed now.
When I finished checking over the last piece of equipment for the day, I made my way to our farm market. The farm market was essentially a store we had opened on the farm more than twenty years ago when my father was running the day-to-day operations. While he still jumps in to help every now and then during our busier times, he’s mostly retired.
The market was a huge success. I was just a kid when it was originally opened, but I remember the first day like it happened yesterday. To see how far it had come and how much the needs of our community had changed over the years was really something. It made me proud to know that we were supplying our community with fresh, high-quality food. With each year that went by, the demand in the market grew.
I’d just walked from the refrigerator back out into the front of the market when the door flew open and my brothers entered. They all had smiles plastered on their faces.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Without an ounce of hesitation, my younger brother, Leo, who happened to be the second oldest brother of the group, said, “They chose you.”
“They chose me? Who chose me? What are you talking about?” I questioned him, having not a clue what he was referring to.
“Bro, how could you forget?” my youngest brother, Sam, shot back.
My brows shot up. I honestly had no idea what they seemed to be so excited about.
Layne, who was born after Leo, declared, “We just got the email confirmation. You were selected as the winner.”
“The winner?” I repeated.
“Don’t you remember our little dare?” Sam asked.
My body tensed.
Shit.
As soon as he said the words, I knew exactly what they were talking about. The fact that my brothers continued to say that I had won was the reason I’d been so confused. Receiving confirmation that I’d been chosen for this wasn’t exactly something I’d have considered as being a legitimate prize.
Maybe for somebody it would be.
For me, not so much.
For years, my brothers and I have always played practical jokes on one another. And if it wasn’t that, we’d come up with a ridiculous dare. No matter what, we refused to turn down a dare. To this very day, none of us had backed out of or declined to follow through on any challenge placed before us. For a period of time, that ended up proving to be a problem. Each of us knowing that we’d be able to get one of us to do something crazy, we continued to up the ante every single time.
In the beginning, the dares had been mostly harmless. We had fun and got along. It was always a great bonding experience for the four of us.
But with the growing determination to do something more outrageous each time, the dares started to become more and more dangerous. Obviously, we never wanted anyone to get hurt. That was never the intention. It was all done in good fun and for some laughs. That was the way it was with boys. Or, it had been that way until one dare, involving some hay bales and the roof of the livestock barn, resulted in Layne breaking his ankle.
It happened ten years ago, and none of us had ever forgotten my mother’s reaction. I was convinced she’d lost her mind.
From that point forward, we decided that we’d tone down the physically dangerous trials.
Now, though, I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the change. Right now, I would have chosen to do something physically extreme if it meant I didn’t need to follow through on this. Because while I didn’t mind challenging my brothers to their fair share of potentially embarrassing stunts, they’d come up with a good one for me. Had I been on the other side of this dare, I’d have been looking much like they did now. Since I was the subject of the venture, I was less than thrilled at what was in store for me.
About a week ago, my brothers had dared me to enter a contest for a romantic stranger photo shoot. They knew that despite how awkward it could turn out to be, I’d never say no.
They were right.
Truthfully, in the back of my mind I figured if it was a contest, there was little chance I’d ever be selected. So, I told them to enter my name.
Clearly, they’d done that.
And I was now learning that my line of thinking was all wrong because they’d apparently gotten an email declaring me the winner.
I started to wonder about all the other men who weren’t chosen and silently pondered if they’d been forced to enter like me or if they’d willingly entered it on their own. I couldn’t imagine it was the latter for many.
“You know, it’d be nice to be able to finish up in here so we could all go home.”
I turned around to see my sister, Piper, walking from the refrigerator toward my brothers and me. Piper was younger than me, Leo, and Layne, but she was older than Sam.
Once she had our attention and had come to a stop beside me, she went on, “It must be nice to stand around and chat while someone else is doing all the work.”
Piper consistently gave us a hard time. It was always harmless, and we knew that she never actually meant what she said when she was trying to be difficult. Piper knew, probably better than anyone else, how hard my brothers and I worked on the farm. Even still, that didn’t stop her from pulling our chain at every opportunity that arose.