Anywhere
By Taylor Bruchet

Jack didn’t know where he was going he just wanted to leave. He just wanted to disappear, to head out to the open road where all his troubles would vanish. Jack had had a bad life back home in Michigan his father would beet him if he made any mistakes and his mother was completely out of the picture but now it was just him, the open road and, old truck. Jack had brought all the money he had saved up over the years which equaled out to be around 800 dollars but he still wondered if that was enough to get him down to Mexico where the sun would be hot and he would be free.
He drove through the rest of Michigan and was entering Indiana when the needle on his gas gauge was getting dangerously close to the bottom. There were no signs of a gas station anywhere and he was getting worried. When his car had run out of gas he pushed it to the side of the road and started to hike along the road in hopes to find some one that would help him. After several miles of hiking he came across a farm that was down a dirt road about a mile or so. When he reached the farm he knocked on the door and waited for someone to answer. After about a minute he heard some movement behind the door and then it swung open with an old man standing in the doorframe.
“Hey my car ran out of gas a couple miles back and I was wondering if I could borrow some gas?” jack asked politely.
The old man starred at him for a while then motioned for him to come in. He sat me down in a pig puffy pink chair then sat down on there sofa and asked me what the problem was so I explained “ I ran out of gas a couple miles back and I was wondering if I could borrow some gas from you and possibly get a ride back to my car?”
The old man pondered about this for about a minute then said, “ I have a lot of work to be done here on the farm since I’m getting kind of old and haven’t hired a farm hand yet so if you work for a couple of days for me I will gladly get some gas for you and give you a ride back.”
He seemed like a nice person that didn’t want to kill me or anything so I said “alright.”
He showed me to a room in the house where I would be sleeping and said his wife would be back from town in about an hour or two and we would be having dinner. I asked if my car would be fine on the side of the road and he said yes because it was seldom traveled. We started to work right after that. He taught me how to build a fence so that I could without his help. I set off making the fence and in an hour I got about 50 feet or so done. When he came back he shook the fence to see if it was sturdy and it fell over. He then said “your going to be here your whole life if you build fences like this.” So I set out to do the fence I had already done only better. Doing it better took me almost twice as long and twice as much strength. I had always been small and weak so building fences took me a long time but I wanted to leave and go. When his wife came she offered me dinner that I graciously took. She was very nice and almost treated me as her own son. After a week of building fences my time was up but I almost wanted to stay there and work I loved the time I spent with them but my mind was set I was going to make it to Mexico. On my departure they told me that if I ever needed a place to stay they would be there. They filled my car up with gas and sent me toward the nearest gas station.