By Peter B. and Art Intelli

Chapter Seven: The Haul Road

The morning came with a new kind of silence.

Peter had grown used to the sound of clinking metal—his own breathing tangled with the rhythm of ankle irons. He’d even adjusted to the permanent weight of the ball and chain, learning to shift it with a timed swing, like an extension of his body.

But today, the twins stood at the edge of the bunkhouse, arms folded, waiting beside a long, flatbed trailer loaded with something new: railroad ties—dense, creosote-soaked, and heavy enough to buckle a man if he wasn’t careful.

Wade barked the order. “You’re hauling every one of those to the fence line. Half-mile down the haul road.”

Colt added, “Stack ‘em neat. No draggin’. We hear draggin’, you’re back in the box.”

Peter swallowed hard and nodded once.

No backtalk.

They handed him thick gloves, more as a dare than a kindness.

And the labor began.

The Test

The first tie nearly flattened him.

Peter crouched, heaved it up onto his shoulder with a grunt, and took his first few steps. The ball and chain trailed beside him, jerking now and again on uneven ground. His pace was slow. Deliberate. Measured. Every hundred yards felt like a mile.

The sun climbed higher.

By the third tie, sweat had soaked him through, dripping into his eyes. His shoulders throbbed. His breath rasped.

Colt and Wade said nothing. They simply followed on foot, boots crunching behind him.

On the sixth tie, he fell.

The edge of the tie caught his collarbone and drove him to the dirt. He gasped, spitting out dust, pain radiating through his side.

Wade stepped closer. “You done?”

Peter didn’t answer. He didn’t look up.

He pulled himself to his knees, groaned, and hauled the tie back to his shoulder.

By midday, he had a rhythm. Lift, shuffle, plant. The ball dragged a half-beat behind him. Sweat ran like rain. His lips cracked. His back was on fire.

But he kept going.

The Stack

By late afternoon, the final tie landed with a thud. Peter dropped to his knees beside the stack, head bowed.

The twins looked at the pile.

“Straight enough,” Colt said.

Wade nudged the last tie into place with his boot. “You didn’t quit.”

Peter said nothing. Couldn’t. His body trembled from head to toe, iron collar glinting in the last of the sun.

Wade crouched beside him, voice low. “We push you because we need to know.”

Peter glanced up, face hollowed by exhaustion. “Know what?”

“That you’re as tough as we think you are,” Colt said, “Not just a soft cityboy who can’t put up fight.”

That Night

No box. No cuffs on the cot.

Peter lay in his bunk, the collar still riveted on of course, the ball still chained to his ankle, but his wrists were free.

He stared at the ceiling, barely able to lift his arms. But a thought came to him—a strange one:

He had earned something today.

Not freedom. Not comfort.

But recognition – almost…respect?

And in this place, with these men, that was the first thing that mattered.

To be continued …