The Fence Man

About The Fence Man

Up in the Florida Panhandle, close to where the state meets Alabama and Georgia, Bascom wakes to fog lying low over the peanut fields and red clay roads still damp from the night. The Fence Man is a fitting name for country like this, where property is marked out by long runs of fence and the grass grows hard against every post. The work here is lawn care: mowing open yards that stretch toward the fields, trimming tight along those fence lines where a mower can't reach, and edging the drives so the yard sits clean against the red earth. At first light, before the Panhandle heat climbs and the pines begin to shimmer, a freshly trimmed fence line runs straight as a surveyor's string across the land.