Dangerous fence

I knew it would happen. Jack took the hammer. The one I had given him to fix the fence. We were on the back forty. The hammer was for driving staples to stretch the barbed wire from post to post. Not for hitting a pipe driven in the ground. Jack, being a teenager, wanted to hit everything in sight. I saw the nest before I knew what was happening.
“No.” I screamed as loud as I could. He turned to look at me, the hammer completing its arch. Maybe softer, maybe not. His mouth hung open.

“What…ow…ow…ouch” He said looking at me. They came out angry. A bunch of wasps out of the pipe. We were having a quiet day until then. One got him on the arm. Jack screamed, realizing what he had done. He took off, crossed the field, the hammer forgotten. He waved his arms in the air. He looked like he was trying to fly. If he had been in a race, he would have won hands down. One wasp stung him in the back. He shrieked. “Fall down. Let them go over you.” I’m not sure if he heard me. The last I saw of him that afternoon; he was walking the gravel road headed home.

I waited ten minutes until the wasps had a chance to settle down. I retrieved his hammer from the weeds and walked to the house.
My wife looked up as I entered the back door. She smiled. “How did it go with Jack?”
“Not so good.” I told her what happened.
“He should have known better.” She said.
“Well, he does now.”

After supper, I drove to Jack’s parent’s home to pay him for the work he completed. I knocked on the door and waited on the front porch. He came out, his bottom lip swollen. I handed him his wages plus another five-dollar bill for his trouble.

“My mom says I can’t work for you anymore. Too dangerous.” Jack said.