Mister Atomic's Plan

I saw right off how he took to drink, so I had emptied the liquor cabinet and hid all the bottles under my bed. I locked the cabinet again – we'll see just how honest he is. Between spying out the window to see that the fool hadn't lit the hay barn on fire, I hid the silver and stretched a needlepoint over the Bracques that hangs in the mudroom. The needlepoint was a traditional embroidery sampler given for weddings in the region, and was writ, "Women have many faults but men have only two: Everything they say and everything they do!" I don't wish to talk about why I have it now, but with this young man in the house, it cheered me to see it up on the nail.
The acrid smell of burning clutch rubber wafted in by fits. Whatever was I thinking? A performer who makes his bread by defecating on-stage, and expects applause as well as payment for this kind of display. Such a man, as ignorant as he was, has never learned the magic in "How do you want it, Ma'am." If I didn't talk fast and give him some idea of expectations, he'd break the whole place down like a mule in a corncrib.
I had yet to fully plomb his ability to take instruction, advice, or correction, to see if he could be made useful in some way he was not now. So far, all the questions or comments he made were not in the order of cooperation, but to catch me out, prove me wrong, get the better of me. But I had to think underneath it all, he was trying to understand something, but on his own. When things got particularly tense, I approached him, my right hand extended toward his right hand, no tricks, no charge, no context. He'd oblige and shake my hand. I could see in his face the electrical rearrangement going on in his head; he'd nearly giggle, and then be much calmer. But beside the handshake, and specifics around the farm that I allowed as his domain, he would neither offer nor agree to any accord; we could not agree to disagree; he would run roughshod over my caveats same as he did my carrot patch.
I resolved to send him on his way, but first there was a project that had been on my mind for quite some time. Years ago, a veterinarian buried the entire contents of his chemistry lab in a big trench at the bottom of the pasture. There were quite a number of bottles and ampules, liquids and gasses sealed in glass; some things I was curious about, things I thought I might get some good money for.