luck delivered it into their name; great-grandparents sharecropped before that, arrived on it newly free and looking for a way of living in the quiet of the seasons, hope humming in their ears.
Through the trees I see the white hem of our house, a silver ghost like my dead Donald, belted with an apron of porch, teacup sky overhead, clouds rimmed in gold. I take the woodpath to avoid the eyes of neighbors where there didn’t used to be any, follow my feet along tracks I could walk blind from first walking, fifty paces to the north, feel the tug of the pole, then my old sharp turn left and twenty more paces through treecover until I step into the corrugations of the garden, the sky darkening to a purple bronze. Now I stand alone.
Not that I blame anyone. I don’t blame my husband for taking out loans to install an irrigation system, to keep the farm alive, building up a debt that forced my hand in the end, debt to the FHA, and debts to banks to pay off the Feds. I don’t blame him for dying before his time. I don’t blame my daughter for telling me what was obvious. I don’t even blame Paul Krovik with his big plans and big money.
But I do blame myself. I blame myself for giving in to Krovik when he asked me to sell the farm, and for giving in to Rebekah when she said I had no choice but to sell: either sell and remain solvent, my daughter told me, or hang on and let the bank take everything when I could no longer make the payments. All those badgering, shouting people, hollering even when they didn’t raise their voices. I don’t blame them, but in the end I didn’t have the strength to resist. I blame myself for that weakness, for not standing with the land, letting my feet sink in, holding the soil with their fleshy roots, finding a way to make farming pay as we always had in the past.
One foot just fits in a furrow between two rows in my garden, the earth warm and soft, lines clear, all of it my labor: the hoeing and weeding and mulching, the mounding and raking and watering. Between stands of asters in September bloom I can see tomatoes and peppers in twilight, leaves yellow and ragged for neglect. I feel bad about that, but my time has been divided. I’ve been fighting to save you all, my little that remains. Rent of a sigh rips my chest, and a claw comes snagging from nowhere. I cannot name the hand that scrapes me now, but I feel its hook bring up a coughing cry. Stuff it back inside, fist my tongue behind my teeth, a salt-knuckle silencing. God forbid the neighbors should come investigate or call the cops.
I love this life and I love my freedom. I want them both to last, free on this plot that was supposed to be my people’s promised land, the new home at the end of their long exodus from the south. My great-grandparents, born in bonds, came here under their new name, following their own star. My grandparents, the first generation born in freedom, the first to own the land themselves, started off as tenant farmers. If they managed to do it, then
I
might have found someone again willing to assume the burden and possibility of farming land not their own, farm it in the way it’s been farmed ever since people came to cultivate this part of the country. I should let go of the blame, but I still find myself accountable for caving in to all those people in the weeks after Donald died, his life going out all at once, moving upright from bed, putting his feet on the rag rug. A congenital defect, said the doctor, weakened by a lifetime of labor, time catching up after the decades of handpicking and lifting and early rising.
I can’t help thinking that if he’d retired and leased the land to tenants when it was clear the work was taking him down by degrees each day and the returns, ever slim, fast diminishing, were no longer worth the effort of his labor, when there were still farmers around looking for land, then he might still be alive. But no,
I’m no overlord,
he said,
and I’ll be no overseer
. We worked
Through the trees I see the white hem of our house, a silver ghost like my dead Donald, belted with an apron of porch, teacup sky overhead, clouds rimmed in gold. I take the woodpath to avoid the eyes of neighbors where there didn’t used to be any, follow my feet along tracks I could walk blind from first walking, fifty paces to the north, feel the tug of the pole, then my old sharp turn left and twenty more paces through treecover until I step into the corrugations of the garden, the sky darkening to a purple bronze. Now I stand alone.
Not that I blame anyone. I don’t blame my husband for taking out loans to install an irrigation system, to keep the farm alive, building up a debt that forced my hand in the end, debt to the FHA, and debts to banks to pay off the Feds. I don’t blame him for dying before his time. I don’t blame my daughter for telling me what was obvious. I don’t even blame Paul Krovik with his big plans and big money.
But I do blame myself. I blame myself for giving in to Krovik when he asked me to sell the farm, and for giving in to Rebekah when she said I had no choice but to sell: either sell and remain solvent, my daughter told me, or hang on and let the bank take everything when I could no longer make the payments. All those badgering, shouting people, hollering even when they didn’t raise their voices. I don’t blame them, but in the end I didn’t have the strength to resist. I blame myself for that weakness, for not standing with the land, letting my feet sink in, holding the soil with their fleshy roots, finding a way to make farming pay as we always had in the past.
One foot just fits in a furrow between two rows in my garden, the earth warm and soft, lines clear, all of it my labor: the hoeing and weeding and mulching, the mounding and raking and watering. Between stands of asters in September bloom I can see tomatoes and peppers in twilight, leaves yellow and ragged for neglect. I feel bad about that, but my time has been divided. I’ve been fighting to save you all, my little that remains. Rent of a sigh rips my chest, and a claw comes snagging from nowhere. I cannot name the hand that scrapes me now, but I feel its hook bring up a coughing cry. Stuff it back inside, fist my tongue behind my teeth, a salt-knuckle silencing. God forbid the neighbors should come investigate or call the cops.
I love this life and I love my freedom. I want them both to last, free on this plot that was supposed to be my people’s promised land, the new home at the end of their long exodus from the south. My great-grandparents, born in bonds, came here under their new name, following their own star. My grandparents, the first generation born in freedom, the first to own the land themselves, started off as tenant farmers. If they managed to do it, then
I
might have found someone again willing to assume the burden and possibility of farming land not their own, farm it in the way it’s been farmed ever since people came to cultivate this part of the country. I should let go of the blame, but I still find myself accountable for caving in to all those people in the weeks after Donald died, his life going out all at once, moving upright from bed, putting his feet on the rag rug. A congenital defect, said the doctor, weakened by a lifetime of labor, time catching up after the decades of handpicking and lifting and early rising.
I can’t help thinking that if he’d retired and leased the land to tenants when it was clear the work was taking him down by degrees each day and the returns, ever slim, fast diminishing, were no longer worth the effort of his labor, when there were still farmers around looking for land, then he might still be alive. But no,
I’m no overlord,
he said,
and I’ll be no overseer
. We worked
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