white Toyota for her to use, but only because she’d gotten all A’s in the first three years of high school, and only because he’d promised, and if she ever gets into trouble with it they’ll both be right back to walking.
While waiting at the stoplight to cross Route 13, she leans back in the driver’s seat and tentatively reaches her mind up into the sky. The air is thick with humidity; she can feel it aching to come down, but instead it continues to build and roll away, to drop over the ocean and the coastal cities, leaving their broad stretch of farmland dry. She can tell that Mitch is doing the same thing.
“Remember that story Grandpa told about the time he went to the mainland?” Mitch asks as the light turns green.
“Did it have a tattooed lady and a bottle of Jameson in it?”
“Nope, after his grandpa died, the one about how he met his wife.”
“He probably told me one time or another. Remember it to me anyway.”
“Well, when he was about as old as we are now—” in his stories Grandpa always seemed to be about as old as they were now—“he found that he’d got pretty sick of dirt farming and dirt farmers and dirt farmers’ daughters, so he decided to make out for the mainland and see if things weren’t better there,” Mitch begins, in fair imitation of their grandfather’s story voice. “His daddy and grandpa had died by then, but he left his ma and brothers and sister behind, figuring between the lot of them things would get tended to. He put the things he couldn’t do without in an old mending bag, got in his beat-up pickup truck with the rust hole in the bed, and started heading south. When he got to the southern point he paid a fisherman to take him across the bay in a Carolina skiff.”
“Less detail, more pith, we’re almost home,” Sally cuts in as she turns onto the gravel road by Matthew’s Market. Miss Ellie is walking along the shoulder of the road swinging bags of groceries, her daughters following after, and Sally veers wide to avoid hitting them. Miss Ellie is thin but broad-shouldered, her kinky hair hanging past her waist, and she raises her hand in greeting as they go by; she and her husband still rent the little house on the edge of the marsh. The younger daughter, Renee, small for her age but maybe five or six, walks in step behind her, both hands clinging to her back pockets. The older daughter, Chloe, almost ten now, jogs along behind them, a grocery bag banging against her leg. Sally never did get to hold themwhen they were babies; now that she can cuddle Pierce’s kid all she wants she finds that she doesn’t crave the warm weight of a baby in the way she did when all she had were dolls.
“He spent two weeks in North Hampton and Virginia Beach, getting drunk with Navy men and getting to know a lot of lonely women, and when he sobered up he heard that a hurricane had nearly wiped the Shore off the face of the map. So he took the loneliest of the lonely women, got her to marry him, and came back in a hurry, and that was the last time he left the Shore.”
Leaves go whipping by, and Sally sits up straighter so she can see the scrubbed white tombstones in the middle of the masses of thick green soybeans. “And the moral of the story is we’re stuck here?”
“Either that, or if you get drunk in North Hampton you’ll meet your one true love and lose your crop to hurricane,” Mitch says.
“But there was only one of him,” says Sally. “There’s two of us. Together we can make things work—”
“Can you see me bringing Brian to live here? It would be a disaster.”
They park by the house, behind a truck with its engine in pieces, and sit for a moment in silence. “Think he was serious about the farm?” she asks.
“And the vodka. Completely. I saw the paperwork on Dad’s desk.”
“Sounds like he’s trying to bribe us.”
“Sounds like whoever stays behind is going to be set for life.” Mitch hops out and slams the door. “Just not
While waiting at the stoplight to cross Route 13, she leans back in the driver’s seat and tentatively reaches her mind up into the sky. The air is thick with humidity; she can feel it aching to come down, but instead it continues to build and roll away, to drop over the ocean and the coastal cities, leaving their broad stretch of farmland dry. She can tell that Mitch is doing the same thing.
“Remember that story Grandpa told about the time he went to the mainland?” Mitch asks as the light turns green.
“Did it have a tattooed lady and a bottle of Jameson in it?”
“Nope, after his grandpa died, the one about how he met his wife.”
“He probably told me one time or another. Remember it to me anyway.”
“Well, when he was about as old as we are now—” in his stories Grandpa always seemed to be about as old as they were now—“he found that he’d got pretty sick of dirt farming and dirt farmers and dirt farmers’ daughters, so he decided to make out for the mainland and see if things weren’t better there,” Mitch begins, in fair imitation of their grandfather’s story voice. “His daddy and grandpa had died by then, but he left his ma and brothers and sister behind, figuring between the lot of them things would get tended to. He put the things he couldn’t do without in an old mending bag, got in his beat-up pickup truck with the rust hole in the bed, and started heading south. When he got to the southern point he paid a fisherman to take him across the bay in a Carolina skiff.”
“Less detail, more pith, we’re almost home,” Sally cuts in as she turns onto the gravel road by Matthew’s Market. Miss Ellie is walking along the shoulder of the road swinging bags of groceries, her daughters following after, and Sally veers wide to avoid hitting them. Miss Ellie is thin but broad-shouldered, her kinky hair hanging past her waist, and she raises her hand in greeting as they go by; she and her husband still rent the little house on the edge of the marsh. The younger daughter, Renee, small for her age but maybe five or six, walks in step behind her, both hands clinging to her back pockets. The older daughter, Chloe, almost ten now, jogs along behind them, a grocery bag banging against her leg. Sally never did get to hold themwhen they were babies; now that she can cuddle Pierce’s kid all she wants she finds that she doesn’t crave the warm weight of a baby in the way she did when all she had were dolls.
“He spent two weeks in North Hampton and Virginia Beach, getting drunk with Navy men and getting to know a lot of lonely women, and when he sobered up he heard that a hurricane had nearly wiped the Shore off the face of the map. So he took the loneliest of the lonely women, got her to marry him, and came back in a hurry, and that was the last time he left the Shore.”
Leaves go whipping by, and Sally sits up straighter so she can see the scrubbed white tombstones in the middle of the masses of thick green soybeans. “And the moral of the story is we’re stuck here?”
“Either that, or if you get drunk in North Hampton you’ll meet your one true love and lose your crop to hurricane,” Mitch says.
“But there was only one of him,” says Sally. “There’s two of us. Together we can make things work—”
“Can you see me bringing Brian to live here? It would be a disaster.”
They park by the house, behind a truck with its engine in pieces, and sit for a moment in silence. “Think he was serious about the farm?” she asks.
“And the vodka. Completely. I saw the paperwork on Dad’s desk.”
“Sounds like he’s trying to bribe us.”
“Sounds like whoever stays behind is going to be set for life.” Mitch hops out and slams the door. “Just not
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