The bloody spot on his knuckle dried to form a thin protective crust.
Then he turned to the county road, hearing it before he saw it: Rose’s blue beater of a truck sputtered toward town.
Every day at noon the Old Man pinpointed Perry’s location and drove out to deliver lunch and tell him how he should be doing things, tossing the paper lunch sack up to Perry’s waiting hands. Today the bag held a ham sandwich and an apple, as it always did. Nina liked consistency. Perry started with the fruit, chewing while the Old Man surveyed the fields.
As his father held forth on how the corn was doing, Perry scanned the horizon. The apple skin was tough. “Nina home?”
The Old Man shrugged. “She let Sill beg off school again today. The kid’s taking advantage.”
“She’s grieving.” His daughter wasn’t ready to let the boy go.
The Old Man bent to inspect the roots of a corn plant. Then he straightened and raised his palm to the air. “The weather is worse. I told you there’s a storm coming. You can’t plan to be out much longer.”
“I heard you,” Perry said.
“The warnings are on the news.”
“I know.” Perry didn’t know, and how would he? The radio on his tractor was silent. But this was often the stance that he took with the Old Man—agreeing without agreement, a way to tamp down the barrage.
“Don’t waste time dithering. If you want to keep working, there’s plenty up closer to the house you can do.”
Perry moved on to the sandwich. The Old Man hadn’t seen him coming from the direction of Rose’s place. A few years ago his father had coveted Rose’s land and tried to buy it, but he’d since done an about-face. Perry looked toward home. A swatch of pink moved through the green below the house at a quick clip. As the figure reached the clearing at the bottom of the hill he could see that it was Nina, carrying a bag and wearing a blue kerchief on her head. She took the slope in long strides, rounding toward the back door and moving out of view.
The Old Man was still talking about fertilizer. Perry had barely tasted his sandwich. He considered the piece of crust in his hand, and swallowed. He could bring up his plans again—it had become a monthly ritual. When do I get to try my ideas? When will you let me take a shot? But he didn’t trust his voice. Perry watched the corn grow and tuned out whatever his father was saying. He folded the empty lunch bag and slid it into his back pocket as the Old Man stalked to his truck.
Perry worked until mid-afternoon and then cut the engine, wiping his forehead and glancing toward the house. He wasn’t ready to face them yet. If the light seemed muted, it matched his thoughts. He was near the untilled land again—not something he’d planned, but as he leapt to the ground the earth met his feet, solid and reassuring. He took a few steps and kicked a small rock to reveal the hard-packed, thirsty soil underneath. Then he crossed over to the fallow patch and found his stone, knelt, and rolled it aside. Perry stretched his body across the ground and whispered into the hole: I will hold the land any way I can.
When Perry was a boy, his father told him that to get rid of bad dreams and sadness you whisper them into a hole in the ground. This was advice about his newly-dead mother after the Old Man grew tired of being waked by Perry’s sobs. Perry had come to this spot and dug a hole, whispering his mother into it as she had become, unrecognizable as the illness progressed—sharp cheekbones and undereye bruises that moved further and further down her face—then whispered in all the things he’d loved about her too. He’d covered the hole with a sizable stone. His father had meant the advice as comfort to a grieving child, but Perry never outgrew the habit. Whenever the Old Man cussed about these rocky acres, in his head Perry saw just one stone, his stone: rough and flat and unremarkable. This piece of land he’d never clear.
A chill came over him. He pressed harder into the dirt and whispered: Forgive me. And: I should’ve done more for Lance. And: Time to shake it up or give up once and for all. If the Old Man—or Nina, or anyone else for that matter—saw him lying here they’d assume he’d gone the way of Theo, or just lost his marbles.
One final whispered vow: I won’t repeat the Old Man’s mistakes. I might make new ones, but they’ll be mine. Then he hoisted himself off his belly, rolled the stone into place, and smacked the dust off his shirt and jeans. He pushed his chest forward, loosening his shoulders, and wiped a sleeve across his mouth. It smelled dry and clean as bones. He bounced on his toes to get his blood moving again and turned toward home.
By the time he pulled up near the barn the air prickled. The house at the top of the hill looked angular and exposed—it was time to repaint again. He rounded the barn, unlatching the doors to swing them wide. No barn cats to be seen. Perry picked up a can of oil and went back out to the tractor. The Old Man must have been watching for him—he humped down the hill, moving fast.
Perry took a breath, still smelling the untilled dirt. “Nina inside?”
The Old Man affirmed that she was, his eyes rheumy. Perry thought of Lance’s dog, Fergus, sitting at Rose’s side, thumping his tail and waiting for him to make a move.
He cleared his throat. “We need to talk about my ideas…” The Old Man tightened his fist on the cane. Perry’s fingers crept up to fiddle with the button on his empty shirt pocket. He made himself drop his hand before he spoke again. “You know what I mean. I’ve proved myself. I want to try hogs.”
“Hogs! They’ll break your back.”
“They didn’t break your father’s.” Leaves rustled. Perry felt a caress of wind at his neck, egging him on.
The Old Man picked up a fistful of dirt and sniffed it. “Pigs are too much, whatever they’re worth. You’ve got to worry about vet bills, parasites, blocked birth canals. You don’t want it.”
“I want to turn Rose’s southern acres and some of our fallow piece into pastures. We need to face facts, we’ll never get enough land to beat the suits, they’ll always win at that game. But if we can focus…people will pay good money for organic—”
“Where’s Rose gonna go, if you buy her out?”
Not the question Perry expected. He shrugged. “Stella’s. She’s got that big place in town now. The farm is too much for Rose.”
“Stella!” The Old Man winced. “Rose would peel off her own skin before going there.”
“What do you care?” What did he care? The Old Man kept talking, pissing on Perry’s ideas. Perry braced instinctively for a backhand: a blow that could’ve come any time from the year Perry was old enough to stand for a beating to the year he graduated high school. His heel ground into the dirt. “I’ve earned this. I’ve put in my time.”
The Old Man let go the fistful of soil and swiped his palm against his blue pants. “You want it so bad, take over. See if I stop you.” A long powdery stain on the Old Man’s right thigh was all that was left of his handful. Perry turned to the barn. The cracked voice pulled him back again: “Put the tractor in the shed.”
“I’ll do it after supper.”
“Don’t be a fool, boy. The storm is coming.” The Old Man reached out and clamped his shoulder. “Look at the goddamn sky.”
It was purplish green overhead, almost camouflage. Wind bent the border of trees along the side of the house. Perry shook his head, making room for the lowering clouds.
“I’ll tell her to get the house ready.” His father swung round, hobbling up the Brown hill.
Perry jogged toward the tractor, toes pressing uncomfortably against hard leather. Then he stopped. “Where’s Sill?” he yelled.
The Old Man yelled back, “…find her.”
Perry angled the tractor neatly into the shed, lashed down the tools, left the doors and windows swinging wide so the wind could find an exit, and then went to check on the barn. The barn cats’