“I thought you’re against chemicals?”
“Caleb,” I called, when we reached the top of the hillside. He was motoring along in our new tractor. He killed the engine when he saw us. As he hopped out and began to cross the field to us, I turned to Shannon, smiling wide. “Well? What do you think?”
What Shannon was supposed to say next was some version ofI can’t believe how much land you own,orI can’t believe how beautiful this place is.Instead, she stared with a distracted expression at the far end of the field, where the Home Depot workers were standing by a John Deere trailer, taking their lunch break.
Too much time passed. My smile hung on my face like a hangnail.
“It’s quite an operation,” she said finally.
Then Caleb was there, saying hello with a big cowboy grin. “Nice to meet you, Brooklyn,” he drawled. I swallowed the urge to punch him in the mouth.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s actually Shannon?”
Caleb’s expression faltered. He dropped the accent. “I know that, I just—it’s a nickname. Like, big-city girl? You’re from Brooklyn, aren’t you?”
“Oh,” Shannon said. “Ha. Yeah. I get it now.” She kicked the dust, squinted up at the sun.
“Bet you’re happy to be out of New York, anyways,” Caleb said. “What with all those rats.”
“Excuse me?”
“There are more rats in New York than there are people. That’s why everyone’s sick all the time. The rats.”
“I’m not sure I—”
“Well, I’m sure you know that New Yorkers have historically had terrible oxygen flow to their brains. That’s why the population is so dumb. For years, scientists couldn’t figure outwhy,until finally they realized what it was.” Caleb paused meaningfully.
Shannon ventured weakly, “The rats?”
“Exactly. The rats.”
Shannon looked helplessly to me, and I gave her my best we’re-all-God’s-creatures smile. “Caleb has a lot of fascinating little theories about the world! I’m sure he’ll tell you all about them at another time. Now that you’ve met, we should get back to—”
“Can I actually ask a question?”
“Oh.” Absolutely not. “Of course!”
Please, Lord, don’t let her ask about the rats.
“How many people work here?”
Caleb and I looked at each other. “I’d say we’re at about twenty part-time heads,” he said, “give or take, but that changes quite a bit on a seasonal basis.” Good man.
“Wow,” Shannon said. “Interesting.”
Here it was, another moment that should have gone one way—Shannon smiling brightly:I can’t wait to digin!—and instead swerved sharply in the opposite direction: she pulled a camera from her bag and pointed the lens at the workers across the field. The metallic sound that followed was deafening:cla-chink.
This was when I realized I’d made a mistake.
41
It’smid-December,I think. A frigid, cloudy, very bad day. I’m at the chicken coop, adding insulation for the ladies. Then I turn around and forget to breathe.
Old Caleb and Abel are walking up the driveway with two other men.
The two men have thick beards, like Old Caleb, and are dressed similarly to him, but are much younger. There it is: a flicker of recognition, followed by a clicking in my mind, a terrible flooding warmth.
I turn back to the thatched roof, heart pounding. My mind feels like an overheating hard drive. A computer with a broken fan. I stuff more hay into the gaps of the rafters, sneaking glances each time I reach down to grab another fistful from the bale.
