“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to freak you out.”
“No, I mean, you really think he could do something like that?”
I picture the rope swing fixed to the branch and switch it out with a noose, the mental image filling me with horror.
“I hope not, but you never truly know what’s going on inside another person’s head.”
“He really did seem okay just now,” I try to reassure him as well as myself. “We were talking about farming.”
“He puts on a good act for strangers.”
“Is he depressed?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Do you know why?”
“Loads of reasons. He feels isolated, trapped, overwhelmed, out of control... If that tornado had torn through the farm... I don’t even want to think about the consequences of something like that. Just the debris alone caused a lot of extra work. If it’s not cleared from the fields, it can damage farm equipment during harvest.”
“He was telling me he’d lost a cornfield to hail and that the river flooded last month and ruined some of the soybeans.” He mentioned this last part on the drive home.
“Yeah. Can you imagine how soul-destroying it was for him to work all hours harvesting wheat, drilling and fertilizing the fields, washing the combine harvester and headers and putting them all away, thinking that the hard work was done for the summer, and then having to get everything out again to replant forty acres? It’s so much work, and that’s not even taking into account the financial loss.”
He sounds so sorry for his brother.
“No wonder he feels overwhelmed right now,” I murmur.
Anders must feel overwhelmed too—andhelpless and out of control, especially if he can’t get time off work to come home and support his family.
“Yeah, it’s no surprise depression is so common among farmers. But most are too stubborn to get help, my brother included.”
“Did he always want to be a farmer?” I shuffle back on the bed until I’m propped up against the pillows.
“He was happy about it when we were growing up, always wanting to get stuck in, do stuff around the farm. Even when he lost a chunk of his finger, he was back at work within a couple of days.”
“How did he do that?” I ask with alarm.
“Sliced into it with an auger.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a spiral-shaped tool that’s used to drill into the ground. We were putting a fence in.”
“We?”
“I was helping him.”
“How old wereyou?”
“Ten. He was twelve.”
“Ten and twelve?”
“Yeah. He got his sleeve caught. Luckily, I was there to turn the damn thing off or he probably would have lost his whole hand.”
“Where were your parents?”My tone has been growing more shocked with every question.
“They didn’t know what we were up to,” he replies airily. “Jonas had got it into his head that he wanted ducks, so we decided to put in a pen first and ask our parents later.”
