George didn’t answer. Instead he dramatically picked up the board, removed the nails, and one by one, dropped each nail into the can. Then he carefully placed the plank onto the pile and returned to his work.
“Slow learner,” Bud said to Colin out of the corner of his mouth.
“Let’s do this,” Colin offered. “You pull the board out. Hand it to me. I’ll take the nails out and put them in the can. I’ll give the board to George, and he can put it on the stack.”
“Assembly line,” George said. “Brilliant. I feel silly that I didn’t think of it earlier myself.”
“And he calls himself the smart one,” Bud said with a wink.
“Did you think of it?” George snapped back. “Ah. I thought not.”
“See? He thought not. That means he doesn’t think.”
The back-and-forth between the two brothers lent an air of normalcy to the day, so much so that he was caught off guard when Bud picked up the earlier thread of conversation. “Are you going to tell us what she said when you told her you loved her?”
“A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell,” George said almost primly.
“Yeah, but we’re talking about Colin now.”
“I honestly don’t remember what she said,” Colin said as he took the next board from Bud. “Maybe nothing.”
“You weren’t kissing her, were you?” George asked, leaning on the plank that Colin handed him.
“Maybe.” Colin wiped his face with his handkerchief. It was one thing to tell George and Bud that he was in love with Lolly. It was another thing entirely to discuss the kiss. That was private and pure. “Here’s the deal. I do love Lolly. I know I haven’t known her long enough to dare to ask her to marry me, and maybe that’s not where this will go, but she is special to me.”
“I’m not sure the timing on this is good,” George said, his face serious.
“The timing is terrible,” Colin admitted. “I had no intention of telling her what my feelings were. The words just took wing and flew right out of my mouth.”
“And how did you feel afterwards?” George kept his gaze steadily on Colin’s face.
“Like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Off my heart. I knew it was the right thing to say.”
“I see.” Lolly’s older brother returned to the lumber stack. “I’d say it’s the real thing then.”
“Listen to him.” Bud joined the discussion. “Mr. Expert-in-Love himself. You learn all this from Ruth?”
His older brother abandoned the woodpile and approached Bud, his eyes blazing with anger. “You leave Ruth out of this.”
Colin understood George’s fury. The decision to sell the farm had taken his future away from him, and without even the basics of a home and a job, he certainly couldn’t pursue the young woman’s affections.
“Fine, fine!” Bud lifted his hands in surrender.
George stood still, his face reddened with emotion, until at last he turned, knocking over the can of nails, and stalked away, his hands shoved into his pants pockets.
“What was that all about?” Bud asked, watching his brother leave. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“I’m guessing that he is quite in love with Ruth, and that he’s quite committed to her and to being with her.” Colin knelt down and began to pick up the scattered nails.
“That’s for sure. Have you ever seen him at the café? I practically have to pull him out of there with a towrope to get him to go.”
“How does Ruth feel about him?”
“Oh, she’s just as goo-goo about him as he is about her.”
“They might have been making plans for a life together, or maybe they were just thinking about it, wouldn’t you say?”
“Sure.”
“I’m wondering,” Colin said carefully, “if the prospect of losing the farm has destroyed their dreams.”
The fact was that he had studied the ledger George had kept. How Lolly’s brother had managed to keep them all on the farm without going into debt was nothing short of a miracle.
But it seemed that the time for miracles on this farm had come to an end. There were precious few pennies on this farm, and he could see no way to squeeze any more out of them than George already had.
He wasn’t used to praying, at least not like Reverend Wellman, with Thou and Thee and wilt. The best he could do was tell God what he wanted and leave the rest up to the Divine.
On Sunday, Reverend Wellman had preached about the plow. You could pray for a plow, and maybe a friend lends you one, or a neighbor moves and gives you his. You strike it rich and buy a plow. So you’ve got a plow.
But that doesn’t mean your fields are plowed, and that’s what matters.
You’ve got to put your back into the work, the minister had told them, and do it. That’s how God works through you. He gives you the plow—the capability—and it’s up to you to use that plow.
Even as he changed the subject to the heat, and as he and Bud exchanged predictions on if and when it might break, a wordless prayer circled through his heart—one that asked for help, for relief, for grace, and for mercy.
And for a solution.
❧
Bruno circled her feet, his toenails clicking on the linoleum, as Lolly cut the beans for the hot dish, a mixture of pasta and vegetables and leftover beef. If she diced everything a bit finer, the vegetables didn’t look so peaked and the meat went a little further.
“If I carve any more corners off the food,” she said aloud to the dog, “there won’t be anything left.”
For the past hour, she’d heard the men talking outside. They were too far away to make out individual words. Just the ribbon of sound floated to her.
Now they had stopped, and she couldn’t hear the sound of the hammer on the wood of the outbuilding they were taking down.
“They probably went swimming,” she said as she leaned over and lit the stove. “I don’t know why I’m doing this. It’s so hot I could put it on the counter and it’d bake up just fine.”
Bruno yawned loudly, and she gave him the bone from the roast. “Here you go, you goofy mutt.” He snapped it up in his jaws and carried it under the table, where he plopped down and chewed on it.
There wasn’t much meat on the bone at all. She’d taken every possible scrap off it already, but she knew the dog would carry the bone around for days, protectively guarding it against any and all threats.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t fight you for it. And I don’t think anyone else will, either.”
She tucked her hair back into the bun. One of these days she’d go ahead and bob it, just cut the whole scraggly thing off and be done with it. She looked longingly at the kitchen shears, but satisfied herself with twirling it in a loose knot and retying it.
She walked through the house, straightening a pillow on the couch, wiping down the shelves by the window. She paused at the crystal vase and she carefully took it down and sat with it on the sofa, cradling the precious object in her lap.
With the edge of her apron, she cleaned the dust from the etched surface. She licked the tip of her finger and ran it around the edge, and was rewarded with a shrill sound that brought Bruno running, the bone clenched in his jaws.
“Sorry,” she said, laughing as he hid under the table. He stared out at her with suspicious eyes. “Didn’t like that, I gather?”
“Didn’t like what?” Colin asked as he entered the room and sat beside her. “He doesn’t like crystal?”
“I made it sing, like this.” She wet her finger and ringed the top of the vase, again producing the piercing note.
“That’s singing?” Colin asked, wrinkling his nose. “I’m with you, Bruno. That hurts my ears.”
Lolly put the vase back on the table. “Here it is. The best thing we own. I wonder what it would fetch if we sold it.”
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“Not much, I’m afraid,” he said. “You’re better off to hold on to it and the memories that go with it. Those are priceless, you know.”
“I don’t need priceless. I need something with a price.”
She didn’t mean to sound glum, but it was unavoidable. She’d carried the news of the impending sale with her for over two weeks now. It was like a heavy cloak, settling on her shoulders and weighing her down. Every once in a while she’d forget, but something would remind her and again, she’d feel the pressure.
She stood up and put the vase back on the shelf. “Pfft,” she said. “After all these years of dusting this vase, I thought I might get something in exchange.” She tried for a cheerfulness she didn’t feel.
“We’ll figure something out,” he said from the couch.
“I like that. We.”
“George is going in to Mankato on Friday, he says. He’s going to check into that program the government has now, and he’s also going to see if there’s any kind of help the family can get in the interim.”
“Relief? We’re going to have to go on Relief?” Her shoulders sagged in defeat and she leaned against the wall.
George had once characterized Relief as the last door in the hall, the one you thought was an exit but was instead another office. They had vowed never to take advantage of it—but they hadn’t envisioned their situation getting so desperate.
“Relief isn’t a bad thing,” Colin said. “The economy’s condition is a bad thing. The drought is a bad thing. But Relief isn’t.”
“I can’t do this. I just can’t do this anymore.” She buried her face in her hands.
She felt his arms go around her, and she leaned into his welcome strength.
“Don’t cry,” he whispered as he stroked her hair. “We can make do. Don’t cry.”
“I’m not crying.” Her words were muffled against his shirt collar. She breathed in his scent, a mixture of sun and sweat. “I’m too drained to cry. It seems like everything is make do, make do, make do. I’ve cut the carrots for dinner so tiny they’re nothing more than little orange flakes. The meat in the hot dish is there in name only. Tonight we can play a game called Find the Beef. I used the last of the noodles, and I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow.”
He held her tighter.
“And I’ve just lied,” she said to him.
“You lied?” She could hear the surprise in his voice.
“I am crying.”
She knew she was getting his shirt wet with her tears, but once they started, she couldn’t stop them. She cried out all the grief, all the anger, all the frustration, all the hurt, until finally her head ached.
She pulled back and said, shakily, “I need a handkerchief.”
“Here, take mine.”
She shook her head. “I have my own.” She managed a weak smile. “These days, it doesn’t do to be without, you know.”
“I suppose.”
His chest was so comfortable, she didn’t want to leave the safe enclosure of his arms, and she leaned against him while she fished in her pocket for her handkerchief.
“Let’s go for a walk,” he suggested. “You can bring your hankie.”
“Am I going to need it?”
“Only if the vision of a broken down barn brings you to tears.”
She had no idea what he was talking about. She knew that he and her brothers had been pulling down the back barn, but why would he want her to go see it now?
Not that it mattered. She would have followed him to Timbuktu if he’d asked her.
He led her, holding her hand, out to the spot where they’d been working. Most of the outbuilding had been taken apart, and she saw the sure hand of her brother George in the neatness of the work site. The wood was piled in a tidy stack, the nails were contained in an old coffee tin, and the tools were out of sight, probably safely stowed in his toolbox in the barn.
“What do you see here?” he asked her, as he stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders.
“I see some trees and a sky and a back barn that, if you all had just waited a week or two, probably would have fallen down of its own accord.”
He chuckled. “It was fairly awful.”
“It was originally meant to store wagon equipment, but when we got the truck, George sold the horse and the wagon and its accoutrements, which is what he called the reins and the harness and all that. Big fancy word, but George likes fancy words.”
Colin smiled as she continued, “Lately it’s housed a skunk or two—I think you’ve already met one—and a possum, and batches and batches of field mice, and a hornets’ nest every year.”
“So it’s the local zoo?”
“You could say that. It’s a definite improvement having it come down. Now I won’t have to worry about what tenant is going to come out and greet me as I walk by.” She shuddered as an old memory resurfaced. “There was even a snake in there once. Nonvenomous, Bud said—as he waved it in my face, of course—but still scary.”
“Ah, typical Bud. So you see an old barn that needed to come down—and it is, bit by bit—and what else do you see?”
“I see the wood and the nails. George, always the thrifty one, will never throw away something even as little as a nail. I’ve seen him pound one straight to use again in a fence or something.”
“Do you know what I see?” he asked as his fingers tightened on her shoulders. “I see hope. I see a family that won’t stop believing and trusting in the future, so much so that they’ll take down an old building and make plans for a new one.”
“But he started this earlier,” Lolly began, “before we knew that we’d have to sell the farm.”
Colin leaned in, so close to her that his breath tickled her ear. “Do you really think he hasn’t known this for some time? That he hasn’t been trying to find a way out of it? But more importantly, once he decided that he couldn’t save the farm, he continued on with this. Do you know what we’re going to do with this lumber?”
Her head was spinning, not only with what he was telling her, but the very fact that he was so close to her.
“He’s going to build a new shed, a toolshed.”
“He says that, but I think it’s just talk,” she answered.
“No, he’s got the plans all drawn up and ready to go. And he’s talking about how he can store his tools in it. Lolly, is this the voice of a man who’s given up hope?”
She couldn’t bear it any more. She was tired of trying to stay upbeat and positive, when it was clear to her that their options were not just limited, but gone.
She twisted out of his hold and turned to face him. “You say this over and over, but here’s the truth. Unless someone comes up with a way to save this farm, it’s done. We can talk about having faith and having hope and all those pretty words, but we’re like Bruno with that bone. All the meat is gone. It’s just a bone. We can chew on it and chew on it and chew on it, but it’s just a bone.”
Her chest hurt so bad she thought it would split open. “I’ve lived here my whole life. My entire past is here. I have nothing else. Nothing! There isn’t anything romantic about poverty, and I think you, of all people, should know that. Look at you, sent out on the road with only a change of clothes and a bedroll.”
“But it was my choice.”
“Choice! You really don’t understand, do you? There isn’t any thing called ‘choice’ any longer! There isn’t enough money here, and without money, Colin, all options are closed. If you can’t pay for a place to live, then you’re homeless. If you can’t pay for food to eat, you’re hungry. Where’s the choice in that?”
She didn’t even bother to swab away the tears that coursed down her cheeks freely. “They don’t call it a depression because everybody’s having such a swell time.”
With those words, she turned and marched back into the h
ouse, hating the way her life had turned against her.
❧
He stood in the clearing, his hands still open as if at any moment she might walk back into his embrace. His ears still rang with her words, sharp and direct.
She was right. It was fine for him to mouth platitudes about keeping her faith and having trust and all that, but there was a time, he knew, to put some muscle behind the plow God had given him, just as the minister had said in the service on Sunday. He had to push it forward to make it work.
What could he do?
Bruno was snuffling around in the foundation of the old barn, and Colin kept a wary eye on him. He wasn’t too fond of any of the animals that Lolly had mentioned, particularly snakes, and Bruno had already proven his talent at rousting animals from the shed with the skunk.
The dog pawed away a loose brick and picked something up in his teeth. Every muscle in Colin’s body prepared for immediate flight as the mutt headed his way.
But it wasn’t an animal. It was a notebook, rubbed over with dirt. The cover was partially ripped away, and it was, of course, damp with dog drool. He could see that Bruno had created his own stash of treasures—a sock, three feathers, a piece of rubber that must have been a tire, a bone, a gnawed candle, and of course, the notebook.
Bruno must have taken it from the house and brought it out to the barn and buried it.
Colin opened it and began to read.
It was a charming story, beautifully told. He understood immediately what he had in his hand.
It was Lolly’s story.
ten
I thought my dreams were safe with him. And perhaps they are. But I have no idea where he has taken them. Across the ocean to enchanting Paris? To a mountaintop in exotic Asia? Into a pyramid in Egypt? I hope he takes good care of them, for these dreams are fragile things. And they are mine.
Dinner was a quiet meal, without much discussion.
George was angry with Bud, who was angry that George was angry. Lolly sighed. They’d been through this many times before. Eventually the whole thing would evaporate and life would go on as if nothing had ever happened.
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